Chapter Thirty-Four
Next arrived Senhor La Paiva, an Iberian burgher who strutted in with not a little pomp. Passing over preliminaries, I can tell you that as soon as he was seated, Pluck began by saying, “Senhor La Paiva, you might have noticed something peculiar about my eye.”
“Pardon, sir? I had not.”
“Look closely. That’s it.” Pluck leant in. “Stand up, and come over, if you need to.”
“Not his eye precisely, but something to do with the area around it,” Enid assisted.
“Don’t give it away!” he hissed to her.
“I won’t.” She folded one hand over the other, realising she might have gone too far.
Senhor La Paiva indeed rose from the seat he had so recently taken, and stepped to the table. Pluck craned his neck up and pulled down his lower eyelid with his (stylishly filthy) finger. “Look closely.”
“Look at his eye!” Bartoff commanded.
“I notice nothing out of the ordinary, monsieur.” Seen close-up, Pluck’s pupil looked a tiny black island in an ocean of white, as seen by a passing gull who had much more important matters to attend to than stop off and look around.
Pluck sighed. “Look.” He pointed at his eyelashes—or, to be perfectly accurate, to where they were not. After La Paiva had stood and stared for some time, still coming up dry, Pluck reached his hand behind the interviewee’s neck and yanked him in closer, but pulled a little too strongly, never one to know the extent of his own formidable strength, the result being that the two gentlemen’s foreheads collided with a resounding thud that could have been heard one or two feet away, at least, and both fell to the ground in a state of unconsciousness.
Senhor La Paiva awoke in a bedroom, on the second floor, darkened by thick shades. The air in the room registered to him as a rich chestnut colour, heavy with significance but light in detail. He sat up in bed, and looked over to find the inspector sleeping in another small bed, parallel to his own. His head throbbed, but he remembered everything—and when I say “everything”, I mean a perfect, minutely detailed recall of every moment of his, contextually speaking, insignificant life, as well as the bounty born of all-pervasive admission to the universal unconscious, and, as a bonus, transliteration of the Mind of God.
Among his infinite realisations, he realised that he had Pluck, and more specifically, Pluck’s mindless clumsiness, to thank for this gift. He stood up and, placing his fingers upon the inspector’s bruised forehead, blessed him.
When both La Paiva and Pluck had returned to interview room, with the intention of resuming their damnably superficial discussion, the Iberian gentleman sat back in his chair and looked out benevolently upon the inspector as upon a trembling three-legged beetle struggling through a patch of grass.
Pluck, understanding none of this, cleared his throat. “Now, then, Senhor. If we might pick up where we left off: please be so kind as to look at my eye.”
“I am, Inspector.”
“Do you see anything amiss?”
“I do not, Inspector.”
Pluck nodded. “Very well. That will be all.”