The Amphibian

by Alexander Belyaev

  “Important business, very important, Larra.”

  “Don Flores de Larra,” the learned in the law corrected him and sipped a little wine.

  But Baltasar let that go.

  “And what this important business of yours might be?”

  “You know, Larra-”

  “Don Flores de-”

  “Oh, leave your tricks for those who don’t know you,” Baltasar said with feeling. “This is important business, I tell you.”

  “Well then, out with it,” Larra said in quite a different tone.

  “D’you know the ‘sea-devil’?”

  “Have not had the honour of meeting personally so far but heard a lot about,” Larra said, relapsing into his fustian.

  “Well, the one that everybody calls the ‘sea-devil’ is my son Ichthyander.”

  “But that’s impossible! “ exclaimed Larra. “You must have been drinking, Baltasar.”

  The Indian banged his fist on the table.

  “I haven’t had anything to drink or eat since yesterday-unless you call a few mouthfuls of sea-water a drink.”

  “Then it’s even worse.”

  “You think I’m loony? No, I’m as clear-minded as can be. Now, shut up and listen to me.”

  And Baltasar told Larra the whole story. Larra listened to the Indian, deeply engrossed, his grey eyebrows invading his forehead. When the Indian stopped, forgetting all about his grand airs, he slapped the table-top with a fat hand and shouted, “Mil diablos! “

  A boy in a white apron, a dirty napkin in his hand, ran to the table.

  “What can I do for you?”

  “Two bottles of iced Sauterne,” and turning to Baltasar, Larra said:

  “Splendid! That’s a peach of a case. Thought all that up by yourself, have you? To tell you the truth, though, your fatherhood’s the weakest point in it.”

  “You don’t believe me?” said Baltasar, flushing with anger.

  “There, there, no offence meant, old boy. I’m only speaking as a lawyer, looking at your case with the eye of the law, if you know what I mean, and it’s not got very strong legs to stand on, you know-I mean that last point. But we can stand it on stouter legs, I’m sure. Yes. And land a bit of money, too.”

  “It’s not money I need, it’s my son,” Baltasar retorted.

  “Everybody needs money and particularly those who expect an addition to their family, as you do,” Larra said sententiously, and screwing up a shrewd eye, continued, “You see, what makes the whole thing almost as safe as houses is that little point about the kind of surgery Salvator’s been engaged in. It can be given such a turn that pesos will rain out of that money-bag like overripe oranges dropping from a tree in an autumn gale.”

  Baltasar took a little sip of the wine Larra had poured him out to wet his lips and said:

  “I want my son. You must write a summons against Salvator for me.”

  “Not on your life! “ Larra exclaimed, almost frightened. “Not at this stage anyway, unless you want to botch up the whole thing. The summons can wait.”

  “Well, what do you advise?” Baltasar asked.

  “First,” and Larra bent a fat finger, “well send Salvator a letter couched in terms of the utmost politeness. We’ll tell him we know all about his illegal experiments and operations and would he please pay us a tidy sum of money to avoid it being revealed. One hundred thousand pesos. Yes, one hundred thousand and not a centavo less.”

  Larra looked enquiringly at Baltasar. The Indian frowned but didn’t say a word.

  “Secondly,” went on Larra. “When we get the aforementioned sum, as I’m sure we will, we’ll send Salvator a second letter, more polite, if anything. In it we’ll tell Mm that Ichthyander’s real father’s been found and that we have irrefutable proofs of the fact. Then we’ll tell him that the father is determined to have his son back even if he has to sue Salvator to get him, and that court proceedings may open the public’s eye to the way Salvator has mutilated Ichthyander. However, if Salvator wishes to avoid court proceedings and retain the boy, would he please pay to the persons and at the place and time specified by us the sum of one million pesos.”

  But Baltasar was not listening. He grabbed a bottle and swung it over the lawyer’s head. Larra had never seen him in such a rage.

  “Come, come, don’t get your monkey up. I was only joking. Come on, put that bottle down,” Larra was saying, covering with one hand his shining pate.

  “You, you,” Baltasar raged, “you suggest that I sell my own son, my Ichthyander! Have you got no heart? Or you’re not a human being but a scorpion, a tarantula, and know nothing about a father’s feelings! “

  “Don’t I! Don’t I indeed! “ Larra shouted back, also roused. “I’ve got the feelings of five fathers. I’ve five sons. Five little imps of all sizes. Five mouths to feed. I know, understand and feel everything. You’ll get your son. But first have patience and let me finish.”

  Baltasar calmed down a little. He put the bottle on the table and looked at Larra.

  “Well then, go on.”

  “That’s better. So Salvator pays us the sum of one million pesos. That’ll buy all your Ichthyander needs — and leave a little over for me, for my pains and authorship, a mere hundred thousand pesos or so. No need to haggle over it. Salvator 11 cough up. Ill lay my head on it, he will. As soon as we have the money-”

  “We bring him to court.”

  “A little more patience. Well offer the story of a sensational crime to the biggest newspaper concern there is for say twenty or thirty thousand pesos-just pocket-money, you know. Perhaps well get a slice of the secret police funds as well. Some of them may make their careers on a case like ours, you know. And when we have squeezed Salvator dry, then go to court, yes, by all means, go and speak about your paternal feelings and may Themis herself help you to prove your claim and to receive in your affectionate embraces your long-lost son.”

  Larra drained his glass at one gulp, banged it on the table and looked triumphantly at Baltasar.

  “What do you say to that?”

  “I can neither eat nor sleep and here you are advising me to drag out the case to the end of time,” Baltasar began.

  “But look what you’ll get out of it! “ Larra cut in hotly. “Millions! Mil-li-ons. Has your brain suddenly stopped working? After all you’ve lived without Ichthyander these twenty years.”

  “Yes, I have. But now — Well, write that paper for me.”

  “Yes, you’ve really stopped using your brain! “ exclaimed Larra. “Come to your senses, Baltasar! Try to understand! Why, man, it’s millions! Money! Gold! You’ll have everything money can buy. The best tobacco, cars, schooners, this very pulqueria-”

  “Write that paper or I go to somebody else,” Baltasar said in a final tone of voice.

  Larra knew when he was licked. He shook his head sadly, heaved a sigh, took a sheet of paper out of his attache case and jerked his pen free.

  In a few minutes a summons was drawn up in proper form against Salvator for unlawfully seizing and mutilating Baltasar’s son. “I’m telling you for the last time, come to your senses,” said Larra.

  “Give it here,” the Indian said, stretching his hand for the sheet of paper.

  “Hand it in to the chief prosecutor. You know where?” Larra instructed hisclient and muttered under his breath, “May you trip on the steps and break yourneck.”

  Leaving the prosecutor’s office Baltasar ran into Zurita on the great white staircase.

  “What business brings you here?” asked Zurita, throwing a suspicious glance at Baltasar. “You haven’t gone and lodged a complaint against me, have you?”

  “Complaints ought to be lodged against the whole lot of you,” Baltasar said, meaning the Spanish “but there’s nobody to lodge ‘em with. Where have you hidden my daughter?”

  “Ill teach you to keep a civil tongue in your head,” flared up Zurita. “Had you not been my wife’s father I’d have given you a taste of my stick.”
/>   And pushing Baltasar roughly out of his way Zurita went up the steps and disappeared behind the monumental door of stout oak.

  A CASE WITHOUT PRECEDENT

  The chief prosecutor of Buenos Aires had a rare visitor-His Grace the Bishop Juan de Garcilaso, Dean of the Cathedral.

  The prosecutor, fat and dapper, with small bleary eyes, short-cut hair and dyed moustache, came out from behind the desk to meet the bishop. With great care the host seated his dear guest in the heavy leather armchair at his desk.

  The unlikeness between host and guest was striking. The prosecutor’s red face was fleshy, with thick lips and a big pear-like nose. His stumpy fingers looked not unlike thick sausages, while the buttons on his stomach threatened to be wrenched off any moment by the sheer rise and fall of the imprisoned fat.

  Now thinness and paleness were the two characteristic features of the bishop’s face. A thin aquiline nose, a sharp chin and a pair of thin bloodless lips lent him the air of a typical Jesuit. The bishop never looked straight into his interlocutor’s eyes, all the same he kept him under sharp observation. The bishop’s influence was immense and he willingly took time off from his church affairs for the game of politics.

  The greetings over, the bishop came straight to the object of his visit. “I should like to know,” he said softly, “in what stage Professor Salvator’s” case is?

  “Ah, your Grace,” the prosecutor exclaimed amiably, “you are also interested in this case. It’s indeed extraordinary, this case,” and picking up a fat file and leafing through it he went on, “On Pedro Zurita’s denunciation a search was instituted at Professor Salvator’s. Zurita’s allegation to the effect that Salvator was engaged in unusual operations on animals was fully corroborated. In fact Salvator’s gardens have been a real factory of monster animals. It’s something fantastic! Salvator, for instance — ’’

  “I know all about the search from the newspapers,” the bishop put in softly. “What measures have you taken against Salvator? Is he in custody?”

  “Yes, he is. Besides we have seized and taken to town-as Exhibit A and witness for the prosecution-a young man called Ichthyander, known also as the ‘sea-devil’. That the notorious ‘sea-devil’, the cause of so much trouble to us, should be an inmate of Salvator’s zoo! It’s amazing! At present a panel of experts, mostly university professors, are conducting an on-the-spot investigation. But Ichthyander has been brought to town, as I said, and housed in the cellar under the Law Courts. And he’s a source of worry, I can tell you. Just imagine, we had to order a big tank for him, for it appears he can’t live without water. And, as a matter of fact, he really was in poor condition. Apparently Salvator had brought about some extraordinary changes in his organism, making him into a kind of amphibian. Our experts are now tackling this question.”

  “I’m more interested in Salvator himself,” the bishop said as softly as before. “Under what article of the law is he punishable? And what is your opinion on whether he will be really sentenced?”

  “The case of Salvator is extraordinary in that it has no precedent,” said the prosecutor. “Frankly speaking I have not yet decided under which article of the law his crime comes. The easiest thing, of course, would be to charge him with carrying out illegal vivisections and disfiguring this young man…”

  There was a suggestion of a frown on the bishop’s brow.

  “So you consider that there is no corpus delicti in Salvator’s doings?”

  “There must be, but what exactly?” the prosecutor said. “Another statement bearing on the subject was handed to me from an Indian called Baltasar. He claims that Ichthyander’s his son. His proofs are rather weak but still we could perhaps call him as a witness for the prosecution provided the experts find that Ichthyander is really his son.”

  “Do you mean to say that at the most Salvator will be charged with violating professional ethics and tried only for operating on a child without obtaining his parents’ consent?”

  “Yes and, perhaps, for mutilation inflicted. And that’s far worse. But there’s another angle to this matter from which it might appear in an altogether different aspect. The experts are inclined to believe-very tentatively so far-that a normal mind could never have conceived the mere idea of such monstrous operations on animals, and still less on a human being. They might declare Salvator mentally deranged.”

  His thin lips compressed in a line and his eyes fixed on a corner of the table, the bishop sat in silence.

  “I did not expect this from you,” he finally broke silence in a low voice.

  “I beg your pardon, your Grace?” the prosecutor said, taken aback.

  “Even you, limb of the law, seem to be condoning Salvator’s doings, trying to find some justification for his operations.”

  “But are they really so bad?”

  “And hesitating todefine the corpus delicti. The court of our Holy Catholic Church-the court of ^Heaven-takes a different view of Salvator’s doings. Allow me to come to your aid and offer you advice.”

  “I’m listening,” said the abashed official.

  The bishop began in a low voice, gradually working it up to a higher pitch, as if pontifying from the pulpit against atheistic science.

  “You seem to think that Salvator’s doings are not without some justification. You seem to imply that the human being and the animals he has disfigured now have some advantages they didn’t enjoy before. What does this mean? Does this mean that the Creator did not make man the perfect creature he is? Does this mean that a Professor Salvator is free to meddle with His divine will and introduce adjustments into man?”

  The host sat listening to the dignitary of the Church, subdued and surprised: he had not expected to be turned from prosecutor to defendant.

  “Have you forgotten what the Holy Bible says in the Book of Genesis, Chapter 1, verse 26, ‘And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness’ and later, verse 27, ‘So God created man in his own image’? Salvator dares to disfigure this image and likeness and you — even you — find this justifiable! “

  “Forgive me, Padre,” was all the prosecutor could utter.

  “Didn’t the Lord find His creation perfect,” the bishop went on, warming to his subject, “wanting in nothing? You remember well the articles of the laws of man but you forget the articles of the laws of God. Recall to your mind verse 31 of the same chapter of the Book of Genesis, ‘And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good.’ And your Salvator, in his godless vanity, considers that there is room for improvement, that man should be made an amphibian, and you just marvel at it and find justification for it. Isn’t that blasphemy? Isn’t that a sacrilege? Or do our civic laws no longer punish crimes against God? Have you stopped to think what would happen if everybody said after you that man was miscreated by God and should be turned over to Salvator for remaking? What outrageous aberration this would lead to? God found everything that he had made — all his creatures — very good. And Salvator sets to and transplants animals’ heads and skins and creates ungodly monsters, as if mocking the Creator. And you find it difficult to detect a corpus delicti in his doings?”

  The bishop stopped. Pleased with the effect his speech was having on the prosecutor, he kept silent for a moment and started off again, first in a low voice, then gradually raising the pitch:

  “I’ve said that I am more interested in what will happen to Salvator. But can I be indifferent to what will happen to Ichthyander? Why, this creature hasn’t even a Christian name, for after all Ichthyander is only a combination of the Greek words for man and fish. But even granted that Ichthyander is not to blame, being only a victim, he’s still a creature begotten of a sacrilege. The mere fact of his existence may lead humble ones into temptation, induce them to entertain blasphemous doubts and even cause to waver those not strong in their faith. Ichthyander must go! The best thing for the unfortunate youth would be to be summoned to Heaven as unfit to live,”-here the bishop threw a meaningful glance at
his host. “In any case he should be condemned and shut off from all contact. After all he did commit punishable offences. He stole fish from the fishermen, damaged their nets until, you will remember, he had them so scared that they stopped fishing and the town was left without its supplies. The impious Salvator and Ms wicked handiwork are a challenge to God and our Holy Church! And the Church will not rest until they are destroyed! “

  The bishop went on with his peroration. The prosecutor sat crestfallen, his gaze fixed on the ground, not daring to stem the torrent of wrathful words.

  When finally the bishop stopped the prosecutor rose and approached the dignitary of the Church.

  “As a Christian,” he said in a hollow tone of voice, “I’ll bring my sin to my Father confessor for penance. As a law officer I tender you my gratitude for the help you have rendered me. My eyes have been opened to Salvator’s crime. He will be tried and convicted. And neither will the sword of Nemesis miss Ichthyander.”

  THE MADMAN OF GENIUS

  Though in custody Dr. Salvator had not knuckled under. He was as calm and dominating as ever, speaking to the investigator and experts in the condescending accents of an adult addressing a bunch of children. His active nature could not stand idleness. He did a great deal of writing and performed a few brilliant operations in the prison hospital. Among others he operated on the prison governor’s wife for a malignant tumour and saved her life when she had been given up by all other doctors.

  The day of the trial came.

  The huge Court was packed, those who had not been able to get inside were overflowing the corridors, the square in front of the Law Courts, looking in at the open windows or climbing up the trees for a better view.

  Salvator sat in the prisoner’s dock with the calm and dignified demeanour of a judge. Everybody’s eyes were glued on him. The fact that he was going to conduct his own defence only whipped up the audience’s interest.

  Ichthyander would, of course, have come in for his share of popular interest but he was not in Court. With the approach of the trial he had been spending more and more time in his water tank, owing to his poor health and everybody’s morbid staring. Besides, in the Salvator case Ichthyander was only a witness for the prosecution, rather in the nature of material evidence, as the chief prosecutor had put it, and his own case was to come up for trial later and separately. It had been arranged that way to meet the bishop’s wish for a speedy conviction for Salvator. Meanwhile evidence against Ichthyander could be prepared. The prosecutor’s agents were paying visits to the pulqueria La Palmera, cautiously but busily recruiting witnesses for the future trial. However, the bishop kept hinting broadly to the prosecutor that by far the best for the unfortunate youth would be to depart this life-and furnish ample proof that a man’s hand could only spoil what God had made.