Patrick deWitt - Undermajordomo Minor

“Why do you do it, Mewe?”

“I don’t know why. It’s like an itch that must be scratched.”

“But it isn’t any fun for me when you cheat.”

“No?”

“How could it be?”

“I should think it might be exciting for you.”

“And why would you think that?”

“It follows some manner of logic.”

“Would you like me to do the same to you?”

“I suppose I wouldn’t, actually.”

She snatched up the cards from his hand, shuffling these into the deck. “Even if you win, you lose, don’t you understand?”

“I don’t know about that ,” Mewe said.

She ceased shuffling. “Will you or won’t you stop it?”

Mewe put on a brave face. “I will try.”

A days-old puppy, black in colour, clambered onto the table top and arched against an earthen jar sitting between Mewe and his enchanting guest. When the jar toppled, Mewe righted it automatically and dragged the puppy from the table to his lap. The girl dealt the cards and they resumed play, and Lucy had the feeling he was watching a painting come to life; there was something enduring about the scenario, something timeless and vividly evocative, and this appealed to him in a sweetly sad way. The spell was broken when Mewe spied him at the window and said, “Oh, hello, there.” The girl turned to look, and when she and Lucy’s eyes met he was filled with a shameful panic, and he spun away, huddling at Memel’s door, his heart knocking against his throat.

“Who was that?” he heard the girl ask.

“Lucy’s his name. We met him on the train. He’s at the castle, now. Gone after Mr Broom.”

She paused. “Is he nice?”

“He seems it. But who can say? Perhaps he’s a scoundrel in hiding.”

The girl softly laughed, then was silent. Lucy heard the scrape of her chair, and now she appeared at the window. She stood mere feet from Lucy but owing to the darkness had no idea of his proximity. She was pondering some distant thought, a lonely one, according to her expression; when she shut the window and drew the curtain, Lucy stood awhile in the snow, feeling foolish and trembly.

He turned and knocked on Memel’s door. Memel answered with a puppy in his hand, this likewise black, but with white boots.

“Did you take my pipe?” Lucy asked.

“Yes,” said Memel.

“Can I have it back, please?”

Memel left and returned with the pipe.

“Thank you,” said Lucy.

“You’re welcome.” Memel nodded to the castle. “How are you settling in?”

“Fine.”

“What have you had for your supper?”

“Nothing.”

“Are you hungry?”

“I don’t know if I am.”

“Shall we find out?”

Memel ushered him into the shanty.

The front room of Memel’s home brought to mind an animal’s burrow. The floor was dirt, and the air smelt of roots and spices. The walls were made from tin scrap of varying colours and degrees of corrosion, and they shuddered in the wind. But it was not an unpleasant space: a copper cauldron hung in the fireplace, its fat, rounded bottom licked by flames, and oil lamps throwing off a honey-coloured light lined the rafters in neatly pegged rows. Lucy sat beneath these at a low-standing table. There was a litter of puppies roaming about, yipping and knocking things over and pouncing upon one another. The exhausted mother lay on the floor beside the table, stomach bagged, dead to the world. “Poor Mama,” said Memel. “She’s had just about enough.” He nudged her with his foot and she retired to one of two small back rooms, with the puppies following after. Memel removed the cauldron from the fire and set it in the centre of the table to cool. Tilting back his head, he shouted, “Mewe!”

Mewe’s muffled voice came through the wall, from his own shanty. “What?”

“Is Klara with you?”

“Yes.”

“Is she still angry at me?”

Lucy could hear the girl named Klara murmuring, but couldn’t decipher her words.

“She says she’s not,” Mewe called.

“And do you believe her?”

“Yes, I think I do.”

“And you? Are you still angry?”

“Not at all.”

“Will you please come and eat with us, then?”

A pause; more murmuring. “Who is ‘us’?” Mewe asked.

“Lucy has come to visit. The lad from the train?”

“Yes, he was spying on us a moment ago.”

Memel looked at Lucy with a questioning glance. Lucy shook his head. “I was only passing by,” he whispered.

“He claims not to have been spying, Mewe.”

“Oh? And what would he call it, then?”

“Passing by, is how he describes it.”

Yet more murmuring. Mewe said, “Ask him for us, please, if he believes one must be in motion to be passing?”

Lucy admitted that yes, he supposed one did have to be, and Memel restated this.

“Well, then,” Mewe continued, “how does he explain the fact of his being stationary at my window?”

Memel raised his eyebrows. “Were you stationary, Lucy?”

“Perhaps I lingered for a moment.”

“Now he is calling it a momentary lingering,” Memel said.

“I see,” said Mewe. Murmuring. “We would like to know, then, just what is the difference between the two?”

Lucy thought he could hear some restrained laughter coming from Klara. To Memel he said, “Spying suggests a hope to come by private information. My intentions were much simpler.”

Memel digested, then repeated the words, which precipitated further hushed discussion between Mewe and Klara. At last the former said, “Would Lucy describe himself, then, as idly curious?”

Lucy was now certain he could hear both Klara and Mewe stifling their amusement.

“Well?” Memel asked, who was smiling.

“I think that would be fair,” said Lucy.

“It would be fair, he says,” Memel said.

For a time, Lucy could not hear any further chatter from next door. Finally it was Klara who spoke. “Give us a moment to finish our game, Father,” she said.

“Stew’s too hot yet, anyway,” Memel said, peering into the cauldron. He stepped away from the table and invited Lucy into his room, a drab cube with no window or furnishings save for a straw mattress on the ground and a wood crate doubling as a bedside table. The puppies lay in a heap in the corner, feeding off their mother, who regarded Memel and Lucy with a look quite beyond concern. Memel leaned down and stroked her with a gentle hand, his face drawn with worry. “They’re going to kill her.” Cocking his head, he asked, “Would you like a puppy, Lucy?”

“Oh, no, thank you.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“Well,” he said, “this simply won’t do.” He picked up the puppy with white boots and left the room. An uneasy feeling visited Lucy; he followed Memel and found him standing at a water barrel beside the front door, his arm submerged to the elbow. “If the mother dies, then they all will,” he said, regarding the black water with a look of grave determination. Long moments passed, and when he slipped his arm from the water, there was nothing in his hand. He returned to his room and re-emerged with another puppy, making once more for the barrel. Why this was being carried out in Lucy’s presence, and just prior to eating, Lucy could not fathom. Whatever the reason, he felt impelled to intervene. When he spoke, he was not motivated by any one thought or combination of words, but in response to a kind of pain, much in the way one involuntarily cries out after being injured:

“Stop it,” he said. “If it’s come to this, then I’ll take him.”

Memel came nearer and deposited the puppy in Lucy’s palm. “Her,” he said, and moved to the table to ladle out the stew.

The puppy was the runtess of the pack. Sleekly black, her head tottered creakily, as though she were feebly aged. She peered up at Lucy and opened her mouth but no sound came out; lowering her head, she closed her eyes and Lucy tucked her into the breast pocket of his coat. Her snout pushed proud of this, her tiny jaws ajar. Lucy rubbed the fuzz above her nose and she licked his fingertip, which prompted a flutter in his stomach. There is an instance of import when one experiences the conception of love, he realized. It was as though you had been waiting for it all along; as if you’d known it was approaching, and so when it arrives you reach out to greet it with an innate familiarity. Behind him, Memel said, “All right, Lucy, the stew is cooled.”