LITMIR.BIZ

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arrived a month before no one had taken care of it for some time, and, unlike England where a little neglect does little harm, the lack of care in the dry California hills nearly ruined it. One of the first things he'd done was to hire a gardener.

      Mr. Hozen Nakamichi had been a real find. The leathery old Japanese walked back and forth over every inch of the garden like a hound on the scent. Every few minutes he looked at Gilbert accusatively, muttering God knows what kind of Oriental curses.

      Gilbert, feeling unjustifiably guilty, tried to tell him he'd only just arrived, but it hadn't seemed to matter. Finally he stopped inspecting and rumbled belligerently.

      "You want fix?"

      Gilbert said yes, he did, to please make it as fine as when his mother took care of it. Mr. Nakamichi must have sensed something because his rumble was less menacing.

      "Do not worry, Mr. Piers, I fix excellently." Then he smiled in a conspiratorial way; "Verry expensive, have three daughters, two at USC."

      One morning, early, Gilbert had been out at the back of the property in the old gazebo, beginning the first moves of a Tai Chi exercise when Mr. Nakamichi appeared through the hedges. Instead of waiting, the old man took his shoes off, joined him and slipped into the movements with the ease of long practice.

      They passed through the exercise, encased in the soothing protection of pure activity without thought. When they finished, Nakamichi bowed to Gilbert.

      Gilbert invited him to share tea, the green tea of Japan he'd brought to the gazebo earlier. After that the old man was unfailingly polite to his young employer.

      On this afternoon it was through the open doors to the garden that his other new friend came an hour earlier. Now she lay stretched along the curved back of the sofa, looking smug and possessive. Probably her real owner, if there were such a thing with a cat, wouldn't let her on the furniture.

      She was a British longhair with typical coloring except for two reddish patches on her white cheeks. For no practical reason he called her Rachel.

      She wandered in a week before while he'd been going through his mother's correspondence. He didn't realize he was crying. It started without visible memory or stimulus. At first, he got up, walked around, willed it to stop. Visible emotion was dangerous. Then he ignored it and went on doing whatever he was doing. Finally it stopped of its own accord.

      That first day the cat jumped up on the desk, sat back on her haunches and talked to him. They looked at each other myopically from a distance of about five inches and then she did a fey thing.

      She rose, stepped forward tentatively and licked the tears from his face. Later he told himself it was the salt, but in his heart he knew it wasn't so.

      Soon after, he stopped. It was as though contact with the soul that was Rachel, was needed. Since then she came by every afternoon around one thirty, and spent a few hours lazing around, inspecting her new domain.

      Once in a while, not often, she jumped into his lap, particularly if he was sitting on the sofa, and permitted him to pay whatever homage she felt due. Mostly she stretched out, as now, along the back of the sofa, possessing all that she surveyed.

      Gilbert reached down and picked a book off the floor and opened it to a marked section. He read quietly for a while.

      "Listen, Rachel." Now, although he frequently talked aloud, he directed his comments to her.

      "You'll recognize this." He turned the book over and read from the cover. "This is from ‘Torture in Brazil'; a report on the use of torture by Brazilian military governments from 1964 to 1979. This section is on a more scientific appreciation of torture." Rachel watched him myopically as he read.

      Neither Rachel nor Gilbert noticed the young woman coming across the garden toward the French doors. When she heard the voice, she stopped and listened. She began to get the gist of what he read. Although the voice was quiet and cultured she felt the underlying rage as if it were a physical presence.

      She sat unnoticed on an old cast iron bench by the door.

      "This is a report on a ‘patient’ Maria Regina Peixoto Pereira, 20, signed by Dr. Ronaldo Mendes de Oliveira Castro on 17 June 1970." Hospitalized in the 1st, (District Hospital of Brasilia), RM 519, coming from DOPS—Department of Political and Social Order—where she had been detained since 29, May 1970.

      “- Reason for hospitalization: removed for presenting a confused state and impossibility of locomotion.

      - Main complaint: headache and feelings of weakness...

      - During her first days of imprisonment, 'Commitment; sorry, Rachel, I added the commitment' she began to feel anguished, suffering panic and fear, accompanied by a migraine headache on the left frontal-lateral side, constantly throbbing. At the same time she noticed difficulties in the movement of her whole body.

      - She presented, soon afterwards, an acute confused state, temporal disorientation, loss of sense of reality and ideas of self-extermination. She had the impression during the night that the interrogation to which she had been subjected continued without ceasing; she was unable to distinguish the real from the imaginary, and could not say precisely how long she remained in that state.

      - She says that she suffered physical aggressions, such as beatings on her abdomen and electric shocks on her head...

      - She also complains of lack of memory for recent facts.

      - She says that she has been having, for several days, contractions over her entire body, not knowing when they began, but that it was just a few days ago...

      - Mental exam: hyper-emotional, frequent weeping, slow conversation with a whispering voice, punctuated by periods of silence. Difficult initial contact, depressive humor.

      - 'Attenuated memory' for recent facts. Perception attention and intelligence alterations.

      - Lack of orientation in time and still somewhat confused. Main courses of thought: Experiences of terror and panic. Suicidal ideas.

      - Presents primitive reactions of regression and hysteria.”

      He let the book fall to the floor and looked around as though dizzy and lost.

      "You see, Rachel, how it is?" His voice fell away to a whisper.

      He sat up and put his face in his hands, but there were no more tears. Finally he got up and pulled another book from a stack on a nearby table and opened it to a place already marked.

      "Listen to this, my little friend. A woman who received repeated electro-shock treatments at a mental clinic not far from here wrote it. She says:

"ECT is a cruel, if not unusual, punishment for which there has been no crime. It is a death sentence, no - that isn't quite it- it is a series of death sentences each of which is almost but not entirely carried out. There is no trial, no jury. There is merely an executioner, one who is excellent at near killing. There is the anticipation of death, the terrible wait and the sound while others are punished, and finally, your turn. In that eternally long fraction of a second, while electricity is ripping apart your being, the searing pain disperses to every nerve ending in your body; you pray that you will die quickly."

      The book joined the other on the floor by the sofa.

      "What difference is there a between 'men of science', the doctor in his white clinician's coat, his high-tech treatment room, and the dungeon beneath some military junta's political re-education barrack? There, 'men of science' wear a military uniform. Their high tech is not quite so lofty, but would either prisoner know the difference between the voltage applied by a modern electro-shock machine and a hand-cranked telephone generator, or electric cattle prod?"

      He looked at the books on the floor in despair.

      "Don't you grow tired of my voice? Why do you stay, sweet Rachel? Any decent woman would have left long ago. If ever I find a woman as faithful as you, I shall immediately marry her."

      He got up, crossed the room, and

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