Werewolf of Paris (14 page)

“And there are, in the second place, werewolves that have but one body, in which the soul of man and of beast are at war. Then whatever weakens the human soul, either sin or darkness, solitude or cold, brings the wolf to the fore. And whatever weakens the beastly soul, either virtue or daylight, warmth or the companionship of man, raises up the human soul. For it is known that the wolf shrinks from that which invites the man.

“These great truths are now forgotten, because in former days these monsters were so ruthlessly hunted down and expunged that we now enjoy a comparative immunity and freedom from such dangers. But it behooves us to watch sharply lest the race of mankind go into eclipse before the rise of a race of beasts, and the civilization of man go down before the anarchy of wolves or of lions or of some yet unformed monster. It behooves us to recall the procedure of the Middle Ages, when the inhuman rivals of man were almost completely extinguished by the cruel but necessary use of fire.”

For a number of weeks after the finding of the bullet, Aymar actually considered the advisability of destroying Bertrand with fire. How? Take him into the woods and there burn him at one of the old charcoal huts, now abandoned? That was risky. Set fire to the house then? Why not? Burn the building and have Bertrand perish as if by accident in the flames.

One night as he was turning over the matter for the thousandth time, he came to a determination. He gathered together his most important papers, the replies to his letters of inquiry concerning Pitamont and his forebears, his slowly acquired collection on lycan-thropy, the silver bullet, the goupillon and various other matters relating to Bertrand, and making several bundles of them, brought them out of the house into the distant carriage shed. These he wanted to keep.

Then he went upstairs, carrying a can of petroleum, as if he wished to fill his lamp. He paused in the dark hall before Bertrand's door, keeping a few feet away, lest he frighten the brute. And sure enough, he heard again that sharp striking of claws on the wooden flooring, the rapid sniffling and then the violent snort at the thin crack beneath the door.

“He smells me,” Aymar said to himself, “and has prepared himself.” For a moment his heart was wrung with sympathy for the poor lad who must suffer for a sin that was not his. Then he girded himself and was ready to dash the petroleum against the door and light a match, when he heard footsteps approaching.

“Who's there?” he cried nervously.

“It's me,” Josephine answered and came up closer.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded harshly.

“Oh, I was just so worried, I couldn't sleep.”

“Worried about what?”

“Fire,” she said.

“How many times have I told you that with the key hanging there near the door there can be nothing to fear!” he cried angrily.

“I know,” she said meekly, “only I couldn't fall asleep tonight, without making sure.”

“You women…” he threw at her, and tramped downstairs to his study, where he flung himself on his couch in a fit of trembling. Cold sweat bathed his body. His intestines were tortured with cramps. After long hours of insomnia, he fell asleep.

In the morning Guillemin sought him out: “I found some packages of books and papers and things in the remise. What do you want done with them?”

Not knowing what to say, he uttered the words that were most ready on his tongue, words that seemed as if they had lain curled up in ambush on the tip of his tongue, waiting to fly out into the air: “
Those are to be burnt, Guillemin
.”

“Those metal pieces won't burn, monsieur.”

“Yes? Well, batter them in and bury them with the ashes of the rest.”

“Oui, monsieur.”

Once he had given the order, he had plenty of time left to wonder why. Fatalistically he declared: “Perhaps it's best so.” People lost in doubt, tortured by fears, unable to see a way out, or unable to choose one out of ten possible ways that suddenly occur to them, such people either go crazy or turn fatalists. There's no better rest for overwrought nerves than a little vacation in fatalism.

“The evidence is destroyed instead of the monster,” he said to himself after a while. “I'll regret it.” But he had ceased to worry. He turned over on his couch and fell asleep again at once.

And strange to say, Bertrand began to improve. He ceased to complain of bad dreams. No sound except his own regular breathing issued from his room at night. But Aymar did not relax his vigilance: “The wolf in him is quiet, for the moment.”

Josephine said: “Bertrand is improving fast. I wish you wouldn't lock him up any more.”

“When I think he's better, I'll do what is necessary,” Aymar answered curtly.

But on her insistence he relented. And nothing happened.

“Perhaps he really is over it.” He wondered.

“It was all those stories about the wolf that frightened him,” said Josephine. “Why don't you begin to teach him again? You haven't given him a lesson in months. He won't be able to take the examinations.”

Thereupon Aymar had Bertrand appear in the study again, as formerly, two hours every day.

But Bertrand was dull. He learnt slowly. He had used to be so quick to grasp. “He's been away from his studies too long,” Aymar decided. “Or else he's reached the end. You can't teach an old dog new tricks,” it occurred to him.

Months passed and still all was quiet. One day Françoise knocked at his study.

“What's the trouble, Françoise, you look worried?”

“Yes, monsieur.” She paused. “I think, monsieur,” she said suddenly and rapidly, “you ought to lock Bertrand's door again.”

Aymar gaped. What did Françoise know?

“Has he had bad dreams again?”

“You and I, monsieur, needn't speak of bad dreams. I'm not Josephine, whose mother-love blinds her. I can put two and two together as well as you.” She brushed the gray hair from her forehead.

“What do you know?” he demanded.

“I've heard that people can keep tiger cubs and make pets of them. But when they reach a certain age you have to put them in a cage.”

“What do you know?” he repeated wearily.

“I know,” she insisted. “Haven't I watched him grow since childhood? He was cute and playful. So are puppies. So, perhaps, are tiger cubs.”

“But why have you come to me with this now?”

“Because Guillemin says to me this morning, ‘That fox is back again.' Guillemin's son found a duck's head, chewed off.”

Aymar wiped his forehead wearily: “Where will this end?”

At lunch he had an idea. He went into the kitchen where Bertrand was eating. He went up to the boy and pulled down the lower lid of the eye. “Anæmic,” he diagnosed.

“He has no appetite again,” Josephine complained.

“We'll give him a little raw meat, every day,” Aymar prescribed. “That makes blood.”

Afterwards he laughed. A good trick. We'll feed the wolf in him and keep him quiet. And he actually succeeded. Bertrand ate the raw flesh avidly. He improved in appearance. His hair grew glossy. His skin sleek. His eyes bright. He grew in weight and stature. And Josephine, noting the excellent results, tempted her darling boy with larger, bloodier portions of meat, with bigger chunks of suet clinging to it.

In his lessons, too, he grew better, and it was delightful to see how he played in the courtyard. He would tire out the dog with running. When he played hares and hounds with the village boys he was always the last to be caught, if caught at all. And when he was It in I-spy, no one could remain hidden from him.

As a whole, the village suspected nothing of Bertrand's peculiar condition. Bramond's wife did indeed smell something a little mysterious in that house, but she ascribed it to an affair between Josephine and Aymar. She allowed her tongue to play with the notion that Bertrand was secretly Aymar's child, but much of her maliciousness in this was due to the fact, as her husband now and then took occasion to point out, that she was jealous of Josephine's son, who was destined to study medicine, a career she wished to provide for her own son Jacques, but which seemed an unlikely possibility in view of the number of the children in the Bramond family—five—and the narrow resources of the family income, limited to Bramond's salary as garde champêtre.

But she came back to it so insistently that she got what she wanted. Not, it is true, all at once, but step by step. First she was allowed to send Jacques to the local school. That was as much as Bramond would give in to. Then she was allowed to let him try to enter a lycée. And when he passed the entrance examination, well, he might have a year of it, but no more. And so on, until years had passed and Jacques was ready to take his baccalaureat, and after the summer he would be off to Paris to study medicine.

Bertrand was to take the examination for the baccalaureat at the same time. He had studied at home with Aymar, whom he called his uncle, and he did not expect to do as well as his friend, for though he was bright, he was frequently ill. Especially in winter, in February. Then he would get dull at his lessons and be troubled at night with horrible dreams. He was ashamed of this, his only weakness, and to his curious friends he would say no more than that he suffered of migraines.

He, himself, was curious about those strange dreams in which he would yearn to race on all fours through a forest, up hill and down dale. His uncle quieted him: “It's nothing. Occasionally boys will have that. You'll get over it.”

Then he asked Bertrand: “What do your boy friends say?”

“They don't say anything. I don't tell them much.”

“Hm. I see. Well, perhaps it's best you said nothing.”

The spring baccalaureat examinations were held at Auxerre. Jacques and Bertrand went off together to take them. It was a matter of three days.

Aymar had at first proposed to go along with Bertrand, whom, despite all these years of comparative quiet, he hated to trust out of his sight. But Françoise had said: “If he's to go to Paris alone later, let him go alone now. It will be a test.” That seemed wise, and was so arranged. After all, he had been pretty good these last six years, thanks no doubt to Aymar's trick of feeding him copious amounts of raw meat.

Arrived at Auxerre, Jacques and Bertrand put up at a little inn which was crowded with boys all there for the same purpose. The first two days there was quiet in the inn. Nothing could be heard but the turning of pages and the drone of many boys reciting to themselves, preparing for the daily hours of severe examinations. But on the third day, with only one more easy test in the offing, the tension relaxed. Voices rose to shrieks, there were shouts of laughter, two boys started to pummel each other in the courtyard.

And when the third test was happily in the limbo of the past, pandemonium broke loose. The boys raged through the town where the citizens, wise from long experience, had closed their shops. The cafés handed out only their worst china and were prepared to charge for broken ware as if it came from Sèvres.

In the evening, slightly drunk, one young man with whom Jacques and Bertrand had become friendly proposed that they go to a house he knew of.

Jacques was willing, for in the freer life of the poorer section of his village he had not remained totally pure. But Bertrand was shocked. No, he couldn't go.

Jacques taunted him: “Afraid?”

The other fellow said: “Garçon, a glass of warm milk for my baby.”

Bertrand said seriously: “No, it isn't that. I'm not feeling well. I didn't sleep well last night.”

“Who did? None of us could sleep.”

“And then I think my migraine is coming on again.” As a matter of fact he did feel that strange congestion and tension that he associated with a delirious night.

Jacques slapped him on the back. “Here's your cure! This is what you've been needing all along.
Une petite femme…
”

The other chap began to recite some naughty verses, which being obscure in meaning were all the more piquant:

Marc une béquille avait

Faite en fourche, et de manière

Qu' à la fois elle trouvait

L'oeillet et la boutonnière
.

D'une indulgence plénière

Il crut devoir se munir
,

Et courut, pour l 'obtenir
,

Conter le cas au Saint-Père
.

Qui s'écria: Vierge Mère
,

Que ne suis-je ainsi bâti!

Va, mon fils, baise, prospère
,

Gaudeant bene nati
.

“Well, good-bye, Bertrand,” said Jacques, “don't forget your muffler or you'll catch cold—Gaudeant bene nati!”

The taunt was a little too much. He rose and said stiffly: “I'm coming with you.” Thereupon the two caught hold of him by either arm and went walking down the street singing together. Bertrand allowed himself to be infected by their reckless gaiety. He lifted up his voice and sang louder than his friends.

The house to which they proceeded was on a quiet by-street. A small but portly woman opened the door and greeting the boys rather coolly, showed them the way into a tiny parlor. Small gilt chairs were arranged around the wall. A diminutive gilt piano occupied a corner. A few pictures decorated the wall and in the flickering gas-jets revealed fat, naked women, lolling on divans or near fountains and attended by black slaves. A single picture in a corner showed Mary Magdalene washing Christ's feet. An eternal light burnt before this picture in a deep ruby glass.

Three girls came into the room. They were neither pretty nor joyous. They were dressed simply, in dark severe materials. One girl, by far the ugliest, wore heavy spectacles. Since Jacques and his friend Raoul had at once approached the other two, Bertrand greeted the myopic girl, and began to dance a polka, along with the others, for Madame had sat down at the gilt piano and was playing.