Saint Peter's Wolf: A Novel

By Michael Cadnum

Collector Benjamin Byrd has added a new and eerie item to his archives: a set of fangs embedded in silver. As he grows more and more obsessed with his new treasure, he finds himself experiencing dreams and visionary adventures. Soon, Benjamin’s normal, successful routine is transformed beyond anything he ever imagined; he has to confront the truth that he is no longer simply human. This powerful and lyrical story brings into our own day-to-day lives the story of the werewolf.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Oct 13, 2015
• ISBN: 9781504023658

Michael Cadnum

Michael Cadnum is the author of 35 books for adults and young adults. His work—which includes thrillers, suspense novels, historical fiction, and books about myths and legends—has been nominated for the National Book Award (The Book of the Lion), the Edgar Award (Calling Home and Breaking the Fall), and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (In a Dark Wood). A former National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, he is also the author of award-winning poetry. Seize the Storm (2012) is his most recent novel.   Michael Cadnum lives in Albany, California, with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Book preview

Part One

One

It was raining, and the world beyond the windshield was a vision, buildings and pavement starred with water that the wipers dashed away. But the drops reappeared, and the wipers at last could not compete with the downpour, and I could not see well enough to keep the terrible thing from happening. A shape like something entirely imaginary, four-legged and indistinct, bounded across the street.

My foot hit the pedal, the brakes squealed, and the car slipped out of control on the wet pavement. Just as the downpour was at its heaviest, with the storm so thick I could see nothing but the steering wheel, the buildings, the few random figures like fragments, the car glided across the water.

It did not happen quickly, but as though it had been predestined, as though this moment could unfold without hurry, because it always had been intended.

The car lurched slightly, a gentle nudge. And then the front end rose and fell, as if I’d driven over a speed bump, a lump of earth. But it was not earth. I could feel my nerves wither.

I’ve run over something. Something is hurt.

And just as suddenly the rain slackened. I leaped from the car and froze there in the dim headlights, the sun leaking through the clouds.

It was the way no one moved that made it all especially sickening. The way the old man in the distance looked our way, baring his teeth in a grimace, the way my own body felt itself go powerless.

A German shepherd struggled to drag its body. Its front legs scrabbled the wet street trying to pull the broken hindquarters. Convulsions rippled through the dog, and it looked toward a figure at the curb, a silent woman, her hands to her face, the dog blind with pain but knowing that the woman was there and that the woman needed her, even now.

Once I had seen a man bitten by a dog who had been hit by a car. The man had crouched with a blanket, and the crazed animal had snapped and found flesh. But I knew only that this dog was in pain, and that I could not stand here and watch it without acting.

So I did what I knew I should not do. I opened the trunk, tugged the woolen blanket free of the tire iron, shook out its folds, and was at the dog’s side, moving smoothly, as though I had done this all before.

No! gasped the woman. Don’t touch her—she’ll bite you. The woman’s voice was a whisper out of agony, considerate for me even in this anguish, but I did not hesitate. I knelt.

But when I opened my mouth, poised to tell the dog that it would be all right, I did not speak because I knew that any consolation would be a lie. So I said nothing but I’ll take you to a doctor. I hardly recognized my own voice. It was calming, and more peaceful than I could possibly have felt. I’m going to cover you with the blanket.

The dog looked at me, ears cupping toward me, teeth bared in her pain. Her brown eyes saw me, and then failed to see me, as the pain pulsed. There was danger here. The dog was ready to fight for her life.

The animal struggled, as though wanting to crawl to where her mistress stood, one hand to her lips. The woman took a step forward and knelt, and I sensed a powerful bond between them. I sensed, too, that this woman was about to take control of the situation, and render my help unnecessary. But for some reason she hesitated. She looked into my eyes and saw something there that made her trust me.

It was the pain that kept the dog from trying to bite me. The dog did not know where she was. The woman was there as I covered her. She held her coat shut at her throat. Her face was shock-pale. She struggled to speak but could say nothing.

I’ll take her in my car, I said.

It’s my fault, she said in a voice that was too steady, kept tight with great effort. I hate to use the leash.

There it was, a useless loop of leather in one white hand.

The dog sang, a long note of agony as I lifted her mercifully quickly, as though I had practiced this a dozen times, and in her pain she snapped at the air. She was a big dog. The scent of her wet fur was strong, and the weight of her surprised me. She tried to wrestle around to snap at me. Her teeth were white slashes in the air. They slammed together at my ear and her breath was hot.

It’s all right, the woman said, and the dog was calmed for a moment by the sound of her voice.

It might have been the worst thing I could have done, moving her like that, but some confidence I could never have anticipated gave me strength. When the dog—and I already began to think of her as nearly a person, or more than a person, a lovely creature in agony—was safely in the back of my car, I turned and guided the woman into the front seat.

Then my confidence broke for a moment, as my hands trembled on the steering wheel and the gearshift fought against me like a tool I had never attempted to use in my life. Where was the nearest animal hospital? I had no idea. Here I was on upper Broadway, a block from my home, with a dog beginning to howl in the back seat. They were long, broken howls, and my stomach knotted with every cry she made. The howls stopped, and were replaced by great, beastly shudders.

The dog was dying. I gripped the wheel and could not even see for a moment.

On Van Ness, said the woman beside me. She was weeping, quietly, and yet there was something about her presence that stilled me and gave me strength. I’ll show you where.

It could have been the waiting room for the most expensive surgeon. Burgundy wool carpets and great spears of cacti, the sort of potted plants that cost hundreds of dollars. I had recently paid my share of remodeling for my own practice, and I knew that these colorful artistic doodles on the wall and this svelte silk-bloused receptionist did not come cheap.

The doctor took no time to offer consolation, or much information. The receptionist mentioned x rays, anesthesia, surgery. Forms were presented, and a pen provided.

And then we waited. The woman beside me struggled not to weep. This was her usual doctor, she said; they all knew and loved Belinda.

Belinda. I was crippled with sorrow at what I had done, and wished that I myself knew medicine so that I might put my hands upon her and heal.

But the woman, who had introduced herself as Johanna, pronounced as the Germans would pronounce it, so that the name was at once stately and musical, blamed merely her unemployed leash. I never should have taken her in the rain, she said, a tissue crumbling in her palm.

It had, in truth, been raining. I had not been speeding. And yet I could not have felt more pained, sitting staring at the floor beside this trembling woman. She was blond and slim, and I noticed her hands, delicate and without nail polish. And without a ring. The way she trembled made me want to take her in my arms. Could a guilty man have such thoughts? But she was not like any woman I had ever met before. The entire point of my life became, as I sat there, to ease her anguish. And to see that her dog survived.

You were so kind, she said.

She had the slightest trace of a German accent. Her gratitude stung me. I’m so sorry, I said.

She touched my hand, unaffectedly, just once. No, it’s my fault. She made herself stop sobbing, because she could see how much grief she was causing me. She wanted to say something to ease me. Sometimes these things are fated.

I realized she had steadied herself once more, and I had to admire her strength, and was touched that she could feel concern for me. I did not, personally, believe in fate, but I recognized the sort of thing people say. Naturally, some things cannot be avoided. They simply happen. They are not planned by anything unseen. I knew we both-felt the same way—we did not believe in supernatural forces. She merely had intended to say something that consoled me.

And so I agreed. Some things were fated.

To continue to distract her I asked what she did, guessing that she was a professional woman of some sort. She was a translator, currently working on the works of Baudelaire. She had just finished translating some previously undiscovered notebooks of Freud’s last years. She consulted with researchers and museums all over the world. It took me some time to find this out. Despite her kindness toward me, she was shy. I was a little surprised that such an attractive woman could be so accomplished and yet so unsure of herself, but I respected her reticence. Some people do not talk easily about themselves, especially to strangers.

And I was, unquestionably, a stranger. When she asked me what I did, the answer I gave her surprised me. I told her that I was a collector.

What do you collect? she said, even trying to smile, and I was happy to try to distract her with the mundane details of my life. Anything. Art, books—objects of interest. It was true enough. I collected prints and books that I found in London and New York, but nearly always donated or loaned the objects to various museums. I collected, but I did not hoard.

She listened with admirable courtesy, but she did surprise me by saying, You must know Mr. Zinser.

I must have shown the surprise I felt. Jacob Zinser was the paramount collector, world renowned. No, but I have always admired him from afar.

I just completed some translation for him. I will introduce you.

Of course, I told her, I would love to meet Zinser. He had discovered a copy of a Shakespearean first folio, a letter from James I regarding witchcraft, and one of the first Tarot card decks, complete. He was the most famous collector in San Francisco, probably in North America. I was a beginner, an amateur in the most pallid sense of the word, compared with the distinguished scholar Jacob Zinser.

I have been in the Bay Area just a few months, she was saying.

I had a dozen questions, but just then the door opened and the doctor was there, a gray-haired man in a white smock. Johanna sat absolutely still, searching his face for some sign of the news he was about to utter.

He had a sheaf of x-rays with him. He offered a smile which was reassuring without being cheering. Belinda is badly hurt, he said. His manner said it for him: there was little he could do.

Johanna made a sound, worse than a sob. She put her hand to her throat again, in that gesture that made her seem so fearful, so deserving of protection from all harm. I’m so afraid—

The doctor must have known he had to reassure her, but apparently the truth was ash. There’s still a chance, he said.

Was this an offer of hope, or an announcement simply that it was too early to grieve? The doctor glanced at me, as though annoyed that I was there to hear him so bereft of professional platitudes. I knew how he must feel. He was a kind man with cruel tidings.

The pelvic bone is— He searched for a gentle way to put it. Badly damaged. She’s lost blood, internally. She’s a big, healthy animal but— He stopped himself. Every word hurt each of us. He held up an x ray, as though to say: look, here’s the truth.

Johanna gazed through it. I kept a discreet few steps away, studying an acrylic, done fairly well, splashes of color not unlike what I feared was taking place inside Belinda.

I can’t— she began. I’m not used to x rays. Said nearly apologetically, as though she had found a passage in a language she could not translate.

She is a young dog. A year old, said the doctor. She has that youth going for her.

Johanna turned to follow the doctor into the office, and then turned back to say, I am so selfish. There you are, so patient. Surely I am keeping you. You are so kind.

She looked into my eyes again, a direct gaze that made me feel that she knew me well, knew and understood me. At such moments she was not the person in need, shaken and afraid. She seemed to know something about me that had allowed her to accept my help. I nearly thanked her.

It would be a long time, the doctor told me pointedly, before they would know anything. I had the feeling that he wanted this attractive woman to himself. The receptionist glanced my way. If I stayed any longer, everyone seemed to say, it would begin to look suspiciously as though I had injured the dog through negligence, or even maliciousness, and now wanted to linger here either to assuage my guilt or to prey on this sorrowful woman. They were protective of their clients. I was an outsider.

And Johanna’s manner had changed. There were x rays, now, and surgical procedures. She was an intelligent woman, and given information she could begin to see for herself what hope, or what sorrow, lay before her. I could go.

Before I left I pressed my card into her hand, feeling the act to be painfully inappropriate. And yet I wanted to hear from her again, and as the door swung shut behind her I stood there, thinking: don’t die.

Please don’t die.

Two

I did not want to leave.

I had not seen her give me her card. The act must have been invisible. But I stared down into my hand, and read her name. Johanna Fisher.

I said her name to myself as I sat in my car. I was reluctant to drive this instrument of harm, but I did have places to go after all. And now I had something of hers in my wallet, her card, her name, a talisman to guarantee that I would see her again.

As I drove I wondered at what she had told me. The accident, and her pale hands, had captured me. I was a fool, I told myself. I would probably never know Zinser, but more importantly I would probably never see this alluring woman again. I would have Tina make arrangements to pay for the dog’s injuries, and I keenly wanted to learn whether or not the dog survived. But our moment of closeness was over. Crisis had brought it about, and now that the emergency had become a medical ordeal, I had no more emotional role to play.

I was puzzled, as I found my usual parking place, that I had told her only certain things about myself. I am not a secretive man, but it had been as though I had sensed that she would understand my interest in collecting. Many people did, but many did not. I was, by profession, a psychologist, and although money left to me by my family supported my collecting, I had found satisfaction and respect in my practice, and at the age of thirty-eight I was beginning to enjoy my life as never before, balancing my love for unusual treasures—even very strange artifacts—with a desire to help people.

But I had not even mentioned my profession to her. I was used to questioning myself. It was the result of years of training, and a mental tool I valued. Was I in fact a little tired of my office and my clients? Was I finding my clients too easy to help? Listening—and I had always thought of myself as a good listener—was becoming all too easy for me lately.

I tended to know what people were going to say before they said it. I saw, like a weary priest, much of what there was to be seen during the first few minutes. To help my clients see themselves was still very demanding. But the excitement of participating with them in this search for hope was no longer as stirring as it had been. Perhaps this was why I had let my practice fall fallow during recent months.

Tina looked up from her computer. It was her computer because she had sighed and wheedled and sulked her way into forcing Orr and me to buy it. Now neither of us could possibly tell any of our clients how much they owed. I am familiar with computers, and I am not afraid of any machine, but Tina had chosen a filing system so difficult and code-ridden that she was now more indispensable than ever. She had just asked for and gotten a raise. She wore a silk blouse even fuller and more brightly colored than the vet’s receptionist, and in recent days she had taken to wearing makeup for the first time, just a little blush on her cheeks—or perhaps it was the flush of triumph.

Mr. Porterman is here early, she said.

Splendid, I said, running my hands through my hair, staring around at the walls as though I had never seen them before.

You look.… I have never known Tina to suffer a loss for words. I was concerned. I knew I felt shaken. How bad did I look? A bit off. Beside yourself, actually, she said.

Tina would always choose a somewhat bookish phrase in place of a more normal, idiomatic choice of words. So I gathered that I looked merely rattled, out of breath. Tina was the only person I knew who said in future instead of "in the future, and even, from time to time, on holiday instead of on vacation" in reference to one of Orr’s frequent absences. She had been born in Van Nuys, but a couple of years before had spent a few weeks at a summer program in Oxford. She was attractive enough to figure in an amazing number of my clients’ erotic dreams.

And Mrs. Byrd wants you to telephone her. She referred to my wife in this formal way, but I did not really mind. A touch of formality makes routine palatable. What did worry me was that Cherry never called me here. She never even called home to tell me she might be late. I had taken to believing that the telephone did something to my voice that rendered it unpleasant to Cherry’s ear.

Is Orr around?

He doesn’t want to be disturbed.

It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen him much, if at all, in recent weeks. He was often traveling.

But I caught Tina looking away from me, and I should have guessed that she knew something.

From my office I called the veterinarian. The receptionist there seemed to have taken a dislike to me. Doctor is still preparing Belinda for surgery.

Could she call me and tell me how it went?

Doctor will have to be the one to decide that. I will certainly tell him you called.

My wife did not answer the phone. Something must be wrong. I was glad she hadn’t answered because I didn’t need another worry, but I was reaching the point at which I was saturated with emotions and desperately needed to go for a long walk.

My first client for the day—in truth, my only client scheduled—was smiling wanly in the waiting room. Your practice, I told myself, is a little too thin at the moment. It was not my fault. My office partner, who co-leased the offices and shared the waiting room with me, had been on local television five times in recent months. Orr was a celebrity. I could not compete with him.

But as I sat listening to Porterman, a man who had lustful desires toward his eleven-year-old daughter, I had to force myself to concentrate on his monotone. He was a nuclear physicist with the University of California. He had explained to me once about quarks and charm, a fascinating forty-five minutes before I remembered that he was paying me and that I had no right to use up his time on my ignorance.

We had both agreed, months before, that a man in real danger of molesting his daughter would not have sought professional counseling, and, since no one can keep the mind clear of unpleasant desires every moment of the day, that he was to be commended for his desire to be a protective father and to assume responsibility for his lust.

Thus encouraged, he had decided to undertake an in-depth study of his dream life. I welcomed this. Dreams fascinate me. But Porterman had dreams about buying a new suit at Macy’s, of choosing frozen spring rolls at Safeway, of starting a subscription to the Examiner. His dreams were like those films we had to watch in high school, legendarily dull films produced in remote decades when everything was in black and white and everyone wore baggy clothes and had, on reflection, baggy faces. Films on the sandy strata that made Idaho’s Famous Potato the Tuber King. Films on the birth of the economy, with faded, camera-conscious amateurs bartering chickens for rutabagas. Films called From Pulp to Packaging or Heroes of the Decimal System. This was Porterman’s psyche. A back lot of visions too dull for any other human mind to create, let alone recall days afterward.

Still, Porterman was earnest. He wanted to understand what made him lie awake at night, why, setting aside his lust, his daughter filled him with dread as she went off to school, to a friend’s house to sleep overnight, to a movie which Porterman had not seen yet and which might have almost anything in it. You can’t be sure.

I couldn’t tell him that dread was normal. Many people feel contented rarely, if ever. And it seemed to undercut my role as healer to take the position that a little illness was standard. And yet that was the truth. Perhaps I merely did not want to risk losing one of my few remaining clients by leading him to understand that he was no more troubled than the people all around us, beyond the walls.

I did not have a child of my own. I had a stepchild, Carliss, my wife’s son, an eight year old who played video games in which he killed soldiers with an appliance which attached to the television and which looked, for all the world, like a Colt .45 automatic.

Carliss had been tested by experts. They all agreed that the child was emotionally troubled. Carliss and I had differing views on many matters. I had been married a scant two years, and felt that I had barely begun to know my wife. It was my first attempt at marriage; probably I had waited too long to make that effort of living with someone. To make the effort while a mentally disturbed eight year old carefully sabotaged the marriage was a curious challenge.

I stopped myself in the midst of this sardonic reflection. Carliss was a child, with a child’s quickness, and a child’s gift for joy. I should spend more time with Carliss. I envied him. For him, the world was still new.

When Porterman left I called Cherry.

Carliss has done something awful, she said.

Awful in what way? I wanted to ask: awful to what?

He had already drawn beards and glasses on a priceless Rubens cartoon. It would cost four figures to get the art repaired. The man at the lab, an old friend of mine, had nearly wept.

Please don’t be mad at him, Benjamin.

What has he done?

He’s emotionally sick. You knew that when you married me. Her voice trembled, and I had the definite feeling that she had been about to say when you married us, thinking of herself and Carliss as an inseparable unit.

Tell me what he did.

You know that medical encyclopedia?

No!

The one you keep on your desk?

It’s not possible! It was a nineteenth-century medical dictionary, not remarkably valuable, but one of my favorite books. I waited for her to agree that it wasn’t possible, but she said nothing. I was, I told her, on my way home.

But I wasn’t, for a moment. I sat shaking my head. I was wondering how I really felt about all this, and the truth was that I felt very little else than a sense that the day would eventually end and another day would take its place, one probably not as disturbing. What patience I could not summon, I would pretend to possess. I would endure. If I was a hypocrite, I was of the benign, necessary sort.

Far away, in the world beyond my office, a fire truck wailed, a pulse of sound I had come to find almost comforting. An acoustical engineer had soundproofed our rooms, but he had not blocked the fire engines. Our building was at the corner of Washington and Sansome, in the Financial District, and all the other offices were occupied by attorneys, the kind with thin Florentine briefcases. Orr had convinced me that this was the ideal location for our kind of stress. Orr had thrived here.

Orr would be able to live my life much better than I could. For a moment, I was alight with admiration for him. He was difficult to have around at times, but he was vibrant, full of color. I wanted to have even a fraction of his command of life. He was in communion with an essential part of himself, something animal and electric. Orr had that core of vitality which I had, at some point, lost.

I tried calling the veterinarian once more, and the answering machine kicked in. The blank, self-consciously alluring voice of the receptionist invited me to leave my name and number, but I declined, wondering if the doctor was at lunch, or consoling an inconsolable woman.

Three

If it were not for hypocrisy we would be noble creatures. But then perhaps we would not be human. I sometimes think that the reason adults want to hide sex from children is that the adults feel that once the truth is out the children will find it impossible to feel respect for any adult, ever. I was entering what I told myself was a period of readjustment. I think I was beginning to realize that I would never understand myself, Cherry, or much of anything else. What puzzled me was that I accepted this smoggy view of things with something like detachment. Was this the grand view of things I had promised myself as a youth? This habit of looking forward to a cup of coffee and a hot shower, letting all hope of epiphany wither, was not necessarily the beginning of wisdom. It might be merely the beginning of age.

Our home had a view of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a tall terra cotta and beige house with wooden balconies and yellow-leafed wisteria fluttering in the breeze. It had been my family home, and I remembered my father coming through the oak door, cigarette in his smile; He had been by profession an architect, but his true gift had been for staying at home as much as possible, enjoying my mother’s company.

The house was quiet. The kind of quiet I hate. I closed the front door carefully behind me. My father, in my place, would have hurried across to the fireplace where even now the silver martini shaker gleamed. He would have used those tongs shaped like talons for a dash of musical ice on crystal, and a long lunch would have been underway.

Cherry met me. I’ve already talked to him.

I want to see it.

It’ll just upset you.

Cherry, what earthly good will it do to put it off? Can you imagine what I’m picturing in my mind?

Whatever you’re imagining, Ben, the truth is worse.

The medical encyclopedia is the size of a very fat slice of bread. It had been bound in London in the early nineteenth century, and the calfskin had aged to a tobacco-leaf gold. I was not careless, but I often left a treasured book out on my desk. To hide things is furtive and contrary to the spirit that makes me love books.

I approached the book feeling weak, each step slower until I stopped and could not move.

The book was fatter than when I had last seen it. There was a bump in it, and the small volume could not close completely around an obstruction.

I steadied myself, and stepped to the desk.

I stretched out my hands, wishing that I did not have to do this, that I would not have to see what had happened.

At the entry for nematodes was a squashed rat. Its eyes were open, two black seeds. Much of what had been inside the rat was now outside it, a scarlet bandana that flowed from between its teeth.

It was a small rat, dark gray, with a long pink hairless tail that drooped from the volume like an unusual bookmark.

He’s emotionally disturbed, she whispered. We’ve always known this.

I sat trembling, aghast at what was before me. Yes, I agreed. He’s very unhappy.

I was hoping after the last time that it was out of his system. But he wants to tell you something. He wants so much to—

To hurt me. And he has. But despite my shock and distaste for what I saw, at that very moment I had the strangest thrill. Imagine, I thought, being a child again. Imagine being able to scribble on this, ruin that, with no feeling of restraint. Imagine feeling that liberated.

We’ve been a terrible burden for you, Ben.

I should have paid closer attention to what she had just said, but at the moment, sad and dazed, I simply shook my head. I had a responsibility to Carliss that was more important than my affection for my books. We’ll send him to Beecher. He’s the best child psychologist in California.

What are you going to do about the book?

The encyclopedia can wait. I want to talk to Carliss.

What will you say to him?

I uttered what seemed like the deepest truth. I don’t know.

Please don’t hurt him. He wants your attention, you know that.

I looked up, surprised. Of course I won’t hurt him. What sort of person do you think I am? Two years is not really long enough to discover all the back roads in another’s emotional countryside. I was amazed, though, that Cherry had so little faith in me. It demonstrated once more that while I knew her fairly well, she did not know me at all.

Or, I asked myself, did I really know her? In the first days of our marriage we had delighted each other. We had both liked the same operas, the same fresh peaches, the same old movies, the same cool, fog-rich wind on the long walks we took together. It was a discovery for both of us, like breathing pure oxygen after a long swim underwater.

But then her career began to simmer. She was a political consultant, a whiz at publicity, press packets, television ads. A former mayor called her the Einstein of demographics. The phone began to ring. The calendar in the kitchen darkened with notes, phone numbers, names. I was always on my way to the airport, always in a hurry to get to an auction on time. She was always just back from a meeting, jotting notes as she listened to her answering machine. The time came when we did not know each other.

Benjamin, you’re so kind, she was saying. It stabs me here to see you so kind. She put a hand over her breast.

She was given to emotional overstatement, but I could not understand why she expressed herself in exactly that way.

Because, she continued, I have something to tell you. Something that’s killing me. I’ll never be able to talk about it. She wept. I’ve ruined our life.

I was saturated with crisis, but I had enough feeling left to put my arms around Cherry and try to comfort her. I am an organized man, capable of focusing on one thing at a time. Just now I did not know what sort of crisis consumed my house, but I would set about quelling it step by step. The problem was that I did not know what first step to take.