Darconville's Cat (70 page)

  There had never been such silence in that room, with
Darconville now bewildered to the soul as to whether that remark
were proof of a defect in his understanding or the depravity in his
heart. Crucifer twirled in the fishbowl with his finger.

  “What’s there to add? Faitery throttled faith. I had
seen in an instant of cerebral death what I’d sought from birth and
as that magic-muttering, instinct-bound piece of pawkery called
Christianity vanished I knew I had learned Fâdi’s lesson with a
vengeance: I had reached the no-number, the root of the monad, a
light-robe.
I was naughted
! There is a limit of ignominy
in the consciousness of one’s own nothingness and impotence beyond
which a certain kind of man can go,” said Crucifer, the roundels of
colored light from the stained glass playing on his face as he
crossed by the window, “and beyond which he begins to feel immense
satisfaction in his very degradation. I arrived there! I saw
Christianity for what it was, a religion expressing its piety in
bows, fawnings, and prostrations of servility that went no deeper
than themselves! I saw
through
God!” Darconville went
mute, his tongue clave to his throat. “Mysticism, you see, and
hoaxes go well together. I can’t tell you how frightful a longing I
have to revile God aloud,” whispered Crucifer,
“
always
.”

  “ ‘Woe unto him,’ “ said Darconville, his mouth
smacking from dry-ness and gone completely hoarse, “ ‘that striveth
with his Maker.’ “

  “I hear you call a Maker what I take to be a
Personified Inconceivability,” cried Crucifer, his voice like the
sound of wind through a patch of dead cat-o’-nine-heads. “God,
Zeus, Iddio, Bog, Dieu, Jubmal, Utixo, Bott, Bung, Zung, Gudib,
Zenc, Jee, or the Great Kazoo, call him whatever you
will—everything suggestive of metaphysical unity disgusts me. Mine
is a world essentially manifold! In every man there is a vacuum in
the shape of God, but where is he?
What
is he? That which
is not sense! Exactly. Non-sensical. Literally, nonsense! I just
adore
the clemency he exacts that wears so flatly
commercial an aspect, don’t you? The fruit of actual purchase? The
literal and cogent
quid pro quo
duly in hand paid? I tell
you, all Christian victuals stink of fish, and his glory depends
upon the antagonism of his creature’s shame, degrading all of us
whom he owns absolutely—we who re-create him of whom we are
creatures—with every one of us, Mnogouvazheamyi Darconville, bound
to him by every last goddamned tenure on earth but spontaneous
affection! I tell you, the best proof for the tragedy of existence
is the proof that is derived from the contemplation of what is said
to be its
glories
! You will see!” The odd lines by
Crucifer’s cheeks drew out like isobars. “God being all things is
contrary unto nothing out of which were made all things, and so
nothing became something and omneity informed nullity into an
existence: now I call that a nice trick, don’t you? And then was he
even acquainted with himself? All he could utter was ‘I Am Who
Am’—a tautology, excuse me, I take to be the essence of
deceit.”

  “
Your soul
,” whispered Darconville.

  “What’s the good of having a soul,” asked Crucifer,
grinding his teeth, “if you have a mind? And what need is there in
heaven of my humility? No, you must listen to me! Can’t I simply be
devoured without being expected to praise what devours me? I am no
French poet. I mean, does a creator necessarily become a master?
And what about a creator not in right but only in might? Then, is a
creator necessarily superior? Does a world that has a beginning, in
fact, necessarily have a creator? And is a creating God necessarily
an authorized God? Can a judging God be an object of love? What
kind of diabolical God can create cats with dreams of satanic mice
and simultaneously by some royal
exequatur
and
placet
give mice dreams of like cats? No, He Who smites
without sword and scourges without rod I shall always remember, my
friend, with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause— and forever
revile! God, I tell you, is the center of the pathetic fallacy.”
Crucifer pushed his head out of his robe with a little twist and
twitched it. “Thus, did Fâdi teach me well—and still of what he
wouldn’t did.”

  Standing close to Darconville, Crucifer gave off a
foul odor.

  “The fact of betrayal, finally, also abolished woman
for me. It eliminated her utterly. She disappeared from the face of
the world, for through Fâdi hadn’t been revealed to me in the
simplicity that is at the heart of all mystical truth the one and
only lesson to be extracted from the doctrine of Original Sin?”
Crucifer’s fat arms shot victoriously out of the red robe, an
almost aposematic coloration, it seemed, warning of a frightful
attack, and he whistled through his nose. “
World
loathing
,” spat Crucifer, “
is woman loathing
!”

  The cry echoed throughout the room.

  “The shadow of the deformed,” said Darconville in a
low voice, “is deformed also.”

  Crucifer’s mouth twisted. He couldn’t abide being
told that. He was that terrible figure now whose tyranny did not
consist in trying to make himself bigger than his surroundings but
in shrinking the surroundings. He claimed
eirpson
—divine
afflatus, inspiration. Humanly speaking, he was out of his
mind.

  “Be warned, my chevalier,” Crucifer answered.
“Disanthropize chance, I tell you. It is your own goodness that is
the ideal you imagine. ‘To fall in love is to worship at the shrine
of a fallible god.’ “

  “You mistake yourself for a prophet.”

  “I keep abreast,” he grinned. “I told you, I can see
in the darkness.” He pointed to his eyes. “It’s a special gift, the
reward in part of a pact I once made with myself”—he paused—”and
someone else.”

  “Someone else?”

  “Those were my words. It is a story, I’m afraid,
over which the Muse of History must draw a veil. Inquire no
further.”

  For the last time, Dr. Crucifer fell onto the
curtain and jerked the bell-pull so hard it snapped out of the
orlo. As quickly, the library door flew open and in ran Lampblack,
out of breath. He looked up, pitifully, with that little nasolabial
funhouse-mirror of a face. Completely out of control, Crucifer went
flashing at him like a fire-zouave, thumping him mercilessly on the
ears and kicking him for failing to appear earlier to make drinks
for them, himself and the guest Lampblack was forced to acknowledge
as Crucifer held him fast by the hair, twigging him backwards.
Lampblack cowered, his open hands fluttering before his eyes to
ward off further blows. Crucifer smiled up at Darconville. “My
tapster,” he said, “my turnspit, my child o’ the bottles.”

  “I see hate comes easily enough to you,” said
Darconville, who, paradoxically, could have killed Crucifer on the
spot.

  “But they’re related, of course,” mocked Crucifer,
“love and hate, aren’t they?” He bent down over Lampblack and
peered into his face. “Aren’t they, millstones?” His eyes shifted
to Darconville. “As I’ve said, hate owes all its meaning to the
demand for love—got of themselves, I don’t doubt, but far better
got of a tutor.”

  He shoved Lampblack away.

  “There nevertheless remains, of course, the
argument-—it’s gone on for thousands of years—that one alone of the
two perhaps adhibits more naturally to human nature.” As Crucifer’s
rapid changes of front were incredible, Darconville for a moment
wondered which of the emotions in Crucifer’s perverse mind
benefited more by the reservation. “The question, however, is
which. Love,” asked Crucifer, putting his tiny head sideways in a
mockery of riddling, “or hate?”

  There was no answer.

  “
Voilà, mon candidat. Entre deux selles le cul à
terre, n’est-ce pas
?”

  Then Darconville said, “Love.”

  “Catshit. Duckshit. Birdshit,” said Dr. Crucifer.
“Dogshit.”

  LXX

  Sic et Non

  Suddenly ghosts walked

  And four doors were five.

        —MARK VAN DOREN,
The Story Teller

  YES, SAID ISABEL, everything was fine. No, no one
had given her any message. Yes, she had been busy. No, honestly.
Yes, she knew she hadn’t written. No, nor called. Yes, she did
realize it was October 2. No, it seemed to her to have passed
quickly. Yes, there were some problems, to tell the truth. No, not
over the telephone. Yes, they were complicated. No, what did he
mean did she mean? Yes, she did think of him. No, she didn’t need
him to come down. Yes, she could come up to Cambridge. No, it would
be easier. Yes, she’d received his gifts. No, she wasn’t ill. Yes,
she knew he loved her. No, she’d come up there if she could. Yes,
he could call back later if he wanted to. No, she’d be home for
sure. Yes, she promised this time she would. No, she’d wait right
by the telephone. Yes, at 7 P.M. then.

  LXXI

  The Deorsumversion

  The best way to make your dreams come true is to
wake up.

        —Bishop
QUODVULTDEUS

  DARCONVILLE immediately called the airport. The next
flight to Washington, D.C. from Boston would be leaving at 2130
P.M., and he booked it, hoping to connect with one of the Piedmont
flights continuing on to Charlottesville. There wasn’t much time.
He called Prof. McGentsroom and, explaining that he had to go to
Virginia, asked him if he’d take his Tuesday afternoon class. Then
he telephoned for a cab, packed a few things, and, putting his cat
under his arm, went flying downstairs to leave him with the
superintendent.

  Suddenly, on the way down, Spellvexit slipped from
his grip and skirted out of the inner door that let out into the
courtyard of Adams House! Darconville called him, in vain. Dropping
his suitcase, he ran around after him, with increasing desperation
as he heard the repeated blast of the taxi out on Bow St. It was
hopeless. He watched sadly as the little form disappeared around
the corner of Apthorp House. A cat never says goodbye. It just
walks away.

  The plane finally lifted off—and none too soon, for
Darconville hoped, instead of calling at seven, to be actually
in
Fawx’s Mt. proper at that very hour. It wasn’t that
there had been small effort made in behalf of his appearing, rather
too much in behalf of his
not
. What would he find? The
facts at his disposal, maddeningly, couldn’t be hammered into
truth. Concept wrestled with data. Could one so solicitous not have
written, so loyal not have kept faith? And what, he wondered, had
it to do with those strange and apprehensive glances she stole—from
what? for what?—especially last summer? Was gravitational pull
inversely proportionate to the square of the distance that, as the
distance increased, the pull decreased? Why hadn’t Isabel explained
anything? He didn’t know, he didn’t know, and he sought to stifle
several aprioristic frights that occurred to him. Lawyers, he
decided, could never be jurors—and thought
itself
, in
fact, is the product of a kind of paranoia. His own mind repelled
him, a sort of autoimmune reaction in which he categorically
rejected his own thoughts, for matter, he felt, only comes to life,
life becomes thought, thought will, and will goes back to matter. I
love you, was his only thought. So he settled back into
contradictionlessness, resigned to this conviction, however, that
their wedding again might be postponed—he had no idea why but knew
she reasonlessly feared telling him so—and before long he was fast
asleep, as if taking refuge from what, by simply accepting, he then
needn’t seek to avoid: the awful struggle to deny that anything
beautiful is nothing else but dream. And there on the plane he
slept back a full three years in time to what was suddenly London,
dreamlit by memory.

  *  *  *  *  *

  
Bis repetita placent
: it had been one of
the worst cold snaps in England, that Christmas. Nothing, however,
would ever match it for the happiness he felt, especially during
those hours at Heathrow airport waiting for Isabel’s plane to
arrive—then there she was, breathless, snug in a short fur coat,
her face shining! His throat filled, he loved her so much. It had
been five long months since they’d last seen each other, and in
this new, sudden context, for all her excitement, she’d grown
silent, even shy. The bus-ride into London, a cab to Pont St., the
walkup of four floors, it all tired her out, and in her exhaustion
she but barely acknowledged the cake, the inscribed cups, and the
welcoming trappings before she was soon asleep. Undaunted,
Darconville sat by her in the dark almost all night, feeling
himself to be the luckiest person alive.

  The following week was a glorious round of dinners,
plays, and sight-seeing, and, as Isabel had never been abroad
before, Darconville took the occasion to rediscover all the places
and things he loved through her young and happy eyes. It was
blowing cold, and in boots, mufflers, and tightly buttoned coats
they walked everywhere, down old crooked lanes, through quaint
side-streets, and into off-beat lamplit passageways lined with
bookshops and antique-and-junk stalls, galumphing home later in the
darkness with all kinds of jumble. They visited museums, boated up
to Greenwich and down to Hampton Court, and went on long strolls
through parks strung around with sparkling lights where
carolers-with-cherry-cheeks, gathered together, intoned white puffs
of air which turned, magically, into the sweet songs of Christmas.
They often went to the zoo—Isabel’s favorite!— and fed the tigers
bits and pieces of cookies from the bag of them Isabel bought every
morning in a special shop of hers on Beauchamp Place, and
everywhere Darconville snapped pictures of her: not there, wait,
over a bit,
grand
! And then at nightfall, alone at last,
always, they’d light the gas-heater, bury themselves in each
other’s arms under a huge pile of blankets, and shiver in the close
darkness until they met in each other’s eyes enough warmth to heat
all the cold rooms in the British Isles and then some. “When you
become a famous writer,” asked Isabel, “will you mention a night
like this in your book?” They were children. It was paradise.
“Yes,” he said.