Darconville's Cat (69 page)

  Darconville gasped.

  “There, there,” responded Dr. Crucifer, wagging a
chubby finger at his guest. “We are pussycats. We are little slubs.
We are only people whose sense of fun has fed on queer food—and not
a one of us who isn’t supple as a pair of Italian shoes and
harmless as the wing of a chicken in the pip. We’re round and open
as wells. I can push my thumb into myself. You really mustn’t
wince, my friend.”

  Struggling up out of his chair, Dr. Crucifer went to
the desk for a cigarette, walking, without free and vigorous use of
those long malign limbs, as if he were being carried along by a
balloon. Darconville waved away the proffered box of them, and
Crucifer again sat down.

  “Angels are all alike,” he said, leering horribly,
“but devils are various, huh? Nevertheless, to place the eunuch in
a category of real perverts is to share the ignorance of ancient
times.” He sucked on the cigarette. “Because I ‘left the family’—as
the Chinese euphemistically describe my condition—doesn’t mean
therefore I’m some kind of incomprehensible bonze and consequently
emotionless. In how many far more terrible ways has figurative
eunuchry in the sexes ruined the world! Faugh! The
Kastrationskomplex
has fathered forth more pain than all
the spiders in Christendom, has peopled the very fucking university
in which you now sit, has—!” He swallowed smoke in the apoplexy of
wrath and fought, with swimming arms, for breath. “And
romantic
love
?” He spat. “It has been responsible for more human misery
than any other notion on the face of this pocked earth. Anything
lower, more obscene, or feculent the manifold heavings of history
have not cast up! And that is why in one blow”—he snapped his
fingers in a fillip between his legs—”I have murdered my own
posterity!

  “I have dared the supreme ordeal!” he cried,
grinning through teeth that looked like a crossword-puzzle. “I
despise purposivism! I have sneaked out of an exit Mother Nature
hadn’t quite planned on! I vail my hat to the Third Sex—Essenes,
Valesians, Skoptsy, Rappites, Gynaecomasts, Tribades, Semivirs,
Thlibs, Clisti, the Priests of Attis, and any other participles you
wish to name neither split nor dangling!”

  The creature seemed too fantastic to believe for
Darconville seriously to acknowledge, a puzzle-headed caricature of
spite with a large share of scholarship but with little geometry or
logic in his head and yet a figure of method and merciless egotism,
possessing a sinister genius.

  “Proudly, I wear the imperial seal: ‘the mounting of
the spotted horse.’ Tell me, have you ever looked closely at the
pontil mark on the bottom of a hand-blown bottle? There! That’s the
badge of my lost, my crushed cremasters! I am a gold pencil, tipped
with lead. And, O, but haven’t we been colorful as eringoes? Tricky
as thixotrops? Saturn was gelded, Origen became a human abstraction
to save his soul, and Xerxes, King of Persia, would never act
without the advice of his chief eunuch, Hermotinus. The proud tribe
of eunuchs almost single-handedly brought down the Ming emperors of
China—my God, I think of the magnificent Li Lien-ying in his dragon
robes standing on the foredeck of his barge and addressing under a
flying black flag twelve full cohorts of neuters! Farinelli, the
famous castrate of the eighteenth century who frequently aroused
such enthsuiastic admiration that of him it was often exclaimed
‘One God and one Farinelli!’ sang four songs to the Spanish King
Philip V every night and was given his portrait set in diamonds by
Louis XV of France. And Heliogabalus himself so loved his eunuch,
Jeroles, that he nightly bowed and kissed his groin, swearing that
he was celebrating the sacred festival of Flora.” He pulled on the
cigarette one last time and ground it out. “On the accession of
Pope Leo XIII, in 1878, the practice of castrating small boys for
church choirs, alas, came to an end. More’s the pity, I suppose. We
can
still be found, however. We’re international in a kind
of silly secret way and will occasionally sprout up —look
closely—in every place from Harvard to Chihli to Ho-chienfu. But
the fact is to most of the world we are now obsolete as
buggies.

  “We’ve multiplied in palaces, ruthlessly acquired
the knowledge of secret councils, and instigated the direst court
intrigues, often by having been privy to the foulest secrets of
women, which is of course a matter not unrelated to our traditional
profession. We are, you understand, authorized in the New
Testament—in fact, Pope Siricius (385-398 A.D.) actually advocated
self-mutilation. Are you scandalized? And gay old Galen in his
book,
Of Sperm
, roundly avers that to possess no heart
would be a lesser evil than to be destitute of genitories. I’ve
managed both, you say?” asked Crucifer, his arms bent the wrong
way, almost tortue, as he leaned forward with a malicious wink.
“Too true. No gimlet to drill, no beatlet to beat.” His eyes were
now glittering like a basilisk’s. “I’ve always considered it the
Devil’s greatest feat to have succeeded in getting himself
denied.

  “Now, I am asexuated. I can neither enter the
Crooked Gate of the female nor”—he cacked—”can I Make Fire Behind
the Mountain. But, you see, there are those of us—some with kit and
no kaboodle, others with kaboodle and no kit—who
can
practice the manifold
plaisirs de la petite oie
(masturbation, irrumation, feuille-de-rose, etc. ). Me, I keep a
traditional discretion about that which may best be left unsaid. I
am docked utterly. I suffered the cut. I am pegless, shaven and
shorn—entirely
rasé
. I answer the call of nature with a
silver quill I keep in my pocket. But I once knew of a woman who
lived near the Crocodile Grotto at Ma’abdeh who had a eunuch for a
husband; he’d dry-bob her and at the point of orgasm—this would be
a secondary discharge from the urethra—the great bitch’d wisely
hold up a little pillow for her husband to bite lest he tear apart
her cheeks and breasts with his teeth! When I was a university
student in Cairo? A slovenly berber girl in an imperfectly lighted
hall once grabbed my yardless body and leaping back in disbelief
screamed, ‘
Ma fîsh! Ma fish
!’ She was looking for a
clinch. But what did she find?” Crucifer, his voice whistling in
laughter, put his hand along his mouth. “Pudding!” He leaned
forward. “But then why not? I was snapt. I had out-Potiphar’d
Potiphar. I am as smooth as the front of your knee. I am a hollow
stoutness, a human abstraction, a contralto. I am empty as Vanity
Fair.”

  Crucifer suddenly stormed up and, fumbling for the
bell-pull by the curtain, jerked it several times. He shook his
head in disgust.

  “There are minuses,” he continued, sitting down
again. “Don’t misunderstand me, it’s not all fun. We are easily
susceptible to infection. We for no reason break into hot flushes
and sweats and often, though we don’t fly, suffer airplane earache
for weeks on end, although under this head I can tell you our
bodies are at the same time unfailing barometers, thermometers,
manometers, and hygrometers. We prematurely wrinkle, the origin of
what years ago became our vulgar nickname, ‘
Lao
koun
’—impotent old roosters. We have the pale complexion of
pederasts, so obviously the sun can’t be good for us. Eunuchs, like
children, often can’t pronounce the letter R. It is often required
of certain of us to insert india-rubber
sardes
or zinc or
lead nails to prevent us from leaking. We are fanatical gamblers.
We are inclined to have oedematous feet, and we despise Jews to
such a degree that it actually affects our health. An intolerable
Jew is, for us, intolerable twice. My penishole aches in the damp
and the rain. My anus is lost in my weight. Unfortunately, it has
fallen to our lot to have had repeatedly to see women at their
least readiness—it sickens me to fix on an image—and this doubtless
explains the eunuch’s longstanding reputation for having a
capricious and nasty temperament. We can be peevish as barn-cats.
But the malevolence? Ah, malevolence keeps one alive. It’s a
preservative, like alcohol!” Crucifer saw the look of pity,
bewilderment, and great sadness on his guest’s face. He leaned
forward to intercept that glance and said wistfully, “Here, but is
it not the vice of distinctiveness to become queer?”

  As Darconville did not reply, Crucifer pulled
himself forward, awkwardly, by his toes and reaching out to touch
him in a friendly way whispered, “
La ilaha illa anta subhanaka
inni kuntu mizzalimin
!”— but his visitor pulled away in horror
at the familiarity.

  “On the other hand,” continued Crucifer, refusing
the insult, unsurprised, his ambition for momentary equality
testing affection in a gesture that would be, he knew, either
endured by clemency or condescension or, more probably, repelled by
custom, breeding, and restraint, “there are pluses—more visible,”
he laughed, “than what isn’t, may I add?” It was the humor of the
embarrassed man. “We are seldom bald. We sing with voices sweeter
than the music of Pachelbel. We look adorable in pants. And then
castration, by extending the period of adolescence, prolongs the
springtime of beauty. We are skilled to perfection in the art of
flattery, I admit it. Languages, for us, are cake. I have not only
Arabic but the Berber group, Kabyle, Shilha, Zenaga, Tamashek, plus
Amharic, Ethiopian, Cushitic, including Agao, Beja, Bilin—are you
impressed?—
and
inscriptive Numidian, he said humbly.
Harvard values this sort of thing, you see? Chat, chat, mumble,
mumble. Please,” said Crucifer, looking up suddenly, “you mustn’t
think ill of me.” He waited. “Darconville?”

  But Darconville said nothing. And so there was
nothing to do but keep on talking.

  “The eunuch, as well, is marvelously cut out for
employment; for the cash register, as for the harem, he is the
perfect guardian—in all embezzlements, Darconville, and in all
irregularities of accounts, a woman will have influenced a man—but
we are also masters at organizing squeezes and
douceurs
as
perquisites for what we do. We are geniuses in the science of
observation, accumulators of gossip, and authorities on the art of
poisoning. I am, like all of us, a gourmand.” He jostled his belly
with both hands. “It’s a fat bird who bastes itself, isn’t it? I
love white truffles, shellfish, and pedroximenes wines. Finally, we
don’t futter anything, the source, I needn’t have to tell you, of
more buboes and bacteria than bad butter. In any case, my dear, I
do not conduct sultanas to their baths. But then you didn’t think I
did, did you?”

  Dr. Crucifer grinned horribly and pointed toward the
void between his hamlike thighs. “When you do this, it is not only
men who become eunuchs”—a clucking laughter, interrupting him,
sounded as though his trachea were rapidly opening and
shutting—”but women also!” His thin shoulders collapsed.
“Revolting, isn’t it? When the terrible mutilations of one sex are
necessary to keep the other pure?”

  “The exigencies, of course,” said Darconville, “of
your Christianity.”

  The big protruding joints, the long bones, stirred,
and Crucifer, in two efforts, rose out of his incomprehensible
belly like a drommeler, his face a wax mask framed to a somber
shape. He twisted close his robe and began to advance on tiptoe
with outstretched neck and listening ears.

  “Priestianity, you say?” He touched a finger to his
nose, meditatively. “But of course!” his voice glubbed. “I see I’ve
omitted the best part of my story, digressing as a man with a
grievance always does. Shall I pronounce about it?

  “My life in Girga continued without occurrence. I
loved God. I worked, read, and maintained a singular fidelity, as I
said, to the promises I’d made to Fâdi, seeking but to patrizate
myself in his holy shadow.” His lips parted, inhaled. “Then in the
eighth year of my devotion and donkeyboyhood—my twentieth in life—I
suffered the reversal of faith, which, to be brief, after the
completion of my education at Cairo and Oxford, haphazardly
enjoined me to the secular profession you know me by today:
Eunuch-in-Residence,
Collegium Harvardiensis
, at the sign
of the motto, ‘Va-Ni-Tas.’

  “But that’s as it is, isn’t it? You want to know
what happened to me, of course, back in Girga, and because I want
to save you from the same disappointment, I will tell you.” The
eyes of most persons converged when they looked at you, but Dr.
Crucifer’s, by some habit he had acquired for effect, remained
parallel. It gave the impression that he was looking straight
through you to a wall beyond. “As I said, I wanted nothing from
life but to strive for distinguished inconspicuousness and to live
to the letter the lessons of saintly Fâdi. O, but Nature knows
terrible and dire ways, doesn’t it? I won’t elaborate. It was, I
remember, Holy Week in Lent—Crucover, when Christ was pacified—and
I one afternoon on an inconsequential visit happened by Fâdi’s
closure”—he took a few steps toward Darconville and paused
dramatically—”and in that ultra-violet doorway before I died saw
the vidame of all my soul—a civet-cat bent on a stealthy errand of
flesh—scumming around on the floor on top of
a naked
woman
!” Crucifer’s fingers knotted angrily. He was staring
blankly before him into a distant point. “It was as if the
Archangel Gabriel had suddenly visited earth and married a ravening
cuckquean. I withdrew, weeping, by a tree, when later the two of
them appeared in the darkness—for night is the paradise of
cowards—and crept away hand in hand, hers in his, and his the left
which even in Egypt couldn’t have been used for a less honorable
function.” He leaned over his chair, almost gagging. “My
dégringolade
from grace can be charted from that day. No
human being has ever lived up to the ideal my imagination created
out of what I wasn’t for what they should be.” Crucifer’s eyes, as
he looked up, were savage. “I hate them all.”