Barking Man

by Madison Smartt Bell

  Alf’s mouth came slightly open as he whined; he salivated on the leather of the chair.

  “rrrrrRRRRABBIT!” said the hypnotist. “You smell the rabbit! You smell the rabbit very near! And now you see the rabbit! And now you chase the rabbit!”

  Alf’s arms and legs began to pump in rhythmic running motions as his neck stretched out and out.

  “And now you catch the rabbit in your jaws, you bite through the fur and skin into the tender flesh and the hot blood, you crush the rabbit’s little bones, and you swallow every part of it. And now, Alfie, now that you are satisfied, you rest. Rest now, Alf. You are sleeping very deeply now.

  “And now you hear voices, Alfie, voices calling out your name from far away across the fields. Alfie, Alfie, they are calling. They are calling you to go home to your house, Alf, and you go. You will obey the calling voices, you are going now. On the back porch of your house you see your family waiting for you—your mother, your father, your elder brother Tom, your sister-in-law Hazel, she is there too. It is they who have been calling you, Alfie, because they need you to come home. They feed you your dinner, Alf, and when you have eaten, they pat your head and they rub your ears the way you love it so. They have prepared a soft mat near the warmth of the kitchen stove, Alf, where you stretch out and rest from your doggy, doggy day. You have no worries, Alf. You have no responsibilities at all … but still, something is missing. What is it, Alf? What is it that you lack?”

  Alf shifted, coming more nearly upright in the chair. He trembled a little, but he didn’t bark. His hands settled on his knees and he assumed a posture of attention. The hypnotist leaned a little closer to him.

  “Dogs don’t love,” the hypnotist whispered. “They haven’t got the capability. They feel, yes, but they don’t love.”

  “That,” said Alf, “is a debatable point.”

  “Perhaps,” the hypnotist said. “Possibly. But in your case … not worth debating, I shouldn’t think.”

  Alf whined and pricked his ears, then let them lower.

  “Come on, Alf,” the hypnotist said. “Come on, boy. Come on out. Are you coming, now?”

  PETIT CACHOU

  TON-TON DETROIT CLIMBED the steps to the small square castle which housed the Cocteau Museum, paused for a moment to look back at the rows of white boats floating in the harbor and ducked through the stone doorway onto the shelf that ran along the outside of the sea wall. The sounds of the town waking were abruptly cut off behind him and all he could hear now was the slow pull of the sea. The wall, something more than twice his height, seemed to decline very sharply as it ran west to the short round tower of the signal light that was its terminus. No one else was in sight. Ton-Ton Detroit walked about a third of the way down the pier, picking his way among the numerous twists of dog dung littered along the path. When he felt he had come to the right spot he stopped, unslung his bag and quickly peeled off his jeans. Naked now except for a blue undershirt that came just down to his navel, he stepped out onto the rocks of the breakwater and crouched to evacuate his bowels as quickly as seemed reasonable. While he was so occupied a twig-sized figure rounded the signal light and began to grow larger as it approached, towed along by a dog on a leash. Ton-Ton Detroit fired a powerful thought beam in that direction and the twig person obediently turned back and went out of sight on the other side of the wall. Ton-Ton Detroit sighed and got up and walked surely back over the rocks to the shelf, his long toes curling into cracks of the stones to confirm his balance. It was not his favorite part of the day, but business was slow so early in the season, and he had cut his trips to the public toilet by the harbor to one day a week: Friday, when he’d pay the six francs it cost to also take a shower.

  Today was Wednesday. It had been a foggy night but the mist was lifting quickly now, and already he could see down the coast as far as the checkpoint at the Italian frontier. Above and beyond the border post, the mountains were still almost invisible, only a blue mass vaguely drifting in a lightening swirl of cloud. Ton-Ton Detroit groped into his bag and unfurled the long gold-striped dashiki, shrugged it over his head and then put on his sandals. He shoved the rolled jeans to the bottom of the bag and began to take out his samples and string them all over himself: the belts, the bone bracelets and bead necklaces, the snakeskin clutch purses and a couple of the headphone radios. As the final touch he fit one of the radios over his ears and raised both antennae as far as they would go. By the time he was ready, the shapes of the mountains had begun to appear more distinctly out of the dissolving cloud, a jagged pale violet line marking the nearest peaks. Ton-Ton Detroit hitched on his bag and walked back toward the small squat castle at the near end of the sea wall, his eye bent on the ocean. It was low tide and the water was nearly flat, shimmering just slightly with tiny pricks of light. With the sun angled across it so low, the sea was bright and colorless as a crinkled sheet of aluminum. The Kamikaze Club boat, on its way to drop scuba divers at various points east along the coast, cut a neat white line across the water. The boat was too far out for Ton-Ton Detroit to hear the engine, and the ocean made only the faintest sucking sound as it dragged at the bottom of the rocks.

  He walked down the stairs inside the wall to the harbor parking and stopped at the bottom long enough to light a Gauloise Blonde. Fuming blue smoke, he climbed the short grade up from the parking and came out at the end of the Promenade du Soleil, the long concrete walk which swept along the gentle curve of the coast all the way to Cap Martin. Below, the diehard sunbathers had already begun to spread themselves out on the pebbled beach, though it was very early still. A light easterly breeze brought him a whiff of suntan oil. Ton-Ton Detroit reached up to his right ear and flicked the radio on. It was already tuned to France Culture; he couldn’t bear French pop music. Time for the science program. Ton-Ton Detroit’s eyes sank half shut and his mouth softened into a sort of smile. He thumbed the dial so the voices fell to a mellifluous mumble in his ear, blending with his own pitch as he began to move out across the beach: “Regardez … Regardez, messieurs, mesdames … C’est pas cher …

  Clayton Powell Simpson, commonly known as Clay, had somehow managed to be dead asleep when the bus pulled into the Gare Routière. Even though the trip from Monaco was short and the road was full of sudden twists and lurches, he didn’t wake up until the driver kicked the sole of his shoe and bent down toward him, jabbering something way too fast for him to make it out.

  “Say what?” Clay said, blinking back sleep. “Comment?”

  “Fin du chemin,” the driver said. “C’est terminé.”

  Clay had heard that last phrase often enough in restaurants to comprehend that he must have come to the end of the line. He went a few paces away from the bus and stopped to try to slap some of the wrinkles out of his tan poplin suit. Not much of a bus station going here, just the parking lot, a kiosk and a glass-walled information booth. Not even any lockers, which you might take to mean it was just as well he didn’t have his suitcase anymore, if you wanted to look on the bright side. In front of him and on either side, there were hills climbing almost straight up. Some buildings were up there, with roads winding up among them, but it didn’t look like the most promising way to go. He turned around, squinting into the sun, and automatically glanced at the place on his wrist where his watch should have been, but it was still gone. Didn’t matter so much anyhow; there was no place he had to be at any certain time.

  He walked out of the Gare Routière on the downhill side. Beyond the railroad overpass, the road opened out into a boulevard with a sort of park between the lanes, with a fountain and palmettos and a lot of vaguely tropical-looking shrubbery. Two blocks down it dead-ended at the front of a cream-colored building with looping letters over the door that read CASINO. Clay practically flinched when he saw that, his mouth pulling tight at the corners. There was a blond chick sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette and he hailed her as he approached.

  “Hey, darling, got the mate to that?”

  The girl looked up at
him, startled and blank, and Clay wiped her away with his hand as he went on by. It didn’t matter, there was plenty of traffic. When he saw the next girl smoking he tried again.

  “Hey there, sugar, let me have a smoke?”

  Again he could tell for sure by the look on her face that she didn’t understand one word he’d said. Clay stopped cold and fumbled the bus schedule out of his inside pocket to scope out just exactly where he was. Menton—it didn’t look to be that far, but in Monte Carlo at least every other person had spoken English.

  “Well, I’d call these steps just a little bit skimpy,” Martin Ventura grunted, mostly to himself, since nobody else was paying any particular attention. Nadine was still fussing around the car they’d rented in Nice, and Mindy had already started yakking it up with the concierge, or listening to the concierge yak it, at the foot of the steps in the entrance hall. In fact, the steps were so narrow Martin practically had to turn his feet sideways to get down them, no joke either when he was carrying the two grotesquely heavy suitcases, which weren’t even his but Mindy’s and Nadine’s, of course. Not more than an inch away from a nice fall to a pair of smashed kneecaps and a gorgeous damage suit, though he supposed he’d have to hire help to take it through the French courts, he didn’t even own a wig himself. Reaching the level floor at last, he dropped the suitcases with a crash, set his hands on his hips and tried to arch the cramp out of his back. From the far end of the dim hallway he could hear Mindy calling back to him.

  “Daddy, you be careful with my bag.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Martin muttered.

  Nadine had come to the top of the stairs. “Need any help with those, Marty?”

  “From here I can wheel it,” Martin said. “Just leave the other one in the car, I’ll come back and get it. And try not to break your neck coming down these stairs.”

  He snapped out the tow handles of both suitcases and hauled them down the curving corridor to the open door at the end of it. The concierge was displaying various features of the little kitchen cubicle to Mindy, who was nodding and smiling and now and then slipping in a word of her own. On her face was a beautiful look of comprehension which Martin knew meant nothing at all, since it was the look she always put on whenever he tried to tell her something she should know.

  The whirl of French seemed to daze him a little; he was half stunned already from the flight and, especially, from the drive. He let go of the suitcases and took a turn around the apartment. When you traveled by throwing darts at the map, you had to be ready to overlook a few things and this place offered enough opportunities to practice the technique. There was one bedroom, which he and Nadine would take; Mindy would have to make do with a fold-down something in the living room. The place was thin on furniture, which was just as well given the character of the furniture that was there. On the walls were some of the worst pictures of boats he’d ever yet seen in any vacation apartment; there might be room for those in a closet somewhere, though on the other hand it might be unwise to expose any more of that wallpaper.

  Well, the idea wasn’t to spend all that much time indoors anyway. Martin slid back a glass door, stepped out onto the balcony and swore. The view of the sea the agency had promised was a thumbnail of blue at the far left corner, mostly obscured by some sort of scrubby pine tree that had sprouted from just below the building. The main prospect was over the roofs of a few other condos, across the canyon to the hair-raising highway cut into the side of the mountain.

  “The French Riviera, voilà.” Mindy was hanging in the doorway behind him, her arms stretched wide enough to raise the hem of her shirt a good two inches above her little brown bellybutton. “Congratch, Daddy, you found us another real dump. I told you we shoulda went to the Cape.”

  “I spend all this money to send you to Concord so you learn how to say ‘shoulda went’?” Martin said. “Sweetheart, I hope your French is better than your English or we’re all going to be in trouble soon.”

  Mindy swung her head back and a wave of black hair broke over her shoulders.

  “So far I’m managing,” she said. “Dibs the bedroom, by the way.”

  Martin laughed.

  “There’s fold-down beds in the living room,” he said. “Take all three of them if you want. You don’t need any bedroom anyhow, you spend your life in the bathroom, you know?”

  He walked away from her down the balcony and discovered another sliding door that let into the bedroom. Nadine was already laying her things out on a small vanity under the mirror.

  “Oh, you brought the other stuff,” Martin said. “I was going to go get it.”

  “Didn’t want to leave it all in the car.” Nadine rubbed at some invisible blemish on the side of her nose and stared at the spot in the mirror. “You got both the heavy ones anyway.”

  Martin stepped into the room and slid the door shut behind him.

  “Well, I can’t say it’s not the French Riviera this time,” he said. “You know why, because it is the French Riviera.”

  “I like it just fine, babe,” Nadine said. “It’s plenty big enough, it’s got all we really need. We might just switch things around a little …”

  “Just don’t stand too near that wallpaper,” Martin said. “Looks to me like it might be planning an attack.”

  He opened the door again and stepped back out. The balcony was big, you could say that for it. It ran the length of the apartment and was comfortably wide. From this angle he could look down across a railroad track that must come out from a tunnel somewhere underneath the building. Half a mile down it was the town of Menton.

  “Maybe we should go out for a while,” he said. “Have a look around the town.”

  “Sure, if you want,” Nadine said. “Just let me get changed into something cooler.”

  Martin walked back along the balcony, trailing a hand along the rail and looking vaguely out toward the highway.

  “Mother Mary,” he said, and stopped cold.

  “You rang?” Mindy had come out on the balcony.

  “Smart pants,” Martin said. “I thought they only did that in Italy.”

  “Did what?”

  “You already missed it,” Martin said. “Two buses passing on a turn.” He shook his head. “What a trip, I think I might be ready for a delayed-reaction heart attack.”

  “Coulda let me drive, I offered.” Mindy shrugged. “Okay, I’m going to the beach I guess, if I can find it from here, that is.”

  “Forget it,” Martin said. “We’re going to town and look at culture, we need you for an interpreter.”

  “So I can drive?”

  “Drive what?” Martin said. “I want to see things, we’re going to walk.”

  Mindy cupped a hand around her ear.

  “There’s a secret to life which you ought to know,” Martin said. “If you walk and do exercise kind of things sometimes, you can eat like a human being and still not get fat.”

  He turned around and went back into the bedroom. Nadine had put on a white sundress with spaghetti straps. Martin bent down to kiss the back of her neck. “You’re not going to get sunburned in that thing?” he said.

  “I’ve got the sunscreen in my purse,” Nadine said. “Mindy ready?”

  Martin exhaled and stroked the side of his carry-on bag to verify that both bottles were still there, unbroken. “Sure she is,” he said. “She’s ready to give me a pain in the neck.”

  When the sun had reached a point almost directly overhead, Ton-Ton Detroit stopped and took off his radio. He put on the white hat and crinkled its short round brim up over his ears and put the radio back on, on top of it. The puff of air trapped in the top of the hat made a cooling cushion between his head and the sun. Now it was perfectly clear, the sky a smooth bland shade of blue. He could have seen almost as far as San Remo if there hadn’t been anything in the way. The next cape westward down the coast was clearly defined against the sea.

  A proportion of the morning sunbathers were beginning to pack up their mats and towels a
nd start in for lunch. Those who remained would be too completely stunned by the light and heat to even look up when he went past them, and they’d stay that way for at least an hour, as long as the sun was at its height. He had come all the way to the end of the beach at Cap Martin without selling any more than two bracelets and one of the belts. It was too early in the season, most of the people were French and he had nothing in his display to surprise them. Scattered back across the beach toward Menton, he could see the silhouettes of the other peddlers coming along wraithlike through the shimmering heat. They would be doing no better than he.

  Ton-Ton Detroit walked down to the last ripple of stones before the water’s edge and stepped out of his sandals there. He raised the hem of his dashiki and walked out till the water was halfway up his shins. The sudden cold sent a pain rocketing up through his bones all the way to his back teeth. After a moment its sharpness was broken and it faded into a rather pleasant ache. The water was fantastically clear and he could still see the bottom plainly out to five feet deep. Odd scraps of seaweed hung suspended at different depths, along with bits of molding paper trash. His own feet seemed to float up toward him, distorted and slightly magnified by the water. There were no swimmers nearby except for a twelve-or thirteen-year-old girl who sat astride a dolphin-shaped float, rocking in the small rollers that came into the beach. She was tanned very brown all over and her brown hair hung in a tangle just down to the bare knobs of her new breasts. The dolphin bobbed continuously, relaying her a molded rubber smile, but she was staring fixedly out over it toward a large sailboat which had anchored some seventy yards out.

  Once he was thoroughly cool within, Ton-Ton Detroit came out of the water and walked up the steps to the promenade. He went past the corner tabac to the bakery and bought a loaf and then a tomato from the fruit stand outside. Turning uphill, he went to the Escalier de la Plage and climbed enough steps to reach a shady spot, where he sat down. Dozens of doves were softly hooting, hidden in the trees and shrubs all around the long concrete staircase. Ton-Ton Detroit sliced the tomato onto the bread and ate it very slowly. The bread was fresh enough to be just slightly warm. When he had done he stayed there long enough to smoke two cigarettes and in between them he dozed for half an hour.