We stood outside the church as evening fell. The stars and moon were beginning to appear, and the snow had stopped falling sometime in the day. The crowd had gone home, many of whom had thanked me personally for having apprehended the criminal. From the words of appreciation, I got the feeling that these simple people had, for their own reasons, always harbored a certain fear of this girl. As for Aria, she had been taken away to the one cell in Ana-masobia—a small, windowless locked room in the town hall.
"I suppose justice must be served," I said.
"If you'll beg my pardon, your honor, you may have found the criminal, but the white fruit is still missing. How are we going to retrieve that if I have the girl executed?" he asked.
"Interrogate the prisoner," I said. "You must be aware that there are methods for making people talk. Search that hovel she lives in. My belief is that she probably fed part of it to her bastard child in order to offset its obvious physiognomical deficiencies."
He nodded sadly, which took me by surprise.
"Nothing to laugh at, Mayor?" I asked.
"Torture is not my strong suit," he said. "For that matter, neither is execution. Is there no other way to go about this? Couldn't she, perhaps, just apologize?"
"Really, now," I said, "the Master would not perceive such leniency with a kind eye. With that course of action, you might jeopardize the entire town's very existence."
"I see," he said. "It's just that I've known this girl from when she was a child. I knew her grandfather. I know her parents. I saw her grow up, and she was such a sweet, inquisitive little thing." He looked into my eyes, and I could tell he was on the verge of tears.
Although I met his gaze with complete silence, his words about Aria forced me to remember those things about her that had, for the past days, kept her constantly on my mind. I was now certain that it had not, after all, been the Traveler who had blinded my perception, but instead it was Aria's own special beauty and intelligence that had bewitched me.
The mayor, getting no reply from me, began walking away, and, with this, I experienced an unfathomable emotion, almost like sadness. I wasn't sure if it was because I also could not bear the thought of Aria's execution, or if it was that, although I had my thief, little had truly been resolved.
"Wait," I told him.
He stopped but remained with his back to me.
"There is something I might try."
He turned and came slowly back to stand before me.
"It is an experimental procedure that I am not sure will work," I told him. "I wrote a paper on it a few years ago, but it was not favorably acknowledged by my colleagues, and the idea died out after a few weeks of heated debate."
"Well?" he said as I searched my mind for the particulars of the theory. When I hit upon it, it seemed rather daring if not reckless, but in light of my newly regained powers, and the feeling of great inner strength their rediscovery gave rise to, I began to think that this case might be the perfect opportunity to test this untried method.
"Listen closely," I said to him. "If the physical features of the girl's face are an indication of the character traits she harbors deep within, then does it not make sense that if I were to * rearrange those features with my scalpel, creating a structure that would indicate a more morally perfect inner state, would she not then be re-formed from the congenital criminal malaise, resulting in the willingness to reveal the location of the fruit and rendering her no longer in need of execution?"
Bataldo rolled his eyes and took a step back. "If I am understanding you," he said, "you are saying you can make her good by performing surgery on her?"
"Perhaps," I said.
"Then do it," he said, and like the lion lying down with the lamb, we each smiled for different reasons.
I made arrangements with the mayor to have her brought to my study at the hotel the next morning promptly at nine. He then asked me if I would join him for dinner at the tavern, but I declined, knowing that there was much preparation to be done if I was going to rescue her from herself.
For the first time since I arrived at Anamasobia, I truly felt at ease. On the way back to my quarters people greeted me with the deference befitting my station. Even Mrs. Mantakis, seeing me enter the lobby of the hotel, addressed me with a certain air of subservience that had obviously been lacking heretofore. I told her to send away all visitors and to bring me some of that blue wine and a light dinner. She told me she had prepared something special for me that evening that had nothing to do with cremat, and I couldn't believe myself that I actually thanked her. She purred like a cat at my grateful response.
Had I still been in the thick of the mystery, I would have been alarmed to see how little of the beauty I still had in my valise—only enough for three or four real doses, but with my new self-assurance that the case would be completely resolved by sometime the next evening, I took a full vial without a second thought.
Then I undressed, put on my robe and slippers, and had a cigarette. True to my old form, I was able, with the enhanced power of the drug, to readily envision Aria's face and the changes that would have to be made to it in order to save her life. I quickly got pen and paper and began sketching my vision of the new Aria.
It must have been hours after Mrs. Manktakis had delivered my dinner and wine that I finally finished making my plans. By now the town was perfectly quiet, a condition, after having come from the City, that I could never really get used to. The sheer beauty was still active in my system, bringing me intermittent visions of splendor. Not one paranoic image found its way into my head as I worked, but occasionally I would daydream vividly about my idyllic childhood on the banks of the Chottle River.
Finally I sat down on the bed to consider the fame this next day's procedure would bring me if it was successful, and that is when Professor Flock made his appearance.
"You again," I said.
"Who else?" he asked, now dressed in his teaching uniform and toting the dress cane with an ivory monkey-head handle it had been his practice to carry at official events.
"You're a traitor," I said to him.
"Did I not suggest the appropriate method with which to apprehend the criminal?" he asked, smiling.
"That you did, but I'm done with you. I'm going to banish you from my mind," I told him.
"That may be a little difficult since I am really you talking to yourself in a drug-induced haze," he said. "I can only say and do, can only be, what you desire."
"Well, what do you think of my plans for tomorrow?" I asked.
"Be certain that you cut some of the intelligence out of the poor girl; she's too smart for her own good. And, by all means, let's have a cut in the center of the chin to ward off those delusions that there is anything in store for her but the meanest existence here in this shit village at the end of the world. The rest of it seems quite good. I don't think I could have done better myself," he said, tapping the cane on the floor.
"Very well," I said, "I can't argue with that."
"My real reason for coming tonight is to bid you farewell. I don't think I will be seeing you again," he said. Then he held the cane up and out toward me, and the ivory monkey head came magically to life, screaming in its small voice, "I am not a monkey. I am not a monkey." As always, Flock left his laughter behind, and I bid him good riddance.
That night I fell into a deep sleep from which I struggled to escape. I revisited again my childhood, but this time what came to me were only the scenes of my father's unbridled anger and the resultant early death of my mother. I woke at sunrise, crying into my pillow as I had done so many nights of my early life. What a relief I felt when I finally opened my eyes and realized I was free of it.