Alexander Belyaev - The Amphibian

But Baltasar was not listening. He grabbed a bottle and swung it over the lawyer’s head. Larra had never seen him in such a rage.

“Come, come, don’t get your monkey up. I was only joking. Come on, put that bottle down,” Larra was saying, covering with one hand his shining pate.

“You, you,” Baltasar raged, “you suggest that I sell my own son, my Ichthyander! Have you got no heart? Or you’re not a human being but a scorpion, a tarantula, and know nothing about a father’s feelings! “

“Don’t I! Don’t I indeed! “ Larra shouted back, also roused. “I’ve got the feelings of five fathers. I’ve five sons. Five little imps of all sizes. Five mouths to feed. I know, understand and feel everything. You’ll get your son. But first have patience and let me finish.”

Baltasar calmed down a little. He put the bottle on the table and looked at Larra.

“Well then, go on.”

“That’s better. So Salvator pays us the sum of one million pesos. That’ll buy all your Ichthyander needs — and leave a little over for me, for my pains and authorship, a mere hundred thousand pesos or so. No need to haggle over it. Salvator 11 cough up. Ill lay my head on it, he will. As soon as we have the money-”

“We bring him to court.”

“A little more patience. Well offer the story of a sensational crime to the biggest newspaper concern there is for say twenty or thirty thousand pesos-just pocket-money, you know. Perhaps well get a slice of the secret police funds as well. Some of them may make their careers on a case like ours, you know. And when we have squeezed Salvator dry, then go to court, yes, by all means, go and speak about your paternal feelings and may Themis herself help you to prove your claim and to receive in your affectionate embraces your long-lost son.”

Larra drained his glass at one gulp, banged it on the table and looked triumphantly at Baltasar.

“What do you say to that?”

“I can neither eat nor sleep and here you are advising me to drag out the case to the end of time,” Baltasar began.

“But look what you’ll get out of it! “ Larra cut in hotly. “Millions! Mil-li-ons. Has your brain suddenly stopped working? After all you’ve lived without Ichthyander these twenty years.”

“Yes, I have. But now — Well, write that paper for me.”

“Yes, you’ve really stopped using your brain! “ exclaimed Larra. “Come to your senses, Baltasar! Try to understand! Why, man, it’s millions! Money! Gold! You’ll have everything money can buy. The best tobacco, cars, schooners, this very pulqueria-”

“Write that paper or I go to somebody else,” Baltasar said in a final tone of voice.

Larra knew when he was licked. He shook his head sadly, heaved a sigh, took a sheet of paper out of his attache case and jerked his pen free.

In a few minutes a summons was drawn up in proper form against Salvator for unlawfully seizing and mutilating Baltasar’s son. “I’m telling you for the last time, come to your senses,” said Larra.

“Give it here,” the Indian said, stretching his hand for the sheet of paper.

“Hand it in to the chief prosecutor. You know where?” Larra instructed hisclient and muttered under his breath, “May you trip on the steps and break yourneck.”

Leaving the prosecutor’s office Baltasar ran into Zurita on the great white staircase.

“What business brings you here?” asked Zurita, throwing a suspicious glance at Baltasar. “You haven’t gone and lodged a complaint against me, have you?”

“Complaints ought to be lodged against the whole lot of you,” Baltasar said, meaning the Spanish “but there’s nobody to lodge ‘em with. Where have you hidden my daughter?”

“Ill teach you to keep a civil tongue in your head,” flared up Zurita. “Had you not been my wife’s father I’d have given you a taste of my stick.”

And pushing Baltasar roughly out of his way Zurita went up the steps and disappeared behind the monumental door of stout oak.

The chief prosecutor of Buenos Aires had a rare visitor-His Grace the Bishop Juan de Garcilaso, Dean of the Cathedral.

The prosecutor, fat and dapper, with small bleary eyes, short-cut hair and dyed moustache, came out from behind the desk to meet the bishop. With great care the host seated his dear guest in the heavy leather armchair at his desk.

The unlikeness between host and guest was striking. The prosecutor’s red face was fleshy, with thick lips and a big pear-like nose. His stumpy fingers looked not unlike thick sausages, while the buttons on his stomach threatened to be wrenched off any moment by the sheer rise and fall of the imprisoned fat.

Now thinness and paleness were the two characteristic features of the bishop’s face. A thin aquiline nose, a sharp chin and a pair of thin bloodless lips lent him the air of a typical Jesuit. The bishop never looked straight into his interlocutor’s eyes, all the same he kept him under sharp observation. The bishop’s influence was immense and he willingly took time off from his church affairs for the game of politics.

The greetings over, the bishop came straight to the object of his visit. “I should like to know,” he said softly, “in what stage Professor Salvator’s” case is?

“Ah, your Grace,” the prosecutor exclaimed amiably, “you are also interested in this case. It’s indeed extraordinary, this case,” and picking up a fat file and leafing through it he went on, “On Pedro Zurita’s denunciation a search was instituted at Professor Salvator’s. Zurita’s allegation to the effect that Salvator was engaged in unusual operations on animals was fully corroborated. In fact Salvator’s gardens have been a real factory of monster animals. It’s something fantastic! Salvator, for instance — ’’

“I know all about the search from the newspapers,” the bishop put in softly. “What measures have you taken against Salvator? Is he in custody?”

“Yes, he is. Besides we have seized and taken to town-as Exhibit A and witness for the prosecution-a young man called Ichthyander, known also as the ‘sea-devil’. That the notorious ‘sea-devil’, the cause of so much trouble to us, should be an inmate of Salvator’s zoo! It’s amazing! At present a panel of experts, mostly university professors, are conducting an on-the-spot investigation. But Ichthyander has been brought to town, as I said, and housed in the cellar under the Law Courts. And he’s a source of worry, I can tell you. Just imagine, we had to order a big tank for him, for it appears he can’t live without water. And, as a matter of fact, he really was in poor condition. Apparently Salvator had brought about some extraordinary changes in his organism, making him into a kind of amphibian. Our experts are now tackling this question.”

“I’m more interested in Salvator himself,” the bishop said as softly as before. “Under what article of the law is he punishable? And what is your opinion on whether he will be really sentenced?”

“The case of Salvator is extraordinary in that it has no precedent,” said the prosecutor. “Frankly speaking I have not yet decided under which article of the law his crime comes. The easiest thing, of course, would be to charge him with carrying out illegal vivisections and disfiguring this young man…”

There was a suggestion of a frown on the bishop’s brow.

“So you consider that there is no corpus delicti in Salvator’s doings?”

“There must be, but what exactly?” the prosecutor said. “Another statement bearing on the subject was handed to me from an Indian called Baltasar. He claims that Ichthyander’s his son. His proofs are rather weak but still we could perhaps call him as a witness for the prosecution provided the experts find that Ichthyander is really his son.”