I headed north, stumbling along. On the way I came across some rats who were setting off to work in the dim
tunnels; they were confident and resolute. I heard some youngsters saying, Pepe the Cop, Pepe the Cop, then laughing, as if my nickname were the funniest joke in the world. Or maybe they were laughing for some other reason. In any case I didn’t stop.
Gradually the tunnels were all deserted. Only now and then did I encounter a pair of rats or hear them going about their business down other tunnels, or glimpse their shadows huddled around something that could have been food, or poison. After a while, the noises stopped and I could hear only the sound of my heart and the dripping that never ceases in our world. When I came to the big well, the reek of death made me tread even more warily. Half consumed by maggots, the carcasses of two average-size dogs lay there, rigid, paws sticking up.
The colony of rats I’d been looking for was also exploiting the canine remains, a little further on. They were living near the sewer mouth, with all the dangers that entails, but also the advantage of extra food, which is never scarce on the frontier. I found them gathered in a small open space. They were big and fat and their coats were glossy. They had the serious expression of those who live in constant danger. When I told them I was a police officer, a suspicious look came into their eyes. When I told them I was looking for a rat who had lost her baby, no one answered, but from their expressions I could tell straightaway that my search, or that part of it at least, was over. Then I described the baby, his age, the dead sewer where I had found him, the way he had died. One of the rats said that the baby was her son. What do you want? asked the others.
Justice, I said. I’m looking for the killer.
The oldest rat, with a scar-covered hide, asked me, puffing like a bellows, if I thought the killer was one of them. It could be, I said. A rat? she asked. It could be. The mother said her baby used to go out alone. But he couldn’t have got into a dead sewer alone, I replied. Maybe he was taken by a predator, said a young rat. A predator would have eaten the body. This baby was killed for pleasure, not food.
As I’d expected, they all shook their heads. It’s unthinkable, they said. There’s no way one of us, however crazy, could be capable of something like that. Still smarting from the police commissioner’s words, I judged it wiser not to contradict them. I nudged the mother to an out-of-the-way place and tried to console her, although the truth is that after three months—that was how long it had been—the pain of the loss had considerably diminished. She told me that she had other children, some grown up and hard for her to recognize, and some younger than the one who had died, who were already working and foraging successfully on their own. Nevertheless, I tried to get her to remember the day when the baby had disappeared. At first she was confused. She got the days mixed up; she even mixed up her babies. Alarmed by this, I asked her if she had lost more than one, but she reassured me, saying, No, babies do get lost, though usually only for a few hours, and they either come back to the burrow on their own, or are found when a member of the group hears them crying. Your son cried too, I said, slightly annoyed by her self-satisfied expression, but the killer kept him gagged most of the time.
She didn’t seem moved, so I went back to the day of the baby’s disappearance. We weren’t living here, she said, we were in a drain in the interior. A group of explorers was living nearby; they had been the first to settle in the area, and then another group came, a bigger one, and we decided to move; we had no alternative really, apart from wandering around the tunnels. I pointed out that in spite of all this, the children were well nourished. There wasn’t a shortage of food, but we had to go and search for it outside. The explorers had dug tunnels that led directly to the upper regions, and no poison or traps could stop us. All the groups went up to the surface twice a day, at least; there were rats who spent whole days up there, wandering through the old half-ruined buildings, using the cavities in the walls to get around, and there were some who never came back.
I asked her if they were outside the day her baby disappeared. We were working in the tunnels, some were sleeping, and there were probably some outside as well, she replied. I asked her if she’d noticed anything strange about anyone in the group. Strange? Abnormal behavior or attitudes; long, unexplained absences. No, she said, as you should know, the way we behave depends on the situation; we try to adapt to it as quickly and as fully as possible. Shortly after the baby’s disappearance, in any case, the group set off to find a safer area. I could tell I wouldn’t get anything more out of that simple, hard-working rat. I said goodbye to the group and left the drain they were using as their burrow.
But I didn’t return to the station that day. Halfway there, when I was sure no one had followed me, I doubled back and went looking for a dead sewer near the drain. After a while I found one. It was small and the stench wasn’t overpowering. I examined it thoroughly. The rat I was looking for didn’t seem to have used that place. Nor did I find signs of predators. Although there wasn’t a dry place anywhere, I decided to stay. In order to make myself a little more comfortable, I gathered what pieces of damp cardboard and plastic I could find and settled myself on them. I imagined the warmth of my fur against the damp materials producing little clouds of steam. The steam began to make me feel drowsy; then it seemed to be forming a dome within which I was invulnerable. I’d almost fallen asleep when I heard voices.
Before long they appeared in the distance: two young male rats, talking animatedly. I recognized one of them straightaway—he was from the group that I had just visited. The other one was completely unfamiliar; maybe he’d been working at the time of my visit, maybe he belonged to another group. The discussion they were having was heated, but without overstepping the bounds of civility. Their arguments were incomprehensible, partly because they were still a way off (though, splashing through the shallow water on their little paws, they were heading straight for my refuge), and partly because they were using words that belonged to another language, a language that rang false, that was alien to me, and instantly revolting: words like pictograms or ciphers, words that crawl on the underside of the word freedom, as fire is said to crawl into the tunnels, turning them into ovens.
I would have liked to scurry away discreetly. But my police instincts were telling me that unless I intervened, another murder was about to be committed. I jumped off the pile of cardboard. The two rats froze. Good evening, I said. I asked them if they belonged to the same group. They shook their heads.
You, I said, pointing to the rat I didn’t know with my paw, out of here. The young rat seemed to have a reputation to defend; he hesitated. Out of here, I’m a police officer, I said. I’m Pepe the Cop, I shouted. Then he glanced at his friend, turned and left. Watch out for predators, I said to him before he disappeared behind a mound of trash, there’s no one to help you if you get attacked by a predator in the dead sewers.
The other rat didn’t even bother to say goodbye to his friend. He stayed there with me, quietly, waiting until we were alone, with his thoughtful little eyes fixed on me, as I guess mine were studying him. I’ve got you, finally, I said when we were alone. He didn’t answer. What’s your name? I asked. Hector, he said. Now that he was speaking to me, his voice was no different from thousands I had heard. Why did you kill the baby? I asked softly. He didn’t answer. For a moment I was scared. Hector was s
trong, and probably bigger than me, and younger too, but I was a police officer.
Now I’m going to tie your paws and your snout and take you to the police station, I said. I think he smiled, but I’m not sure. You’re more scared than I am, he said, and I’m pretty scared. I don’t think so, I replied, you’re not scared—you’re sick, you’re a disgusting predatory bastard. Hector laughed. You’re scared, though, aren’t you, he said, much more than your aunt Josephine was. You’ve heard of Josephine? I asked. I’ve heard of her, he said, Who hasn’t? My aunt wasn’t scared, I said, she might have been a poor crazy dreamer, but she wasn’t scared.
You’re wrong there; she was scared to death, he said, glancing sideways distractedly, as if we were surrounded by ghostly presences and he were discreetly seeking their approval. The members of her audience were scared to death as well, although they didn’t know it. But she didn’t die once and for all: she died every day at the center of fear, and in fear she came back to life. Words, I spat. Now lie face down while I tie your snout, I said, taking out the cord I had brought for that purpose. Hector snorted.
You’ve got no idea, he said. Do you think the crimes will stop if you arrest me? Do you think your bosses will give me a fair trial? They’ll probably tear me to pieces in secret and dump my remains where predators will take them. You’re a damn predator, I said. I’m a free rat, he replied impudently. I’m at home in fear and I know perfectly well where our people are headed. His words were so presumptuous I chose not to dignify them with an answer. Instead I said, You’re young. Maybe there’s a way to cure you. We don’t kill our own kind. And who’s going to cure you, Pepe? he asked. And your bosses? Where are the doctors to cure them? Lie face down, I said. Hector stared at me; I dropped the cord. Our bodies locked in a fight to the death.
After ten eternal-seeming minutes, he lay beside me, lifeless, his neck crushed by a bite. As for me, my back was covered with wounds, my snout was torn open and I couldn’t see anything out of my left eye. I took his body back to the station. The few rats I encountered no doubt supposed that Hector had been the victim of a predator. I left his body in the morgue and went to find the coroner. It’s all solved now, were the first words I could articulate. Then I slumped to the ground and waited. The coroner examined my wounds and sewed up my snout and my eyelid. As he was attending to me, he asked how it had happened. I found the killer, I said. I stopped him; we fought. The coroner said he had to call the commissioner. He clicked his tongue and a thin, sleepy-looking adolescent emerged from the darkness. I assumed he was a medical student. The coroner told him to go the commissioner’s place and tell him that the coroner and Pepe the Cop were waiting for him at the station. The adolescent nodded and disappeared. Then the coroner and I went to the morgue.
Hector’s body was lying there and his coat was beginning to lose its gloss. It was just another body now, one among many. While the coroner was examining it, I took a nap in a corner. I was woken by the commissioner’s voice and a couple of shoves. Get up, Pepe, said the coroner. I followed them. The commissioner and the coroner scurried down tunnels that were unfamiliar to me. I followed them, half asleep, watching their tails, with an intense burning pain in my back. Soon we came to an empty burrow. There, on a kind of throne, or maybe it was a cradle, I saw a seething shadow. The commissioner and the coroner told me to go forward.
Tell me the story, said a voice that was many voices, emerging from the darkness. At first I was terrified and shrank away, but then I realized that it was a very old queen rat—several rats, that is, whose tails had become knotted in early childhood, which rendered them unfit for work, but endowed them, instead, with the requisite wisdom to advise our people in critical situations. So I told the story from beginning to end, and tried to make my words dispassionate and objective, as if I were writing a report. When I finished, the voice that was many voices emerging from the darkness asked me if I was the nephew of Josephine the Singer. That’s correct, I said. We were born when Josephine was still alive, said the queen rat, shifting herselves laboriously. I could just make out a huge dark ball dotted with little eyes dimmed by age. The queen rat, I conjectured, was fat, and a build-up of filth had immobilized her hind paws. An anomaly, she said. It took me a while to realize that she was referring to Hector. A poison that shall not spell the end of life for us, she said: a kind of lunatic, an individualist. There’s something I don’t understand, I said. The commissioner touched me on the shoulder with his paw, as if to stop me from speaking, but the queen rat asked me to explain what it was that I didn’t understand. Why did he let the baby die of hunger, instead of ripping his throat open, as he did with the other victims? For a few seconds all I could hear from the seething shadow was a sound of sighing.
Maybe, she said after a while, he wanted to witness the process of death from beginning to end, without intervening or intervening as little as possible. And, after another interminable silence, she added: We must remember that he was insane, that we are in the realm of the monstrous—rats do not kill rats.
I hung my head and stayed there, I don’t know for how long. I might even have fallen asleep. Suddenly I felt the commissioner’s paw on my shoulder again, and heard his voice ordering me to follow him. We went back the way we had come, in silence. Just as I had feared, Hector’s body had disappeared from the morgue. I asked where it was. In the belly of some predator, I hope, said the commissioner. Then I was told what I had already guessed. It was strictly forbidden to talk about Hector with anyone. The case was closed, and the best thing for me to do was to forget about him and get on with my life and my work.
I didn’t feel like sleeping at the station that night, so I found myself a place in a burrow full of tough, grimy rats, and when I woke up I was alone. That night I dreamed that an unknown virus had infected our people. Rats are capable of killing rats. The sentence echoed in my cranial cavity until I woke. I knew that nothing would ever be the same again. I knew it was only a question of time. Our capacity to adapt to the environment, our hard-working nature, our long collective march toward a happiness that, deep down, we knew to be illusory, but which had served as a pretext, a setting, a backdrop for our daily acts of heroism, all these were condemned to disappear, which meant that we, as a people, were condemned to disappear as well.
I went back to my daily rounds; there was nothing else I could do. A police officer was killed and torn to pieces by a predator; there were several fatalities as a result of more poisoning from the outside; a number of tunnels were flooded. One night, however, I yielded to the fever that was consuming my body and returned to the dead sewers.
I’m not sure whether that sewer was one of those in which I’d found a victim, or even if I’d been there before. All dead sewers are the same, in the end. I spent a long time in there, hiding, waiting. Nothing. Only distant noises, splashes: I couldn’t say what caused them. When I returned to the station, with red eyes from my long vigil, I found some rats who swore they’d seen a pair of weasels in the tunnels nearby. There was a new police officer with them. He looked at me, waiting for some kind of sign. The weasels had cornered three rats and several young in the end of a tunnel. If we wait for backup it’ll be too late, said the new officer.
Too late for what? I asked, yawning. For the young and their guardians, he replied. It’s already too late, I thought, for everything. I also thought: When did it beco
me too late? Was it in the time of my aunt Josephine? Or a hundred years before that? Or a thousand, three thousand years before? Weren’t we damned right from the origin of our species? The officer was watching me, waiting for a cue. He was young and he couldn’t have been on the job for more than a week. Some of the rats around us were whispering, others were pressing their ears to the walls of the tunnel; most of them, it was all they could do to stop themselves from shaking and running away. What do you suggest? I asked. We do it by the book, replied the officer, we go into the tunnel and rescue the young.