left the canteen than the intermittent bell called them to the Great Hall for the French election: Regional Harmonisation gave citizens of neighbouring states the vote too, to curtail extremism, and the insane were apparently considered as able as anyone else of making a sufficiently neutralising choice. Odd and Frank ambled up to a grey line.
‘The doctor will check you over now.’
Mary scowled. Doctor Saif Zadir stood in front of her like a statue, recognising her immediately, then mumbling something uselessly. Despite his unshakeable faith in science and organised religion, pearls of cold sweat appeared on his forehead. He grabbed her by the throat and slammed the door shut.
After leaving Mary with the doctor, the unaffected Deputy stepped up to the Governor’s office to get the admission form stamped. The Governor buzzed the door:
‘Deputy.’
The Governor’s sleepless face stared back at him, hair sprung all over the place, his beard ungroomed, his eyes wide and staring: he released the occasional grunt from behind a colonial antique desk as big as a tomb, an orb on either side—one an astral globe, the other terrestrial—and his Lodge’s ceremonial knocker at his feet. He wore his white Masonic gloves grown grey and black through continual use: for bacterial protection and spiritual support, and was fiddling with an ornamental paperknife.
He grunted.
Just how could the Worshipful Master of the local Masonic Lodge, home of one ambassador, two magistrates and a notary, have fallen so low? Terror! Each of the three previous Governors had met untimely and dramatic deaths: one at the nib of his very own Mont Blanc pen, embedded in his neck; another crushed beneath the ballroom chandelier mid-way through the Christmas Day appetiser; whilst the most recent incumbent had been tipped up and over the wall of his beloved private terrace to his sacrificial impalement on the basalt below, whilst watering the roses—by a Prefect who had even babysat his daughter.
The portly Governor managed a petrified smile, then lost it again. ‘Close the door. Quickly.’
He’d been landed the custodianship of Bedlam courtesy of his unfortunate connections and sworn obedience to his Lodge Brethren—and that was indeed the only occasion he ventured beyond his quarters, once a month, when summoned to preside over their meetings.
‘What are they saying? What’s going on?’
The only person he could trust was the Deputy, since the Deputy would be the one obliged step into his shoes were he to die, thereby inheriting not just a promotion but a death sentence too.
The Deputy delivered his unabridged report from the inside: of the Lunatics who would excitedly discuss inventive ways of disposing of their Governor; of the Orderlies who were enthusiastically taking sweepstakes on when it would happen; and of the more reasonable Patients who regretfully understood that their only remaining chance in life of becoming a legend of any kind, was to trade their own for his.
Some, two floors beneath, had attempted to give the poor man a heart attack: they had banged on pipes and howled up vents in the dark of the night, until the poor Governor in his delirium of lack of sleep and justified paranoia became convinced he was being haunted by his predecessors. Others, as yet unidentified, had poisoned his food, guessing correctly that the Deputy whom the Governor had tasked with testing it (in boarding school fashion) was merely pretending to—but then the tiny morsels the Governor did gingerly nibble had been enough only for a few days of violent vomiting, not death. Most ambitiously, a stack of paper had appeared on the
‘The doctor will check you over now.’
Mary scowled. Doctor Saif Zadir stood in front of her like a statue, recognising her immediately, then mumbling something uselessly. Despite his unshakeable faith in science and organised religion, pearls of cold sweat appeared on his forehead. He grabbed her by the throat and slammed the door shut.
After leaving Mary with the doctor, the unaffected Deputy stepped up to the Governor’s office to get the admission form stamped. The Governor buzzed the door:
‘Deputy.’
The Governor’s sleepless face stared back at him, hair sprung all over the place, his beard ungroomed, his eyes wide and staring: he released the occasional grunt from behind a colonial antique desk as big as a tomb, an orb on either side—one an astral globe, the other terrestrial—and his Lodge’s ceremonial knocker at his feet. He wore his white Masonic gloves grown grey and black through continual use: for bacterial protection and spiritual support, and was fiddling with an ornamental paperknife.
He grunted.
Just how could the Worshipful Master of the local Masonic Lodge, home of one ambassador, two magistrates and a notary, have fallen so low? Terror! Each of the three previous Governors had met untimely and dramatic deaths: one at the nib of his very own Mont Blanc pen, embedded in his neck; another crushed beneath the ballroom chandelier mid-way through the Christmas Day appetiser; whilst the most recent incumbent had been tipped up and over the wall of his beloved private terrace to his sacrificial impalement on the basalt below, whilst watering the roses—by a Prefect who had even babysat his daughter.
The portly Governor managed a petrified smile, then lost it again. ‘Close the door. Quickly.’
He’d been landed the custodianship of Bedlam courtesy of his unfortunate connections and sworn obedience to his Lodge Brethren—and that was indeed the only occasion he ventured beyond his quarters, once a month, when summoned to preside over their meetings.
‘What are they saying? What’s going on?’
The only person he could trust was the Deputy, since the Deputy would be the one obliged step into his shoes were he to die, thereby inheriting not just a promotion but a death sentence too.
The Deputy delivered his unabridged report from the inside: of the Lunatics who would excitedly discuss inventive ways of disposing of their Governor; of the Orderlies who were enthusiastically taking sweepstakes on when it would happen; and of the more reasonable Patients who regretfully understood that their only remaining chance in life of becoming a legend of any kind, was to trade their own for his.
Some, two floors beneath, had attempted to give the poor man a heart attack: they had banged on pipes and howled up vents in the dark of the night, until the poor Governor in his delirium of lack of sleep and justified paranoia became convinced he was being haunted by his predecessors. Others, as yet unidentified, had poisoned his food, guessing correctly that the Deputy whom the Governor had tasked with testing it (in boarding school fashion) was merely pretending to—but then the tiny morsels the Governor did gingerly nibble had been enough only for a few days of violent vomiting, not death. Most ambitiously, a stack of paper had appeared on the
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