Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

“This is hilarious,” said one of his lackeys.

“What fun.”

“I’m about to split my si-hi-hi-hides,” said another.

But the door tipped open — and Mrs. Dodypol pitched out backwards, her hair sticking out like a wig created by Klimt, and fell supple as a tobacco pouch into the outspread arms of President Great-racks, who wabbled backwards on his ill-smelling feet and angrily looked about him and wondered out loud just who the hell in the dang a-rea, goddamit, aimed to grow themselves enough backbone to get a poor child a drink of water? The pipe-smoking lickgolds, each cautious as a medieval guard watching over the king’s nef , all hopped to. “I will,” said one. “Leave it to me,” said another. “No, me,” said still another.

“I think I know what to do,” said Miss Skait’s date, appearing from nowhere. “I saw this here movie on television last night where someone got shot, see, and the victim’s brother, no, his father from, I don’t know, someplace where they wear those fur hats, what, Czechoslovania or something, the Orient anyway, said to elevate his feet, I mean head, and—”

Checking his watch, Darconville took advantage of the distraction and ran upstairs again to the telephone. He dialed several numbers. The ghost in Isabel’s dormitory wouldn’t answer. The infirmary nurse, doing her bedpans, rudely told him to call back. And the sheriff was out.

* * * * *

Friday 10:20 P.M.: Isabel solus is sobbing on a bed too real, covered with a quilt too narrow. She writhes, she twists, she toils, perspiring and spiked from within. The sleeping pill she took sustains but a periodic unconsciousness, easing neither the dying out of life nor the living out of pain. A black dream enacts itself in her fever: a telephone, locked on its rack, is screaming and screaming for help, as if being tortured alive. Isabel’s shadow comes at her bellowing, “ She won’t pick it up !” Isabel cries in reply, “She can’t pick it up!” “ She won’t pick it up !” But Isabel cries, “She can’t pick it up with a hand that wants to!” “ She won’t pick it up! She won’t! She won’t !” The screaming then stops, the telephone is dead. Trembling, Isabel wakes and tries to call Annabel Lee Jenks, who has gone. Her puffed face burns back at her from the night window in a foolish swollen reflection. Everyone has left her. Everyone hates her. Everyone has gone to sea. In a sudden wingstroke of will, Isabel, standing on her shadow, brutally shakes the telephone to life, dials another number, and — as the Incidental leaps up to throttle the Essential — whispers low to the party at the other end, “Govert?”

* * * * *

A painting of Mt. Vernon took pride of place in the living room. Floyce had done it for the Guipas earlier in the year, and now as the various members of the faculty sat around there, drinking, it came under discussion, meeting with drunken abuse from the men and, from the women, unfeminine swipes that in the eighteenth century, the Virginian’s favorite, would at least have been whispered behind fans, an uncharitable belowting that ridiculed the beginnings of skill and the ends of art. Miss Throwswitch called it untheatrical. Dr. Glibbery asked if a nigger done it. And Mrs. DeCrow, snickering, pretended to look at it sideways and yet still had to admit it honored a great American, no, not Floyce, she added, putting an objurgatory sibilance to his name — but George Washington. “First in war, first in peace,” she quoted pompously, “and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”

“Still,” said Felice, her eyes smiling, “he married a widow.”

Mrs. DeCrow, her eyes going ablaze with prosecutional bitchery, turned cat-a-pan and marched out of the room. “Terribly earnest,” murmured Felix Culpa, unwrapping another bottle of bourbon. “Well, you know,” said Felice to Darconville, “the poor old pelican hasn’t been the same since the operation. The cosmetic work, not the tubes she had twisted. Her plastic surgeon grafted skin in the damnedest way. I won’t tell you where, but every time she gets tired,” Felice winked, “her face wants to sit down.” Felice wet her forefinger, nicked the air, and, screaming with laughter, took Felix by his belt and pulled him out into the garden.

“You want to know what I think? I think these people are revolting and disgusting, that’s what I think,” said Miss Malducoit to Miss Porchmouth, who was with her enormous hands trying unsuccessfully to worm a cherry out of a bud-vase she’d filled with gin. She looked down censoriously at only half of stone-blind Qwert Yui Op who, rendered hors de combat from milk — a digestive indisposition characteristic of that race — was lying under the sofa, with only his little twig-like legs sticking out. But Miss Malducoit couldn’t believe what was going on at the other side of the room.

For Miss Ballhatchet, her eyes wide as a lovesick potto, had wangled a place on the couch with Miss Thisbite and, chatting her up with a few choice misandrous asides, asked the girl — who politely overlooked the deltoid massage — if she didn’t agree with her that one man made a market, two a mob? Meanwhile, Floyce R. Fulwider, equally zealous, excused himself to a group of old ladies wearing necklaces strung as if with the teeth of peccaries and gynandromorphosed past them in short, mincing steps, holding high a couple of overly befruited drinks and singing, “Coming through! Coming through!” He set one, gently, into the hands of the slim blond boy who was Miss Thisbite’s brother and told him he looked like the young Louis XVII. The old ladies were not quite sure how they felt about it, and, closing into a circle, proceeded to commit several sins against the Eighth Commandment. Dr. and Mrs. Speetles, philoprogenetists, then began passing around to everybody there — saving, of course, the Weerds, who were down in the cellar talking to each other — several photographs of their hydrocéphalie baby playing with a fire engine, a little meldrop of snot shining under its nose in every one. Dr. Glibbery said he looked like a dufus and handed them to Darconville who passed them to Miss Tavistock who thanked him, stared at him steadfastly a full minute, then asked, “Are you in love with me?” There was an awkward silence, broken by a whistle — Felice calling Darconville into the kitchen.

Darconville excused himself just as Dr. Knipperdoling, loaded to the scuppers, was remarking how good old Mr. Bischthumb of recent memory would have enjoyed the party, bringing to mind, with significant pauses, both the doily of his undoing and the irony of death-by-laughter. Touching on the odds and ends of life, he pointed out that life was odd and yet that, funnily enough, it would have only one end, you know? The profundity struck him, and he blew a long unmusical note of grief into his handkerchief. Dr. Pindle turned to his partner with an I-suppose-we-in-a-way-expected-it-but-how-horrible-just-the-same face, drawing an arrow out of his sententious quiver. “In one way,” he philosophized, “life is pointless, but a needle isn’t.” He paused. “You know?” His friend knew. Oh, his friend knew very well. And Dr. Knipperdoling burst into tears.

“Forgive me,” Felice said to Darconville. “I saw you over there being pried by ‘The Clawhammer’ and couldn’t bear to see you trapped.” He smiled. “I wasn’t really trapped, but—” Darconville stopped short. He snapped his fingers at the sudden idea. Miss Trappe!

Swiftly, Darconville got to the bedroom, shut the door, and made his call. Of course! Isabel, making that long-delayed visit, had forgotten all about the party. But Miss Trappe had been asleep. He could see her at the other end — it almost broke his heart — just wakened, confused in the dark, wearing an elfin nightcap and groping for an identifiable chair. Her voice sounded far away, as if it were underwater, old and tired as hope.