 | V. The Red Flower of the Madman |  |
5. V.
ALL that night he did not close an eye.
He had plucked the flower, believing to have performed thereby a heroic action, which was imposed upon him, and which he wanted to accomplish regardless of consequences. At the first glance he had cast through the glass door, his attention had fixed itself on this red flower, and from that moment he had comprehended what was his mission.
In this red flower with incandescent petals were concentrated the evil, the sins of the whole world. He knew that poppies are used in the making of opium. Perhaps it was this thought, distorted by a morbid imagination, that took on monstrous forms and developed in him fantastic ideas of an exquisitely acute morbidness.
In his eyes, this flower was the incarnation of evil on the earth. It was steeped in blood, in all the blood shed wrongfully in the world! Gorged with the blood, the gall and the tears of humanity, it stood triumphant. This flower was a terrible and mysterious being, the adversary of God, Arimanes, who had clothed himself in a form of innocent and modest seeming. The flower had to be plucked and bruised to powder.
But that was not all. It was necessary when it died to prevent it from exhaling among men its last poisonous breath. Therefore he had buried it in his bosom. He hoped, if he kept it there until morning, it would have lost its destructive power. Evil sin would enter his bosom and would filter into his soul, and in this manner would be vanquished. As for himself, he would be lost, but would die in a heroic struggle. He would be humanity's noblest martyr, because until now there had been no one found to dare the combat, body to body, with the personification of evil, that bad genius whose power was so great.
"They did not notice. I have seen that.
He writhed, extended on his couch, bathed with sweat, his hair erect with fright, his strength growing less little by little. In the morning the surgeon found him nearly dead. In spite of his weakness the patient arose, sprang down from his bed, and ran through the whole house in great agitation, holding with his companions conversations more incoherent than ever. He spoke with himself also, in a vibrating voice, gesticulating wildly. He was not permitted to go into the garden, and the surgeon on weighing him found his weight diminished by several pounds. He ordered strong injections of morphine to be administered. The madman made no opposition. At this moment he had happily a short interval of lucidity, which was favorable to the operation. He soon dropped asleep; his nervous gesticulation ceased, and the perpetual buzzing in his ears, which had occasioned his jerking and noisy step, and which he tried to escape in his feverish journeyings to and fro, completely disappeared. He became oblivious of all things, and dreamed of nothing, not even of the second flower, the task of plucking which he had imposed upon himself.
At the end of three days, however, he succeeded in tearing it from its stem, and that under the very eyes of the keeper, who did not have time to prevent him. The keeper pursued him into the corridor. The madman ran to his chamber, uttering a loud cry of victory.
He had hidden the flower in his bosom, and pressed it passionately against his heart.
"Who permitted you to pluck flowers?" cried the keeper, when he caught up with him.
But the sick man, stretched on his bed with arms folded, answered with a flood of words so incoherent that he contented himself with removing from the patient's head the cap with the red cross, which he had forgotten to take off in his flight. Then an attack of furious madness broke out. The patient felt the flower disgorging torrents of poison, which became solidified and took the form of venomous serpents. These serpents entwined him, covered him with sharp bites, imprisoned his limbs in their steely coils, spewed over his whole body a burning and foul saliva, whose corrosive action wounded him cruelly. He wept in a loud voice. He called upon God to help him, and cursed his enemies.
Towards evening the flower was withered. The madman crushed the blackened plant under his heel, stamped on it, and collecting its smallest particles, carried them to the bath-room. Here he threw them in the glowing furnace on the embers. And looking at his enemy writhing and hissing in the flames, he saw it curl up and transform itself into a tiny flake of snowy whiteness. He blew upon it, and every trace of it disappeared. Then he drew a long breath.
The following day his condition had become much worse. Pale as a sheet, with cheeks fallen in, his eyes fixed and burning in their inflamed orbits, he dragged himself from morning till evening through all the rooms, without rest, staggering and faltering at each step, a mad race accompanied by feverish discourse and haggard gesticulation.
"I am afraid to use violence with him," said the head physician to his assistants.
"However, it is in the highest degree necessary. He weighed only ninety-three pounds to-day. If this continues he will be dead before forty-eight hours."
The head physician reflected a moment: "Morphine? Chloral?" he murmured undecided.
"Yesterday the morphine injections produced no effect."
"Well, have him bound, though, I doubt if we shall be able to save him."
And the sick man was bound. He was put in a straight waistcoat and laid on his bed, to which he was tied by means of broad canvas bands. But the furious madness persisted. It increased in violence. He was dreadful to look at, his face a livid blue, and jaws firmly knit together. During several hours he continued the most unheard-of exertions to break his bonds.
Finally, stiffening himself in a supreme convulsive effort he succeeded in rending some strips of canvas and freeing his feet. Then he slipped from under the other strips that were crossed over the bed, and went up and down his cell with tied hands, walking with long steps, and declaiming an incoherent discourse interrupted with savage growls.
"What the devil!" cried the keeper on
The three threw themselves upon him, and a terrible struggle took place, a struggle that exhausted the keepers and robbed the patient of his last remaining strength. Finally, they got him on the bed, and tied him more securely than before, doubling the number of canvas bands that held him.
"You do not know what you are doing," cried the patient in a strangled voice. "You are consummating your own perdition! I have seen a third one of them. It is just half open. It will soon be in full blossom! Let me finish my work! I must kill it! Kill it! Kill it! Then all will be finished, all will be saved. I would send you for it, but I alone am to accomplish the task. If one of you were so rash as to touch it you would fall blasted by lightning!"
"Silence," said the keeper.
The assistants withdrew. He remained near to watch him. The sick man became suddenly silent. He had decided to make use of a ruse. He remained tied the whole day, and when night came he was kept in the same condition. The nurse gave him his supper himself; then he prepared a bed on the floor near the patient, and lay down. In a few moments he fell asleep.
Then the madman set to work silently. He twisted and stiffened his body, forcing it to bring his hand enveloped in the long sleeve of the straight waistcoat in contact with a rough iron bar that extended along the middle of the bed. He succeeded in rubbing forcibly and rapidly this sleeve against the rugosities of the iron. After some time the coarse canvas cloth yielded, and he was enabled to pass out his index finger. From that time the work went on more rapidly. With wonderful cunning and dexterity he untied the knot that held the sleeves together. Then he held his breath for an instant, and listened to the snoring of the nurse. The old man was sleeping profoundly. The patient took off the straight waistcoat and unknotted the straps that bound him to his bed. He was free. He tried to open the door, but he found it locked inside. The key was probably in the keeper's pocket. The madman was afraid to awaken him if he touched him. He decided to go out by the window.
The night was still and dark. The air was warm and balmy. When he opened the window, myriads of stars were shining. He raised his eyes to heaven and looked at the glittering constellations, and rejoiced that they seemed to comprehend him and approve of him with their soft lustre. He beheld with blinking eyes the rays they sent down to him, and felt strong in his determination.
Now what he had to do was to separate the iron bars of the grating by bending them, to slip through the narrow opening to the lane beneath, and to climb the high wall in front of the window. There a final struggle awaited him, and then—and then— Or, perhaps it would be his to encounter death!
He tried to bend the thick bars with his two hands, but the iron did not yield. He then twisted the coarse sleeves of the straight waistcoat into a kind of a rope, attached it to a bar and suspended himself by it heavily, with all his force. After several fruitless efforts in which he employed a strength much more than that of ordinary men, he succeeded in bending one of the branches of the grating. Then he slipped softly through the narrow aperture, first his shoulders, his elbows, and his knees, and crept along the lane and through the bushes as far as the wall. Here he stopped. All was quiet. The light of the night lamps illuminated the windows from the interior of the asylum. He saw no one. No one noticed him. Without doubt the old keeper was still sleeping profoundly at the foot of his bed. The stars were shining brightly; their pale beams inundated his heart with a sweet joy.
"I come," he murmured, looking up at the sky.
His first attempt at climbing the wall failed; he fell to the ground. With torn nails and hands and knees bleeding, he sought a more favorable place. There where the wall ran along the morgue several bricks had fallen and the mortar was gone. The madman profited by these breaks in the smooth surface. He clung to them, scrambling up the wall, and succeeded in seizing hold of the bough of an elm tree planted in the garden. He lifted himself into the air by this, and let himself glide softly to the ground.
He ran towards the stone stairway. The flower, of a somber color in the night, held
"The last!" he murmured. "The last! It is now victory or death! But that is indifferent to me. Wait," said he, with eyes raised ecstatically to the sky, "I shall soon be with you."
He grasped the flower, bruised it, and crushed it slowly between his fingers. Then he regained his cell by the same way he had left it. He dragged himself painfully to his bed, and fell upon it in a faint.
They found him dead the next morning. The expression of his face was calm and serene. His emaciated features, his thin lips and closed and deeply sunken eyelids were transfigured and as though illuminated with a joyous and triumphant radiance. When they laid him on the bier one of the keepers wanted to take the red flower from his hand. The hand was closed in a vise-like grip. The madman carried his trophy with him to the grave.
Translated for THE COSMOPOLITAN.
| V. The Red Flower of the Madman | |