Read Online Winter's End by Jean-Claude Mourlevat - Free Book Online

of black coffee left over from the evening before. Mills put it on the stove to warm up while he dressed. He didn’t wash; he never did before setting out on a hunt. Nor did he wash at any time during the hunt, even if it was likely to last for weeks. He didn’t shave either. The dirt that built up in the folds of his stomach and between his toes, the beard spreading over his face as if to consume it, all made him feel he was turning into an animal. When it was over and the prey was caught, he liked to go home, exhausted, filthy, and hungry, take a hot bath, and then spend three days eating and sleeping and never showing his face outdoors.
    He put on his boots and a leather jacket, swallowed the coffee on his feet, and threw a few clothes, a pair of snowshoes, and a chunk of rye bread into an old canvas knapsack. As he left, he picked up the travel bag containing the boots and the scarf.
    “Coming, Ramses? Let’s have fun!”
    The two of them set off for the barracks through the night. The deserted roads echoed under their feet. The police chief went ahead. Ramses followed a little way behind him, walking upright. Like all dog-men, he could maintain a vertical posture without much difficulty, but he had the hunched shoulders and rounded neck typical of his kind, making him look like a hunchback. His arms seemed too shortand too rigid, as if they had atrophied. “Stand up straight!” Mills often told him. Then Ramses would straighten his shoulders and put his head back, but next moment he had forgotten again.
    Soon they were in the suburbs.
    “Walk beside me!” ordered Mills. “You know I don’t like to have you following me. Anyone would think you were a farmyard dog snapping at my heels!”
    Ramses came up level with his master, and they walked side by side for ten minutes. Then, gradually, the dog-man fell back until he was walking behind Mills again. Mills gave up. This was one of the things he couldn’t get Ramses to do, although when he’d taken him to live in his own apartment five years earlier he had cherished high hopes of this exceptionally gifted member of the pack.
    Ramses was one of the third generation of dog-men in Mills’s service. The first generation, which he had inherited when he was appointed to his post, consisted of twenty animals — or twenty men, whichever you preferred — who had been given the names of stars. The second generation, ten years later, bore the names of Roman emperors: Caesar, Nero, Octavius, Caligula. The third was named after ancient Egyptian pharaohs: Chephren, Teti, Ptolemy, and so on. Thus Ramses was the son of Augustus and Flavia, and the brother of Cheops and Amenophis. Mills had quickly seen the remarkable potential of the big dog-man with the dreamy look in his eyes, and one day it gave him the ideaof adopting Ramses and keeping him in his own bachelor apartment.
    They had made rapid progress over the first few weeks. Ramses had learned to write his name and read easy words like
taxi
or
bike.
He could soon say over forty words, beginning with
hello, thank
you, eat, hunt,
and
Bombardone
— although they became
“L-l-o-o-o! . . . an-koo . . . e-e-e-eee . . . uuu-nt,”
and
“. . . aaardone!”
Then Mills had tried to do more, and that was harder: teaching him to play cards, whistle a tune, make an omelette.
    Those days were over now. It had been obvious for some time that Ramses wasn’t getting any further.
    “Why do you keep him?” Pastor the dog-handler asked. “Take him back to the barracks. He’ll be happier with his own kind. Isn’t he bored, living with you?”
    The chief of police couldn’t bring himself to tell the truth: he had become attached to his strange companion’s quiet presence and absolute loyalty. Sometimes he woke suddenly at night, a prey to uncontrollable fears, and eating didn’t help. Then he went to lie down beside Ramses on the living-room sofa and spent the rest of the night there, reassured by the dog-man’s regular