“Poor Imo,” said Veronica with eyes that shone with equal parts compassion and fascination. “Was it the devil? Did he come to you? Did he come into you? Did it hurt?”
If it was the devil’s work, why could he not punish Veronica a little, too? But he did not; she was just as rudely healthy as she had always been, with her shiny hair, her perfect complexion, and her naturally rosy cheeks.
Imogene was no longer able to pretend that nothing was wrong. She was sent to the hospital and examined, first by the sisters and then by the doctors at Saint Bernardine. At first they thought it was a brain infection, but later—when she did not die but in fact got better—they leaned more toward the theory that she had suffered an epileptic attack.
She herself knew exactly what had happened, even though the entire afternoon had become a pitch-black hole in her memory. The wolf had taken her. In front of everyone, in broad daylight, it had overcome her resistance and violated her so deeply that not even the Son of God would be able to forgive her.
When the great Pasteur gave the illness a name, it was only too fitting. Lupus. Le loup. What else could it be called?
She suffered for two years. She lost most of her hair, and when it began to grow in again, it was as if it were not really hers. It was lifeless and stiff, like the bristles on an animal—not even the pelt of a wolf but something much less pleasant to touch. Pig bristles, perhaps. Ferrand married the daughter of a landowner from the neighboring town, and shortly thereafter her mother left Les Merises and moved back to her native region.
“All you think about is her!” she had shouted at her husband, so loudly that Imogene could hear it even though she lay in her own room, with the door closed. “Her, that cursed illness, and doctors, doctors, doctors. Throwing good money after bad!”
Two years later Maman died suddenly of a violent stomach illness, without having spoken another word with her husband or daughter.
Imogene was well aware that it was all her fault.
“Imogene, this is Doctor Fleischer.”
He arrived long after she had finally given up. Long after she had come to believe she was the wolf’s prey forever and would never be free. The Other Doctor. That was how she always thought of him, even though there had been doctors by the dozen before him. He was the Other, the one who was different. Doctor Wilhelm Fleischer was completely bald and no taller than she was. But he had worked with some of the best doctors and researchers in all of Europe—Fehleisen, Koch, Pasteur—and he had even spent two years in the United States. And he had a cure, he said.
“You have probably heard the expression that you must fight fire with fire?” he asked.
Imogene nodded. Yes, she knew it.
“This is almost the same. We will fight one illness with another. Do you also know what bacteria are?”
“I received top marks in both chemistry and biology,” she said a bit indignantly. She was seventeen now and not a child.
“Excellent, then you will understand my explanation better.”
He described how he would take a bit of infected tissue and skin from a person suffering from erysipelas—“You may know it better as Saint Anthony’s fire”—and place it in a mixture of gelatin and serum, so that the Saint Anthony’s fire bacteria multiplied vigorously for a few days. Afterward he would inoculate her with this bacteria. She would become ill . . .
“Very ill. The sicker you become, the better it works!” he said. “High fever, violent headache, skin infections across large parts of your body. You must be brave, but I promise you, once you get a fever, it will help. That is the fire we are going to use to drive out the wolf!”
“Is this not too dangerous?” asked Papa. “With such a high fever, and given that Imogene is already weak . . .”
“There is a risk,” said Doctor Fleischer. “But it must be weighed against the chance of a complete cure.”
Imogene looked at the small, bald doctor with a calm gaze, and she understood. Fully. She felt how right it was—that the fever fire would burn and cleanse her, exactly as purgatory purified the sinful souls who would otherwise be lost.
“Yes,” she said. “Do it. Fire with fire.”
They measured her fever at forty-one Celsius at its worst. None of what the wolf had done to her had been half as painful. But purgatory must hurt, she whispered to herself and allowed them to tie her wrists to the bedsides so she could not tear and scratch the infection. It felt as if her skin was burning off, but when she looked down her front, it was still there, just scalded and swollen and full of pus. Her dreams were full of fire. She fought for every breath she took.
But at last the fever fell. The fire burned out and took the wolf with it.
“There, you see,” said Doctor Fleischer to her father the day she was examined by him for the last time. “The power of nature is incredible.”
“I think we must thank the Lord,” said her father. “And you and your bacteria, Doctor.”
For five years she was well, and she believed God had forgiven her. She slept peacefully at night and did not need to bar her door and her mind against that which wanted to get in. The fever had been her test, and she had come through it, purified and clean.
That is what she believed. Until the day Mother Filippa sent her down to the wolf stables with a message for Emile, and she found him together with Cecile.
She still did not like visiting the wolf stables very much. She could not free her soul from a final shudder of horror when she saw the gray shadows, the pale eyes, the dark gaping jaws. Luckily all the wolves were outside, she observed. But Emile was not in the little room that served as his home.
She considered turning back with the excuse that she could not find him. But then she heard the sound. It came from the wolf pen, and it sounded as if someone was moaning with pain. She feared that he had been hurt, perhaps had even been attacked by the wolves, and she grabbed a hayfork to protect herself if necessary. When she opened the gate, she saw the wolves at once. It was not the whole pack, just the old pack leader and three of the females. They stood completely still and were staring rigidly at something in the elder bushes, and only one of them turned its head when she came out.
At first she thought that Cecile was merely sitting on his lap, which, of course, was unsuitable enough. But then she realized that the skirt of the school uniform was pushed all the way up to Cecile’s waist. That her lower body was bared. And what she was sitting on, what she was raising and lowering herself over in a smooth, slippery rhythm, was not so much his lap as his erect member.
Although they were both facing her, neither of them saw her. Emile’s cheek rested on the girl’s shoulder and his face was turned away. Cecile’s eyes were closed. She had both hands pressed against her own thighs, and her fingers glistened wetly. Imogene stood paralyzed for a moment, as motionless as the observing wolves. Then she threw down the hayfork and fled.
She did not say anything, did not go to Mother Filippa, as she should have. Instead she waited until the next time she had a tutorial with Cecile to bring it up.
If she had expected remorse, if she had expected shame, then she was disappointed. Cecile listened to her without lowering her eyes. She looked attentively at Imogene with soft, dark eyes, and then she took her hand.
“Poor Imo,” she said. “Were you very afraid of the wolves?”
“Let me go.”
If only she had not touched me, Imogene thought later. But she did. With her unclean hand, the hand Imogene had seen shining wetly, pressed against her penetrated sex.
The headache hit her like a hard, flat blow to the temples. She heard Cecile’s voice through a crackling blanket of noise, distorted and barely recognizable.
“Immmmmmmmo. Whaaaat issss wronnnng?”
She disappeared. And when she returned, she was lying with her head in Cecile’s lap and a pleat of the skirt’s woolly fabric had made a reddened furrow on her cheek.
“I did not dare to leave you,” said Cecile. “Imo? Are you fee
ling better now?”
She still refused to believe it. She had gone through purgatory, she was clean now. It could not be true. But then she saw the damp stains of spittle on Cecile’s white blouse, and the pale red blotches where the skin had broken and bled.
“Don’t worry about it,” said Cecile. “I know you cannot help it. I won’t tell anyone.”
Then she knew. She could feel it everywhere in her body, from the pulsing temples to the heaviness in her thighs, the burning skin, the odd singing that constantly whined in her ears.
The wolf had returned. And it was stronger than ever.
She wrote to Doctor Fleischer, but he just answered that he no longer used this method of treatment; it was now considered to be too risky. She sent more letters, attempting to explain that she did not care about the risk, that she was afraid, that he had to help her. In the beginning, he was understanding, but gradually his replies became shorter and shorter and finally her letters came back with a scribbled “Return to sender” on the envelopes.
She tried to explain to Mother Filippa, but the abbess did not understand the extent of her terror. “Illness is not necessarily a punishment from God,” she said. “Everyone can get ill, even the purest. What exactly is this sin that you imagine He wishes to punish you for?”
“Beastly feelings,” she stammered. “Beastly desires.”
“Oh, Imogene. We all have those. If God were to punish us just for feeling and thinking something, He would have plenty to do.”
Imogene was astonished. Mother Filippa was the convent’s most elevated leader, the one who had to be the cleanest, the strongest, the most compassionate. If not even she was free of the beast, then who was?
“Imogene, sickness is not a punishment. Sometimes it just comes to us. If we are lucky, it is a trial from which we can learn. Other times, we must just accept that we humans do not understand everything.”
For a long time Imogene considered what she was supposed to learn from her trial. Arthritis tore at her joints, the headaches made it hard to think. She tried to stay as far away from Cecile as possible, but the girl could not be avoided. She wanted to help, she claimed. And her eyes. Her soft dark eyes. They followed every movement Imogene made when she taught Cecile’s class, noted every tremble, looked for every sign of weakness. Every time Imogene had to sit down in the middle of a class, or the chalk fell from her bent, arthritic fingers, Cecile was always there, every single time, with the loving concern that she could not brush off.
Including the afternoon that the girl’s true intentions came to light.
“Imo, you are my friend, aren’t you? You care for me. I can tell.”
Imogene had dismissed the class ten minutes early, because she was too dizzy to go on. But Cecile had not gone. She had followed Imogene into the storeroom behind the biology classroom.
“Cecile, stop,” said Imogene with all the authority she could muster. “Go join the others. I am your teacher. We cannot be friends.”
“Yes we can. I will help you. I can make it stop hurting. And you . . .”
“What about me?” asked Imogene, caught against her will.
“You could perhaps tell Sister Beatrice that I have a private tutorial with you tomorrow. After physics. Could you do that?”
So that she had an excuse. So that she could meet Wolf-Emile and give herself over to that, down in the wolf pen, while the animals looked on. Imogene could barely contain her disgust. But the girl continued to stand there looking completely innocent. The gaze was still soft and loving, not at all calculating. Not insolent or challenging. A cramp in her abdomen made Imogene gasp for air.
“Imo, Imo. Come on . . .”
“Go away . . .”
“Are you feeling ill? Sweet Imo, let me . . .”
This time she wasn’t even gone. She was still there, still looking out her own eyes, still trapped in her own body, feeling the saliva that dripped down her chin, tasting the blood through the material of the blouse when she bit. Hearing, quite clearly and distinctly, Cecile’s cry of pain, and her voice afterward, light, breathless, lighter and younger than it usually was.
“It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter . . . Imo, I will let you. If it helps, I will let you . . .”
There was no one she could talk to. Mother Filippa, the oh, so virtuous Mother Filippa, had taken in a wolf, the old male wolf, because Emile had said it was being harassed by the others. It lay at her feet at mealtimes, it followed her around the convent like a shadow, at night it slept in her room, and who knew . . . who knew what happened behind the closed door? Nausea rose in her throat, and still . . . still she could feel the wolf in her own body every time she thought of it. No help. There was no help to be had. Everything was putrid and unclean, and the beast had penetrated everywhere.
It was her father who saved her. He recognized the signs of the illness and took her to Les Merises, without hesitating, without discussing it with anyone. He did not even allow her to give notice, but merely sent a short note a few days later. And when two of the sisters appeared, full of compassion and questions, he lied and said she was not at home.
The night after the sisters had been there, she had another nightmare about the wolves. She could not stand to be in her bed, she could not stand the house and the night, the darkness, and the moon. Her father found her the next morning in the chapel, still only in her nightgown and with bare feet, stretched out on the floor in front of the Madonna.
He was angry. At her, at the nuns, at the illness that had returned in spite of everything they had done, everything she had gone through to be free. She had never seen him so angry before. He had shaken her so hard that she had finally told him about her fear of the beast, about what had happened at the convent.
His disgust was as violent as his anger.
“You are not going back,” he said. “Not to that place.”
“I cannot be here, either,” she said. “I cannot stand to be with people anymore. Not even with you. Not until it stops, or I die.”
“Do not say that!”
“Why not? Better a death in the hope of heaven than a life in sin!”
The moment she said it, she knew that was how it had to be—she had to find her salvation somehow. Alone.
He protested for a long time, but for once she was more stubborn than he was. Finally, he helped her to move out to Vabonne’s old hunting cabin, where she was at least certain that the nuns would not find her.
It was the end of September, and the forest around the cabin flamed red against yellow, golden against green. The lake lay like a secret world at her feet when she sat on the veranda and saw the last dragonflies dive toward the surface, greedy, dying, with a hunger that could not be met. Iago lay at her side, the only company she allowed herself beyond her father’s short visits.
She was still awaiting her salvation; she had still not understood what God was attempting to teach her. She prayed long and often, mostly to Madonna, because the Mother of God seemed to be more understanding and compassionate than the Almighty Himself.
But she was not without work to occupy her. When Doctor Fleischer refused to help her, she had to try to help herself. She had brought her microscope and her travel laboratory, and in those long autumn days full of transformation, she probed and examined and registered every bit of herself, her blood, the skin flakes of her eczema, her body’s temperature and fluids. She even began to compare it with Iago’s blood, skin, tissue, and fluids, which initially he allowed her to do, but later liked less and less, until she finally had to anesthetize him with ether in order to take her samples.
It was under anesthesia that she saw them. They came creeping out of the dog’s nostrils, tiny pale white specks that revealed their spiderlike nature under the microscope—an eight-legged symmetry that related them to scorpions, ticks, and other arachnids.
At that moment she was seized by an attack that pulled her out of the golden September day, out of the hunting cabin’s reality, out of her wrecked
body.
All at once she was back in the convent. She even dreamed that she woke up in the small chamber in the teachers’ wing where she had lived six days of the week. She woke up, and for the first time in months felt completely light and unburdened by pain. Happy, she dressed and set out for morning prayers. In the hall in front of her walked two young girls hand in hand, dressed in the gray school uniform.
“Good morning,” she said, and one of them turned around. It was Christine, and she smiled and curtsied briefly. But when the other figure turned her head, it was not a young girl’s profile that appeared but a horrible bubbling mixture of animal teeth, animal drool, animal bristles, and human features. The drool ran from the distorted lips down across the girl’s chest, and worms and mites poured out of her nostrils and ears. But the grimacing lips formed human words:
“Good morning, Imo.”
Imogene stood as if turned to stone. Other students passed her, curtsied, and hurried on. The lauds bell rang out its last peals.
“Do not to be late, Imogene.” Mother Filippa’s voice sounded behind her. “That sets a poor example.”
But when she turned around, it was not Mother Filippa standing there. It was the wolf. Its eyes were olive green precisely like those of the abbess, and its smile was one no beast ought to have been able to produce.
Suddenly Imogene held a flaming sword in her hands. It stung and burned her palms, but she raised it and swung it at the wolf. The beast stood completely still and did not attempt to evade the stroke of the blade. And the sword cleaved it in two precise halves that fell to the ground like two sides of a cow’s carcass in an abattoir. Mother Filippa was standing in front of her, shining and slightly transparent, and laughed and cried with happiness at the same time.