Saint Peter’s Wolf (16 page)

Besides, I kept reconvincing myself that my dreams were only dreams. A dog had made the print in the wet humus, and perhaps the same dog had made the prints in my back garden. A dog, and that fugitive animal had been shot. We returned to the cabin, and I built a fire.

It snowed that afternoon, a swirl that seemed to rise upward from the lake itself. Trees turned black and shrugged and struggled in the wind.

My mistake was in believing that now I understood that air of secrecy about Johanna. I thought that now, at last, I understood her.

We needed chains on the drive back the next day, and could not remove the chains until Colfax, the freeway a tunnel of white that closed in from the sides, and swelled from the road itself, as though the earth and sky were one.

Then there was the sloppiness of rain, pure formlessness. Johanna told me of herself as I drove, and I relished each chapter, even stifling my jealousy at the few lovers she had taken. She had seen so much, and had worked with so many brilliant people that she seemed to be a citizen of another, brighter world than mine.

We had lunch in a quiet restaurant in Davis, watching the rain through the gradually steaming window.

When we reached San Francisco, ants had overrun her kitchen.

They were the tiny domestic ant, the tiny black fragment which, individually, seems too small and fragile to live. The counter was alive with them. “The poor, sad creatures. The rain drives them in,” she said.

“You can't let them crawl all over everything,” I said, feeling, as I said it, cruel.

“They came in because they were drowning. You don't really expect me to put out poison, do you?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “I don't really expect you to do that. Why don't you make them a sandwich. Maybe they'd like some tea. Turn on the television, let them make themselves comfortable.”

“Do you suppose if I put some sugar cubes on the floor, I could train them to stay off the counter?”

“You could train them to do anything.”

“I could have an ant circus.”

“Ant football. Ant basketball. No question about it. Just get out the sugar cubes.”

But she wasn't entirely joking. She would take any measure to avoid killing a single ant.

I was in my study, in a moment of childish curiosity trying to discern the cuneiform inscriptions on my Babylonian vial. In a way, I felt silly. I had no idea where to begin, squinting through my loupe and penciling the rows of finch tracks. It seemed somehow healing to do this, as though to parse something both ancient and matter-of-fact would cure something in me.

No doubt Zinser was right. The inscription would prove comfortably dull, something about money, a scale of prices, or a one-time offer, a coupon for a free vial with three proof-of-purchase shards. It would, I knew, turn out to be a list of ingredients for an antacid, or a tisane to cure bad luck in the wine trade. A snifter of cognac was at my elbow, untouched. I was doing what I had rarely done in recent months, actually enjoying my collection. It was raining out, the downpour chiming off the eaves. I had just finished my list of inscriptions, and was beginning to consider which of my expert friends I would bore by consulting when the phone chirped.

My hand was right when it hesitated, not wanting to pick up the receiver. I was delighted to hear her voice, but then I settled back into my chair like someone willing himself invisible.

Her voice trembled. They had found the dog on Twin Peaks, as they had expected. The beast was dead. “The poor creature suffered. Two bullets in its haunch. It must have had such pain.”

But, she continued, the neighborhood was huddled at back fences and front porches. The news was unsettling, but several calls to the police had confirmed it.

The dead dog was a large half-breed collie, its paw not nearly big enough to fit the cast.

Eighteen

“How is he?”

“You'll be surprised.”

I had brought flowers, a great shock of irises, and she gathered them from me. It was a quantity of flowers so great that for a moment I could not see her face at all. I had chosen them because during my therapy Dr. Ashby had kept a print of Van Gogh's “Irises” beside his desk. The green florist's paper crackled, and a drop of water sprang from a petal onto the carpet.

“Lovely,” she breathed, and I paused for a moment, realizing that Eileen, too, had anticipated my visit with pleasure. “That was sweet of you,” she added, this woman who had always treated me with nothing more than calm, if kind, courtesy.

I expected Eileen to lead me up the stairs, but to my surprise and delight she led me through the house, hugging the harvest of flowers. Dr. Ashby was sitting in the sunlight, huddled in a blanket.

“He brought us irises,” she said.

It was so wonderful to see him outside, with a book in his lap, that I could not speak. He was drowsing, I thought, but when my step whisked through the grass he looked up and blinked until he saw who I was.

“Irises,” he repeated, as though the word meant little. Language was a puzzle to him, I thought. Then he smiled. “That was very kind of you, Ben. That's a haystack of irises.”

His grip was strong, but as soon as it had given the impression of strength, I sensed the weakness, the barely perceptible palsy.

“I'm glad to see you again,” said Dr. Ashby. We both knew what he meant: I am glad to be alive to see you, and to see anyone.

“I wanted to make sure you were doing all right,” I said. “And I also wanted to talk to you about something. The fact is, I need your help.” I stopped myself. My feelings overpowered me, and I blinked tears. I needed Dr. Ashby—I needed his wisdom. But as I saw him, his white hair in the sun, I felt unworthy. I shouldn't trouble him.

“Eileen makes the world's best rose hip tea,” he said.

“And these will need a vase,” she said, and hurried into the house.

I had not intended to blurt out the truth. I did need Dr. Ashby's advice, but I had hoped to approach the subject in stages. “You look terrific,” I said. “Really amazingly well.”

Dr. Ashby grunted, acknowledging my excessive enthusiasm. “I'm alive, somehow.” He lifted a hand to his eyes with effort, and shaded his gaze as he studied me.

Under his gaze I felt myself feel much younger, too young, a neophyte, untrained, unlearned. I sat in a lawn chair and attempted a smile. After a long moment he said, “You still look different.”

“Worse or better?”

“You tell me.”

I told myself that the subject would shock or at least worry him. I hesitated, and he knew me well enough to become impatient, pursing his lips in a way that meant: stop stalling.

“I've never felt this way before,” I began. “I feel so—alive.” This did not, I realized, sound like much of a confession, but I felt that it was, in a way, sinful to feel so vigorous.

“I'm very glad to hear it.”

I leaned forward. “I want to talk about my dream—my old, recurring dream.”

“Has the dream changed?”

How could he know? The grass at our feet glittered in the sunlight. I did not speak for a moment. “I'm beginning to understand it.”

His silence meant: don't stop now. Tell me more.

“We've always admired animals,” I said. “We've wanted to be beasts of some kind. We've wanted to put on wings or claws, and be eagles, or lions. We've been hungry for it. We've always felt cheated that we are human beings and not hawks or buffalo. Or wolves.”

The last word rang within me. “Children know, don't they?” I continued. “They pretend to be horses. They growl, and gallop, …” I looked away, overcome by his eyes, and by the sunlight. “But we lose it. We grow up, and forget to admire the beast.”

“But it doesn't forget us.” Dr. Ashby smiled. “It remains loyal to us. We know what we have lost.”

We have lost, I thought, nearly everything, but that rational, hopeful lie: that we can control our lives with plans and with knowledge. We become personae, masks. We become hollow.

The question was asked before I knew what I was saying. My own voice spoke, and I could not silence it. “Tell me about werewolves.”

Dr. Ashby turned his head slightly, to look at me from a different angle. “Whatever have you been up to, Ben?”

I did not enjoy lying. “I've been thinking.”

“So it seems.”

I bit my lip. He would not want to discuss such a peculiar subject. The Dr. Ashby of earlier years would have pursued the subject with gusto, but this was a weak and weary man, despite his cheerfulness. I should leave him alone, or talk about something else.

He closed his eyes, and was, I thought, too weak to continue. I turned to see Eileen arriving with a tray of teacups and a pot. She murmured something to Ashby and I heard him say that he was fine. “Just thinking, like Ben here. We are two big thinkers,” he said.

When she had left us alone again, a bee scribbled through the sunlight and vanished. Dr. Ashby eyed the teapot beside him as though he could not guess what it was. The faintest vapor unraveled from the spout.

Then he spoke. “The werewolf,” he said. The sound of the word from his lips made me shiver with the most unusual pleasure. “I'm surprised to hear you ask. But I can't tell you how pleased I am.” He waited, perhaps to let his strength accumulate. “I studied the werewolf as a young man. I nearly wrote a book on the subject. Now, I'm afraid I have forgotten nearly everything. You make me feel young again. Young and nervous,” he chuckled, “and eager to accomplish something important.”

His words gave me such pleasure that I could not sit still. I poured tea for both of us, a vivid red tea that swirled into the pale interior of the cups.

He waited for me to return to my seat, as though my presence before him gave him strength. “Why are you so curious about werewolves?”

“Why were you?”

“Answering a question with a question. Not exactly forthright, Ben.”

“It has to do with understanding my dream,” I said, wanting to be at least partly truthful.

He did not seem to hear me, or perhaps my answer did not matter. “Our culture considers the werewolf, this mythical creature, to be a dangerous fugue away from human form into that of a beast.” He thought for a moment. “But there is another way to view the werewolf. In Romania, the folklore understood that a human being could become a wolf and run with the wolves at night, and return to human form nourished—enlivened by the experience.”

He closed his eyes. So much talk drained him, and yet he began to speak again nearly at once. “I've sometimes thought that when a person turned into a werewolf, it must be the human side that does the killing, emboldened, you might say, by finding itself in the body of a wolf.”

These words took my breath away.

He rested for a few heartbeats, and then his voice was stronger. “Perhaps if a person lived as a werewolf for a long time, he would evolve into a new sort of being, neither typically human nor a beast.…”

Another bee flashed through the sunlight.

He laughed quietly. “If there were such things, what a remarkable world it would be.” He gathered the blanket closer, chilled despite the warm sunlight.

“You don't believe such things are possible,” I said. It was not a question.

“Of course not. And yet,” he smiled, looking aside at the green lawn. “There are reasons for such tales. Amazing things do happen. A child can grow to be a man, and learn and feel regret, and through it all still become a fine creature. It happens. Rarely, but from time to time.” He chuckled. “I'm getting too tired, Ben. Look at me—I'm old. Do you know what I think?”

I could hardly ask. “What?”

“I think you know I won't live long.”

I gasped, but he lifted a hand to silence me. “I probably won't. How could I? You wanted to come visit me and hear some last words of wisdom.”

He was speaking the truth, and I knew it. We both knew it.

“Maybe I'm just another person who makes an awkward bow,” he said. “But I have nothing glorious to say. I would tell you, though, that the animal in us is wiser than we can imagine. Wiser, even, than the child in us, and the child is very wise.”

“In the dream,” I offered, “it was not a beast following me. It was wisdom.”

“No, Ben. It was something greater than wisdom. It was life.”

All the way across the Bay Bridge I mused over what Dr. Ashby had told me. The traffic was heavy, and a yellow tow truck with blinking lights was backing to assist a car with steam rising from its hood.

All around me were drivers jockeying to change lanes, sitting, staring straight ahead, all of us inching forward. I kept changing stations on the radio, not satisfied with this news, that sports report, that music—all of it failing to reach me, all of it so much noise.

Surely, I tried to tell myself, I would see Dr. Ashby again. Such a man was a living work of art. We needed a man like that alive and healthy.

Traffic stopped entirely near Treasure Island, and it was over an hour before I reached my home, and my secret.

Nineteen

I woke.

The wind streamed over my body, and under it, and through my legs. I knew that I was naked again, and yet, in the darkness, I was not cold. I was running, hard.

But this time when I was fully awake I felt my shoulder muscles bunch and release as I ran, and I felt my hind legs lope, and it was all so easy, this running on all fours, this powerful run across the wet grass in the dark.

So that even when I tried to shake myself awake I felt myself trot and ease to a standstill, and I knew where I was by the bright scents from the buildings beyond. I was panting, my tongue spilling from my mouth, the air cool and delicious along it.

I shook myself and slaver flew all around me, and I narrowed my eyes and continued, in that easy pace. I stole into the brush. There were people far off, their clothing squeaking and stirring around them, their shod feet crunching the fine grit of a distant sidewalk, the smell of them earthy and salt confused with a sick-sweet fake perfume.