Dog Island

by Philippe Claudel

  As for the Mayor and the Doctor, they met every evening at one or another’s home, to go through the thick folder for the Spa. The final decision was to be made by the Consortium at the beginning of January, after a last visit. The Mayor wanted to welcome his investors in the best circumstances, anticipating their reservations and wishing to have all the arguments available to sweep them away.

  The Teacher was the only one who was unhappy with his job as a teacher. Of course, he took care of his class conscientiously, a class of almost thirty children aged from six to twelve years old, but he did not do just this, as Swordy reported back to the Mayor after the latter had asked him to keep an eye on him. He went running in the morning, in his ridiculous outfit, but he interrupted his run to inspect the beach when he passed by. He approached the water’s edge and walked slowly along the three hundred meters that made up the shoreline. He stopped occasionally, scanned the horizon, bent down to pick up an unidentifiable object which he eventually threw back into the water, and inspected the waves as though he was trying to work something out.

  “How do you mean, work something out?”

  “I don’t really know,” said Swordy, who was standing in front of the Mayor in the warehouse office, and was fiddling with his hat as though he were trying to unravel it. “It’s as if he were searching. As if the waves were going to tell him something.”

  The Mayor stooped over the table for a few seconds. You would have thought his cares were weighing down on his shoulders. On the other side of the office windows, it was break time. The fishermen were rolling cigarettes or making coffee. No one was looking in the direction of the office. Swordy was standing at attention in front of his boss. He did not know whether he should stay or go.

  “What do you expect the waves to be saying to him, apart from singing the song of the sea?” said the Mayor eventually, in a thoughtful voice. “The sea doesn’t speak.”

  Swordy nodded. He worked on the principle that one should always agree with one’s boss. It was the best way of avoiding trouble. He also applied this to his wife, whom he had married for her gentleness and her beauty, but who, twenty years and three children later, resembled a grouper fish with a rasping voice.

  “You can go.”

  The fisherman did not need telling twice and left the office. The Mayor was not at ease. The worm was entering the fruit. Without really knowing the Teacher, he suspected that his silence ever since the burial of the bodies concealed a particular purpose. But what was it?

  It was always the same with men who had studied. The Mayor reckoned that if the world was turning out so badly, it was the fault of men like the Teacher, bogged down in ideals and kindness, who search obsessively for an explanation of the how and the why, who convince themselves they should know right from wrong, good from evil, and who believe that the borders between the two aspects are like the cutting edge of a knife, whereas experience and good sense teach one that these borders do not exist, that they are merely a convention, a human invention, a way of simplifying what is complex and of getting some sleep.

  The Doctor had also studied, and at some length, before returning to the island and taking the place of the Sad Fellow, who was more of a bonesetter than a doctor, and who dragged his melancholia around like a large, cumbersome piece of baggage, moaning to his patients about his own misfortunes. But he did not bore the pants off anyone with any of this, even though his house was full of books, and books that he read, too, and this was what was most incredible to the Mayor. When the two of them, after having worked for a long time on the Spa project dossier, chewed on their cigars and knocked back small glasses of brandy, the Doctor did not bore the Mayor with how he was feeling or with his views on Society, the State, Justice, or these kinds of big words. They talked about fishing and the sky, vines and orchards, recalling moments of the childhood they had shared, strolling across the years like friends who have been nourished on the same air, the same dishes, and the same odors.

  These moments soothed the Mayor, who worried about everything and for whom responsibility often seemed to be a punishment, a punishment that he had not chosen, however, and which added to his own problems all those of the community.

  One evening, after they had reviewed the compulsory purchases necessary for the project and assessed the amount of compensation and sales figures once more, the Doctor, as he poured the brandy into their glasses, warned the Mayor:

  “I really do need to tell you this. I have been informed that the Teacher wished to hire a boat.”

  “A boat?”

  “A boat.”

  The Mayor put down his glass without having drunk from it.

  “Who told you this?”

  “A patient. I won’t tell you which one. You know very well that we doctors are like priests. We listen and we say nothing.”

  “A small boat?”

  “No. A proper boat. With a motor. A vessel that can put out to sea, reasonably far, safe and solid. With navigational instruments, a radio, sonar, GPS, and also a small cabin in which to sleep. Those are his words, apparently.”

  “And to do what? To fish?”

  “To conduct some experiments.”

  “Some experiments?”

  “I’m repeating what the person told me.”

  The Mayor’s evening was ruined. He put down his glass and stubbed out his cigar, which had suddenly given him a pain in the throat. It was the word “experiment” that particularly upset him. It smelled bad, that word. It stank. It tasted of rot, like tooth decay caused by a fiber of meat that sticks in the mouth and goes bad.

  He went home, giving the excuse that he was tired and had not slept all night, starting up from bed like scabbardfish do when they are trapped in the net. His wife suggested a cup of verbena tea, but he refused. She shrugged and went back to sleep. She slept like a dormouse.

  What was this rascal up to? What could he mean by wanting to experiment? Of course, it had to do with the three corpses, but the Mayor failed to see the connection between what had happened and the hiring of a boat.

  When the dawn light shone through the slits of the shutters, he was still turning all this over in his head. He was not seeing things more clearly, but he had come to a decision all the same: the Teacher who loved sport so much could go and whistle for a boat. No one would agree to lease him one. He would see to that.

  It was not difficult for the Mayor to spread the word, particularly since the fleet was quite small, and all the boats would be required for the S’tunella, which was about to take place. There were, however, a few dinghies that either belonged to elderly fishermen who no longer went to sea but continued to maintain them in order to pretend that they still did, or to deceive themselves, or to tell themselves that it could still be possible and that where there was a will there was a way; or else they belonged to widows who saw in the boat on the quayside the image of their dead husbands, the extension of his forever absent flesh, and who would not dream of selling it for anything in the world, even if they had to live in poverty for the rest of their lives.

  Sell it, no, but hire it out perhaps?

  The Mayor paid some visits. They did not take long. At lunchtime he pushed open the door of the harbor café. He was smiling. He stood a round of drinks for all those present. He had obtained what he wanted. It had not been difficult. A few little promises, two or three banknotes, and then occasionally, when that had not been enough, a reminder that the Teacher was not from these parts. That he was not born on the island. That he was not like them. You only had to listen to him or look at him. It was the best argument, all in all, one that had to do with birth, the community, and where you came from. That is how civilizations have been constructed and strengthened.

  The Teacher sensed fairly quickly that a watchword had been given. When doors closed, or mouths clamped shut, or even when neither of them opened in the first place, he did not persist, but neither did he give up his plan. So it was that he was seen one Saturday, stepping aboard the ferry that
made the crossing twice a week between the island and the mainland. His wife and his twin daughters accompanied him as far as the landing stage. He was holding a small travel bag that suggested a brief absence. In any case, he had school from Tuesday onward, Monday that week being a holiday commemorating an armistice day, long ago.

  The day was bright and the temperature very mild. It felt as though summer was trying its luck again. The Teacher kissed his wife and little girls, then he climbed on board. He could be seen walking straight to the main salon, which was empty, to sit down, putting his baggage beside him and opening the notebook in which many people imagined he wrote poems.

  The captain sounded the horn and gave the order for departure and soon the weighty mass of the black-and-orange-painted vessel caused the harbor waters to bubble, and off it sailed for the mainland whose shores were never visible, but which one knew were there, toward the northeast.

  X

  THEY WERE EXPECTING TO SEE THE TEACHER ARRIVE BACK early on Tuesday morning, on the same ferry, but there was no sign of him. He had returned the day before, on Monday evening, when the twilight was already dimming the rays of sunshine that were sinking into the harbor waters.

  No one immediately realized that it was him, when they saw a boat they did not recognize and which, after an awkward maneuver, managed to dock at one of the two jetties. The pilot switched off the engine. His silhouette could be made out bustling around for a brief while in the narrow cabin, and it was only when he emerged and climbed up onto the bridge to cast out the mooring ropes and secure them, that people recognized the Teacher.

  The name of the boat was Argus, and one might ask oneself whether it was not this name that had attracted the Teacher, who must have known his mythology.

  He was not wealthy enough to have bought it or even to have hired it for the year, and the manner in which he attempted to dock the boat against the jetty several times before succeeding proved that he was not a skillful sailor. It was also noticed that, in the place where nets and crates are normally kept, the boat contained something quite different, some impressive white objects laid next to one another, but before they could be identified the Teacher had already closed the hatch, which he locked with a padlock.

  From that day onward, and until the end of September, the Teacher stopped running and devoted all his free time to sailing, particularly on the weekend, when he would be away for a couple of days, on his own, leaving his wife and two little daughters on the island. Of course, some fishermen in their boats happened to observe him moored in various places, scanning the skies with his binoculars, or they came across him at sea, but in a different place each time, so that no logical or recognizable intention could connect them.

  The Mayor, to whom this was passed on, no longer slept as a result. Eventually he summoned the Teacher, as he had a right to do, since the school was answerable administratively to the community and he was, although not his immediate superior, nevertheless his employer and his landlord, as it were. In order that the interview should be less formal and so that the Teacher, who had an emotional nature, should not feel as if he was caught in a trap, the Mayor invited him to his home. He received him in what is called “the beautiful room,” not because of its actual beauty, but because of its size, for it is the largest room in any of the houses.

  The Mayor never set foot in it. When he worked with the Doctor, he preferred the kitchen, which reminded him of his mother and his grandmother, both of whom he had loved so much and whom he still often thought of with happiness. The beautiful room, on the other hand, conjured up death, because it was there, on the olivewood table covered for the occasion with a white cloth, that the bodies of the dead were habitually placed, after they had been washed, dressed, and had their hair combed.

  However much his wife polished the table every week—which created a smell of soft, warm wax in the confined space—and laid out on her tray the marital soup tureen, a bunch of dried flowers, and a few pink and gold trinkets that for some represented angels and for others dolphins, as well as some swallows and a couple of young shepherds whose color varied according to the humidity, the Mayor could not stop himself seeing on the table the remains of his father, who died when he was only thirteen, from what was called at the time an “attack.”

  An artery had probably burst, unleashing a flow of blood that had streamed through his entire body and beneath his skin, as far as his face. In a flash, his face had turned scarlet, a color that he had retained in death, so that when he was laid on the table his deceased father’s ruddy complexion gave the impression that he harbored within him an anger that threatened to strike the child at any moment.

  The Mayor asked the Teacher to sit down in one of the two armchairs whose backrests were covered with embroidered doilies. He suggested a cup of coffee or a drink, but his guest refused both. The Mayor noticed that the Teacher was nervous, and this amused him. And so he took his time, asking him for news of his wife and his daughters, then conversing with him about the strange weather and the heat that had returned, even leaving him on his own for a moment, offering the excuse that, due to a temperamental prostate, he often had to go to the lavatory, which was absolutely untrue.

  When he returned, the Teacher’s anxiety had increased still more.

  “Supposing we talk a little about your fine boat?” said the Mayor with a smile.

  “Ah, so that’s it! Is that why you asked me to come here?”

  “Are your ‘experiments’ conclusive?”

  “When they are, you shall be the first to be informed, Mr. Mayor.”

  “May we know what type of thing they are?”

  The Teacher seemed astonished by the persistence of the man who was addressing him. He was about to mumble something, hesitated, and probed the Mayor’s expression. It seemed to have shrunk. His body had faded still more. All that remained were his eyes, which shone with an intense and steady brilliance and were searching the Teacher’s face, like crochet hooks, as though trying to get inside him, to cut open his skin, to bore into his bones, to break viciously into his skull and to swoop into his brain matter so as to latch on to his thoughts.

  “I’m surprised your spies have not informed you yet.”

  The Mayor did not react to the cutting remark. The Teacher breathed more easily. The phrase had cost him a great deal. He was still blushing from it.

  “That’s not an answer,” the Mayor said, determined not to let him off.

  “I’ve nothing to hide, after all. I work by daylight. I study the currents.”

  “The currents?” said the Mayor, smiling again.

  “The currents. I want to understand how the corpses of those men could have washed up on the island’s beach. It defies all logic.”

  “Because according to you it’s logic that controls the seas?”

  “I’m talking about physical logic: if an object is thrown into the water at such and such a place, the marine currents will carry it to a specific other place. The currents are known. They only have tiny variations, depending on the season, as I don’t need to tell you. I have repeated the journey the smugglers make, who, for crazy amounts, promise these men to take them to the mainland. I have dropped dummies along the route, at different points, ten in all. None of them has washed up on the beach until now. None.”

  “The sea sometimes takes its time. Its rhythm is not man’s rhythm,” objected the Mayor, who had stopped smiling. “That being said, I don’t understand what you’re trying to prove.”

  The Teacher allowed himself to smile for the first time. He was breathing as though he had just been running for a long while, and was wringing his hands. The Mayor waited. This man was not made as he was. This man was a lunatic, ruled by his sensitivity, and enslaved by it. He would persevere to the end. He was certain of this now, and had just reached this conclusion: nothing could stop him. The Teacher probably saw it as a sort of mission. A higher objective that enabled him to forget his wretched and temporary condition, his tiresome and not
very rewarding job, his dreary life?

  He was the type of man who, during the wars, left the trenches in a standing position, shouting as he dragged others along, taking no notice of the bullets that were whistling around him and mowing bodies down. He was also the type of man who could not kill a fly in his day-to-day life, but who, in the course of revolutions, had sent his fellow men to the scaffold without batting an eyelid. He was the type who was still wrapped up in childhood and its fantasies, but who, in the name of a belief, could without a qualm massacre those who did not subscribe to it. His type was not made for the world of men, which is the product of flexibility, compromise, and concessions. This kind of man could create only idiots, martyrs, or torturers. And the Mayor had not the slightest intention of being used as a victim.

  “You’ll know soon enough. Allow me to take my leave now. I have to prepare my lessons for tomorrow.”

  The Teacher did not wait for the Mayor to reply. He had already got to his feet and said goodbye in a somewhat theatrical manner, struggling to conceal the trembling that gripped his lips and his hands. He looked like a tall, very gentle boy trying to stop himself from crying after something or other had upset him. He left.

  The Mayor remained seated for a long while in his armchair, pensive and feeling irritated. The seconds ticked by on the clock beside him, making the sound of wood being chopped. This made him think of a tiny woodcutter, tireless and like a metronome, busily and invisibly pursuing his task. Then his wife’s voice came from the kitchen. She was calling him to lunch. He was not hungry. The Teacher had taken away his appetite.