— I know her names! yelled Samuel, furiously squirming in Franky’s arms. She’s the whore of the Apocalypse, the most naked among the clothed. In my tribe she was called Lilith.
— You wouldn’t be confusing her with someone else, would you? Franky asked, without letting go of him.
At that point, the dormant Doña Venus began muttering a complaint seeming to come from afar.
— No rough-housing, she whispered. This is a proper establishment.
The characters in the vestibule exchanged glances, once again amazed by that prodigy of the talking head.
— Okay! growled Bernini. Is the woman sleeping or not?
— She sleeps in the saddle, like a cowboy, Pereda answered very calmly. She sleeps mounted on her stool.
So she did, in fact. Her words having restored order and reconstructed the broken silence, Doña Venus had fallen back into her purring torpor. But all of a sudden, at the sound of steps from inside the room, she blinked eyelids as wrinkled as walnut shells. The door of the room, which no one had yet seen open, swung on its hinges, and out came the Anonymous Lover. Not even looking at him, Doña Venus dropped from her pedestal with gelatinous fluidity, slid over to the main door, drew back the stealthy chain, and opened the frosted-glass street door. The Anonymous Lover, not bothering to pretend he wasn’t in full flight, made his discreetly phantasmal exit. Doña Venus closed the door behind him, secured the chain, planted herself in front of the men, and critically took stock of the situation.
When standing, Doña Venus displayed an almost perfectly spherical shape, the overflow of her flabby flesh raining down from breasts, abdomen, and buttocks. Her head, in contrast, had a certain refined quality of a rampant animal, embellished by the wonder of her half-white, half-black coiffure. As for her eyes, their long experience was obvious in the way she now studied each of those men who sat slowly ripening under the shrill light between blood-coloured walls. Even more obvious was that Doña Venus’s intelligent eyes had just chosen the Syrian Merchant. Sensing this, he feigned a yawn of indifference and got to his feet. Doña Venus smiled enigmatically and gestured toward the door left open by the Anonymous Lover. The Merchant obeyed the silent order and slipped into the room, closing the door behind him. From the vestibule, they could hear the key turn in the lock. Satisfied, Doña Venus bent over to stroke the belly of her little dog before climbing back aboard her stool to recover her equilibrium, beatitude, and slumber.
Franky Amundsen hadn’t missed a single detail of the scene. He turned to the philosopher of Villa Crespo:
— Most satisfying to observe how much the Terrestrial Venus has modernized her operation. Son of a gun! One on the scaffold and another waiting in the chapel. Now that’s production!
— Hmm! Samuel responded vaguely.
— The assembly line, Bernini said with a cynical air. The latest thing from míster Ford.
Franky nodded, serious and scientific, and solicited the audience’s attention with a gesture:
— Gentlemen! he began. Who would dare suggest that we are not progressing? Consider this prodigy of technique and be amazed! Mechanical love, in three movements. Speed, comfort, hygiene! Nota bene: at no point in the production process does the hand of man intervene.
— There’s no other girl like Jova! Doña Venus’s words came sputtering up from profound depths.
But Franky’s speech didn’t enjoy the success he was hoping for; on the contrary, it exercised the negative virtue of throwing a shadow across everyone’s face. Adam and Schultz were now lowering brows pregnant with melancholy ruminations. Samuel was stammering a sad, drunken soliloquy. The pipsqueak Bernini, indefatigable sociologist, meditated on the sexual problem resulting from a majority of avid men and a minority of inflexible women who found themselves in this mysterious alluvial land. Motionless and silent waited the Conductor and the Gasfitter, the latter moist and tranquil as a vegetable, the former concentrated and rough-edged as a rock. As for the Mature Gentleman, he had evidently not let go of the Martínez murder case; he looked cautiously up from his newspaper at Franky and then back down, as though thinking the young fellow dissimulated splendidly if indeed he was a detective.
After Franky had run his eyes over each and every one of the expressionless faces, he guessed what was going through the Mature Gentleman’s mind. And so, for the sake of breaking a silence that didn’t agree with his character, he turned to the Mature Gentleman and said:
— Let’s say it was the Mafia. How did you arrive at that hypothesis?
The Mature Gentleman drew himself up to his full stature (which wasn’t much):
— Gut feeling! he exclaimed, at once confused, triumphant, and modest.
— Bah! scoffed Pereda. The gentleman conducts his investigation like it’s a game of truco.
— The intuitive method, Franky declared in a protective tone.
— Not only that, said the Mature Gentleman, miffed by Pereda’s disdainful comment. The circumstances surrounding the crime clearly point to a Mafia job.
— The deductive method, Franky corrected himself. Yes, it’s a crime with a signature, as we say in the trade. No doubt about it. But tell me, how do you see the chain of events?
The Mature Gentleman adopted a circumspect air.
— Same as always, he said. The rancher receives an anonymous message: he has to go to a certain place at a certain time, under threat of death. When he shows up, they kidnap him. They want a huge sum of money, make him sign a cheque, or something along those lines. What happens in the end? The police get wind of it, and the mafiosos get scared and shoot the rancher, and…
— Nothing could be further from the truth! Franky interrupted. That’s where appearances are deceiving.
— What? asked the Mature Gentleman. Is there another theory?
Franky gave him a long look of unconcealed harshness.
— That’s just the point, he said. In the first place, sir, I don’t formulate theories. I, sir, work with magnifying glass in hand.
— And so? the Mature Gentleman asked again, disconcerted.
— The rancher, growled Franky, was murdered right in his bedroom. A shot from a pistol with a silencer.
Adam and Schultz, Pereda and Bernini exchanged furtive glances. The Mature Gentleman’s jaw was hanging open.
— Impossible! he cried at last. What about the corpse? They found it at an estate.
— Pure theatre, Franky explained. They got him dressed in the bedroom, and two men carried him out between them, as if he was drunk. A grey Hudson was waiting for them at the corner with the motor running.
— And the motive for the crime? objected the Mature Gentleman. What could they rob from a dead man?
Franky hesitated, as though deciding whether or not to divulge information that might breach professional confidentiality.
— Look, he finally decided. In the rancher’s bedroom there was a Chinese vase from the Sung dynasty. And the vase has disappeared!
— But the newspapers haven’t even mentioned it! complained the Mature Gentleman.
— And do you know what was inside the vase? concluded Franky, pregnant with mystery. The Eye of the Buddha — the famous emerald of the Maharaja!
The duo Pereda-Bernini burst out laughing, and the contagion passed to the duo Schultz-Buenosayres, then got a thunderous response from Franky himself, as well as an echo of solidarity from the Italian Gasfitter. But the Mature Gentleman wasn’t laughing; quite the contrary. Red with embarassment and anger, he was winding up to give this young whippersnapper a piece of his mind. And doubtless he would have done so, if at that very instant Doña Venus, drowsing on her tripod, hadn’t shown signs of agitation: