Читать книгу The Contract - Anto Krajina - Страница 13

As soon as Professor Bourgh had arrived home, he took the jar with the preserved mushrooms out of his bag and put it on the table. Then he lay down on the sofa in his lounge.

“We all have our destinies and our obligations,” he began meditating as he was lying with his hands under his head. His back was hurting, however he didn’t feel the full strength of the pain – the gravity of the hour didn’t permit it.

“My destiny wanted me to have that nasty accident, to hurt my backbone, to be a twisted hunchback for the rest of my life and to offer no pleasure when looked at. I am aware of that and I feel many pitying looks every day. His looks and his words, condescending and humiliating are worse than all the others. He uses his fake friendliness to underline his superiority and to make me feel my inferiority. He thinks that I don’t know how ignorant he is. He has been appointed Head of the Department because his brother is minister of health, a bigwig in politics. My destiny is to suffer. Fortunately I also have my duty, which is much higher than his. I have to see to it that trees without fruit don’t grow too high.

I can bear a lot but I also have my limits. He has had lots of young women, however he didn’t love any of them. He used them up and threw them away like old socks, regarded them dirty and worthless, as soon as they had fallen victim to him. We both shared a room when we were students. I happened to meet Ann, my first and my only love. Ann was all my happiness. I told her about my accident, she knew everything about me. She wanted to have a child with me. We had an intimate relationship for about a month. I was the happiest man in the world. Then he began staying in the room and didn’t want to go out for a walk when she came to see me. All of a sudden Ann left me, and I never saw her again. As soon as she stopped coming to see me he also left and found another room somewhere in the town. Later it happened that we were both employed by the same institution. I have tried for so many years to forgive him and to forget what he had done to me. I have helped him to write his theses. I have written his speeches, I have done all the scientific work for him. I have always tried to explain delicate problems to him that he would have never been able to understand without my help. In short: I have tried with all my heart and with my entire mind to love my enemy. So far I have been successful. Now I don’t want to be successful any more, I want to fail. My cup of grief is full to overflowing. The hour has come to do something, to settle all the outstanding accounts. I can’t prevent all those like him from continuing with their abominable practice, but I can do something. Let me chop off at least the branches that prick me in my face. Others like me that are pricked must try to help themselves. I can’t be everywhere.

Only Vivien personally and nobody else knows what she had to suffer in her captivity. She is in many respects still a child. On the other hand, however, she is a grown-up young lady who has had a terrible experience and therefore riper than lots of women who are twice her age. She is exceptionally intelligent and would probably accept me as her partner, if she knew that my hunchback is not the consequence of a genetic disorder but of a tragic accident in my youth. If she saw my photos before my accident, she would see me in a different light. If she had a conversation with me, she would realise that my semen would produce especially good-looking, especially intelligent and healthy children. After all she has experienced, she is probably looking for somebody who would be ready to live for her. She would probably wish to bear me a child. If he were an honest person, I wouldn’t have anything against his procreation with her innocence. I know, however, who he is, and I mustn’t allow that. I would be a criminal if I didn’t prevent him from doing that. He loves my mushrooms, can’t have enough of them. He always asks me to bring him more. Destiny wanted him to enter his office with her the very moment when I wanted to give him a jar full of the finest mushrooms I have, those that he especially likes. If I hadn’t seen him in the decisive moment, I would have given him the mushrooms, preserved, but unprepared for the unexpected purpose. Now he’ll get them preserved and prepared in the way the present situation requires. He should disappear but not suffer. I know what suffering is, I don’t want even him to suffer. I’ll add a sufficient portion of the substance No. 17 to the delicious content and thus make it even more delicious. That will convey him into the world where neither harm nor alarm can be caused to anybody. Fifteen minutes after he has eaten them he will be yonder. That’s just enough time for him to go comfortably to a sofa or a bed to have a rest, because he will feel very tired without any pain. Soon he’ll fall firmly asleep and will never again come back to this world in which he has caused so many tears. No forensic specialist, no scientist will be able find out what has happened. No bottle in any institute in the world contains the substance No. 17. It must be made of completely innocent substances that we all use every day. Half an hour after it has been taken there is no trace of it whatsoever. That scientific beauty could be terribly misused. For that reason I mustn’t tell anybody the secret ingredients and how it is made. My secret should die with me. Those scientists who independently come upon the same idea of how to produce it certainly won’t tell anybody the secret and will take it with them to the grave. It should just be used by special people, for certain people and in special cases. Let’s prepare the delicacy,” he thought at the end of his long, silent soliloquy.

He slowly got up and went into the room in which he kept hundreds of little glass pots filled with all sorts of powders and liquids. All the tiny vessels were supplied with labels bearing numbers and strange letters never used by anybody else. He took several small brown glass pots with black lids down from the shelf. On each of them there was a label with a combination of numbers and peculiar letters. Each time using another cylindrical spoon of a different size, out of each glass pot he took a certain quantity of the content, and put it into a clean glass pot intended for the mixture No. 17. Immediately after that he carefully shut all the pots with the ingredient substances and put them back again on the shelf. Then he shut the glass pot with the mixture and shook it well several times. He opened it, filled an unused tiny cylindrical spoon with its content and emptied the spoon into the pot with the mushrooms. After that he closed the pot carefully and shook it for almost a minute in order for the mushrooms to be properly soaked through by the poison. At the end he emptied the remainder of the lethal magic potion into the toilet and washed the glass pot with water and alcohol. The mushroom delicacy was prepared to bring about Professor Frederic’s end.

“That’s it,” he muttered and put the pot into his large bag.

“Now I must have some sleep, I feel more tired than usual,” he thought. He went to the large sofa in the living-room and lay down. Almost immediately he fell asleep. While he was sleeping he had a dream. Somebody in his vicinity was speaking to him in a low pleasant voice. He couldn’t see the person speaking but the voice reminded him strongly of Ann’s.

“Whatever you do,” the voice said, “only what can happen will happen. Regardless of what you do and how hard you try you will never bring about what cannot happen. The world is equally complete with your doing and without your doing. It’s only you yourself to whom you are answerable, because the entire world is your own product, your own creation. Do not forget that before our birth we do not sign any contract in which we declare that we agree or wish to be born and to be what we are. We cannot choose our parents nor can we choose our genetic dowry, which is given to us without our consent; the same applies to the time and the place of our birth and to everything that goes with them. Therefore every instant is charged with only one single true possibility that can be realised and everything is bound to happen just as it does. Not all people are supposed to understand that but you are. Everyone is involved in his personal way in everything that happens in this strange way of man. Every kind of behaviour is effective, for it can both achieve cause and prevent it. You like mathematics and know only too well that the so-called negative numbers are equally important as the so-called positive ones. You must bear all that in mind if you want to be a worthy and impartial judge. Don’t forget that the sentence you have passed will be executed on you, because anybody else is you yourself,” said the voice.

Professor Bourgh woke up. His watch told him that he had slept for full five hours. He felt fresh and almost didn’t feel any pain. He could get up much faster than usual. He immediately took the pot with the mushrooms out of his large bag and emptied it into the toilet. He took another one without any magic substances in it and put it into the bag.