Alexander Theroux - Darconville’s Cat

Trying to locate Adams House, Darconville found he couldn’t. He tried to match map to terrain, following his finger through one courtyard, out of an archway, and into a second court at another distance. He lost his way and followed his finger back, to pause. It waited. He checked the map. He moved his finger now to count past turrets and a forest of chimneypots and mansards, but dusk, falling, either doubled them or truncated or made indistinct those that rose behind others. It was useless, for once again one was back at an angle that couldn’t do anything but lead in a direction that discouraged the logic of the whole enterprise. He smiled. This person, he thought, is divided against himself: one part overlooks the whole, knows that he is sitting there and that the way is clear; but another part notices nothing, has at most a divination that the first part thinks it sees all. Darconville reflected, at that point, that these two could sit waiting for years, pondering the parable. Then one part said: if you know that, you have found your way. While another replied: but unfortunately only in parable. Would that be a comment on art?

Darconville almost laughed.

He walked back then through the narrow streets and turned into the iron gate on Linden St. that led into the courtyard of Adams House, where the master’s residence, Apthorp House — a white colonial dwelling — sat surrounded by the high wine-black brick of what looked like an old deserted gashouse or Victorian railway station, the roof edge of which, sloping down to gimmaled windows, was interrupted at intervals by a series of beetle-browed gables jutting out in sooty-stained façades that diminished in width after the fashion of steps and seemed in the gloom of sudden dusk a perfect perch for rooks and cormorants. There were perpendicular rows of apertures crossed here and there by cantilever fire-escapes. The shades were all drawn. He went in.

There wasn’t a sound inside of Adams House. One corridor led to another, communicating to ever more and more shadowy rooms, and, all in all, it seemed to be one of those places that had been kept, swept, and oiled, but locked up for ages and never to be used again. Gothic-shafted windows let in grey light. There were more exits and entrances, unexpected turnings and angles, than Darconville had ever seen — including the many Venetian palazzi he’d known famous for them. He was intrigued. He looked down — and listened — into stone stairwells that wound down and around as if into sunken, desolate dungeons. He started up the stairs, turning from landing to landing, higher and higher, and he came out of the surprising changes of level to the top floor of F staircase. It appeared to be the top floor. At the end of the staith there, however, just out of conventional view, a glimpse of some nearly hidden balusters invited further inspection; it was obviously a bam — the corners white with the striggles of spiders— of the stairbuilders of yore.

Curious, Darconville kept on up, entering a gallery that seemed contained in the thickness of the wall, an interior space which consisted of another winding ascent, not quite an inclined plane, yet not by any means a regular stair, the edges of stones, neat but primitive, having been suffered to project irregularly to serve for rude steps or a kind of assistance. Through this narrow stairwell Darconville crept to the top of the house, which was partly ruinous and full of nooks. There was a good deal of hooded furniture and old stuffed chairs, upsidedown and shrouded with linen antimacassars turned inside out, all blocking spare rooms reserved for lumber and empty portmanteaux. The dust was formidable. There, branching off at irregular intervals, horizontal galleries — full man height, but narrow — went round the whole building, or so it appeared, and received air from circular holes, wheel-windows that fell open from their peaks and were held by a chain. There were — rooms up there! Inhabited rooms!

Then came the sound of a sudden step. Darconville’s heart squeezed in fright as, turning, he found himself staring at a delicate, slack-twisted boy of indeterminate age — fourteen or forty, it was impossible to say — whose complexion was the color of a slug. He had one of those faces, ellipsoidal and cricket-like, which resembled one’s reflection when looking closely into a shiny spoon or doorknob. Blowing up fitfully at a wisp of his ashy-blond hair, he shifted, the better to grip the box of books and bottles he tightly held with nailbitten hands, and pointing from the wrist to a nearby door stammered in angry panic, “I’m t-telling Dr. Crucifer about this, y-you wait!”

—ISABEL?

—This is Dot. Good lord! — hush up, y’hear ! — some folks here neighborin’ a spell but carryin’ on like they was clappin’ their feet in the air. Hello?

—This is Darconville.

— Darconville !

—I’m sorry to be calling so late. It’s midnight.

—Midnight? Shoot, I didn’t think it was 5:30. My watch was upsidedown, for cry-eye. But listen to you: too late don’t count on Saturday night, not here, ( pause ) Will somebody turn that damfool thang down ? ( pause ) You still up yonder in Massatoochits?

—Yes. Yes, I am.

—Isn’t that nice? That’s right nice.

—Sort of. I wonder, may I speak to Isabel?

—What in the world ? O law, here I am holdin’ a glass in one hand and, fool that I am, nearly proceeded to try to drink out of the telephone receiver ! ( pause ) Hello?

—Isabel. May I speak to her, please?

—Is she here?

—Um, don’t you — know?

—Funny, you know, I don’t know if I don’t know. Here, you hold on, I’ll be back in a breath, ( long pause ) Out, wouldn’t you know it. Fickle, fidgety thing.

—Fickle?

—Well, fidgety, really, ( sigh ) I bleeve she got her a part-time job. Days, that child been ugly as homemade soap to me. I mostly let her be, Darconville, plain out. I’m at my end of the rope, I’m telling you. We habm’t seen a sign of her much lately. She’s been takin’ to goin’ on long walks night and day. All that. You know? In the woods. Off down the path. Hands deep in her pockets. All that kind of— quiet ! — thing.

—Hands deep?

—All that.

—At night? Alone?

—Or maybe with someone else.

—Someone else? No.

—Well, I mean with someone else if she ain’t alone, see? Hello? Your voice sounds s’small.

—Was she alone tonight?

—I haven’t a clue. That’s the point. It’s difficult to say.

—When she’s alone?

—When it’s too dark to see. Hello? ( pause ) Wait, this is going to kill you — I was just talkin’ into my beer glass!

—You mentioned that.

( pause )

—Did I call you?

—I called you, Mrs. Shiftlett.

—Please, call me Dot? Besides I have a small headache.

—Listen, perhaps I should give you my telephone number so Isabel can call me. All right? Now, I’m giving you my telephone number: 1-617-495-3612.

—A mess of numbers? Lordy! I can cold out tell you, Darconville, they’re sure to come out, whaddyacallit, added wrong me takin’ them down now. ( pause ) Was that a a-tomic bomb out there ? ( sigh ) A few folks is by, is all, turnin’ some sweet potato vines. Sound like a bunch of aborgirines, though, don’t it? I bleeve I cain’t hear m’self think.