Dog Island

by Philippe Claudel

  The sky, neither blue nor gray in this late-September weather, but covered in a smoky glaze, transformed the sun into a doughy, uneven mass, spreading over it like rancid butter and blurring its contours. The sea birds, gulls, terns, eagles, kittiwakes, albatrosses, and oystercatchers, were flying in a strange manner, concentrically—not so much above the waves and close to the shore as they normally did, or close to the boats on the quay, excited by the smell of fish that never leaves the nets completely, but around the slopes of the Brau, in a noisy, shrill, circular flight, eventually constructing a sort of ring of wings, feathers, beaks, and cries, bringing the dead volcano back to life in what to us is a meaningless cyclical existence.

  And then there was the stench. Which no longer had anything pleasant or indeterminate about it: it was a smell of decay that was settling over the island. A smell that was unmistakable, like one that comes from a thicket when a wounded animal goes there to die and its corpse decomposes over time, loses its original shape, attracts flies, worms, and maggots, swells up with gas, grows huge, decomposes, bursts, and releases all its foul fluids, which trickle away in blackish streams.

  It was hard not to think of the bodies of the drowned men within the bowels of the Brau. It was impossible that three corpses buried dozens, perhaps even hundreds of meters inside the earth should manage to saturate the air of the entire island with their miasma, but the stinking air seemed to express their presence, their anger, and their bitterness. This foul smell was the first act in a vengeance that would unravel at an implacable tempo: the dead would make the living pay for their indifference. They had treated the bodies of their fellow human beings as they would the remains of animals. They had chosen silence rather than words. They would be punished for this.

  The Superintendent did not hurry to arrange the confrontation. It took place midway through Monday afternoon, in the stifling atmosphere of the council room. They had drawn the curtains, both to conceal themselves from the crowd in the town square that had grown steadily larger and to protect themselves from the sun, which seemed to want to bring the island and its inhabitants to the boiling point.

  The Mayor had already been in his seat for an hour, as had the Doctor, whom he had asked to come slightly earlier. The Superintendent entered, dressed as though he were going to a wedding, wearing a blue suit with thin white stripes, a beige silk shirt, a red tie, and polished shoes. He had brushed back his sparse hair with a shiny lotion. Freshly shaved, his greenish complexion was now exposed; it did him no favors and provided evidence of his poor health. However, there was no bottle to ruin the shape of any of his pockets.

  “Here we are, gentlemen. Time’s up!”

  “Would you like me to leave?” asked the Doctor, who was wiping his neck with his large, dirty scented handkerchief.

  “Do no such thing,” replied the Superintendent, who was examining everything in the room as he walked around it. “The more the merrier!”

  Then, turning suddenly toward the two men, he exclaimed with a look of excitement in his eye:

  “Have you seen them outside? The noose is tightening! I like crowds when they are full of electricity. They become unpredictable! Anything can then happen. Come and take a look at them: monsters in the pit waiting for their meat to be distributed. None of them wants to miss it and each of them hopes to bring back its share. It’s wonderful.”

  He had just drawn back the curtain of one of the windows that overlooked the square. The Mayor had got to his feet reluctantly, and the Doctor had followed him, both because he did not want to leave him on his own and also so as not to upset the Superintendent, whose nervous and no doubt unbalanced temperament he had seen through. All three of them found themselves gazing at the square.

  “So, what do you reckon? We’re at the theater, are we not?”

  The Mayor could not conceal his surprise. The Doctor disguised his beneath his smile, but the way in which he vigorously wiped his forehead proved that he was concerned. There, below them, taking up the entire gloomy perimeter of the square, were hundreds of women, children, and men huddled together, a compact mass that was humming like a beehive. Hypnotic, the music of their voices sounded like a litany, entrancing, nasal, basic, generous, and all-enveloping, and it reached the ears with a buzz that made every part of the body quiver, and eventually rose to the brain to irritate it.

  Suddenly, without anyone knowing why, the layer of sound subsided, then stopped, while at the same time, at the far end of the square, opposite the town hall, toward the alleyway that bordered the southern corner of the church, a ripple ran through the crowd, which separated and divided in two, as though it had been sliced with the blade of a scalpel. Then, in the narrow opening that gradually split in two, the Mayor, the Doctor, and the Superintendent saw the slim figure of Mila appear, all dressed in white, and holding a large candle in her joined hands.

  Why a candle, and who had given her the idea?

  The fact remains that the candle and the clothing produced their effect. The crowd grew silent. Motionless, they gazed at the girl, who was followed by her father, Furry, who was not carrying a candle but also had his hands joined, and was staggering slightly—drunk perhaps, drunk in all probability, as was his custom—with his lopsided bearskin wig on his head.

  As the girl passed by, the men removed their hats and the women crossed themselves; some of them even knelt down. All this without anyone conferring with anybody else. All this a result of drawing on the old resources, still active, of fears and sacred signs that are denied, that are disregarded, but which linger on and raise their ancient heads when it is necessary, when people are powerless, when they don’t know what to do, when they are at their wits’ end.

  The girl moved forward, slowly, gazing straight ahead of her, dignified and serious, looking only into the distance, unconcerned about the crowd surrounding her, holding her candle as though it were the body of Christ Himself. She walked into the town hall. She disappeared inside. Furry, too. The door closed behind them. The crowd remained silent.

  “Splendid, no?” exclaimed the Superintendent. “At last, we know how to have fun in your dump!”

  XX

  A FEW SECONDS LATER, THE GIRL AND HER FATHER ushered in with them a scent of warm wax and whiffs of brandy. Mila was holding her candle in one hand now and had blown it out. The Mayor drew the curtains and pointed to the chairs. The girl sat down. Furry beside her, yawning and adjusting his wig. The Superintendent took control of matters.

  “Within a few moments, the Teacher will come into this room. I shall have him sit down here, opposite you. He will be far enough away not to do you any harm, but close enough for you to be able to see him clearly, and for him to see you. I shall sit here. There are enough of us to protect you from him, so you have nothing to fear. I shall put questions to you, shall ask you to respond to them, to describe what happened as you have done already. The Teacher may shout, lose his temper, threaten you, and plead with you. You should take no notice of what he does or says. You should only concern yourself with the truth. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. The truth. I understand.”

  “Good. Mr. Mayor, would you be so kind as to go and fetch the accused?”

  The Mayor appeared disconcerted. Perhaps he was expecting the Superintendent to take responsibility for collecting the Teacher from his improvised prison? He gave the Doctor an imploring look, which the Superintendent noticed and understood.

  “Have someone go with you, if that would reassure you.”

  Never had the journey from the council room to the cellar seemed as long to the two men. The building, which was just like all the other constructions on the island, may have had dwarflike proportions, but that day the Mayor and the Doctor had the impression that the space was expanding, that the corridors were becoming longer as though they were made of a pliable and soft material, that the staircases were increasing their steps and never stopped going down, and that the cellar in which the Teacher was imprisoned was situated at th
e center of the earth, in the place where everything is born and everything dies, where all the opposing forces rise up and destroy one another.

  The Mayor took the key out of his pocket, paused for a moment and looked at the Doctor who, his face gleaming with sweat, favored him with his impassive smile.

  The Teacher was lying down on the mattress, in a position that made one think of statues in cathedrals. You might have thought he was dead. The Doctor saw immediately that he was breathing and reassured the Mayor with a wave of his hand. The Teacher drew himself up onto his elbows. He looked at them. A smile of deep sadness appeared on his lips.

  “Even you, Doctor! Are you not ashamed . . . ?”

  The Doctor’s smile faltered a little but it did not disappear.

  “You are going to be confronted by the young girl,” said the Mayor straight away. “Kindly follow us.”

  “Yes. Let’s get it over with.”

  He got to his feet with difficulty. The night spent in this inhospitable place devoid of all comfort had made him move like an old man. He brushed against the Mayor and the Doctor without even looking at them. The Doctor noted that an acrid smell of congealed sweat arose from his body, one that can be detected in hospital rooms in the morning, hovering over the beds of those with high temperatures who have spent the night tossing and turning in their damp sheets.

  The Teacher smiled at Mila as he entered the room, and greeted her father and called him by his name, but Furry did not answer. He also said hello to the Superintendent. It was not yet a defeated man who was taking his place in the council room, but a shocked and weakened human being, and one who, in spite of everything, was confident in the outcome of the confrontation and the truth it would bring to light.

  The Superintendent bowed his head, Furry lowered his, and the girl greeted the Teacher by addressing him as “Sir,” which seemed to please him. He took this as proof of respect, a respect that could not exist if the facts that the girl had accused him of had been genuine. But apart from him, for anyone else who heard this word uttered by the child and the way in which she had pronounced it, the effect it produced could be a chilly one, because one could fancy that it suggested the influence and limitless authority the Teacher exerted over the girl, and which had possibly enabled him to demand the worst from her, and to obtain it.

  So, how to summarize what followed next? The Teacher destroyed himself, without anyone having the least need to help him die: he managed it so very well on his own. And as he lost his footing, as he felt the situation developing into a perfectly constructed trap for him and one that would leave him without any hope, his voice grew increasingly weaker, shakier, and emptier, and the more he moaned.

  The child’s performance was perfect in every respect. When the Superintendent asked her to describe how all this came about, she adapted her manner, like the good pupil she was, speaking in her sweet, birdlike voice. She began by saying that the Teacher often congratulated her for her excellent results. In front of the whole class, he praised her conscientiousness and her ability, saying that she was a role model, a gifted child, a little treasure, adding that furthermore she was polite, had good manners, and was so charming and very pretty.

  The Superintendent paused to turn toward the Teacher so that he could ask him whether all this was true, whether these were his words. He confirmed that this was the case.

  “And do you often speak about a pupil like this in front of the whole class?”

  The Teacher replied that no, he did not do so frequently, but that in this case he had wanted to encourage the girl, who had obvious gifts, who did not come from a milieu that could help her, and that she deserved praise all the more for it.

  “What are you trying to say about her family background?” asked the Superintendent.

  Attention turned toward Furry, who did not react. Perhaps he did not realize that they were talking about him. He gazed at the table with an idiotic expression. With his wig and his large animal-like eyes, you would have thought he had escaped from a zoo.

  “I know that she lives alone with her father, who is often away on his boat. She does not have the usual life of a child of her age. She has no support. I wanted to be kind.”

  “Kind?” the Superintendent repeated as he loosened the knot of his tie which, being too tight, had left a red mark on his yellow throat as though someone had been trying to strangle him.

  The Teacher did not say anything in reply. The Superintendent told the child she could continue.

  “Sometimes, when the Teacher passed along the rows, he stopped beside me. He looked at what I was writing. He bent down and came very close to me. I could smell his breath and his aroma. The heat of his body, too. He was really close. I didn’t dare to continue. I was frightened that I would write something stupid, right there in front of him, and that he would notice it. But he said nothing. He stopped for a moment, and sometimes he would stroke my hair, or put his hand on my shoulder. Then I was even more petrified.”

  “So he touched you.”

  “Yes. He touched me.”

  “What do you say about this, Teacher? Is it the truth?”

  It was clear that great waves of conscience were swirling around inside the Teacher’s head, filling his facial features with sudden and confused stress, with little flickers of irritation, rather like nervous tics. He was no longer thirty years old. He was of no age. Gradually, he was taking on the appearance of a victim.

  “I behaved like that with Mila, just as I did with other pupils.”

  “With others?”

  “Yes. Is it forbidden?”

  “To stroke children?”

  “You call it ‘stroking’ and immediately give the word a perverse connotation. They were simply gestures of sympathy, of encouragement. A way of rewarding them. We are not machines and we are not working with machines.”

  “And you, my dear,” said the Superintendent, “how did you feel when the Teacher touched you like that?”

  The child replied immediately, with a quickness that surprised the Superintendent.

  “It embarrassed me. I felt ashamed. I felt very uncomfortable, but I didn’t dare say so.”

  “Continue.”

  “One evening, he asked me to stay on after class. The others left but I didn’t. We had taken a very important test the day before and I wasn’t sure I’d passed. I was worried. The Teacher spoke to me about the test and about the marks I had got since the beginning of the year. He repeated that he was proud of me, that I was a very good pupil and that I could go to university, which would enable me to get a good job and to leave the island. And he spoke to me about the test.”

  The girl stopped speaking. She suddenly seemed confused and very emotional. She glanced over at her father, but he continued not to be there. She turned to the Mayor, who looked away, then at the Doctor, who began to inspect his pockets as though he urgently had to find something vital in them. The Superintendent noticed the awkwardness that had just surfaced. He asked the Teacher whether what the child said was true, concerning her studies, her results, and the fact that he had detained her when the others had already left.

  “It’s true.”

  “And that doesn’t bother you, being alone with a young girl in the classroom, without any witness.”

  “I never thought of doing anything wrong.”

  “You’re a noble soul, dear Teacher. You live in another world. In a way, you’re lucky. Please, Mila, continue,” said the Superintendent, with a kindness that he had not shown hitherto.

  The girl remained silent. Her eyes shone a little more brightly. The room suddenly seemed to grow smaller. There was no air. The heat created large damp patches beneath everyone’s armpits. The Doctor kept mopping his brow. The heavy curtains blocking the windows gave the impression that one would never be able to get out of the place and that one would suffocate there. A tear appeared in the child’s eyes, then another. She began to weep, silently, without moving, still upright and with a fixed expre
ssion in her eyes.

  “Would you like us to stop for a while?” asked the Superintendent.

  She shook her head and, through her tears, looked at the Teacher, who appeared shocked.

  “That evening, the Teacher told me that I had failed my test.”

  “But that’s untrue!”

  “Be quiet! Let her speak!”

  “That I would get a bad mark, but that there was perhaps a way for me to get a good mark.”

  “Why are you lying, Mila? Why are you talking nonsense?”

  The Teacher had got up from his seat and was leaning over toward the girl, who appeared frightened.

  “Sit down at once or else I shall have you tied to the chair! Is that what you want? Sit down!”

  The Superintendent had to wait for a few seconds before the Teacher obeyed him. He collapsed onto the chair like a bundle of washing.

  “Please, go on.”

  “The Teacher made me come and see him, in his office. He stroked my hair and my cheeks. He told me that it didn’t matter having a bad mark occasionally, that I was a very good pupil, and that it was a mishap. He made me sit on his lap.”

  “BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE! YOU’RE LYING!”

  “I didn’t want to. He forced me to sit down. He continued speaking to me as he stroked me. He put his hand on my thighs.”

  “SHE’S LYING!”

  “He told me that I was beautiful, that I should be nice. He pulled up my skirt. He fondled my underwear.”

  “STOP IT! WHY ARE YOU SAYING THIS?”

  “I could no longer move. I thought I was dead. He put his fingers inside my underwear. He stroked me there, in the place you know. He took my other hand. He slipped it inside his trousers. I felt his thing, which was hard.”

  “THIS IS UNBEARABLE! WHY ARE YOU LYING, MILA?”

  “He forced me to fondle it. He talked to me about the good mark that would replace the bad one. In the evening when I got home, I vomited. I had a temperature. I didn’t want to go back to school anymore.”