Vidot found the morning and midday travel through the city infinitely easier than his original nighttime journey had been. He was almost proud of how quickly and completely he had acclimated to life as a flea. He hopped from soul to soul, pet to pet, tucking in for a bit of sustenance whenever he found himself on an undersized dog (the morning’s trial and error had taught him that small ones were the sweetest, though breed mattered too; beagles were the best, while basset hounds tasted bitter.) His biggest surprise was that he found every animal he rode on appeared to be completely free of all other vermin. He deduced that this was not actually the case, as there were telltale signs (red bites, raw rashes) that other creatures had been riding and feeding on the dogs. Mysteriously, though, there were no other fleas, ticks, or lice to be seen. He guessed that they were in fact there all around him, but laying low and hiding deep in the fur, as his arrival had no doubt come as a bit of a shock to these simpleminded creatures of habit. For, as unfamiliar with his condition as he was, he therefore undoubtedly moved, acted, and behaved himself like a very unusual and suspicious flea. I must be like a gorilla dropped onto a city street, causing pedestrians to scatter and flee, he thought to himself. This idea amused him greatly as, very quickly and with an almost military efficiency in his hops and small scurries, he steadily approached the station.
Time was of the essence, if only because he did not know how much time he had. All he knew was that the clock of a bug’s life ticked exceedingly fast and if he did not keep up his pace then the clock would run out. But he remained optimistic, reminding himself that he had raced against time on other important cases: running to Gare de Lyon to catch the fleeing embezzler Martel; dashing to the hospital to save the poisoned bride Castrillon; rushing so many places across the various landscapes of Paris that he wondered if he had not always lived his life like some wild, hopping flea.
There was one problem: he still did not know what he would do once he arrived at the station, but even that did not bother him. He knew the station’s rhythms and hours, when the officers came and went, its every corner and corridor, and he knew that, at the very least, he could find safe harbor there. If he got hungry, he thought, he could simply go suck some blood off the skull of that cow-witted Maroc. That fool had it coming. It still nagged at Vidot that the station had not told the truth about his disappearance to Adèle. Maroc was most likely stalling, hoping Vidot and Bemm would miraculously reappear so that he would not have to face the scandal of losing two policemen. Such things did not look good on one’s record. So Maroc was probably trying to buy some time. It was understandable, but it was not right, and as hurt as he was by his wife’s adultery, Vidot did not like to see her deceived by an ass like Maroc. He wondered if she would be worried and if Alberto would comfort and console her. Vidot did not like where such thoughts went. And so, like many men who have troubled lives at home, Vidot energetically hopped off toward his office.
Luckily, it was a pleasant day and his journey was proceeding nicely. Things were not so bad, and the farther he got away from Alberto and Mimi Perruci’s apartment, the more content and confident he felt. He understood that some other souls might be panicked or even overwhelmed with grief at the thought of being trapped in a small insect’s body, but, he thought, these were generally the same people who felt cursed when there were only plain croissants at the market, or complained when the lunch waiter was slow. Whereas he believed life, any life, was a curious adventure, and if you merely kept your wits about you and stayed alert and in motion, you could find your way to a satisfactory conclusion. Instead of feeling cursed, he amused himself by thinking of how his hops resembled the arcing phrase marks on music sheets and, in fact, how he was not so unlike that American actor Bobby Van who had hopped so memorably through an entire small town in the film
