Werewolf of Paris (10 page)

You don't know everything? Why, that phrase was the beginning and the end of mysticism.

“What do you think of religion?” he asked Le Pelletier.

“Moi? Je m'en fous pas mal,” was Le Pelletier's coarse appreciation of that branch of the humanities.

“I mean,” said Aymar, “what for example do you think of…an afterlife?”

Le Pelletier smiled wryly. “That old question? I didn't think people ever brought that up nowadays.”

“Then you think it's settled?”

“Look here,” said Le Pelletier. “Here's my watch.” He drew forth his timepiece. “If I wind it, it marks time. It exists. It is alive. If the spring breaks, it stops. It no longer marks the hour. It is dead. Time doesn't exist for it. Same with you when your mainspring is gone.”

“And nothing, after that?” said Aymar.

“Nothing, and lucky for us that that's so,” Le Pelletier declared. “Imagine being able to mark the passage of time while you lie in your coffin for thousands of years. Wouldn't be funny that, would it?”

“I hadn't thought of it that way,” Aymar said softly. His mind was filled with the image of his aunt as she lay in her coffin. Pale, faintly smiling, virginal. Was she marking time? Counting second after second?

“You have allowed your grief to get the better of you,” the notary said sympathetically.

Aymar sighed: “Do you believe,” he asked, “that a dog can sense when death is approaching one of the inmates of the house, and that he will then bay lugubriously?”

Le Pelletier looked up suspiciously. “Me, I'm a believer in science. I have nothing to do with superstitions. I'm a positivist with Comte.”

“But,” Aymar objected, “might not science discover that dogs are capable of sensing the near demise of some person who is close to them?”

“What are you driving at, anyhow?”

Aymar hesitated. Here he was talking as his aunt used to talk, while the rôle of the skeptic which had formerly been his was played by Le Pelletier. “Frankly,” he said at last, “something of the sort happened here at my aunt's death and has left me shuddering still.”

“Nerves, just nerves,” said Le Pelletier with confidence. “Everyone has moments when he can no longer see clearly. Grief blinds one. You will get over it.”

And as a matter of fact, Aymar did get over it. Summer came and Josephine, Françoise and the baby went out to Mme Didier's property. Aymar was to follow just as soon as he could dispose of the apartment in the city. He did not think it necessary to keep it up. The women could stay on the farm where Guillemin the métayer made living cheap with his lush garden and his basse-cour overflowing with hens and pigs, rabbits and sheep. As for himself, Aymar might provide himself with an inexpensive pied-à-terre somewhere in the town, but he would spend most of his time in the country too.

He could not make up his mind whether to obey his aunt or to forget her wishes. Either way he envisaged a path of pain. In truth, life no longer held any possibility of pleasure. He could not bring himself to labor for the oppressed or to fight the administration of the Little Napoleon who was dusting off the throne of France. At times a prey to the fear of death, at other moments longing for the peace of the grave, which in the moral world is the universal solvent as water is in the physical world—thus he tossed about on his bed of painful indecision.

Would he, could he really study for the Church? What would his life then be like? He had the courage, one day, during a sudden shower, to step into a nearby church. When his eyes had become accustomed to the darkness, he examined with a certain curiosity the altars with their crosses and statues, the candles flickering in dozens of dark red glasses.

A priest came walking down the aisle. With sudden resolve, Aymar approached him. “Mon père,” he said in a low voice, “may I speak to you for a while?”

“Do you wish to confess?” the priest asked briskly, ready to retire into a nearby booth.

“No, no. Just a few questions I'd like to ask.”

“Certainly.”

Aymar was for a moment at a loss how to begin. Then he asked: “Do you enjoy your work? Pardon me, I know it is a bold question, and you need not answer it, if you are not so inclined.”

The priest laughed with a deep rugged voice. Altogether he was a healthy, robust fellow, most likable and certainly not in the least wan, pale or monastical. A joie de vivre emanated from his sturdy body, visibly sturdy despite his soutane. His eyes, his mouth showed lines eager to gather into smiles.

They talked. The priest explained his work. He had a rather cold, factual way of looking at things. He explained how he liked to perform mass, and went into details about various differences. He spoke of his literary ambitions. He wanted to write about the Bolandists and their vast labors interrupted by the Revolution. Did Monsieur know about the astronomical work of the Jesuits in China, their remarkable architectural constructions? In this day when the Church was being attacked so savagely, it was good to remember what science and art owed to the Church. And greater glories were to come. He meant to be there to share them.

His eagerness was infectious. Aymar, too, wanted to be there.

“It will be the Church that will some day lead man out of this economic muddle,” he asserted. “You will see. Rome, disappointed everywhere by unfaithful dynasties, will put its strength behind socialism. Then you will see a new era dawn for man.”

In succeeding interviews, Aymar became more and more friendly with the priest and more and more willing to become a part of this vast organization whose history was greater than that of any country. One day, he said: “I want to become a priest. What shall I do first?”

The priest shook his head: “Not you.”

Aymar said: “It is true. Hitherto I have been hostile, but you have explained much to me.”

Still the priest shook his head.

“You think,” said Aymar, “that my resolution will not last? Perhaps you are right. And still I mean to prepare myself for ordination. In fact, I must.”

“You don't understand,” the priest said softly. “You limp. You cannot celebrate mass while physically defective.”

Aymar recalled having heard that long before, but still he was stricken. Suddenly he wanted badly to become a priest, now that the possibility had been snatched from him. He explained to the priest how, at first annoyed by his aunt's last wish, he had gradually grown more anxious to fulfill it.

“Wait a moment,” the priest said. He left and returned with a magazine. He found the advertisement he was looking for. “Pierre-Paul Sgambati, advocate, 165, rue Saint Honoré, au premier. Correspondence bureau for all the Dicastery offices at Rome.”
*

“Go see this man,” he said. “Look, see this list of things he does. Procures authorization to bless rosaries, crosses, medals with the indulgences of St Bridget. Secures permission for a bald priest to wear a wig when saying mass, for a priest to invest his personal fortune for profit, etcetera, etcetera. And here: Dispensation for missing left eye for ordination. It will cost you heavy, business with Rome always does, but you may secure what you want.”

“Why, that's ridiculous,” cried Aymar. “Shameful!”

“Well,” said the priest and shrugged his shoulders. “Some priests here have objected, too. But Rome is big and complicated. It costs you money here too, no matter what you may want in the courts of justice. Think of the lawyer who has studied to know all the numerous offices at Rome and the secretaries and the paper and ink and whatnot. I guess St Peter didn't dream of this. But then life is ever becoming more complicated. The simple splits, doubles itself, quadruples itself, becomes a maze.”

Aymar could not take the news so matter-of-factly. He thought the question over for many days, but unable to face the humiliation of obtaining a dispensation for his crippled legs, he ceased to go to see his friend the priest, and at last determined to drop the matter, for the time being at least.

He had had many bitter pills to swallow in his life. And more than ever recently. What was this world, anyhow, that delighted in mocking man for his ignorance? Was there mystery to it or was it all plain? Why was he a cripple now, and so many of his comrades at the barricades still alive and healthy, untouched by a single bullet? Why did his aunt wish him to be a priest, while the Church rejected him? Why, if he despised the Church, was he shocked to discover a streak of business in it? And finally, there was something a little more than coincidental in this priest telling him how to get around the law of the Church, a few days after the notary had told him how to get around the law of the State. Living and dead, sacred and profane, all were amenable to money and guile.

Despite his increasing melancholia, he managed to dispose of his apartment lease to good advantage and packed off the furniture to the country. One day he stood in the empty apartment and said good-bye to all that he had experienced within these walls. He was annoyed to discover that he was not so deeply impressed as he expected or even as he would have liked to be. The walls meant nothing to him. The window where he used to sit, deprived of its curtains and of its window-cushions, and without the chair, which had been his by virtue of adoption, seemed like any other window. A silly comparison came to his mind and caused him disgust:
the impersonality of a skeleton
. His aunt, too, would lose the habiliments of her flesh and would be like that window, meaningless to him. What happened to bodies when they died? Doctors must know, he cogitated, with all those gruesome autopsies they have to perform. The afterlife? Was that the afterlife?

As he ruminated on in this dismal fashion, his eye caught with a start a brass object. Half hidden behind one wing of the door, it had apparently escaped the eyes of the packers only at the last moment, for the ticket on it showed that it had not been entirely overlooked. This brass object, Aymar recognized it with strange emotion, was the vessel in which his aunt had kept her holy water. It was a small brass bowl, hammered into the shape of a seashell and provided with a cover depicting some indefinable Biblical scene. Attached to a ring at the side was a short length of chain and suspended from the chain a so-called goupillon, a fox-tail made of brass and shaped like a small scepter. The head drilled with many holes was intended to gather water and release it in a spray when the instrument was flicked with the hand.

And all the things that had almost taken on the mistiness of unreality, of things remembered from a dream, came back with all their colors and outlines sharp and fresh. His aunt sending Josephine around the corner to fetch some holy water and the storm and—what was the name of that priest?—Pitamont, yes, and Mère Kardec's and the woman coming out of that room with her pail full of bloodied water, and that terrible night when the baby had howled and his aunt had died.

The apartment that a moment ago had seemed to contain no meaning was now replete with memories. They seemed to peel off the silk-covered walls, they swirled around him. In the gathering twilight the shadows took on life, stepped out threateningly from their corners, reached at him from behind so that he turned around suddenly with a distinct feeling that someone was behind him. He grappled with a hostile atmosphere that surrounded him with menaces. There came the echo of distant baying, growing louder, reverberating through the empty halls, filling his ears.

Stricken with horror, he dashed out as fast as he could. Down two flights of stairs to the hall and out of the hall into the street where his fiacre was waiting for him with his bags packed for travel. His chest was filled with a wild cry for help which he did not dare utter. One more step and he would be in the safety of his cab. Instead, he found himself rolling over and over on the curb and grappling with an adversary.

It was Maître Le Pelletier, the stunted, sallow notary, who rose with his mouth full of dust and curses. Then he recognized his assailant: “You, Galliez?” and extended a brown, bony hand to help him up. “What the deuce has come over you? Are you gone quite mad?”

“I have only a few minutes to catch a train,” said Galliez breathless, brushing dust from his clothes. “Come with me?”

“No, thanks. Sorry but I've business elsewhere. You'd better hurry and not miss your train.”

“Well, then, a thousand pardons, friend,” and Aymar mounted into the fiacre. At the station he had a good hour to wait and wonder, before his train pulled out.

Truly he was going mad.

*
Political clubs, severely suppressed at this point, nevertheless continued as casual café meetings.

*
I must apologize to the reader for a possible anachronism. Who the advocate was to whom Aymar was referred, I cannot say. Pierre-Paul Sgambati did not open his office at the above mentioned address until some five years later. See
l'Observateur Catholique
, Paris, 1857. This is the nearest my research came to finding the advocate's name.

Chapter Six

S
ays Galliez:

“There are mornings on which one wakes with the shreds of a dream cobwebbing the cogs of our daytime minds. One was asleep and in a different world. One was sunk in a different medium. Slowly one comes back to daylight and its world of daylight logic, but the taste of the dream lingers on, suddenly to make one conscious of a strangeness in our usual world, a strangeness that is so fleeting that no one has ever succeeded in analyzing it. But who is there who has not experienced it?

“In swamps one may sometimes witness a strange phenomenon: the dark, silent water, that seems too thick and oily to be disturbed by the breeze, appears in sudden agitation. The surface rises as if a body were in labor below, and out of the commotion comes an old waterlogged trunk that for years had lain at the bottom of the tarn, and now that it has risen to the surface, will slowly sink again to the bottom. On the ocean once a few sailors were privileged to witness a similar event.