Miss Carminda and the Prince

Herophilus ran away from the Domingos Jorge Velho Public School and hid in the storm drain. From the darkness, quiet as a rock, he watched the machine rattle to a stop and identical humans jump out. They ran into the school and rushed back out carrying Mr. Aristides. Then they fed the teacher to the machine.

The principal was out of breath, eyes on the ambulance, hands shoving the students out the door. Put your things away and go home, classes are canceled today. What about the snake, Miss Carminda? Go straight home, I'll take care of the snake.

The principal waited for the last sixth grader to leave and took two tranquilizers. The police might show up any minute asking questions, and Miss Carminda would have to answer them calmly. The police always made her nervous. Any awkward answer, any hesitation in her voice, any shaking, and she might be considered a suspect and possibly have to go to jail for a crime she hadn't committed. Mygod, a coral snake was loose on the school grounds and Miss Carminda just stood there paralyzed, imagining melodramas. Iranildes, look up the number for the Center for Reptiles and Poisonous Animals in the phone book.

Miss Carminda collapsed in the armchair. It's nice to have a body, to let it fall down into a soft place, to feel your fingertips, and the soles of your feet. It's nice to yawn. The tranquilizers were kicking in, another miracle of science. If animals hadn't been sacrificed in laboratories, Mr. Aristides would say, medicine wouldn't be where it is today, and you, Miss Director, wouldn't have your pills. Write down the number, Iranildes, I'll call them myself, and you can go back to your office.

Miss Carminda stared at the phone number for the Center for Reptiles and Poisonous Animals. It's nice to fix your eyes on a number. Soon she'd ask the men to come capture the snake, real soon. Without slavery, Mr. Aristides, civilization wouldn't be where it is either, but people finally recognized slavery for what it was: a cruel anachronism.

He was smiling through his mustache in the teachers' photo gallery, above the metal filing cabinet. He would have liked to have been Doctor Aristides, biologist or paleontologist, Harvard Ph.D., research professor at Yale, author of scientific books. But the public school needed him more than Harvard, so he never had time to pursue a fellowship to study abroad. None of the three women he had married and divorced had been Miss Carminda. Thankgod, sighed the principal. It's nice to sigh. Mr. Aristides used to say he had never felt quite ready for a serious relationship with her. Thankgod. For a former actress whose portrait hung in the lobby of the Municipal Theater of Santa Cruz do Rio Pedroso, and a director of a respectable institute of learning, it would have been embarrassing to share a bed with a poor, alcoholic teacher, writer of science fiction stories without rhyme or reason which he never finished.

Mr. Aristides had a bad reputation in the city. It was well known that he would arrive at work drunk and refuel during regular working hours from a bottle of jurubeba, a hooch he kept in his mail slot. What no one knew, but Miss Carminda suspected, was that he got high on ether and benzene he stole from the school laboratory, laboratory in a manner of speaking. It was actually only the bathroom of a small, empty shed that Miss Carminda dreamt of transforming into a theater when the budget permitted. Mr. Aristides expanded the bathroom by sawing down a wall of rotten wood that separated it from the rest of the shed and making a new wall with formica dividers. An opening between the dividers served as passageway from the laboratory to the rest of the shed. The bathroom, that is, the laboratory, had a door that led out to the courtyard.

Miss Carminda didn't like to see the old bathroom cabinet fill up with drugs, much...