“Lewis?”
It wasn’t a man’s walk, that roll, that swagger. It was the gait of an upright beast who’d been taught to walk, and now, without its master, was losing the trick of it.
It was an ape.
Oh God, oh God, it was an ape.
“I have to see Phillipe Laborteaux.”
“I’m sorry, Monsieur; but prison visitors —”
“This is a matter of life and death, officer.”
“Easily said, Monsieur.”
Lewis risked a lie.
“His sister is dying. I beg you to have some compassion.”
“Oh…well…”
A little doubt. Lewis levered a little further. “A few minutes only; to settle arrangements.”
“Can’t it wait until tomorrow?”
“She’ll be dead by morning.”
Lewis hated talking about Catherine in such a way, even for the purpose of this deception, but it was necessary; he had to see Phillipe. If his theory was correct, history might repeat itself before the night was out.
Phillipe had been woken from a sedated sleep. His eyes were circled with darkness.
“What do you want?”
Lewis didn’t even attempt to proceed any further with his lie; Phillipe was drugged as it was, and probably confused. Best to confront him with the truth, and see what came of it.
“You kept an ape, didn’t you?”
A look of terror crossed Phillipe’s face, slowed by the drugs in his blood, but plain enough.
“Didn’t you?”
“Lewis. . .” Phillipe looked so very old.
“Answer me, Phillipe, I beg you: before it’s too late. Did you keep an ape?”
“It was an experiment, that’s all it was. An experiment.”
“Why?”
“Your stories. Your damn stories: I wanted to see if it was true that they were wild. I wanted to make a man of it.”
“Make a man of it.”
“And that whore. . .”
“Natalie.”
“She seduced it.”
Lewis felt sick. This was a convolution he hadn’t anticipated.
“Seduced it?”
“Whore,” Phillipe said, with infinite regret.
“Where is this ape of yours?”
“You’ll kill it.”
“It broke into the apartment, while Catherine was there. Destroyed everything, Phillipe. It’s dangerous now that it has no master. Don’t you understand?”
“Catherine?”
“No, She’s all right.”
“It’s trained: it wouldn’t harm her. It’s watched her, in hiding. Come and gone. Quiet as a mouse.”
“And the girl?”
“It was jealous.”
“So it murdered her?”
“Perhaps. I don’t know. I don’t want to think about it.”
“Why haven’t you told them; had the thing destroyed?”
“I don’t know if it’s true. It’s probably all a fiction, one of your damn fictions, just another story.”
A sour, wily smile crossed his exhausted face.
“You must know what I mean, Lewis. It could be a story, couldn’t it? Like your tales of Dupin. Except that maybe I made it true for a while; did you ever think of that? Maybe I made it true.”
Lewis stood up. It was a tired debate: reality and illusion. Either a thing was, or was not. Life was not a dream.
“Where is the ape?” he demanded.
Phillipe pointed to his temple.
“Here; where you can never find him,” he said, and spat in Lewis’ face. The spittle hit his lip, like a kiss.
“You don’t know what you did. You’ll never know.”
Lewis wiped his lip as the warders escorted the prisoner out of the room and back to his happy drugged oblivion. All he could think of now, left alone in the cold interview room, was that Phillipe had it easy. He’d taken refuge in pretended guilt, and locked himself away where memory, and revenge, and the truth, the wild, marauding truth, could never touch him again. He hated Phillipe at that moment, with all his heart. Hated him for the dilettante and the coward he’d always known him to be. It wasn’t a more gentle world Phillipe had created around him; it was a hiding place, as much a lie as that summer of 1937 had been. No life could be lived the way he’d lived it without a reckoning coming sooner or later; and here it was.
That night, in the safety of his cell, Phillipe woke. It was warm, but he was cold. In the utter dark he chewed at his wrists until a pulse of blood bubbled into his mouth. He lay back on his bed, and quietly splashed and fountained away to death, out of sight and out of mind.