Werewolf of Paris (29 page)

“Are you asking how I knew I'd find you here? And do you think that I have forgotten you and your tastes?”

“You are cruel.”

Aymar laughed in staccato. “You are evidently nothing but kind-hearted.”

“I have suffered,” Bertrand returned.

“And those whom you slew? They did not suffer, I suppose. Do you think I have not watched you, even if from afar? There was, let me see: Jacques, first of all. What? Have you forgotten him? Well, I suppose when you have so much to recall, when one is so terribly busy…”

“Uncle,” Bertrand pleaded, his head lowered.

“And here's one you can add to your list,” Aymar said, suddenly recalling. “When mail came through again after the armistice, I received a letter from Françoise. By the way, it never occurred to you to write, did it? Seventeen years of good care and food, and then off one goes.”

“You were holding me a prisoner,” Bertrand defended himself meekly, his head still bowed.

“And I did wrong, I suppose?”

“No,” the soldier breathed.

“Hm. Well, I'm glad to hear you admit as much. That helps. Ah, yes. As I was saying, Françoise wrote to tell me that the farmhand who was accused of murdering Jacques was acquitted. But the whole district was united in thinking him guilty. Life was made unbearable for him. He hanged himself.”

Bertrand sighed.

“In the matter of digging up the miser, Vaubois, it never occurred to you that the shepherd, Crotez, would be accused of the job. Or in the matter of General Darimon's daughter, that a poor
croque-mort
, the coachman, Jean Robert, would go to jail for it, and his family become destitute? How many others have suffered through you, I cannot say. I blame myself for keeping quiet in these matters. I should have shouted your guilt from the housetops. But I was ashamed. Yes, ashamed. Like a man who is afraid of being surprised in a privy. That's it. I did not want people to know that I was even remotely connected with such a monster as you.”

“Uncle,” Bertrand pleaded.

“Yes, monster,” Aymar continued, working himself into anger, his voice rising now to a hoarse whisper. “Yes, a monster, the man who could murder prostitutes like La Belle Normande. For that was you, too, wasn't it? Confess! All those murders were yours!”

Bertrand bowed his head. His whole body began to tremble.

“You beast!” Aymar cried in a subdued voice. “You—you loup-garou!”

At this Bertrand pushed his knuckles between his teeth to strangle a wild desire to shriek, a shriek which came forth only as a whine. The public, clamoring around the newly discovered crimes of the monks, the eighteen coffins of young girls, paid no attention to the two who sat apart. Nor did the officers, quite accustomed to the lax discipline of the National Guard, concern themselves with Bertrand.

The young man's body was shaken with violent tremors. “Not that!” he sobbed. “Oh, isn't it bad enough to know oneself a werewolf, without having it thrown at one as a reproach?”

Aymar was moved. He had been cruel. It was the boy's misfortune, not his sin. “I'm sorry, Bertrand. For years I tried to spare you from knowing. I tried to help you. I would not even tell your mother what was wrong. It was a hard task at times.”

“Mother never knew?”

“I don't think so.”

“How is she?”

“Well, I guess she's all right,” Aymar said lamely.

“What do you mean?” Bertrand asked, his suspicions aroused.

“Nothing. You know, one doesn't get much mail these days.”

“Tell me,” Bertrand insisted, “I want to know.”

And Aymar thought: “Why should I try to conceal his mother's shame from him? It's such a small matter compared to the others.” — “Your mother,” he said, taking a long breath, “was seen to be pregnant and it made much scandal in the village, and Jacques' mother especially talked a lot and accused me of sinful relations with your mother, which, of course, wasn't true, I mean it wasn't so-” He stopped, filled with memories.

“Go on.”

“Well, Françoise wouldn't stand for that, and she had seen young Guillemin sneaking around the house, so she took a long chance and accused him. Your mother confessed it was so, but Guillemin denied it at first. But it evidently was true, for one day they ran off together.”

“Where to?”

“No one knows.” Aymar shook his head and sighed.

Bertrand also shook his head. “That too,” he said slowly.

Another shame for the lad to bear, Aymar thought, and nodded sadly. Then, in a flash, he understood: “What? That too? Bon Dieu!”

“Yes,” said Bertrand, looking up and straight at his uncle. “That too. But it is all past. All over now. Thank God for that.”

“What do you mean, all past?”

“It's over. I'm cured,” he answered simply.

Was he trying to escape, Aymar wondered? Or really, was he cured? “How?” he asked.

“I don't know. Yes, I do. A girl. I'm in love. She cured me. She keeps me from—” He didn't finish.

Could this be true? No, impossible. And yet, Aymar argued, the crimes had dropped suddenly. Was this then the explanation? Love? The miracle of Love? The love for a good woman?

“Who is she?”

“Her name is—Well, I would rather not say. But you will see her, for she will come to meet me here. I'm off duty at five. I shan't introduce you. But you will be able to look at her from a distance. She is rich, and very beautiful and so good. Ah, you cannot have any conception of how good she is. No, you cannot have any conception.”

“Hm,” said Aymar and smiled. Cured by a love affair. And just like Bertrand to turn into a loving swain. For such is the irony of life. Aymar had no doubt that this affair was pure and sickly sweet with sentiment.

A number of old fairy-tales, connected by Grimm
*
to werewolf-ism and for that reason brought to Aymar's attention during his study of the subject, leaped to his mind. It was a story of endless variations: the prince turned into an ugly lizard or a frog, or some other loathsome or dangerous beast, requires the love of a pure virgin to turn him back to human shape. Of course, no one will consent to marry a frog. But at last one pure and innocent girl, filled with pity, consents to a wedding and takes the frog to bed—the frog who thereupon ceases to be a frog and becomes a prince. And the two, of course, live happy ever after.

And was this nightmare, too, to end with a dawn all of rose and pearl and perfume? And was Bertrand to live happy ever after? What truth was there in the old stories?

Was that the way to cure them?

Beauty and the beast. Yes. There was deep wisdom in those old tales.

“I see her there, outside now,” Bertrand declared in an excited whisper. “Come and look at her, uncle, from a distance. She is the most beautiful thing you ever saw.”

Bertrand ran out and greeted Sophie with a kiss. They clung to each other as if they had been apart a year.

Aymar watched from the portal of the church. He saw a young officer pay the coachman and move away, his head bowed, as if he had nothing to do with this scene but take care of that one detail. Evidently her brother. Truly she was a beautiful thing. Hadn't he seen her somewhere before? But where?

And Aymar watched Bertrand and his love go offhand in hand. “And the sheep shall lie down with the wolf,” he quoted, “and they shall beat their swords into plowshares.”A real calf-love, he mused. And then said to himself, cynically: “I wonder…”

It occurred to him: “Suppose I talk with that young officer. Perhaps I shall discover if I did right to let him go, after having hunted for him so long.”

He approached the officer, who was standing on the sidewalk as if he were waiting for another cab to come along so that he could pay another coachman.

“Pardon me,” said Aymar. “Would you mind if I asked you a question?”

Captain Barral de Montfort ceased at that moment to be an unfortunate lover and became a spy. “Not at all,” he answered. “But whether you'll get a reply is another matter.”

“Entendu,” said Aymar. “Do you know that young lady?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you know the young man?”

“No.”

“Well, many thanks for your courtesy,” said Aymar. “I hope I didn't trouble you too much.”

“Pas de quoi,” said Montfort. But as Aymar turned to leave, the captain bethought himself: “À mon tour maintenant: Do you know the young lady?”

“No.”

“Do you know the young man?”

“Perhaps.”

Aymar smiled and the captain smiled.

“I think,” said Aymar, “that if we put our fragments of knowledge together, something might come of it. Come, let us sit down somewhere.”

They found a café nearby, took seats and ordered drinks. But the conversation did not want to go forward, the reason being that each wished to receive more than he gave. Barral was not anxious to reveal the woeful tale of his love nor, was Aymar ready to divulge the truth about Bertrand. He spoke vaguely of a mysterious and obnoxious nature, but said nothing of crimes.

“I see,” Barral said at one point, “that you have none too high an opinion of your nephew. That coincides completely with my own. Let me tell you something that I have observed,” he continued. “When first she went with this fellow, she began to show an unusual flush on her cheeks. I was struck by it, for it increased her beauty, but I was also frightened. To those hectic spots was added a queer, hard brightness in her eyes. I thought at first these might be symptoms of the onset of disease. But no, she was, as ever, in perfect health. Later I came to understand. She was bewitched. How else explain that a beautiful girl, the gayest, happiest creature you ever saw, pampered all her life, brought up in a luxury
inouï
, should take to such a sullen, poverty-stricken boy?”

For some obscure reason this annoyed Aymar. He now took up Bertrand's defense, not vigorously, but to a certain extent.

As if to excuse himself, he said, “Why haven't you communicated with her parents?”

“Well, you see,” said Barral, obviously embarrassed, “she made me promise not to tell.”

In love with her himself, Aymar decided. Poor fellow. And worse fool, I, to let Bertrand go on unhindered.

After an hour of this sort of desultory conversation, they rose, neither quite satisfied with the results of the conversation, and both imbued with a sense of fatality. Barral, who had begun the conversation with much hope, seeing the end approaching, could not restrain himself from crying out: “But, monsieur, isn't there something you could say to your nephew? Isn't there something you could do?”

Aymar patted him on the shoulder. “My friend, that's your job. But let me warn you. Do something! And do it quick.” And with that he hobbled off, feeling content that, on the one hand, if Bertrand was still a criminal, then by this last warning he had done his duty in that the young captain would be urged to some really desperate move and thus solve the whole problem; and that, on the other hand, if Bertrand was now reformed, then he had done right again by not forcing matters. But in the long run, he feared, such straddling was not likely to prove the best course. Years of shilly-shallying, however, had made straddling on the question of Bertrand a permanent habit.

Barral, watching Aymar go off, wanted to run after him and cry out: “Why do you say that? Why have you only hinted at terrible things? Come, you must help me. We must work together!”

Instead he went home and began his usual evening letter to Sophie. This was the only restful and beautiful moment of the day. Then the duplicity of his secret service was over, Bertrand faded from his mind, he concentrated on recalling exactly how Sophie had looked on such and such a day, it might be two years ago. He wanted to recall the exact dress, the color of the taffeta, the nature of the design on the ribbons that hung in garlands, from bow to bow, around the voluminous skirt. He wanted to recall the precise words of their conversation that evening, and puzzled his mind to find quotations from his letter of that night.

All that was back in the past and impossible to lay one's hands on, but it was surprisinghow suddenly things would leap out of the dark and stand before one's eyes as if they had happened only yesterday.

Reliving the past, thus, he had all the pleasure of wooing Sophie again and of thinking his love returned. His memory was naturally good. He did almost all his spy work by word of mouth and memory, and thus avoided keeping papers that might furnish incriminating evidence.

Late at night when he had finished his missive, he went out and posted it. Then it occurred to him: Was there really such an address? And did she live there? If there was actually such a number on the street, then the likelihood was that she had told the truth.

He went tramping through endless silent and chilly streets to the indicated address. The distance was considerable, but he did not mind. At last he found the place. The number was correct. Which was their apartment? he wondered. He crossed the street and looked up. All the windows were dull black squares, dark against the stone work. To the side there was a narrow passageway. Perhaps their window fronted in that direction? No. Everything was dark. They were probably asleep. Asleep. In one bed. Side by side. Or not asleep—lying awake in the dark—

He almost groaned aloud with pain. At that moment a faint glow came from the base of the building. Behind that half-subterranean window someone had lit a candle. He had been heard and people were going to open the window and examine. He was about to flee. But no. The window remained closed, and still aglow from the candlelight that filtered through a dense white curtain, probably a piece of sheeting.

Supposing that was their room? He bent down and peered. One could see through into an interior, but so faintly that nothing was recognizable. There were voices. They came through a slit made for ventilation. Male and female, it seemed. But they spoke in such whispers that it was hopeless to determine whose voices they were or what they were saying.