An Uncertain Place

‘Paris, 13th arrondissement.’

‘I’m not far, I’m in the 7th. If you agree, we could go there together and I could treat the kitten. If there’s anything to be done, that is. Meanwhile, what your friend should do is sprinkle water all over her body, but without making her soaking wet.’

‘We’re on our way,’ said Adamsberg, feeling as if he was sending a signal for an urgent police operation. ‘Sprinkle her with water, but not too much.’

Feeling a little dazed, as if he had now left the bridge, and was being besieged by bashers, migratory flows, doctors and one-armed Spaniards, Adamsberg told his colleagues to clear things up and drove back with the doctor.

As they entered the ring road, he said, ‘This is ridiculous. We’re going to give medical assistance to a kitten, while all hell has broken loose on Vaudel.’

‘A nasty crime, was it? He was very rich, you know.’

‘Yes, I guess it will all go to the son,’ said Adamsberg, feeling his voice ring false. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Only through his father’s mind. Desire, refusal, desire, refusal, both of them, same thing.’

‘Vaudel didn’t want a son.’

‘He especially didn’t want to leave behind him vulnerable descendants who would be exposed to his enemies.’

‘What enemies?’

‘If I told you it wouldn’t help. They were the mad imaginings of the man, created over the years and lodged in the caverns of his mind. It’s medical, not police work. At the point he’d reached, you’d have to be a speleologist.’

‘Imaginary enemies, you mean?’

‘You don’t want to go there, commissaire.’

Lucio was waiting for them in the tool shed, his huge hand stroking the kitten, which was rolled up in a damp towel on his knees.

‘She’s going to die,’ he said hoarsely, his voice full of tears which Adamsberg could not understand, since it was a mystery to him how anyone could be so affected over a cat. ‘She can’t feed. Who’s this?’ Lucio asked ungraciously. ‘We don’t need an audience, hombre.’

‘This gentleman is a specialist on cats with dislocated jaws who can’t feed. Mind out, Lucio, and give him the cat.’

Lucio scratched his absent arm, and obeyed, still looking suspicious. The doctor sat down on the bench and took the cat’s head in his thick fingers – he had enormous hands for his size, not unlike Lucio’s large single hand. He felt her slowly all over, back and forth. Charlatan, Adamsberg was thinking, now feeling more upset than he should have been, as he looked at the kitten’s limp little body. Then the doctor moved to the pelvis, and put his fingers on two points, as if playing a trill on a piano, and they heard a weak mew.

‘Her name’s Charm,’ Lucio said grudgingly.

‘We can fix the jaw,’ said the doctor. ‘Don’t worry, Charm, we’ll have you right in a minute.’

The large fingers – to Adamsberg they were getting more and more enormous, like the ten arms of Shiva – came back to the jaw and held the kitten’s head in a pincer grip.

‘Now, now, Charm,’ he murmured, as he moved his thumb and finger. ‘Did you get your jaw blocked when you were born? Did the commissaire twist your head? Or were you frightened? Just a few minutes more and we’ll be on the way. There now. I’m going to press your TMJ.’

‘What’s that?’ asked Lucio warily.

‘The temporo-mandibular joint.’

The kitten relaxed, as if it was made of plasticine, and allowed itself to be put to the mother’s teat.

‘There, there,’ crooned the doctor gently. ‘The jaw joint was dislocated caudally left and cephalically right, so of course it couldn’t move, the injury was stopping the sucking movement. Seems to be fine now. Let’s just wait a little, to see if it stays that way. I also adjusted the sacro-iliac joint. All consequences of a slightly eventful birth, don’t worry. She’ll be a tough little thing, take good care of her. No harm in her, she’s got a sweet nature.’

‘Yes, doctor,’ agreed Lucio, who had become respectful, as he watched the kitten sucking away like a steam engine.

‘And she will always want her food because of the five days.’

‘Ah, like Froissy,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Another cat?’

‘No, one of my colleagues. She eats all the time, and hides stashes of food, but she’s as thin as a rake.’

‘An anxiety disorder,’ said the doctor wearily. ‘She should get it seen to. So should everyone, me included. You wouldn’t have a glass of wine or something, would you?’ he broke off suddenly. ‘If it’s not too much trouble. It’s that time of day. It may not look it, but this stuff uses up a lot of energy.’

Now he looked nothing like that professional pompous bourgeois Adamsberg had first seen across the arms of the lieutenants. The doctor had loosened his tie and was rumpling his grey hair with his fingers, looking like a simple man who had just finished a good job of work, and hadn’t been sure whether he’d manage it an hour earlier. He’d like a drink, and the request made Lucio react at once.

‘Where’s he going?’ asked the doctor as Lucio shot off towards the hedge.

‘His daughter has banned alcohol and tobacco. So he has to hide them in the bushes. He puts the cigarettes in a double plastic container against the rain.’

‘His daughter knows he does that, I bet.’

‘Yes, she does.’

‘And he knows that she knows?’

‘Of course.’

‘The way of the world, all these hidden agendas. What happened to his arm?’

‘He lost it during the Spanish Civil War when he was nine years old.’

‘But there was something else there, a wound that hadn’t healed? A bite? I don’t know, some unfinished business.’

‘Just a minor thing,’ said Adamsberg, with a slight gasp of surprise. ‘A spider bite that itched.’

‘He’ll be itching for ever,’ said the doctor fatalistically. ‘Because it’s in there,’ he said, tapping his forehead, ‘etched into the neurones. They still don’t understand that the arm’s gone. It lasts for years, and knowing why makes no difference.’

‘So what’s the point of knowing why?’

‘It reassures people, which is something.’

Lucio was on his way back with three glasses arranged between his fingers and a bottle clutched under his stump. He put it all down on the shed floor, and took a long look at the kitten, now firmly clamped on to its mother’s teat.

‘She’s not going to burst now, is she, from feeding too much?’

‘No,’ said the doctor.

Lucio nodded, filled the glasses and invited them to toast the kitten’s health.

‘The doctor knew about your arm and the itch,’ said Adamsberg.

‘Naturally,’ said Lucio. ‘Spider bite, that’ll go on itching till kingdom come.’

XII

‘THAT GUY,’ SAID LUCIO, ‘MAY BE AN ACE, BUT I WOULDN’T want him touching my head. He’d have me back sucking like a baby.’

Exactly what he was doing at that moment, Adamsberg reflected, as Lucio sucked the edge of his glass with a sound like a newborn child. Lucio much preferred to drink straight from the bottle. He had only brought out glasses for the occasion because they had company. The doctor had gone an hour since, and they were sitting in the shed, finishing off the bottle and watching the litter of kittens, now fast asleep. Lucio took the view that you finished a bottle once you had opened it, because the wine would go off. Either you finish or you don’t start.