No Piece of Mind

It was raining outside in the expensive way.

Rain has several economic classes. Poor rain falls into your shoes. Middle-class rain ruins a picnic. Rich rain slides down twelve-foot windows overlooking the city while somebody in a satin dress pours cognac that costs more than a Chevrolet.

This was rich rain.

House Ape sat at a walnut chess table in the drawing room of the Hotel Armitage with his chin resting upon one hairy fist.

Across from him sat Marwood Prot.

Marwood Prot was dead, technically speaking, although the technical distinction had become increasingly difficult to defend whenever he got up and walked around.

Three days earlier somebody had removed his brain.

This was not, in itself, especially remarkable. People had been accusing Marwood Prot of lacking one for years. The remarkable part was what somebody had put back.

Marwood Prot moved his bishop.
"Check."

House Ape stared at the board.

Velma Vane stood behind him in a green satin gown. Ruby DeLuca leaned against the opposite chair smoking through an ivory holder. Clara Finch occupied the middle, where she had been instructed to watch House Ape's pupils for signs of neurological distress.

None of them knew anything about neurological distress.

Clara had nevertheless been watching magnificently.

House Ape moved his king.

Marwood Prot immediately moved his rook.

"Check."

House Ape scratched his ear.

"You certain you've never played this game before?"

"I don't even like chess."

"Interesting."

"I like bass guitars."

"Also interesting."

"And killing people."

"Less diagnostic."

Marwood Prot moved another piece.

"Checkmate."

House Ape looked at the board.

The game had lasted eleven minutes.

"Again."

They played again.

This time House Ape lasted nine.

The third game required six.

Ruby exhaled smoke.

"He's getting better."

"No," said Clara. "House Ape is getting worse."

House Ape glared at her.

Clara smiled.

It was one of the privileges of being indispensable.

Marwood Prot leaned backward. A long horizontal scar crossed his forehead from temple to temple. Whoever had stitched it had approached human anatomy with the aesthetic standards of a sailmaker.

House Ape opened the folder on the table.

Inside was a photograph.

JOSÉ RAÚL CAPABLANCA
Cuban.
Chess grandmaster.
Former world champion.
Alive.
Presumably.

House Ape turned the photograph toward Marwood Prot.

Marwood Prot stared at it. Something happened behind those yellow eyes.

"I know him."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

"That's him."

"I know."

"You just said you didn't."

"I know that too."

House Ape closed the folder.

"Girls," he said, "we have a problem."

Ruby raised an eyebrow.

"We've got a corpse with a Cuban chess champion's brain."

House Ape shook his head.

"No."

He pointed at the chessboard.

"We've got a Cuban chess champion with a corpse's face."

That was considerably worse.

The case had arrived at the offices of House Ape Investigations, although the lettering on the frosted glass still read UFC.

This stood for Underwear Filing Clan.

Years earlier House Ape had discovered that criminals frequently lied about money, women, murder, religion and politics, but almost never lied convincingly while someone was holding their underwear.

Consequently the agency maintained seventeen steel filing cabinets containing intimate evidence from half the criminal population of Chicago.

Ruby handled seduction.
Velma handled society.
Clara handled everything requiring intelligence.
House Ape, while dreaming, handled the three of them.

Marwood Prot had walked in at ten-thirty Tuesday morning carrying a paper sack.

"I think somebody stole my brain."

House Ape looked at the sack.

"That it?"

"Lunch."

"Oh."

Marwood Prot explained that he'd awakened earlier that morning in an abandoned surgical theater with a headache, a fresh scar and an irresistible desire to play the Queen's Indian Defense.

Before the operation he hadn't known what the Queen's Indian Defense was.

Afterward he couldn't stop thinking about it.
He also had memories of Havana.
He remembered sunlight outside a window he'd never seen.
He remembered tournaments he'd never attended.
He remembered calculating knight positions while eating soup.
Most disturbingly, he had developed an overwhelming preference for quiet positional play.

"I used to be exciting," Marwood complained.
House Ape looked at him.

"You still have a face like a municipal disaster."

"Thank you."

"So why come to us?"

Marwood lowered his voice.

"Because yesterday I dreamed in Spanish."

House Ape stopped smiling.

House Ape knew three words of Spanish.
Two were tequila.
The third was also tequila but pronounced with confidence.

So he called Clara.
Clara discovered the first connection by lunchtime.

A neurologist named Dr. Percival Blott had recently been expelled from the International Society of Experimental Cerebral Transplantation.

This sounded impressive until Clara discovered that the International Society of Experimental Cerebral Transplantation consisted of Dr. Blott, his cousin Eugene and a woman in Milwaukee who thought she'd subscribed to Popular Mechanics.

Blott had nevertheless developed an apparatus capable of keeping a human brain alive outside the body.

That was the good news.
The bad news was that he had subsequently disappeared.
The worse news was that José Raúl Capablanca's brain had disappeared at approximately the same time.

THE UNFORTUNATE BUSINESS OF MR. CAPABLANCA'S BRAIN

By Thursday morning, Clara had discovered how José Raúl Capablanca had lost his brain.

This was impressive because Capablanca himself hadn't discovered it yet.

He was alive in a private hospital outside Paris, where six doctors were telling reporters that the former chess champion was suffering from nervous exhaustion.

Doctors use nervous exhaustion the way hotels use renovation. It can mean almost anything, but you're probably better off not seeing what's behind the curtain.

Clara had seen behind the curtain.
She came into the office carrying a telegram, a medical journal and the expression she normally wore when House Ape had been left unsupervised near machinery.

"He's alive."

House Ape looked up.

"Who?"

"Capablanca."

House Ape looked toward Marwood Prot. Prot was sitting on the radiator doing a crossword puzzle in Spanish.

"Then whose brain is that?"

"Capablanca's."

House Ape considered this.

"I see."

"No, you don't."

"No."

Clara dropped the journal on his desk. The article was by Dr. Percival Blott.

Its title was:

THE MIGRATION OF GENIUS:
A PRACTICAL APPROACH TO CEREBRAL REHOUSING
House Ape read the title twice.

"I don't like the word practical there."

"You shouldn't."

Blott believed civilization had made a fundamental mistake. For thousands of years, humanity had permitted its greatest minds to die inside the people who owned them.

Newton had died with Newton's brain.
Mozart had died with Mozart's brain.
Leonardo da Vinci had died with Leonardo da Vinci's brain.

According to Blott, this was criminal waste.

"Imagine," he had written, "if the brain of Beethoven had been preserved and installed successively in younger, healthier bodies."

House Ape stopped reading.

"Would the new fellow still be deaf?"

Clara stared at him.

"It's a reasonable question."

"Keep reading."

Blott proposed a future in which great brains would be treated like municipal property.

Scientists could be transferred.
Mathematicians could be transferred.
Statesmen could be transferred.
Great artists could continue producing masterpieces indefinitely.
Human civilization would no longer be limited by mortality.

House Ape turned the page.

"What's this photograph?"

"Blott."

"He looks like a dentist who poisons squirrels."

"He was a neurologist."

"Same tie."

There was, however, a problem with Blott's theory. Nobody particularly wanted him to remove their brain. This had slowed the research considerably.

Then José Raúl Capablanca came to Paris.

Between Capablanca's statement in the telegram and a packet of Blott's notes Clara had obtained from his cousin Eugene, the sequence of events was unpleasantly clear.

Capablanca had been invited to participate in an exhibition match against twenty-seven opponents simultaneously. Blott attended and watched Capablanca dismantle twenty-six human beings and one accountant in less than four hours.

Blott was transfixed.

Here, he decided, was a brain worth saving.
Not eventually.
Immediately.

Great scientific discoveries are often separated from serious felonies by enthusiasm.

Blott had enthusiasm.
He also had chloroform.

Capablanca remembered arriving at his hotel.
He remembered ordering tea.
He remembered somebody knocking at the door and announcing room service.

The hotel did not provide room service.
This should have concerned him.
Instead, he opened the door.

Three men in white coats came in carrying a stretcher.

Capablanca awoke the following afternoon with an incision around his scalp, a tremendous headache and an unexpected enthusiasm for daytime radio.

The doctors examined him.

He could walk.
He could speak.
He knew his name.

But when somebody placed a chessboard in front of him, he attempted to eat a knight.

The hospital immediately announced nervous exhaustion.

International chess officials announced that Mr. Capablanca required privacy.

A Cuban representative announced that absolutely nothing unusual had occurred.
This was how everyone knew something unusual had occurred.

House Ape lowered the telegram.

"What's in Capablanca now?"
Clara turned another page.
"A replacement."
"What replacement?"
"They don't know."
"Whose?"
"They don't know."

House Ape stared at her.

"You mean somebody stole Capablanca's brain and left another brain so nobody would notice?"
"Apparently."
"Did anybody notice?"
"He tried to eat a knight."
"Fair."

Blott transported Capablanca's brain to Chicago inside a device of his own invention called the Portable Cerebral Preservation Cabinet. It resembled a cocktail shaker connected to a Buick battery.

The customs declaration described its contents as:

PICKLED CABBAGE — SCIENTIFIC
This was apparently sufficient.

Blott now possessed one of the finest strategic minds in human history.
He lacked only a body.
He tried advertising.

WANTED: HEALTHY MALE BODY.
BRAIN OPTIONAL.
EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY FOR ADVANCEMENT.

The newspaper refused to print it.

Then Marwood Prot arrived.

Not voluntarily.

At eleven-fifteen on Monday night Marwood Prot had been struck by a delivery truck carrying thirty-seven cases of canned peaches.

The truck was traveling forty miles an hour.
Prot got up.
The driver fainted.
Marwood walked into a tavern and ordered a beer.

An hour later he was struck by another vehicle.
Prot got up again.

By midnight he'd been stabbed twice during an argument concerning jukebox etiquette.
He complained that the knife was cold.

Dr. Blott heard about Marwood Prot.
A body that obstinately refused to die was precisely what science required.

Prot was abducted at one-thirty in the morning.

He was offered chloroform. Prot drank it. Nobody had told him what it was for.

At two-fifteen Blott opened Prot's skull.
At two-seventeen he encountered his second problem.

Prot's brain was perfectly healthy. Blott hadn't expected that. He had assumed appearances were diagnostic.

For several minutes the great neurologist stood between two operating tables contemplating the ethical dilemma before him.

On one table lay Capablanca's brain.
On the other lay Prot.

Blott had already committed kidnapping, assault, international cerebral theft and several violations of French customs law.
Ethics had arrived rather late.

He removed Prot's brain.
Then he installed Capablanca's.

"Why Marwood Prot?" Ruby asked.

Clara shrugged.

"Blott needed a durable host."

Ruby looked across the office.

Prot was now reading the financial page upside down.

"And Prot qualified?"

"According to Blott's notes: exceptionally robust organism, low apparent intellectual utilization, abundant cranial capacity."

Marwood looked up.

"What's that mean?"

House Ape took the notes from Clara.

"It means you have a magnificent skull."
Marwood smiled.

"I always thought so."

Clara continued.

The operation succeeded. Mostly.

Tuesday Morning Post-OP

Marwood woke at four-ten Tuesday morning.

His first words were in Spanish.
His second words were:
"Where is my queen's bishop?"
His third words concerned the quality of the stitching.

Blott was ecstatic. He had done it. Human genius was portable. Death had been defeated.

Civilization had entered a new age.

Then Prot punched him through a medicine cabinet.

Science frequently has difficulty retaining its test subjects.

Marwood escaped.
Blott fled.
And somewhere during the confusion, an orderly picked up the glass container holding Prot's original brain and placed it beside several jars scheduled for removal.

By Tuesday afternoon, nobody knew where it was.
This included the people who had sent it somewhere.

Back to the agency...

House Ape leaned back.

"So Blott wasn't trying to make Marwood smarter."

"No."

"He was trying to make Capablanca immortal."

"Yes."

"And now Capablanca is inside Prot."

"Apparently."

House Ape looked at Marwood.

Marwood looked back.

"How do we prove it?"

Clara smiled.

For the first time that morning, House Ape didn't like her smile.

She reached into a case. Then she placed two objects on his desk: a chess clock, and a chessboard.

House Ape looked at them.
Then at Marwood.
Then back at Clara.

"Why am I playing him?"

"Because you claim you're good."

"I am good."

"Wonderful."

Marwood stood.

Something subtle changed in his face.
The vacant yellow eyes sharpened.
His shoulders straightened.
He looked at the chessboard the way a starving man looks through a bakery window.

"White or black?" Marwood asked.

House Ape swallowed.

"Black."

Prot sat down.

Clara started the clock.

House Ape lasted eleven minutes. And that was how they knew.

House Ape stared at Prot.

Prot stared back.

There was something House Ape didn't like about the arrangement.

There were several things, actually, beginning with Prot's complexion and proceeding rapidly toward the fact that a Cuban chess champion was apparently living behind it.

But one thing bothered him professionally.

"If that's Capablanca's brain," he said, "why are you Marwood Prot?"

Marwood frowned.

"Because I'm Marwood Prot."

"No, you're not."

"I am."
"Your brain's Cuban."

"My brain was stolen."

"That's my point."

Prot considered this. Then he became angry.

"Who else would I be?"

House Ape looked at Clara.

Clara was already reading Blott's notes.

"Here."

She placed three typewritten pages on the desk.

Across the top Blott had written:
RESIDUAL SOMATIC IDENTITY FOLLOWING TOTAL CEREBRAL SUBSTITUTION

House Ape read the first paragraph. Then the second. Then part of the third.

"Can you translate this into English?"

Clara took the papers.

"Blott discovered that replacing the brain doesn't completely replace the person."

"Where's the rest of him?"

Clara pointed at Prot.

"There."

House Ape looked.

"Be specific."

"The spinal cord. Peripheral nerves. Autonomic nervous system. Possibly muscle tissue. Blott believed the body retains what he called a somatic identity field."

"That's ridiculous."

"You're a chimpanzee with a private detective license."

"Fair."

Clara continued reading.

According to Blott, the human brain contained language, reason, calculation, learned knowledge and the sort of memory that could tell you precisely what your mother looked like.

But the body contained something older.
Preference.
Aversion.
Habit.
Appetite.
Fear.
Desire.
Emotional association.

And, buried beneath all of them, the stubborn conviction of being oneself.

Blott had discovered this accidentally while transplanting the brain of a dachshund into a cocker spaniel.

The resulting animal remembered where the dachshund had buried three bones but refused to answer to the dachshund's name. It also continued chasing the cocker spaniel's mailman.

Science had been disappointed.
The mailman considerably more so.

"So Marwood's still in there?" Velma asked.

"Yes," said Clara. "More than Blott expected."

Prot pointed at himself.

"I could have told him that."

Clara ignored him.

"Capablanca's brain contains Capablanca's memories. But Marwood's nervous system retained something Blott hadn't anticipated. Not memories exactly. Impressions of memories."

House Ape looked at her.

"What's the difference?"

"Marwood knows who he is. He knows what he likes. He knows whom he loves, whom he hates, where he belongs. He remembers experiences without necessarily remembering the experience itself."

"That's ridiculous."

"You're a chimpanzee with a private detective license."

"We've covered that."

Ruby poured herself a drink.

"Give us an example."

Clara looked at Marwood.

"Your mother."

Marwood's face darkened.

"What about her?"

"Do you remember her?"

"Of course."

"What did she look like?"

Prot opened his mouth.

Nothing came out.

He closed it again.

"Disapproving."

"What color was her hair?"

Marwood thought.

"Hair-colored."
"Her eyes?"

"She had them."

Clara turned to House Ape.

"That's Marwood's memory. He can't retrieve the picture, but he knows exactly how he felt about her."

"She called me Woody," Marwood said.

Everybody looked at him.

Prot scowled.

"I hated that."

"There," said Clara.

House Ape considered this.

"And Capablanca?"

"His memories are intact. Marwood can remember Capablanca learning chess from his father. He can see the room. He remembers the board. But Marwood's nervous system receives the memory and knows it didn't happen to him."

"So Prot remembers things he can't see, and sees things he doesn't remember."

Clara smiled.

"Exactly."

"That's terrible."

"Neurologically, it's fascinating."

"Same thing."

Nobody said anything.

That was considerably stranger.

House Ape looked at Marwood.

"That happen all the time?"

"All the time."

"What else do you remember?"

Marwood stared toward the window.

"Havana."

"You've been to Havana?"

"No."

"How do you know?"

"I hate Havana."

"You've never been there."
"I know."

"Then why do you hate it?"

Prot shrugged.

"Too hot."

House Ape turned back to Clara.

"This isn't helping."

"It explains why he knows his brain was stolen. Capablanca's brain supplies memories Marwood can see clearly. Prot's body supplies the identity that tells him those memories belong to somebody else."

House Ape considered this.

"So Capablanca knows he's Capablanca."

"Yes."

"Marwood knows he's Marwood."

"Yes."

"And they're both right."

"More or less."

"Who gets to decide what they have for lunch?"

From Marwood came the immediate answer.

"Ropa vieja."

There was a pause.

Then his face twisted in disgust.

"I hate ropa vieja."

Clara smiled.

"There you are."

Proving was not the same thing as fixing.

Marwood wanted his brain back. Capablanca, insofar as anyone could determine where Prot ended and Capablanca began, wanted considerably more explanation.

House Ape accepted the case.

This was partly professional responsibility and partly because he had just lost to a dead man at chess.
The first order of business was finding Dr. Blott.

The second was finding Prot's brain.

Nobody yet understood that the second order of business had already been somewhere near a trout.

Velma attended an auction at the Museum of Surgical Curiosities wearing a silver gown and acquired a preserved medulla oblongata, three telephone numbers and an invitation to Major Harrington's country estate.

Ruby infiltrated a nightclub called The Frontal Lobe, where cocktails were named after neurological disorders. The Ape had spun records there a few times. He had his hobbies.

Ruby drank two Cerebral Hemorrhages and woke up with the address of a warehouse on Wabash Avenue written across her thigh.

Clara went to the library. She accomplished more than either of them. The warehouse contained Blott's laboratory.

There they found the machine.

They also found a receipt.
ONE HUMAN BRAIN — STORAGE
CHICAGO MUNICIPAL AQUARIUM
TANK 14

House Ape stared at it.

"Why would anyone store a brain in an aquarium?"

Clara shrugged.

"Temperature control."

"For the brain or the fish?"

"The brain."

"Then the fish are incidental."

"Entirely."

House Ape considered this.

"I wouldn't like that if I were a fish."

"You aren't."

"That's why I'm able to consider their position objectively."

Clara folded her arms.

"A refrigerated aquarium provides a stable temperature and continuous circulation."

"For fish."

"And apparently brains."

"At the same temperature?"

"Within reason."

House Ape looked troubled.

"I don't like a medical theory in which a trout and Marwood Prot have identical storage requirements."

Clara smiled.

"You've met Prot."

House Ape considered that.

"The trout may have grounds for complaint."

"I'll notify them."

"Do. We may need witnesses."

Tank 14 contained six trout, an octopus named Gerald but no brain.

Gerald knew more than he was saying.

Ruby distracted the night watchman.

Velma distracted the curator.

House Ape attempted to interrogate Gerald.

Clara found the shipping ledger.

The brain had already been transferred to a refrigerated truck belonging to Midwestern Educational Meats.

They followed the truck.

It led to a girls' finishing school in Evanston.
The finishing school led to a funeral home.
The funeral home led to a bowling alley.
The bowling alley led to a Lithuanian delicatessen.
The delicatessen led nowhere.
House Ape bought a sandwich.

At approximately four-thirty that afternoon, Velma noticed a small glass jar behind the pickled herring.

Inside was a label.
PROT, E. — BRAIN — DO NOT EAT

The jar was empty.

The proprietor remembered it.

"A fellow bought that yesterday."

"What fellow?"

"Short."

"How short?"

"Normal short."

"Anything distinctive?"

"He had an ostrich."

That narrowed things considerably.

The ostrich belonged to Professor Leopold Sneed, proprietor of Sneed's Traveling Museum of Scientific Impossibilities.

They found Sneed outside Joliet. He confessed immediately. He had purchased Prot's brain believing it to be the preserved brain of Napoleon Bonaparte.

"What did you do with it?" asked Clara.

Sneed looked embarrassed. There are many kinds of embarrassment. This was the kind involving an ostrich.

The ostrich's name was Mildred.
Mildred had eaten Prot's brain.

House Ape removed his hat.

"So that's it."

"Not exactly," said Sneed.

Mildred had subsequently escaped.

"Where?"

"Stockyards."

House Ape put his hat back on.

They drove to the stockyards. There they learned that Mildred had been mistaken for an unusually ambitious turkey and loaded aboard a truck bound for a rendering plant.

They reached the rendering plant seventeen minutes too late.

There are certain moments when even a private detective understands that a case has reached its natural conclusion.

House Ape looked at the smokestack.

Ruby looked at House Ape.

Velma looked at Ruby.

Clara looked at the paperwork.

Nobody looked at Marwood.

Finally Prot said: "My brain?"

House Ape lit a cigar.

"Industrial accident."

"Can we get it back?"

House Ape considered explaining rendering.

Instead he said: "No."

They returned to the Hotel Armitage. Rain slid down the windows. Someone poured another cognac.

Marwood Prot sat at the chessboard staring at his hands.

"So I'm Capablanca."

Clara shook her head.

"Not exactly."

"I'm Marwood Prot."

"Not exactly."

Marwood sighed.

"Then who am I?"

House Ape moved a pawn.

"That's the trouble with identity. Everybody thinks there's an answer."

Prot looked at him.

House Ape shrugged.

"Mostly there's paperwork."

For the first time all evening, Marwood smiled. Then he moved his knight.

House Ape frowned. He hadn't seen that coming.

Three moves later, his queen was trapped.
Five moves after that, his position collapsed.

Marwood leaned back.

"Checkmate."

House Ape stared at the board.
Ruby laughed.
Velma applauded.
Clara poured herself a drink.

Outside, the rich rain continued falling upon people who could afford roofs.

House Ape reached into his jacket and produced twenty dollars.

He pushed it across the table.

"Best of seven."

Marwood smiled.

"That was seven."

House Ape looked toward Clara.

"Was it?"

"Nine, actually."
House Ape pushed another twenty across.

Prot pocketed it.

He was adapting.
He would have to.

Somewhere inside that long-haired, greenish corpse lived the strategic mind of José Raúl Capablanca.

Prot's original brain, meanwhile, had passed through an ostrich named Mildred and subsequently become an ingredient in industrial fertilizer.

It wasn't the ending anybody wanted.

But endings are like brains: you generally don't appreciate the one you've got until somebody replaces it.

House Ape reset the pieces.

"Again."

Marwood opened with a pawn.

House Ape immediately knew he was in trouble.

Behind them, Ruby, Velma and Clara settled in to watch.

And on the desk beside the cognac, Clara placed a fresh manila folder.

She typed the label herself:
Marwood PROT / CAPABLANCA
BRAIN — UNRECOVERABLE
CASE CLOSED

Then, after thinking about it, she added:

DO NOT FILE UNDER OSTRICH.

EPILOGUE — 1942

Five years later, José Raúl Capablanca sat at a chessboard in the Manhattan Chess Club. He no longer ate the pieces.

This represented considerable progress. The doctors had called his recovery remarkable. The chess world had been less enthusiastic.

Capablanca could play again. Not particularly well. He knew how the pieces moved. He understood castling. He had even developed a respectable Queen's Gambit, although nobody could explain why the greatest natural chess player who ever lived now required twenty minutes to find moves he once made while discussing the weather.

Whatever part of José Raúl Capablanca had remained outside his original brain had apparently remembered that chess mattered.

It had not remembered why.
People blamed his health.
People are helpful that way.

Capablanca reached for a rook.

Then he stopped.

Something inside his skull hurt.

Across the room, a clock ticked.

Five years earlier, in Chicago, Dr. Percival Blott had placed an unidentified brain inside José Raúl Capablanca's head because an empty skull would have attracted attention.

Blott had been correct about that.

He had been less correct about everything else.

Capablanca collapsed beside the chessboard.

In Chicago, Clara Finch unfolded the morning newspaper.
She read one paragraph twice.

Then she walked to the seventeenth filing cabinet and pulled out a folder.

Marwood PROT / CAPABLANCA

House Ape looked up from his desk.

"What?"

"Capablanca died."

Marwood Prot was sitting by the window.

He had never exactly joined the agency. After the business with his brain, he simply kept coming back until one day there was a desk with his name on it.

Nobody admitted ordering the desk.

Marwood looked over. For several seconds he said nothing.

"How?"

"Cerebral hemorrhage."

Marwood touched the long scar across his forehead.

House Ape watched him.

"So what does that mean?"

Clara looked at Prot.
Then at the newspaper.
Then at the file.

"I don't know."

She put the folder back.

Prot returned to his chess problem.

He solved it in eleven seconds.

House Ape had been working on it since breakfast.