The Great Wash

by Gerald Kersh

  Lord Kadmeel said: “I agree with Tarrytowne. Arrangements may have to be altered. We do not know how much this man knows, or how much his employers may know. I propose that he be Questioned immediately.”

  “I second that,” said Tarrytowne.

  “Yes, but I should like to be present at the Questioning,” said Romagna. “Is there any objection?”

  Nobody replied. Van Weenen shrugged. Lord Kadmeel said: “Then you are to go to work without delay, Chatterton.”

  “I submit,” said Chatterton, “that I be allowed to proceed along the lines already suggested—that is, that the First Part of the Questioning consist in the application of Question Number One to the man Kemp, here, in Oaks’s presence, Oaks being potentially too valuable a man to spoil.”

  Lord Kadmeel said: “You are always right, Chatterton. Proceed as you think fit. Take them away.”

  “When will you begin?” asked Romagna.

  Chatterton replied: “In about an hour or so. I will see that you are duly informed.”

  I heard Romagna mutter: “He looks as if he might put up a stout resistance, the big fellow.”

  Then the doors slid together, cutting us off from the Council, and we were in the ante-room again. I saw tall men, now, standing against the walls. “Better come quietly,” said Chatterton.

  Walking like a man in a nightmare, I went with Oaks back to our quarters. Chatterton walked behind us now, with Mungo-Mitchell and Oettle. I knew then what the Ancients meant when they told of the Virtue going out of strong men: I was no longer angry, I was not even afraid . . . only heavily hopeless, so that when we reached our house I sat in a dull torpor, looking at my feet, counting the eyelet-holes in my shoes, unable to add them up.

  Chatterton said: “Sorry, Kemp, but that’s how it’s got to be. Well, you still have about three-quarters of an hour to think it over. Powell, give the gentlemen some brandy. . . . You were speaking before (somebody overheard you and told me) of the Mysteries of Russia—the unlikeliest people betraying their friends, and pleading guilty to the most impossible offences, and so forth. Well, it may or may not surprise you to know that one of the very highest-ranking Russkies in the world is one of Us. They—and, incidentally, We—have three degrees of Persuasion, you know (I wonder why these things always seem to go in threes?), of which you, Kemp, are going, tonight, to get Number One, the mildest. . .

  “The process isn’t terribly blood-curdling to describe. Treit shoots some stuff into your frontal sinuses, that’s all. I’m no biochemist, so I can’t go into details, but it’s something that sets up the kind of itching that you get with hay fever, only multiplied about ten thousand times, if you can imagine that. It starts in the forehead over the eyes, and, in about five hours, extends to the inner lining of the whole skull, so that you’d tear yourself to pieces if We let you. Simple as all that.

  “The effects wear off in about eight hours. Even a very strong man generally breaks by about the fourth hour—can’t become unconscious, you see. And after that, the memory of it being always with him, he’ll say and do just about anything that’s required of him. It takes quite a superman to hold out against Number One. Still, some do—in which case We apply Number Two; and that is rather disgusting. I only know, personally, one man—an Englishman, I’m proud to say—who got through Number Two. Then he went quite off his rocker, but We sifted what We needed to know out of his ravings before We put him to sleep.

  “Number Three I’ve never seen applied, but I believe it’s something quite out of this world. However . . . See you presently. Don’t try anything desperate—it won’t do the least bit of good, you know. . . . Oettle, come with me. Powell, don’t leave the room.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mungo-Mitchell, grinning like a demon. “Oh, if you please, sir—may I watch, just this once?”

  “Why, yes, Powell; I think you’ve deserved it.”

  “Thank you very much indeedd, sir!”

  When Chatterton and Oettle were gone, he turned to us and, in a whisper that was quick, clear, yet faint, like the crackling of burnt paper, said: “Oaks! That stuff in the bottom fly-button of your trousers; the pills in the thin glass capsules—what is it?”

  “Cyanide.”

  “Thank God! Get it out . . . Kemp, listen. Take this——” he handed me something like a little glassy imitation pearl—“keep it in your mouth, between your gum and your cheek, as far back as you can—that’s it, right in the slack of the cheek. Now, when they strap you down in a kind of barber’s chair, and push a kind of thin syringe with a curved nozzle up your nose, get that capsule between your teeth, bite hard, and swallow with all your might. It won’t hurt—one pang, like a stab to the heart—you’re unconscious before your nerves can register it. Oaks, you take one and do likewise.”

  “Why wait?” I asked.

  “Brother!” whispered Mungo-Mitchell, with terrible intensity, “I’m not exactly a religious man, but I believe that Presumption of God’s Mercy lies less heavy on the soul than Despair. I presume on God’s Mercy—I make allowance for a miracle.”

  The feel of that glass bead between my gum and the big biting-muscle of my lower jaw gave me a kind of gallows-courage, and I whispered to Oaks: “You two talk the same language.”

  Oaks said, aloud: “We are men, Albert, old friend. All true men are brothers. We need no language in the Last Ditch. Therefore, I make no more apologies to you.”

  “George,” I said, “no apologies are needed between you and me. All in all, I have a great deal to be grateful for.”

  I was thinking of the pill in my cheek, I believe, but he said: “Wow, but there will be something to talk about when we touch the Happy Isles and meet the great Achilles whom we knew!”—and squeezed my hand.

  Mungo-Mitchell said, with a snigger: “Wouldd the gentleman care for a little something to moisten his lips? His throat sounds awfully dry.” And he whispered: “Keep mouth moist—save saliva for swallowing.”

  “Brandy,” I said.

  As I was drinking it, Chatterton returned, followed by Oettle, who was carrying a folded white woollen garment over one arm; after him came a man in white, pushing—horror of horrors!—a hospital stretcher on wheels.

  They led me into a bedroom, stripped me naked, and helped me into a kind of sack, a sack in five parts into which my limbs and my torso snugly fitted. A framework of metal kept my legs apart at an angle of about thirty degrees, my back immovable, and my arms almost at right angles to my body.

  “The itching hits the armpits, also, you see,” said Chatterton, as if in explanation, as they made everything fast with stout leather straps.

  Oettle and the man in white lifted me on to the stretcher, and wheeled me through the lounge. I saw that Mungo-Mitchell had changed his houseboy’s coat for a dark green mess-jacket with silver buttons. I heard George Oaks cry: “Courage, old friend!”—and then I was looking up at the stars.

  I tried, tentatively, to move my arms and legs, but it was as if they were steel-stayed masts, and my will a mere squall—if I had been filled with the strength of a gale I could not have budged them. Then I lay limp. I tried to think noble thoughts, but could only say silently, over and over again: Forgive us our trespasses . . . Forgive us our trespasses . . . Yet I could not find it in my heart to forgive them who, in trespassing against me, trespassed against all I hold sacred. I caught one glimpse of the North Star, silent, white, and beautiful, and then I was travelling through a dully-shining white passage illuminated by livid fluorescent tubes, and so into a hot, dry, white room.

  I was taken hold of, and lifted on to a kind of operating table. Cold sweat was trickling between my shoulder-blades, now, and from my armpits over my ribs . . . The wool, too, tickled my naked skin . . . This, in itself, was agony; I was happy that I was to be spared Question Number One.

  I sucked the little glass
bubble in between two strong molars. I had kept my mouth moist. I was ready. Someone tightened straps over my chest and above my knees, and pressed a lever; and then I was reclining, stiffly, at an angle of about sixty degrees to the floor. A pursy, heavy-mouthed, round-shouldered man was looking at me through thick bifocals. He was got up like a Park Avenue specialist, but he had the odour of a Turkish cigarette that has come loose in a lady’s handbag.

  “Clamp,” he said; and an arc of padded metal came down upon my forehead, imprisoning my head. He picked up an instrument like a pair of scissors only it terminated in a hollow, truncated cone, which he inserted into my nose. But my nose still ached abominably from my fight with Oettle, and I cried out. Reflector on forehead, the pursy man stooped, scrutinised, and said: “Ze septub is broked. Ze bebrades badly idflabed—ve bust abbroach ze siduses srough ze sroat”—which I interpreted as: “The septum is broken. The membranes badly inflamed—we must approach the sinuses through the throat.”

  In that instant, with the capsule between my teeth, I made ready to bite—but even as I began to close my jaws, a great rubber plug was thrust between my back teeth on the other side, and something cold and hard was exploring the upper part of my throat behind the palate.

  I gagged, retching and coughing uncontrollably, and in that convulsion I felt the little glass capsule that contained my death and the lives of a billion better men flying away between my lips. My horror was such that I scarcely felt the long, curved nozzle of the syringe feeling its way through the sensitive passages behind my nose. I could see, at a distance, the face of George Oaks, green and appalled. Mungo-Mitchell, was standing beside him, grinning tightly. Near them stood Chatterton, coolly alert, with Romagna, whose mouth was puckered as if he was going to whistle.

  George Oaks had seen the falling of the pill, I knew, because I saw his eyes following something that seemed to come to rest in an angle of the wall not far from where he stood. Mungo-Mitchell saw it, too, because even in that ghastly light his face changed colour. But the others, unaware and unexpectant, had seen nothing.

  I felt a sickening fullness of fog between and behind the eyes. The pursy man withdrew the syringe, and said: “Zere is dothig to do budt vaidt, gedtlemed”—while I lay there, wondering whether I might find strength to bite off my tongue so that I could not talk. True, they could make me write, eventually; still, by that means I might gain time.

  I prayed, silently: “Lord, one of Your saints bit off his own tongue to save himself from temptation: give me courage to do the same to save the world!”

  Meanwhile, my eyes were on Oaks. He was gazing, with anguish, at Mungo-Mitchell. Chatterton and Romagna came forward to look at me. “Well, you’re for it, now, you know, old fellow,” said Chatterton. “What say, Dr. Treit?”

  “He vill holdt oudt to ze bitter edt, zis vud, budt id fife hours he vill talk.”

  Romagna said: “I hope so, yet I cannot help hoping not. Oh, I would so like to see Number Three in operation!”

  I saw Mungo-Mitchell turning to George Oaks. His right hand disappeared under the skirt of his mess-jacket and came back into sight gripping a heavy blue pistol. Then, silently, they sprang forward together. A voice I had not heard before cried out in alarm, and Chatterton turned, just too late, as the barrel of Mungo-Mitchell’s pistol crashed against the side of his head. He must have been very light; I scarcely heard him fall.

  But before he had hit the ground, George Oaks’s sinewy arms were about Romagna’s throat, and his knee was in the small of his fat green back. Romagna went over backwards, and out of my field of vision, and Mungo-Mitchell, with grim death in his face, was covering Treit with his pistol, saying, between his teeth: “Unstrap that man, quick!”

  The straps and the clamp fell loose. Tremulous hands fumbled at the buckles at my back, and I writhed free of the steel-stayed sack, and stood naked in that stark and grisly place of torment, with murder in my heart. Treit was sweating with fear. His assistant, a bald, burly, serious-looking young man started, in outraged tones, to say: “Now see here, I’ll have you know——”

  “—Shut him up,” said Mungo-Mitchell, and so I did, with a right-hand punch that lifted him three inches from the floor, and sent him sliding into a corner.

  “Keep Treit quiet,” Mungo-Mitchell said to me, and turned to George Oaks, who was straightening himself over the inert form of Romagna.

  “Oaks, strip him—quick, quick!” George Oaks’s fingers flew to buttons and studs, while Mungo-Mitchell turned Chatterton over with his foot and, stooping, touched a bloody patch above the ear. Chatterton lay still, with his eyes half open.

  “Well, you’ve had it, for one,” said Mungo-Mitchell.

  He handed me Romagna’s dark green dinner suit. “Kemp, put this on, quick! . . . Shirt, collar, tie, and all . . . Treit, lend a hand—get this pig strapped down, or by God I’ll beat your head to a jelly! Oaks, lend a hand!”

  Romagna, half-strangled, was gasping himself back to consciousness. He was beginning to groan by the time the straps were buckled about him. I was dressed in his trousers, pumps, and shirt, and marvelling at the sureness of my hand as I knotted his tie about my neck, when he opened his eyes in an incredulous stare; and then an explosive puff of outraged astonishment blew his mouth into the shape of a scallop at the rim of a pie.

  Mungo-Mitchell said to him: “Scream all you like, Romagna. You’ve heard screams in here before. This is a torture-chamber, sound-proof—remember? Even if you could make yourself heard, the guards outside have strict orders not to move . . . on their lives! So scream, if you like.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” said Romagna.

  “This,” said Mungo-Mitchell—I have never heard anything quite like his voice just then, stretched by hate to a fraction of a turn of breaking point—“this. You’ve seen Question Number One, and so have I . You’ve seen Question Number Two, and so have I—God keep it out of my dreams! But you’ve never seen Question Number Three in action. No. It has never been used before. It is going to be used now, Romagna, and you are going to feel it.”

  “No,” said Romagna, “no, no!”

  “Treit, prepare Question Number Three,” said Mungo-Mitchell.

  Sweating and trembling, Treit stammered: “For hib? Sir, blease, I dare dot! I dare dot!”

  “Oaks,” said Mungo-Mitchell, “to the right of the glass cupboard over there is a smaller steel cupboard. It is unlocked. Open it. You will see three drawers labelled 1, 2, and 3. Open Number 3. You will find some plastic tubes, apparently full of cotton wool. Bring me one. Also, a standard hypodermic syringe out of the glass cupboard. Hurry.”

  I was seeing through a fine haze, now, but my hearing was acute, too acute—the steel cupboard seemed to scream in my ears as it opened, and to box them when it closed . . . and my eyeballs felt dry and granular in their orbits . . . and between my teeth there was something like ground glass. . . . Still, I watched, telling myself that the ants in my ears and nostrils and armpits were not real. . .

  Mungo-Mitchell had unstoppered the tube and pulled out its contents. On the palm of his hand I saw a topaz-coloured ampule in a nest of white cotton wool. I saw him nip off the tip of the ampule with a pair of tweezers; then, with infinite care, he drew its contents through the fine needle up into the barrel of the syringe, which he held very carefully between the first and second fingers of his right hand, while with his left he threw the empty ampule far away. I felt a hand on my arm, and heard George Oaks whispering: “Courage, old friend, we’ll beat them yet” and, looking, saw that he held the pistol now, and that Mungo-Mitchell was tearing away Romagna’s silk undershirt. The noise of its tearing was like the crackle of an electric storm.

  “Intravenous, intramuscular, or subcutaneous?” asked Mungo-Mitchell, holding the syringe poised.

  Romagna began to scream: “Chatterton! Chatterton! Chatterton!”
>
  I picked up the limp body of Chatterton, and held it dangling where Romagna could see it, laughing, while Oaks said: “He is dead, he is the lucky one . . . Drop it, Albert. Mungo, let him have it!”

  Then Treit (he could not stop himself) blurted: “It is dot idtravedous—it is subcutadeous!”

  “No, no, for the love of God!” cried Romagna. “What do you want of me? Mercy!” I saw his large, swimming, blue eyes set like jellies as his look met mine. “The big one!” he screamed. “His eyes are red like blood—I tell you, he will rend, tear! Let me go!”

  Mungo-Mitchell touched him with the hollow needle, and squeezed up a pinch of the skin of his upper arm; whereupon Romagna fell deathly still, whimpering: “What do you want of me?”

  “The Password,” said Mungo-Mitchell.

  “That needle—take it away!”

  “The Password!”

  “The word for tonight is Quid Si Coelum Ruat? . . . For God’s sake, take away that needle!”

  Mungo-Mitchell’s hand jerked; the needle disappeared under the skin of Romagna’s arm. “If you’re lying, think again,” he said; but at the prick of the needle the Italian screamed like a horse in a fire, and I saw his biceps contract convulsively under the fat. Mungo-Mitchell stood back, looking blankly at the hypodermic syringe. The plunger was down; the barrel was empty; and on the point of the needle hung one last transparent drop of clear amber liquid. He let the syringe fall to the floor.

  Romagna sobbed: “Don’t do it! Not that! Take away the needle—anything but the needle! I have not lied to you—Quid Si Coelum Ruat?—It is Latin for ‘What If the Heavens Fall?’—It was I who chose it for tonight, I swear it! I will tell you everything, anything, only don’t prick me with that needle!”