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I remember with the clarity of a nightmare that spring night in 1888 when he woke me up from my dream, with his hair disheveled, his eyes wide open and illuminated by the light of the lamp, and that glow on his marked features, a glow which, unfortunately, I had come to know perfectly.
That night we rode to Dedham, a three-hour trip over rough, isolated roads during which we stopped only once right at the entrance to the city, to silently enter the forest so that no one would see us enter the city later.
We were not far along the main street when Ougai turned his horse down a narrow path, at the beginning of which was an inconspicuous sign hanging from a rusty steel nail: "The Guild Mental Hospital." Nothing disturbed the deep and eerie silence that, rather than falling on us during that dark path, crushed our heads.
About a hundred meters away there was a Federal-style house, the windows were dark and the property had an air of abandonment, as if its occupants had fled some time ago. I looked at the doctor, whose lips were pursed and his dark eyes glistening, as if lit from behind.
"Dazai," he said quietly as we walked towards the house, "you must not talk. You must not look anyone in the eye. If someone talks to you, do not say anything. Do not address them or respond. Do you understand?"
"Yes sir."
Mori knocked on the door, three short knocks, a pause, then three more: knock-knock-knock, knock-knock-knock.
When there was no immediate response, I sighed with relief, showing that intelligent smile that I used to wear in my youth whenever I felt more capable than him. "It's abandoned."
"No, it's just that they weren't expecting our visit."
Mori was always witty, chillingly intelligent. No matter how much the darkness of his room or the dead bodies in his basement scared me, it was always his mind that I should have feared the most.
"No visitors accepted after nine!" croaked an old woman dressed in black, with a lamp in her hands and held high illuminating our faces.
"I have come on a matter of extreme importance, so, if you don't mind, I would appreciate it if you would inform your employer of my presence."
Getting into the place was relatively easy. Only sweet words and a few coins from the doctor were enough for that lady to let us pass. It goes without saying how dismal the asylum was.
The doctor never told me the reason why we went to that place, he only said the words "to take care of some business" before leaving the house and forced me to move.
I was never able to understand the reason why I live, so at the age of fourteen I committed the sin of attempting against my own life. Despite being a person who does not like pain, back then I set my own body on fire waiting for divine rest. That caused Mori to take me under his care, putting bandages all over my body and worms on my head.
To understand my misfortunes, the first thing is to know that I had no escape, I never did.
As we climbed the stairs of the place, we could hear screams and moans from multiple people. Laughter and sobs. A cloying, nauseating, rotten smell also gained strength as we advanced.
When we reached almost the end of the hallway, we stopped at a huge wooden door. Mori took out a bunch of keys from one of his pockets, calmly going through them one by one. When he finally pushed the heavy door with his shoulder, the smell became much worse.
The room was tiny, with no furniture other than a bed placed two steps from the door. Beside him, on the floor, the smoky flame of a lamp was the only source of light.
There was a man lying in bed, under several layers of blankets and sheets, of which the top one only left his head and neck exposed. What I had before me was a man of monstrous proportions who must have weighed more than one hundred and fifty kilograms.
Then, while I leaned my back against a nearby wall, Ougai leaned over the bed and put his face close to the old man's swollen face to say loudly and loudly:
"Herman Melville! Captain!"
There was no answer.
"Melville, can you hear me?" the doctor asked.
He waited for an answer with his shoulders tense and his jaw clenched as the flies continued to buzz against the window pane. The heat was stifling, and it reeked of bleach.
"Do you know who I am, Melville? Do you know who has come to see you tonight?"
"Who...?" moaned the old man, as if to refute him.
"Ougai Mori!" answered. "My name is Mori."
"Mori!" the captain shouted.
His eyes, as if they had been released by the mention of that name, were infected by the restlessness of his tongue and began to move from one side of their sockets to the other, although refusing to concentrate on the doctor's face. They walked non-stop along the ceiling, where Mori's distorted shadow danced, the one projected by the floor lamp and hovering over Herman like a demonic spirit, dark, grotesque, enormous.
"So, you remember the name,” said the doctor.
The huge head nodded imperceptibly.
"God help me, of course I remember, it was all your fault, may the devil and his entire crew curse you a thousand times!"
Mori could only smile gracelessly.
"I've spoken to the manager of this place, and she assured me that to the best of her knowledge, you haven't said a single word about those years to anyone. That makes me think you've finally accepted the reality of your hallucinations. Look at you. Doesn't that make you a good man?"
A chill ran down my spine as I heard the words similar to the ones I used to hear.
"Don't even try," Herman spoke, "I know what I saw, Ougai. You don't need to convince me otherwise."
"Oh?" Mori crossed the room until he was incredibly close to the old man, adjusting his doctor's suit and fixing his hair, intimidating. "Haven't the last few years in this place fixed your head enough? There is only one truth, and it's not the one you claim to know."
A sigh.
"Now," Mori continued, "I have come here to ask for your consent."
Melville laughed, a sound as faint and crackling as autumn leaves under the footsteps of a large man.
"Admit it, Herman. You are dying, just a quick glance is enough to notice your deteriorating condition. You have no time left in this world. So, I would like to obtain your dead body for scientific purposes."
Melville looked at Mori with contempt, his old face wrinkled, and his mouth spit unpleasantly. His expression instantly distorted, small sobs began to come out of his mouth, his gaze drifted to the moldy ceiling of the room, visualizing something that perhaps only he saw.
"I don't know why you came here in full force to ask me questions to which you already know the answers. I don't know why you came, except to torment a sick old man. I don't know what pleasure my pain gives you, Mori. The only thing I'm capable of is ask is that you please have mercy on me."
The doctor ignored his diatribe, that anguished plea full of moans and whimpers. Without listening to him, he said:
"I think the worst mistake of your life was running away, Melville. You couldn't save them, not from me." Mori paused for a second, thinking about what to say next. A soft, calm smile appeared on his face, the kind that tells you a lot and at the same time hides everything from you. He began to recite: "The head is the most coveted prize. The first to arrive grabs it and tears it from the neck, and the still beating heart releases its blood and paints their alabaster bodies crimson."
"No." The bedridden man whispered. "No more, I beg you."
"Children, especially. Girls of twelve or thirteen years old. Girls in the prime of life, about to mature. Although sometimes they were smaller creatures, naked babies who screamed when they were thrown into hell. They are no longer human. "
Melville groaned after an uneasy silence disturbed only by the sound of flies.
I was still standing on the wall near the exit door, relatively close to the man. So, when her tearful gaze fell on the bandages on my arms, I felt bile running down my throat. The missing pieces of skin, now lost, made me feel a ghost sensation again.
I didn't know where this was going to go. And for the first time in my life, at that moment, my thoughts began to get out of control. You see, I am not a person who is easily surprised, quite the opposite. And in the case of Mori, that made me act and think the way he wanted, who forcibly replaced my beliefs with his, my heart almost stopped.
For a long time, there was nothing that scared me more than those cold, dark nights when the doctor worked late. Hours and hours locked in his basement, until around three in the morning, he suddenly came out and knocked on my bedroom door. He silently slipped inside, steps as light as feathers. And Mori has done many unpleasant things to me in the past, so many unspeakable things that I won't go into in detail, but those nights, when the knife lodged itself into my burned skin, slowly cutting off more and more pieces of me, I wanted to die.
The pain was indestructible and I never understood exactly what the purpose of that action was. The scars of my missing flesh will be forever. Therefore, in that moment, there in that small, disgusting room full of strange smells and the annoying buzzing of flies, my brain thought it was reaching a conclusion.
But I didn't like my thoughts, since my mind in those years was full of the perfect image of my savior. Still, my bandaged hand patted the revolver on my hip, just as a reminder.
Herman was certainly an unfortunate man. Despite that, his direct look into my dark eyes told me that he knew more than I did, and that was undoubtedly worrying.
The bedridden man did not look at him, but instead returned his gaze to the ceiling and the comfort that its yellowish and irregular surface offered him.
"I will never regret what I did, Mori. I did what I could to save them-"
"And where did that get you?" Mori laughed. "You've been locked up in this place for years."
Melville coughed, "I wouldn't be here if it weren't for you, monstrosity. How dare you even say something like that to me?"
I trembled in my place again. The man sighed while the doctor looked as calm as when he arrived, not even a drop of worry crossing his face.
"I didn't stop when you left. It didn't stop when you tried to help and then ran away like a coward. That day, I-"
Melville covered his ears with his filthy, chubby hands. He glared at Mori and then at me.
"Are you willing to say all this in front of the boy? How old is he, fourteen, fifteen?"
And even though I wasn't completely sure yet, the doctor slowly turned his head until he looked me in the eyes. It wasn't a normal look, he had his hands in his pockets and his eyes seemed to unearth my soul, his soft smile was still there. And I knew that if I said anything, it would be hurt. Retching attacked me.
"Okay, he's my helper. It's about time he became a man, if he isn't already."
"You are a monster." Melville barked contemptuously.
"So, would you be so kind as to sign the contract? You know, the consent."
"Never, not even in your wildest dreams will I sign such a paper. I will not let you do to me what you did to them, my body is not your property."
"What are you afraid of? You'll be dead by now anyway; you won't feel anything at all."
The man remained silent for a few seconds. The silence established a reign of terror where the only perpetrators were perhaps the cries of other patients in distant rooms.
It was the blissful calm before the storm, since less than a minute later the old man began to scream in despair.
The screams sounded hoarse and were almost incomprehensible, the words mixed with sobs and saliva. Mori didn't react, but I must admit that I was a little scared.
"Have mercy on me! End my suffering and my years of guilt! I'm tired of reliving those images over and over again in my head! I can't live this way! And now, after long years you come back here to sentence me to a fate worse than anything, even though I was dead."
The doctor did not answer. He didn't say a single word, and of course, neither did I. The moans continued.
"Get away from me! How could you do that to them?" Suddenly, Herman pointed in my direction again. "Boy! Run while you can!"
And finally, Mori seemed to react.
"Dazai, don't you dare listen to him. You know this is a man out of his mind."
"Don't play puritan now, 'doctor'. You and I know what you're capable of. Young man! Don't let me fool you!"
Mori massaged his nose, pretending to be tired.
"I have never met a person as exaggerated as you."
Melville's face turned red with anger, his voice bursting with hysteria.
"Someday you will die by hanging for your crimes, and on that day, I and everyone you harmed will finally be able to rest in peace!"
"What crimes are you referring to? Do you have evidence of any of them?"
Mori began to tense. He looked at the man's swollen face for a few seconds, picked up the lamp from the floor, and approached him. He grabbed the sheet covering the old man with both hands.
Herman's eyes slid to him and he whispered, "No."
However, he didn't move when Mori pulled at the bedding and I staggered back, unable to suppress a gasp.
Herman Melville was naked as a newborn, his body the same grayish tone as his face. I had never seen a human being so obese, although it wasn't that that made me recoil even further and gasp, it was the smell. The sweet aroma of rotting meat that I had detected earlier multiplied tenfold. I looked at the doctor, who in turn looked at the man with a gloomy face.
"No," he whimpered. "Do not touch me!"
Mori moved the lamp closer to the dying body. Under her was a huge wound that reached to her ribs. Bloody pus dripped from the edge of the hole and ran down his stomach. Writhing in the organic slime of Melville's violated torso, three maggots within the infected skin reared their repulsive heads.
The man began to cry again and inconsolably. He cursed. He let out a list of profanities in insults amid more heartbreaking sobs.
The doctor took a step back with a look of disgust and dismay. Then he looked at my tear-streaked face.
He put the lamp down and returned to Herman. With great feigned tenderness, she placed a hand on his forehead and looked into his eyes.
"Melville, Melville! How did this happen? Doesn't it hurt? How long have you been like this?"
With an overwhelming effort, a triumph of human will over inhuman circumstances, the old man raised his head a couple of inches from the pillow and whispered:
"How do you like my body like this? Now that you know you won't be able to use my flesh and feed on me, what will you do?"
Despite trying to keep his face completely flat with emotions, even I was able to see through my growing tears that Mori was gritting his teeth due to anger.
The doctor did not respond. He was silent for a moment, continuing to stroke his feverish brow. Then he slowly straightened up and nodded almost imperceptibly.
He turned to the dying man, confident, as always. He put one hand under Melville's head and with the other grabbed the pillow underneath.
I left it there. At that point, I stopped looking. I covered my teary eyes like any fourteen-year-old would do in that situation.
Mori was always someone who scared me, yes; but that didn't change the fact that it was the only world he had known those last few months. And as my savior, I held him on a despicable pedestal in my heart.
So, in that moment, when the truth sank into my bones and the man in front of me was being suffocated with a smelly pillow, my mind began to reproduce the horrible images that it itself was capable of creating.
After all, cannibalism was a crime for a reason.
Mori mistreated me in so many different ways that such an accusation seemed almost impossible, that was an irrefutable fact. But still, the thought of him cutting off my arms at night, corpses rotting to worms in his basement, experiments that I now knew weren't really for science, would haunt me to this day.
Time passes differently in places like The Guild Psychiatric, an hour seemed to last more than a day, and nights more than a year.
And in that endless time loop, my brain was only capable of thinking the most selfish things. If Mori had saved me, he had saved many, he was not a good man but he was not a murderer either. How could he have done something like that? Did he enjoy my body? Drain every last drop of it, abuse it to the point of exhaustion, wasn't that my price to pay for being saved? Was it not the duty of every rescued person to serve his savior until death? What did Mori tell me that time? I am his and only his. I am not my own person, since the moment I decided to give my life to God, it stopped belonging to me. So, was it really that bad?
No, but it was bad. Who did he think he was? Scars will remain on me forever, and he and I know well that I will never be able to live my life well after this, after all. I hate him, I hated him and I will hate him forever.
He knew I would never be able to sleep peacefully after that day, so why let him do it? If I had been a more sensitive person at the time, I would have cried for the people who suffered at his hands before me. But my selfish self only thought: Why me? Why me? What did I do to suffer this? I needed to stop that nonsense. Mori had to stop. I don't want him to touch me. It hurts me. It hurts.
It hurts.
Melville's screams in the background slowly began to diminish, however, I could feel a million people in the room. Too many situations in which I myself was the protagonist swung by my eyes, hiding the real silhouettes in front of me and covering my ears with words that I would never want to hear again.
And maybe it could have been the fear or the excitement of the moment, but I want to believe that my true self took control when Mori dropped the pillow on the face of the then-dead Herman Melville.
"Dazai?"
My eyes widened in horror. Now that he was done with the old man, what assured me that he wouldn't come back for me?
My attitude totally changed. I was not able to pronounce a word or make a single expression.
Mori turned around for a second to cover Melville's dead body again, ignoring me.
My trembling hands ignored how much my body hurt and itched, my right hand rested on my waist and the other wiped away the trail of tears on my cheeks.
Everything happened too quickly.
"Dazai? Osam-!"
My name sounded disgusting on his lips.
A gunshot rang out in the room, the smell of gunpowder spreading throughout the place. Smoke came out of the mouth of my revolver. Mori's head now with a bloody hole looked at me for a few seconds before falling to the ground. I could swear he said something to me in those seconds, but it wouldn't be real.
Almost instantly I dropped the revolver, it fell to the floor with a metallic sound on the wooden planks.
I screamed into the air and my hands ran madly and violently across my face, pulling my hair and scratching my cheeks. I tore off my bandages with my teeth. More tears came out uncontrollably, my vision began to blur.
And to this day, I still wonder if my reaction should have been that. Even though I cried inconsolably on the floor for endless hours and even though I was left alone forever.
It's not that I loved or missed the doctor; I do not mean that. I owe no loyalty to the man or his memory, even though the former has been missing for years and the latter consumes me. Not a day goes by that I don't think about him and our many adventures together, although that's not proof of love. Not a night goes by without me seeing his face, lean and handsome, in my head, or without hearing the distant echo of his voice in the acoustic perfection of my memory, but that proves nothing. Neither then nor now (nor ever), and I will repeat it and I will never repeat it enough, have I loved Mori.
There's something dark and morbid inside me that needs Ougai Mori to survive and at the same time doesn't want to see him again, and knows it won't.
I don't regret anything I did, and if I could, I would do it again.
I'm free now.