“So that's the kind you are,” said Dr Dumas. “I thought as much. Well, we'll teach you. Take him up to the top floor. Give him the corner room. If you can learn to behave, you'll come down again.”
It did not take Bertrand long to realize that he had exchanged his nice cell at the hospital-prison of La Santé for a genuine hellhole. His new room contained only the minimum of furniture; a narrow cot, a chair and a small table. By standing on the table one could barely reach the sill of the only window, an oval, barred æi'l-de-bæuf.
He kept his rage under control for a while. He promised himself that he would get that fellow Paul yet. And if he ever had his hands on Paul again that would be the end. He licked his teeth at the thought. And of course he'd tell Aymar all about it when Aymar came, and Uncle would see to it that he got a better room.
In fact, there was no sense in waiting two weeks for Uncle's visit. He could write to him at once. There was no pen and paper. Bertrand called out for an orderly. There was no answer. He banged on the door. But sounds didn't travel far in this solidly built house. Moreover, the third floor was completely isolated by doors at the top and bottom of the staircase. And as for noise, as for shrieks and banging and all manner of sounds, these were far too common to disturb the orderlies even if they should chance to be on the upper floor.
Maddened by the unsuccess of his efforts, Bertrand lashed out in fury. He threw the chair against the door, until that flimsy piece of furniture was in pieces. He ripped the cover of his bed to pieces. Then he subsided in tears. He promised himself to be wiser in the future. To control himself and play the mild-mannered youth, which, he had learned at La Santé, achieved the best results.
A round, barrel-like fixture on the door clicked. On a little shelf was his food. No orderly came into his room. Perhaps an orderly would never come into his room. They would leave him here forever and tell his uncle he had died. Yes, now he regretted the nice cell he had had at home. What good had it done him to run away? He had only succeeded in getting into La Santé. And from La Santé he had come to this. From bad to worse.
But the second Saturday came around and with it the prospect of being able to unload his misery to his uncle. He had counted without his hosts.
In the evening he found himself lying on his bed. His room had been cleaned. There was fresh linen on the bed. His mind groped through the clearing mists of a drug and remembered as if in a dream his uncle's visit. He recalled being led downstairs by Paul. Yes, by Paul! He recalled the visiting room, his uncle seated opposite and questioning him, and himself sitting there stolidly and unable to do more than smile.
This time he lost his head completely. He smashed, he tore, he howled, until he fell exhausted on the floor and slept. When he woke up, feverish, tense, he groaned to know himself alone and unable to find release.
He listened: There was a noise in the adjoining chamber. It could be faintly heard. It was the little mongoloid cooing to herself. Bertrand did not know what the origin of the sound was, but the soft feminine voice enchanted him, drew him with the power of a siren. He threw himself against the wall. “A woman!” he screamed. He kicked and scratched. Impossible. The wall was not a simple partition but one of the retaining walls of the house, of solid brick and heavy plaster surface.
The noise he had made had evidently frightened the owner of the voice. Bertrand fell to his knees. “Please, sing some more! Please⦠pleaseâ¦I'll be quiet.” But the owner of the voice remained silent.
So great was his necessity for hearing that voice, sole link with the feminine world, that he learned to control himself, especially in the evening, when it generally sang its flat, gentle, monotonous tones. Its timbre was surely only vaguely like Sophie's rich and resonant voice, but Bertrand came to think of it and speak of it as Sophie.
“Sing to me, Sophie,” he would say. “Sing to me. Do you recall how we used to go walking in the evening, hand in hand? Do you rememberâ¦?” And the mongoloid crooned soft accompaniment to his reminiscences.
The prospect of seeing his uncle was another hope that aided him in keeping himself in check. He had puzzled out the mystery of the drug. Of course they administered it to him in his food. It was only necessary to keep good track of the days as they passed, and avoid eating on Saturday.
His trick worked. On Saturday he did not touch his food, hungry as he was. Instead he waited quietly for the afternoon visiting hours. At last he heard footsteps outside. The key squeaked in the lock and the door swung open.
It was Paul, the enormous lumbering orderly who, a month ago, had defeated Bertrand's attempt to escape. And now Bertrand made a terrible mistake. Evidently he should have gone meekly with Paul, as if truly drugged, and then revealed his grievances to Aymar. Instead, blinded by his desire for revenge, he leaped on the surprised orderly and would surely have killed him if his screams had not attracted another orderly who ran to his comrade's assistance. Between the two, Bertrand was subdued and tied up.
Then Dr Dumas was summoned. It was a simple question of the injection of a drug by means of a hypodermic needle, and a meek, mild and stupidly smiling Bertrand, neatly attired, was led downstairs.
When the drug wore off, Bertrand knew that he had missed his second opportunity and that another would be hard to find. Mad with disappointment he sank his teeth into a leg of his table, and splintered the wood. When he had made a heap of ruins out of that, he attacked the sheets and blankets of his bed. He took off his shoes and chewed up the leather, cracked the buttons on his clothes. He twisted his spoon, the only implement that was served with his food, into knots, and crushed his tin plate.
And the following fortnight found him drugged by an easy trick. For the two previous days he was starved. He howled with hunger. His empty belly growled. He fell into light dozes from which he woke with vivid dreams of food. And then, there in the revolving tray was a plentiful, appetizing meal. He knew, yes, he knew that it was visiting day and that he should not touch a bite of it, but he couldn't resist. He gulped down every morsel. As through a dark glass, he saw Paul enter and grin at him.
Dr Dumas was incensed at all this breakage. “No more linen or blankets for him. Take off his clothes after visiting hours. Let him go naked. And as for his food, throw it on the floor. No more dishes!”
You can't very well throw soup on the floor. But you can throw a piece of meat. And the orderlies had discovered Bertrand's love for meat. It got to be quite good sport to starve him for a day, then open his door suddenly and fling in a bone covered with shreds of flesh.
The orderlies, armed with whips or clubs, would stand in the opening and watch Bertrand pounce upon his food and crouch on the floor to gnaw off and bolt the meat in chunks, and then to crack the bone for the marrow fat. For greater amusement the orderlies liked to offer Bertrand some especially hard bone, the heavy thigh bone of the horse, for example. The sound of enamel grinding against bone filled the room with a sinister crackling. The orderlies trembled and retreated as far as they could. And they held the handle of the door, ready to slam it shut at the least sign of danger.
In this they were well advised, for on several occasions Bertrand, irritated by their laughter or excited by their applause, suddenly leaped at them. Once he was rewarded by having his face caught between the door and the jamb, so that his cheek bones were nearly crushed in. But on another occasion his teeth managed to reach the leg of Paul, and slashed through the cloth, but without catching the flesh.
Paul had had enough. He had long thirsted for vengeance, anyhow. One day, knowing the doctor absent, he procured aheavy whip from the stable. Bertrand was drugged and chloroformed and tied to the bedpost, where he slumped over the ropes that sustained him, for he was completely unconscious. They took turns beating him, now lashing him with the fine thong, now clubbing him with the butt. Bertrand groaned softly. But he did not wake, though blood spurted from his bruised and shredded back. For weeks after, though, his days and nights were one long torture.
Of all the patients, the men took a peculiar delight in annoying Bertrand. On the days when he was starved, preparatory to being drugged, they used to stand outside his door and listen to his mad bellowing. That amused them. And then when he had been drugged, they found some strange pleasure in manhandling him. He was docile as a sick child. The orderlies scrubbed him, put soap in his eyes or tweaked his nose. He responded with a silly grin. Once an orderly thought of a clever trick. He put sharp tacks through the soles of Bertrand's shoes so that points projected through. And thus Bertrand, oblivious of pain, was walked along the hall and down the flights of stairs to the reception room where his uncle awaited him.
To his uncle's greeting he gave no answer. Stood by glumly until Aymar forced him into a seat. Aymar tried to question him. Bertrand continued to glare angrily. Or if his face broke into a silly smile, the effect on Aymar was only the worse.
He tried kindness. “Answer me. Answer me. Please, Bertrand, answer me. Bertrand, look at me. Are you angry at me? Did I not always do my best for you? No father could have struggled harder. And what, after all, did I have to do with you? Neither your mother nor father was any relative of mine. But you came to belong to me, and I came to love you and feel responsibility for you. You were mine, but only as a stray dog sometimes attaches himself to a passerby and will not be shaken off.”
Bertrand grinned.
“Well for you to smile,” Aymar continued. “It was I who had all the pain and disappointment. It is I who now bear all the affront of your ingratitude.”
Bertrand's smile faded. His face darkened into a scowl.
“Yes, scowl if you like. But you will be sorry. For I shall not see you much longer. I have received papal dispensation and will soon take holy orders. Then I may be sent far away. To China, to South America. And you will be left here. Will you write to me at least? Probably not. You have answered none of my letters so far. Your brutish nature has swallowed all the learning I gave you. Do you recall how I taught you your letters, cutting the alphabet out of various colored papers, and how you first thought that every letter from red paper was A, because A had been cut from red paper?
“So you will not forgive me for having brought you here, where you are surely better off than in that prison asylum? Here it is expensive and beautiful and you have the freedom of that great garden, and the care of a famous doctor who means to help you, if he can, which I doubt, but at any rate.
“Well, speak, finally! Answer me! Or are you dumb?” Aymar rose and yelled into that stolid scowl. He postured, gestured, pleaded.
Then he mopped his brow. “I am going crazy myself,” he thought. “It is plain that the poor boy is totally off.”
He went into the corridor and called an attendant. “Good-bye, Bertrand. Who knows if I shall ever see you again.” Bertrand meekly followed the orderly without so much as another glance at his uncle.
Aymar knocked at the doctor's office. Dr Dumas greeted him with a smile.
“Come in, M Galliez. Come in. Have a glass of porto with me.”
Aymar was only too happy to sit down and talk to a human being for a change. Dr Dumas was indeed a kind and intelligent man, one with whom one felt at once at home.
“And how did you find your nephew, M Galliez?”
Aymar sipped his porto and answered sadly: “I'm afraid he's not doing very well.” He shook his head and sighed.
“Well, well,” said the doctor, “such cases, you know, are devilish hard to treat. You must repress their beastly side and that robs them of their joy in life. They grow angry at the whole world and sulk or else mock you in secret.âHere, let me fill your glass.”
After a few glasses of porto, Aymar was feeling more mellow. “What disturbs me, what, in fact, wounds me deeply, is that he will not even talk to me. And why does he never answer my letters?”
“Ah, well, M Galliez, one must put up with such things. Gratitude is rare enough among the sane. For myself, I cannot approach him without raising a scowl on his face. And yet, you know yourself how much care and attention we give to our patients here. What kind of a life is this, after all, to devote oneself, sacrifice everything, in order to relieve the suffering⦔
“You should feel ennobled by that, my dear doctor. To attempt to relieve the world's ills, from whatever side. Oh, by the way, you know, I intend soon to take holy orders.”
“Really?” the doctor was shocked, but recovered quickly. “Then allow me to congratulate you. May I drink to your future? There is nothing finer than the career of priesthood. I am not one of those blatant medicos who are so vociferous in their denunciations of the Church. As a man of science I must be unbiased, as a student of the soul, I know that religion is a potent force.”
Aymar was pleased. There was something he had had on his heart for a long time. Could he entrust it to Dr Dumas?
“I've wondered. I know, of course, that your patients may have mass said to them, if they so desire, but do you, ah, systematically attempt to open their hearts to religion? Do you, for example, try to teach them to pray?”
“You have hit there on one of my pet theories, monsieur. I am gradually working toward that.”
“I neglected that myself, in former years,” said Aymar, “but since the terrors of the last year I have become deeply convinced that man must return to the simple faith of his ancestors, back to what we in our modern sophistication and pride term vulgar superstition.”
Dr Dumas nodded his head in agreement, and filled the glasses.
“There is something,” said Aymar, “that I have been wanting to ask you.”
“Certainly.”
“You have watched my nephew carefully?”
“Why, monsieur!”