Doctor Death (30 page)

“I don’t believe we have been introduced,” I said, and forced a smile that was about as natural as the naked grin on a skull. “I am Madeleine Karno. I met your daughter a few times . . .”

This did not help. His face went rigid, and his lips pulled back so I could see his tobacco-stained teeth.

“That doctor,” he said. “Doctor Death. You are his daughter.”

“Yes.” I began to get up, holding out my hand as though we were at a tea party and about to be introduced.

“Stay where you are!”

“But, monsieur . . .”

He raised his rifle and reloaded rapidly.

“Sit down, I said!”

I let myself slide to the floor. It was not difficult; my legs were already shaking so much that they were having a hard time supporting me.

“It is probably best if I stay with the boy while you go for help,” I tried, and knew that my little performance was getting more and more labored and less and less credible. I fumbled for the boy’s cold hand under the shelter of my petticoat. Not that he could feel anything, it was more to console myself. We wanted to save you, I thought, and now . . .

Now it looked instead as if we had given Monsieur Leblanc the final push.

“He would have died anyway,” he said. “The priest. I just saved him a few days of suffering.”

Don’t tell me such things, I thought urgently. The more he revealed, the more likely it was that he would feel impelled to fire that gun.

“Of course,” I squeaked. “I am sure they will understand that if only you . . .”

“May God have mercy on me,” he said, and began to take off his left boot.

I did not understand why, just sat completely paralyzed by fear and tried to think of something, anything, that could prevent the unpreventable.

“Down, Iago,” he said.

The dog looked up at him, then reluctantly lay down. He took a step backward, on one bare and one booted foot, took aim, and put a bullet through the back of the dog’s head. I was still sitting there with my mouth open, trying to comprehend what was happening, when he reloaded, placed the rifle’s stock against the floor, placed the barrel under his chin, and used his naked toes to pull the trigger.

He was clearly more used to handling guns than Monsieur Montaine. Most of the back of his head disappeared in a cloud of blood and bone splinters, and he was dead before he hit the floor.

When the Commissioner finally returned about ten minutes later, with a carriage and some men from the convent, I was sitting next to the unconscious Louis Mercier, shaking so badly that my teeth were rattling against each other with a tiny, brittle sound. The cavalry stopped quite abruptly in the doorway, it seemed to me, staring at Leblanc and the mess at the back of his head, at the dead dog, and at me.

“Dear Madeleine,” said the Commissioner, “I think you may put down the rifle now.”

IV

March 28–30, 1894

L
ouis Mercier regained consciousness a few hours later on the chaise longue at Carmelite Street. It was easier for my father to examine him there than if we had brought him to Saint Bernardine, and both Inspector Marot and the Commissioner waited impatiently to question him about Antoine Leblanc’s deeds and misdeeds.

We now knew with certainty that it
was
Louis Charles Napoleon Mercier, because after one look at the unconscious child, Marie Mercier had thrown herself to her knees at his side and kissed his face again and again, and then—still on her knees—she had seized both of the Commissioner’s hands and covered them with just as many kisses while she stuttered her incoherent gratitude for saving her son.

The Commissioner stood with a most peculiar expression on his
face—it had to be his version of disconcerted unease—and repeated, “My dear lady, my dear lady,” as if it were the refrain of a song, all the while trying to persuade her to stand up. Apparently, this was what it took to crack the Commissioner’s monolithic self-control.

I did not feel cracked, I felt blown to bits and pieces. At first I had been able to hold myself together to some extent. I had cared for Louis Mercier on the trip back to Varbourg, had insisted on warm blankets and great caution in the handling of the unconscious child, and had perhaps clung to that task so insistently because it was better than thinking about Antoine Leblanc and his hunting rifle.

During the trip, the boy came closer to consciousness, though he still did not answer when I tried to rouse or soothe him. His eyes flitted under closed lids, and he moved his lips a little. I moistened them with cold water, and he sucked on the cloth like an infant, still without waking up. Thirst and dehydration were part of the problem, I concluded, and I began systematically wetting the cloth and dripping water into the boy’s mouth, only a few drops at a time so it would not end up in his windpipe instead.

But when we got home and my father took over this responsibility, my defenses began to crumble. I sank down into the Commissioner’s chair and could not move any farther. I was filthy, and my suit was in a sorry state. I ought to wash myself and change my clothes and do something about my hair. I ought to get up and help my father with the examination and care of Louis Mercier.

But I could not.

I just sat.

I did not say anything, and that was probably one of the reasons no one really noticed me, especially not when Marie Mercier
arrived a little later and performed her tearful identification. But I sat with the sensation that my hands were not my own, that my body did not belong to me, and that my head had detached itself from my neck and was floating around like a balloon on a string a few meters above the rest of me.

Then the string broke.

I did not understand myself what happened; I was not asleep, nor was I unconscious, yet what I saw had to be a dream.

Cecile was walking toward me through the salon. She moved among the others, stepped aside in order not to bump into Marot, but no one else saw her, of that I am certain, because no one reacted. Even though she was naked.

Her black hair fell across her back and shoulders, her lips were moist and vividly colored, precisely the same delicate shade of rose as her nipples. Her eyes were full of life. Her hair was wet, and her naked body also, as if she had just walked through the rain, and glittering trails of water ran down her breasts and across her stomach and thighs. She smiled, but she was not smiling at me. She looked past me, and I turned my head in reflex.

From the other side of the room, by the window, came Emile Oblonski. He, too, was naked, and his member stood unashamedly erect without him making any attempt to cover it. His compact muscular form was whole and free of the injuries I knew he had, and he was just as wet with rain as she was.

They met in the middle of the room. Their bodies slid together, slid into each other without difficulty, without clumsiness. She folded her legs tightly around him and let herself slide down until she engulfed him, and he carried her effortlessly.

At first it seemed that her long black hair enveloped them both. But then I could see that it was not just hair; it was fur. Smooth, shiny black fur broke through the skin along her spine, spread down across her buttocks, covered her legs. They both
turned, in a physically impossible way, around the axis that was the joining of their sexes. And with one long smooth jerk it was no longer two people I saw but a black wolf and a golden one, in close coupling.

Infinitely long.

That is how it felt. I could not look away and did not want to, because the sight filled my body with a rush of desire, a pounding pulse I would not have been able to stop.
I
wanted to have fur. I wanted to be an animal. I wanted to surrender myself as they did, without thought, without guilt, without shame. And when they finally parted and trotted off on moist paws, through the salon, past the people, and out the open door, I wanted to follow. Everything in me wanted to follow. But I could not. I sat bound in a chair and a salon and a body, a body that could not be transformed. A body that was not a wolf’s.

I fell back into myself with a dull impact, as when an insect hits a window. A small moan of protest escaped me, but I do not think anyone heard me. For at that moment Louis Mercier opened his eyes and looked around him with a blank confusion that was even more fundamental than mine.

Or perhaps not.

I knew
where
I was. I was just no longer certain who or
what.

Inspector Marot led the boy through his testimony with a gentleness I had not expected. He was soothing, attentive, sympathetic. He waited patiently when the child stopped, prompted him with simple open-ended questions, and of the aggressive walrus there was no trace.

Yes, Louis had been called over by a gentleman who wanted to pay him to run an errand. And though he did not discover the man’s
name, it was clear from his description, not least of the dog Iago, and from his further explanations, that it was indeed Antoine Leblanc. He had been paid a good sum and promised an even more princely reward to carry a message to the priest’s residence at Espérance at precisely a quarter past eleven. He had carried out his end of the bargain and had delivered the note precisely as he had been instructed, but when he showed up to collect the franc he had been promised, the dog had jumped on him and toppled him so he hit his head on the curb, after which the man held him down and “choked him with a rag.”

Inspector Marot glanced questioningly at the Commissioner and my father.

“Possibly ether,” said my father. “Or chloroform.”

When Louis regained consciousness, he was in the chapel. And there he remained, for all three of the weeks he had been missing. Every evening and every morning, someone placed a little food, a pitcher of water, and a clean chamber pot for him, but when he drank the water, he became drowsy and fell asleep. He quickly figured out the connection but did not know what to do; there was nothing else to drink.

The worst part was the cold and the fear of what would happen to him. He was a child of the streets, and he knew that there were people who harmed children for their own pleasure.

Once he had poured the water out of the pitcher without drinking it and only pretended to sleep. It was the man with the dog who came to open the door. Louis had lain completely still and had even attempted to snore a little. He had heard the faint rattling when the man set down the water and a tin plate with food and emptied the chamber pot, but he had not dared to move, because the dog stood over him, sniffing his breath suspiciously.

There was the sound of steps. The man came closer. Louis squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath.

“A child,” the man had murmured. “How can one do it when it’s just a child.”

Then he went back to the door.

“Iago, heel,” he said, and the dog left Louis alone. The next day the fairy tale book had appeared next to the pitcher of water when Louis woke up.

“I had thought that I might try to get away, m’sieur,” said Louis. “But the dog . . . I was so afraid of the dog. I did not dare. And the rest of the time . . . I just drank the water. It was easier.”

“You did the right thing, my boy,” said Marot. “Your job was to survive. To find you and free you was the task of the police.”

A task the police had not managed particularly well, I thought bitterly. It was pure luck that the Commissioner had found Louis Mercier while he was still alive. But Marot’s words comforted the boy and eased the guilt he clearly felt over his own fear.

“Where is the man now?” asked Louis. “Did you catch him?”

“He is dead,” said Marot.

“Good,” Louis said and did not ask anything else.