Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

Suddenly, he rang a bell by the side of the bed. “And yet how like sits upon like. Isabel: Elizabeth — one’s a wonder, the other’s a Tudor! Virginians two and two less than a deuce. When they meet in hell they can shout ‘Snap!’ How things come round at last.”

Lampblack, tugging his forelock, appeared in the doorway. “Lunch, Master Numps,” ordered Dr. Crucifer, who before the boy went out explained with sharp directives that he was first to pour him an apéritif and to bring Darconville anything he wanted over the next few days. “My bum-boy,” said Crucifer, smiling at Darconville, “my clerk of the hanaper, my exécuteur des hautes oeuvres .” The boy quickly obliged. Crucifer took his glass and, standing, held it aloft to intone:

”A lexical man came to marry

And erred for the trull’s mood did vary;

The rosy cheeked bride, feared a

Uxoricide.

Prevail, worthy man, but be wary.”

“Get my clothes.”

“You aren’t well.”

“I have no intention of staying here.”

“Tut-tut,” warned Crucifer.

Darconville struggled to move up in the bed. “I do not like you,” he said. “I do not acquiesce. I will never like you. I will never acquiesce. Now I’ll say it once more: my clothes, get them.” But he felt tired, disoriented, and, troubled by an elusive interdiction there, couldn’t help but sense that everything for which he’d ever hoped or striven had somehow been relinquished in the confines of that room. His chest ached, and even in the dimmest light his eyes consistently hurt.

“You’re not going to be ungrateful, now, are you?” asked Crucifer. He screamed for Lampblack. “You mustn’t stir, in any case, not certainly until you’ve eaten and—”

Crucifer’s eyes smiled, sheepishly.

“And?”

“—well, until the chlorpromazine wears off.”

Smiling, Dr. Crucifer held up the empty cognac inhaler from which Darconville had drunk, twirled it between his clubbed fingers, and set it down.

“And so, you see, we can continue without fear of having to choose between other courses.” Darconville slowly rolled over onto his face and breathed out in deep agony as the keeper of the bed took the occasion, swiftly, to refill the empty goblet from a special decanter he was keeping under the table. “Now, we were discussing motives, not ours, rather Mistress Commodity’s. It would seem—”

But Lampblack suddenly appeared in the doorway balancing a tray at eye-level; it held two steaming bowls, some glasses, and a litre of wine. The boy carried it to the table by the bed. Darconville, however, refused to eat even as Dr. Crucifer, humped forward in hunger, told the fare: bush of crayfish in Viking herbs and frog cream, fingers of toast, and a sturdy Côtes de Montravel. Lampblack — it was his habit — waited, biting his nails, until Crucifer, waggling a bit of delicacy out of the bowl with his fingers, held out the trifle to the boy which he snapped up, and then he disappeared. Crucifer poured the wine and raised his glass: “Confusion to ladies!”—and he began to eat.

“I was saying,” he continued, abrodietically licking his fingers, “it would seem to be impossible to consider this new mésalliance except in reference to you — the simple logistics of a ladder: touching points. It was a relationship, yes, but one of those relationships of contradiction whereby the error of illogical distribution — and of course,” he paused, “in love,” he sneered, “there is never enough equality to go around — prevented any logical conclusion. Why, even the proposition that hides in her name — I-A-E — serves no logical mood.

“We’re agreed,” said Crucifer, sucking in two fish from the spoon and waving some toast, “there was a plot. But why. See? How. She either came to look at herself through your eyes, in my opinion, and, flattering herself by what she saw in them, while at the same time not uncoincidentally making you indispensable, was driven to have that adoration confirmed elsewhere — a woman is repeatedly compelled to call herself a reward — or, as I say, your vision of the world frightened her to this point, that she came to take a realistic view of things and, reverting to type, capitulated for security ! Money! Jews’ butter! Fric! A fellaheen habit, I’ve seen it before. Semele, remember, prayed for a visit from Jupiter in all his splendor, but when he came his lightning killed her.” He smiled gruesomely and grugeoned at the food. “I love that story.” He wiped away the smile. “You of course asked very little of her, but hers, you mustn’t forget, was a quest-in-reverse, an attempt to shed the meaning of her life rather than find it, see? Emptiness is the female form of perdition.” He squelched, chewing his food, and breathed laboriously through his nose as he did so; the cult of the belly as an ethic appeared to him as perfectly natural, and it was obvious as he ate that he retained a predilection for such celibates who displayed the good sense of preferring gluttony to love. “Put a light load on a donkey, you see, and it thinks it can lie down, literally, in this instance — for women, like Egyptians, well know the principle of the inclined plane — and so she gilt up her eyebrows with arsedine, put on a tight sweater, and trotted off down the road.”

“No.”

“And notice when she acted: precisely when it would pay off . Good and evil in a woman’s mind, I tell you, mean simply money and no money. Forgive me, but I suspect unless one promised her marriage it’d have been harder to plug her than to sneak daybreak past a rooster! What, you don’t think he fucked her?” Crucifer grolched noisily. “This is embarrassing.” He pressed his cheeks. “I’m not being wrong enough. I’m too correct .”

“No!” insisted Darconville into the pillow.

“Very likely,” replied Crucifer, “exceedingly likely. Very exceedingly likely.”

He calmly lapped some cream off the spoon.

“And for a Dutchman! The Pilgrims, remember, left Leyden for America not for religious reasons — simply, their children were becoming Flemings! I’ve been to Holland. What, a sail down the Amstel, a box of sugar cookies, and an afternoon listening to the horrible rhythms of the Froth-Blowers’ anthem?” Crucifer poured more wine and drained the glass. “Have you ever met this rival?”

Darconville said nothing.

“No answer.”

He leaned forward.

“Did you ever try?” He waited. “No answer.

“The Dutch dog, tell me, is he — wealthy? His family?”

“Yes.”

“A color card! I tell you,” said Crucifer, fussing through some green sprigs to pull out another crayfish which he devoured like a bor-borygmite, “a woman’s virtue is always in greater danger from opportunity than desire. Ambition has an intellect that runs like a rat through all the scrutinous possibilities here — and, I think, has snouted a hole! She wouldn’t have been—”

Darconville turned questioningly to Crucifer.

“—promiscuous?’ ‘

“No.”

“No,” snapped Crucifer, sourly. “ Pride ! It is the very one that will tolerate none of the other Deadly Sins — not stinking, neither faltering, nor loosening its grip. It is self-contained, protectively secretive, and so poised between envy and antipathy, passions irreconcilable to reason, that as one monster seeks to predominate the personality the other cries it back, and wantonness is mitigated in the vain pursuit of self-esteem.” Crucifer clacked through his bowl with a spoon for the last traces of cream. “Its disguises are not pretense but fact, revealing not sanity but concealing folly. Arrogance exacts seeming perfection! It acts a lawyer to the will, which, while appearing outwardly harmless,” said he, looking suddenly strange, “conceals a most genuine depravity. I know about depravity,” he whispered, never taking his cold eyes off Darconville as he rang the bell. “I can see in the dark, haven’t I told you? When most I wink, then do mine eyes best see.” He rang the bell again. “I have told you that, haven’t I?”