The Story of the Werewolf (Continued)

We re–invented the werewolf in the twentieth century. The germ of the idea was too far away and stank too strongly of the pyre to be taken into our popular culture. As a result, the traditional accoutrements of the werewolf, which might have spawned a tradition to rival Dracula's, are largely forgotten. The wolf belt or strap, made from the skin of a wolf or a hanged man, that can transform the wearer at will (which is what Stubbe claimed the Devil gave him); the magical ointment that also gives transformative power, day or night; the werewolf that, as in Marie de France's Bisclavret, cannot change back unless he has access to his clothing; the excommunicated wanderer cursed with werewolfism by a wrathful saint or priest: these strange and fruitful images no longer ring any bells. Shockingly enough, it has been suggested that the reason why the full moon, goddess of our tradition, originally featured in werewolf stories is an upsettingly simple one: in an age before street lights, you needed a bright moon in order to see the transformation take place. Nothing more.

We make of traditions what we can. Dogs fill me with a phobic terror; my friends will tell you that I'll hide behind them to avoid a Pekinese. When I sat in the safari park, though, gazing through the car window at the long–legged, white–ruffed pack of wolves that trotted to and fro outside, I felt no fear of them; nothing but an interested admiration for their beauty. Their eyes were clear and alert; their coats were thick; they were practically fluffy. Yet something about these creatures got people spooked, even before the trials, even aside from the fact that they were a lot more dangerous to a medieval villager than to me, safely ensconced in a vehicle. I remember being a child, thrilling to my father's stories of the ancient Greek superstition that if the wolf saw you before you saw it, you would be struck dumb.

The thing about wild beasts is that they aren't evil. It isn't evil that makes them dangerous, savage, and able, under the right circumstances, to rip apart those who cross their paths. That's just how wild beasts work. The history of the Inquisition fascinated me, so when I sat down to write my own version of the werewolf legend in my novel Bareback, I decided that witch and werewolf trials had to be part of the story. A witch–burner is a far more frightening creature than a canine. But at the same time, the black–and–white morality of the tales, the evil monster or the poor tragic hero, came to seem simplistic — and whenever you look at morality, simplistic thinking is dangerous. That's how people wind up on the rack. And in any situation where there is power at stake and people are frightened of each other, there are bound to be wrongs on both sides. We are, after all, animals; clever ones, but flesh and blood like all the rest. Rather than writing the traditional post–Inquisition fable of the bestial outsider that threatens society, I chose to write something different, something closer to the birthplace of the myth: the bestial society that threatens the outsider. After all, do we really need to look for the inner beast? If you want to find an animal, all you have to do is look down — there's one standing in your shoes.