The Madman's Tale

by John Katzenbach

  Peter, however, had taken up a position in the corridor where he was leaning against the wall, staring directly at the storage room. Every so often his eyes would measure the distance between the spot where the nurse’s body was discovered and where she had been first assaulted, in the wire mesh enclosed station in the center of the hallway.

  Francis moved toward him slowly. “What is it?” he asked quietly.

  Peter the Fireman pursed his lips together, as if concentrating hard. “Tell me, C-Bird, does any of this make any sense to you?”

  Francis started to respond, then hesitated. He leaned up against the wall next to the Fireman and began to look in the same direction. After a moment, he said, “It’s like reading the last chapter of a book first.”

  Peter smiled and nodded. “How so?”

  “Well,” Francis said slowly, “it’s all in reverse. Not reverse, like a mirror, but as if we are told the conclusion but not how we got there.”

  “Go on, C-Bird.”

  Francis felt a kind of energy as his imagination churned with what he’d seen the night before. Within him, he could hear a chorus of assent and encouragement. “Some things really bother me,” he said. “Some things I just don’t understand.”

  “Tell me some of the things,” Peter asked.

  “Well, Lanky, for starters. Why would he want to kill Short Blond?”

  “He thought she was evil. He tried to assault her in the dining hall earlier.”

  “Yes, and then they gave him a shot, which should have calmed him down.”

  “But it didn’t.”

  Francis shook his head. “I think it did. Not completely, but it did. When I got a shot like that it was like having all the muscles in my body sliced, so that I barely had the energy to lift my eyelids and look out at the world around me. Even if they didn’t give Lanky enough, some would have done the job, I think. Because killing Short Blond would take strength. And energy. And more, too, I suppose.”

  “More?”

  “It would take purpose,” Francis said.

  “Go on,” Peter said, nodding his head.

  “Well, how does Lanky get out of the dormitory? It was always locked. And if he did manage to unlock the door to the dormitory, where are the keys? And why, if he did get out, why would he take Short Blond to the storage room. I mean, how does he do that? And then why would he”—Francis hesitated, before selecting the word—“assault her? And leave her like he did?”

  “He had her blood on his clothes. Her hat was underneath his mattress,” Peter said with a policeman’s stolid conclusiveness.

  Francis shook his head. “I don’t understand that. That hat. But not the knife that he used to kill her?”

  Peter lowered his voice. “What did Lanky tell us about, when he awakened us?”

  “He said an angel came to his side and embraced him.”

  Both men were silent. Francis tried to imagine the sensation of the angel stirring Lanky from his nervous sleep. “I thought he made it up. I thought it was something he just imagined.”

  “So did I,” Peter said. “Now, I don’t know.”

  He began to stare at the storage closet again. Francis joined in. The longer he stared, the closer he got to the moment. It was, he thought, as if he could almost see Short Blond’s last seconds. Peter must have noticed, for he, too, seemed to pale. “I don’t want to think Lanky could do that,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like him at all. Even at his worst, and he certainly was at his scariest yesterday, it still doesn’t seem like him. Lanky was about pointing and shouting and being loud. I don’t think he was about killing. Certainly not killing in a sneaky, quiet, assassin’s type of way.”

  “He said evil had to be destroyed. He said it real loud, in front of everyone.”

  Peter nodded, but his voice carried disbelief. “Do you think he could kill someone, C-Bird?”

  “I don’t know. In a way, I think, under the right circumstances, anyone could be a killer. But I’m just guessing. I’ve never known a killer before.”

  This reply made Peter smile. “Well, you know me,” he said. “But I think we should get to know another.”

  “Another killer?”

  “An Angel,” Peter said. Shortly before the afternoon group session the following day, Francis was approached by Napoleon. The small man had a hesitancy about him, that seemed to speak of indecision, and doubt. He stuttered slightly, words seeming to hang up on the tip of his tongue, reluctant to burst forth for fear of how they would be received. He had the most curious sort of speech impediment, for when he launched himself into history, as it connected to his namesake, then he would be far more clear and precise. The problem was, for anyone listening, to separate the two disparate elements, the thoughts of that day from the speculations about events that had taken place more than 150 years earlier.

  “C-Bird?” Napoleon asked, with his customary nervousness.

  “What is it, Nappy?” Francis replied. They were hanging on the edge of the dayroom, not actually doing anything but patiently assessing their thoughts, as the folks of the Amherst Building often did.

  “Something has really been bothering me,” Napoleon said.

  “There’s been a lot that’s bothered everyone,” Francis responded. Napoleon ran his hands over his chubby cheeks.

  “Did you know that no general is considered more brilliant than Bonaparte?” Napoleon said. “Like Alexander the Great or Julius Caesar or George Washington. I mean, he was someone who shaped the world with his brilliance.”

  “Yes. I know that,” Francis said.

  “But what I don’t understand is why, when he was so roundly considered such a man of genius, does everyone only remembers his defeats?”

  “I’m sorry,” Francis said.

  “The defeats. Moscow. Trafalgar. Waterloo.”

  “I don’t know if I can answer that question, Nappy …,” Francis started.

  “It’s truly bothering me,” he said quickly, “I mean, why are we remembered for our failures? Why do defeats and retreats mean more than victories? Do you think Gulp-a-pill and Mister Evil ever talk about the progress we make, in group, or with medications? I don’t think so. I think they only talk about setbacks and mistakes and all the little signs that we still belong here, instead of the indications that we’re getting better and just maybe we ought to be going home.”

  Francis nodded. This made some sense.

  But the short man continued, his stuttering hesitancy dropping aside. “I mean, Napoleon remade the map of Europe with his victories. They should be remembered. It really makes me so angry …”

  “I don’t know that there’s much you can do about it—,” Francis started, only to be cut off as the small man leaned forward and lowered his voice.

  “It makes me so angry the way Gulp-a-pill and Mister Evil treat me and treat all these historical things that are so important, that I could hardly sleep last night …”

  This statement got Francis’s attention.

  “You were awake?”

  “I was awake when I heard someone working a key through the door lock.”

  “Did you see …”

  Napoleon shook his head. “I heard the door swing open, you know, my bunk isn’t far away, and I closed my eyes tight, because we are supposed to be asleep, and I didn’t want someone to think that I wasn’t sleeping when I was supposed to and get my meds increased. So I pretended.”

  “Go on,” Francis urged.

  Napoleon put his head back, trying to reconstruct what he remembered. “I was aware that someone went by my bunk. And then, a few minutes later, passed by again, only this time to exit. And I listened for the lock turning, but it never happened. Then, after a little bit, I peeked just a tiny little peek, and I saw you and the Fireman heading out. We’re not supposed to go out at night. We’re supposed to be in our bunks and fast asleep, so it scared me when you went past, and I tried to go to sleep, but now, I could hear Lanky talking to himself, and that kept me up until the police
came and the lights came on and we could see all the terrible things that had happened.”

  “So, you didn’t see the other person?”

  “No. I don’t think so. It was dark. I might have looked a little, though.”

  “And what did you see?”

  “A man in white. That’s all.”

  “Could you tell how big? Did you see his face?”

  Napoleon shook his head again. “Everyone looks big to me, C-Bird. Even you. And I didn’t see his face. When he walked past my bunk, I squeezed my eyes shut and hid my head. I do remember one thing, though. He seemed to be floating. All white and floating.”

  The small man took a deep breath. “Some of the bodies, during the retreat from Moscow, froze so solid that the skin took on the color of ice on a pond. Like gray and white and translucent, all at the same time. Like fog. That was what I remember.”

  Francis absorbed what he’d heard, and saw that Mister Evil was walking through the dayroom, signaling the start of their afternoon group session. He also saw Big Black and Little Black maneuvering through the throng of patients. Francis started suddenly, when he noticed that both men wore their white pants and white orderly jackets.

  Angels, he thought. Francis had one other, brief conversation, while heading into the group session. Cleo stepped in front of him, blocking his passage down that corridor to one of the smaller treatment rooms. She swayed back and forth before speaking, a little like a ferryboat nestling into its berth at a dock.

  “C-Bird,” she said. “Do you think Lanky did that to Short Blond?”

  Francis shook his head slightly, as if in doubt. “It doesn’t seem to be the sort of thing that Lanky would do,” he said. “It seems so much worse than he could ever manage.”

  Cleo breathed out deeply. Her entire bulk shuddered. “I thought he was a good man. A little wacky, like the rest of us, confused about things, sometimes, but a good man. I cannot believe that he would do such a bad thing.”

  “He had blood on his shirt. And he seemed to have picked out Short Blond and for some reason, he thought she was evil, and this scared him, Cleo. When we get scared, we do things that are unexpected. All of us do. In fact, I’d bet that just about everyone here did something when they got scared, and that’s why they’re here.”

  Cleo nodded in agreement. “But Lanky seemed different.” Then she shook her head. “No. That’s not right. He seemed the same. And we’re all different, and that’s what I mean. He was different outside, but in here, he was the same, and what happened, that seemed like an outside thing that seemed to happen inside.”

  “Outside?”

  “You know, stupid. Outside. Like beyond.” Cleo made a wide, sweeping gesture with her arm, as if to indicate the world beyond the hospital walls.

  This made some sense to Francis and he managed a small smile. “I think I see what you’re getting at,” he said.

  Cleo leaned forward. “Something happened last night, in the girls’ dormitory. I didn’t tell anyone.”

  “What?”

  “I was awake. Couldn’t sleep. Tried going over all the lines of the play, but it didn’t work, although usually it does. I mean, go figure. Usually, when I get to Anthony’s speech in act two, well, my eyes roll back and I’m snoring like a little baby, except, I don’t know if little babies snore, because nobody’s ever let me get anywhere near theirs, the nasty bitches—but that’s another story.”

  “So you couldn’t sleep, either.”

  “Everyone else was.”

  “And?”

  “I saw the door open, and a figure come in. I hadn’t heard the door key in the lock, my bunk, it’s way on the far side, right by the windows, and there was moonlight last night that was hitting my head. Did you know that in the old days, people thought if you went to sleep with the moonlight on your forehead you would wake up crazy? That’s where the word lunatic comes from. Maybe it’s true, C-Bird. I sleep in the moonlight all the time, and I keep getting crazier and crazier, and no one wants me anymore. I haven’t got anybody anywhere to talk to me, and so they put me in here. All by myself. No one to come visit. That doesn’t seem fair, does it? I mean some people somewhere should come visit me. I mean, how hard would that be? The bastards. The goddamn bastards.”

  “But someone came in to the bunk room?”

  “Strange. Yes.” Cleo shook a little bit, quivering. “No one ever comes in at night. But this night, someone did. And they stayed a few seconds, and then the door went shut again, and this time, because I was listening hard, I heard the key in the lock.”

  “Do you think anybody asleep by the door saw the person?” Francis asked.

  Cleo made a face and shook her head. “I already asked around. Discreetly, you know. No. Lots of people sleeping. It’s the meds, you know. Everyone gets knocked right out.”

  Then her face flushed and Francis saw the sudden arrival of some tears. “I liked Short Blond,” she said. “She was always so kind to me. Sometimes she would share lines with me, speak Marc Anthony’s part, or maybe the chorus. And I liked Lanky, too. He was a gentleman. Opened the door and let the ladies pass through first at dinnertime. Said grace for the whole table. Always called me Miss Cleo, so polite and nice. And he really had all of our interests at heart. Keep evil away. Makes sense.”

  She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and then blew her nose. “Poor Lanky. He was right all along, and no one listened and now look. We need to find some way to help him, because, after all, he was just trying to help all of us. The bastards. The goddamn bastards.”

  Then she grabbed Francis by the arm, and made him escort her into the group session.

  Mister Evil was arranging steel folding chairs in a circle inside the treatment room. He gestured at Francis to take a couple from where they were stacked beneath a window, and Francis dropped Cleo’s arm and crossed the room, as she gingerly lowered herself into one of the seats. He reached down and seized a pair, and was about to turn and bring these back to the center where the group was gathering, when some movement outdoors grabbed his attention. From where he was standing, he could see the main entranceway, the great iron gate that was open, and the drive that went up to the administration building. A large black car was pulling to the front. This, in itself, wasn’t all that unusual; cars and ambulances arrived off and on throughout the day. But there was something about this particular one that he could not precisely say, but which grabbed his attention. It was as if it carried urgency.

  Francis watched as the car shuddered to a halt. After a second, a tall, dark-skinned woman emerged wearing a long tan raincoat and carrying a black briefcase that matched the long hair that fell about her shoulders. The woman stood, and seemed to survey the entirety of the hospital complex, before burrowing forward, and striding up the stairs with a singleness of purpose that seemed to him to be like an arrow, shot at a target.

  chapter 8

  Organization came slowly and unnaturally to them all. It wasn’t, as Francis noted inwardly, as if they were suddenly rowdy or even disruptive, like schoolchildren being called to pay attention to some boring classwork. It was more that the members were restless and nervous simultaneously. They’d all had too little sleep, too many drugs, and far too much excitement, mixed with a significant amount of uncertainty. One older woman who wore her long, stringy gray hair in a tangled cascading explosion on her head kept bursting into tears, which she would rapidly dab away with her sleeve, shake her head, smile, say she was okay, only to burst forth in sobs again after a few seconds. One of the middle-aged men, a hard-eyed former commercial fishing boat sailor with a tattoo of a naked woman on his forearm, wore a furtive, uneasy look, and kept twisting in his seat, checking the door behind him, as if he expected someone to silently slip into the room. People who stuttered, stuttered more. People likely to snap angrily perched on their chairs. Those likely to cry seemed quicker to their teary-eyed destination. Those who were mute descended deeper into silence.

  Even Peter the Fireman, whose
calmness usually dominated the sessions, had difficulty sitting still, and more than once lit a cigarette and paced the perimeter of the group. He reminded Francis of a boxer in the moments before the bout was scheduled to begin, loosening up in the ring, throwing rights and lefts at imaginary jaws, while his real opponent waited in a distant corner.

  Had Francis been a veteran of the mental hospital, he would have recognized a significant tick upwards in the paranoia levels of many of his fellow patients. It was still unarticulated, and like a kettle steadily heating toward a boil, had yet to truly start singing. But it was noticeable, nonetheless, like a bad smell on a hot afternoon. His own voices clamored for attention within him, and it took the usual significant force of will to quiet them. He could feel the muscles in his arms and stomach tightening, as if they could lend assistance to the mental tendons that he was employing to keep his imagination in check.

  “I think we should address the events of the other night,” Mr. Evans said slowly. He was wearing reading glasses, which he let slip down on his nose, so that he peered over them, his eyes darting back and forth from patient to patient. Evans was one of those people, Francis thought, who would make a statement that seemed straightforward—like the need to address precisely what was dominating everyone’s thoughts—but look as if he meant something utterly different. “It seems to be on everyone’s minds.”

  One of the men in the group instantly pulled his shirt up over his head and clamped his hands over his ears. There was some squirming in the seats from the others. No one spoke immediately, and the silence that crept over the group seemed to Francis to be tight, like the wind that filled a sailboat’s sails—invisible. After a second, he shattered the quiet by asking, “Where’s Lanky? Where have they taken him? What have they done with him?”