Robert Silverberg: The Impossible Intelligence

It was a warm and mild August night, with just the merest hint of rain in the distance—the kind of night on which there are few pleasures greater than a fine meal followed by a gramophone concert in the music room. And the meal was indeed fine; Mary Quinlan, our estimable factotum, had quite outdone herself with a magnificent roast capon, and the mouth of my friend and companion Dario di Cesare was literally watering as he deftly drew the cork from a bottle of chilled Chablis.

“Bene,” the little Italian muttered. “The obstinate obstruction gives way at last, and we are free to enjoy our wine!” He filled my glass lavishly. “Drink hearty, friend Star-buck, and proceed to attack your fowl with gusto—for the great talents of la Callas await us in the music room.”

Di Cesare had brought home but that afternoon a new album of operatic discs, and I knew that only the opulence of the meal Miss Quinlan had prepared had kept him from plunging at once toward our music room to surround himself with the wonderful melodies of Donizetti. For the peppery little psychoanalyst had brought with him from his native land—when forced by tyranny to leave twenty years before—the Italian’s fanatical devotion to opera.

“Looks as though there’ll be rain tonight,” I ventured.

“Si. Clouds shroud the stars,” di Cesare remarked between mouthfuls of tender white meat. “There will be no glorious meteoric displays tonight, I fear. But for us there will be a display more dazzling than even the Leonid showers, via the spinning discs.”

For the past two weeks, we had been subjected to nightly meteor showers of great intensity—a normal occurrence in August, though this year they seemed particularly intense—and di Cesare and I had witnessed in wonder the fall of one blazing beauty several weeks before. Tonight, though, the little Italian’s mind was riveted exclusively on his new operatic album, and not even the unheralded appearance of the Star of Bethlehem would budge him from the music room this evening.

“Excuse me, sirs,” Mary Quinlan said, entering the dining room with an air of irritation. “There’s a young man outside who insists on seeing you, Dr. di Cesare. I told him you’re eating, but he won’t go away, and he says he’ll stay outside all night making a racket until I let him in to talk to you, so …”

Di Cesare cut off the voluble flow with a gesture of one hand. “Ahime,” he sighed sadly, “will interruptions never cease? Send him in, Miss Quinlan.”

“But your dinner …”

“Send him in. Perhaps he will be brief, and we can return in peace to this excellent bird.”

The young man who entered was hatless and wild-looking. Moist patches of sweat showed through his thin sports shirt. He glanced at our laden table and said apologetically, “I hate to come barging in like this when you’re in the middle of dinner, Dr. di Cesare.”

“The damage is done,” my friend said, his eyes sparkling with annoyance. “Now that you are here, tell us, per favore, why it is you must disturb us at this hour.”

“It’s my wife,” he said. “She’s disappeared—gone without a trace!”

“A case for the police, not us,” I snapped. “Dr. di Cesare isn’t in the business of crime detection.”

“Wait,” the young man exclaimed. “You see, she—she has been delirious for several days. Muttering about a cave, and insects talking to her, and all kinds of other gibberish. She didn’t have any fever or anything, but her eyes were closed, and she didn’t seem to hear anything we said to her. I had the doctor—maybe you know him, Dr. Starbuck, he’s Dr. Wright from Lorimer Street

—but he couldn’t figure out what the matter was, and suggested that it was a mental breakdown, and that I call in a psychiatrist. And then some time this afternoon she disappeared! I had engaged a nurse for her, you see, and the nurse was going to bathe her, and had gone to draw the water; and when she came back the bed was empty and my wife was gone!”

I said, “This is all very interesting, Mr.—Mr. …”

“Collins. Paul Collins.”

“Mr. Collins. But you’ve made a mistake by coming here. Phillipsburg has a very efficient police force to deal with disappearances. And in any event, my friend Dr. di Cesare is not a psychiatrist. He is a psychoanalyst; that is to say, he practices Freudian therapy to cure neuroses, and …”

“Basta!” di Cesare exclaimed. “If there is any explaining to do, friend Starbuck, let me do it.” He looked sharply up at the young man. “Your wife, Mr. Collins, has vanished after a sudden schizophrenic seizure. Have you notified the police of her disappearance?”

“Yes, I called them right away. And it was Sergeant Berkowitz who suggested that I tell you about it, too. He said there was something definitely fishy about it, and that you’d be interested in the case.”

Di Cesare scowled fiercely. “ Sciagurato! Seeing me leave the record store with a neatly-wrapped album under my arm this afternoon, the brutish Berkowitz must have spent all day devising some means of prying me loose from my phonograph this evening!”

“You’ll help me, then?” Collins said hopefully.

Di Cesare shrugged. “I will finish my meal. Then I will telephone il Berkowitz. and learn why this matter should interest me. And then, forse, I will be at your service, Signor Collins.”

Di cesare rushed through his meal, stuffing the meat into his mouth and gulping the wine as though he were eating nothing more important than hamburger, or drinking no finer beverage than soda pop. While we finished, poor Collins was banished to di Cesare’s waiting-room, there to cool his heels and, if he chose, explore di Cesare’s bound volumes of Imago. At length, the meal was concluded. What had promised to be a relaxed evening for two bachelor operaphiles was rapidly turning into yet another frantic exertion in the interests of law and order.

Taking his coffee in three swallows, di Cesare rose from the table, ignoring the cognac Miss Quinlan had thoughtfully placed out for after-dinner delectation. “I will phone the police, amico mio, and get to the-root of this. You had best go to my waiting-room and comfort the Collins lad.”

I found Collins pacing nervously up and down the room. He turned on me the moment I entered.

“Dr. Starbuck, do you think di Cesare can find my wife? The police seemed to think he was the only one who could.”

“If your wife can be found,” I said, “di Cesare will go to the ends of the Earth to find her. I hope you realize, though, that he’s sacrificing an evening’s pleasure to help you.”

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am. And if only he can find Ellie for me …”

At that moment, di Cesare strode briskly into the room. His eyes were alight, and he was nervously tugging at his pointed little goatee.

“Well?” I asked.

“I have indeed spoken to Detective Sergeant Berkowitz, and he requests that we come to the station house at once, young Collins and I. You too, friend Starbuck, if you wish.”

“Of course. But—what’s it all about?”

“Mrs. Collins is not the first to disappear,” di Cesare said. “She is the fourth, in the past two days. And the same symptoms in each case—delirium, dreams of caves and insects, ultimately somnambulism. An epidemic of schizophrenia! Per-bacco, but it gives me the fascination!”

“But what about the Donizetti album?” I asked.

“Pleasures postponed are all the sweeter,” di Cesare remarked. “ Andiamo, signori! To the police station!”