Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

“ Your soul ,” whispered Darconville.

“What’s the good of having a soul,” asked Crucifer, grinding his teeth, “if you have a mind? And what need is there in heaven of my humility? No, you must listen to me! Can’t I simply be devoured without being expected to praise what devours me? I am no French poet. I mean, does a creator necessarily become a master? And what about a creator not in right but only in might? Then, is a creator necessarily superior? Does a world that has a beginning, in fact, necessarily have a creator? And is a creating God necessarily an authorized God? Can a judging God be an object of love? What kind of diabolical God can create cats with dreams of satanic mice and simultaneously by some royal exequatur and placet give mice dreams of like cats? No, He Who smites without sword and scourges without rod I shall always remember, my friend, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause— and forever revile! God, I tell you, is the center of the pathetic fallacy.” Crucifer pushed his head out of his robe with a little twist and twitched it. “Thus, did Fâdi teach me well — and still of what he wouldn’t did.”

Standing close to Darconville, Crucifer gave off a foul odor.

“The fact of betrayal, finally, also abolished woman for me. It eliminated her utterly. She disappeared from the face of the world, for through Fâdi hadn’t been revealed to me in the simplicity that is at the heart of all mystical truth the one and only lesson to be extracted from the doctrine of Original Sin?” Crucifer’s fat arms shot victoriously out of the red robe, an almost aposematic coloration, it seemed, warning of a frightful attack, and he whistled through his nose. “ World loathing ,” spat Crucifer, “ is woman loathing !”

The cry echoed throughout the room.

“The shadow of the deformed,” said Darconville in a low voice, “is deformed also.”

Crucifer’s mouth twisted. He couldn’t abide being told that. He was that terrible figure now whose tyranny did not consist in trying to make himself bigger than his surroundings but in shrinking the surroundings. He claimed eirpson —divine afflatus, inspiration. Humanly speaking, he was out of his mind.

“Be warned, my chevalier,” Crucifer answered. “Disanthropize chance, I tell you. It is your own goodness that is the ideal you imagine. ‘To fall in love is to worship at the shrine of a fallible god.’ “

“You mistake yourself for a prophet.”

“I keep abreast,” he grinned. “I told you, I can see in the darkness.” He pointed to his eyes. “It’s a special gift, the reward in part of a pact I once made with myself”—he paused—”and someone else.”

“Someone else?”

“Those were my words. It is a story, I’m afraid, over which the Muse of History must draw a veil. Inquire no further.”

For the last time, Dr. Crucifer fell onto the curtain and jerked the bell-pull so hard it snapped out of the orlo. As quickly, the library door flew open and in ran Lampblack, out of breath. He looked up, pitifully, with that little nasolabial funhouse-mirror of a face. Completely out of control, Crucifer went flashing at him like a fire-zouave, thumping him mercilessly on the ears and kicking him for failing to appear earlier to make drinks for them, himself and the guest Lampblack was forced to acknowledge as Crucifer held him fast by the hair, twigging him backwards. Lampblack cowered, his open hands fluttering before his eyes to ward off further blows. Crucifer smiled up at Darconville. “My tapster,” he said, “my turnspit, my child o’ the bottles.”

“I see hate comes easily enough to you,” said Darconville, who, paradoxically, could have killed Crucifer on the spot.

“But they’re related, of course,” mocked Crucifer, “love and hate, aren’t they?” He bent down over Lampblack and peered into his face. “Aren’t they, millstones?” His eyes shifted to Darconville. “As I’ve said, hate owes all its meaning to the demand for love — got of themselves, I don’t doubt, but far better got of a tutor.”

He shoved Lampblack away.

“There nevertheless remains, of course, the argument-it’s gone on for thousands of years — that one alone of the two perhaps adhibits more naturally to human nature.” As Crucifer’s rapid changes of front were incredible, Darconville for a moment wondered which of the emotions in Crucifer’s perverse mind benefited more by the reservation. “The question, however, is which. Love,” asked Crucifer, putting his tiny head sideways in a mockery of riddling, “or hate?”

There was no answer.

“ Voilà, mon candidat. Entre deux selles le cul à terre, n’est-ce pas ?”

Then Darconville said, “Love.”

“Catshit. Duckshit. Birdshit,” said Dr. Crucifer. “Dogshit.”

YES, SAID ISABEL, everything was fine. No, no one had given her any message. Yes, she had been busy. No, honestly. Yes, she knew she hadn’t written. No, nor called. Yes, she did realize it was October 2. No, it seemed to her to have passed quickly. Yes, there were some problems, to tell the truth. No, not over the telephone. Yes, they were complicated. No, what did he mean did she mean? Yes, she did think of him. No, she didn’t need him to come down. Yes, she could come up to Cambridge. No, it would be easier. Yes, she’d received his gifts. No, she wasn’t ill. Yes, she knew he loved her. No, she’d come up there if she could. Yes, he could call back later if he wanted to. No, she’d be home for sure. Yes, she promised this time she would. No, she’d wait right by the telephone. Yes, at 7 P.M. then.

DARCONVILLE immediately called the airport. The next flight to Washington, D.C. from Boston would be leaving at 2130 P.M., and he booked it, hoping to connect with one of the Piedmont flights continuing on to Charlottesville. There wasn’t much time. He called Prof. McGentsroom and, explaining that he had to go to Virginia, asked him if he’d take his Tuesday afternoon class. Then he telephoned for a cab, packed a few things, and, putting his cat under his arm, went flying downstairs to leave him with the superintendent.

Suddenly, on the way down, Spellvexit slipped from his grip and skirted out of the inner door that let out into the courtyard of Adams House! Darconville called him, in vain. Dropping his suitcase, he ran around after him, with increasing desperation as he heard the repeated blast of the taxi out on Bow St. It was hopeless. He watched sadly as the little form disappeared around the corner of Apthorp House. A cat never says goodbye. It just walks away.

The plane finally lifted off — and none too soon, for Darconville hoped, instead of calling at seven, to be actually in Fawx’s Mt. proper at that very hour. It wasn’t that there had been small effort made in behalf of his appearing, rather too much in behalf of his not . What would he find? The facts at his disposal, maddeningly, couldn’t be hammered into truth. Concept wrestled with data. Could one so solicitous not have written, so loyal not have kept faith? And what, he wondered, had it to do with those strange and apprehensive glances she stole — from what? for what? — especially last summer? Was gravitational pull inversely proportionate to the square of the distance that, as the distance increased, the pull decreased? Why hadn’t Isabel explained anything? He didn’t know, he didn’t know, and he sought to stifle several aprioristic frights that occurred to him. Lawyers, he decided, could never be jurors — and thought itself , in fact, is the product of a kind of paranoia. His own mind repelled him, a sort of autoimmune reaction in which he categorically rejected his own thoughts, for matter, he felt, only comes to life, life becomes thought, thought will, and will goes back to matter. I love you, was his only thought. So he settled back into contradictionlessness, resigned to this conviction, however, that their wedding again might be postponed — he had no idea why but knew she reasonlessly feared telling him so — and before long he was fast asleep, as if taking refuge from what, by simply accepting, he then needn’t seek to avoid: the awful struggle to deny that anything beautiful is nothing else but dream. And there on the plane he slept back a full three years in time to what was suddenly London, dreamlit by memory.