Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

And then suddenly a hideous scream filled the room — the most dreadful and abject sound Darconville had ever heard: he sat white with terror, quivering, as it rang in his ears with inflexible steadiness until a silence, like denial, fell about him telling him what he could not feel and still could not believe. It had been his very own voice.

He sat there, in the darkness, shivering in the dreadful chill of his diarrhea. Then he stumbled over to the mantel, blew out the vigil light, and took a bottle over to his desk where he slowly prepared the moment — he artfully composed a letter to the Naval Academy on official Harvard stationery requesting a photograph of Gilbert van der Slang on the pretext of his having been selected by the college for some special award of merit: a sprat to catch a mackerel. He drank from the bottle in long pulls, gulping more, then finished it all, wishing he would die — not that he faced death with fortitude, he merely faced life without any. Laboriously, he proceeded to dress and for the first time in weeks went out of his room, the effort in simply descending the stairs — where he called and called and called his cat — leaving him weak to the bones and whiter than a corpse.

He made his way to the corner of Mt. Auburn St. and mailed the letter: extinctus pudor . It was a very cold night, making the simple act of walking — a struggle in illness and fatigue and drunkenness— next to impossible. Crossing back to Adams House, he looked up toward the morbid rooms with the pulled shades and tears of bitterness sprang to his eyes. You are crueler, you that we love, he thought looking toward the sky, than hatred, hunger, or death. He reeled. “You have eyes and breasts like a dove, and you kill men’s hearts with a breath.” A group of students stood in the Adams doorway on Bow St., and the gaunt unkempt figure pushed past them.

“You could say excuse me,” exclaimed one of them with disdain. Darconville turned slowly.

“I would have,” he said, seriously, “if I didn’t have to speak to you.”

The door closed, and he was no sooner inside before the hallway suddenly moved; the floor seemed to buckle. A strange black light leapt in front of his eyes. Darconville reached for the nearest wall to steady himself but fell to the floor, his face a greyslick, and lay there in a state of obdormition, more dead than alive, but alive still, alive nevertheless, relentlessly alive to the mysterious and deathless reality in which for no known reason he was living.

IT WAS with Darconville now as with wastrels, left with thoughts such as sue and send, and send and sue again, but to no purpose, the evil of policy and plot having rained down like a plague upon everything of value he’d once owned. His was the compunction of one fallen from grace, whose wounds were of a nature to be cured no longer with balms but corrosives.

The folly! The sacrilege! The loss! The inheritance he’d squandered when, forsaking his father’s house, he came down from Galilee and wandered south toward Moab, over to Edom, and then into Goshen itself! The wasted dreams! The pens, inkcakes, and writing palettes sold for a fistful of silver to buy rings and baubles and toys on night-walks through the shadowy sûks of Rephidim! Cheated at Damascus! Burnt with fire at Shushan! Robbed in the leaping-houses of Al-duqa as-sawda! The pagan idols and teraphim on whom he threw away whole fortunes in rubies and gold! The self-satisfaction in the face of fate! The feasts and banquets given over to whole cities, the drinking out of full bowls, the dancing in silver-soled sandals to obscene flutes and timbrels! What truth hadn’t been forfeited, what trust not mislaid? Beaten in Jezreel! Drugged in Bubastis! The excesses in the abiding places of Babylon, attainted of outrages on morals and perfumed with calamus and onycha, where to amuse herself one night a whore swallowed his richest pearl and, to flatter her, he wallowed in her flesh as if there to find it! The emptiness! The trivialities! The turmoils of weeping before the ghosts of what he couldn’t have! All, all had profited him nothing! The profane songs sung to unkempt shepherds in the Wilderness of Zin, the dice-throwing with the soldiers of Porcius Festus, the wasted years dabbling in Gnosticism! Ridiculed in Gath! Corrupted in Philistia! The dissipation in the brothels of Megiddo where fops smeared themselves with malobathrum and ate pomegranates watered with silphium and collop-bellied tarts danced naked before the graven images of Baal! The fools and Marduk-faced losels and malefactors on whom he gambled away entire fleets of Cilician horses! The recklessness! The presumption that he deserved to be loved! The love he foreswore while, ignoring his faith, he sucked up to thralls and hirelings and read in counterfeit books and riddled wit with the high-priests and intellectuals of Ecbatana and Zebulun! The silences he took for adoration! The extravagance! Perverted in Admah! Condemned in Zeboim! The chances he had thrown away! Who hadn’t loved enough could now not love at all! All, all lay dead upon his hands!

Crying out, Darconville struggled to get up — then fell back flat onto the floor, totally unconsciovts. It was late at night, gone quiet now, and there was no one around to help him who might have for who could have been found in the hallways at such an hour? That night God and Satan fought long hours for his soul. And God conquered. It was only left to be determined which of the two was God.

“UNE NUIT BLANCHE, VIEUX?”

Darconville opened his eyes.

“It’s cognac. 1884,” said Dr. Crucifer, solicitously hovering over the bed and holding out a round goblet. “Please, won’t you allow me to lead you beside distilled waters?”

They were in a bedroom of a portentous size, with a barreled ceiling crisscrossed with oak slats in a pattern something like a cat’s cradle. A rich Burgundian tapestry hung on a far wall: two medieval figures hurrying out of a garden at the behest of a stern pointing angel. Below it stood a phonograph. There were silver sconces by the door, ginger jars, mirrors. A beautifully quilted counterpane heavily worked with a design of gold fishbones and anthropolatric-faced pentagrams had been neatly folded on a Jacobean cross-legged chair next to the four-poster bed in which, inexplicably, Darconville now found himself. It was a cumbrous load of oak — the sheets yellow silk sprigged in black — so tall to reach from floor to ceiling and wide enough that it appeared to be designed for three.

“What is this? Where am I?” asked Darconville, trying to sit up.

“You were found — drunk enough to piss through your shirt collar. Ill. Delirious. I don’t doubt you’ve had a bad experience. I see you went down South, the Albania of America, mmm?”

“What—?”

“Lie back, my dear. Don’t misunderstand me: the airplane ticket in your room — I went to fetch your pajamas — spoke volumes. It’s irrelevant, anyway. You’ve been raving out loud about little else since last night, so I shan’t pretend not to know what’s happened. Fawx’s Mt.,” pronounced Crucifer with a snort. “Village life and peasants with water-buckets? Flown over by a bird of paradise? Heading towards the sun? How goes it down there — are men still men, women women, and the sheep glad of it?”

“I don’t have to listen to this,” said Darconville, attempting to rise but falling back, weakly.