Werewolf of Paris (16 page)

“Go ‘way,” said Madame jocularly, “you'll probably work so hard and so well that someone will take you home in marriage and you won't even leave us your book of autographs to remember you by.”

“Oh, madame, how can you say that?” said Thérèse reproachfully, while she let her mind go with the joyous possibility of this very thing happening some time.

This kind mistress' conscience still had a pang left and that would not be satisfied until she had bought Thérèse a dress for ten francs and even paid for the laundering of the bloody sheets out of her own pocketbook. The thousand francs, however, went to swell her neat little investment in rentes, on which she hoped some day to retire. The road to financial independence is awfully slow and difficult.

Meanwhile Aymar walked up and down his study and pondered. How long had this sort of thing been going on with Bertrand? That could not have been his first visit? The sexual side of the crime was, in his eyes, not inconsiderable. Not that he had totally forgotten his own several profligacies of that nature, but having, since his studies at the Langres Seminary, succeeded in downing his own fleshly appetite, he could no longer appreciate the fact that in others these desires might be insurmountable. The more he thought over the lad's actions, the more incensed he grew. Finally he opened the door of his study and shouted out, which was much against his custom: “Josephine!”

She came running out from the kitchen and up the long hall to his room.

“Oui, monsieur?”

“Is Bertrand back?”

“Non, monsieur, not yet.”

“Let me know at once when he arrives.”

There was a question in her eyes but he ignored it and closed his door. He recalled a long letter that someone had sent him regarding the Pitamonts and Pitavals, and how a Pitamont was shut up in a well and fed on meat and suet and after long years could not speak any more but only howled like a wolf; “and in fact,” the letter concluded (Aymar recalled this well), “it was said that there never was a good Pitamont but that one who was shut up there. And even at that he killed two people before they locked him up. Of course, it was Pitavals he killed so nobody missed them much, nor him either, except his sweetheart who waited thirty years or more to see him. But the Pitamonts were noted for leaving a trail of misery spreading out fanwise in their wake.”

And Aymar pondered: “Will it come to that with Bertrand?”

If this kept on, there would be nothing else to do but lock him up. As he thought over the matter, he wondered how good a cell Bertrand's room would make. It would have to be livable, surely, at least as livable as the dungeon in which Pitamont was shut up, if not better.

Supposing that Bertrand grew as ferocious in his own home as he had occasionally shown himself outside, going beyond killing lambs and taking to lacerating people, like this poor prostitute, for example. Then it would have to be either the police or a cell at home.

Following the bent of his thoughts, he walked upstairs and flung open Bertrand's door. The young man was there, sleeping in his bed!

The sight startled Aymar, as if on a walk he had suddenly come face to face with a tiger. He controlled himself and went up to the bed. The boy's face was heavily flushed. He was breathing deeply. His head was thrown back as if he were depleted of all strength. His hair was awry. He looked as if he were sleeping off a drunkenness.

Under the influence of Aymar's gaze, Bertrand opened his eyes. They looked out in surprise at first; then they looked away.

“When did you get back?” Aymar asked.

“Why, I—I didn't know I was back. Oh, I can't remember.”

“What's the matter with you?”

Bertrand did not answer for a moment, then he said: “I had another one of my terrible dreams; I don't know how I got here. Let me think, my head is so dull and my body is as if I had been running all night. I wonder—”

“What do you wonder?”

“I wonder, I wonder if it was only a dream this time? I was in the city taking examinations. How did I get home? Did I really run home, as I dreamed? And what happened before, was that a dream, too?”

“Not this time!” Aymar suddenly thundered at the boy, who jumped back in terror. “Not this time!” Bertrand's eyes were popping out of his head. A great fear had overtaken him. He retreated to the far corner of the bed and cowered in the angle of the wall, and there remained shivering like a lapdog in the cold.

“Wait for me,” Aymar shouted at him. A sudden idea had come to him. He ran out, taking care to lock the door, and was off as fast as his poor legs would allow him, to the barn where he grabbed the heavy horsewhip used to tame colts to the Plow. He ran back upstairs and shouting to the women: “Away!” he locked himself into Bertrand's room.

“I'll tame the wolf in him,” Aymar thought madly, and lashed away at the lad, who had remained in the same position. As the whip wound around his body, Bertrand let out a yell that was as if wrung from the depths of his being.

The whip rose and fell. “I'll tame you!” Aymar thought, clenched his teeth and called upon all his strength. “I'll tame you!” The sweat stood out in beads on his brow.

Bertrand howled until he grew hoarse and his voice thinned into falsetto. Then he whined, in little broken gasps. Finally he was silent. And Aymar ceased.

Dizzy, scarcely knowing why or what he had done, he left the room. Outside the door, Josephine was lying on the floor and Françoise was bending over her with a bottle of smelling salts. Guillemin's wife was downstairs and shouting up: “What is it? What is it? For God's sake!”

“Ce n'est rien. Allez! Vaquez à votre besogne!” Aymar dismissed her gruffly, and brushing past, shut himself up in his study.

For days the house was silent, full of unuttered anger. Only once Josephine, raising her fists, shouted at Aymar: “You've killed him!”

“Shut up!” said Aymar.

“What did he ever do to you?” she asked with a dark menacing note in her voice.

“That's none of your business.”

“And you who are almost his father.”

Aymar snorted with scorn.

“Yes, and if he dies, I'll kill you too!” she cried.

But the walls of righteousness around Aymar's anger were nevertheless gradually crumbling away and leaving him more and more exposed to the stirrings of repentance and sympathy.

One day he went up to Bertrand's room. The young man looked up at his uncle with his soft brown eyes. There was no hate in those eyes, no desire for revenge, only a plea and a little glint of terror: “Don't…”

“He looks like a whipped dog,” Aymar thought. “Maybe I've cured him.”

“Let me see your back,” he commanded.

The boy's skin was striped with parallel lines of yellow, of red, of purple and green. Aymar was frightened. “How do you feel?”

“I'm better now,” Bertrand said gently.

“And you'll take care not to repeat your—shall we call it—escapade?”

“I'll take care, uncle,” he promised.

“See that you do.” Aymar turned to go, but Bertrand called him back:

“Uncle, did I really do what I only dreamt? I mean…”

“What did you dream?”

The boy hesitated. He felt timid and shy.

“…I mean, bite and scratch…her.”

“Yes, I guess you did. And I had to pay for it. But forget it now and don't talk about it any more.”

Bertrand pondered for a while. “I often have just such dreams of biting and scratching and people shooting at me.” He paused.

“Well?” Aymar asked.

“But that's just dreaming.”

“Of course,” said Aymar. “But you see to it that you keep out of bad company.”

“I promise you that. And,” he hesitated and went on: “You told Mother you wouldn't send me to Paris.”

“I don't think you can be trusted alone, for a little while,” Aymar said and resolutely left the room.

In the days that followed, he deliberately hardened his heart. Bertrand's back had healed, but still Aymar would not permit him to leave his room. When Josephine complained and pleaded, he cut her short. “In good time,” he would say, and if she insisted, he left her standing. He would take no further chances, he determined.

But one day, old skinflint Vaubois died, and having been for so many years neighbors, it was necessary that the Galliez people attend. Bertrand was, therefore, released for the purpose, upon his solemn promise that he would conduct himself properly. As a matter of fact the young man was as well behaved as he had always been in his outward life. He was affable and at his ease with Mme Bramond.

“You've been ill?” she asked.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Jacques left some of your books at our home,” she said. “I'll send one of my boys over with them.” He thanked her and wondered: “How much does Jacques know? How much did he tell his mother?”

“When are you going to Paris?” she inquired.

“Uncle hasn't said yet,” he answered.

“You know, Jacques is coming back on the twelfth of next month, that is, August,” she said. “You must come to the farewell supper. He'll be leaving, on foot, for Paris, early the next morning. Why don't you two boys tramp it together?”

“I'll ask Uncle,” he replied evasively.

She went off thinking: “Just because they have a little money, they think they've got to be cold and hoity-toity. Well, his mother must earn her money and I'll bet Galliez doesn't make it any too easy for her.”

While he thought: “Thank God, she didn't ask too many embarrassing questions.”

The ceremony of the burial was beginning to affect Bertrand. He felt tense and uncomfortable. For some reason, which he couldn't determine, the long, slow action of the priest and others annoyed him so badly that he wanted to shout out, “Come on, get it over with!” He was almost glad to think that he would soon be back and locked up in his room. Strange thought, he reflected. But then, he was not like others. They could be open and free. He had secrets, the weight of which oppressed him when he was out among people he feared might know something of his trouble. Yes, he was safer in his room.

But in the evening, as he sat before his meal in the kitchen, for the first time in over a month, he felt differently about returning to his room. On the contrary, he wanted to be off in the fields and feel the good summer winds bearing evening coolness.

Aymar came in. “Time you were upstairs,” he said.

Bertrand did not answer, but only looked down sullenly at his plate.

“Why aren't you eating?”

“I'm not hungry.”

“How about the raw meat, here, for your anemia?”

“I don't care for it.”

“You used to like it well enough. But of late I notice you won't touch it.”

“I don't care for it,” he repeated sullenly.

“Then get to your room!” he ordered sharply.

Bertrand did not answer. Josephine, hearing the altercation, had come to the doorway.

Aymar thought quickly: “He's not hungry. Eh? It's coming on again then. Of course now that he's gotten the taste for human blood…”

“I'll teach you!” he cried out loud. “Where's that whip?” He ran out toward the barn.

Josephine slipped up to Bertrand and put her arms around him: “My dear boy,” she whispered, “do what he says. He'll kill you. Run upstairs quickly. I'll unlock your door later, when he's asleep.”

When Aymar returned, Josephine managed to quiet him, pointing out that the lad had gone upstairs. “Whatever he's done,” she said, “it can't be that bad. And don't think I don't know what he did. He's told me. But boys always do that. You did yourself. As if I couldn't remember.”

“You don't know anything,” he flung at her.

“I know that I'm going to the mayor if this doesn't stop.”

He was frightened, but concealed it. “Whatever I'm doing is for his own good. And I'll stop when I think he's learnt his lesson. If you want to pack up and go, both of you, I'm willing.” And he left her to go upstairs and lock Bertrand's door.

The next day Françoise came into his study.

“You know Vaubois' grave was found opened up this morning, and his body mutilated. The whole village is talking about it. They've arrested Crotez, the shepherd. They say he did it to get Vaubois ‘ gold teeth, which they found in his room, too, but he claims that Vaubois, miser that he was, when about to die and unable to eat, gave the teeth to Crotez, in lieu of wages he owed Crotez, because he knew he couldn't use the teeth any more, anyhow.”

“Hm,” said Galliez, “I can believe it of that man.”

Françoise appeared to be wanting to say something more, but she only stood there and brushed back her gray hair defiantly. “Well, Françoise?” he urged.

“I thought Monsieur would want to know that Bertrand was not in his room last night.”

“Nonsense! How could he have gotten out?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe he's made himself a passkey. At any rate, I saw him slinking down the allée early this morning, when it was barely dawn. I'm sure I wasn't mistaken.”

“Well, I'm tired of all this,” he said and returned to his books on political economy. He was immersed just then in a study of Karl Marx, a German whose pamphlets were making much stir at the time.

But in the midst of his reading, a correlation which took place unconsciously in the back of his mind, even while he was hard at work on the difficult German sentences, popped into his thoughts. Bertrand—Crotez—Vaubois—why not? Yes, why not Bertrand? Was that what Françoise had meant? No, impossible! And yet even if she hadn't implied as much, the possibility remained. He needs human flesh, now that he's had the taste of it! And as for the door, it could only have been Josephine, with her silly excuse of fire, who had opened it.