Alexander Belyaev - The Amphibian

In the boat a policeman gave a hoarse yell, jumped overboard and made flat out for the bank. His companion had dropped down on his belly and was crying, “Jesus, Maria у Jose! “ over and over.

The two policemen on the bank were saying prayers, ashen with fright, trembling, trying to hide one behind the other.

Ichthyander had not expected anything like that and was quite taken aback for a moment. Then he remembered the proverbial superstitiousness of the Spaniard. So the policemen thought he was an apparition from the other world, did they! Well, he would scare them a little more. Baring his teeth and rolling his eyes, he howled horribly and slowly strode up the bank and to the road and away along it, walking at a deliberately measured pace.

None of the policemen made a move to stop him. Their sense of duty had battled with and lost to their superstitious awe.

Dolores-Pedro Zurita’s mother — was a stout doughy old woman with a hooknose, a jutting chin and a thick moustache that added up to produce an odd, almost forbidding effect. The latter adornment, so rare with her sex, had earned her the nickname of Dona Dolores la Mostacha by which she was known throughout the locality.

When Pedro brought his young bride to her she had greeted the girl with an unceremonious stare. Dolores had an eye only for deficiencies. The girl’s beauty struck her, but it was like her not to show it in any way and to decide later, over her pots and pans, that that was just what was wrong with the girl.

“A tasty dish! “ she said that day, alone with her son, and shook her head, “Much too tasty! “ and, after a sigh, “See you don’t run into trouble with a beauty like that for a wife. I wish you’d married a Spanish girl.” She paused, then added, “Haughty, too. And her hands, why, she won’t do a stroke of work about the house with those soft hands of hers.”

“Well break her to it,” Pedro said and bent over his accounts.

Dolores yawned and, leaving Pedro to his work, went out into the garden, cool with the evening. She was fond of sitting in the moonlit mimosa-scented garden, all by herself, dreaming.

She went past a border of lilies gleaming white in the moonlight, past whispering laurel bushes, to a bank overgrown with myrtles, let herself down onto it and was soon lost in her dreams. In them she was buying a neighbour out of his farm, building new sheds and out-houses, breeding flocks of fine-fleece sheep.

“Pest on you,” the old woman cried angrily, slapping her cheek. “Those mosquitoes won’t leave a body in peace for a moment.” Clouds had banked the skies and the garden was dark. Against the darker sky a bluish band low on the horizon-the glow of the lights of the town of Parana-gained in lightness.

Suddenly, above the low stone fence, she spotted a man’s head. A pair of manacled hands were lifted into view and the man eased himself carefully over the fence.

The old woman shuddered with terror. An escaped convict in her garden! She wanted to cry out but couldn’t, tried to get up and run but her legs buckled under her. From her bank, spell-bound, she watched the stranger.

Meanwhile he had made his way cautiously among the bushes to the house and was stealing from window to window, peering in.

Then she heard him-or was she mistaken? — caU softly, “Gutierrez! “

That’s your beauty for you, she thought. That’s the type she goes about with. Wouldn’t be surprised if she murdered me and Pedro, burgled the place and made away with that convict of hers.

A feeling of gloating hatred for Gutierrez seized the old woman. Her strength recovered, she jumped up and waddled quickly inside.

“Quick! “ Dolores whispered to her son. “There’s a convict in our garden. He’s calling for Gutierrez.”

Pedro rushed out as though the house were on fire, seized a spade lying by the garden path and ran round the corner.

Standing at the wall and peering into a window was a stranger in a crumpled suit, his hands manacled.

“Damn you! “ Zurita muttered and brought his spade down on the crown of the man’s head.

The man fell as though cut down.

“That’s done for him,” Zurita said in a low voice.

“It has indeed,” Dolores, who had caught up with him, agreed in a tone she would have used if her son had squashed a scorpion.

Zurita looked at his mother.

“Where shall we take him to?”

“The pond,” the old woman indicated. “It’s deep.”

“Hell come to the surface.”

“Well weight him. Hold on a second.”

Dolores ran inside and searched feverishly for a sack to put the dead man in. But she had sent all her sacks to the mill with wheat that morning. So she took a pillow-case and a length of string.

“There’re no sacks,” she told her son. “Here, put some stones in the pillow-case and tie it up to his handcuffs.”

Zurita nodded, heaved the body on his back and dragged it to a small pond in the back of the garden.

“Mind the blood,” Dolores whispered to him, waddling behind, pillow-case and string in hand.

“You wash it away,” Pedro replied, putting the man’s head down, however, so that the blood would spill on the ground.

At the pond Zurita quickly stuffed the pillow-case with stones, tied it securely to the young man’s hands and shoved the body into the water.

“I must change.” Pedro glanced up at the sky. “It’s going to rain. By the mom-ing there won’t be a trace of blood on the grass.”

“What about the pond, won’t the water turn red?” asked Dolores.

“No, not in a running-water pond. Oh, to hell with it! “ growled Zurita and shook his fist in the direction of the house.

“There’s your beauty for you,” the old woman was saying in a whining voice as she followed her son towards the house.

Gutierrez had been given a room in the attic. That night she could not go to sleep what with the stuffiness, stinging mosquitoes and the cheerless thoughts that crowded her mind.

The memory of Ichthyander still came between her and her sleep. Her husband she did not love. Her mother-in-law she detested, yet here she was sharing their roof with them.

Gutierrez thought she heard Ichthyander’s voice calling her. A noise like muffled voices floated up to her window. She listened but heard nothing. Towards dawn she decided that she was not to fall asleep that night at all. She went out into the garden.

The sun was not up yet. The garden lay in front of her, wrapped in pre-dawn haze. The clouds had been chased away and heavy drops of dew sparkled in the grass and on the trees. In her light gown, barefoot, Gutierrez was walking over the grass. Suddenly she stopped short. In the walk, outside her window, the sand was blood-stained. A blood-stained spade was lying nearby.

A crime had been committed that night. Or was there some other explanation for these blood stains?

Involuntarily Gutierrez followed the track which led her to the pond. Suppose the key to the crime is hidden in the pond, she thought, peering, scared, into the greenish water.

Down there, in that murky water, looking straight at her was Ichthyander’s face. There was a wound near the temple. The face expressed suffering mingled with happiness.

Could she have gone mad? Gutierrez wanted to run away, but she couldn’t. Nor could she tear her eyes away from Ichthyanders’s face.

Meanwhile Ichthyander’s face was slowly coming up, till, with a soft ripple, it was clear of the water. Ichthyander stretched his manacled hands towards Gutierrez and smiled wanly.

“Gutierrez! “ he said. “My dearest! At last-” but he did not finish. Clutching at her head Gutierrez was crying: