6
So your life unfolds without other concerns but the search for a little food and a shade, without other activities than the seasonal harvest of berries and mushrooms, the hunt for butterflies, the fishing of crayfish, without worse predator to fear than a female post-coitum. And then they arrive with their dogs, their weapons, their traps. They hunt you. They capture you. Put yourself in the place of Palafox. They rip you by the roots from your sylvan existence. Palafox paws the ground, you’d paw too in this narrow box. He snorts, relax. Calm down. Maureen appeases him, her fingers play along his nape, creep up between his ears and, lower, her hand rests flat on the nearly perfect white star near his nose. Be a good little Palafox, behave now. He doesn’t reject a fist full of grass. His teeth are yellow and uneven, his tongue is rough. Blinders keep him from seeing the professors Cambrelin and Baruglio to his right, Zeiger and Pierpont to his left. This new consultation was obviously necessary. We cannot pretend to be unaware of the savage acts he has committed, or so it would seem, while he has been on the run. Before starting to train him again, Algernon wants to know if he is or isn’t salvageable, whether he can or can’t be broken. In addition to the misdemeanors about which we know, or think we know, innumerable tragedies past are bubbling up to the surface again, those that preceded Palafox’s first appearance amongst us and for which the true culprit was never identified: whenever the field mouse was implicated in a case, the wolf came out pure and white, and vice versa, the wolf being implicated, white became the mouse. In brief, Palafox is suspected of having slit the throats of many thousands of our fellow creatures. And of having horned many thousands of others. Suffocated still more. Strangled others. Crushed others still. Poisoned countless. Through the centuries. For motives that remain uncertain. Of having mutilated, well yes, millions and millions more, ripping a finger or two from the hand extended only to pet him or bully him, never to give. If that were all it had been, but tearing the arm with it, and with the arm the shoulder, with the shoulder the breast, with the breast the infant, rending a foot here and there, tearing away leaden limbs of swimmers weak at the knees — those, pitiful in the water, diminished on the banks, unfortunate wherever they fall, sinking into despair in a balloon or along a line. To this list of crimes please add the decimated herds, the pillaged granaries, the emptied ponds, the poultry yards, the sheep barns, the sacked pigsties and vines, the devastated orchards, because pig doesn’t make for good dessert (hors d’œuvres variés, asst. cold meats, plate upon plate, nutritious, filling, but nothing sugary to bring it all to a close, no chocolate, no sweetness). Let us then list, in the hosts of houses where Palafox, doubtless, by turns, served as pet, or companion animal, the soiled carpets, the confettied curtains, splattered ceilings, debased baseboards, compromised couches, marked mirrors, furniture befouled, sweaters unraveled, knickknacks paddywacked, spools tangled, books unbound, cooling pies pinched from sills, plants phylloxerized, stolen diamonds, nights ruined, sons stripped bare, trashcans upended, endlessly….
It would be endless were we to list his hideous crimes in full, the multiple pillagings, every trespass of paws that brought death or destruction, whatever the intention behind them, of which Palafox is suspected, to provided an exhaustive list that would leave out none of the relevant details, for every incident, each circumstance, the date and the place of the event, the level of intimacy that linked him to the victim, when their association began, how often they were in each other’s company, if the nature of their company were normal, ordinary even, the magical moment when in the heat of the moment death arose and what happened to the ashes, and to hear one after the other the plaintiffs still alive enumerate their suffering and their gripes! Incidentally, his ferocity was also and on many occasions for our own good, right away Baruglio wishes to make the point were Palafox was ever found to have been guilty of this and all things. It’s all a question of point of view, of course, as it often is, a matter of the angle from which one observes the event: only the explorer who was well placed to watch the animal swallow a cloud can speak with authority on hippo mucous membranes. His back-packing companion will remain mute on the subject, or very evasive, but saw, on the other hand, with his own eyes a rocky island disappear beneath the mist and advises us to hurry because there isn’t anything good about having night creep up suddenly in these regions far from camp. And in effect it was high time, for in a few minutes the jungle has filled with shadows. This example chosen among a thousand possible others for its exceptional setting, Zambezi, its roseate twilight, its white birds, will it be properly understood? Our eyes are rolling like marbles on the surface of things, this is the banal idea that Baruglio is arguing for: beware of appearances. Let us give Palafox his due. He defeated many malefactors and destroyed many caterpillars, worms, beetles, the banes of our flowerbeds, his guano fattening the fruit of our vegetable gardens, and therefore in turn our vegetables, our children, our ogres, his tunnels favoring aeration and the fertilization of our soil, fighting against the oversilting of our rivers, more effectively than our engineers of the Departments of Water and Forestry, without him the muskrat and the starling would swarm our countrysides.
But we aren’t here to plead in his defense. His guilt remains to be proven. The accusations rest on nothing: no fingerprints, contradictory testimony, the private conviction of Madame Fontechevade constitutes the only serious element we could level against him. The unresolvable question of his age alone would have us stay his execution. He seems young, recall his mischievousness. His fur is silky, his groin humid, his mouth full of teeth, his eyes glitter, his tail functions, sweeps. It would be in bad faith to try him for murder, even for walking out on a check, someone not yet in the world at the time of the facts already mentioned. We will not begin to blame larvae for every shadowy crime, all the unsolved murders. Imagine for a moment the number of maternity wards the police could then assault in search of supposed assassins, caught like rats in a trap, plucked up at birth, with no other choice but to give themselves up, and be shot on the spot? Needless to say such an alibi would be impossible to contradict, and would clear Palafox. Alas! It will be difficult to establish. Even if his mother of whom we know nothing were suddenly to step forward, we would have to buy her testimony. Yet we know what lies and sacrifices a mother can make if it should mean saving her endangered child. She would perhaps go so far as to confess to having committed the crimes herself. Besides, she seems thoroughly compromised in this affair. It is not impossible that we are mistaken in believing he is so young. Since his arrest, everything is calm. No sign of new aggression or attack around us. Henceforth walking in the woods does one good, on foot or horseback. Peace begged on bended knee before wine and wiseman alike, peace that had been refused us, here she reigns, reestablished, in this church where wafts the scent of a cellar. Coincidence, adds Baruglio, simple coincidence.