THE RAT OF THE BIEVRE
(BIBO the Brown Rat)
Translated from the French by Kathakali Jana

Once upon a time, there was a fat rat who lived on the edge of his favourite river, the Bièvre.

Now, Bièvre wasn’t at all like other rivers. It had long become reduced to a drain. And so, Bibo had never known the light of day, which is perhaps why he was grey. On his left ear, there was a small red mark shaped like a ring. It was the only bit of colour on his beautiful fur, and it distinguished him from his twelve brothers and sisters, as also from his friends, the other male and female rats.

Bibate, his rat mother, organised all sorts of treats for her family. She gathered old pieces of paper floating on the frothy water. She collected beautiful, plump droppings swimming in the dirty waves. She put together crunchy poplar leaves essential for her family’s vitamin supplies.

But what Bibo loved most were the large cockroaches that Bibate served them on special occasions.  On the birthday of one of the thirteen raccoons, or on Christmas or Easter, she would put this delicacy on the table.  Wrapped in shiny aluminium foil, they were the dessert for festive meals. Yum! Crunch!

Bibo and his raccoon friends loved playing the rat equivalent of blind man’s buff on the concrete bank of the river, and sometimes our rat found himself in the river. He hated this more than anything else in the world. He swam against the current to the edge of the murky water and hoisted himself up onto the quay to the shrill peals of laughter from all his buddies. 

Indeed, what could be funnier and more ridiculous than a wet rat?

One of the raccoons’ favourite games was hunting for germs. It is important to know that the sewer rat, a mutant species, is immune to all the diseases carried by these little creatures. But it has the power to transmit them to larger but more fragile species like humans, for example.

Both the banks of the Bièvre had been lined with poplars when the river flowed freely a long time ago. Now, the trees could still be found, standing as a testament to the past, on the Rue de la Poterne des Peupliers.

In this marvellous land, 52 different kinds of microbes were found, and they were of all colours and sizes.

Beautiful bacteria and dangerous elongated bacilli responsible for diseases with names that resonated warmly in their wise raccoon ears: typhoid, tetanus and tuberculosis. The most microscopic, but nonetheless the most formidable, are the viruses: retroviruses and megaviruses, which invariably caused rabies, foot-and-mouth disease, smallpox, influenza, measles and leptospirosis.

The game of finding germs was so much fun! The winner was the one who caught the most dangerous microbe!

When he wasn’t playing blind man’s buff or chasing germs, Bibo loved to organise wonderful games of ‘the perched rat’ with his brothers and sisters. The large pipes that ran everywhere seemed to have been built especially for their games.

Bibo’s life flowed by like this, peacefully, night after night, one darkness after another. It was punctuated by the good meals served by Bibate and the games raccoons love to play by the cascades of foamy water. It was only the flushing of toilets that sometimes interrupted the flow of time in the Bièvre and surprised the family.

One lovely evening, Bibo was walking inside one of his favourite large pipes when suddenly he was blinded by a strange light. His tiny eyes narrowed further under the terrible beam of brightness. When, after what seemed like a very long time, his gaze became accustomed to this illumination, he was seized by fear. What he saw was frightening and indescribable. An enormous creature, with beige rubber lower legs, a blue body, grey hands, and a blue helmet on its head, was staring at him. The beast was carrying a brown leather satchel on its side, and from the helmet came the mysterious light.

The eyes were barely visible, hidden under two sheets of glass. Neither the creature nor Bibo budged an inch. Bibate had warned Bibo never to speak to a stranger, nor to follow one, but she had never spoken to him about a gigantic animal like this! Bibo then gave out one of those high-pitched cries in which he was so adept.  Pui pui pui pui! This was both a rallying sign and a cry for help. A moment later, twenty rats came running to his rescue along the pipe. Bibate was in the lead with his twelve brothers and sisters, then came twenty more, then another twenty, and finally yet another twenty. The tunnel was now invaded by a troop of rats shouting their war cries. The immense helmeted and rubber-clad creature, no doubt frightened by this gratuitous and unexpected concert, turned around, leaving the brown rats to continue their noisy agitation.

Only Bibo and Bibate remained on their end of the pipe, overjoyed at their reunion. Little by little, the cries calmed down. Bibo the brown rat was recovering in his mother’s arms. And in the distance, an enormous gong resonated, the sound bouncing from porch to porch in the eternal night…

THE END