The map extracted from the quasi-imperceptible drawer bottom had been sketched on a sheet of paper that, despite the years, retained a pale sheen, from which a few marks, letters, numbers and lines drawn in black ink proclaimed their millionaire secret, converging on that precise spot in the patio – almost under a laurel that was surely a hundred years old – where Crespo and el Greco now dug to depths that had begun to dismay the Count.
“Can it really be so far down, Lieutenant?”
“Dig deeper, dig deeper,” he insisted, lighting another cigarette and looking at the sky, which had turned into a leaden mantle across which dirty, spongy clouds scurried northwards, laden with water, electricity and evil intent.
A warm, humid breeze from the south was already rustling through the treetops, a prelude to the furies that might assail the city that same morning or, at the very latest, tomorrow morning. The noise of the spade and shovel, striking, moving, extracting earth, brought him right back to a keen awareness of what he was witnessing, but the idea of Miguel Forcade’s final dramatic failure, after he’d been preparing himself for almost thirty years to make the leap to the fortune resting on a gold Buddha, concentrated his mind, despite what his eyes could see. Ever since he’d come to possess that Buddha who still refused to put in an appearance, Miguel Forcade must have lived completely in the thrall of a statue endowed with enough magnificence to change his karma in the most radical way: money and power would flow through his hands, the deceased must have dreamed, as he lived in a perpetual state of hypocrisy, waited to seize his moment in a country where millionaires no longer existed and where power, for a man like him, was based solely on capricious decisions that went beyond his wilclass="underline" today you have it, tomorrow you don’t… The Count imagined the number of deferments that must have altered that desired, attainable fate, while the would-be millionaire lived a diminished life, always looking out for ways to enhance it, as resonantly as he could. Good luck as hell on earth. In fact his fear of the sea must have been a real sickness: because a well-equipped launch would have been the shortest route between that hole in the ground and the financial glory for which he’d betrayed all trust and faith. Then there were the years Fermín had spent in prison, while he worked in an office in Miami for a Cuban who’d got rich somehow or other and who’d die of envy when he discovered his employee’s prospect of millions, and that must have been the worst sojourn in hell on earth the Buddha ever prepared for Miguel Forcade, in his desperate confinement to a small house in the South West, while his dreams furnished him the best mansions in New York, Paris or Geneva… That pit, which still hadn’t given birth, which had in fact been a grave for Miguel Forcade’s life, and apparently for his death: a straight line ran from that Buddha for whose appearance the Count prayed to all the gods of the Orient and even the Virgen de la Caridad del Cobre and the corpse found five days earlier in the sea, and in the Count’s mind the only person able to trace that line was taciturn Fermín, the man in whom the deceased millionaire who never was had placed all – or part of – his trust, he who, as a result of that elusive Buddha, had entered most unpleasantly, and most physically incomplete, into the perfect state of Nirvana: the one that goes by the common, profane name of death.
“Conde, I don’t think there’s anything here,” protested Crespo, wiping the sweat from his scalp, which got less hairy by the day.
“Did you get the measurements right?” enquired el Greco, leaning breathlessly on the edge of the grave.
The Count looked back at the map, checked each of the references again, took the line and placed it between the roots of the laurel and measured a third time. The centre of the grave fell on the nine-and-a-half-foot spot marked by Miguel Forcade.
“Come on, out of there, for fuck’s sake,” he told his subordinates, feeling his sweaty hands getting the shakes again. “Come on, Manolo, give me a hand,” requested the lieutenant, who threw himself at the ditch and began sinking the pick into the ground at a furious rate, as if his only task in life was to dig to the other side of the world, which in Disney cartoons was always to be found in remote China.
Manolo used the spade to extract the soil dislodged by the Count, who raised the pick once more, when the sergeant asked him: “And what if someone’s already been and taken it, Conde?”
“Nobody’s taken it, for fuck’s sake, nobody!” shouted the lieutenant, and he lifted the pick as high as he could and brought it down with all his remaining might on earth moist because it was so deep and felt the metal point shiver as it hit something solid, compact, definitely metallic, maybe divine. The sergeant’s spade dug hurriedly, spurred on by the tenacious Count, until a man-made surface revealed all its opaque brilliance, clouded by twenty-seven years of contact with soil. The Count thrust his hand into the mud and began to extract from the entrails of the world a nylon covering, which in turn contained a cloth wrapping, beneath which a heavy, almost round object slumbered, bound tightly round: the Count managed to retrieve the bag and cut the ropes securing the protective layer of cloth, and there, at the bottom of the pit, he pulled off the gauze that had begun to disintegrate, to reveal before the eyes of the police a yellow gleam capable of dazzling the world. Yes, it was lean and strong, like a real Buddha ready to distance himself from all non-transcendental materiality, and the smile on his face seemed to express sardonic satisfaction: and with good reason, thought the Count, for that pagan god had triumphed over the most incredible vicissitudes for fifteen centuries, and defeated a risk of death by melt-down that had threatened several times. Neatly draped in a metal cloak that fell in the most amazing folds, the body must have been over sixteen inches high, from the feet on the lotus leaf to the final twist of its Hindu headdress. Various men, over countless years, had risked their all for that smiling face, which was able to hallucinate, enrich and even kill those who tried to hold on to it, as if one could grasp the unattainable: old Forcade was right when he stated that the image of the Buddha was merely an illusory reflection of a truth situated beyond all dimensions and categories, because the creator of that powerful religion always recognized that his strength and permanence were rooted in his ultimate spiritual essence, far from the world of the terrestrial and tangible, beyond the realm of appearance: hence the triumphant smile. A right bastard, the Count told himself, keeping his eyes on the sardonic statue, but feeling his waist curse him as he reverted to the vertical. He turned painfully round to the house and on the upper floor balcony saw the old man on his wood and willow chair, and his wife, at his side, also watching the search. Then the policeman yelled at a volume the whole neighbourhood could have heard: “We’ve got the gold Buddha!”