The Complete Short Stories

‘Big mistake there, doctor. You better get out fast before I tip off the Police Prefect. Stopping a suicide! God, with your record you’d get ten years for that. What a joke!’

Gregory shook him by the shoulders, temper flaring. ‘Listen, what are you playing at? What do you want?’

Christian pushed Gregory’s hands away and lay back weakly. ‘Help me, doctor. I want to kill Bortman, it’s all I think about. If I’m not careful I’ll really try. Show me how to forget him.’ His voice rose desperately. ‘Damn, I hated my father, I was glad when Bortman threw him out.’

Gregory eyed him thoughtfully, then went over to the window and bolted out the night.

Two months later, at the motel outside Casablanca, Gregory finally burned the last of the analysis notes. Christian, clean-shaven and wearing a neat white tropical suit, a neutral tie, watched from the door as the stack of coded entries gutted out in the ashtray, then carried them into the bathroom and flushed them away.

When Christian had loaded his suitcases into the car Gregory said: ‘One thing before we go. A complete analysis can’t be effected in two months, let alone two years. It’s something you work at all your life. If you have a relapse, come to me, even if I’m in Tahiti, or Shanghai or Archangel.’ Gregory paused. ‘If they ever find out, you know what will happen?’ When Christian nodded quietly he sat down in the chair by the writing table, gazing out through the date palms at the huge domed mouth of the transatlantic tunnel a mile away. For a long time he knew he would be unable to relax. In a curious way he felt that the three years at Marseilles had been wasted, that he was starting a suspended sentence of indefinite length. There had been no satisfaction at the successful treatment, perhaps because he had given in to Christian partly for fear of being incriminated in an attack on Bortman.

‘With luck, you should be able to live with yourself now. Try to remember that whatever evils Bortman may perpetrate in the future he’s irrelevant to your problem. It was the stroke your mother suffered after your father’s death that made you realize the guilt you felt subconsciously for hating him, but you conveniently shifted the blame onto Bortman, and by eliminating him you thought you could free yourself. The temptation may occur again.’

Christian nodded, standing motionlessly by the doorway. His face had filled out, his eyes were a placid grey. He looked like any well-groomed UW bureaucrat.

Gregory picked up a newspaper. ‘I see Bortman is attacking the American Bar Association as a subversive body, probably planning to have it proscribed. If it succeeds it’ll be an irreparable blow to civil liberty.’ He looked up thoughtfully at Christian, who showed no reaction. ‘Right, let’s go. Are you still fixed on getting back to the States?’

‘Of course.’ Christian climbed into the car, then shook Gregory’s hand. Gregory had decided to stay in Africa, find a hospital where he could work and had given Christian the car. ‘Marie will wait for me in Algiers until I finish my business.’

‘What’s that?’

Christian pressed the starter, sent a roar of dust and exhaust across the compound.

‘I’m going to kill Bortman,’ he said quietly.

Gregory gripped the windscreen. ‘You’re not serious.’

‘You cured me, doctor, and give or take the usual margins I’m completely sane, more than I probably ever will be again. Damn few people in this world are now, so that makes the obligation on me to act rationally even greater. Well, every ounce of logic tells me that someone’s got to make the effort to get rid of the grim menagerie running things now, and Bortman looks like a pretty good start. I intend to drive up to Lake Success and take a shot at him.’ He shunted the gear change into second, and added, ‘Don’t try to have me stopped, doctor, because they’ll only dig out our long weekend here.’

As he started to take his foot off the clutch Gregory shouted: ‘Christian! You’ll never get away with it! They’ll catch you anyway!’ but the car wrenched forward out of his hand.

Gregory ran through the dust after it, stumbling over half-buried stones, realizing helplessly that when they caught Christian and probed down into the past few months they would soon find the real assassin, an exiled doctor with a three-year-grudge.

‘Christian!’ he yelled, choking on the white ash. ‘Christian, you’re insane!’

1962

The Garden of Time

Towards evening, when the great shadow of the Palladian villa filled the terrace, Count Axel left his library and walked down the wide marble steps among the time flowers. A tall, imperious figure in a black velvet jacket, a gold tie-pin glinting below his George V beard, cane held stiffly in a white-gloved hand, he surveyed the exquisite crystal flowers without emotion, listening to the sounds of his wife’s harpsichord, as she played a Mozart rondo in the music room, echo and vibrate through the translucent petals.