After their conversation Blue Wolf decided Perdrix wasn’t such bad company after all. She was always in a good mood. They swapped memories; the years went by. And then, last week, Perdrix died. Which brings us up to date. Right up to the present moment, with Blue Wolf sitting in his empty enclosure, opposite the boy.
The pair of them stare into each other’s eye. Their silence is framed by the distant rumbling from the town. How long have the boy and the wolf been staring at each other like this? The boy has watched the sun setting in the wolf’s eye several times. Not the cold sun of Alaska (which gives off such a pale light you never know whether it’s setting or rising), but the sun from here, the sun at the zoo, which disappears each evening when the visitors leave. Night falls in the wolf’s eye. First of all the colours blur, and then the shapes get rubbed out. And the wolf’s eyelid finally slides shut over his eye. The wolf stays sitting upright opposite the boy.
But he’s fallen asleep.
The boy tiptoes out of the zoo, the way you might sneak out of a bedroom.
But each morning, when Black Flame, Grey Cousin, the Redheads, Shiny Straw and Perdrix wake up in the eye of the wolf, the boy is there again, standing in front of the enclosure, concentrating without moving a muscle.
Soon you’ll know everything there is to know about me.
Now the wolf is gathering together even his tiniest memories: all the different zoos, all the sad animals he’s met along the way who were prisoners like him, all the human faces he pretended not to see (faces that didn’t look very happy either). He remembers the seasons passing by like clouds, the last leaf to fall from the tree, the final glance Perdrix gave him, the day he decided he wouldn’t eat his meat any more.
Right up until Blue Wolf’s last memory.
It was the moment when the boy arrived in front of his enclosure, one morning at the beginning of winter.
Yes, you are my last memory.
It’s true. The boy can see his own image appearing in the wolf’s eye.
You really annoyed me to begin with!
The boy can see himself, standing still as a frozen tree, inside that round eye.
I used to ask myself, What does he want from me? What’s his problem? Hasn’t he ever seen a wolf before?
The boy can see his breath creating a white mist in the wolf’s eye.
I used to say to myself, He’ll give up before I do; I’m more patient than he is – I’m the wolf!
But the boy in the wolf’s eye doesn’t seem to have any intention of leaving.
You know what? I was furious. To prove his point the wolf’s pupil contracts and expands like a flame around the boy’s image. And then you closed your eye. Which was a very kind thing to do…
Everything is calm now. The snow begins to fall gently over the wolf and the boy. The last snowflakes of winter.
But you? You? What kind of person are you? Who are you? What are you called, for a start?