If it had been the watch, could it not arguably have been the cardinal? And if it had been one or the other, did that not argue a plan; and, if a plan, then a reason for his trial?
Or, if he’d been chosen at random, then, at least, reason behind a plan in which he had been caught by accident?
And if there was that force sufficient to make such a plan—given he’d been ensnared through no fault or through no error of his own—would that not counsel submission to a power of such magnitude?
Submission, possibly, but not acquiescence, he thought, unless one could discern the reason, or the good, in it; and, even if so, why me, he thought, rather than another?
Absent which answer, submission would become courage, not to say faith.
“How much do we unwittingly intuit,” he thought, “in extenuation of that which we lack the honesty to call ‘random’? So,” he thought, “so, we could argue both sides of the proposition.
“And if there were no predestination in the walk, or in the cardinal. Or in the watch, or in myself at all, and all my actions, and my very self, then …”
“The Greeks wrote,” the Rabbi had said, “‘Either the Gods exist or they do not. If they do, then, no doubt, things are unfolding under their control; if they do not, why should we mourn to depart a world ruled by chance?’”
“All right. The watch. The cardinal,” he thought. “Yes, these, but what portents did I ignore—for surely my consciousness, my capabilities, and my predilections prescribe the choice of my impressions. If I had been ill on that day, would I have stopped by the jewelry window at all? Or might I not have walked to the pharmacy? And what would have happened then? Or if I had stopped at Sloan’s for a cigar? Or if I had lingered to watch the cardinal …?”
“… the pictures, Mr. Frank …” the doctor said.
Frank came around. He heard the man repeat the phrase, and his eyes focused, slowly, on him. “The pictures, yes,” Frank said. They were of girls in various states of undress. Some having or pretending to have sex with other women, some with men, some simply sitting, looking, Frank thought, quite bored. Drugged, perhaps. He heard the doctor drone on. “… your impressions …”
“What?” Frank said, and drifted away.
“… force you to cooperate?” he heard the doctor say. Then he was back again in contemplation of the cardinal.
“… or come another day. But I must insist on some, some, some semblance of cooperation.” Frank drew in a long breath.
“Or do you wish me to go and file this report with the Commission?”
Frank looked at the man.
“… and say that you’ve been uncooperative?” the man said.
“I’ve lived my life as a fool,” Frank thought. “Every word and every gesture of my life—those I called Good and those I called Bad—has been the act of a fool …
“If there is this vicious stupidity in the world, and I have, to this point, escaped it by chance, by merest chance, thirty years, and accounted my astounding fortune as a show of merit.” He sighed.
“A man had as well establish a school in How to Avoid the Plague …”
“… all right,” the doctor said.
“… because he’d had the blind fortune to’ve escaped it himself,” he thought, “and so act as those ‘authorities’ who have escaped knowledge both of their and others’ savagery, and set themselves up as philosophers.”
The man closed his portfolio and stood and gazed at Frank.
“I’m sorry,” Frank said. “What is it you wished to know?”
“It’s too late for that,” the doctor said.
“Well, then,” Frank said, “please excuse me if I’ve put you out.”
He saw the man look to determine if he was being mocked, and he saw that the man felt he most probably was not, but could not completely dismiss the possibility, and he saw the man decide that dignity was best protected by an angry exit, and he left the room accordingly.
“Where was I?” Frank thought. “The bird. Although I wonder what he expected me to find in those photographs. Or who the men were who created a science of looking at them. Wouldn’t any two people, of necessity, have different thoughts and feelings, looking at those cards? And the doctor himself,” he thought.
“I wonder what his feelings were, in showing them to me.”
He rubbed his face. “What can they have been?”
The guard opened the door and motioned for Frank to stand, which he did, reluctantly, as he preferred the room to his cell.
He stood. The guard re-manacled his legs and motioned Frank to leave the room.
Frank shuffled down the corridor. The leg chain ran between his ankles. At its center was welded a second chain, the other end of which was a large ring, which the guard held in his hand.
The guard walked behind Frank. The two moved slowly down the corridor, and through a large metal door, and into the cell block.
“What can he have seen in those photographs?” Frank thought.
“And what would induce a man to take a job like that?”