Dog Island

by Philippe Claudel

  The girl stopped speaking. The Teacher was speechless, gazing at everyone with a crazed expression. All of a sudden, as though it came from the depths, a roaring sound arose from within the walls, which were shaking, giving the meeting room the consistency of a marshmallow, while beneath their feet everybody felt the seismic wave that was twisting and turning like a huge snake, thrashing about for all eternity beneath the prong of the trident that was trying to spear it. There were crackling sounds, rattling, scraping noises. Even the big table seemed to be wanting to escape and to be groaning. The Brau was roaring. As though the volcano itself was taking offense at the child’s remarks. Only the Superintendent was concerned by the phenomenon, which was something to which he was unaccustomed.

  “It’s nothing. It’s the volcano,” said the Mayor, who was not displeased by this diversion.

  Calm was restored. The walls regained their impassivity, the big table its silent immobility. The Teacher’s torment could continue.

  “And what was your mark for this test?” asked the Superintendent.

  “The top mark,” replied the child, wiping away the large tears that were still flowing down her cheeks with the back of her hands.

  XXI

  IN THE MINUTES THAT FOLLOWED, IN THE THICK silence of those minutes, there were images. That of the scene which the child had just described, and that of the scene as it must have occurred, and which she was not asked to describe. Her final remark encompassed an entire world simmering with horror and despicable behavior. The remark became the receptacle for ignominious and contemptible acts which everyone now saw in their imagination as though on a cinema screen, with astonishing clarity. There was no need to add anything else.

  The Teacher could no longer hold back his tears. Huddled over his chair, he wept. And throughout the rest of the confrontation, he never once interrupted. Even when the Superintendent gave him the floor, questioned him, asked him to confirm or contradict what Mila had just said about their frequent encounters, about the way in which he had raped her, the whereabouts, the circumstances, and the manner in which it had happened, he persisted in maintaining his silence. He continued to weep, sometimes staring at the child, who did not appear to be embarrassed by this, who retained her tear-stained expression most of the time and churned out her relentless story while continuing to weep herself, even though her tears never affected the clarity of her voice.

  “Like a sort of trance,” the Doctor said later to the Old Woman, who had knocked at his door to have the scene described to her. “The girl behaved as though she was possessed. Something or someone seemed to be talking through her. I am tragically materialistic myself, and don’t believe in any form of transcendence, but it was unsettling. Furthermore, one felt that by saying what she had to say she was draining herself of all her strength, and that she was about to faint at any moment.”

  The Old Woman said nothing. The Doctor had offered her a small glass of liqueur, which she had not touched. He was mauling a cigar. She was weighing up everything he had just told her. Dusk had fallen and the crowd that had filled the town hall square for so long had deserted the streets. The Doctor’s house stank like a dead dog. Beneath every window he had placed damp clothing to prevent the foul air outside from penetrating the rooms, but it was a lost cause. He frequently raised his handkerchief to his nose while he was with the Old Woman. The bergamot scent with which he had soaked the clothes had not managed to get rid of the stench entirely.

  “What’s the matter with you? A cold?”

  “No. Can’t you smell anything?”

  “Smell what?”

  “That smell that’s been around for two days, like a decomposing corpse, everywhere, all over the town.”

  She looked at him contemptuously as she lightly shook her scrawny head in which her white eyes formed two little bottomless cavities.

  When the girl had finished reeling off her evidence, the Superintendent stood up, Furry appeared to wake up, and the Mayor—who could not bear it anymore, and for whom the confined space and the child’s account were like having a large hand put over his mouth and his nose, preventing him from breathing—walked over to a window, started to draw open the curtains and grabbed the handle to open a shutter, but then he caught sight of the crowd, which he had forgotten all about. He stood stock-still, amazed. Hundreds of eyes were looking up at him. He closed the curtains. A murmur rose up from outside. You would have thought that a gigantic boiler had just been lit.

  It was decided that the child and her father should be allowed to leave. Mila picked up her candle again and left the room, her gaze lowered. Furry looked at the Mayor and seemed to be waiting for an instruction. The Mayor looked irritated and signaled for him to go. When the door of the town hall opened and the girl appeared, the hubbub died down, just as it had when she had arrived in the square a few hours earlier. People made way for her once more. She walked, upright and dignified, her extinguished candle in her hand. Her father following behind her looked like a mangy old dog.

  People watched her go by. In spite of the heat wave, seeing her look so thin and so pale, each footstep so feeble, made one feel cold all of a sudden, and when she had already crossed half the square and thus found herself in the very middle of the crowd, at the precise intersection of two diagonals that singled her out as the center of everything, she stopped suddenly, and put her hand to her chest, to her throat, and those who were nearest to her saw her pale eyelids flutter, her eyes roll upward, and like a fleur-de-lis scythed down by the sharp blade of a sickle she suddenly collapsed, a white corolla on the black pavement.

  Then a cry burst out from the crowd, a sort of loud, malevolent spitting sound, as shrill as a nail and as cutting as a razor, a cry that embodied a vengeance that demanded to be implemented, and the cry tore through the square, hammered against the fronts of the buildings, knocked on the door of the church, which remained impassive, and finally crashed against the windows of the town hall behind which the Mayor, the Superintendent, and the Doctor, all standing, received it like a slap in the face, whereas the Teacher, still seated, seemed to understand that now, as far as he was concerned, whatever happened, whatever he might say or do, all was lost.

  XXII

  AFTER THE CONFRONTATION, ALL THE TEACHER COULD do was to die. In one way or another. No one said this, but everyone felt it.

  When Mila fainted she was carried home, like a holy relic, held high, and the people started to cross themselves again and to intone prayers. Furry followed behind, in tears. The child was put to bed. Some women soothed her, cooled her down with damp cloths, made her some clear broth and watched over her, while in the kitchen Furry wiped his hand over his fake brown nylon hair, still whimpering and knocking back the glasses which some fishermen came to refill for him, so that he could relate the scene at the town hall to them.

  Without anyone having said anything, the square remained filled. Not by the entire crowd, but by a hundred or so men and women, as if in continuous rotation, like vigils that seem to occur without any clear instructions being given. They stared up at the illuminated window of the town hall. They were waiting for the man who had already been stripped of his job, and who they referred to now only as the Monster, to emerge. They were waiting for him to come out, or else they were there to prevent him coming out, which amounted to the same thing.

  The other witnesses close to the scene—the Superintendent, the Mayor, and the Doctor—were a few steps ahead. They knew that History is full of blind mobs demanding blood. And even though a mob is often wrong, it always ends up getting what it wants.

  The Teacher asked to speak to the Superintendent in private. The Mayor and the Doctor were glad to leave the room, for it was becoming difficult to breathe. They did not reckon it wise to leave the building for the time being. They would have to speak to the crowd. Tell them. Respond. It was not yet time to do so. They shut themselves away in the Mayor’s office.

  “What do you think he’s going to say to him?” asked the Do
ctor.

  “I couldn’t give a damn. He can tell him about everything. The three drowned men, what we have done with them, his experiences, his conclusions. The Superintendent will listen to him, but he’ll do nothing about it. He’s got so many better things now to get his teeth into.”

  “I’d like to be as certain about that as you are.”

  “Normally I’m the one who gets anxious and you’re the one who puts my mind at ease.”

  “Times are changing. I don’t like what we’re doing.”

  “What do you mean? Neither do I, but it had to be done. Anyway, don’t worry yourself. What matters is that he should go away, far from us. That’s all. Tomorrow the girl will go back on what she said. He’ll be cleared. You’ll say that your medical report was misinterpreted. That you’re not sure about anything. That you’re neither a forensics expert nor a gynecologist. But all this commotion will drive him off to the mainland far more effectively than any favorable wind. We shall be rid of him. And we shall be able to think about the real problems at last.”

  The Superintendent had called for three bottles of wine to be brought, and a brandy. The Café Owner served them himself. They watched him as he walked through the square. He carried them carefully and solemnly, as though he had been entrusted with an important mission or was carrying gold. The Superintendent did not allow him to enter the room and made him put everything down at the entrance. He left without having seen the Teacher, of whom he nevertheless provided a detailed description the moment he was outside.

  “I wouldn’t have recognized him. All those perverse tendencies now show on his face. To think that we entrusted our children to him! Every morning I used to say hello to him innocently, when he set off running. The scum! You should have seen him, sitting on his chair, with his bloodshot eyes, his mouth drooping, and his hands, his fingers, his disgusting big hands on the table in front of him. He’s incredibly ugly! If the Superintendent hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t have been able to control myself, I would have smashed the bastard’s face in!”

  The Superintendent poured wine into the two glasses. He put one down in front of the Teacher, who had not moved, and knocked back his own in a single gulp. He took off his tie, which he tossed onto the table with a weary gesture, removed his jacket, and unbuttoned and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He came and sat down next to the Teacher, one buttock on the table, the other unsupported, as he loved to do. He poured himself another glass of wine, which he sipped in small gulps while he fixed his gaze on the Teacher. It was as though he was sorrowfully observing a sick animal. The Teacher took a long breath and began to speak:

  “There are things I need to tell you about.”

  “The girl must be clever, to invent such stories,” said the Superintendent in a very lighthearted manner.

  The Teacher looked at him as though he were suddenly seeing an apparition.

  “Sorry?”

  “I was telling you that this little girl has plenty of imagination. But you know that, don’t you?”

  The Teacher opened his mouth wide. He looked flabbergasted. The tide was turning. The Superintendent drained his glass and poured himself another.

  “How hot it is! How can you live in this country? Don’t you drink?”

  The Teacher shook his head. He was unable to speak. So many contradictory thoughts must have been whirling around his mind. And then the bad night, the emotion, the young girl’s words, everything had exhausted him. And now these words of the Superintendent, which he wasn’t sure he understood properly.

  “You’re wrong not to. Apart from wine and alcohol, I wonder if there’s anything else that deserves to be well known and popular during one’s life, for men in any case. We’ve just had yet another example of their wretchedness.”

  “So you don’t believe everything she’s telling you? You believe me? You believe me, don’t you, when I say that I’m innocent and that I’ve done nothing?” said the Teacher in a shaky voice.

  The Superintendent looked at the poor wretch for a few seconds. He would not have liked to be in his shoes. He shrugged and stood up. Glass in hand, he walked to one of the three windows. He drew back a curtain and pointed outside.

  “Whether I believe you is of no importance, and the fact that you’re innocent is irrelevant. What matters is what all those people down below believe. They’re like hyenas in a bear pit. Do you like zoos? I can’t stand them. I was taken to one when I was a child. A shabby place with grimy trees, and copses filled with rubbish and litter. A smell of shit everywhere, of blood-soaked wounds, and dying animals. Like those there, waiting.”

  “But you could tell them, explain to them!”

  “Explain what to them? That the girl was raped? The Doctor’s examination proves it, unless he himself was lying, which after all cannot be ruled out. There’s no shortage of scoundrels on this island. That she was lying when she singled you out? That she was reading from a text? That it was probably her degenerate father who raped her, or an uncle, or a cousin, just as retarded as him? That you were here for no reason? That she was acting? That she had been taught a lesson? That pressure had been put upon her? That they had threatened her with sending her father to prison if she did not reel off her story, or that she had been offered money, or I don’t know what else? Who would believe me?”

  “And yet that is the truth!”

  “But who is interested in the truth, my dear Teacher? No one could care a damn about the truth! What they want is your head, and you know why they want your head: because by arresting you, by bringing you here, by confronting you with the girl, it’s as though they have already promised your fine, well-endowed head to all these numbskulls. Imagine their disappointment, if it is taken away from them! Have you ever tried to take away a bone from a dog who was contentedly gnawing at it?”

  The Teacher, who, a few seconds earlier, had begun to hope again, now rolled his eyes, incredulous. He appeared to be suffocating. The Superintendent came back and sat down beside him, on the table. He grabbed the bottle of wine.

  “And what’s more, if you’re the rapist then that suits them because you’re not like them. You come from somewhere else. You’re different. You’re a stranger to their island! If I were to tell them that the man who raped the little girl is one of them, that he is just like them, that he comes from the same background as them, from the same mold, is made in their image, do you think they would like or accept the notion? Do you think a human being likes to be shown their own ugliness in a mirror? We never see ourselves as we are, and when it is revealed to us, it’s unbearable! Telling them that it’s one of their own, a pure local product, a son of the island who touches and penetrates young girls of eleven years old, do you think that’s a nice idea? Do you think they would accept the notion? No, you’re extremely useful to them, my dear Teacher. They’re not going to let you go.”

  Panic overcame the Teacher. It crept over him rapidly. All his limbs were shaking. He tried to swallow but was unable to do so. He grimaced, gulped the air for breath. The Superintendent handed him the glass of wine once more.

  “Drink.”

  The Teacher obeyed.

  “They’re sacrificing me. I know things that they don’t wish to be divulged. I wrote a report. I was a witness. I’ve carried out experiments. All that matters to them is their peace and quiet. The Thermal Baths project, for instance. I can tell you everything. I was there. I understood. They know that I know. That I’ve guessed. The boats. The traffic. The Mayor. The Doctor. The Old Woman. Swordy. America. All of them. I was with them on the beach. And the Priest, too. Later on. In this very place. And then in the cold storage room. They had put the bodies in there. With the fish. Underneath the blue tarpaulin. And then afterward, the hole in the volcano. They were shoved in there. Then nothing more. Silence. And then afterward you came along!”

  The Superintendent had great difficulty in stopping the Teacher’s outburst.

  “Do you realize that you’re talking like a lunatic? I don’t u
nderstand a thing you’re trying to tell me. Calm down. Is there any point in you getting carried away? It’s too late. Too late, as I told you. You don’t have the knack. And in any case there’s nothing I can do for you.”

  “But you’re a policeman!”

  “There again you’re wrong.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m telling you that you’re wrong.”

  “You’re not a superintendent?”

  “Everyone wanted me to be one. It’s my own fault, of course: I accepted the role because it made it easier to do what I came here to do, but I’m as much a policeman as you’re a cabaret dancer. I’m playing the game. That’s all. When I was young, I did a bit of acting at university. They said I was talented. Everyone here wanted to see me as a police officer. I wasn’t going to disappoint them. I shoved a card I’d picked up one day from a dead man under the Mayor’s nose. He was satisfied with it. I believe it suited him! Everybody lies. Life is a farce. The scene just now amused me a great deal, all that palaver, the little girl who had learned her part, all that damn nonsense paraded like that, shamelessly, but I’m not here for that and I haven’t got much time. You’re going to have to get along without me.”

  XXIII

  THE STRANGE THING IS THAT THE SUPERINTENDENT called at the Doctor’s house that same evening. The Doctor had just come home when there was a knock at the door. He was not expecting to see the Superintendent at his house. He invited him in and asked him why he had come to see him. Why him, rather than the Mayor, who had been the person he had spoken to up till then?

  “Why should it matter to you? I’m here, that’s all. I’m looking for someone who is prepared to listen to me. Someone who will know how to pass on what I am going to tell them. Your Mayor is too highly strung. He gets angry and he retreats into his anger, but I’m not telling you anything new, you know him better than I do. I enjoyed pushing him to the edge and alarming him, but I soon tired of it. I like playing like a cat with mice, but not for long. And furthermore, with him I would be worried that he might not fully understand what I say to him. Are we going to remain standing in your corridor forever? It’s been a long day.”