Free A Void by Georges Perec

zoo with a
    Jardin d'Acclimatation just fifty yards away?"
    "Think, Ottaviani! That solicitor so boorish as to light up his
    cigar in a zoo'!"
    "Okay, okay," says Ottaviani with a compliant sigh, "you go
    to a zoo and I'll ask around at a handful of hospitals to find out
    if anybody has brought him in."
    "Good thinking," says Amaury. "I'll join up with you tonight
    to discuss our findings. Midnight at Maxim's, what do you say?"
    "Lipp isn't as pricy."
    "Right. Lipp it is."
    Thus Amaury trots off to Paris's world-famous zoo, photo-
    graphs a Sahara lion and cautiously hands a candy bar to a chimp
    that has thrown a twig at him. Pumas, cougars, stags, muskrats
    and mountain goats. A lynx. A yak. And, without warning:
    "You! Lord, what a small world it is!"
    It's Olga, a distant cousin of a Canadian consul in Frankfurt,
    and a woman who has always had a passion for Anton.
    Olga starts crying. "Oh, Amaury, darling Amaury, do you
    think Anton is . . . is . . . "
    "No, Olga, I don't. Missing, I'm afraid so. But not .. . no,
    no, not that."
    "Did you also obtain a postcard from him advising you of his
    going away for good?"
    "I did. And didjyowr postcard also contain a PS about a solicitor
    smoking in a zoo?"
    'That's right. But you won't find any solicitor in this zoo."
    "Who can say?" murmurs Amaury.
    And, in fact, at that point, as if by magic, standing not far from
    a pool simulating, with uncanny naturalism, a mini-Kamchatka, a
    pool in which a host of birds, fish and mammals play as happily
    as infants in a sandpit - frogs, squids, cormorants, basilisks,
    dolphins, finbacks, cachalots, blackfish, lizards, dugongs and
    narwhals - Amaury spots, and naturally accosts, a man just about
    to light a cigar.
    5 3
    "Good morning," says this individual.
    "Morning. Now, my good man,' Amaury asks him straight
    out, 'do you know of any solicitors in this zoo?"
    "I do. I am such a solicitor." (This is said with blunt, oddly
    disarming candour.)
    "Shhh," says Amaury, "not so loud. And did you know Anton
    Vowl?"
    "I got him to do occasional odd jobs."
    "Do you think Vowl is still living?"
    "Who knows?"
    "And you? I didn't catch your . . ."
    "Hassan Ibn Abbou, High Court Solicitor, 28 Quai Branly,
    Alma 18-23."
    "Did Anton also mail you a puzzling postcard similar to that
    which both of us got prior to his vanishing?" Amaury pompously
    asks him.
    "I did."
    "And do you know what its closing words signify?"
    "I didn't at first. But now I think that Anton was making an
    allusion to yours truly by writing about a cigar-smoking solicitor.
    Which is why I instandy took a taxi to this zoo. As for his tots
    of whisky, I had no notion of what it was all about until noticing
    this morning in my Figaro that Longchamp's Grand Prix is just
    3 days off."
    "I don't follow."
    "You will! For it has a trio of odds-on nominations: Scribouil-
    lard III, Whisky 10 and Capharnaiim."
    "So your hunch is that Anton was subtly hinting at this Grand
    Prix?" says Olga, who, until that point, hadn't said a word.
    Amaury cuts in. "Who can say? It's an indication worth follow-
    ing up, though. You, Hassan and I will go to Longchamp this
    coming Monday."
    "Talking of which," says Hassan, "I got from Anton Vowl,
    a month or so ago, 26 cartons containing all his labours, all
    that hard, cryptic work that Vowl was carrying out in his flat. I
    5 4
    know of no surviving kinfolk of his who can claim familial,
    suppositional, optional or subsidiary rights to this voluminous
    body of work. So I think it normal that you hold it in trust,
    particularly as it might contain all sorts of hints vital to our
    inquiry."
    "How soon can Olga and I study it?"
    "Not until Monday, I'm afraid, as I'm just about to go off to
    Aillant-sur-Tholon. But I'm coming back on Monday morning
    and I'll contact you both. At that point you should know what
    Anton Vowl was trying to say in his allusion to 'a glass of
    whisky'."
    Amaury laughs. "I'm willing to go as far as to put 10 francs
    on that nag."
    "So am