then, the greatest imponderable remains - the role of the accused. In my case I was, to all intents, not present at the trial, so my innocence is established by force majeure. Don't you agree, Malek?' Malek's eyes searched the pieces on the board, his lips pursing thinly. 'I'm afraid this is above my head, Mr Constantin. Naturally I accept the authority of the court without question.' 'But so do I, Maiek. I've made that plain. The real question to is simply whether the verdict was justified in the light of the new circumstances I am describing.'
Malek shrugged, apparently more interested in the endgame before them. 'I recommend you to accept the verdict, Mr Constantin. For your peace of mind, you understand.'
Constantin looked away with a gesture of impatience. 'I don't agree, Malek. Besides, a great deal is at stake.' He glanced up at the windows which were drumming in the cold autumn wind. The casements were slightly loose, and the air lanced around them. The villa was poorly heated, only the single radiator in the lounge warming the three rooms downstairs.
Already Constantin dreaded the winter. His hands and feet were perpetually cold and he could find no means of warming them.
'Malek, is there any chance of obtaining another heater?' he asked. 'It's none too warm in here. I have a feeling it's going to be a particularly cold winter.'
Malek looked up from the board, his bland grey eyes regarding Constantin with a flicker of curiosity, as if this last remark were one of the few he' had heard from Constantin's lips which contained any overtones whatever.
'It is cold,' he agreed at last. 'I will see if I can borrow a heater. This villa is closed for most of the year.'
Constantin pestered him for news of the heater during the following week - partly because the success of his request would have symbolized Malek's first concession to him - but it failed to materialize. After one palpably lame excuse Malek merely ignored his further reminders. Outside, in the garden, the leaves whirled about the stones in a vortex of chilling air, and overhead the low clouds raced seaward. The two men in the lounge hunched over their chessboard by the radiator, hands buried in their pockets between moves. Perhaps it was this darkening weather which made Constantin impatient of Malek's slowness in seeing the point of his argument, and he made his first suggestions that Malek should transmit a formal request for a re-trial to his superiors at the Department of Justice. 'You speak to someone on the telephone every morning, Malek,' he pointed out when Malek demurred. 'There's no difficulty involved. If you're afraid of compromising yourself-though I would have thought that a small price to pay in view of what is at stake - the orderly can pass on a message.' 'It's not feasible, Mr Constantin.' Malek seemed at last to be tiring of the subject. 'I suggest that you - ' 'Malek!' Constantin stood up and paced around the lounge. 'Don't you realize that you must? You're literally my only means 'of contact, if you refuse I'm absolutely powerless, there's no hope of getting a reprieve I' 'The trial has already taken place, Mr Constantin,' Malek pointed out patiently.
'It was a mis-trial! Don't you understand, Malek, I accepted that I was guilty when in fact I was completely innocent I'
Malek looked up from the board, his eyebrows lifting. 'Completely innocent, Mr. Constantin?'
Constantin snapped his fingers. 'Well, virtually innocent. At least in terms of the indictment and trial.' 'But that is merely a technical difference, Mr Constantin. The Department of Justice is concerned with absolutes.' 'Quite right, Malek. I agree entirely.' Constantin nodded approvingly at the supervisor and privately noted his quizzical expression, the first time Malek had displayed a taste for irony.
He was to notice this fresh leitmotiv recurringly during the next days; whenever he raised the subject of his request for a re-trial Malek would counter with one of his deceptively naive queries, trying to establish some minor tangential point, almost as if he were leading Constantin on to a fuller admission. At first Constantin assumed that the supervisor was fishing for information about other members of the hierarchy which he wished to use for his own purposes, but the few titbits he offered were ignored by Malek, and it dawned upon him that Malek was genuinely interested in establishing the sincerity of Constanfin's conviction of his own innocence. He showed no signs, however, of being prepared to contact 7
his superiors at the Department of Justice, and Constantin's impatience continued to mount. He now used their morning and afternoon chess sessions as an opportunity to hold forth at length on the subject of the shortcomings of the judicial system, using his own case as an illustration, and hammered away at the theme of his innocence, even hinting that Malek might find himself held responsible if by any mischance he was not granted a reprieve.
'The position I find myself in is really most extraordinary,' he told Malek almost exactly two months after his arrival at the villa. 'Everyone else is satisfied with the court's verdict, and yet I alone know that I am innocent. I feel very like someone who is about to be buried alive.'
Malek managed a thin smile across the chess pieces. 'Of course, Mr Constantin, it is possible to convince oneself of anything, given a sufficient incentive.'
'But Malek, I assure you,' Constantin insisted, ignoring the board and concentrating his whole attention upon the supervisor, 'this is no death-cell repentance. Believe me, I know. I have examined the entire case from a thousand perspectives, questioned every possible motive. There is no doubt in my mind. I may once have been prepared to accept the possibility of my guilt, but I realize now that I was entirely mistaken - experience encourages us to take too great a responsibility for ourselves, when we fall short of our ideals we become critical of ourselves and ready to assume that we are at fault. How dangerous that can be, Malek, I now know. Only the truly innocent man can really understand the meaning of guilt.'
Constantin stopped and sat back, a slight weariness overtaking him in the cold room. Malek was nodding slowly, a thin and not altogether unsympathetic smile on his lips as if he understood everything Constantin had said. Then he moved a piece, and with a murmured 'excuse me' left his seat and went out of the room.
Drawing the lapels of the dressing gown around his chest, Constantin studied the board with a desultory eye. He noticed that Malek's move appeared to be the first bad one he had made in all their games together, but he felt too tired to make the most of his opportunity. His brief speech to Malek, confirming all he believed, now left nothing more to be said. From now on whatever happened was up to Malek.
'Mr Constantin.'
He turned in his chair and, to his surprise, saw the supervisor standing in the doorway, wearing his long grey overcoat.
'Malek-?' For a moment Constantin felt his heart gallop, and then controlled himself. 'Malek, you've agreed at last, you're going to take me to the Department?'
Malek shook his head, his eyes staring sombrely at Con-stantin.
'Not exactly. I thought we might look at the garden, Mr Constantin. A breath of fresh air, it will do you good.'
'Of course, Malek, it's kind of you.' Constantin rose a little unsteadily to his feet, and tightened the cord of his dressing gown. 'Pardon my wild hopes.' He tried to smile at Malek, but the supervisor stood by the door, hands in his overcoat pockets, his eyes lowered fractionally from Constantin's face.
They went out on to the veranda towards the french windows. Outside the cold morning air whirled in frantic circles around the small stone yard, the leaves spiralling upwards into the dark sky. To Constantin there seemed little point in going out into the garden, but Malek stood behind him, one hand on the latch.
'Malek.' Something made him turn and face the supervisor.
'You do understand what I mean, when I say I am absolutely innocent. I know that.'
'Of course, Mr Constantin.' The supervisor's face was relaxed and almost genial. 'I understand. When you know you are innocent, then you are guilty.'
His hand opened the veranda door on to the whirling leaves.
The Illuminated Man
By day fantastic birds flew through the petrified forest, and jewelled alligators glittered like heraldic salamanders on the banks of the crystalline rivers. By night the illuminated man raced among the trees, his arms like golden cartwheels, his head like a spectral crown. During the last year, since the news of what is now variously known as the Hubble Effect, the Rostov-Lysenko Syndrome and the LePage Amplification Synchronoclasmique first gained world-wide attention, there have been so many conflicting reports from the three focal areas in Florida,
