Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

“Kill their children, if they should have any! There’s to be no pity: nits will be lice!”

He shot off the face.

“Kill her parents — a murder of total elimination — for the soul of the offspring, say the Traducians, originates by transmission. Nothing exceeds like excess! Send them to Azrail, the angel of death, and let Munkar and Nakeer inquisition them in hell.” He fired: twiiiiing ! And again: twoooong ! Howling, he emptied the entire gun into the screen.

“ Kill them all !” he screamed, biting the air in the fullness of his malice. “ Kill them all !”

“R-R-REVENGE!” cried Dr. Crucifer, his voice resembling the tearing of a strip of calico. He was almost unable to pronounce the word from happiness as he pressed the pistol into Darconville’s hands. “It is a wonderful witty word much disliked by those to whom the thing signified by it is nevertheless dear. Harden your heart. What good is kindness now? All delight comes to an end, hence the chief pleasure in the next beginning: spill the thing’s blood and water a mandrake! It’s only justice! White, to use the parlance of chess, is always morally justified in attacking, so let black see to black — remember, in describing a capture only the capturing and captured pieces are mentioned, never slyness of method or means. Say nothing and you won’t have to repeat it. But be chaos: fast in action, dirigible in absence. She doesn’t have the right to own the area she’s in.

“Come, do you hesitate?” Crucifer looked wounded. “Didn’t Alexander destroy the oldest cities on earth without a qualm — Tyre, Cyprus, Gaza, Boeotia, and a thousand more? Or Ferdinand Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba, did he shrink from answering with fire and sword the question of Dutch perfidy? And had Louis XIII any doubts about the justice of fitting out Protestant Huguenots as blackbirds and shooting them just for the sport of it as they leaped about and exploded in puffs of feathers? I mean, if you have a problem, and you know the answer to it, isn’t the problem immediately eliminated?

“The comfortablest revenge is when you can kill to pardon.” He winked. “There’s sugar in salt, I tell you. But, here, don’t hoard your grief — you have someone to divide it with! It’s as easy as witches bottling air! You can summon demons from the hell-light pale! You can appeal to Fornax, god of ovens! You can even pray for it, for in several secret chapels in North Wales you can actually make supplication to vengeance and, with one carnaficial kiss, offer up your enemy to Sts. Llan Elian in Anglesea and Chynog in Carnarvonshire! But you must act! Intense device! Superflux of pain! Nothing is worse for the soul than struggling not to give play to feelings it cannot control. Revenge is a dish best served up cold — have at her swiftly before she tries to make amends! Do it now! Kill her! A promise to do so in the past was not redeemed, Darconville — the thought, I daresay, having too much play in the expression of it.

“All that’s real,” hissed Crucifer, sitting down heavily on the sofa, “is rational ! Black magic, with all its grim theatricals, is all very fine and large yet nothing more than exploiting lost angels with impunity. You must not simply cut off from your agony all that is superfluous but necessarily impart a shape to what is left: be avenged here,” he pointed, “in this life. Scupper her right there in her stained and mousy sheets, rank with twice-dyed blood! Or do you prefer, tell me, other than a pistol?” he asked, taking it and setting it aside. “Are there no longer racks, wheels, strappadoes? Bilboes, feral engines, iron collars? Or pikes, the tyrants of the wat’ry plain?” His face turned the color of craft paper. “I mean, precisely what are the other ways to skin a cat?”

Dr. Crucifer’s soul seemed to come waveringly forward, like a grey vapor, out of his eye-sockets, until it formed itself into a shadowy double of a person.

“Poleax her! Bang her on the toenails with dowels and mallets as they do to Indian elephants! Sfregia la ?” he giggled, drawing a finger along his throat. “Death has a thousand doors to let out life!” He threw out a series of short paratactic suggestions. “Scorch her with ultraviolet light! Truss her up in ropes and thraw her jerking in all directions! Slip her a funny-tasting pie! Pick any of the three swords of Mohammed: Medham the Keen or Hatef the Deadly or al Battar the Trenchant! In Iceland”—he clapped his hands—”they beat codfish into powder for bread. Or shall it come as it did for Adonibezec, King of Bezek, who had his thumbs and big toes amputated? How about eserine? Physostigmine? Ovabain? Bouillon d’onze heures ?

“The quickest poison is the barbiturate thiopentone: one choice in-tracardiac shot”—Crucifer blew a kiss—”and cheery-bye! Or you might consider aconitine or digitalin, which can’t be detected. A more colorful alternative? Try 1000 cc’s of scoline, not only swift but the state of horror and intense fear before excruciating suffocation is indescribable. The Borgias adored white hellebore, thorn-apple, and Christmas-rose. Then there’s always our old friend curare, which relaxes the abdominal muscles to the point where breathing will just simply stop and, as it’s soluble, if the body were then immersed in water — have they bathtubs in Fawx’s Mt.? — all traces will disappear. But what? Raw rice, pounded glass, ribstone pippin, Bean of St. Ignatius, fool’s parsley, Godfrey’s cordial, sesquisulphuret of arsenic — it’s God’s plenty! Paralysis from buttercups, stupor from buckeye seeds, agony from mistletoe berries! All natural, all nice. In irritant poisoning, the pain usually comes on gradually, and slowly increase in severity. Neurotic poisons, whether spinal, narcotic, or cerebrospinal, of course rarely leave any well-marked traces in the stomach or bowels, and any pretenders to minute analytical accuracy will invariably apply their tests in vain. I personally favor anything, for elegance, that addresses the spinal marrow.” Crucifer, smiling, crossed his legs and pick-a-backed his hands. “But I love them all.

“The poisoner is, I must confess, of all others the genius. He must have the confidence of the person he is killing; he must appear amiable; he must be willing to give from his own hand those drops that mean death. And yet all the while,” smiled Crucifer, “the victim sits as helpless as an egg about to be tapped! But it doesn’t matter how, does it? Death conjugates all tenses. It matters why , first of all. Then, it matters when.” He paused. “I am an Arab, you forget. Revenge is almost a religious principle among us.” He leaned toward Darconville. “The only point is: when you bite, make your teeth meet.”

The silence that followed indicated a pause that seemed too much like moral deliberation. Couchant immediately became rampant: Dr. Crucifer fought up off the sofa and, as if his delight in caricature sprang from his own unfortunate condition, played out not only with fists and faces but in terrible detail the rest of his indoctrination.

“There is a various plenty in slaying of constants and parameters. Proficient? Freeze her to death, then thaw her out — the perfect murder. Ingenius? Perform a transabdominal laparohysterosalpingo-oôphorectomy on her, unsuccessfully ! Historical? Double her up like a small compass in the ‘Scavenger’s Daughter.’ Slow? Try the Thousand Piece Execution: the idea of this is to cut out from her body one tiny square bit the size of a cough lozenge, say, every few minutes or so until bit by bit — all of them selected with discrimination so as to have her live to the nine-hundred-ninety-ninth piece — her whole body has been removed. Amusing? Tickle her to death with the tassels of her wedding card. Suitable? Brank her like a shrew by padlocking a sack over her head — the virtue here being that, unlike a cucking, the tongue is not given liberty ‘twixt dips — and dunk her in a gum-stool until she drowns to death. Ethical? Place a lethal snake in one corner of her house and at the same time place the exact amount of antitoxin to cure the bite in another — then walk away. Patriotic? Smother her to death in the Virginia state flag. Metaphysical? Dream her to death in a mind-war and watch her combust in a nasty puff of smoke. Colorful? The Chinese dai sh’pin comes to mind, a particular treat where you feed her bits of paper pulp — it’s nutritional, briefly — which, absorbing moisture, sit humectant in the digestive tract, making it increasingly more difficult to defecate as each day passes, and in the process renders vain any attempt on her part to try to stick her fingers up her anus to pry out the dry lumps.” Crucifer glinked sideways. “Are these yet too elaborate? Too venturesome? Inapposite? Overcon-ceptualized? Explicit? Jeopardous?” He touched a finger to his brow in a pose of self-consultation. “Mmmmm, sad. Then why don’t you—”