“No, it’s not!”
“Delusion!”
“Is not!”
Seeing that the iron was hot, the accountant struck.
He gave the gentle doctor a shove and emitted a lengthy howl that startled the other patients, especially the little idiot, who sat down on the floor and said, drooling:
“Un, dun, trois, quatre, Mademoiselle Jourauvatre.”
Then, to his delight, Berlaga overheard the woman doctor telling an orderly:
“We need to put him in with those other three, or else he’ll scare the whole ward silly.”
Two even-tempered orderlies took the cantankerous Viceroy to a smaller ward, for disruptive patients, where three men lay quietly.
And it was there that the accountant finally learned what true madmen were like.
Seeing the visitors, the patients grew extremely agitated.
A fat man rolled out of bed, quickly got down on all fours, stuck out his rear end—it looked like a mandolin in his tight clothes—and started barking in bursts, digging the hardwood floor with his slipper-clad hind legs.
The other one wrapped himself in a blanket and started shouting:
“Et tu, Brute, sold out to the Bolsheviks!” This man clearly thought he was Gaius Julius Caesar.
At times, however, something would snap in his deeply disturbed head, and he’d get confused and yell:
“I’m Heinrich Julius Zimmermann!”
“Go away!
I’m naked!” shouted the third man.
“Don’t look!
I’m ashamed!
I’m a naked woman.”
As a matter of fact, he was a fully dressed man with a mustache.
The orderlies left.
The Viceroy of India was so petrified that he lost any interest in demanding the return of his favorite elephant, the maharajas, the faithful nawabs, never mind the mysterious abreks or kunaks.
“These guys will kill me just like that,” he thought, breaking into a cold sweat.
He kicked himself for making such a scene in the quiet ward.
It would have been so nice to sit near the kindly geographer and listen to the comforting babble of the little idiot:
“Ene, bene, raba, quinter, finter, baba.”
But nothing terrible happened.
The dog man yelped a few more times, growled, and went back to bed.
Julius Caesar kicked off his blanket, yawned deeply, and had a good stretch.
The mustachioed woman lit up his pipe, and the sweet smell of Our Capstan tobacco calmed Berlaga’s tormented soul.
“I’m the Viceroy of India,” he declared, recovering his bravery.
“Shut up, bastard!” replied Julius Caesar dismissively, and he added with the directness of a Roman:
“Or you’re dead meat.”
This remark by the bravest of the warriors and emperors brought the fugitive accountant to his senses.
He hid under the blanket, sadly reflected on his grueling life, and drifted off to sleep.
In the morning, still half-asleep, he overheard a strange conversation:
“They stuck a real lunatic in here, goddamit.
It was so nice with just the three of us, and now look . . .
He’s trouble!
This damn Viceroy could very well bite us all.”
Berlaga recognized the voice: it was Gaius Julius Caesar.
A few minutes later, he opened his eyes and saw that the dog man was staring at him with keen interest.
“That’s it,” thought the Viceroy, “now he’ll bite me!” But the dog man suddenly clasped his hands and asked in a perfectly human voice:
“Excuse me, aren’t you the son of Foma Berlaga?”
“I am,” answered the accountant, but then he came to his senses and started hollering: “Give the poor Viceroy his faithful elephant back!”
“Please look at me,” invited the mongrel man. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“Mikhail Alexandrovich!” exclaimed the accountant, regaining his sight. “I’m so happy to see you!”
The Viceroy and the dog man gave each other a friendly hug and a kiss.