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accentuated his youthful appearance. When
he got up to shake hands, it occurred to both Espinoza and Pelletier that he
must be gay.
    "That faggot is the closest thing to
an eel I've ever seen," Espinoza said afterward, as they strolled through
Hamburg
.
    Pelletier chided him for his comment, with
its markedly homophobic overtones, although deep down he agreed, there was
something eellike about Schnell, something of the fish that swims in dark, muddy
waters.
    Of course, there was little Schnell could
tell them that they didn't already know. He had never seen Archimboldi, and the
money, of which there was more and more, was deposited in a Swiss bank account.
Once every two years, instructions were received from the writer, the letters
usually postmarked
Italy
,
although there were also letters in the publisher's files with Greek and
Spanish and Moroccan stamps, letters, incidentally, that were addressed to Mrs.
Bubis, the owner of the publishing house, and that he, naturally, hadn't read.
    "There are only two people left here,
besides Mrs. Bubis, of course, who've met Benno von Archimboldi in
person," Schnell told them. "The publicity director and the copy
chief. By the time I came to work here, Archimboldi had long since
vanished."
    Pelletier and Espinoza asked to speak to
both women. The publicity director's office was full of plants and photographs,
not necessarily of the house authors, and the only thing she could tell them
about the vanished writer was that he was a good person.
    "A tall man, very tall," she
said. "When he walked beside the late Mr. Bubis they looked like a ti. Or a li."
    Espinoza and Pelletier didn't understand
what she meant and the publicity director wrote the letter l and then the letter i on
a scrap of paper. Or maybe more like a le. Like this.
    And again she wrote something on the scrap
of paper.
    le
    "The l is Archimboldi, the e is
the late Mr. Bubis."
    Then the publicity director laughed and
watched them for a while, reclining in her swivel chair in silence. Later they
talked to the copy chief. She was about the same age as the publicity director
but not as cheery.
    She said yes, she had met Archimboldi many
years ago, but she didn't remember his face anymore, or what he was like, or any
story about him that would be worth telling. She couldn't remember the last
time he was at the publishing house. She advised them to speak to Mrs. Bubis,
and then, without a word, she busied herself editing a galley, answering the
other copy editors' questions, talking on the phone to people who
might—Espinoza and Pelletier thought with pity—be translators. Before they
left, refusing to be discouraged, they returned to Schnell's office and talked
to him about Archimboldian conferences and colloquiums planned for the future.
Schnell, attentive and cordial, told them they could count on him for whatever
they might need.
    Since they didn't have anything to do
except wait for their flights back to
Paris
and
Madrid
, Pelletier and Espinoza went walking around
Hamburg
. The walk
inevitably took them to the district of streetwalkers and peep shows, and then
they both lapsed into gloom and began telling each other stories of love and
disillusionment. Of course, they didn't give names or dates, they spoke in what
might be called abstract terms, but despite the seemingly detached presentation
of their misfortunes, the conversation and the walk only sank them deeper into
a state of melancholy, to such a degree that after two hours they both felt as
if they were suffocating.
    They took a taxi back to the hotel in
silence.
    A surprise awaited them there. At the desk
there was a note from Schnell addressed to both of them, in which he explained
that after their conversation that morning, he'd decided to talk to Mrs. Bubis
and she had agreed to see them. The next morning, Espinoza and Pelletier called
at the publisher's apartment, on the third floor of an old building in
Hamburg
's upper town. As
they waited they looked at the