Palafox

4

Olympia resists, clenches her fists, she will not let herself put up with being stripped like that, without a fight. But she is alone, no longer very young, and there are so many of them, soon she will have to let go. By contrast, we share a blanket, the cold comes in through the bungalow’s little door, dawn in a state of undress, Palafox is gone. No panic, after all this isn’t the first time it has happened, that he has slipped into or burrowed under a magazine. Olympia moistens the leaves, shakes them out, a few pages fall and fly through the shelter, naked beneath her little skirt Pamela picks up a tennis ball, naked beneath their sarongs Olga and Anaïs gather what must be mangoes, or guavas, glistening Amandine also gathers, without faltering, shells or pebbles, and in tow and in tatters though no less lovely follow Agatha, Elodie, Melanie, Cora, Deborah — not a single comma in this list that isn’t a hair from the head of Algernon — but not a single trace of Palafox. Acephalous, apterous, anurous, apodous, Palafox, Palafox disappeared, no more Palafox. He slipped out over here. Algernon, kneeling, inspects the opening of a narrow tunnel which comes out over there, far from the pen, in the rosebushes. Or through that gap, suggests Maureen, look, he forced his way. Or over here, and Olympia, certainly correct, pointing skyward to a red feather clinging to the chicken wire. Palafox will have flown over the garden and the house, then, with agility, holding onto the wisteria, he will have climbed over the outer wall before disappearing into the town — where danger awaits a little toad. Palafox will end up road kill. And not lumpy either, rather, almost liquid. In a liquid state, a toad can be thirst quenching, so that you know, whether you like it or not. Farewell Palafox, the doors slam, the motors moan, he won’t make it through alive, even a hedgehog wouldn’t stand a chance. Always too kind on tires, the hedgehog, another thirst quencher. Why would ours be spared?

Algernon curses his lack of planning, if we had only thought to have him wear a collar, with his name and address, his and ours, a kindly soul would surely have already returned him. It would have been so simple. A collar made of nickel or of rope, or of studded leather, or a ring on his paw. Rather than standing around moping, Olympia proposes action, rather than standing around moping, let’s post his photo on all the walls, with a description and the promise of an award?

What photo, Olympia? And as for circulating a description, we are willing to hear you out. His color, for example, do you recall the color of his coat? Yes, Sir, very clearly. Olympia triumphant. So, tell us! Oh but Sir, first tell me what he’s roosting on! (Olympia, naively, alludes here to a stunning ability Palafox possesses, we might as well mention it ourselves, he always adopts the color of the surface of the thing upon which he comes to rest: green on grass, red-orange on terra cotta, yellow with big brown spots in the scattered shadows of African leaves, hidden from predators despite his outsized neck.) Palafox in gray runs alongside the pavement splattered with gas — is there no solution for the incontinence of motorcycles? — an iridescent reflection on his neck completes the camouflage. He goes unnoticed by passersby, their curiosity dulled in the end by all they’ve had to look at. What’s more, even the pigeons think he’s one of them. Now and then he stops, sings two notes and bows, then disappears like a hat in a crowd. He feels he’s really earned the muesli this time, or the oatmeal that the sweet old ladies, skipping a meal, saved for him. Palafox settles onto the shoulder of one of these ladies, not in gratitude, but to carry his benefactress away and eat her elsewhere, in his eyrie. She thinks they are love bites when he pecks her ear or wrists, her eyes filling with tears. To drink, something hitherto unknown to us, Palafox tips back his head. Another thing to correct. His benefactress kneels and bleeds from her eyes. Another thing we were unaware of, but what we now know is that Palafox loves the taste of blood.

All the preceding information was provided to us by Professor Zeiger. He had risen before dawn, had crossed the sleeping town and garden of the Buffoons and made his way over to the pen — this long journey just to watch Palafox sleep — when he became aware of who was slipping out through a hole in the chickenwire — but how had you imagined to keep such a little creature captive behind so flimsy a barrier when he is barely visible to the naked eye? So rather than sounding the alarm, Zeiger preferred to follow the insect so as to study its behavior in an urban setting. The greatest discoveries are always made by observing the animal in action. In its maze, the white mouse meets a psychiatrist, a neurologist, and a metaphysician in distress, all of whom are fascinated by its strategic moves. Only by watching how animals live have we learned how to equip ourselves, knives, scissors, drills, pastry-cutters, and others are still busy diversifying our toolboxes, all, relentlessly, even if the lobster after having invented blow by blow the pincer and the nutcrackers now seems to have run out of new ideas. That being said, false modesty aside, our ingenuity ends up proving of use to animals as well. Call it an exchange of courtesies. Would the sea lion be able to spin a plate on its nose without our friendly guidance? Could four elephants carry a fifth?

Zeiger now knows all that he wishes to. He closes his notebook, slips it into the left interior pocket of his jacket then, changing his mind, into the right interior pocket, after which he rushes to help the old dear. With a well-timed intervention, one would be able to save her, no, but there are always a thousand things to glean from a cadaver, jewels, scarf, perhaps even a horrible anecdote for a local news reporter. And then it is time to gather Palafox into his cage. The ornithologist grabs him by one paw, the other claw crushes his hand. He lets go. Free, Palafox hops into the gutter. In the water, he gets his sea legs immediately — helped along by the current, he soon reaches a manhole, he lets himself be sucked down, head first, at the risk of blemishing his magisterial antlers.

Many other crocodiles before him had sought and found refuge in the sewers, for the most part tossed in by their owners — an alligator eight inches long proves to be a central part of family fun, you can dress him up, throw him from room to room while laughing all the way; when it becomes as long as your arm, it ceases to be fun for the kids, and you get rid of it as quickly as you can. Palafox is one of the rarer ones, the only one perhaps, to have arrived there of its own volition. Regardless, once there, his quality of life is no different from that of other crocs. As for food, there is no shortage of rats, nor of sewage workers who have learned caution after all manner of misadventure. In the past, they would fall roasted into our hands. Ready to eat. Henceforth they are almost nonexistent. Thus the joy we feel when luck is on our side and we run into one: lucky us! As far as nutritional value, rats were the same as a sewage worker’s foot, but as far as flavor goes, excuse the thought, whether booted or barefoot, the foot of a sewage worker surpasses a rat.

On the surface, everyone is worried. Algernon finally apprised of the situation, responsible in the eyes of the law for whatever damage Palafox has done, resolves to lead the hunt himself. He is given help in lifting the heavy cast-iron lid, he puts two feet on the rungs of the ladder, he’s going down. Sadarnac (still out of breath from having sprinted) hands him a shrimp net that Algernon accepts since, after all, in the absence of a more suitable net, perhaps this will somehow suffice. Our eyes never adjust to the dark, Algernon gropes around. Sometimes he sinks into the muddy water all the way to his belt. The stink is horrible, but this you adjust quickly to, you just don’t think about it, you think about other things, an opportunity for introspection, for self-examination, where am I in this life? The ambitious young man I once was, would he be ashamed to see me now? Would he blush with shame or pride? At sixty, Algernon Buffoon, honorary ambassador, widower because father, esteemed author of the Guide to Collecting Ancient Pottery and many other scientific works, searches through the sewers brandishing a shrimp net in search of a butterfly. This net is the one false note in Algernon’s otherwise brilliant destiny. A delicate wing marks his cheek, Palafox flutters around him, ungraspable, brushes his lip, then disappears like smoke from a cigarette. Algernon beats the walls, beats the water, captures a few rats, thinks its Palafox he’s gotten each time, his beveled teeth, his stiff tail, but then he realizes that Palafox is dancing just over there, right over here, there, you can’t miss him — Algernon decked out with his shrimp net might force us to adjust the rather stern image we’ve had of him up until now. Now, mumbling, he retraces his steps. Feeling his way in the dark, he parts the velvet drapes, smoothes out endless heads of hair, pets soft fleece, digs through deep bodies, the blind man invents all he touches, Afghan hounds brush against him, rug sellers pester him. Algernon sometimes sinks all the way to his belt in the blue water of the lagoon. An unknown woman leaning on her balcony throws him a silk ladder, he can already make out her smiling face, her white arms extending toward him, two square red hands that grip his armpits. Sadarnac has already brought heavier things up from the bottom, this wouldn’t be Palafox alone in his brimming pot, he lifts Algernon effortlessly and leaves him on the shore.

His dorsal flipper cuts the waves, Palafox won’t be spending his life here. After having watered the city and suburbs, the sewers service the surrounding countryside, eventually pouring their worn waters into a stream (murmurs of protest). Sooner or later, Palafox will get there. We will be there to pick him up.

Except for Chancelade and Fontechevade in reserve — at this very moment, if everything goes as planned, they are razing enemy churches and burning enemy cottages — no one is missing. We are all here, crouching together around the bank, rather perplexed. Five short fingers tipped with terrible claws, there is no question the print was left by Palafox. He beat us. His trail disappears into the undergrowth. You’d have to be crazy to look for him. It would be like looking for lice in the proverbial haystack. Better just to wait. Patience, Palafox will make a mistake eventually. Hunger will make him careless, will make him show himself, even if we are not unaware that he can live for extended periods on the stores of fat in his two humps (which are also responsible for giving him the hideous appearance mentioned time and again). Contradictory information makes its way to us. A few practical jokers claim to have seen him, however incapable they are of describing him or able they are at providing pencil drawings as good as those by the proverbial police sketch artist, more or less ornithologically inspired, although somewhat anteatery, or coelacanthy, too. Algernon wastes no time confusing them. We follow other, more promising trails, the first to a fattened chicken, the second to a black sheep, the third to a coypu. We rejoin our camp as night falls. Fallen, a new character arrives, his name would mean nothing to you, and asks if he might avail himself of our hospitality as he shrugs off a heavy pack of beige sackcloth, the contents of which we will not bother listing. The darkness disorients, the only illuminated path leads to the moon — he thought it best to stop for the night. We welcome him, are you thirsty, are you hungry, might you have seen anything unusual on the road? He slakes his thirst, restores himself, and yes he did recall almost flattening a strange little luminous animal, fluorescent green, that moved out of the way just in time and then flew a zigzagging course into the night. We identified Palafox from this description, it could only be Palafox, he must have molted his winter fur.

The sun will rise, the cock will let the cat out of the bag. Worms will eat nightingales. We set out. Our guest takes us to the very place where, last night, radiant Palafox appeared to him. We ask him to tell it to us again, and to see if there’s anything he may have forgotten. The animal whose size is close to that of a fat wasp or a little cheetah was nonetheless neither striped nor spotted, therefore there was no mistaking it. His rapid flight, without displaying his wings, sinuous and slender like a swimmer’s stroke, seemed to support professor Pierpont’s hypothesis; first filed among the fish, the mammals and the sparrows, the whale would be in reality a coleopteran insect, close cousin to the firefly, the etymologist was only waiting for proof, he nearly had it. Because our goal was in sight, in a verdant patch of black undergrowth, our guide advised us to forget the possibility that Palafox could still be there and for a good reason, as easy to understand as it is difficult to admit: the odor of man upsets the wild boar and is enough to drive them from their muddy den. Likewise, we change our sheets after a hurtling retreat of a wild sow, the last of her eight little ones evacuated as soon as possible, and don’t we also change the pillow, a little later in the night, as soon as a ninth little boar is discovered and at last flushed out? Caught once in his wallow, Palafox will not appear there again.

Nonetheless, leaving the cave, his trail is easy to follow. Broken branches, uprooted bushes, mangled hedges, Palafox did as Palafox does, running full bore before him, straight ahead, scorning obstacles, mountains and valleys, bitter winds, thorns, his path looking like what a grouchy little blonde baby girl might do to her braids, through the wheatfields, the ponds, only giving up a tuft or two of wool here or there, stuck to the broken barbs along a fractured fence. Algernon leading the group guides us up the hill marked with the flesh-less sculpted head of a cow and bloody corpses: millers, road-workers, shepherds and goatherds, with their animals, a fly fisher whose rod had changed hands, then donkeys in the fir trees, flat dray-horses, uncountable cows bathing in their milk. To butter a bovine, we drive the thought out of mind, Palafox on the other hand cultivates it when it comes, he makes a single mouthful of the bee and its honey, the chicken and her egg, the grape-picker and his bunch. We arrive too late at the devastated farm. The dovecote has been gnawed through at one corner and is lying across the yard. Stables and sties are empty, bent bits spit onto the ground, clover and flowering alfalfa in the rabbit hutches. Not a single pig to bless himself with, nor the littlest poussin, as for the blabbing mallards, they will not go far, just to the wall, just to the pond, wherever they go they will be poorly received. Would you have happened to have seen a sort of buzzing bird? So asks Algernon tactfully. Kneeling at the edge of the well, making a megaphone with his hands, he repeats his question in other ways, you wouldn’t have happened to have seen my cat? No one answers, but what could they say? How can one scream, or even sob, without a glottis? From the bottom of the well, wounded but miraculously saved, the old peasant contents herself by throwing a clog at Algernon, and another, then a pebble, hoping he will understand.

A femur (of an ox, claims Franc-Nohain, of a pig, states Algernon, of a ram, has decided Swanscombe, of a buffalo, insists Franc-Nohain, which is not even to say peccary, underscores Algernon, or even of an ibex, argues Swanscombe — African antelope! Indonesian wild pig! Basque chamois! yak! koiropotamus! mouflon! — a femur according to Franc-Nohain, a fibula according to Algernon, a tibia according to Swanscombe) discovered in the meadow adjacent to the farm puts us back on the trail of the beast. Palafox has been delayed, is having dessert in the orchard. A handful should have sufficed, but no, not one cherry is without a cruel beak’s peck, from this one he tears a cheek, from another a thigh. There’s no excuse for it. Purest vandalism. Bad for bad’s sake. He paused at each apple, at every pear (early for the season, or else very late), in each fruit he bored a tunnel with no exit, opened a gallery to show nothing, gnawed heart and lungs, poisoned all the vital organs of the figs, and brained the nuts.

Tracks and leftovers showed us the way. Having eaten, Palafox will have smoothed his whiskers and restored his vigor. We dig in vain for scales or horsehair in the tall grass, a feather that would suggest which way he went. It would be only reasonable to assume that Palafox is busy digesting at the moment, under our noses or nowhere near at all, hiding beneath a stone or hidden in the branches. Patience, hunger, always hunger, hunger which he supposes to have gotten past and left behind will make him step from the woods on two paws and three tails, his wind-beaten side, miserable. But the wait, this time again, could be long. Palafox has had all the time in the world to stock up on provisions, grain in his belly, meat in his crop, fish in the expandable pocket of his beak, dried fruit to nibble filling his jowls — enough to endure a siege, all the more so for a reptile of his size, capable in other circumstances of incredible speed, who digests slowly, slowly, plunged into a sort of lethargic sleep which could last weeks. In all likelihood therefore, immobile as crabs mimicking pebbles, eyelids closed to avoid distraction, Palafox melds into a herd, a poultry yard, an orchard, a few feet from us or nowhere near, curled up under the shelter of a bush or pressed against the bottom of his burrow. It was he who was seen close to the bank where yesterday we spotted his tracks among those of beavers and woodpeckers. Hikers heard him knocking with violent, regular blows against the trunk of a birch — testimony corroborated by the log dike newly built across the stream and by the rise in the water level, drowning men and beasts, flooding meadows and nearby farms. In the evening, Palafox would have still attacked a family out for a walk, biting a child in the heel, stinging his mother on the lip, soiling the father’s hat, finally caught up in and struggling in the sister’s hair, the sister who hasn’t spoken since, but perhaps one day will walk again.

We are no longer the only ones on his heels. The countryfolk arm themselves, organize search posses, set traps, bird netting, set snares, nooses, prepare ferrets, falcons, mirrors, nets, bird-traps, mousetraps, glue traps, pesticides, sulfurous wickers, poisons, gasses, fumigants. Their displeasure is no source of bafflement. Palafox pillages their haylofts, their stores of wheat, gnawing and burrowing, he empties beets from within, he parasites, perforates, grinds, weakens. He devours buds, seedlings, bulbs, rhizomes. What he doesn’t eat rots. Where he ripped the shallots from their rootlets, you see black necroses. He weaves fine tight webs which asphyxiate the young shoots, seedlings, cuttings. He stunts the growth of small trees, bores out their trunks, blocks the circulation of the sap. The damage is incalculable. On the list of natural disasters, Palafox rises through the ranks, neither drought nor hurricane ever caused as much damage as this single Colorado beetle. Nothing frightens him, neither the scarecrows in the fields, nor the aluminum ribbons in the apricot trees, not the little owls crucified to the fences, not the cries of buzzards or kites broadcast uninterrupted over loudspeakers — to complete the illusion the cries seem to come from the pumpkins themselves. Palafox remains elusive. A few dogs from the farms dispatched to pursue his scent return rabid and have to be destroyed. Now we barely get a glimpse of him if that, sometimes a red shadow, a silver shimmer, a brown shape which leaps from the ground, shaking his little pink hands like an impudent marionette, or a green tail which slides silently between stones. We immediately grab a stick, you name it, a sachet, a scythe, we rush, but are too late, again too late, the black dot on the horizon, the white dot at the zenith, Palafox remains out of reach.