The Red Collar (6 page)

Lantier watched the way this old dog wrinkled his forehead and tilted his head slightly, opening his eyes wide to express contentment or narrowing them slyly to question what the person he was with might want or intend to do. These facial expressions, teamed with eloquent little movements of his neck, allowed him to cover the whole gamut of emotions. Showing his feelings but, more significantly, responding to those of others.

Sitting there on that bench, maddened by the heat, the investigating officer felt a terrible weariness build inside him. Four years serving his country fighting, and two defending order and authority by sentencing poor devils to death had worn him out. Moments ago he'd already been feeling nostalgia for military life; right now he was closer to regretting the emptiness it had left him with. Would he ever be able to do anything else?

The dog must have sensed his despondency. He had moved closer and had laid his muzzle on Lantier's knee. His breathing had slowed. It sounded painful.

Lantier was still stroking him. His hand smoothed affectionately over the animal's muscular neck; he scratched Wilhelm's ears and the dog shook his head with pleasure.

The major had had a dog himself once. He was called Corgan, and Lantier remembered how he would pet him for ages, on the steps to his parents' house in the Perche region. Corgan was a pedigree dog, a black-and-white Pointer, well fed and looked after in his case. But he'd had the same devotedness, and Hugues Lantier had had an opportunity to gauge this the year he turned thirteen.

In those days the Lantiers used to spend the summer at their estate on the banks of the Huisne, and would head back to Paris toward October. Only Hugues's father couldn't be away such a long time. He was senior banking executive for a bank based on the Rue Lafitte, and would return to Paris in early August. Hugues stayed on at the country estate with his two younger sisters and his mother.

The family was starting to experience financial difficulties and would soon be forced to sell this property, which had been inherited from an uncle. In the meantime, they had reduced their staff to a cook and an aging retainer who used to go off in his cart to buy provisions.

One autumn day burglars got into the house at nightfall, simply by climbing the boundary wall which had almost crumbled away in places. They were a gang of opportunists afraid of nothing and no one, and never stayed in the same place long. There were three of them and they took orders from a leader, a tall blond fellow with a bushy beard.

They burst into the living room just before the evening meal. The leader whooped as he herded Hugues's mother and her two daughters into a corner of the room. His accomplices brought in the cook and the old servant, and pushed them into the same corner. The third man tied them up with a washing line, and lined them up side by side on the floor behind the piano. Only Hugues had escaped because he'd been playing in his bedroom on the second floor when they arrived. He watched the scene between two balusters on the galleried landing.

What happened next was very violent and very messy. The thieves broke into cupboards, emptied wine bottles and feasted on what they found in the larder. Two of them had a fight, hurling ornaments and paintings at each other. It was an extraordinary sight for the child. In a matter of minutes, the peaceful order in the house was obliterated and replaced by unbridled primitive desires and senseless violence. Hugues waited for the nightmare to end.

Later, well into the night, one of the pillagers who was less befuddled by their blowout realized that they had four women at their disposal and could derive some pleasure from them. Hugues's sisters were only ten and eleven, but the thug didn't let a detail like that trouble him. He walked behind the piano, laughing loudly, studied the bodies lying there, and dragged one of them into the middle of the living room. It was Solange, the elder of the two little girls, wearing a blue dress with an overly full skirt that gave her womanly curves. The drunk made her stand up and introduced her to the others who were slumped on armchairs. The poor child was terrified. Hugues could see her face, her eyes wide with terror. His first instinct was to come out of hiding to help his sister. But that would only have handed over yet another victim to the gang, who already had five at their mercy. He waited, eyes closed.

A piercing scream made him open them again. Solange, whose dress had been ripped off by her attacker, was shrieking with all her might. Surprised by this scream, the brigand stepped back. At that exact moment, something launched across the room and leapt onto him. It was Corgan. The man fell backward and struggled to break free, bellowing hoarsely. The dog had grabbed him by the neck and was pinning his prey to the floor, devouring his face. The others were paralyzed with fear, frozen in contemplation of the scene. They soon gathered their wits and got to their feet. The dog let go of his first victim, who was howling in pain, and squared up to them.

Making the most of the confusion, Hugues came down the stairs, hidden by the banisters. When he reached the hall he opened the glazed door that led into the garden, and fled. The moon had risen and lit up the countryside. He had no trouble finding his way. The village was about half a mile away, as you came out of the woods. He woke the local policeman, who raised the alarm. Ten armed men were soon setting off toward the house. They came across the bandits loading as much food and wine as they could onto the cart. They were fodder for the penal colonies.

But Corgan was dead.

Lantier had never forgotten this dog's sacrifice, but he rarely thought about it. Morlac's case had made it resurface in his mind. And now he thought of it, he felt this dramatic event had not been without consequence in his life. He had joined the army to defend order against barbarity. He had become a soldier to serve mankind. Which was a misunderstanding, of course. It wasn't long before war came along and showed him that the opposite was true, that order feeds off human beings, it consumes them and crushes them. But deep down and in spite of everything, he was still bound to his vocation. And that vocation had its origins in the actions of a dog.

He must have fallen asleep. True, he'd cut short his siesta at the hotel in order to get back to the prison sooner. And now here he was dreaming again as he sat on this bench, stroking the dog.

Wilhelm still had his muzzle on Lantier's knee. He was looking at him, swiveling his eyes in a comical way. Lantier gently drew back his leg and pushed the dog aside. Then he stood up and stretched. He straightened his uniform and headed for the prison. The sun had moved round, the square was almost entirely in the shade.

He knocked at the door, and Dujeux opened up for him. As he stepped inside he heard the dog start barking again in the distance.

I
t must have been Morlac's day for a shower. He was clean and freshly shaven, his hair was combed and he smelled of Marseille soap. The interlude with the dog had put Lantier in a good mood. When he arrived in the cell he sat in his usual place and opened the file.

“Where were we? Ah, yes! Salonika.”

“Do you really want me to talk about all this?”

“Not all of it. Just the essentials.”

“Well, so we reached the front.”

“What did the front consist of in that part of the world?”

Morlac was scraping under one of his nails with a beveled stick. Now that he was clean, he'd set about scouring every inch of himself.

“Valleys surrounded by sort of rounded mountains. There weren't really any trenches, not facing each other like in Picardie or the Somme. The enemy positions were quite a way off. We hid in holes and we often moved around. The artillery fired blindly.”

“Any mud?”

“Not too much. But it was hot in summer and freezing in winter. Unbelievable differences in temperature. The hardest thing was definitely that we spent long stretches of time on the front line. The Oriental Force was always short of men. No troops came to relieve us. We were so, so bored, weeks on end like that.”

“What did you do?”

“Well, I read.”

“Did the others?”

“Not so much.”

Lantier made up his mind to ask some questions he hadn't clearly formulated the previous day, when he'd seen him reading Victor Hugo.

“And how is it that you could read? You left school very young, from what I think I know.”

Morlac muttered to himself.

“I like reading, there's no harm in that,” he said.

“You must have acquired this taste for reading from someone?”

The prisoner shrugged. “Possibly.”

Lantier decided the moment had come. He put down his notes and stood up. He took a couple of steps toward the far wall which was covered in obscene graffiti. Then he spun round and said, “I went to visit you wife this morning. You don't seem to be in a hurry to get back to her. But I do think she's waiting for you.”

“She's not my wife.”

“But she's the mother of your child.”

Morlac's eyes suddenly flashed with hate.

“Mind your own business! Anyway, that's enough of this interrogating. Sentence me to death and be done with it.”

“In that case,” Lantier replied, “let's get back to your dog, because this is about him.”

He was briefly tempted to describe his moment alone with Wilhelm, on the bench. But he was keen to maintain his authority as an investigating officer, and this anecdote ran the risk of looking like familiarity. His curt tone of voice and the way he'd buried himself in his notes had their effect on Morlac, who dropped his head, like a reprimanded schoolboy.

“After more than a month at the front and in the surrounding area,” he carried on automatically, “we were evacuated to Monastir. It was the end of the spring offensive. Wilhelm couldn't come with us because he had an injury in his side from a shell blast.”

“Did you leave him at the front?”

“The guy who took over my blockhouse agreed to look after him. He was a Serb, evacuated to Corfu after the defeat in Belgrade. He had a funny way of looking at Wilhelm. I got the feeling he'd eaten quite a lot of dogs during the retreat. All I asked was that he bury him if he did die.”

“But he didn't die.”

“No, he's a tough nut, that dog. When he was pretty much healed he made the journey on his own, through the Vardar gorges to Monastir. He was hit about the head with sticks, and when he arrived his eyes were almost closed from all the blood that had trickled into them.”

“Then what?”

“We spent the winter in a billet and that's what saved us. The cold there is incredible. Apart from the mountain infantry boys, no one had seen temperatures like it. When we were sent back to the front in March, there were still seven-foot snowdrifts along the side of the road.”

“And the dog was still going strong?”

“He got his strength back in Monastir. I didn't take much care of him. But there was an English fusilier, I used to play cards with him in the evenings, and he really took to him. You know what the English are like with animals. He'd bring him stuff to eat, leftover rations, not scraps. And he even found some disinfectant for the wounds on his back.”

“Wasn't the dog tempted to stay with the Englishman?” Lantier asked with genuine interest. “I don't mean to be judgmental, but you don't seemed to have given him much affection, this dog of yours.”

“I've told you. That's the way I am. But I was his master and he knew that.”

“All in all, he stayed with you for the whole of the war.”

“Yes.”

“Did you have much fighting on that front?”

“Not really. It was a strange war, with very little contact. One time we bumped into an Austrian patrol by chance. We had to use our bayonets to get out of that. It was the first time I saw Wilhelm in action. He understood who were the enemies and attacked the Austrians, he got it right every time.”

“You didn't get a mention for that combat.”

“There was no reason to,” Morlac said dismissively. “There was nothing glorious about it. We saved our own skins, that's all. And Fritz could only think of one thing, and that was getting away, too.”

“What did you do the rest of the time?”

“Routine things: patrols, guard duties, a bit of reconnaissance. But most of all we were sick. It's a very bad climate. I avoided malaria but I got terrible dysentery. As you seem interested in the dog, I can tell you he watched over me the whole time I was ill and went to find help every time I needed something.”

Now that Lantier knew Wilhelm a little, he was very touched by this devotion he'd shown during the war. But it only made his master's coldness all the more surprising. The fact that, like all country folk, Morlac had had a utilitarian relationship with animals, deprived of any effusive emotion—that Lantier could understand. But there seemed to be something else, some sort of resentment. What had happened between them that the prisoner wasn't saying?

The investigator dug deeper.

“Did Wilhelm take part in the fighting that earned you the mention?” he asked.

Morlac had taken four or five drags on his cigarette in succession. Smoking had a visibly relaxing effect on him. He leaned back until his head touched the wall. He stayed in that position for a long time and then sat up again abruptly and looked at Lantier.

“It's a long story, sir. We'd be more comfortable going through it outside, don't you think? Couldn't we go out for a walk?”

Lantier wasn't far from having the same idea himself. He'd almost had enough of this dark cell with its stuffy tobacco smell when the weather outside was so beautiful. He was reaching the decisive part of Morlac's story, and wanted to secure the man's trust.

“You're right. We could walk around the yard.”

It wasn't the appointed time but there were, after all, no other prisoners and Dujeux could perfectly well open up the space used as an exercise yard. The major went to find the guard who came over all important and thought about it at length in silence, considering whether such a request was compatible with the regulations. Lantier ended up making the decision for him by telling him it was an order.