On the way to the hospital, the patient flailed his arms and babbled incoherently, all the while worrying about his first encounter with real madmen.
He was afraid that they would be nasty to him, and maybe even kill him.
The hospital was very different from what Berlaga had pictured.
People in light-blue robes sat on couches, lay in beds, or strolled around a large, well-lit ward.
The accountant noticed that the madmen hardly ever spoke to one another.
They didn’t have time to talk.
They were busy thinking.
They were thinking all the time.
They had many thoughts, they had to recall something, something very important that their happiness depended upon.
But their thoughts were falling apart, and, worst of all, they were simply disappearing, wiggling their tails.
And so one had to start anew, think everything over again, finally understand what had happened and why everything was so bad when everything had been so good before.
The same disheveled and miserable madman had already walked past Berlaga several times.
Holding his chin in his hand, he walked along the same line—from the window to the door, from the door to the window, back to the door, back to the window.
So many thoughts roared in his poor head that he had to put his other hand on his forehead and accelerate his pace.
“I’m the Viceroy of India!” cried Berlaga, giving the orderly a quick glance.
The madman didn’t even look at the accountant.
Wincing, he went back to gathering the thoughts that Berlaga’s wild cries had scattered.
Then the Viceroy was approached by a short idiot, who put his arm around Berlaga’s waist and chirped something in his ear.
“What?” asked the frightened Berlaga cautiously.
“Ene, bene, raba, quinter, finter, baba,” his new friend enunciated clearly.
Berlaga said “Oh my God” and moved away from the idiot.
He then found himself near a man with a bald, lemon-like pate.
The man quickly turned away to the wall, giving the accountant an anxious look.
“Where are my maharajas?” Berlaga asked him, feeling he had to maintain his reputation.
But then a patient who was sitting on a bed deep inside the large ward stood up on his legs, which were thin and yellow like church candles, and yelled out with pain:
“Freedom!
Freedom!
To the pampas!”
Later, the accountant learned that the man who longed for the pampas was an old geography teacher, the author of the textbook from which the young Berlaga had learned about volcanoes, capes, and isthmuses many years ago.
The geographer went mad quite unexpectedly: one day he looked at the map of the two hemispheres and couldn’t find the Bering Strait.
The old teacher spent the whole day studying the map.
Everything was where it was supposed to be: Newfoundland; the Suez Canal; Madagascar; the Sandwich Islands with their capital city, Honolulu; even the Popocatepetl volcano. But the Bering Strait was missing.
The old man lost his mind right then and there, in front of the map.
He was a harmless madman who never hurt anybody, but he scared Berlaga to death.
The shouting broke his heart.
“Freedom!” the geographer yelled out again.
“To the pampas!”
He knew more about freedom than anyone else in the world.
He was a geographer: he knew of the wide open spaces that regular people, busy doing their mundane things, can’t even imagine.
He wanted to be free, he wanted to ride a sweating mustang through the brush . . .
A young woman doctor with doleful blue eyes entered the room and went straight to Berlaga.
“How are you feeling, dear?” she asked, touching the accountant’s forearm with her warm hand. “You’re better now, aren’t you?”
“I’m the Viceroy of India!” he reported, blushing.
“Give me back my favorite elephant!”
“You’re having a delusion,” said the doctor gently. “You’re in a hospital, we’ll help you recover.”
“Oooh!
My elephant!” cried Berlaga defiantly.
“But you must understand,” said the doctor even more gently, “you’re not the Viceroy. This is a delusion, you understand? A delusion.”
“No, it’s not!” objected Berlaga, who knew that he was supposed to be difficult.
“Yes, a delusion!”