A Curable Romantic (86 page)

“Forgive me, Dr. Sammelsohn,”
said, “if I suggest that you’re not thinking clearly.”

“No, I assumed not,” I said, pointing to my head, happy to have my self-diagnosis of madness confirmed. That it had been confirmed by a figure who was himself an element of my delusion did not strike me as ironical as it perhaps should have.

“No. Why else would we be here, he means,”
said.

Looking back and forth between the two, I shrugged. “I have no idea truly.”

“It’s
said.

“Ita?” I said.

“She’s been reborn,”
said.

Reborn? Ita? These words chilled me to the bone. Still, I supposed it made a kind of sense. Hadn’t the three of them always been mixed up together?

“Or rather reborn
again
, we should say.”

“Ah, yes, that’s right,”
said. “You met her once before in Paris, I believe.”

“Gaston,”
whispered, and as he pronounced the name, I once again saw the poor unfortunate being pummeled to death by Monsieur Gajewski.

I blushed at the memory. “I
thought
that was Ita. However, I wasn’t certain, you see.”

“No, of course not,”
said.

“The entire system works on just that very principle of doubt,”
explained.

“It’s not that. Rather, it’s the fact that …” I took a moment and looked at my hands resting on my knees. “No, it’s just that Gaston seemed, I have to say, a little too much like the Ita I once knew, that we all knew, in fact: violent, vindictive, spiteful, addicted, as I believe you once told me, to short lives and unhappy deaths.”

shrugged. “I suppose that’s true.”

“Whereas” — I couldn’t help shaking my finger at them — “I seem to recall striking a bargain with the two of you.”

“A bargain?”
said, squinting myopically behind his thick glasses.

“A bargain?”
swallowed his laughter. “Do you recall making any bargains, brother?”

“A bargain?”
repeated.

I hesitated, uncertain how one approaches an angelic being with a grievance, but my anger had emboldened me, and so I persisted. “A bargain indeed! As I recall, you two made me a promise. You promised me that if I coerced Ita into abandoning Fräulein Eckstein’s body and submitting to your authority, you’d see to it that she was remanded to the Highest of Heavens, her soul restored to its original purity.”

“Oh, yes,
that
bargain.”
tutted his tongue. “Now, of course, I remember.”