Charles Newman - In Partial Disgrace

The next morning we reconvened at breakfast. Mother again put in a highly eccentric appearance, wheeling about in a whirlwind of activity which produced only cold porridge and some brown apples. Father was not in a good mood, as sheets of rain and lightning had canceled his walk. The day’s blood was still high in his cheeks; the arteries alongside his neck were two blue cords, a barometer of heavy weather. I noticed then that Mr. Mooks’s claws were not only untrimmed but actually curled — except for passing gas, his only really unattractive feature. The nails had grown long, yellow, and hollow, curled under at the ends like a mandarin’s, and made an unpleasant noise upon the stone floor. I was not yet convinced of my parents’ inattention (which was often feigned) to my companion, so I politely asked Mother to set out another plate at the table, which she did with an acrobatic développé . But my father focused upon the small addition to our table setting with intense curiosity.

“For. . whom?” he enunciated slowly.

“Mooks,” I said. “Mr. Mooks.”

“Mooks?” he repeated, somewhat embarrassedly, thinking perhaps he had forgotten an honored overnight guest. “Mooks?”

“Mooks is my new friend,” I said. “A dog. I don’t know what kind.”

The two blue cords on either side of my father’s neck swelled slightly. Though he said nothing, I saw immediately the aspect of betrayal in his eyes. If he had been capable of speaking at the moment, it would have gone something like this: “I have spent a lifetime creating a race of animals which exceed in their deeds and speciespower anything which has yet appeared on this earth. All this I bequeath to you. And you might choose from them any member to lavish your attention on. But no, you must sneak in, like a servant girl, some anonymous insubstantial mutt, and place him at my right hand!” And this, indeed, is almost word for word what he did say to me several days later.

Mooks seemed to sense this disapproval as he hopped up with downcast eyes upon the bench beside me. But he did not take offense. Father’s eyes were now, as they often were, on the ceiling, which gave him an aspect of those historical figures in bas-reliefs. The fact that he could see no dog there did not in the least mitigate my platonic betrayal.

Mother, sensing that all was not well, leapt between us, and with a large spoon, plopped a portion of white-hot cream of wheat into Mooks’s plate.

“We certainly hope Mr. Mooks likes American cereal,” she said.

As it turned out, he did not. The cereal sat there throughout the day, and then day after day, turning not just cold but gelid, then oddly crusty, and only when it took on a terminal green hue was it removed, a rebuke to my new companion.

I must say I preferred Father’s hurt feelings and internalized rage to Mother’s hypocritical concession to my new friend, as I have always found intemperate scorn more instructive, and kinder in the long run, than halfhearted lies. This should have told me something important about myself, but what astonished me was that both my parents assumed Mooks’s appearance was due to something they had done or not done. If I had sufficient power, I would have inflicted upon them the Voo himself, that faux friend from the rim of civilization, and not some harmless, innocent, fake animal.

In any event, due to Mooks’s eternal vigilance, the Voo’s visits became more intermittent, and when he did appear, it was not with quite the same claustral charisma of old. Mooks himself seemed irritated on those nights when he did not make an appearance, and little balls of tension appeared in his short neck. The Voo seemed to be having problems with self-presentation, and with my new companion, rather than gaining any confidence, I was simply losing interest in the tyrant. But as the Voo’s visits became less predictable, he gained the advantage of surprise. His passages were more varied, less choreographed. He appeared at different hours, when I least expected it and Mooks was dead asleep. He also acquired a larger repertoire of gestures and movements, some of them quite bizarre, and once, after a long absence, he appeared in the late afternoon while I was doing sums, in a kind of pathetic shuffle without his lamp.

One night I awoke to the creak of the closet door, and I could make out by the light of his lamp a newly beguiling Voo, eyes twinkling like kernels of corn in horsemanure, something very like a grin across his fecal-face. He moved without his usual sluggishness and I saw that he had also acquired a companion. At his feet there sat the cutest monster you ever saw, a three-headed hound, its back covered with snakeheads and the tail of a perfect little dragon. Mooks was stunned silent, obliterate. The monster sat obediently and focused at the end of a velvet rope. I had to give him credit. It was a standoff. The Voo sashayed out into the hall dragging the brute with its tail thrashing behind him. He would not return.

I believed then, if I could only reclaim the dead language of childhood, that the Voo would disappear from my life, or become a mere augury whom I could interpret as I liked. Indeed, I was becoming bored with my fear and less anxious about its source. The Voo, after all, had a certain authority and detachment which seemed admirable. The magic of in extremis had always appealed to me. His situation was clearly more interesting than mine. From the demands of the infant, one can come to understand the tyrant’s point of view, because it is we in our stinking bedclothes who are most totalitarian. I had never questioned the fact that I deserved to be frightened and judged by this assassin of disfigurement. And I was attracted by a spirit who had the hardness to go to any lengths! In short, I had to summon the honesty to admit that I would have preferred to be very like the Voo, and insert myself into his world, but simply couldn’t muster the wit or will to do so. I had also come to notice that as the Voo was vain and self-regarding, he was basically human, and therefore defeatable. But this in no way made me less interested in what went through the villain’s mind, what it was like to be in his large red shoes. How I missed my absent mute interlocutor!

As the days went on and I became more attached to Mooks, cosseting him without qualms, hugging him until he burped, I began to have other concerns, not the least of which was the wedge which my small companion had put between me and my parents. I also began to speculate about what would happen if the tyrant, cornered, as it were, might alter his routine, then strike out and injure Mr. Mooks, even sic his three-headed monster dog upon him. Mooks was not their match. He had altered our relations by a kind of irrational bravado, not to mention a certain stupidity which would eventually irritate a cosmic presence like the Voo.

This was not real sympathy, only a bloated sense of myself, having less to do with self-confidence than a kind of spiritual elephantiasis, mercilessly requiring enormous amounts of new territory and stimulation. How stupid of me not to have made a pact with the Voo before Mooks entered the scene!

Most disturbing of all, what if the Voo was indeed banished — would Mooks, who had conquered him, not get a swelled head, no longer feel useful, and perhaps disappear? Or would he become, as smug victor, so insupportable in our civil family that I would finally have to hide him out?

The Voo, for all his threats, did not require interpretation; everyone understood what Vooness was. But Mooks did, and endless lies. Moreover, as I reached out to stroke his rigid little neck, I came to see that out there where he lay was a little bit of me — less easily satisfied perhaps, but certainly more alert and more real. And that indeed if Mooks saw me in this light, he might be tempted to hold his bravery over me, constantly reminding me of my inferiority, and making me appear ridiculous, talking to an underpedigreed dog, all but invisible.