(Winkie was fascinated but wondered how his own existence might fit into the scheme.)
I ask you further, Howard, how did he classify man with reference to other animals; what did he say about them?
Well, the book and he both classified man along with cats and dogs, cows, horses, monkeys, lions, horses and all that.
What did he say they were?
Mammals.
(Nearly everyone in the courtroom appeared deeply offended. Winkie, however, knew what a mammal was and felt happy to be one.)
Classified them along with dogs, cats, horses, monkeys and cows?
Yes, sir.
Nothing further.
The prosecution often scheduled its most colorful witnesses for the afternoon, to keep the court interested. Shortly after lunch, a rotund but delicately featured man, with precise goatee and large, clever eyes, came floating down the center aisle in a red damask gown and red velvet bonnet, both trimmed in ermine. Thirty-three mother-of-pearl buttons down his front signified the thirty-three years of Christ’s life.
“Pope Urban the Eighth,” he said in elegantly accented English, when asked to state his name. “Formerly Cardinal Maffeo Barberini,” he added, with a slight bow. His long, white hand appeared particularly graceful atop the Bible as he swore to tell the truth.
“Your Holiness,” said the prosecutor, having first knelt and kissed the scarlet hem of his robe. “Please now tell us the defendant’s crimes against the Holy Faith.”
Urban smiled deferentially. “He holds as true the false doctrine, taught by some, that the sun is the center of the world and immovable and that the earth is not the center and moves.” There was a murmur of alarm among the spectators. The pope smiled again, almost apologetically. “Expressly contrary to the divine and Holy Scripture, this doctrine is calculated to injure our faith.”
The prosecutor pressed one hand to his heart. “Our faith?”
Urban closed his eyes and gravely nodded. The spectators gripped more tightly the plastic arms of their chairs.
The world and everything in it is a miracle, thought Winkie, but wearily, that night in his cell. He had just taken one of Darryl’s capsules. Looking once again up into the pale green glow of the ceiling light, which so far had never blinked once, he imagined the starry sky, also unblinking, which night after night he and Baby Winkie used to watch traverse the grand and velvet distance of the horizons. A slow, vast, beautiful spin—why?
As if in answer, the circular bulb began to blind him. Winkie clicked shut his eyes. His own faith in life had indeed been shaken, and he wondered if the pope had been right—if he himself had injured that faith and had even meant to do so.
The little bear sighed and tried to sleep. In the green-lit cube that was his home now, Darryl snored.
4.
Each day the prosecution introduced some new charge against the bear, while certain crimes, like random numbers in a game of chance, tended to come up again and again. From the testimony of Alfred Wood, formerly a clerk, currently not in any occupation:
After dinner I went with Mr. Winkie to Sixteen Tite Street. There was nobody in the house to my knowledge. Mr. Winkie let himself in with a latchkey. We went up to a bedroom where we had hock and seltzer. Here an act of grossest indecency occurred. Mr. Winkie used his influence to induce me to consent. He made me nearly drunk. [Testimony censored.] Afterward I lay on the sofa with him. It was a long time, however, before I would allow him to actually do the act of indecency.
Prosecution: Surely you are to be commended for resisting him as long as you did.
(Unwin objected that this wasn’t a question and was overruled. “Grossest indecency,” Winkie murmured to himself, as the next witness was brought in, Charles Parker, age twenty-one, a valet:)
Where did you first meet Mr. Winkie?
Alfred Taylor took us to a restaurant in Rupert Street. We were shown upstairs to a private room, in which there was a dinner table laid. After a while Winkie came in and I was formally introduced. I had never seen him before, but I had heard of him. We dined about eight o’clock. We all sat down to dinner, Winkie sitting on my left.
Was the dinner a good dinner?
Yes. The table was lighted with red-shaded candles. We had plenty of champagne with our dinner and brandy and coffee afterward. We all partook of it. Winkie paid for the dinner.
(Though he couldn’t recall the incident, Winkie felt satisfaction in having treated the other guests.)
And then?
Subsequently Winkie said to me, “This is the boy for me! Will you go to the Savoy Hotel with me?” I consented, and Winkie drove me in a cab to the hotel. At the Savoy we went first to Winkie’s sitting room on the second floor.
More drink was offered you there?
Yes, we had liqueurs. Winkie then asked me to go into his bedroom with him.
Let us know what occurred there.
He committed the act of sodomy upon me.
(A stunned silence in the courtroom. Winkie wrote on his lawyer’s pad, “What’s sodomy?” Unwin blushed.)
Go on, please.
I was asked by Winkie to imagine that I was a woman and that he was my lover. I had to keep up this illusion. I used to sit on his knees and he used to [censored] as a man might amuse himself with a girl. Winkie insisted on this filthy make-believe being kept up.
(“Filthy make-believe,” Winkie repeated to himself, still trying to understand. “Make-believe filth …”)
Nothing more with this witness.
The young man nervously straightened the collar of his tunic, which was white linen with black trim in a Greek key pattern. “The defendant is a clever speaker,” he warned, narrowing his eyes, “and you must be careful not to let him deceive you, for he can make the weaker argument seem the stronger.” Winkie furrowed his brow. “He believes neither the sun nor the moon to be gods, like other men. He says that the sun is a stone, and the moon earth. And he corrupts the young by teaching them not to believe in the gods the state believes in but in other new divinities instead.”
New divinities sounded good to the bear, but there was a general murmur of disapproval.
“You have spoken well, Meletus, son of Meletus of Pitthos,” said the prosecutor. “No further questions.”
The witness shook back his long black hair with satisfaction. All eyes turned to the defense.
“Um … Um … A moment …,” said Unwin, searching through his piles of notes.
Winkie continued gazing in puzzlement at the witness, trying to remember ever meeting him. Their eyes locked for a moment. Meletus looked away.
“Mr. Unwin—” sighed the judge.
“Your Honor, again, um, again—maybe I’m crazy, but um, I don’t see any of this in the pretrial testimony …”
The prosecutor chuckled indulgently. “If you look again, Mr. Unwin, I think you’ll see that this witness was deposed on the same day as the Oracle at Delphi.”
“Delphi …” Unwin pulled another sheaf of papers from a folder on the floor. “Delphi … Delphi …”
This particular exchange might have been written off as simply another low point among many for the bear’s troubled defense. However, as commentators would note later, the prosecution had committed a major error in mentioning Delphi. For by some miracle, Unwin now actually laid hands on that particular document—one among literally thousands that the state had filed only that morning.
“Aha!” Unwin shouted.
The judge rolled his eyes; the prosecutor shook his head; behind the curtain, some of the jurors tittered. But with unusual focus the defense attorney strode toward the witness and thrust the paper into his hands.
“Mr. Meletus, please read this deposition aloud. For the benefit of the court.”
The witness hesitated, stroking his thin beard.
“Mr. Meletus, again, I ask you to please read for us the sacred words of the oracle.”
The witness cleared his throat. His voice was low, but the words were perfect
ly distinct:
“Of all men living, Winkie most wise.”
The courtroom fell into an uproar.
It was a significant victory for the defense, but by the time order was restored (the court had to be cleared and a two-hour recess called), Meletus’s admission seemed all but forgotten. The prosecutor was ready with three of his most important witnesses.
“The people now call the Afflicted Girls,” he boomed. Cries of horror rippled through the courtroom, for these witnesses’ shocking claims had been reported on extensively in the media. “But first, the defendant must be strongly enjoined not to look upon them until instructed to do so, for as you shall see, if he should glance their way but once, they shall fall into their fits.”
“Very well,” said the judge.
“Your Honor—” said Unwin.
“Sit down, Mr. Unwin. Whatever it is—overruled.” He banged his gavel. “Bring in the witnesses, and the defendant shall lower his eyes until instructed otherwise.”
A stout bailiff stood in front of Winkie as he stared down at the Formica brown of the table.
The rest of the courtroom watched then in eager silence as slowly down the aisle came two girls of twelve and one of about seventeen, each wearing a white bonnet and long black dress with starched white collar. They settled together into three battered metal folding chairs that had been placed next to the witness box.
“Ann Putnam, Abigail Williams, and Elizabeth Hubbard, do you solemnly swear …”
When they had lowered their right hands, the prosecutor commanded gravely, “The accused will now please look upon these witnesses.”
To Winkie’s surprise and chagrin, as soon as he glanced at them, all three girls fell to the beige floor writhing and moaning. “Whish, Whish, Whish!” said Williams, stretching her arms as if to fly. “I won’t, I won’t, I won’t sign the devil’s book!” shouted Putnam, who got up and began running around the courtroom. “Goodwife Nurse,” cried Hubbard, pointing. “Do you not see her? Why, there she stands!”
The bailiff aimed his pistol toward the window, but nothing was there.
“Your Honor, please!” said Unwin, half shouting. “Clearly they cannot testify in this condition.”
“And who do you suppose put them in such a state?” countered the prosecutor.
“I certainly don’t know,” said Unwin. And here he made one of his unfortunate jokes, wildly throwing up his hands in theatrical disgust: “Maybe the devil did it.”
The judge looked at him sternly. “How comes the devil so loathe to have any testimony born against your client?”
This cast Unwin into more than usual confusion. Putnam continued running to and fro, while Williams and Hubbard thrashed on the polished floor, their long dresses spread out around them like black pools. Winkie was frightened.
“Judge,” the prosecutor loudly affirmed, “if the accused be allowed to look upon them no longer, and if he should only then touch them but once, their fits will surely cease.”
“Proceed.”
The bailiff now roughly tied a handkerchief around Winkie’s head, covering his eyes. In turn, each of the three struggling, raving girls was brought to him, he was made to touch her hand with his right paw, and each time—much to everyone’s relief, including the bear’s—the struggling and raving stopped. Suddenly the courtroom was silent.
“So we see that by his touch,” said the prosecutor, “the venomous and malignant particles, that were ejected from the defendant’s eye, do, by this means, return to the body whence they came, and so leave the afflicted persons pure and whole.” He wheeled around to face the jury curtain and called to them, “What further proof need you?”
Winkie’s sleepless glance roved this way and that across the nine-by-nine-foot ceiling. The stuffing of his head was throbbing, and the Afflicted Girls seemed to cry out within the sound of Darryl’s rasping breaths. “Whish! Whish! Whish!” If there had been a mirror in the cell, the bear would have looked into it to see if his own gaze really was so harmful and, if so, then surely to harm himself with it, too, for that was only just.
Winkie had always let his angry gaze fall wherever it might and never stopped himself from hating, but if he could somehow make three poor girls collapse in agony with a mere look, without even wanting to, then how many other, more terrible ills might he have caused in his life? He had seen his own child harmed, and every child he’d ever known, from Ruth to Cliff, and now these scenes flickered before his memory with a new and searing might. For what if it was the very witnessing that had caused them?
He clicked his terrible eyes shut and began to cry.
When he opened them again, after what had seemed like years of sorrow, he was surprised to see Darryl’s wide, blotchy face hovering near his pillow, peering at him with bewildered concern. Winkie hadn’t noticed that the snoring had stopped. He thought to look away, remembering the evil of his glance, but realized in the same instant that Darryl was, evidently, unfazed.
“Don’t cry,” said the hulk slowly, his huge, tired eyes rimmed with red. They stared at each other awhile longer and then, with drugged gentleness, Darryl patted Winkie’s forehead once and returned to bed.
The bear was almost consoled.
“And there appeared another wonder in heaven,” said the man in the brown burlap caftan. The prosecution had cannily saved John the Apostle for last. He stared straight ahead, wide-eyed, apparently seeing only the spiritual realm. His feet were bare and his beard was white and voluminous. “And behold a great red Winkie, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. And his tail drew the third part of the stars of heaven, and did cast them to the earth. And there was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the Winkie; and the Winkie fought and his own angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great Winkie was cast out, that old bear, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.”
The courtroom burst into applause, with shouts of, “Yeah!” The apostle couldn’t resist waving to the crowd.
“Your witness, Mr. Unwin.”
The defense lawyer sat rubbing his temples. The trial had been going on for more than seventeen months, and in all that time he’d scarcely slept. “No questions,” he sighed.
Winkie looked at the apostle in wonder as he slowly stepped down from the witness box and hobbled away. Once again the bear felt strangely compelled by the testimony against him, for he really did feel like he’d been cast out into the earth.
But who, then, he wondered, were his angels?
Winkie vs. the People
1.
“Mr. Winkie, I hope I may speak, um, frankly, and therefore I frankly must urge you, urge you most frankly, to testify on your own behalf.”
Winkie shook his head. It seemed that his whole being rebelled against speaking before his accusers, and now he couldn’t even bring himself to say the word no to his own lawyer. He shook his head once.
Unwin began pacing back and forth in the tiny cell, clutching his head. “But really, but how, but what, but goddamn it—”
Darryl, who had been coloring quietly in his bunk, looked up to see if the lawyer was annoying his friend. “Mr. Bear?” he asked, his two giant fists at the ready.
Unwin froze midstep, but Winkie made a calming gesture with both paws and Darryl returned reluctantly to his crayons.
Sighing, the lawyer sat down again in his folding chair. “All right, Mr. Winkie, if that’s how you want it, but, but, but, again, as your defense begins tomorrow, I must …”
Winkie closed his eyes and stopped to admire once again the Spartan beauty of his silence with respect to the authorities. Somehow it didn’t please him the way it used to, but he told himself it was perfect and he mustn’t waver.
“Orange,” Darryl murmured. Unwin had trailed off and there was now only the nonsound of waxy color giving itself to the page.
&nbs
p; A night of sleepless defiance had left the bear sour and headachy, but as he was led into court that morning, he thought maybe he glimpsed, through the legs of the crowd, a smiling radiance he dared not hope to find. Agents Mike and Mary Sue and Deputy Walter seemed to huddle around him longer than usual as they unlocked the three, tangled chains that connected his shackles to each of their own wrists. But when at last he was lifted up to his seat and his guards had stepped aside, Winkie turned to see Françoise waving and beaming at him from the front row. Next to her sat a voluptuous woman with thick, dark hair falling around her shoulders who was also smiling, and to whom Françoise gestured with her eyes so that Winkie would know this was Mariana. Lifting one paw a few inches, which was as far as it would go, the bear thought he might weep—to see that Françoise was safe; to find her there on his side.
He faced forward and Unwin whispered, “Good morning, Mr. Winkie, how are you, good, I see you’ve spotted Miss Fouad, that’s fine, but please, no more waving, I’m very nervous and I don’t want you to give them any excuse today, any excuse at all, to, to, to restrain you any further, not now when we need to be focused, I mean really really really focused, on your defense, so please, please, please, Mr. Winkie, I beg you, restrain yourself.”
Winkie didn’t know what to do now but look sad.
“No long faces either! You must project confidence, Mr. Winkie! We both must. God knows it’s hard enough for me, I don’t want to have to worry about you, too!” Winkie glared at him.
“All right, I’m, I’m, I’m sorry, um, um, um, never mind. Please!” Winkie nodded once in pardon, and Unwin proceeded to tell, with growing excitement, the story of Françoise’s release. “It really is wonderful. Classic. It really goes to show. You see, Miss Fouad’s, um, um, you know, friend is also a cleaning woman, I mean, person, cleaning person, anyway, anyway, as I was saying—she doesn’t work at the hospital; rather, and quite fortuitously indeed, she cleans an old building downtown that houses the, um, you know, the Gay and Lesbian Community Center and, moreover, moreover, Legal Aid, the ACLU, and PETA.”
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