Werewolf of Paris (24 page)

He sank his teeth into it. His eyes glared around suspiciously. Low growls came from his throat. For a while there was silence, then there were more noises, the slap of the hard, dead hand as it hit the floor, the crunching of a bone, and occasionally a sharp tick as a ring on one finger struck wood.

At last his hunger was appeased, but he had no recollection of it. Morning found him in bed, his head heavy, his neck aching, his tongue furred. It was difficult to get up, but having succeeded at last, he began the disgusting task of cleaning up the remains on the floor. He dressed himself and went out to join his regiment.

As he traversed the courtyard, the fat concierge came dashing out: “Monsieur, monsieur. Leave me your key, finally. I would like to clean your room.”

“Here it is,” he said darkly, “but in that case, I'm moving.”

“Ah monsieur…” she said.

“How many times have I told you that I don't want my room cleaned? What do you think I had my own lock put on for? So you could come in and disturb me whenever you pleased?”

“Ah, mais—”

“Well, do you want the key or not?”

“Ah, mais, voyons…”

“Merde alors!” he exclaimed and walked off.

“Peuh!” she breathed. “Quelle bête féroce! You'd think I wanted to spy on him. Well, I bet he has something to conceal, if he keeps his door locked that way.” Self-righteous, her lips compressed, she returned to her interrupted scrubbing.

When his duties were over, Bertrand went to the canteen and sat sullen, filled with horror at himself. “You've besmirched yourself foully. How dare you even come into the same room with that pure being?”

He wished with all his strength that he might turn into some loathsome insect, a spider, for example, and that he could run beneath her foot and die crushed under her sole. “No,” he thought, “she would not even step on me. Even a poisonous bug she would let live. She's too good.”

But though he tried to restrain himself, he did at last look up. Her eyes were upon him, but she shifted her glance quickly. Her gaze wandered back, however. As if magnetized, her eyes looked into his, and his looked into hers. It lasted but a fraction of a second, but it might have been years.

That evening he made a deep vow, and when he reached his room he wrapped all the flesh and bones he had and, adding a stone for weight, made a tight package which he contrived unnoticed to sink into the Seine.

“No more of that,” he said. “No more. Never. I swear it by your eyes.”

He was in love. He was in love. As he wandered home a woman accosted him, but he shook his head violently. “Ugly creature,” he said to himself. He was through with that sort. He had suddenly become very prim. He went home and slept soundly. In the morning he woke up from a dreamless sleep.

“I'm cured!” he wanted to shout to the sunlight that in the early morning found its way into his room. “I'm cured! She has cured me. With her help, it needed only a good effort.”

In the afternoon at the canteen he was moved to rush up and thank her, but he did not dare. However, he found a piece of paper and wrote: “You have rescued me from my nightmares. You are an angel.” But for two days he carried the scrap of paper around and did not dare give it to her.

Finally, one afternoon, when he sawher coach drivingup and the possibility about to be lost for another day, he walked rapidly past the counter and pushed the paper across to her. She snatched it and hid it away in her sleeve as if she had been expecting a message from him, as if she had been secreting billets-doux from him all her life.

Before she rode off with Barral she had a chance to glance at the note: “You have rescued me from my nightmares.” The effect on her was electrical. How did he know? How did he know about her dreams?

She was not in the mood for Barral's gaiety. But she dissembled. It had come to be natural for her to be perpetually smiling and laughing. She could do it despite her trembling heart.

“Sophie,” said Aunt Louise shaking her head, “will you never be serious?”

Sophie stopped laughing. She was struck by the similarity of their thoughts. She, like Aunt Louise, had been thinking: “Is that all you have, Barral, jokes and smart replies and pretty nonsense? What do you think of at night?”

She could formulate the answer he wouldgive to such a question. “I think of you all nightlong, and if God is good I dream of you too in my sleep.” A pretty conceit and nothing more. A good fellow, this Barral, but shallow and silly. And she held that reply against him without ever giving him the opportunity to make it.

For several weeks Sophie and Bertrand confined themselves to an exchange of notes. But these protestations of mutual dreams and love soon ceased to satisfy. She craved more intimacy.

In the evenings at home, with Barral, and generally under the watchful eye of Aunt Louise, Sophie nearly yawned. “If Barral would only leave,” she thought, “then I could go to bed and be with my Bertrand's eyes.” She was no longer so afraid of the dark, no longer so afraid of death, since she knew her fate shared.

Once Aunt Louise left them alone for a minute. And Sophie, unaware of what she was doing, ceased her light chatter. She was thinking: “Poor Barral, I'll be leaving you soon.” And under a sudden impulse of pity, she laid her hand in his. Frightened by this open declaration of affection, a token greater than any she had ever shown him, he clasped his fingers round hers and was so weak with love that he could not say anything. With astonishment and a joy so deep that it was painful, he saw her eyes fill with tears, he heard her say: “Poor Barral.”

Aunt Louise entered and suggested that it was late. He took her home, feeling all the while as if he were floating on clouds, and when he had reached his apartment, he forgot to take off his cape in his haste to sit down and write to Sophie. He filled more pages than ever. He described his emotions a dozen times, swore his love in every paragraph, and when he went out to post his letter, it was three o'clock, but he was in no mood for sleep that night.

In the morning Sophie took his letter to her room and sat down, intending to read it. But her thoughts carried her off to Bertrand. She wondered how best to arrange a meeting with him. It grew late, and time to hasten off to a silly appointment which she regretted ever havingmade, except insofar as such appointments kept people from discovering her secret.

But before she left home she must write a note for Bertrand. Why not say that she would come to his house? Yes, she must do that. Soon, almost any day now, the siege might be over and with that the canteens and a large measure of her freedom. She wrote the note and was about to hurry off. Then she remembered Barral's letter which she had not yet read. “Bah,” she said, “some other time,” and threw it unopened into a drawer of her secretaire.

That evening Bertrand could scarcely control himself from shouting with joy. She was comingto his house.
She
, yes, she. She was actually coming into his room. She could only spare a half-hour, but she would come sharp at the dot and they would be together and alone.

The night no longer had any terrors for him. He knew he would sleep through, and if he dreamt at all, it would be of her. In the morning as he was leaving, he bethought himself:

“Mme Labouvaye!” he shouted into a dark hole.

“Oui, monsieur! Oui, monsieur!” the concierge shouted back and came running out, her ample bosom dancing with the motion imparted by her strides.

“Voilà la clef,” he said. “Please clean up thoroughly.”

She was too astonished to speak.

In spite of himself, he smiled. He could smile now that he belonged to the human race again. “Someone is coming to see me.”

She understood and laughed with him. “Ah, monsieur,” she said, drawing out her words. Then she chuckled: “I'll clean it. I'll scrub your room so clean you will be able to eat off the floor.”

He shuddered, controlled himself, and smiling a goodbye, walked off. She remained looking after him, standing out in the chilly winter air. “Hmm. And so that's all he wanted to make him act more human? Those young fellows take that sort of thing too seriously. But after all, what else is there to life?”

Sophie came on time. He met her at the corner of the street and showed her through the maze of courts and dark corridors to his room.

“I'll remember, next time,” she said and smiled up at him.

Within, she noted the ugliness of his chamber. The window that did not look out upon the sky, but upon walls. The chairs that were hard and uncomfortable.

They sat together on the bed and held each other's hands. And they were silent, filled with rapid thoughts and emotions, but embarrassed. What should they do now that they were together? They did nothing, just sat and looked at each other.

At last, in a voice that was hoarse from its weight of love, he excused the meanness of his quarters. And she, in a voice warm and throbbing, expressed some equally trite remark.

They may have been sitting thus for some twenty minutes or more and exchanging remarks that were far from inspired, when a strange thought obtruded itself into her mind. What was she doing here in this room? Who was this young man whose hand she was holding in her own, clasping it with force as if she would have sooner parted with her life? Why…?

A strange terror took hold of her, the kind of a terror one has when, just before waking from a bad dream, one's whole being shrieks: This can't be true! and yet fears that it may.

Abruptly she dropped his hand and rose.

“You're not going yet?” he exclaimed.

“I must,” she said.

“Don't,” he pleaded.

Her eyes were darting around the room as if she imagined she were trapped in a cage. And indeed she did feel trapped. She must get out! She had put herself into a living nightmare. She had entombed herself alive! She made a move toward the door, but he caught hold of her hand again and held her.

“Let me go,” she cried in a whisper.

He wanted to let her go, but his fingers wouldn't loosen. He drew her slowly back toward himself. She held her hand before her face as if she would ward him off. Her eyes were wide open in terror.

“Don't hurt me!” she begged. “Oh, please don't hurt me!”

Thereupon he suddenly released her. “I wasn't going to hurt you,” he said in a pained voice. He looked away and said: “You may go if you like. Shall I show you the way to the street?”

Her momentary terror vanished. What had she been afraid of? She was filled with contrition instead. Impulsively she put her arms around him.

His own arms remained at his side. It was now his turn to be frightened. He realized that for a moment at least he had lost control of himself. He did not dare clasp her in his arms. It would be better if he never saw her again. Better still if he killed himself quickly.

“Bertrand,” she said softly, entreatingly.

He did not answer.

“Bertrand,” she cried out in despair, “don't you love me?”

He sighed out: “I love you so madly it were better I—”

“Then quick, put your arms around me,” she interrupted.

He obeyed.

“You must hold me tighter,” she said.

Again he obeyed.

“Tighter still,” she whispered. Such a bliss flowed through her from the feel of his arms about her, from his body pressed close to hers, that her head grew dizzy, her breath came and went. Her body tensed and then seemed about to dissolve in liquid. About to dissolve, but not quite. If only he would press harder. If only he would crush her. Tear her! Mutilate her!

“Hold me, hold me tighter still,” she panted. And still she was on that point of dissolving and could not dissolve. In desperation she cried out: “Hurt me! Bertrand, hurt me!”

Then she felt his arms closing around her like a vise. And within this circle of pain she experienced a strange exultation, as if a bird within her had been released and was filling her ears with a wild singing. And it was as if all her body dissolved away. She breathed heavily.

They were still standing near the bed.

“You're hurting me,” she said at last. At once his arms loosened. She looked up at him. Looked first into one of his eyes and then into the other. She was searching there for an explanation of the joy she had just lived through. There was nothing, only strange, big, brown eyes under heavy brows that were out of place on so boyish a face.

She was grateful to him. She wanted to give him some sign of her gratitude. What could she say? What could she do? They were sitting on the bed again and holding hands.

“What large nails you have,” she exclaimed.

“Don't look at them,” he said, “they are ugly.”

“You mustn't say that. They are not ugly. They are very beautiful and so shiny. But why are they so big?”

“Because…” he said and halted. “Because it's—it's a disease.”

“A disease?”

“Yes.”

“What kind of a disease?”

He was on the verge of casting himself at her feet and telling her all. But he restrained himself and sought for a way to turn the conversation. “It's called onichogryphosis,” he said.

“Onicho…what?” she asked.

“Onichogryphosis,” he repeated.

Her laughter tinkled through the room. “You must write it down forme.”

“Let us look at
your
nails instead,” he suggested. “Like polished jewels.” He put them to his mouth and kissed them. He felt tempted to nip her fingertips with his teeth, and he did so, but ever so gently.

And yet he had hurt her. She had wanted to exclaim and draw her fingers away, but she didn't. Was not this the way she could show her gratitude? She insisted: “Bite them, if you want to.” And as he hesitated, she asked: “Do you want to?”

He felt as he had once when as a little boy he had confessed to his mother of a pain in his groin and she had wanted to see.