“Thirteen alabaster jars,” mused Carter, all he had to show for his efforts in the Valley of the Kings, and these from back in February 1920. George Herbert, Lord Carnarvan, the “money”, had threatened to shut down further excavation after the unsuccessful season ending March 1922. Nothing to show for it but sand. But Howard Carter had persuaded him to fund one more dig, at the price of offering to guarantee the costs himself, in an area close to a line of ancient worker huts at the entrance of the tomb of Ramses VI. Carter was not adverse to making a little on the side on the illegal antiquities market, but a major dig in the Valley of the Kings requires aristocratic funding.
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Carter wasted no time, continuing the former excavation where it had stopped, at the northeast corner of the entrance to the tomb of Ramses VI, “trenching southwards”. At this location, there were ancient stone huts of the Necropolis workmen, built less than a metre above the bed-rock, which had partly been exposed by his former work. These ancient huts were soon cleared of rubbish as a prelude to the planned dig.
Carter, an artist and loner by temperament, who never it seems formed a serious human relationship in his life, exhaled a mighty puff of smoke from his cigar and adjusted his fedora and bowtie, at the welcome news: a boy worker had stumbed across a stone step. Carter was soon digging shoulder to shoulder with his men. The first step was the beginning of a sunken staircase, a steep excavation cut in the bed rock, about four metres below the entrance of Ramses VI's tomb. They set about clearing further heavy rubbish, soon uncovering a tomb entrance, the funerary seal undisturbed. Carter’s eye lid clapped frantically, like a trained falcon bound to its master’s arm, the fantastic effect of his magnifying glass. The name on the tomb unmistakable: Tutankhamun, the son of the misshapen and elongated Pharaoh Akhenaten.
The site of the doorway reburied, Carter telegraphed an urgent message to Carnarvan, at his home at Highclere Castle in England: “Have uncovered what appears to be an undisturbed tomb”. Regrettably, there were signs of the crude work of ancient grave robbers along the stairs, but not on the door to the tomb itself. That was a good sign, but both feared the tomb had somehow, some ways, been looted millenia ago and what they had discovered was an empty crypt. Carnarvan set out from England with all due haste, accompanied by his daughter.
At around 2 p.m. on November 26, 1922, Carter stood in the hot, dusty tunnel having just made a small hole with an iron spike through the top left corner of a wall of ancient mortar. A fetid flow of warm air escaped from the tomb. Carnarvan stood behind, as did his elegantly attired daughter, Evelyn Herbert. Next to Evelyn stood Arthur Callander, Carter’s assistant, an engineer and archeologist by trade, with the unfortunate nickname of “Pecky”. Carter inserted a candle into the hole and peered after it. This, they prayed, was the first light to enter the chamber in 3,200 years. He remained silent as he watched the candle dance over what appeared to be two black ghostly figures, soon dissipating amid a cascade of light, glimmers of gold pushing out the darkness.
Then came an impatient question from Carvarvan: “Can you see anything?”
“Yes,” Carter replied. “Wonderful things.”
Breaking away from the sight, he turned back and took in Lady Herbert’s lovely blue eyes, now visible and radiant beneath the dusty brim of her melancholy hat. She smiled and nodded reassuringly. Carter noted the presence of two black clad local women at the top of the ancient stairs. They wore the niqab. Females of their race were never to be seen on the worksites, unless only in passing and always accompanied by adult male family members. These two hawkish sentinels were alone. Perfectly still, their unblinking black eyes, like obsidian, fixed pitilessly on him. He had no time to worry or inquire, his gaze tore back into the tomb. But now the light of the candle had lost its penetrating and illuminating qualities. Carter squinted, held his eyes tightly, forcibly, to generate sufficient moisture to counteract the dust and new onset darkness. Had he been imagining things? He struggled to focus, peering back into the tomb. He gasped. Two black, unblinking, eyes looked back out at him, from within. There was someone inside.
“What’s this!” he screamed, his head jerking backwards. His colleagues recoiled instinctively, a look of horror draped upon them. Carter reinserted the candle and yelled, “Who is there?”
“What?! Grave robbers! Impossible!” responded Pecky.
Carter remained still and did not answer. “No… NO!,” he stammered, rubbed his eyes, hard, and looked back in. “We reburied the tomb and posted guards. Impossible!”
Relieved. The intruder had vanished, the wonderful things had resumed their proper place amid in the golden, shimmering, light of his flickering candle. Carter smiled and wiped his brow, nervously, then cleared his parched throat. "Sorry, sorry. No, certainly no grave robbers,” he chuckled. “A trick of the light. Just… the light. There is no one there. Wonderful things, nothing but wonderful things”.
Gilles Caron stared out from the peep hole in his hotel room door into the bleak, torn red carpeted hallway. “Who is there? Is anyone there?” He opened the door wide, a gust of fetid air invading his nostrils. Caron could have sworn a half dozen partygoers at least had been raising hell, one even pounding on his door, as the others laughed and cheered, for no good reason any sane person could understand. At his first glance, he had seen the woman, in white and grey furs, out front, and men beside and around her, young men, in flat caps, and straw boater hats, some carrying torches of all things. But on second glance, they were gone or seemed to be. Perhaps these drunken fools had staggered onto the wrong floor, his third floor, and then bid a rapid retreat. But nothing but a ghostly silence remained, and nothing of the expected scent of her perfume, their cigarettes or even kerosine from the torches. From the stairwell, more nothing, the silence of the tomb.
Caron’s own route of escape, from his decrepit and unwanted residence, in the red light district of Buenos Aires, was not at all clear to him. He would first need to remember who he was.
Ellen drafted her notes from the day’s excavation at Ek Balam by the light of a diminishing, flickering candle. Her shelter was a jungle lean-to after the ancient maya design, crafted by Arturo. Outside, her attention was drawn to heavy steps, approaching with intent through the darkness and underbrush. The palm leaves, serving as her doorway, were swept aside, and there stood Ali, an astonished look on his face.
“You have a visitor.”
“A what, you say?”
Pushing Ali aside brusquely, there stood Eduard Degrelle, grinning profusely. “Yes, Mademoiselle, so you have.”
“My Lord, what are you doing here? When did they let you out?”
Degrelle wore his useful hunting coat, designed as he liked to say, to “carry everything.” He extinguished his cigarette on Ellen’s camp table. Ali withdrew, Arturo taking his place and sitting off to the side, listening intently, his eyes fixed on Degrelle’s side arm.
“I heard from your father Alistair you wouldn’t be on the bus tour to Chichen Itza. Regrettable. His Excellency’s son told me you’d be here instead. That was very fortunate. It so happens I have a private airfield nearby. I have had my eye on this site for sometime. Have you dug up anything of interest?”
“Fortunate indeed. Are you alone?”
“Just my pilot. He is setting up camp.”
Ellen held in her gloved hand a figure in black obsidian of a winged human-like creature, then pulled out a second, nearly identical one, from her pocket and placed them side by side next to the cigarette burn on her table. Each stood no more than four inches high, three inches wide. “Winged angels? Not likely,” added Ellen. The Mayans didn’t believe in angels. “Gods? Priests accompanying the dead king on his final journey? Something else I think.”
She looked into Degrelle’s blood-shot eyes. “Perhaps they ward off evil spirits? No, they obviously don’t do that,” she chuckled. “Feeling ill Degrelle?”
“No, not in the least,” wiping a bead of sweat from his brow.
It was then that a terrible shriek shattered the night. “Come quick! Madam James! Come!” It was Ali’s voice. Degrelle, followed by Arturo, and then Ellen emerged from the lean-to.
“A snake! Caron was bitten!”
“Where is he!?”
Caron already convulsing, gasped and moaned. “Did you see it? How do you know?”
“I sucked what poison I could from the wound on the right arm, but I was too late.”
“What kind of snake?” said Degrelle, effecting moderate interest.
“Big. I don’t know. I didn’t see it, but I could hear it slithering at my feet, monstrous thing, moving in the brush like a serpent. I threw my torch at it, but it was gone.”
“A coral snake no doubt,… an unusually large one perhaps,” said Degrelle. “Give him this.” Degrelle drew a small vial from one of his many pockets.
“What is it?” said Ellen.
“No time to explain, just hold him down and force it into his mouth.” Ali then held his jaw shut, and the potion did seem to have an effect, the convulsions less frequent, less ferocious, allowing Caron’s prostrate body to rest in relative security on a litter prepared by Arturo. They would need to get him to hospital without delay, and carrying him back through the jungle by foot was certain death.
“Don’t worry,” said Degrelle. “Get him to my plane. It is nearby. My pilot will fly him to Valladolid. I know a doctor there, a young fellow from Boston. A good friend of mine. He runs a clinic for the destitute opposite the San Servacio Church. He is expert in the treatment of snake bites. Of course, there are always costs regrettably. You understand.”
“Yes, how much? We don’t have time.”
“But perhaps I can make an exception and cover the costs myself … if we could do business.” Caron groaned hideously.
“Yes, we can do business Degrelle,” Ellen declared. “This one time. Now get him on the plane.”
From the small anti-room where Caron lay, he could have seen or perhaps did see the main facade of the Church, and a coat of arms carved on stone with arabesques, a royal crown and a Franciscan cord, and in the central part of it, an eagle and a palm, peculiar to the taste of the Franciscans. Two square towers rose, on either side of the central facade, made up of three structural bodies. On top of the main gate, a small booth hosted the clock, the only public one available to the destitute who frequented the Doctor’s charitable clinic. The Doctor’s only demand was absolute obedience to his instructions, no exceptions, including his prescribed remedies and injections. After several weeks in the care of the Doctor, Caron’s condition stabilized and he was transferred to the local hospital.
“What do you mean gone?” Ellen said, staggered by the words delivered by the frail looking nurse before her, ghostlike in the flickering lights adorning the hospital entranceway. A hospital at twilight has a sickly, stale, medicinal smell. Or perhaps it was in this case the smell of formaldehyde. The light bulb that illuminated the nurse’s ghastly features was bare, covered in silken cobwebs. The phantasm spoke in Spanish, in which Ellen was passably conversant. “Yes gone. He must have awakened in the darkness, dressed himself, made his bed and left,” she said. “No one saw him leave the ward. The bed looks as if no one has slept in it at all. The windows were locked from the inside. I really don’t see how a living person could have just walked out, unseen. And his file is gone. It must have been misplaced. It is as if he had never been here. The night nurses and doctors have all gone home too, and I cannot reach them. When I arrived, he was gone. Not a trace. Es algo de lo más sorprendente … It is a most astonishing thing.”
Detective Francisco Furriel sat perfectively still in his office, a fragment of cigarette held firmly between his lips, inhaling with enthusiasm. Looking down, he opened the file folder before him marked, “Gilles Caron, Missing Person”. Mexican authorities suspect foul play. Glancing over at Lieutenant Montiel, he declaimed: “The suspect was last seen in Caraccas. Anything more recent?” Montiel shrugged, “Nothing, just rumours. They say he is here in Buenos Aires. We know he is French, nationality unknown, fluent in English and German … his Spanish isn’t bad either. We’ve checked the German and French clubs. No one matching his description. Mexico says he is may be driving for the Zwi Migdal… you know, the Varsovia.”
“Uh huh… Well then Nicolas,” said Furriel, “if standard procedures fail, we will go on what my gut tells me. And my gut tells me the rumours are correct, the murderer is here, in Buenos Aires, and where would a murderer on the run hide? Where could he find work and protection? In the Abasto of course,” Montiel raised an eyebrow and nodded in agreement. “Let’s start with Raquel,” added Montiel. “She might know something.”
The Balvanera barrio or neighbourhood of Buenos Aires had a saintly start, when in 1799 Father Damian Perez, a Franciscan monk, was donated land on which he commissioned a chapel dedicated to Nuestra Señora de Balvanera. The church was completed in 1842 and gave the barrio its name. The parish catered to the spiritual needs of its residents. The Abasto is the informal name for the north-western portion of Balvanera, which sits along the avenue Rivadavia between Congreso and Caballito. The Abasto was once considered the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Its transformation from the saintly to the sordid, came gradually, incrementally, almost imperceptibly, until the traffic in humanity for the service of human depravity, went from a trickle to a wave. A new life form came into being under the red illumination that seems inseparable from sin, to the aroma of cheap perfume and sweat, and living walls that moved and slithered as one passed. By the time Caron took up residence, the Abasto, was notorious for its selection of brothels, particularly around Junín y Lavalle. Prostitution was legal and municipally regulated since 1875. The brothels serviced the growing immigrant population, which in Buenos Aires at the time was predominantly Jewish, Eastern European and male, arriving in the city to work. Their families would follow, or at least that was the plan. A unique demographic, authorities who just looked the other way and the Abasto’s discreet location, was a perfect environment for the Zwi Migdal, a Jewish organized crime group, to take root and floorish, specializing in sex slaves.
The cage of the metal fan rattled and pulsated in turn, making sleep without the benefit of alcohol near impossible. Caron lay half conscious on the sunken cot that passed for his bed, the lights of passing cars dancing the tango off the peeling ceiling paint. Another night of dreams and nightmares in turn. His eyes shot open as if responding to an imaginary shriek echoing only in his mind. He rolled, his right hand striking the empty bottle on the bedstand, which fell to the floor and rolled, slowly, across the uneven surface of his floor, stopping only at the leg of the rickety wooden table supporting the fan.
Outside the door there was laughter, drunken, slurred singing. Raquel had another guest. The prostitute and Caron shared a thin wall between their pillows and could insult each other, ask the time or beg a favour, as they preferred, without raising their voices.
Caron threw open his door, “What’s this?”
Raquel stopped her howling, her drunken sailor friend in white, his cap gone missing, lifted himself off the floor, leaning back precariously as he addressed Caron, “Go to bed, this is none of your business. Go back to sleep or I’ll put you there, kid.”
Caron ripped the dirty grey cap from his head, and rolled up his greasy sleaves as he lurched forward, blood on his knuckles from the day before still visible. Caron had changed considerably from the young well dressed man perusing the books of the law library, only a few years before. His circumstances or how he perceived them made him ferocious, a coiled spring of violence. His gestures were all it took to send Raquel’s guest tearing down the stairway, stumbling as he went, falling heavily with a clatter into the garbage cans in the entranceway.
“Well done, Juan Perez, well done,” said Raquel, mocking mute applause. “How very well done. Not all of us can drive for pimps, or would want to. But Juan Perez, the ridiculous Juan Perez with the heavy French accent….or are you Monsieur X? He will do anything for money.”
“That’s what they call me, Perez. At least I’m not a whore.”
Raquel’s eyes sharpened. “No, you’re not a whore. You are worse than a whore, a go-boy for pimps and human traffickers.”
“Shut up and go to bed. Learn to live with pain. It’s good for you. The world is all about pain and the sooner you figure that out, the sooner you’ll make peace with it.”
“Pain!” Raquel laughed hysterically. “I hear your dreams, your nightmares. All that fear!! I know about the man you killed. Every night, the same thing, the same begging for mercy, the same hammer blows, killing that poor man, over and and over … Murderer! Reliving it every night. And the fool doesn’t even have a name!” she belly laughed.
Caron smiled. “You know why Efron employs me Mademoiselle Liberman. It’s precisely because I am Juan Perez, Monsieur X, John Doe. Nobody. No identity. As if I came out of a painting on the wall. Now good night,” he added gently.
“Good night Perez,” added Raquel with a smile.
Raquel Liberman was born on 10 July 1900 in Berdichev in the Kiev Governorate of the Russian Empire. She moved to Warsaw in Russian Poland with her family as a child and in 1919, married Yaacov Ferber, a Warsaw tailor. They immigrated to Buenos Aires only to have her husband drop dead of tuberculosis soon after their arrival. Struggling as a seamstress, she soon fell in with the Jewish human trafficking network named Zwi Migdal, (previously "Varsovia"). Her pimp, Jaime Cissinger, set her up in her residence in the “suite” next to Caron. She paid Jaime for protection, who in turn paid Efron. It was at the hotel that Jaime made the acquaintance of Caron, provided him with the forged documents he would require, and introduced Juan Perez to his new employer.
“Don’t forget, Saturday at 9 pm, Avenida Rivadavia, Cafe de Los Angelitos,” yelled Cissinger, digging his hands deep into his pockets, a twinkle of light catching what could be seen of his right eye, beneath the heavy burn marks. “We have two little angels for you, for immediate delivery.” Caron nodded back at Jamie, before trotting off out the hotel entranceway, down the front steps, then running at a galop to catch his bus. Thirty minutes later, Caron emerged at the foot of the steps of the Musea National Bellas Artes. He rushed up the stairs, paid for a ticket and walked inside.
The man from the painting scanned the collections, as if looking for anything familiar, any clues as to who he was, where he was from, anything to place him in that moment before his first memory, running through the streets of Valladolid, pursued by the assassins who stalked him by day and night. There was that time in the public library, the books seemed to transform, bend, turn, spin around him and then, the voices, as if from a lecture, delivered in a tunnel, reverberating in his head.
He stopped before "L’ Angelus”, a painting in the naturalist style by Jean-Francois Millet, and couldn’t bring himself to detach from it. A peasant couple were lost in prayer, the man clutching his hat. The woman, bonneted, holding her hands clasped close to her breast, seemed to be leading the pair in mourning. Caron’s eyes focused on the point of their gaze, the ground, or was it a basket, but then could feel himself drawn into the canvas, his right hand clutching the basket and throwing it aside. Now, to his knees he fell, clawing at the ground with his bare hands. There is something buried here. A step, emerged, then a door to a tomb and then a seal. “Undisturbed,” he mumbled to himself, as a security guard approached him sensing his agitation. Turning to the guard, who touched his arm with his hand, “The tomb is undisturbed, don’t you see it”.
“Move on sir, you better move on.”
Raquel entered the Cafe la Luz and sat next to Montiel who had already ordered two coffees. He was hatless, wearing a black trench coat. “You know it’s not good to meet in the day time, what is so urgent?” she said. A live performance by a guitarist behind, a tango, provided sufficient cover for their words:
Almitas torturadas,
pobres esclavas blancas del tango y la milonga.
Mujeres infecundas,
¡autómatas del vicio, sin alma y sin amor!…
“We are looking for a killer. He may be in the Abasto.” He slid over between their coffees a rough sketch of the suspect.
“That could be anyone. I don’t know him.”
No sé por qué esta noche
reflejan tus pupilas la pena que te mata
“There is also a rumour he drives for Mr. Efron."
“The boss has many drivers… you said a killer?”
“Yes. Have you heard anything?”
“I don’t want to get involved. It’s too dangerous. There are many killers in the Abasto. A man in the room next to me has terrible nightmares. Are you going to interrogate him about the crimes he commits in his dreams?”
“Maybe, what is he dreaming about?”
y en cada carcajada,
yo sé, pobre milonga, solloza el corazón.
Tal vez tu propia culpa,
“Nothing… who could say?” Raquel struggled to remember Caron’s words. There was a name, the victim had a name, but it was always masked by the screams.
“Raquel, you know we can help, but you have to help us too. The man he killed is a Frenchman. The name is Gilles Caron.”
tal vez el desengaño
del hombre que has querido
“I don’t know anything, I have to go.”
Montiel sensing there was more, grabbed her arm roughly, then loosening his grip. “Sit down. Please. There is nothing to be afraid of. Just tell me. There is more isn’t there. Let’s talk about this fellow with the nightmares.”
y hoy para olvidarlo,
emborrachás tu alma
con tango y con champagne.
Pero pensá, milonga,
que hay una criaturita
de manecitas blancas
que en este mismo instante
tal vez a unos extraños
les llamará mamá…
The elderly Mayan woman held the young child firmly in her lap. Her clothing was tattered. Her face furrowed with age. The child, a boy, was shirtless and still. The young doctor handed him a candy, which he buried in his month, holding it in his cheek. The doctor, dressed a la mexicain, was more of a gaucho, in overalls and a gingham shirt, than a physician. Yet he administered the syrum with uncommon ease and speed. The child did not flinch at the pinprick. The woman rose and said something in Spanish to the nurse the doctor did not understand. The Doctor looked up to see a small yellow lizard, maybe three inches long, slip through a crack in the clinic wall. He picked up his clipboard and continued his notation concerning another case with which his mind was preoccupied:
As to the interaction between the k’aizalaj okox, a hallucinogenic mushroom reportedly ingested by the patient prior the snake bite, and snake venom, results promising in the treatment of psychotic disorders, mental trauma, including shell shock. Tests incomplete. Results pending.
He put down his pen. “Nurse, next patient please.”
Caron lay flat on his bed, still wearing his cap, and stared at the peeling paint in his ceiling, forming imaginary sand dunes in traces of light and shadow; the time, deep into the night. “Raquel, you awake?”
She responded in a sedated whisper, “Yes, Perez. What is it?”
“I was at the art gallery today. Do you like art?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Perhaps I will take up painting, do you think that might help me remember?”
Raquel paused. “The police are looking for you… you know that don’t you?”
“But if I was a painter? I bet that isn’t in their file.”
Raquel, torn between despising this black creature of the Abasto, and a certain uncontrollable affection, asked, “And even if you knew how to paint, and Efron bought you an easel. And even if you set it up in the street and painted, what would you paint?”
“I would paint ghosts,” Caron laughed. “That’s all I know… that’s all I dream about… I might even paint you, ha!”
Both smiled without speaking and went back to sleep.
This is a work of fiction. Although its form, content and narrative may at times suggest real people, real documents and records, autobiography or that the work is historical non-fiction, it is a product of the imagination. Space and time have been rearranged to suit the convenience of the book, and with the exception of public figures, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. The opinions expressed are those of the characters and should not be confused with the author’s.