Dog Island

by Philippe Claudel

  But the strangest thing, and frankly the most unreal, was that a new voice rose up, one that did not belong to any of those present; a voice that caused them all to jump, as though the Devil had suddenly decided to join them.

  In the confusion of their thoughts and the growing awareness that the sight before them did not belong to a nightmare, a scene from a film or a television newsreel, or a page from a crime novel, but to the damp reality of this September morning, they had not heard the approach of the newcomer who had just broken the silence, like a lanced boil, by simply repeating “My God!” three times over, in a soft and horrified voice that made them all shudder, and immediately irritated them all, since no one likes to be caught in flagrante by weakness and fear.

  The voice belonged to the Teacher, who had taken over the class after the Old Woman. He was not native to the island. A foreigner. The Old Woman did not like him, but then she did not like many people. Of course, it had been some time since she had stepped down, but she still thought of him as a thief. He had stolen her job. Stolen her pupils. Stolen her school. She loathed him.

  He had a wife who was said to be a nurse. To begin with, she had looked for work, but nothing had been offered to her. She had then tried to open a health care clinic in an annex of the school. But the people of the island look after themselves and when it is something more serious there is the Doctor. So in the end she had remained at home. Doing nothing, apart from finding that time passed very slowly. The island had become her tedious day-to-day chore.

  People said that she was wasting away like a forgotten plant on the corner of a windowsill, one that is hardly ever watered. The couple had two little girls, twins. Gay and carefree as young birds. Two ten-year-old children, who never left one another’s side and played only with each other.

  That morning, the Teacher was dressed in green shorts and a close-fitting white T-shirt, on which was printed the advertising slogan for a telephone company. He was wearing sneakers. He shaved his calves and his thighs like a professional sportsman, his skin was smooth like a woman’s. Every morning, he set off on a long training run before taking a shower and going to work. His attention was gripped solely by the three corpses, whereas everyone else was now staring only at him.

  “What on earth are you doing here?” the Mayor barked.

  “I was running. I saw the cart and America’s donkey. And all of you in the distance. And then the tarpaulin. I reckoned that—”

  “What did you reckon?”

  The Old Woman had spoken in as unpleasant a tone of voice as the Mayor.

  “That all this was not normal—that something serious must have happened. I recognized the Doctor, and then the Mayor . . . My God!”

  He did not disguise the fact that he was deeply distressed, unlike the others, who were also upset but would have died rather than let it show. In spite of his large, sturdy body, and the strength that radiated from his youth, for he was a little over thirty years old, he suddenly looked very vulnerable. He was unable to stop the flow of his litany in which the name of God trickled like clear water.

  The Old Woman stopped the tap for him.

  “Leave God out of all this.”

  The Teacher fell silent. No one spoke.

  It was early. Only just eight o’clock. The cloud covering had dropped still lower, and the dawning day was already losing its brightness. The wind from the sea blew the waves right up to the feet of the little group, who all took a few steps backward so as not to get wet. Everyone suddenly felt cold. The Teacher was shivering, the flesh on his arms and his legs looked like a plucked chicken’s. Only the three corpses remained impassive.

  The Mayor spoke.

  “There are six of us here. Six of us who know. Six who should say nothing until this evening, when we shall meet again at the town hall at nine o’clock. I am going to think about what steps to take.”

  “Steps to take?” said the Teacher in surprise, shivering.

  “Be quiet!” the Mayor said. “We’ll discuss the matter this evening. But if between now and then one of you talks to anyone about this, or if any one of you does not turn up this evening, I’ll take down my gun and I’ll sort him out.”

  “What are you going to do with them?” asked the Old Woman, gesturing to the three corpses.

  “Swordy and I will take care of them. America, leave us your cart and your donkey. The rest of you, you can all leave. You, too, America, two of us will be enough. See you this evening. And remember, I’m not a man to make empty promises!”

  They all dispersed. The Old Woman continued her walk as though nothing had happened. The dog gamboled around her. It was as happy as only animals can be, who live in the present, who know nothing about the past, nor about suffering and matters concerning the future.

  The Old Woman disappeared into the distance. The Teacher tried to resume his route, but he could be seen lurching and eventually walking aimlessly, like a robot, turning back to gaze at the corpses of the drowned men. The Doctor set off toward the town with America, while Swordy returned with the donkey and the cart. The Mayor rummaged in his pockets.

  “Are you looking for something, Boss?”

  “A cigarette.”

  “I thought you had given up.”

  “And if I want to start again, is it anything to do with you?”

  “I was just asking.”

  “Give me one of yours.”

  Swordy held out a pack. The Mayor helped himself to a cigarette and Swordy lit it for him. The Mayor took two long drags one after the other, closing his eyes. Swordy stroked the donkey as he contemplated the three bodies.

  “And now, Boss?”

  “‘Now’ what?”

  “What’s going to happen?”

  The Mayor shrugged. He spat on the ground.

  “Nothing. Nothing is going to happen. It was an error.”

  “An error?”

  “In a few weeks’ time you’ll tell yourself you dreamed all this. And if you speak to me about it, if you ask me anything, I’ll tell you I don’t know what you’re talking about. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Memories. We can hold on to them, but we can also grate them up like a piece of cheese in the soup. And afterward, they no longer exist. Do you understand that?”

  “That I understand. The cheese disappears. It melts into the soup. All that’s left is the taste in the mouth, but with a glass of wine you get rid of it. Nothing is left.”

  “There you are. With a glass of wine, you get rid of it. Let’s go, the Old Woman is staring at us.”

  The Old Woman had stopped some hundred meters away and even appeared to be turning back, as though she were coming toward them with her dagger-shaped figure and her dog that pranced around her. Swordy grabbed the first corpse under the armpits. The Mayor took it by the feet. They hoisted it onto the cart, and did the same with the two others. Swordy lay the tarpaulin over them and tied it down. Soon, all one could see was blue plastic. The Mayor had already clambered up onto the plank that served as a seat. Swordy joined him, took the reins, made the donkey turn around, and set it off in the direction of the path.

  The beach returned to its impassive solitude.

  IV

  FOR EACH OF THESE CHARACTERS, THE DAY HAD FELT AS long as a century and it was with relief that they watched dusk fall. At nine o’clock that evening, while the night outside blurred the sea and the sky into one dark mass, the Mayor shut the door of the boardroom and drew the velvet curtains that were never closed. Clouds of red dust dispersed and scattered over the two chandeliers, the only luxury in the room, and landed on the heads and shoulders of those who had taken their places around the oval table.

  The Mayor sat down. He did so with ostentatious solemnity, his small body like that of an elderly child, and, in silence still, looked at each of those present: no one who had been on the beach that morning was missing.

  “Swordy and I have placed the remains in a place where no one will be
able to find them, and to which I alone have the key.”

  He took out of his pocket a piece of aluminum that did not look like a conventional key, something flat and smooth, dotted with holes, and placed it in front of him. He gave the others time to look at it.

  “I’ve spent the day considering what should be done, and I suppose you have been doing so, too.”

  The Teacher, who had changed his sporting gear for appropriate clothes and whose demeanor still showed evidence of the great anxiety that exercised him, interrupted the Mayor:

  “How do you mean, ‘what should be done’? We must inform the authorities! What else? I was so flabbergasted this morning that I wasn’t in my right mind. I did as you asked, I haven’t said anything to anyone, but I don’t understand what we are doing here or why you are delaying getting in touch with the police and a magistrate. To allow an entire day to go by, after such a discovery—it’s astonishing!”

  The Teacher stopped speaking. Looking at the others, he searched for support, but they lowered their heads, apart from the Doctor, who smiled as he gazed at him, and the Old Woman, whose bright eyes caused him to look away. He was breathing quickly, and swallowing with difficulty. The Mayor stared at him for a moment before replying:

  “I remind you that my role as mayor places police matters within my remit on this island, and that in the absence of a police station I am the only person among the inhabitants to have this power, a power that I have never used, as you are no doubt aware, because ours is a peaceful island. And although I have no skills where matters of justice are concerned, it nonetheless falls to me to decide initially whether it is worthwhile involving an investigator and a magistrate from the mainland.”

  “And three corpses, are they not worthwhile?” said the Teacher. “How many would it require for you to pick up your telephone? Five, ten, twenty, a hundred?”

  His audacity made him blush. He stared once more at the Mayor, whose eyes appeared to be bulging in their sockets and who could be heard grinding his teeth. The latter retorted, in a voice so low that some of them had to strain their ears to hear him.

  “The bodies have been examined by the Doctor. They display no traces of violence. Stop me if I am mistaken: you didn’t notice any wounds, isn’t that what you told me?”

  The Doctor, who was rubbing his stomach, assented with a smile.

  “Nothing indicates that these unfortunate people were the victims of an attack or murder. They died by drowning and did not spend long in the water, as is indicated by the lack of abrasions, or of wounds that might have been caused by rocks, crabs, or fish, or the propellers of a boat—”

  “Did you carry out an autopsy on them, Doctor?” the Teacher said, and on asking this question he swallowed painfully, as though the word, heard thousands of times on detective series, was too burdensome for him.

  “No need,” replied the Doctor, maintaining his good humor. “Drowning, alas, is obvious. What did you expect they died from? Sunstroke?”

  Swordy laughed, and so did America. Even the Old Woman smiled, silently, her pale lips curled into a haughty pout over her gray teeth. And the Mayor laughed, too, but in his case it sounded like the hiss of a snake. The Teacher, who was wriggling about on his chair, spoke out in his timid little boy’s voice, which did not correspond to his large, strong frame.

  “You know better than I do that, to establish whether someone has died from drowning, a superficial examination is insufficient, and that comparative analyses of the levels of strontium and iron in the blood and the levels of these metals in the water are vital. I apologize for these somewhat technical details. I don’t mean to play the pedant; I am simply interested in the truth.”

  “It’s entirely to your credit,” replied the Doctor, who had begun to fondle a cigar that he had just taken from his inside coat pocket, “and you are right. But let us consider for a minute: everyone here knows where these unfortunate people come from, and what they were attempting to do. Even if we turn our backs on it, Africa is right there, very close, a few dozen kilometers away. How can we not know what is taking place there, when the media never stop showing us the lengths that thousands of wretched people go to in order to reach Europe? We know very well where these three men wanted to go. The boat in which they had set out capsized, as did others before it, and as others will capsize again. They died from drowning. The sea often allows men to glide over its surface, but occasionally it grows irritable and devours some of them. That is the truth, which is extremely sad, I grant you.”

  Talking had made the Doctor feel hot and he took out a handkerchief to mop the drops of sweat that had appeared on his brow. The Teacher said nothing; it was as though the Doctor’s speech had acted on him like a narcotic. The Mayor let him wallow in his silence. The Old Woman continued to glare at him. Swordy stared at the ceiling and America solemnly inspected his fingernails, as if their blackness suddenly bothered him greatly, and had plunged him into depths of astonishment.

  It was then that a sort of scraping could be heard at the door, not timid knocking, but an unpleasant noise, like a branch of dead wood scraping against a shutter in the wind, or when a crow tries to get into a house with its beak and its claws. And even before any of them had been able to identify the sound, the door slowly opened—one might have thought that it was the wind beating against the casement again. The Priest appeared, with his thick spectacles and his neck as hairless as an anemic cockerel’s, strangled by the loose collar of his cassock that had once been white, but which time and dirt had turned as gray as a hangman’s rope. A few bees buzzed around him.

  The Mayor did not permit him to come in any further.

  “Father, please forgive us, but we are busy with an important meeting and I don’t—”

  “Don’t worry,” the Priest said. “I know why you are here. The bodies of the black men on the beach this morning. I’ve been told everything.”

  “Which of these bastards told you?” the Mayor shouted. He had leaped out of his seat, beating the tabletop with both hands. He looked at everybody as though he was about to throttle them.

  “Somebody confided to me in the secrecy of the confessional,” the Priest continued. “That person is here present. They should not be afraid. I would never betray them. I simply warned them that I would be coming this evening. My presence is no surprise to them. I simply wanted you to be aware, all and every one of you, that I know. My place is here, therefore, with you.”

  He always gave the impression of being at home everywhere, even in places where he had never set foot. He removed his thick and cloudy spectacles, which made him look like a goldfish lost in an aquarium where the algae had turned the glass green, then began to polish them slowly with a strip of his soutane, which smelled of camphor and lengthy celibacy.

  “Do go on, please. Where were you?” he asked, once he had wiped his spectacles again and knocked a bee that would not stop buzzing around his ear to the ground.

  The Mayor clenched his jaw. He fiddled with his mechanical pencil. His skin looked as though it had grown tauter still over the bones of his face. He was most likely trying to reason with himself, telling himself that a priest was not really a man, and that, through holding long conversations in empty space, he had, in his deep solitude and wretchedness, lost his sense of reality and was out of touch with the world. He was probably there only to concern himself with what was to become of the souls of the drowned men, and if that were the case, he as mayor and out-and-out atheist would gladly allow him to fulfill his purpose. He could not care less about the salvation of souls, Purgatory, Hell, and all that nonsense. His training as an accountant by correspondence course had long ago taught him that life was merely an earthly sum of joyful and unhappy moments which, ultimately, whatever one did, amounted to a nil balance sheet.

  Nevertheless, the Priest’s words had their effect. Around the table, people gave one another suspicious looks. Each of them tried to guess who it could have been who hurried along to the church, still belie
ving sufficiently in those questions of confession and forgiveness to have felt the need to knock at the door of the presbytery and then to shut themselves inside a dusty old cupboard in order to soothe their soul.

  What was certain was that the man or woman who had gone to tell the Priest everything was covering it up very well, because each one of them had appeared to be horrified when he announced that he knew everything. But in reality, it was a strange, exaggerated type of horror, because up until now no one had been guilty of any crime. No one had drowned the three men. No one had thrown them in the water. No one knew them or had met them before.

  The meeting had to continue. The appearance of the Priest seemed to calm the Teacher. Perhaps he thought that the Priest would side with him and ask, as he did, for the authorities to be informed immediately. So he allowed the Mayor to speak, without interrupting him this time.

  “As the Doctor has mentioned, we know very well where these men come from. They are fleeing poverty. They are fleeing chaos. They are fleeing war. They are risking their lives by setting out on rafts, dinghies, and wrecks that can sink at any moment. The Doctor has confirmed: they are not the first to die like this. They will not, alas, be the last. What is new is that the tides should have brought them to our shore. It’s hard to understand.”

  The Mayor paused for a second, time enough for him to glance at the Teacher, thinking that he was about to break into this silence, but the latter did nothing and waited to hear what followed.

  “Our island was not their destination,” the Mayor went on. “They probably did not even know it existed. It has become their cemetery. If I were to inform the police and a magistrate, what would happen? Not only would we see those fine gentlemen, who always look down on us as though we were rats’ droppings, but they would be followed by masses of reporters, with their microphones and their cameras. From one day to the next, our island would become the isle of the drowned. You know how keen those vultures are on such phrases.”