City of Darkness

Chapter NINE

Winter, 1872





The snows came, and it was time to go back to school. The boy was a good pupil and most days he had finished the problem while his classmates were still struggling over their slates. Sometimes he even caught his teacher in small mistakes, although he was careful to never let this awareness show on his face.

One Sunday he protested a sore throat so that he would not be required to walk to the village church with the rest of his family. He wanted to take his father’s gun and go hunting by himself. He sat at the foot of an oak for an hour, neither moving nor hiding and, just as his father had promised, the birds soon ceased to register his presence at all. He watched as a covey of quail trotted no more than a meter before him, one of them straggling behind. Was it his imagination that the bird looked willing, that it seemed to somehow self-select? He sent it a silent message in his mind. Slow down. Even more. Yes, that’s it. Separate yourself a bit farther from the group.

A snapping twig. His awareness snapped too, back to the broader world of the clearing and when he looked up he saw to his horror that a wolf was standing opposite him, wary and crouched at the top of the bank. It was a huge and hulking beast, dark, its mouth stretched into a horrible parody of a human smile. How long it had been there or what had kept it from springing he could not say. He scrambled to his feet, fumbled with the gun, shot wildly into the air. The wolf disappeared into the underbrush and the boy fell trembling to his knees.

How quickly the hunter can become the hunted. How quickly the hungry can become the meal. It was a lesson he would never forget.

He spent three Sundays searching before he found it. When he did, he opened fire and heard a long low bellow of pain when the bullets found their mark. Followed the bloody stagger until the beast dropped, and then ran across the field to its body. Its final expression was a grimace of surprise. So this is death, the wolf’s face seemed to say. Not at all as I’d imagined.

Should he bring it home, mount its head or clean its pelt? No, there was no way to explain this to his parents, who had forbidden him to go into the deepest parts of the forest, had forbidden him to take the gun, who were growing suspicious of this fever than only seemed to befall him on holy days. And besides, now that he was observing the wolf up close, he was disappointed. It was not the great rival he’d pictured. In fact it was a shaggy, malnourished creature, with clotted hair and protruding ribs, not even a proper trophy. He looked down at it sadly. Everything seems smaller when it’s dead.

The bullet marks seemed a violation of the wolf’s flesh and he knelt, impelled by something he did not fully understand, and pulled his knife from the pocket of his jacket. Its dull blade made ragged progress across the animal’s belly, but the rising blood briefly delineated the cut, creating a perfect and elegant line before it began to spill. He said something aloud. A word he would not later remember. He felt the heat emanating from the wound, felt the promise of something more profound beneath the mottled skin. Felt himself being called, like a priest to the altar or a sailor to the sea.

Throughout the long winter, while the other pupils read the lesson, their brows furrowed and their lips moving, the boy would practice sitting completely still. Monitoring his breathing to the point of silence. Controlling the many small impulses the flesh is prey to – the desire to scratch, to yawn, to blink. The clock on the wall ticked away the seconds, measured the times between blinks, between exhalations, between the movements and fidgets that would betray lesser men. He understood. He saw it all. His family was poor, nondescript. Their limited funds would go to educate his oldest brother, to provide his sister with a dowry. The village they lived in was dying. Anyone with any wit left as soon as he could, headed for the city where the newborn factories and mills offered a sort of brutal hope.

If he was to attend the University, to become a physician, it was up to him. If he was to have a life, he must author it himself.

By the time spring came, the boy could go ninety-four seconds between blinks.