They started pasting up black and white posters in Bonville early in February, a few days after my fourteenth birthday; at the time I didn't see any connection. The poster showed a large photograph of President de Gaulle in his familiar general's uniform, epaulets gleaming on his shoulders, round military hat with curved shiny brim set firmly on his head. He was pictured at a slight angle so that his large aquiline nose was almost in profile, his jaw firm, dark eyes radiating power and determination. Beneath his portrait the legend read, "6 June 1959, 15th Anniversary of Allied Landings in Normandy."
The President's supporters-the majority in our district-loved the posters. His enemies didn't. But even his admirers were annoyed that posters had been slapped on the walls of their houses, on the Church of St. George, and even on the tiny structure that was the mairie, our city hall. All his admirers, that is, except my father, Paul Montreux. Paul was delighted; he wanted the men who put up the posters to hang two on the walls of his automobile repair shop, and he was angry when they only gave him one.
Mother said, "It's not wise to mix politics with business."
Paul laughed. "Helene," he said, biting down on the words with large strong teeth, "Mon General is the greatest man in France-in all the world. The fools in this town better learn to love him or they'll regret it." To emphasize the point he smashed his right hand into his left, which made a sound like two wooden planks, banged together.
Paul was a large man, tall and broad-shouldered, his heavy arms crowded with muscles, callused hands as hard as horses' hooves. Tangled black hair spilled off his head over deep furrows in his forehead, and his corded black mustache twisted down in disdain.
Mother shrugged. It didn't pay to argue with him under any circumstances, least of all where Mon General was concerned.
I wished I was as strong as Paul, but my size and coloring were closer to Mother's. My hair was blonder than hers, almost white, and people said my eyes were bluer. I was a decent height for my age, one hundred seventy five centimeters--about five foot, eight inches in the English system--but I weighed only fifty-five kilos, a hundred-twenty pounds. Although I didn't have big muscles like Paul, my coordination was good and I could move fast. Sometimes I had to.
I remember being elated when the posters went up because Paul agreed I could go down to the coast and watch the parades and fireworks. Before then, I'd never been allowed to go. I'd always been stuck in boring Bonville when everyone else was celebrating the Liberation of France.
Bonville was on a dead-end spur off the coastal highway. The town didn't seem like much, only three hundred houses jumbled together like lumps of clay along what we called the main road. The houses looked alike, one- and two-story dark wood and doughy plaster dwellings sagging with age under sloping, ragged roofs.
We lived on the south edge of town with a little more land than most, a rickety barn, a small pasture for the animals, a vegetable garden with a few geraniums, and a small orchard with a dozen apple trees, all surrounded by an unpainted wooden fence and bisected by a sliver of a stream that splashed only in the wet season.
Nothing in Bonville would catch your eye except the castle, a huge pile of crumbling gray limestone and decaying red brick, which loomed menacingly over town from its rocky perch, unoccupied except for screech owls, crows and lizards. The townspeople said that before the war it was a lively place with a uniformed staff serving rich people in fancy clothes who drove up from Paris in brightly colored touring cars. They also said the most recent owner was killed by the Nazis near the end of the war, but they never gave any details. Some claimed that guns and grenades were still buried in the half-destroyed buildings and in the collapsed tunnels that radiated from the fortress. One thing was clear: There were no longer any parties or rich people in limousines.
The locals talked guardedly about the former owner, Armand Moret. Sometimes they glanced warily towards the castle; sometimes they crossed themselves and mumbled things I didn't understand. If anyone spoke openly, someone else would cut them off. Young people whispered about ghosts and monsters; if their elders heard they hushed them immediately.
Once I asked Mother, "What's the secret of the castle?"
"That old heap of stones doesn't concern you," she answered.
"Don't talk about the castle!" Paul broke in. "Not with anyone--not ever!" His massive fists were clenched at his sides. I nodded quickly and hastened out of the house.
Regardless of what my parents said, it was impossible to ignore the structures looming over Bonville. The walls and buildings were lumpy and uneven, which made them seem more ominous. Inside was a large open area called the ward, which surrounded the keep, a four-story building topped by a stone tower carved into a snarling dragon like those on the prows of Viking warships. Its slanted eyes were windows, many broken, and the huge jaws jutted open, revealing a curving row of damaged windows that looked like fangs. In the fading Norman sunset, the castle became a huge crouching creature; the gate towers metamorphosed into enormous dragon's claws, the walls into its body, supporting the snarling head. The entire jumbled mass was canted at an angle so that the dragon seemed about to lunge. The ancient name for the fortress was Le Dragon Couchant, the Crouching Dragon. But the townspeople preferred to call it the Castle or Moret's Chateau-names that didn't sound sinister. We kids called it the castle in front of our folks, but privately it was usually the Dragon.
There was a rocky slope below the Dragon with a few scraggly trees and scrambled underbrush, divided by shallow ditches that followed the lines of collapsed tunnels. People said they marked rivers of blood from the creature's victims. In shifting light and slithering fog, the Dragon seemed to raise itself, ready to pounce on Bonville. I told myself I was too old for such childish ideas, but when the winds blew wild and loud, when the light congealed and exploded, it was easy to believe the Dragon was alive.
Centuries ago, peasants had leaned their half-timbered, thatched roof houses against the fortress walls. As the need for protection by dukes and earls waned, the villagers moved further and further away, forming a single row of houses that spread along a dusty, pot-holed pavement, now the main road. There, directly in line with the Dragon's head, rising above the rooftops of Bonville, stood the church of St. George, a blunt building with rough plastered walls, a sway-backed slate roof, and a squat, slightly tilted bell tower topped with a spindly iron spire. When the last rays of the sun flashed on the broken windows of the castle, flames shot out of the Dragon's eyes, nostrils and jaws as the monster prepared to slink down the hillside to squash the spire and devour the town.
Next to the church was a small square facing the main road. In the center, surrounded by untrimmed clumps of brown weeds, stood a bird-stained, undersized bronze statue of Marshal Ferdinand Foch, hero of World War I. Around the three closed sides of the square were a bistro serving drinks and food, a tiny hotel, a bakery and a butcher shop. You had to live in Bonville to know which was which, for the storefronts were weather-beaten and the signs had faded to indecipherable scrawls. And they didn't display merchandise in the windows.
Crowded between the bakery and the bistro was the mairie, nothing but a small dark room with a desk for the mayor and another desk that was permanently unoccupied. Civic meetings were always held in the church.
On the other side of the hotel was a tiny gendarmerie, which was seldom manned because the men were assigned to the larger station in Luc-sur-mer, a seaside town three kilometers away. It hardly mattered. Until the time of the disappearances, we never had any crime in Bonville.
The church was at the intersection of the main road and a narrow unpaved street that led to the fields below the castle. At the end stood Paul's garage. Mother never let him forget his lack of foresight in choosing an almost inaccessible spot, out of sight of potential customers.
Each time I worked in the garage, I walked up the sloping street toward the Crouching Dragon. It was easy to explain the flames as a trick of the setting sun, but what about flames that sometimes flashed in the dead of night, and the smell of smoke that drifted down into town? What about the sudden roar that sounded like an airplane zooming through the air? And what about the two dead deer that had been found beneath the walls, their antlers brutally torn away? Someone said--making a joke--that perhaps it was the Dragon. Nobody laughed and the story grew more fantastic with every telling; now it was said the deer were killed in a savage ritual, and that the bones of a slaughtered cow had been found in a pasture. Parents told their children they would be fed to the beast if they didn't behave. Some kids laughed, but nobody played anywhere near the castle.
Late one evening, my friend Andre was found on the stoop of his home, moaning in pain, his face blood-streaked, a bump on his head and a crushed leg. Andre said he had chased his dog under the walls of the castle when something knocked him unconscious. He had no idea what happened or how he had reached home; his dog disappeared.
Some who had scoffed at tales of the Dragon changed their minds. Still, no one asked for an investigation of the animal killings or Andre's injury, not even his parents. His father was angry because for several weeks he was unable to do his chores. The townspeople seemed to close ranks, almost as if they were protecting the castle, but Andre had a grim reminder of his brush with the Dragon: a twisted leg and a limp.
How could I ignore the Dragon? Impossible. At the very least I wanted to find out what had happened to my best friend. Besides, I didn't like being afraid of anything. Sometimes I would leave my father's garage and cross the fields near the castle. Not right below the walls, you understand, but closer to the castle than the town. That made me feel brave. But I was ready to run if the Dragon so much as breathed.