by Fred Vargas
Contents
Cover
About the Book
About the Author
Also by Fred Vargas
Title Page
France
The Southeast
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Chapter XXIX
Chapter XXX
Chapter XXXI
Chapter XXXII
Chapter XXXIII
Chapter XXXIV
Chapter XXXV
Chapter XXXVI
Translator’s Note
Copyright
About the Book
In this frightening and surprising novel, the eccentric, wayward genius of Commissaire Adamsberg is pitted against the deep-rooted mysteries of one Alpine village’s history and a very present problem: wolves. Disturbing things have been happening up in the French mountains; more and more sheep are being found with their throats torn out. The evidence points to a wolf of unnatural size and strength. However Suzanne Rosselin thinks it is the work of a werewolf. Then Suzanne is found slaughtered in the same manner. Her friend Camille attempts, with Suzanne’s son Soliman and her shepherd, Watchee, to find out who, or what, is responsible and they call on Commissaire Adamsberg for help.
About the Author
Fred Vargas was born in Paris in 1957. A historian and archaeologist by profession, she is now a bestselling novelist. Her books have been translated into thirty-two languages.
David Bellos is professor of French and comparative literature at Princeton University. He is the author of Georges Perec: A Life in Words (1993) and Jacques Tati: His Life and Art (1999), and the prize-winning translator of Perec’s Life a User’s Manual.
ALSO BY FRED VARGAS
Have Mercy on Us All
The Three Evangelists
Wash This Blood Clean From My Hand
This Night’s Foul Work
The Chalk Circle Man
FRED VARGAS
Seeking Whom He May Devour
TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
David Bellos
FRANCE
On the map of the Southeast, especially in the mountainous regions between Gap and Entrevaux, it would not be possible for readers to locate all the towns and villages mentioned in the narrative.
THE SOUTHEAST
I
ON TUESDAY, FOUR sheep were killed at Ventebrune in the French Alps. On Thursday, nine were lost at Pierrefort. “It’s the wolves,” a local said. “They’re coming down to eat us all up.”
The other man drained his glass, then raised his hand. “A wolf, Pierrot my lad. It’s a wolf. A beast such as you have never clapped eyes on before. Coming down, as you say, to eat us all up.”
II
TWO MEN WERE lying prone in the undergrowth.
“You don’t reckon you’re gonna teach me how to do my job, do you?” said one.
“Don’t reckon anything,” said the other. Tall, with long, fair hair. Name of Johnstone. Lawrence Donald Johnstone.
They lay quite still, gripping their binoculars, observing a pair of wolves. It was ten in the morning. The sun was scorching their backs.
“That one is Marcus,” Johnstone said. “He’s come back.”
His companion shook his head. A short, swarthy, rather pig-headed local. He had been keeping watch over the wolves in the Mercantour National Park for six years. Name of Jean Mercier.
“That’s Sibellius,” he muttered.
“Sibellius is much larger. Hasn’t got that yellow tuft at the neck.”
Jean Mercier was needled, so he reset his binoculars, brought the viewfinder once more into focus, and looked closely at the male wolf prowling round his family lair and occasionally sniffing the wind, some three hundred metres to the east of their hide. They were near, much too near, it would be better to pull back, but Johnstone wanted to get one or two good shots at any cost. That’s why he was there – to film wolves. Then he had to go back to Canada with his documentary in the can. But he had been putting off going back for six months, for reasons that were not entirely clear. To tell the truth, the Canadian was rooting in. Mercier knew why. Lawrence Donald Johnstone, celebrated connoisseur of Canadian grizzly bears, had fallen in love with a handful of European wolves. And he could not make up his mind to say so. In any case, the Canadian spoke as few words as he could get away with.
“Came back in the spring,” Johnstone muttered. “Started a family. But I can’t see who the she-wolf is.”
“That’s Proserpine,” whispered Mercier. “Out of Janus and Juno, third generation.”
“Alongside Marcus.”
“Alongside Marcus,” Mercier agreed, after a pause. “And what’s for sure is that there are brand-new cubs.”
“Good.”
“Excellent.”
“How many?”
“Too soon to say.”
Mercier jotted some notes on a pad attached to his belt, took a drink from his gourd, and got back into position without snapping a twig. Johnstone put down his binoculars, wiped the sweat off his face. He pulled over his camera, focused on Marcus and smiled as he switched it on. He had spent fifteen years among the grizzlies, the caribou and the wolves of Canada, wandering alone across the vast preserves to watch, record and film, occasionally stretching out a hand to the oldest of his untamed friends. Not creatures to be taken lightly. There’d been Joan, an old female grizzly, who’d come at him, her head down, to get a good scratch of her coat. And Johnstone had never imagined that Europe – so pinched, so wasted and tamed – could have anything of interest to offer him. He had not taken on this documentary job in the Mercantour Range very gladly. But what was he going to do?
And when it came to the crunch, he’d kept putting off going home, he was dragging out his stay in this neck of the mountain. He was dragging his feet, to be blunt. He was hanging around for the sake of these European wolves with their paltry grey coats, no more than poor panting cousins of those thick-coated, brightly coloured Arctic beasts that deserved all his affection, or so he reckoned. He was hanging around for the sake of the swarming insects, the rivulets of sweat, the charred undergrowth and the crackling heat of the Mediterranean lands. “Just you stick around, you haven’t seen the half of it,” Mercier would tell him rather pompously, with the proud manner of a hard-baked habitué and survivor of solar onslaught. “This is only June.”
And he was hanging around, let’s face it, for Camille.
Round here they called it “rooting in”.
“I don’t hold it against you,” Mercier had said to him, quite seriously, “but it’s better you know: you’re rooting in.”
“OK then, now I know,” Johnstone had replied.
He stopped the camera, put it down gently on his rucksack and shaded it with a white canvas sheet. Young Marcus had gone off out of sight, heading north.
“Gone to hunt before it gets really hot,” Mercier observed.
Johnstone sprinkled water on his face, dampened his hat, took a dozen sips. Good Lord, w
hat a sun. Never known anything so hellish.
“Three cubs at least,” Mercier mumbled.
“I’m being fried alive,” Johnstone said, grimacing as he passed a hand over his shoulder.
“Just you wait. You haven’t seen the half of it.”
III
COMMISSAIRE JEAN-BAPTISTE ADAMSBERG poured the pasta from the pan into the colander, watched distractedly as the water drained off, then dumped the whole lot on a plate. With grated cheese and tomato sauce, that would do fine for tonight. He’d come home late after interrogating a cretin of a youth for hours on end, until eleven. Adamsberg was slow in any case. He did not like to rush things or people, however cretinous they might be. He especially did not like to rush himself. The television was on with the volume set low, nothing but wars, wars, and more wars. He ferreted about in the cutlery drawer, making all sorts of noise, found a fork, and stood in front of the set.
. . . wolves in the Mercantour National Park have once again gone on the attack in a locality in the department of the Alpes-Maritimes that had up to now been spared. This time, people are talking of an animal of unusual size. Truth or legend? To find out, our special . . .
Adamsberg moved cautiously towards the TV, plate in hand, tiptoeing as if he did not want to frighten the announcer. One false movement from Adamsberg and the guy might fly from the screen without finishing the terrific wolf story he’d just begun. He turned up the sound and stepped back. Adamsberg was fond of wolves, the way you can be fond of your nightmares. His whole childhood in the Pyrenees had been shrouded in old folks’ accounts of the saga of the last wild wolves in France. When he walked the mountain paths in the dark, at the age of nine, when his father sent him out to gather kindling – no arguing, now – he used to think he could see yellow eyes trained on him all along the way. Them eyes, sonny boy, them wolves’ eyes, they burn bright in the night, they do. Bright as a flaming brand.
Nowadays when he went back down to those parts, to his mountain home, he retraced the same paths in the pitch dark. That’s what makes human beings so hopeless, really. They cling to the worst things they’ve known.
He had heard it said – a few years back – that some wolves from the Abruzzi had crossed the Alps into France. Just a gang of tearaways, in a manner of speaking. Boozers on a night out. A friendly raid, a symbolic return, all hail and welcome to you three moth-eaten beasts from the Abruzzi. Ciao, fellas. Since when, he assumed, some guys had been pampering the predators on the sheltered marl of the Mercantour National Park, and the wolves had lunched on fresh lamb from time to time. But he had not seen such pictures before. So were those good lads from the Abruzzi suddenly getting violent? Adamsberg ate his pasta in silence as he watched sequences of dismembered sheep, bloodied soil, the gnarled face of a shepherd, and the stained carcass of one sheep that had been torn to pieces lying on meadow grass. The camera gave morbidly indulgent close-ups of the carnage, and the reporter plied the locals with leading questions, fanning the flames of anger among the country folk. They had edited into the news report shots of snarling wolves’ snouts lifted from old documentaries, more probably about the Balkans than about the Alps. It was enough to make you think that the whole hinterland of Nice was reeling under the onslaught of packs of wild beasts while aged shepherds stood their ground with pride, looking the enemy in the eye. They burn bright in the night, they do, bright as a flaming brand.
But the facts were there. About thirty recorded wolves in the Mercantour, plus maybe a dozen lost cubs, along with feral dogs that were scarcely less threatening. Hundreds of sheep killed last season within a radius of ten kilometres around the Mercantour. These facts weren’t aired in Paris because no-one in Paris gave a damn about stories of wolves and lambs, and Adamsberg was stupefied when he heard the figures. Today’s two savagings in the canton of Auniers had reawakened the conflict.
A vet appeared on screen, pointing in a measured and professional manner at a gaping wound. No, there was not the slightest doubt about it, this is the bite of the upper jaw, fourth premolar on the right-hand side, see, and here, in front, this is the right-hand incisor, look here, and here, and on the underside, here. And do you see how far apart they are? These are the jaws of a very large canine.
“Would you say it was a wolf, doctor?”
“Either that or a very large dog.”
“Or a very big wolf?”
Then another close-up of a defiant shepherd. Since those filthy predators had begun stuffing their bellies four years ago with the blessing of the folk up in Paris he had never seen wounds like these. Never. Fangs as big as your hand. The hill farmer gestured towards the mountains on the far horizon. It’s on the prowl, right up there. A monster such as you have never seen before. They can snigger all they like, them folk in Paris, but they’ll stop laughing pretty sharpish when they set their eyes on it.
Adamsberg watched in fascination as he stood eating the last of his cold pasta. The news anchor moved on to the next report. Wars.
Commissaire Adamsberg sat down slowly and put his plate on the floor. Good lord, those Mercantour wolves. The innocent little pack they’d started with had done a fair bit of growing. It had expanded its hunting ground canton by canton. Now it had overstepped the borders of the department of Alpes-Maritimes. And of the forty or so wolves up there, how many were predators? Did they hunt in packs? Or in pairs? Or was there just one lone wolf doing the damage? Yes, that’s the way it was in stories – a cruel and lonesome rogue, keeping his hindquarters low over his grey hind paws, slithering up to the village in the dark. A large beast. The Monster of Mercantour. And children asleep in the houses. Adamsberg closed his eyes. They burn bright, my boy. Bright as a flaming brand.
IV
LAWRENCE DONALD JOHNSTONE did not go back down to the village until half past eleven on Friday evening.
Between one and four in the afternoon the men of the Mercantour National Park took a long break, to read or to sleep, in the shade of one of the abandoned dry-stone dwellings dotted around the mountainside. Johnstone had taken possession of a disused sheepfold not far from the young Marcus’s new territory. He’d had to clean out the droppings, but they were so old that they hardly had any smell left in them. But even so it had to be done, on principle. The tall Canadian was more accustomed to washing himself from the waist up with fistfuls of snow than to wallowing in sheep shit with his skin all gluey with stale sweat, and he found the French a thoroughly filthy lot. On his swift transit through Paris he had sniffed the heavy odours of piss and sweat overlaid with garlic and wine. But it was in Paris that he had met Camille, so Paris was forgiven. As was the overheated Mercantour and the village of Saint-Victor-du-Mont where he had provisionally shacked up with her. But they were a filthy lot nonetheless, especially the men. He could not get used to black fingernails, matted hair, and shapeless, dirty grey T-shirts.
In his cleaned-up old sheepfold, Johnstone would settle himself every afternoon on a big canvas groundsheet laid on the bare, hard-dried earthen floor. He would sort his notes, go over the morning’s shots, prepare for the evening watch. For the last few weeks an old wolf nearing the end of his life – a venerable loner of about fifteen called Augustus – had been hunting on Mont Mounier. He only ever came out of his lair in the cool evening air and Johnstone did not want to miss him. The old paterfamilias was not hunting really, more trying to survive. He was getting so weak he missed even easy prey. Johnstone wondered how much longer the old fellow would hold out, and how it would end. And how long he himself would hold out before he went to poach some meat for old Augustus, in defiance of Park law, which required beasts to cope and die on their own as at the dawn of time. But if Johnstone brought Augustus a hare to eat, that wouldn’t upset the balance of the world – or would it? Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, he would have to do it without the slightest hint to his French colleagues. They were persuaded that giving a beast a helping hand softened it up and distorted the laws of Nature. Sure, but Augustus had already gone soft,
and the laws of Nature had long been in shreds. So what difference would it make?
Then, after downing his water, bread and salami, Johnstone stretched out on the ground in the shade, with his hands clasped under his head, and thought of Camille, her body and her smile. Camille wore perfume, but what was quite special about her was an unbelievable grace that sent shock waves through your hands, your guts and your lips. Johnstone had never dreamed that he would quiver for a woman so dark, with straight black hair cut short at the back, who looked like Cleopatra. Funny thing, he thought, old Cleo’s been dead two thousand years, but she’s still the archetype for all clear-skinned, fine-necked, straight-nosed and dark-haired beauties. Quite a girl she must have been, old Cleo. But to tell the truth, he did not know much about Queen Cleopatra and hardly more about Camille, except that she wasn’t a royal and earned her living alternately as a musician and as a plumber.
Then he had to drop these mental images that were stopping him from getting any rest, and he concentrated on the clatter of the insects. The little fellows were incredibly energetic. The other day, on the lower slopes, Mercier had shown Johnstone something he had never seen before – a cicada. The size of a fingernail, making lots of noise for no very good reason. Johnstone preferred to live in silence.
He’d annoyed Mercier this morning. But joking aside, it really had been Marcus. No doubt about it.
Marcus with the yellow tuft around his neck. He was a really promising wolf. Lean, persistent, and hungry. Johnstone suspected him of having eaten a fair flock of lambs last autumn in the area around Trévaux. That had been unabashed slaughter, with blood all over the grass and dozens of mangled carcasses – the kind of show that made the wildlife refuge staff despair. Though their financial losses were made good, the hill farmers got angry and brought in attack dogs, and in December there had almost been a mass hunt. But after the winter wolf packs had broken up at the end of February, things had calmed down. Peace.
