Tumbleweed

11

"Yes," Chief Inspector Silva said, "I will tell you what I know. Some of it I have only found out very recently and some of it I have known for some time but even if you add it all up it may come to nothing."

The commissaris shivered, and Silva immediately showed concern.

"You haven't caught a chill, have you? It's this damned air conditioning. It's a comfort of course but a danger at the same time. This isn't our best season and the heat hits you like a hot towel when you step outside but here, in the offices, it's too cool. I'll turn the machine down a little."

"No, no," the commissaris said quickly, "I feel quite well, better, in fact, than I have felt in a long time. But I did, probably, shiver because of the change of temperature."

"All right. Maria de Sousa. But it's intricate, how can I begin to tell you about what goes on here, on the isla. Isla, we call it, a Spanish word. So many influences are acting and reacting together here that the climate, the mental climate, has a very strange character of itself. A peculiar character."

He paused and the commissaris waited.

"To begin with, everybody knows about everybody. I even know Maria personally, but if nobody had ever introduced us, if we had never gone to the same parties, or met on the beach, even then I would know her by name. And she would know about me. If you had mentioned my name in Amsterdam she could have told you a long story about me, possibly with a lot of truth in it although some of the details would have been grossly exaggerated. We do exaggerate here."

"Yes," the commissaris said.

"She comes from a good family. Her father is in business, legitimate business. He owns a wholesale company. He is also engaged in smuggling, but smuggling isn't illegal here, as long as no weapons are involved, or drugs. The Colombians bring us a lot of coffee, no duty is paid, and the bags are marked ' produce.' We grow no coffee here, of course. Nothing grows here except thorn trees and cactus and maybe some figs on the old plantations where the soil hasn't been tilled for many years. The coffee is sold at very competitive prices but the merchants make a profit for they can undercut the official export trade from the South American continent, and the smugglers who bring us the coffee also make a profit for they pay no tax and the price we pay them is higher than their own governments will pay. But our merchants are very clever. They don't pay in money but in goods, in whisky and cigarettes which the smugglers take back when they return."

"A profit is made both ways," the commissaris says, "and no local laws are broken."

"Exactly. Some of the merchants grow very rich."

"Does old Mr. de Sousa have many children?"

Silva smiled. "He has three daughters by his wife."

"There are other children?"

"Yes," Silva said. "There are others. A rich merchant will have mistresses. Some of them will live in adobe huts in the cunucu and others will live in Miami, in expensive apartments."

"Please continue," the commissaris said. "I am sorry I interrupted."

"Mr. de Sousa's daughters are beautiful and it was easy for them to find husbands, husbands the old man would approve of. Maria was the last to marry and she married an engineer, a proper Dutchman who, for a year or so, tried to start a small factory here but he gave up in the end. He had labor problems, our people are not very efficient perhaps, and textiles can be imported here from any country in the world. The shareholders of the company he worked for told him to give up. Mr. de Sousa wasn't pleased with the failure but there was nothing he could do about it, and Maria and her husband went to Holland. Then she divorced him, and she didn't marry again. Some rumors filtered back to us. It seemed she lived an immoral life, but she was living it at a great distance and we weren't concerned. She used to come twice a year and her father would meet her at the airport and take her home. Her father was concerned. He would hardly speak to her. After a while he stopped meeting her at the airport. There was a fight, he called her 'puta,' whore, and she was no longer allowed to live in his house, but she still kept coming, living in the same hotel where you live now."

The commissaris shivered again and Sliva jumped from his chair. "Just a minute," he said, "I'll get you some very hot tea laced with rum and with a few drops of lemon juice." He was gone for a few minutes while the commissaris enjoyed the view of the harbor. A dirty-looking tramp flying the Venezuelan flag was moored practically underneath the window, separated from the police station by the quay only. An old man with a yellow beard and a torn cap stood on the bridge and looked up. When he saw the commissaris he shouted something and shook his fist, then he disappeared into the cabin and a thick cloud of sooty smoke bulged from the ship's ancient funnel, spreading out slowly and blocking the view from the office.

"Here is your tea," Silva said.

"Somebody was shaking his fist at me," the commissaris said, "an old man with a yellow beard."

Silva laughed and looked out of the window.

"The old bastard has done it again. He probably thought it was I at the window. I caught him once, he was making a nuisance of himself in an expensive bar, and we arrested him. He broke a bottle on a sergeant's skull so he got locked up for a while. Ever since he tries to moor in that convenient spot over there so that he can smoke us out but we have air conditioning and he doesn't worry us. He is a nice old chap when he isn't drunk."

"You don't mind this soot?"

"No," Silva said. "I keep him happy. Sometimes I run out to his ship and shake my fist at him."

The commissaris sipped his tea and tittered.

"Did you like that story?" Silva asked.

"Yes. Very much."

"Good. So Maria kept coming back to the island in spite of the fact that she was no longer welcome in the house of her parents. I could understand her father's attitude. The women who leave the island become free and they are a bad example, we think, to the women who stay. Here a woman is either very respectable or a whore. The mother is venerated and the father does as he pleases. Maria had opened herself to criticism when she divorced her husband. And she didn't remarry which made it worse. She was a beautiful woman, and educated, so why wouldn't she remarry?"

"Yes," the commissaris said.

"I thought she had a lover here but it seems she hadn't. I made investigations at the hotel and she never shared her room when she was here. They wouldn't have allowed it, I imagine. It isn't that sort of a hotel; important guests stay there, like yourself."

"Thank you," the commissaris said.

Silva grinned. "Did you like your tea?"

"Very much."

"Another?"

"Please."

When Silva was away the commissaris looked out of die window again and saw the captain with die flamboyant beard pacing on his bridge. He waved. The captain ran into bis cabin and the commissaris expected another cloud of soot but the captain returned with a pair of binoculars. The two large glass eyes stared and the commissaris waited. The captain put his binoculars down and unsteadily moved bis hand, which, when Silva had returned and had joined the commissaris at the window, immediately became a fist again.

"Let's leave him for a while," Silva said. "He may have a heart attack or delirium. Last year he ran into the station downstairs shouting that all the crabs of the island were after him, turning their eyes on stalks and snapping at his legs with their wicked shears."

"Poor fellow," the commissaris said, and sat down.

"Oh, he is all right. He is quite old and he has had a good life on the Carribbean. He won't admit he is old, that's why he dyes his beard. I like him, I'll be sorry when he goes. Maria used to know him too. I have seen them talking together. He has probably offered her a free trip but I don't think she has ever put a foot on his boat. His crew are a bunch of madmen."

"So Maria didn't have a lover," the commissaris said.

"Not here. When I knew you were coming out I alerted my detectives and they must have alerted their contacts on the island. The information I was given tallies. Two reasons brought Maria back to the island. Plain homesickness and her contact with Shon Wancho."

"Ah," the commissaris said.

"Not what you think. Shon Wancho is old, seventy years old maybe, and he is a black man. Maria isn't altogether white herself, most people aren't over here. I am not white either."

"You?" the commissaris asked.

"I look white, I know, but my hair is a bit kinky. My sister is much darker than I am. It all depends on the laws of Mendel and the way the chromosomes go. Maria is darker than her sisters. Shon Wancho is pitch black. He is an important man, a local character who is feared and respected. That's why he isn't called Wancho but Shon Wancho, a title of respect, like Don in Spanish."

"He is a sorcerer," the commissaris said.

Silva brought his hand down on the desk with some force. "You know?"

The commissaris didn't answer but brought out an object packed in tissue paper. He carefully unfolded the paper and put the contents on Silva's desk. "Do you know what these are?"

Silva put on a pair of spectacles. He studied the mandrake roots. "No, I have never seen them before. They are roots, I can see that, and they look evil. Amazing, isn't it, they look like thin men, human beings. That little twig is very much like a penis and the legs are perfectly formed and they have heads and arms. And those hairy bodies, there is even hair on the heads and those dark spots are eyes."

He crossed himself.

"Yes," the commissaris said. "They scare me too. We found them in Maria van Buren's houseboat. We found plants as well, herbs, witch-weeds. She grew them in pots on her windowsills. The roots are of the mandrake plant, they were said to be powerful."

"So you suspected her of sorcery?"

"It isn't a crime," the commissaris said, "so we couldn't suspect her of it. Black magic is still practiced and we have run into it before. Dolls with pins in them, people collecting other people's nail clippings and hairs. It may be more popular over here but perhaps it will become fashionable in Europe again. The hippies are fascinated by it and the drug cult, it seems, is related to black magic."

"And these are mandrake roots? I have never heard of mandrake."

The commissaris told Silva what he knew about the plant and Silva listened.

"Gruesome. And you are right about Shon Wancho being a sorcerer. He lived by himself in an adobe hut at the extreme north of the island, near Westpoint. He hardly ever leaves his place but people will go and see him."

"Do you know him?" the commissaris said.

"Yes. Not well, but I have met him. We had a killing out there once and I went to his hut to ask if he had seen anything. It turned out that he knew nothing about the case. It had been a drunken fight and the killer gave himself up the next day."

"And what did you think of Mr. Wancho?"

Silva rubbed his face. "I liked him. Yes, I really liked him. He has a beautiful face, very quiet and peaceful. I was, to tell you the truth, immensely impressed by him and I have often thought of him since."

"You don't think he was an evil man?"

"No. Not at all. He struck me as a man who knows himself, and therefore knows others. Socrates said that, I believe. The greatest feat is to know yourself. I think Shon Wancho is a wise man."

"And Maria went to see him?"

"She did, according to my contacts. Every time she visited the island she would hire a car and go out there each day. She would leave the hotel after breakfast and come back before nightfall. But I don't know what she did out there. Nobody but Shon Wancho himself would know. His place is close to the sea and hidden behind some cliffs and I don't think anyone would dare to spy on the old man."

"Hmm," the commissaris said, "I will have to go out there."

"Perhaps you should."

"And I will have to go and see her father. He knows about her death, I assume."

"We informed him," Silva said.

"He knows she was murdered?"

"He does. He was very upset although he tried not to show it."

"I'll have to hire a car."

"No," Silva said. "I will give you a police car and a driver."

"I would rather have a map of the island. I'll see more if I have to find my own way."

"As you like," Silva said. "I'll go down to the garage with you and we will give you an unmarked car."