Fever Read Free

‘Do you know what you were telling me?’ I asked. ‘Of course,’ Collani replied and repeated what he had said in his trance – that’s what it’s called, isn’t it?”
    â€œCertainly,” Godofrey hastened to assure him.
    â€œâ€“ in his trance. After that, he left. When I came out of the house at eight the next morning – it was a very clear September morning, you could see the chotts , the great salt lakes, sparkling in the distance – I ran straight into Collani with the quartermaster and the captain. Captain Pouette told me Collani had reported that sheets had been going missing and claimed he knew both the thieves and the receiver. The thieves were already locked up, now it was the turn of the receiver. Collani looked like a water-diviner without his divining rod. Though he was completely conscious, there was a fixed look in his eyes and he was pressing forward.
    â€œI won’t bore you any more. At the bottom of an orange box in a tiny shop run by a Jew who sold onions, figs and dates, we found four sheets. Mamadou was a negro in the fourth company, he admitted the theft. At first Bielle, a red-haired Belgian, denied it, but then he too confessed.
    â€œFrom then on Collani was always called the clairvoyant corporal and the battalion doctor, Anatole Cantacuzène, organized seances with him: table-turning, automatic writing, in short they tried all the accursed nonsense on him that the spiritualists practise here without the least idea of the danger they’re putting themselves in.
    â€œYou will be asking yourselves, gentlemen, why I have told you this long story. It was just to explain why I could not ignore Collani when, one week later, he told me things that affected me personally.
    â€œIt was 28 September, a Tuesday.”
    Father Matthias paused for a moment, put his hand over his eyes and continued:
    â€œCollani came to me. I spoke to him, as is my dutyas a priest, imploring him to give up these satanic experiments. He remained defiant. And suddenly his eyes glazed over again, his upper lids came halfway down over his eyeballs and his lips were twisted in a disagreeable, mocking smile, revealing his broad, yellow teeth. Then he said, in a voice I knew so well, ‘Hello, Matthias, how’s things?’ It was the voice of my brother – my brother who died fifteen years ago!”
    The three men round the table in the little bistro by Les Halles listened in silence. Commissaire Madelin gave a faint smile, as you might after a weak joke. Studer’s moustache quivered, though it wasn’t obvious why. Only Godofrey attempted to relieve the feeling of embarrassment at the improbable story.
    â€œFunny how life keeps forcing you to deal with ghosts . . .” It could be a profound statement.
    Very quietly Father Matthias said, “This strange and yet so familiar voice was coming to me from the lips of the clairvoyant corporal . . .”
    Studer’s moustache stopped quivering, he leant over the table. The stress on that last sentence. It sounded false, feigned, affected. He shot a glance at Madelin. There was the hint of a grimace on the Frenchman’s bony face. So the commissaire had sensed the false note too. He raised his hand and placed it gently on the table. “Let him speak. Don’t interrupt.” And Studer nodded. He had understood.
    â€œâ€˜Hello, Matthias, d’you remember me? Did you think I was dead? Alive and kicking, that’s me.’ That was the point at which I suddenly realized Collani was speaking German. ‘You’ll have to hurry, Matthias, if you want to save the old ladies. Otherwise I’ll come for them. In . . .’ At that point the voice, which was not Collani’s voice, became a whisper, so that I couldn’t understand what came next. But then it was loud andclear again: ‘Can you hear the hissing? That hissing noise means death. Fifteen years I’ve