One of the policemen pointed to me and cried: “Seize him!” A moment later I was brought down by the horde, chained and manacled, protesting my innocence all the while.
“He must be guilty as sin, Sergeant,” I heard a policeman chortle. “The only one who didn’t run! And listen to him pleading his innocence!”
“A foreigner, too!” cackled another. “Listen to that outlandish accent!”
“I’m from Ozar,” I protested. A momentary pause in the bustle of binding, manacling and chaining. Then:
“The blackguard! Impersonating an Ozarine!”
“Gag him,” came a tone of command. “No need for honest secret policemen to listen to the honeyed words of treason.”
Before I knew it—now gagged, to boot—I was hustled into the coach. As I was forced into its dark interior, I heard the sergeant say: “You two stay here and search the area for the other one.” A moment later, the coach careened into motion.
By now I was in a dark and gloomy mood, full of self-reproach. In my mind’s eye, I could already hear my uncle Ludovigo’s sneering voice.
“Forgot everything I taught you, you fool—and at the very first opportunity!” Here he would glower in his inimitable style. “Idiot. Cretin. Moron.” This would go on for no little time, accompanied by much clapping of despairing hands to aggrieved forehead. Then the lecturing voice of my uncle:
“What is the first law of secret police?”
The innocent flee where no man pursueth.
“The second law?”
Protestations of innocence stand in direct proportion to guilt.
“The third law?”
Who wants to hear it, anyway?
I was not looking forward to my next meeting with my uncle, let me tell you. No point lying to him, either—he’d see right through it. After the heaping of foul names upon my head, the ritual clapping of despairing hands onto his own head, there would come the great sigh—a genius casting pearls before a swine—and then, horror, the inevitable lecture.
“I will try again, my witless nephew. As I have told you before, time and again”—here would follow the history of the universe, beginning with the coalescence of the galaxies—”and so—will you try to remember?—if you wish to be a great artist you must expect many encounters with the secret police, many an interrogation by the forces of Church and State, many a long stay in the donjons and bastilles, many a beating and torture. Especially in Grotum! For these ineluctable modalities of the risible, you must be as well trained and prepared as your uncles Giotto, Algardi, Donatello and Salviati have made you for the actual exercise of your art itself.”
Here would follow the ceremonial chewing of mustachios. Then:
“And why do you want to be an artist, anyway? It’s a foolish ambition, no matter what those other uncles tell you! Much better for you to become a condottiere like myself or your uncles Rodrigo and Filoberto and the others. You have a talent for arms, and it’s a much safer occupation than being an artist!”
The rest of his future lecture I was able to rehearse in advance, as the coach banged and clattered its way along the cobblestoned streets. And there was this benefit from the gloomy experience, that by the time the secret police of Goimr reached their destination, I was well-prepared for the immediate prospect of torture, having reviewed in my mind all of my uncle’s instructions.
I was hustled into a great, gray, windowless building, which shared the general shabbiness which I was coming to realize was inseparable from Goimr. secret police headquarters read the sign above the door. (With, needless to say, the same bloodcurdling threat concerning classified information below.) Down a long corridor, a turn to the left, and there it was—the interrogation room, replete with all the requisite engines and tools of torture.
And then—
My rigorous rehearsal for the ordeal proved greatly excessive. For—would you believe it?—the incompetent fools began with a bastinado! My greatest problem was not to burst into laughter. The soles of my feet were covered with iron-hard calluses a half-inch thick—this the product of my uncle’s rigorous training, which included walking on coals and soaking in brine. The blows of the cudgels were like a tickle.