Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

“The temptation, of course, is to wait. And how easy to prevail by doing nothing more than that, for nothing forbids you from reflecting that with every passing minute she is growing older, fatter, homelier. You are avenged 1440 times a day! How old is the puffin — twenty-three? Why, for a girl that’s late autumn! She’s got two more years to be loved, ten more to love herself, and the rest to pray to God! But why wait? Will she not strout? She will. Did she not spitrack you? She did. Was she not a spot-powdered, downsical-bearing cat of convenience? She was. So, being on land, settle; being at sea, sail. Why hesitate? To suit a natural action to a most unnatural crime? You were her victim; must you be her dupe? No, my child, the past is the adversary of the future, and past mirth will have future laughter, don’t you see? A few luminous and fervent hours are enough to give meaning to an entire lifetime, the honor of which is at stake and the outcome hanging in the balance. The very voices of your forebears cry to you from the ground, ‘My son, scorn to be a slave!’

“Heed to consent! Hearken to comply! Follow not the dictates of a sloven and unmerited mercy but enlist yourself under the sacred banner of justice to play out its ends and prevent the curses of posterity from being heaped upon your memory that both by this trial and its swift redressai we shall be delivered, that we shall have deliverance at last, and until the last shock of time shall bury her memory in ignominious and undistinguished ruin! Datum serva! Cognatus cole ! There alone shall be peace for you, and otherwise there won’t, for what makes a person noble? Not a continued false and smothered love, surely, for love if it’s real never refuses what love sends. Neither pity, for that is nothing more than a disagreeable impulse of the instinct for appropriation at the sight of what seems to be weaker. What makes honor? A person brave? Constitutes perfection? I will venture to say that no man ever rose to any degree of perfection but through obstinacy and an inveterate resolution against the stream of mankind!

“I want a platter — listen to me — and I want a head on that platter! Inaction itself must otherwise assume the proportions of a crime. I see a demon behind you standing in the midst of her own noise, the biology of whose shadow cannot and will not be studied! Examine it no further! But there is a reality pitched above that shadow. It’s yours alone to feast on in ill-will! Stand upon her — and prevail, overcoming the hound that bays and rejoicing only that you’ve lived to say, ‘The dog is dead!’ She was your hell in perspective, was she not, and is it not written that justice is the punishment of sin? Rack her soul for it then! There is always more that you can be than what you are! Thaw out thunder! Dun the reality for what it is! When are you going to learn that Satan isn’t a metaphor ?”

[Note: in the lists that follow, the paper edition contains

ditto marks (") to indicate repetition of the words

“libera nos, Domine” after each entry. It is hoped

the reader will mentally supply these and forgive

their ommission here for the sake of simplicity.

—remz]

THE WORDS were so terrifying that they precluded any possibility of interruption, anaesthetizing Darconville where he lay in a silence of sustained disbelief. Dr. Crucifer’s face was bloodless white, like the underside of a sole, his mouth writhing with unintelligible words, when suddenly proceeding to the phonograph he set in a record which came up slowly in the mournful rhythm of plain chant. It was the “ Dies Irae ”—the saddest, emptiest, most melancholy determination of sorrow on earth. He seemed as he closed his eyes to be listening to something beyond him, as if in bizarre and unhallowed colloquy with his inner self, and then he turned, moving now around the ancient relics of the room, and in the falsetto modulations of that impossible voice began to recite in a cold drawn-out prolation the queerest litany ever heard:

“—from Eve and her quinces, libera nos, Domine

—from Jael, the jakesmaid,

—from Pasiphaë, the Cretan motherlord,

—from Venus Illegitima, goddess of

unnatural acts,

—from Alice Trip-and-Go, who wardeleth,

—from Dejah Thoris, princess of helium,

—from Beatrice Joanna, the changeling,

—from Galinthia, who was turned into a

cat,

—from Belestiche, mistress of Ptolemy II,

—from Fanny Abington and her harlotries,

—from Lupa, the wife of Faustulus,

—from Queen Gertrude of Denmark,

frampold and feak,

—from Kaulah, the sister of Derar,

—from Old Mother Whummle and her

Winchester geese,

—from Jezebel and her 50¢ womb,

—from Signera Bubonia and her poxes,

—from La Dolcequita, cara de vinagre ,

—from Umm Kulsum, the hag procuress,

—from the Marquise de Brinvilliers,

poisoner and viragint,

—from Mad Meg and her shittle-witted

gixies,

—from Temba-Ndumba, child-eater of

the Jagas,

—from all Sirens, Hirens, and Pampered

Jades,

—from Agrippinilla, mother of Nero,

—from Lysistrata and her antianeirai ,

—from Hyacinthe Chantelouve,

the gernative backstress,

—from the Ghats of the Indian Ocean,

—from Lady Midhurst, the gongoon,

—from Seraphina Feliciano, Contesse de

Cagliostro,

—from Linda Ne Touchez Pas, the tit

of turncoats,

—from Angerona, goddess of melancholy,

—from Unakuagsak, the Great Mother

of Eskimos,

—from Mistress Libuschka and her

slit-piece,

—from Urganda, the fairy neckbite,

—from the Fifty Daughters of Danaus,

—from Pudicitia and her mattress

knights. .”

Dr. Crucifer deambulated, walking in rogational fashion now, and the drone became perceptibly higher and higher as he moved. He was overcrowing with hatred and disgust, his mouth becoming absurdly puckered and puffed as he began a funeral clap.

“—from Iolanthe the impositrix, libera nos, Domine

—from Sycorax, the black poozle,

—from Venus Calva, who was bald,

—from Medea, the craven sluck,

—from Lady Caroline Lamb, whose

clicket was ever clacking,

—from Efna Koloi, the Queen of Ashanti,

—from Miss Dubedatandshedidbedad,

—from Lucrezia del Sarto,

la scapepuzzano ,

—from Mother Atkins of Pinner,

—from Mme. Britannica Hollandia

of Hollands Leaguer,

—from Anactoria the anispix,

—from Cleopatra VII, high-priestess

of rashers,

—from Rahab the harlot,

—from Melinda Goosestrap, hussy and

cheatstress,

—from Sue Lozo, the sheela-na-gig,

—from Queen Hatshepsut, bint al-bazra ,

—from Lambito the pintleless,

—from Khatun, Queen of the Mongols,

—from Isabel Burton, the ballacher,

—from Azazel, inventress of jewelry,

—from Paphian Aphrodite, the pocket

thief of hearts,

—from Charybdis and her voracious

mouth,

—from Lady Macbeth, the missing lynx,

—from Jane ‘Boo’ Faulkner, the nurse

for a prayer,

—from Eurygale and her fat colworts,

—from Calypso the croshabell,

—from Isadora Klein, the Hebrew

shortheel,

—from Thuvia, Maid of Mars,

—from Parisina Malatesta, the princess

of cats,

—from the Maiden All Forlorn

That Milked the Cow with the

Crumpled Horn,

—from Gawrey, the flying scrunch,