Savage Bride

Chapter Twenty-one

The minister of the Interior was paying a private visit of inspection to the office of the director of the insane asylum of San Lázaro. A very private visit, strictly nonofficial, you might say.

“Bring in Two-twenty,” the director ordered.

The director was a spindly little individual with a massive, partly bald skull, whose rimless glasses gave him the aspect of a mousy little clerk or pedant. From his appearance, it was hard to believe he held complete autocratic power of life and death over scores of unfortunate human beings. His feet barely reached the floor from the swivel chair in which he sat, and he was continually blowing his nose into a large cabbagy handkerchief, far more often than there could have been any real need for.

The office, furnished in a musty nineteenth-century style, was abnormally quiet while the two of them sat waiting. Not a sound penetrated it, either because of the distance at which it lay removed from the rest of the institution or because of the fortress-like thickness of the walls throughout the entire building, which had helped gain it its reputation of being a living tomb. And yet this very silence defeated itself, made one conscious of the presence, close at hand but unseen, of dozens upon dozens of tormented beings, crushed and mute and agonized. The place was shot through with macabre undertones. It reeked of stealthy things, kept from the light of day. Souls dying inside bodies that went on living.

The director said, between nose blows, “This man was brilliant no? An archaeologist? Too much brilliance is not good. Too much knowledge. It can soften the brains. Sometimes it may end up this way.”

The minister fanned himself languidly with his panama hat. “You are right there,” he said inscrutably. “Too much knowledge is a bad thing, in more ways than one.”

There was a muffled knock on the door. The director interrupted his handkerchief-manipulating long enough to call out, “Pase.” The door swung back and Fredericks stood there between two guards. He seemed lost in thought, his eyes directed forward but at a moderately downward inclination that struck the floor just short of where the two officials sat. He failed to raise them in company with the opening of the door, which peeled a layer of shadow from his face, brightening it by that much. There was no pain in his face; it looked younger, if anything, as when all experience has been wiped out.

He had retained his own shirt and trousers, but they were discolored to a dirty greenish-gray. Straw slippers replaced his shoes. The buttons were gone from the cuffs of his shirt and they gaped open around his wrists like great bells, with his bony wrists the clappers.

They brought him forward a pace or two and sat him on a straight-backed chair that stood just inside the door. Then they stood one on each side of him, without taking their hands from his shoulders.

“Good evening, my friend,” the minister purred sardonically. “You perhaps remember me? The department chief who takes bribes? Who misinforms his government about the localities under his jurisdiction?”

Fredericks didn’t seem to see him. It was as though his eyes refused him further service. They maintained that lowered dullness, showed no cognizance of the room or anyone in it.

The minister extended one hand and snapped his fingers sharply directly under Fredericks’ face. The eyes never even blinked. They gave no reaction at all.

The minister turned to the director inquiringly.

“It is no use,” the latter explained. “His mind is gone. He cannot understand what you say to him.”

“How long has he been this way?”

“On and on for about two weeks now. The lucid spells are becoming less and less frequent. I think they will disappear entirely in a little while. Of course, we prefer them this way. They give much less trouble.”

“And how long do they last, once they are like this?”

“Sometimes many years. Sometimes just a few months.” The director was watching the minister closely, as if trying to read his thoughts.

“But the expense, in such cases, must be considerable,” the minister protested virtuously.

“It is true, they keep on eating, and keep on taking up space. We try to keep our bills down as much as we can.”

“I believe in economy,” the minister let him know firmly. “I will not only fight extravagance in every way, but I will even go so far as to reward economy, in certain justifiable cases.”

The director looked at him hard and long, through his rimless glasses. Then he dropped his eyes demurely, in perfect understanding.

The minister got up and went over and stood by Fredericks. He leaned down and brought his eyes to within inches of the other man’s, as if he were trying to peer into his very soul. “Nothing there,” he remarked. He shook him by the shoulder slightly.

Fredericks spoke dully. “Baltimore. Stop them in Baltimore. Look for them in every hotel.”

The minister straightened slowly, drew back. He was smiling, not altogether displeasedly.

The director made a sign. They stood Fredericks up, and the door closed. The chair stood there empty. There wasn’t even the sound of a footfall. He had gone like the ghost he already was.

The director was watching his visitor closely for signs of approval. Or, perhaps, concrete indications of them.

“Satisfactory, sir?”

“Very.” The minister smiled thinly. “I shall recommend you highly in my next report. In the meantime, distribute this among your—” He opened a gold-rimmed alligator billfold and took out several banknotes of large denomination. “Well, put it wherever it is most needed at the moment,” he concluded.

The director put it in his inside pocket, right over his own heart.

“And now,” said the minister amiably, “I think I will go over to the jail and see how the other one is getting along.”

“Bring in a pitcher of cold well water,” the minister ordered, in the prison commandant’s office. “Have it in a crystal pitcher, so that the water can be seen clearly through it. And an empty glass.”

“Is this for the señor ministro?”

“Oh, no, no,” the minister said disclaimingly. “I never drink water. This is for — interrogation purposes.” He made a steeple of his hands. The large emerald on one of them gave out with a flash of green. “You have followed my instructions?”

“Si, señor ministro. He has had no water for three days. And the food has all been picante, highly seasoned, as you indicated. Chile, red peppers—”

“Bueno. This is a difficult case, you understand. It requires unorthodox methods.”

Cotter was brought in between two guards. He had shrunk to waist-height, legs out behind him, dragging like a two-finned tail.

“Inmate Juan Gonzaga,” reported one of the guards.

“—the second,” supplied the commandant.

The minister waved his hand carelessly. “You don’t have to be so technical. It is no one’s business if there once was another inmate called the same.”

Cotter’s lips had a peculiar purplish color. They were thick and gave him almost a Negroid appearance. His tongue, which continually flickered forth, was swollen.

“Water,” he said huskily.

“Now hold him carefully, while I put the necessary questions,” the minister instructed.

He poured a glassful of water with painstaking precision. Not a drop too much, not a drop too little; not a drop spilled. The glass immediately steamed over with the coolness of its new-found contents. It became attractive by that fact alone.

The minister allowed it to stand there, midway between them.

Cotter’s already half-folded knees gave a still further dip.

“Just a drop. Oh, for the love of God — just on the tip of my tongue. Just one drop.”

The minister sandwiched his hands across his own breastbone. “Now tell me. You have forgotten your Spanish yet?” The question of course, was put in the English language.

“Yes. Yes. All of it. Every word.”

“You are sure?”

“I swear,” Cotter panted. “Every word.”

“What does si mean?”

Cotter shook his head violently. “I don’t know. I’ve forgotten.”

The minister craftily edged the glass forward a little, with the back of his folded knuckles. “Quiere beber?” he coaxed dulcetly.

Cotter moaned, shuddered all up and down his length, closed his eyes, didn’t answer.

“Tiene sed? Tome,” the minister invited silkily. He edged the glass forward a little more.

Cotter grimaced, began to cry soundlessly, his eyes creased into slits.

The minister picked up the glass, came around the desk with it, held it in front of Cotter’s face.

“Pero tenga, hombre,” he insisted, as if growing slightly impatient with a refusal he could not understand. “Aqui está.”

A sob of helplessness floated in Cotter’s throat, like a gas bubble, and burst with a little clucking sound.

“Let him come forward a little,” the minister instructed the two guards holding him, with a wink. “Slowly. He cannot reach it from where you are holding him.”

But as they did so, he withdrew the glass, so that the distance between remained the same.

Cotter was sticking out his tongue, desperately trying to lick the side of it with that.

The minister dexterously kept a distance of approximately a quarter of an inch, or perhaps it was an eighth between the two. He had a very steady hand and eye.

“Say just one word, say the Spanish word for water, and you can have this. One word is not much, one word is not a whole language.”

“Water,” said Cotter insanely. “Water.”

“In Spanish. What is it called in Spanish?”

“I don’t know! I can’t! I’ve forgotten!”

“It’s here, so near you. It’s yours. Just say it in Spanish.”

“Agua!” bellowed Cotter, agonized.

The minister slowly tilted the glass in front of his very face. All the water ran out of it in a thin, even column, and splashed to the floor. Cotter hung limp in the guard’s grip, as though he had gone down with the water.

“That was one word too many. You still haven’t forgotten. Take him back to his cell. Even if it takes five years, you’ll stay here until you have forgotten every last word.”