always tried to explain delicate problems to him that he would have never been able to understand without my help. In short: I have tried with all my heart and with my entire mind to love my enemy. So far I have been successful. Now I don’t want to be successful any more, I want to fail. My cup of grief is full to overflowing. The hour has come to do something, to settle all the outstanding accounts. I can’t prevent all those like him from continuing with their abominable practice, but I can do something. Let me chop off at least the branches that prick me in my face. Others like me that are pricked must try to help themselves. I can’t be everywhere.
Only Vivien personally and nobody else knows what she had to suffer in her captivity. She is in many respects still a child. On the other hand, however, she is a grown-up young lady who has had a terrible experience and therefore riper than lots of women who are twice her age. She is exceptionally intelligent and would probably accept me as her partner, if she knew that my hunchback is not the consequence of a genetic disorder but of a tragic accident in my youth. If she saw my photos before my accident, she would see me in a different light. If she had a conversation with me, she would realise that my semen would produce especially good-looking, especially intelligent and healthy children. After all she has experienced, she is probably looking for somebody who would be ready to live for her. She would probably wish to bear me a child. If he were an honest person, I wouldn’t have anything against his procreation with her innocence. I know, however, who he is, and I mustn’t allow that. I would be a criminal if I didn’t prevent him from doing that. He loves my mushrooms, can’t have enough of them. He always asks me to bring him more. Destiny wanted him to enter his office with her the very moment when I wanted to give him a jar full of the finest mushrooms I have, those that he especially likes. If I hadn’t seen him in the decisive moment, I would have given him the mushrooms, preserved, but unprepared for the unexpected purpose. Now he’ll get them preserved and prepared in the way the present situation requires. He should disappear but not suffer. I know what suffering is, I don’t want even him to suffer. I’ll add a sufficient portion of the substance No. 17 to the delicious content and thus make it even more delicious. That will convey him into the world where neither harm nor alarm can be caused to anybody. Fifteen minutes after he has eaten them he will be yonder. That’s just enough time for him to go comfortably to a sofa or a bed to have a rest, because he will feel very tired without any pain. Soon he’ll fall firmly asleep and will never again come back to this world in which he has caused so many tears. No forensic specialist, no scientist will be able find out what has happened. No bottle in any institute in the world contains the substance No. 17. It must be made of completely innocent substances that we all use every day. Half an hour after it has been taken there is no trace of it whatsoever. That scientific beauty could be terribly misused. For that reason I mustn’t tell anybody the secret ingredients and how it is made. My secret should die with me. Those scientists who independently come upon the same idea of how to produce it certainly won’t tell anybody the secret and will take it with them to the grave. It should just be used by special people, for certain people and in special cases. Let’s prepare the delicacy,” he thought at the end of his long, silent soliloquy.
He slowly got up and went into the room in which he kept hundreds of little glass pots filled with all sorts of powders and liquids. All the tiny vessels were supplied with labels bearing numbers and strange letters never used by anybody else. He took several small brown glass pots with black lids down from the shelf. On each of them there was a label with a combination of numbers and peculiar letters. Each time using another cylindrical spoon of a different size, out of each glass pot he took a certain quantity of the content, and put it into a clean glass pot intended for the mixture No. 17. Immediately after that he carefully shut all the pots with the ingredient substances and put them back again on the shelf. Then he shut the glass pot with the mixture and shook it well several times. He opened it, filled an unused tiny cylindrical spoon with its content and emptied the spoon into the pot with the mushrooms. After that he closed the pot carefully and shook it for almost a minute in order for the mushrooms to be properly soaked through by the poison. At the end he emptied the remainder of the lethal magic potion into the toilet and washed the glass pot with water and alcohol. The mushroom delicacy was prepared to bring about Professor Frederic’s end.
“That’s it,” he muttered and put the pot into his large bag.
“Now I must have some sleep, I feel more tired than usual,” he thought. He went to the large sofa in the living-room and lay down. Almost immediately he fell asleep. While he was sleeping he had a dream. Somebody in his vicinity was speaking to him in a low pleasant voice. He couldn’t see the person speaking but the voice reminded him strongly of Ann’s.
“Whatever you do,” the voice said, “only what can happen will happen. Regardless of what you do and how hard you try you will never bring about what cannot happen. The world is equally complete with your doing and without your doing. It’s only you yourself to whom you are answerable, because the entire world is your own product, your own creation. Do not forget that before our birth we do not sign any contract in which we declare that we agree or wish to be born and to be what we are. We cannot choose our parents nor can we choose our genetic dowry, which is given to us without our consent; the same applies to the time and the place of our birth and to everything that goes with them. Therefore every instant is charged with only one single true possibility that can be realised and everything is bound to happen just as it does. Not all people are supposed to understand that but you are. Everyone is involved in his personal way in everything that happens in this strange way of man. Every kind of behaviour is effective, for it can both achieve cause and prevent it. You like mathematics and know only too well that the so-called negative numbers are equally important as the so-called positive ones. You must bear all that in mind if you want to be a worthy and impartial judge. Don’t forget that the sentence you have passed will be executed on you, because anybody else is you yourself,” said the voice.
Professor Bourgh woke up. His watch told him that he had slept for full five hours. He felt fresh and almost didn’t feel any pain. He could get up much faster than usual. He immediately took the pot with the mushrooms out of his large bag and emptied it into the toilet. He took another one without any magic substances in it and put it into the bag.
After Vivien and Doctor Ovale had left, the members of the managing team decided to stay in the studio to discuss the recording of the interview rehearsal. Mr Corner first asked all members to comment on the interview. Being clever and cautious people, all of them remembered very well what Mr Corner had already said about the interview. Therefore they all were impressed by Vivien’s spontaneity, by her clear pronunciation, by her rich vocabulary and by her resoluteness. Each of the members added a few personal words to underline the common positive impression.
“I’m sure that millions of young girls all around the world will admire her and see in her an example to follow,” said Ms Panther.
Mr Hole and Mr Late informed the other members of the team that they had taken the necessary steps to secure a decent compensation for Vivien for the damage she had suffered in a way that it would enable her to enjoy a comfortable and carefree future.
“We both,” said Mr Hole, pointing to his colleague, “will watch carefully all that is going on in connection with Vivien so that nobody can reach out for her deserved property.”
Nobody commented on Mr Hole’s words.
“Now that Vivien is free,” said Professor Frederic, “the first and the most important thing is to integrate her fully into real life. For her it is a completely new situation, and it will take quite some time to carry out that programme of her integration into our world of freedom, however also of stress and tension. That will, of course, require a lot of energy and good will, of patience and love. I have already arranged everything for Vivien here in the hospital. She will have all the necessary comfort and be looked after round the clock. Ms Simple, my assistant, and I will be at her disposal all the time. During this transitional period of Vivien’s integration, she should be let alone; that means no interviews by radio or by TV