The calm was not a lack of feeling. A mutually agreed resolution. Giovanni discovered how to interpret the tingling on his skin as a dialect of vulnerability. The biting fiery pain of a falsehood. The crisp gleaming gloss of an exclusion. The intense pulsing hurt of a self-delusion deep it resonated through his very bones. He was evolving into a connoisseur of wrongdoing. The clinic served as his sampling chamber.
He started the notebook just as he had vowed to himself. He didn't note down the lies themselves—that was inscribed automatically permanently on his skin. Instead he documented the circumstances. The weather on the day a particular mark showed up. The look in the liar's eyes if he had noticed it. The atmosphere in the room. He was compiling an index, for the living manuscript of his body.
On a Tuesday the quiet, in the clinic was disrupted by an unforeseen guest. Louis Lancelot, the prosecutor waited in the lobby his umbrella shedding water onto the floor his expression a veneer of official calm. Jacques watched him cautiously. Arthur after a brief pause let him inside.
"Mr. Graham " Lancelot spoke, positioned inside Giovanni's room doorway declining the chair presented. "I'll keep this short. This isn't a meeting."
Giovanni shut his notebook. "So what is it?"
"A consultation." The phrase felt like ash lingering on Lancelot's tongue. "There's a case. A delicate one. A child vanished from a village, in the Vercors mountains two months back. The main suspect is her uncle. The proof is… indirect, yet substantial. The man insists on his innocence. Fervently. The town is divided. The family devastated." Lancelot's attentive gaze locked with Giovanni's. "The man has undergone two polygraph tests." He meets the gaze of each juror. Vows he did not cause her any injury. And there's something, in his tone… it resonates with a sincerity that the evidence disputes."
Giovanni experienced a chill of fear settling in his gut. "You want me to read him."
"I want you to be in the room, as him. I want you to let me know if whenever he mentions his niece your skin… responds."
"No." The term escaped Giovanni before he could reflect on it. "I am not an instrument. I am not a truth verifier, for your cases."
"This isn't some corruption game!" Lancelot's calm facade broke, exposing a deep urgent frustration underneath. "A child has vanished. A man might be executed for a crime he didn't do or released to cause further harm. I hold proofs, yet not the truth. You… you possess access, to a form of evidence."
"That's not proof " Giovanni retorted, his tone escalating. "It's a curse. It's an infringement. You intend to exploit my infringement to infringe upon him. To expose his soul completely in a manner no court is entitled to."
". If he's not guilty? Would you allow him to wither away behind bars, when the truth could be uncovered?" Lancelot's inquiry lingered in the silence, a pointed challenge.
Giovanni gazed at his hands noting the silvery patterns of minor past deceptions etched on the backs of his knuckles. He reflected on the labyrinth a testament, to a toxic falsehood. This time would be distinct. Intimate. Mortal. Tormenting.
"If I choose to do this " he stated deliberately "it will be a time.. It is not meant for you. It is intended for the child.. The man. Not, for the government."
Lancelot gave a brisk nod. "Understood. He's scheduled to be moved to a holding center, in Valence tomorrow. I'll set up a meeting. You will attend as an observer representing the health ministry. Just a standard review."
Once Lancelot had gone Giovanni remained seated for a period, in the deepening gloom. Isabella came by for her visit and discovered him still at his desk.
"He told you to act like a bloodhound " she said, her tone devoid of emotion. Filled with anger after he confided in her.
"He requested me to serve as a witness " Giovanni clarified, though the difference seemed slight. "An unequivocal one."
"And what if you don't sense anything? If the man is honest. You exonerate him? Then Lancelot will return.. Next time it won't concern a vanished kid. It will involve a divorce. Corporate spying. A competitor, in politics. You will evolve into the supreme judge. They will never release you."
"I understand " he murmured.
"Then why?"
He flipped open his notebook to a sheet. "For years this curse has revealed nothing but falsehood. It has exposed decay. Perhaps… this one time… I can wield it to discover a kernel of truth. To offer a solution than merely gathering doubts."
Isabella gazed at him her keen eyes gentling with a realization. "You wish to be helpful. Not merely stored away."
The day inside a dull soundproof interview room at the Valence gendarmerie Giovanni encountered Émile Lacroix. The individual was, in his forties possessing the hands of a carpenter and eyes rimmed with red perpetually weary. He regarded Giovanni with distrust.
Lancelot and an additional officer watched from, behind a one-way mirror. Giovanni's part was just to sit and listen while the officer asked a set of standard practiced questions.
Afterward the officer inquired, "Émile, just to confirm for the record. Were you involved in Céleste's vanishing?"
Lacroix's entire frame appeared to fold then expand with a frantic intense energy. He bent forward the sound of chains jingling. "I loved her. She was the sunlight, in my workshop. I would rather sever my hands. I never touched her. I have no idea where she's. I vow it on my mother's soul."
Giovanni steadied himself. He anticipated the sting, the piercing mark of a falsehood.
It never arrived.
On his chest above his heart a feeling arose. It wasn't the sting of a lie. Instead it was a profound, echoing, chill. A chill of deep sorrow. A chill born from powerless unawareness. It resembled the form of a child- void, in the cosmos. When he later inspected it in the clinic's restroom the impression left was not a sign of falsehood. It was a simple, stark outline of a small, empty swing.
Émile Lacroix was speaking honestly.
Giovanni conveyed his observation, to Lancelot softly in one statement: "His sorrow is genuine. His unawareness is genuine."
The day the case against Lacroix was put on hold. Fresh leads, which had been overlooked due to the attention, on the uncle were investigated.
Giovanni had accomplished something. Something just.
True to Isabella's forecast the inquiry arrived a fortnight after. On this occasion it wasn't Lancelot reaching out. A polished corporate attorney acting for a biotech company, in Grenoble alleging that a previous staff member had misappropriated intellectual property. The proposal was driven not by ethics. By money. An consultant's fee."
Giovanni declined.
But the world had tasted the possibility of a perfect truth-detector. The Inkwell of the World had been tipped, and everyone now wanted a dip of his pen. The new silence in the clinic was no longer just the silence of recovery. It was the silence of a siege, as the walls of his sanctuary grew thinner under the pressure of a world that wanted to turn his curse into a commodity.