He Has Picked Some Odd Habits On His Travels

We don’t know what to do about Paul. Paul, our Paul, our old friend and comrade! He used to be such a laugh, Paul. He used to be good fun.

He also used to be very poor, poorer even than the rest of us. His mother died when he was little, his father when Paul was just old enough to leave our village, seeking for fortune, like so many of us did. We remember the last night before he left, when we met at the lake to share one last smoke.

‘I’ll do something of myself,’ he said. ‘You will see. You will all see.’

We didn’t hear from Paul for twenty years. We didn’t forget him, exactly. There are too few of us, down here in this village, and too few things happening, for us to forget. But we had our lives, our livelihoods, and we didn’t think about him much. We got married, we had children, we found jobs, we even started to die.

When Paul came back, we were happy to see him again. He had aged well, which reflected well on all of us. He was a new person, in a sense, but not new, in another, so he brought change without a sense of threat. We loved him for that, at first. He told stories about the places he had been - some far away, others closer - and about the jobs he had had.

There was something about him, something which was not there when he’d left. He has picked some odd habits on his travels.

Paul established himself in this old house, a ruin which he bought for little money and of which he inhabits only two room. The others he left as they were, decayed. The habits he picked, it took us a while to notice; we had to pierce things together. We had to trust that our senses were not lying to us.

Every night Paul goes to his garden, barefoot and naked, and walks three times around the house, whistling faintly. Three times every night, even when it rains, even when it snows.

We heard noises, from the house, which we had never heard before. Voices, we would say, if we didn’t know that Paul lives there alone, and entertains no visitors.

We have seen Paul gather dirt from the cemetery. We have seen him lick rapturously a dead fox. We have seen him eat a maggot, alive. We have seen him stand at the edge of the wood, for hours to end, watching the darkness among the trees. And we are not saying it was Paul who stole the baby, but we cannot deny that, when the baby went missing, our thoughts went that way.

We don’t know what to do about Paul.