Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

It was a blatant rudeness, not to Greatracks, of course, who loved it, but to her husband, for common report had it that she was Greatracks’s mistress, that he had finagled her the managership of the Piggly Wiggly, and that on more than one Saturday night their twin, fully unambiguous shadows had been seen thrown against the indiscreet shades of the otherwise irreproachable Timberlake Hotel.

“Honey,” exclaimed Mrs. Dodypol, slightly inebriated and turning to Darconville the countenance of a bummish down-and-out clown, the umbo of her nose scarlet and her general features flaking like an old moist Roman fresco, “think. No crime. Country air. Plup-plup-pl,” she hiccuped, “plain folks.” Her eyes swam, crossed, reddened. She was all mops and brooms, and as the heat rose to her face, frazzling her hair, she seemed to reinforce Casanova’s theory that any woman over fifty-six need no longer be considered among the living. “And then what about that shweet child,” her tongue thickened, “you take out walkin’?” She tapped his heart. “Solid. Loyal. Faithful.” It was the common, amplified anti-rhetoric of the drunk: brief, non-discursive, laconic.

“And cute as pah ,” pitched in Greatracks, putting her drink vertical.

“You stay on,” breathed the Dodypol Better Half through her powder and fucus. “That right?”

“Sunshine,” said Greatracks, beaming, “you as right as rain!”

Lowering her mottled face, Mrs. Dodypol took a thriftless slug of fruity domestic. “And so,” she hiccuped, “will you will or won’t you won’t?” She waited with the drunk’s fussy care, the ungainsayable doggedness. “Yes, sugar pie?”

“Now don’t go crowdin’ him, dumperling,” said Greatracks, jogging Darconville in the ribs. “He be back, shinin’ like a nigger’s heel. Right?”

Deliberating, Darconville thought: yes, I will be back . It was suddenly strange, for of the many times he had heard the question this was the first time he had heard the answer. Was to agree to yield? he wondered. He didn’t know. He had been fearful for so long that if he came to like Quinsyburg he might not hate it anymore, the fear faded: the act committed by not acting. He thought of a related question: precisely what of that freedom which, exercised, relinquished itself? And that led to still another: may one be consoled in the absolute that everything is relative? It immediately occurred to Darconville, then, that to allow for the absence of danger was somehow to acknowledge the possibility of slavery. And yet he was in love! He had opted forever, and for something to be entirely romantic, he thought, it had to be irrevocable. So choice itself had been made irrelevant. His freedom, paradoxically, was the deliverance from it: the choice, chosen, never to choose again.

Darconville, nodding, said he would be back.

“That is a joy ,” brayed Mrs. Dodypol, almost bleaching Darconville’s hair in a spatter-spray of drunken yux and wet-cupping her mouth. She turned merrily and pronged President Greatracks in the bullseye of his navel with a fingernail the color of potassium permanganate. “Isn’t it, skeezix? Just a ol’ joy?” There was no response, however, other than that of a great dopplerian whoop of laughter, for having caught sight of a tray of ham slabs and a mess of wallop-sized buns Greatracks was now more than halfway across the room and moving fast. Without a pause, Mrs. Dodypol, part-time grisette and supremo of the Piggly Wiggly — spilling her drink — bounced into the air and sprang after him through the room with a scream like that of a crazed woodfreak.

Darconville just stood there. Colorless as an etching, resigned, Dr. Dodypol looked up at him. He blinked. Then he silently picked up several crackers from a plate and put them into the pygmean side-pocket of his graveclothes and walked aimlessly through the smoke of the noisy room, looking back only once: to smile sadly at Darconville, hold up a cracker over his head, and then, inexplicably, bite it in two in one ferocious turtle-like snap — after which he turned through the crowd and, solitary, followed himself out to the garden where the Chinese lanterns were. Darconville looked on until he disappeared. And then he looked at his watch.

* * * * *

Friday 4:03 P.M.: The Smethwick library, though open, is virtually empty, not a rare thing, alas, on weekends at Quinsy College. Isabel is there, however, sitting noiselessly and alone in the tomb of the reference room, surrounded by shelves of maroon encyclopedias, newspapers racked in binding-shafts, globes. (That is Miss Pouce rearranging the art oversizes in the next room by the window with the mixed bowl of maypop and bunchberry.) Isabel stares through a blank notebook to the face of mournful Ate rising in a page, faintly frowning back at her with expressionless lavender lips and profane eyes; her pencil waits in her fist, her fist on her cheek, her cheek pale. Thesis: apprehension is foreknowledge. Antithesis: what we see is what we sometimes by mistake think we foresee. Synthesis: Isabel, knocking on her head, subdues a wish to probe further and determinedly turns to her index cards, fact-filled with notes for her art termpaper on the subtle and artfully worked technique in Dutch potting of concealing dull earthen pottery in pretty white glaze and decoration: “Decoys in Delftware.”

* * * * *

Soon, the party was in full swing. The flint was struck, a spark flew out, and the dry little birdnests that were the hearts of the participants, once ignited, now crackled, then spread. The crowd grew, as if the guests in some kind of ridiculous fission seemed to double at every turn. It was a Wimmelbilder : a teempool, now in high report, of party goons, noisome dowds and doodles, truffatores, pusspockets, stoop-nagels, and a whole crazy retinue of hoopoes-in-fine-fettle.

Guests, being introduced, were rotated like tops. These were the Ho’s, those were the Hum’s. Those were the Go’s, these were the Come’s. The Snipps met the Snapps and the Snapps met the Snurrs. It was endless. But Felice Culpa, who had no end of energy, loved the combinations. Dr. Roget, Miss Carp; Miss Carp, Dr. Roget. “Delighted,” said motograph-voiced Dr. Roget, one of the pawns on the Board of Visitors, “overjoyed, highly-pleased, gratified.” “Peachy,” replied ninety-year-old Miss Carp, her long cigarette wagging up and down on the two syllables. A former teacher at Quinsy, she was one of those outspoken choleric old sticks down South who smoked three packs a day, said anything she damned well pleased, and was given a wide berth — in this case, a wider one than most, ostracized as she’d been in the Quinsyburg community ever since casting that irreligious vote in 1928 for Al Smith. The Culpas, her neighbors, liked her and thought to do something about it, but not everyone approved, and Mrs. DeCrow, looking like Vrouw Bodolphe come alive, thought the invitation disgraceful, clacked her teeth, and turned her back to the room.

Others couldn’t be introduced. Dr. Glibbery was searching for hot sauce in the kitchen. The Weerds, alone, were talking to each other in the backyard. And Dean Barathrum was in the bathroom. In two cane chairs on the porch, side by side, Misses Shepe and Ghote were sitting like pharaohs, their hands on their knees. They noticed Darconville. “Forget the black clothes,” muttered Miss Ghote. “It’s the long hair gives me the dreads.” “Well, long hair,” sniffed Miss Shepe, “ is sanctioned in the Bible, Miss Ghote.” She smiled. “Judges 13:5.” Miss Ghote arranged her fingers into a reef knot. “I hate to disappoint you, Miss Shepe,” said Miss Ghote, who hadn’t the slightest intention of sitting passively by and allowing her neighbor the luxury of placing the teapot of her Episcopalian proclivities on her Baptist trivet, “but long hair is not sanctioned in the Bible.” She shifted indignantly on her sapless buttocks. “You want to re-read I Corinthians 11:14, I’m afraid.” It was only another one of those pull-devil, pull-baker affairs that would last long into the night, good old ecclesiastical coun-teravouchings, each felt, having both source and sanction in such great biblical priestesses of yore as Euodias, Syntyche, Priscilla, Phoebe the deacon, and all the other spoof-proof little charmers who traveled across the sacred pages of Scripture in numbers too big to ignore.