His thin legs disappeared, twitching and flexing, scissoring futilely against the slippery stairs.
Then he was gone. Jones couldn’t watch the rest of it. He could only remember that scouring of the heart region, that wickedly curved obsidian scalpel, that golden ewer he had glimpsed being carried upward by one of the priests, in which to catch — what?
The silence seemed as though it would go on forever. Then suddenly it exploded into a piercing scream of agony that had already become death before it completed itself and winged thinly off into nothing.
The onlookers at the base of the altar dropped to their knees. A brazen gong crashed out triumphantly, just once. Then that trailed throbbingly away too, in the wake of the scream.
Something white fell inert, with a sodden thud, to the ground at the foot of the altar, cast over the side from above. The eyes only seemed to be fluttering closed now, but that might have been an illusion. Chevrons of red streaked out from a thin-lipped, puckered incision just under the left breast.
A deep groan of religious ecstasy sounded from those kneeling below. Scattered drops, as of thick dark rain, fell here and there upon them, as of something held aloft toward the sun, and then shaken out on those below. Another whiff of aromatic smoke came looping down and about, like a ghost snake.
Jones slumped to the ground of his dungeon and lay there in open-eyed despair.
To have to die is hard. To have to die as he’d just now seen this other man die was sheer horror.
Chapter Twenty-four
The badly frightened turnkey came hurrying back along the jail corridor, bringing the prison commandant at his heels.
“In here,” he said fearfully, stopping short outside the last cupboard-like crevice of all.
The commandant was still chewing the last mouthful he had brought away from the table with him in his haste. He took his time, swallowed first, then ordered, “Well, open it, fool. Have I eyes that can see through this iron slab?”
Keys clashed and the cell was exposed to view.
“Oh,” said the commandant. “I had forgotten who was in here.” He said it almost with an air of relief.
“I don’t know when it happened,” the turnkey expostulated. “He was all right the last time I looked in.”
“Well, I suppose we have to make sure,” the commandant said unhappily, stepping reluctantly forward to go in. “And right on top of eating, too. I didn’t even have my coffee yet.”
The turnkey trailed in after him.
“We don’t want any more mistakes, like that other time,” the commandant continued. “Remember what happened?”
“The one from Eighteen. Yes.” The turnkey crossed himself.
“We had him already lying out there on the ground, when he rolled his head over and his lips started to move.”
“Well, luckily there was that shovel there handy, to quiet him with.”
“As long as we were that far, why should we have the trouble of bringing him all the way back again with us — and then maybe the next day it would happen anyway?”
“Si, mi comandante, you’re right,” the turnkey agreed judiciously.
“Bring in the lamp from the corridor,” the commandant said irritably. “I can’t get used to this dimness.” While he was waiting, he lit a cigarette, to temper some of the foul odor in the cell.
The turnkey came back with an oil lamp, and rays of straw-colored light, spearing up the walls ahead of it, finally coalesced into a satisfactory patina of illumination.
Cotter’s body lay laterally across the cot. His leg over-spanned it on one side, his head hung partly off the other. There was not room for it to hang down entirely. His arms lay spread out sideward.
His neck and throat and shoulders were all dark, as though a sudden empurpled birthmark had overspread him there. There was something the matter with his throat. It seemed to yawn open, as though his mouth were lower down than where it belonged; as though he were grinning in the wrong place.
The commandant bent over a little toward him, blowing cigarette smoke away from between himself and the corpse, so that he could see clearly. He nodded. “We don’t have to have any doubts this time,” he commented.
“But how—?” the turnkey faltered.
The commandant looked around briefly on the small area of floor space. He stooped, picked something up.
“With this,” he answered. “Here it is, right here.” It was a small sliver, about an inch long, about half an inch wide.
The turnkey goggled at it.
“It’s one of those blades the americanos make so beautifully. They’re very hard to get down here. I used to have some, though. They call them... ah... you know, shave-with-safety. You cannot cut yourself with them. That is the way in which they shave up there.”
“But if you can’t cut yourself with them, how could it do that to him?” the turnkey pointed out naively.
“Ah, you’re very dense,” snapped the commandant. “You can’t cut yourself with it while it’s in the holder. You can when you take it apart.”
“I won’t get in trouble, will I, mi comandante?”
“No, you didn’t know he had it,” the commandant reassured him.
“You did, mi comandante?” the turnkey gaped in astonishment.
“Naturally. It was sent to him through me. It came from the Minister of the Interior, no less. He said he wanted the inmates to look neat, he didn’t like them with stubble all over their faces when he came here on inspection visits. This particular one, in any event.”
The turnkey still didn’t understand. He scratched his skull in bafflement. “But if it’s supposed to be used in a holder, and if the señor ministro wanted him to use it, then why didn’t he send him the holder with it? Why did he just send him this part?”
“Stop trying to figure out things that don’t concern you,” the commandant reprimanded him. “It’s none of your business and it’s none of mine. The señor ministro is entitled to a slight fit of absent-mindedness once in a while, a man with all the heavy responsibilities he’s got.”
He suddenly caught sight of something, leaned sharply forward again, and thrust his whole arm down between cot and wall. He brought up a small piece of rumpled paper and smoothed it out.
“Wait a minute, here’s a note he seems to have written. With a piece of soft charcoal, it looks like.”
“I gave him that a few days ago,” the turnkey admitted. “It was soft, he couldn’t hurt himself with it.” He craned his neck across his superior’s shoulder. “Does it say why he did it?”
The commandant gave a shoulder fling of incomprehension. “No, it says the same thing over and over. It must be some kind of lesson, like they give little boys to do in school.”
The words were:
“I have forgotten Spanish.
I have forgotten Spanish.
I have forgotten Spanish.
I have forgotten Spanish.”
Chapter Twenty-five
Alone now in the dungeon, he could sleep.
Human beings must sleep. Give them time enough, and they can sleep anywhere, in any situation. Even on the floor of Purgatory, even in the mouth of Hell, they will sleep. Night comes and they will sleep.
Sleep was friendly. It was awakening that was the cruel time. For in sleep he still dreamed he was back home, in his own country, in his United States. Voices spoke to him in English, sometimes he saw a car or two skim by in the background, women appeared in short swirling skirts and high-heeled slippers; once he was manipulating an automatic toaster, from which the slices of bread kept flying up without his being able to catch them.