Patrick White - The Vivisector

He would have liked to take the drawing-board down, or at least turn its blank back to them; but his ingenuity had dwindled, like his strength. He flopped down on the old plangent bed, where the state of its rucked-up grey blankets and grubby sheets was immediately emphasized by his presence.

Fortunately an inner distraction seemed to prevent Kathy noticing as much as she might have noticed, or else the objects which attracted her attention were closer to her own interests. After taking up and reorganizing one or two things on the chest: chunks of quartz and agate, a dried-up pomander which she sniffed at briefly, a pewter mug full of buttons, pins, and the melted ends of sealing wax, she began to talk to him in disconnected snatches, while showing no sign of expecting answers.

‘D’you really use sealing wax? I’ve always wanted to. I use coloured inks according to how I feel. Shall we write to each other, Mr Duffield?’

The formal address destroyed the enormous headway he felt they had made in their relationship.

He answered bleakly tentative: ‘There won’t be much point in writing, will there? If we continue to see each other?’

She became more nervously excited, twitching as she talked and moved. She looked out of the window, eyes unflinching, at the now blindingly yellow light.

‘Of course there’ll be a point!’ She was forced to close her blinded eyes; she was smiling slightly: she had a rather thin mouth. ‘Don’t you think we’ll put in the letters the things we don’t say to each other? I mean — you couldn’t say the things you paint, could you?’

She was swaying in the blaze of evening. His head felt as though it were reduced to skull, with the thoughts feverishly rattling in it.

‘My dear child’—it sounded unbearably gauche—‘will you let me hold your head — as we did — before? I want to remember the shape of it.’

He did long — yes, to drink it down — swallow it whole — its beauty.

She opened her eyes, and grinned rather heartily, like a girl in a newspaper photograph. ‘What a funny thing! I’ve got to go and practise. This is the time.’ If she had been older, she might have been warding him off with appointments at her dress-maker’s or hairdresser’s.

But she did in fact come towards him, over the endless, intervening floor.

Now that he had what he wanted, love and terror were flapping inside him in opposition. He must smell terrible, too: an old, unsavoury man. That, certainly, and their uncomfortable attitude, not to say his silliness as he laid her head against his, must ensure purity.

He closed his eyes, feeling he had achieved a definite stage in relationship with his spiritual child.

But she began to resist. ‘It makes me nervous if I’m late for practice,’ she breathed close to his ear. ‘I’ve got to sit down always at the same time.’ Her cheek, fidgeting to escape, must have been grated by his more abrasive one; but she didn’t shed her kindness. ‘Here’s a surprise for you!’

She popped into his mouth what began as a smooth jewel, but which melted abruptly into all that was soft and sweet-succulent. At the same time she seemed to crest over on him, breathing or crying, enveloping him like a wave.

‘What is it — Kathy — darling?’ he rattled as he was sucked under.

‘It’s like he smelled when he kissed me! My father! That only time I can remember.’

He despaired more and more for the delicate relationship he had conceived: because her own innocent natural scent and distress over her lost father were cancelled out by the skill with which she had planted kisses in his mouth. That too could be innocent, of course: pure innocence, or ignorance. If he had not begun to suspect the innocence of his own desires he could have better accepted such an interpretation of Kathy Volkov’s behaviour.

Then, when they were growing together like two insidious vines, she tore herself away with a force which should have reassured him.

‘Good-bye for now!’ she said, and giggled.

If he didn’t wince, it was because his normal reactions had been sent too far astray.

‘Can you let yourself out?’ he feebly asked. ‘I don’t want to come down,’ he added, even feebler, and something about work.

‘Sure!’

He might have hated her for that, but was prevented by some of the silent expressions she had used, and for the shape of her unconsciously noble head.

She began leaping down the stairs, practically tearing the banisters down: so it sounded.

‘I’ll come tomorrow,’ she called back. ‘No — not tomorrow — but soon — to see how the kitten’s doing.’

He had forgotten the wretched growling cat.

‘If I don’t come,’ she shouted up. ‘I’ll write you a letter like we arranged.’

He was almost composing his.

After some other semi-intelligible and not particularly relevant information, she shrieked: ‘Gee. I almost broke me neck!’

She went out banging and clattering. The silence continued vibrating some time afterwards; while he huddled in a corner of the bed, already sensing the agonies of an empty letter-box, or worse still, her clear voice as it rocketed up the stairs on arrival, accurately aimed at his vulnerable core.

About dusk he got up and went out. There was laughter in the darkening streets; a window opened, and shut; a breeze was blowing through dusty lace. Up at the thoroughfare a spawn of artificial light had begun to hatch and pulsate. The drunks were spewing. On a corner a big patent-leather mouth, boiling bust, and acquisitive eyes might have been for hire if he had brought the cash with him; but he hadn’t: no conventional defences could now protect him from the attacks to which he was being subjected.

He walked around, past the wide bright shops, down the stale side streets, over hacked-off vegetable stalks and slivers of dog shit. Up a lane, where the last of an apocalyptic sky was burning the top of a paling fence, a figure had bent over a little go-cart, dispensing meat to cats. The cats lurked, mewed; some of them advanced when coaxed; in the shadows others growled and coughed over the charitable offal with which they were being fed. There was little love lost: the cats were gorging themselves on what was their due. Perhaps the voluntary martyr was rewarded by not being accepted; as the food was doled out, claws occasionally reached up to slash, and once a pair of growling jaws seemed to fasten in the charitable hand. The cat person continued bending over the improvised cart. The stench had become predominantly horse-flesh; while the cat lover’s sex remained indeterminate: a small person, however. (For God’s sake, not another child!)

The voice offered no immediate clues while ringing clearly enough in the narrow deserted lane. ‘Prrh! Prrh! Puss? puss! You big devil, I know you! You cat! Claw me! Well, claw me! What good did it ever do any body?’

As she withdrew her clawed hand the cat person became a woman: ‘Big Swollen Cheeks!’ she spat at the mangy, chewed cat: while throwing him another gobbet of dark flesh.

She straightened up, or would have done so: coming level with her in the wasted light, the intruder saw that she was a hunchback. And more. He had hardly recovered from the other attack when here was this fresh one.

‘Not — Rhoda?’

‘Yes, Hurtle.’ Raising her face on its thin little neck, she bared her teeth: in the half-dark, they appeared fine and curved, spaced like a cat’s.

The smell of horse-flesh was overpoweringly rich.

‘Yes!’ she confirmed her identity in what sounded like a long hiss; while he began to crush, not her cat’s paws, her bird’s claws, the once delicate made coarse and stiff and knobbed.

He no longer minded the smell of horse.