Read Online Sweet Nothing by RICHARD LANGE - Free Book Online

have no fear, they’re not going to kill this sly one. Right this second Zola is writing a letter for me, just like he did for the Jew Dreyfus. I’ll be free in no time.”
    “No, you won’t,” I said.
    “Yes, I will,” he replied.
    “If I were you, I’d make peace with what’s coming,” I said.
    When I looked in on him fifteen minutes later, I was shocked to find him hanging from a makeshift noose he’d fashioned from his tunic. He’d somehow wedged the garment into a crevice in the wall so that it would support his weight.
    I unlocked the door and entered the cell. Wrapping my arms around the prisoner, I lifted his body until the tunic was no longer taut. He came to sudden kicking, punching life, and I realized he’d merely been feigning unconsciousness in order to draw me inside. I fell back as he wrenched himself free from the wall and stumbled for the door. He was not a big man, nor a strong one, so it was nothing for me to lay my arm across his throat and arrest his flight. I tightened my hold until he ceased his struggles then removed the noose and made him strip off his trousers.
    He spent the rest of the day curled naked on his bunk, face to the wall. At the end of my watch I opened the cell door and stood on the threshold.
    “If I tell the commander what you did, it’ll be a straitjacket for you,” I said.
    The prisoner didn’t respond.
    “I’ve seen men made crazy by that thing,” I continued.
    Still no response.
    “Can I trust you?” I said.
    “Yes,” the prisoner mumbled.
    “I can’t hear you,” I said.
    “Yes,” he pronounced clearly.
    I returned his clothes to him and shut the door. He made no more attempts to escape.
      
    A MONTH BEFORE the trial, the prisoner’s attorney, accompanied by a clerk and two soldiers, came down into the pit to take his charge’s statement. A tall, thin man with a skittish air, the attorney first had me chain the prisoner, then ordered the soldiers to draw their pistols before he entered the cell with a scented handkerchief pressed to his nose. His clerk stood beside him, pad and pen at the ready.
    “I am Maître Bergerot, the attorney assigned to the defense in this matter,” he said.
    The prisoner slouched on his bunk and shot the man a glare that could have driven nails.
    “Assigned by whom?” he asked.
    “The court,” Maître Bergerot answered.
    “You look more like an undertaker than an attorney,” the prisoner said.
    “See here, you bastard—” Maître Bergerot began.
    “I see! I see! I see!” the prisoner said, shouting the attorney down.
    Maître Bergerot sputtered like flame on damp wood and looked as if he might swallow his tongue. He regained his composure after a few deep draws on his hankie.
    “We’ll begin again,” he said to his clerk, then asked the prisoner his name. The prisoner said he’d heard the newspapers had given him a nickname. Maître Bergerot told him yes, he was being called the Wolf.
    “The Wolf will do, then,” the prisoner said. “No need to confuse things.”
    “Listen closely,” Maître Bergerot said. “You’ve been accused of killing eight children. Do you wish to refute these charges?”
    “What I’d really like is some lamprey,” the prisoner said. “Do you think you could catch one for me, stork?”
    Maître Bergerot stared angrily at him, then said to his clerk, “Come. There is nothing I can do for this madman, and nothing I want to do but see him pay for his crimes.”
    “Prepare it à la b ordelaise, ” the prisoner called to him as he left the cell. “I’m sure your wife has a nice recipe.”
    I released him from his chains after the group departed, and he was silent for the rest of the day, a madman, as Maître Bergerot had said, chasing his mad thoughts.
      
    THE SOULS OF children have more worth than the souls of adults, which, sacred though they are, have nonetheless been battered and tarnished by the various degradations encountered along life’s rocky path. Thus, if