Beyond the Fringe

THE SICK Fox (305 pp.)--Paul Brodeur--Atlantic Monthly Press ($4.75).

The story seems strange but simple. Harry Brace, a U.S. intelligence officer, is in charge of guarding a hidden U.S. nuclear warhead depot in a remote section of West Germany. Patrolling the dark forest around the depot, cutting his own orders, wearing civvies, chasing trout and women at his pleasure, he comes to feel like a feudal baron. Then he sees a sick fox and realizes that it may be rabid. But he does not kill it. Why? Unconsciously, he sees it as a companion in his own growing urge toward anarchy.

On this framework, Paul Brodeur blends psychological insight and historic parallel to create a portrait of the alienated man in the nuclear age. Harry Brace is not merely the familiar figure who feels estranged just from his own society. He wants out of the whole organized world.

When the fox bites a village dog and thus creates the threat of an epidemic of rabies, Brace finds himself more and more at odds with society. Contemptuous of the German authorities trying to control the disease, he strikes up a strange alliance with an itinerant shepherd and game poacher whose sheep are suspected of infection. Defending him, Brace finds himself in a shooting showdown with a posse of outraged villagers.

The novel's distinction is the rich symbolic resonances woven around Brace's disintegration. Unwillingly representing the waning influence of the U.S. in Europe, Brace is seen partly as a throwback to the last of the Roman legionnaires in Germania. Making love to a local landowner's wife, he is the incarnation of Woden offering himself to the goddess of the forest. Even the shepherd Brace defends is not merely an old reprobate but a kind of Ur-brigand descended from the race of Jacob. As for the fox: Is he a fox? He may be Brace's alter ego. He may even be man himself, close to madness and ready to spread destruction in the world.

Many an earnest young writer launching a first novel is like a man trying to raft his belongings across a flooded river. The problem, clearly, is to get the essential items safely over. The temptation is to pile everything on. Paul Brodeur's story nearly founders under its symbolic freight. But the voyage into a world where inner disorder and outer chaos mirror each other makes an absorbing trip.

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