The Color of a Dog Running Away

by Richard Gwyn

  Back in Santa Caterina, I climbed the stairs to my flat, grateful that there were no cryptic messages under the door. I checked the answerphone: Eugenia had left a message saying she would be around the next day with Susie Serendipity, and to call her back if I was not going to be in. Let them come, I thought: let them all come. I have a tale to tell.

  I went out and stood on the veranda, leaning over the parapet so that I could see the stretch of road directly below. The cobbles were reflected back at me under the street-lamp. Somewhere nearby a cat-fight spluttered into action, the preliminary hissing and wailing drifting in malevolent waves across the rooftops. Up here the warm wind blew in more constant drafts, ruffling my shirt and hair. I stripped off down to my boxer shorts and lay on the hammock.

  What was it about my red-tiled outpost above the city that rendered me invulnerable to all that went on below? I had been living here for two years untroubled by normal social exigencies or their consequences. My sex life had adapted to a pattern of one-night stands since moving from Maragall and Fina’s monogamous ministrations. I had become an observer of city life, a cynical frequenter of all-night bars and clubs. A reluctant flâneur. I had stood by, unable to force myself into any kind of action while witness to a street robbery that evening in May; had questioned my inactivity roundly, and yet had still remained incapable of doing anything. Since then the circumstances of my life had changed. My terrace remained much the same, the view identical. But it was as if everything within my immediate sensory zone had acquired a new intensity, while the boundaries of the familiar world became more indistinct.

  I lay there smoking, resisting sleep. When the morning trucks arrived and started unloading outside the market, I dragged myself out of the hammock and into the bedroom. Once there I pulled the bedclothes over my head and passed out.

  That afternoon there was a hammering on the door and Zoff and Hogg walked in, sober and rested, but carrying an immoderate quantity of tequila and cold beer, and demanding the next installment. Shortly afterwards Eugenia and Susie followed, and the five of us retired to my veranda. Eugenia drank herb tea, while the rest of us made a start on the psychotropics with an aperitif of Tequila and more cocaine. I had to bring Eugenia and Susie up to date on the story so far, while Sean and Igbar argued about whether or not to play ambient music. This suggestion was vetoed by the women.

  Sean had evidently been thinking about my story.

  “Now, I don’t wish to prejudice the reaction of the ladies. But Lucas here, or the Lucas that Lucas describes in his story, seems to have been pretty well diverted from his concerns about Nuria after the supposed abduction. Here, I thought last night, was a man in the throes of a passionate affair, who has been forcibly separated from his lover. He wanders off on some Arcadian picnic with the evil Dr. Pontneuf and discusses reincarnation and transcendental philosophy while, as far as he knows, his beloved is, even as he speaks, being subjected to the most horrid improprieties at the hands of Pontenuf’s mutants.”

  “Mutants?” Eugenia was puzzled.

  “This Pontneuf’s savages. They all seem to have some physical deformity, an eye or a nose or a foot missing. They’re the backroom boys in Pontneuf’s house of horrors.”

  “Something of a presumption isn’t it,” admonished Igbar, “running the story down at this early stage? Besides, Lucas never mentioned a character with a missing foot, did you, Lucas?”

  “No. There were no missing feet.”

  “Okay. I stand corrected. But an understandable hyperbole considering the unlikely course of events so far.”

  “Can you let us be the judge of that?” asked Susie Serendipity.

  “Quite so,” said Igbar.

  “Fair enough,” said Sean. “Just airing a healthy scepticism.”

  We settled down in the meagre shade of the veranda, spread variously on the hammock (Igbar) and cushions (the rest of us), and I continued where I had left off.

  Later that same day, though not immediately on his return, as Pontneuf had led him to expect, Lucas finally had his reunion with Nuria. He was lying on the grass near a barn when she approached, dressed reassuringly like a 1990s barcelonesa in blue jeans and a white cotton vest, rather than smocked, hippy-primitive, in grey or brown sacking, which seemed to be the couture of choice of most of the residents.

  She settled on her knees beside him and they kissed. There was a coy, almost flirtatious air about her that was at once seductive and yet, to Lucas, strangely incompatible with the situation they found themselves in.

  “Have you planned our escape yet?” she asked, smiling, as though such a scheme were utterly predictable of Lucas. He was offended by her mocking tone.

  “I hadn’t planned anything until I could see you. But I for one don’t fancy being a willing abductee. It would fit in too neatly with Pontneuf’s plans for us. Or rather, for Clare and Raymond.”

  Nuria watched Lucas carefully as he spoke, twisting a blade of grass between her fingers. She remained silent, however, and he at once sensed a resistance to the tone of his answer.

  “Nuria,” he asked, “what’s the matter? Don’t you want to leave? The longer we stay, the greater the chances are of us being sucked into this thing, of becoming a part of it.”

  Her look expressed more exasperation than concern.

  “Can’t you see? We’re a part of it already. We have been from the beginning, without knowing it. Right down to the circumstances of our meeting at the Miró Foundation. It was all a set-up.”

  Nuria pulled a pack of cigarettes out of her jeans pocket and lit two, handing one to Lucas. He noticed that her hand was trembling. “Perhaps our being set up is not the best analogy,” she continued after a while, seeming to collect herself. “I told you before, in Barceloneta, that I felt as though I’d known you all my life. This is not a fantasy, or even a confirmation of Romantic Love. It’s a kind of”—she broke off, uncertain of her words—“inner recognition. I’m only asking you to consider the possibility that what André is saying could be right, and that we might have been together in a previous life.”

  “But why do the feelings that we have for one another have to be straitjacketed by Pontneuf’s interpretation?” asked Lucas. “To base one’s life on the notion that one is continuing what had been begun in a previous incarnation seems so deterministic, so limiting.”

  “It’s not his interpretation I’m concerned about,” she answered. “It’s what I know in myself to be true. Dreams I’ve had over the years and never confided to anyone. A picture of you I’ve had in my head since I was eleven or twelve years old. And then there’s the other stuff, which we haven’t even mentioned yet.”

  “What other stuff?”

  “Things that André could tell about me. Secret things he could not have known about. My terror of being caught in a fire and burned alive, which I have carried with me always, silently. Arguments I had with the priest at school. You know I went to a convent school?”

  He did, because she had told him at their first meeting. “I invoked practically the entire Cathar litany in religious instruction classes with him. He had called me, only half-jokingly, a heretic. In a religious instruction class,” she repeated, “with a dozen other thirteen-year-olds! ‘My little heretic’ became his nickname for me. Obviously I didn’t know then that I had summarized a dualistic worldview, but that priest made sure I learned the error of my views. Without mentioning Catharism or the Albigensian heresy. He didn’t want to nurture my heretical beliefs by grounding them in an historical precedent, by showing that thousands of others had died for harbouring those same beliefs seven hundred years before. He continued using this nickname, ‘my little heretic,’ only in private, when no one else could hear. But André knew of this affinity of mine with the Cathars, just as he knew the priest’s secret nickname for me.”

  This disclosure of another of Pontneuf’s displays of insight ought not to have come as a surprise. Still, Lucas felt bound to discredit him in whatever way he could. For Nuria, t
he situation now seemed straightforward, and her behaviour from that point onward only confirmed Lucas’s mounting suspicion that she had been completely taken in by Pontneuf. Not that she lost her sense of humour, in the way that religious converts and neophytes are supposed to do. She remained, for the most part, the character that he had known in Barcelona, given to verbal excesses of every kind, including sharply observant insights regarding other members of the community (particularly the most slavishly devout); libidinous; and occasionally sulky. One thing that she would not tolerate, however, after that first meeting, was any criticism of Pontneuf.

  That first afternoon at the Refuge, as the community was un-originally named, they were given their sleeping quarters. The room was spacious and puritan, with a single window giving onto the grass-strewn square and the mountains beyond. It was a pleasant, uncluttered room: a room which (were it not for the double bed) aspired to an ascetic self-restraint. Once inside the room, Nuria flopped onto the bed and lay on her back, watching Lucas through half-closed eyes.

  “Lucas, let’s stay a few days and find out some more about ourselves. Or who we might be.” She spoke in her natural voice, with that barely detectable edge of irony that she often had. “After all, we’ve nothing to lose but a few body fluids.”

  She laughed, and patted the bed beside her. Lucas sat down on the edge of the bed, non-committal.

  “But what about our jobs? Arranging stuff back home? A person can’t just disappear.”

  “That’s okay. I already phoned work this afternoon, using André’s cell phone. I’m taking time off. And you were going to have the week off anyway.”

  “You’ve already—?” Lucas started.

  He was truly hurt: this meant she had presumed Lucas’s eventual concordance, at least in respect of staying at the Refuge, before speaking with him. In this she was right, of course. He would not have left her here alone, except perhaps to go and fetch the police. But what would he have told them? That a twenty-seven-year-old woman had been abducted, but was entirely happy to remain with her captors? They would have laughed at him.

  So he sulked.

  Nuria shrugged and went on, conceding a little to his mood. “Look. Why not let’s discover what goes on here, at least? There’s got to be more than just being reincarnated Cathars. There must be a policy, a strategy. Even if you don’t believe in reincarnation you’ve got to admit it is an interesting situation. And, who knows, you might lose a little of that martyred air.”

  Lucas did not respond to the last remark, only making a mental note that martyrdom was a specifically Cathar concern.

  “Perhaps you’re right,” he said eventually. Secretly, however, he harboured other plans. “We should stay. As you say, I can fix things at work, since I’m practically freelance anyhow. I’d like to find out what makes our André tick.”

  As Lucas discovered over the following days, there was in Pontneuf a considerable element of megalomania, despite his charm. He exerted detailed control over the lives of his followers: in fact the whole community ran according to his plans and dictates. True, there was a “council meeting” at the end of each day (which he chaired) in which individuals were encouraged to make suggestions for the running of the Refuge, and occasionally to voice complaints, but these were invariably of such a minor kind as to be insignificant.

  At the end of the first week, Nuria and Lucas must have given the impression of having reached a similarly conditioned state themselves. They both wrote to their employers, requesting an indefinite leave of absence. Strangely, and in spite of his personal, more subversive agenda, Lucas was seduced by the atmosphere of the Refuge, and while he still held overpowering doubts about Pontneuf, he was swept up by Nuria’s enthusiasm. He began to enjoy the sensation of withdrawal from the concerns of the material and consumerist world. Besides, Catharism was undemanding in its imposition of ritual and ceremony. It was, taken on its own, a simple faith, without the central problem of a literal belief in Christ as the embodied Son of God. It was, rather, the ultimate objective which Pontneuf seemed intent on imposing on it that riled Lucas.

  Later, he would find it hard to understand quite how easy it had been for him to adapt to the blinkered and delusional way of life at the Refuge. He put it down to two factors: his obsession with Nuria, which he gradually came to accept as, possibly, the consequence of his love for her in a previous existence, and the undoubted personal magnetism of Pontneuf. However much Lucas tried to hate him, however clearly he thought he saw through the rhetoric and hotch-potch philosophy, the man held a sway over him, as he did over all of the members of the community. Indeed, his feelings about Pontneuf sent him again and again into ever-tightening circles of ambiguity and self-doubt.

  Daily life at the Refuge unfolded with a repetitive simplicity. There were informal prayers and meditation at six in the morning followed by breakfast. Immediately after breakfast Pontneuf addressed the group, often using a text from the gospel of Saint John. Morning tasks followed, mainly concerned with the maintenance of the land and caring for the animals. The main meal of the day took place at midday, after which there was a rest period, and then either more menial tasks or else a range of designated “spiritual exercises.” The day came to a close with a council meeting, supper, and evening prayers.

  At the community’s head was Pontneuf, the undisputed leader and owner of the properties. He employed four “helpers,” two of whom, Zaco and Le Chinois, consented to speak only French and looked as though they had been scraped off the dockside at Marseilles: a tattooed, smouldering, belligerent duo who, incongruously in the peaceful climate of the Refuge, appeared to act as Pontneuf’s minders. They were assisted by two Spanish-speaking misfits: Francisco, the noseless one of the night of the abduction, and the one-eyed giant, El Tuerto. These four did not attend prayers or take part in the everyday activities of the community, apart from carrying out occasional labouring jobs. They ran errands for Pontneuf, disappearing in pairs in the large van which had brought Nuria and Lucas to the Refuge, or else in one of two Land Rovers. Lucas noted early on that the keys were often left in these vehicles, so Pontneuf’s claim that he and Nuria were free to leave at any time they wished was apparently not an idle offer.

  The two other perfecti were Marta, the Kierkegaard woman who had directed the kidnapping, and her Cathar “husband,” Rafael, a slight, nervous Italian from Lombardy with the harassed eyes of either resolute self-denial or chronic onanism—Lucas could never decide which. These two acted as Pontneuf’s lieutenants in spiritual matters. Their role was to lead morning and evening prayers on normal days and to act as counsellors to the rest of the flock.

  The community was centred on the council hall. This was a large room comprising the ground floor of one of the main buildings. The floor was covered with straw matting and strewn with prayer cushions. Cathars did not acknowledge the symbol of the cross, believing it to be a corrupt artefact, so the room was devoid of crucifixes or other religious icons. During prayers, Pontneuf, Marta, or Rafael would stand or kneel at the front, surrounded by a semi-circle of credentes. The room contained no other furniture, nor any musical instruments. They did not sing hymns or psalms, but recited simple prayers in a monotone, following the lead of whichever perfectus was ministering that day.

  The meetings, or “chats,” as Pontneuf called them, were a different matter. Pontneuf had indicated to Lucas on his arrival at the Refuge that their own group was not the only one that had been constituted from reincarnated Cathars. He spoke about “the movement” gaining pace elsewhere, although he avoided any geographical exactitude. He spoke, but again, only in vague terms, of the unique role that New Catharism would play in the overturning of materialism and “idolatory culture.”

  The lack of a coherent structure to his movement, the absence of evangelism or any policy of spreading the Cathar gospel, was, of course, utterly at odds with the notion of developing a world religion, but this was something which nobody appeared to question. It was as if the promi
se of a world community sharing Cathar beliefs was based wholly within the microcosm of the little tribe at the Refuge. When Lucas mentioned his doubts to Nuria, she shrugged, saying that no doubt André would provide the means to his chosen end when the time was right, and that all that was required from them as credentes—as, she pointed out, the term implied—was faith. Lucas was staggered that someone as sharp and inquisitive as Nuria could show such blind acceptance. Or rather, the Nuria he had known in Barcelona.

  With Pontneuf himself, Lucas edged around the topic with care, while the Prophet of New Catharism expounded grandiosely, both in private sessions and at group meetings, in terms of spiritual fulfilment and the need to convert all the credentes at the Refuge into perfecti before sending them out into the world to preach the faith. This, it was revealed, was the master plan. But no time-scale was ever indicated as to when precisely this might happen. Pontneuf relied instead on clichés and platitudes such as “when the time is right,” or “when God sees fit.”

  In order to achieve perfect status, one had to receive the consolamentum, of course; renounce the ways of the world, and dedicate oneself to celibacy, vegetarianism, and the ministry. While all the credentes aimed to achieve this status, there was, insisted Pontneuf, no hurry. Hadn’t they, after all, waited seven and a half centuries in order to be born into a propitious age? Only when they were fully prepared, he insisted, would they have the strength to carry the message in the wider world.

  Lucas’s growing belief was that Pontneuf was holding something back, something which he alone knew. This withholding of information was not merely a trick designed to enhance his mystique as guardian of secret Cathar knowledge, but something apart. The conviction had been ignited in Lucas on that first day by the stream, when Pontneuf had responded with such alacrity to Lucas’s murderous thoughts, and had developed gradually with every prevarication and excuse that Pontneuf made for not ushering his flock more succinctly into an evangelical force.