Numbers in the Dark and Other Stories - Italo Calvino [67]
Even if we accept that each of the twelve deeds was committed by just one person and inflicted upon just one other person, reconstruction would still be a tall order: given that there are four characters to be considered, then taken two by two we have twelve possible relationships for each of the twelve kinds of relationship listed. The number of possible combinations is thus twelve to the twelfth, meaning that we shall have to choose from a total of eight thousand eight hundred and seventy-four billion, two hundred and ninety-six million, six hundred and seventy-two thousand, two hundred and fifty-six potential solutions. It is hardly surprising that our already overworked police force has chosen not to pursue its enquiries, on the good grounds that, however many crimes may have been committed, the perpetrators doubtless died together with their victims.
Only the insurance company is eager to know the truth: mainly on account of a fire insurance policy taken out by the owner of the house. The fact that the young Inigo, the policy holder, likewise perished in the flames only serves to make the matter more problematic: his powerful family, despite having ejected and disinherited this degenerate son, is notoriously disinclined to give up anything owed to them. Then one can level the worst possible charges (whether or not included in the abominable index) against a young man who, as a hereditary member of the British House of Lords, dragged an illustrious title down to the steps of those public squares that serve as beds to a nomadic, introspective generation, a man who was wont to soap his long hair under the water of municipal fountains. The small house he rented to the old landlady was the last property left to him, and he had taken a room there subletting from his own tenant in return for a reduction in the already low rent he charged. If he, Inigo, was the arsonist, perpetrator and victim of a criminal plan executed with the carelessness and imprecision that appear to have been typical of his way of behaving, and if the insurance company could demonstrate as much, then they wouldn't have to pay the damages.
But this is not the only claim the company is obliged to honour as a result of the calamity: every year Widow Roessler would renew a policy insuring her own life in favour of her adopted daughter, a fashion model familiar to anyone in the habit of leafing through the pages of the more stylish magazines. Of course Ogiva herself is likewise dead, incinerated together with the collection of wigs that would transform her features with their terrifying charm (how else describe a beautiful and delicate young woman with a completely bald skull) into those of hundreds of different and exquisitely asymmetrical faces. But it turns out that the model had a three-year-old child, entrusted to relatives in South Africa, who will waste no time in claiming the rewards of the policy, unless it can be demonstrated that it was she, Ogiva, who killed {Knifing? Strangling?) Widow Roessler. Or again, given that Ogiva had taken the trouble to insure her wig collection, the child's guardians could claim on this policy too, unless it can be demonstrated that she was responsible for their destruction.
Of the fourth person who died in the fire, the gigantic Uzbek wresder, Belindo Kid, we know that in Widow Roessler he had found not only a zealous landlady (he was the only