by Paul Hoffman
16
Since he had come into Kitty’s room, hammers had been working in Cale’s brain to come up with an escape plan and decide what to do about Kitty the Hare. He had never seen Kitty do anything more than stand or sit. What was he? He had seen the peculiar paw-like right hand and since he had taken to wearing the peaked cap and the dirty looking brown linen veil there was only the cooingly precise voice to go by. What if he had teeth to tear you with, claws as sharp as razors to cut, arms so brutal they could rip your bone casings apart like Grendel, or worse, like Grendel’s mum? He was unknown until the moment he was attacked. Then there was the door and the men outside who could open it whenever they wanted to. Then there was getting away. Too many unknowns for someone who, even at sixteen (if that was Cale’s age), was no longer the man he used to be. His position was so evil that, even as he was pouring camel manure into Kitty’s ear and looking around the room for a means of blocking the door and finding something that might help in the infliction of the violence that was certainly coming, he was also cursing himself for failing to observe one of IdrisPukke’s mostly highly polished aphorisms: always resist your first impulses, they are often generous. After all, those two cretins had gone off on their demented frolic entirely of their own free will. Why should he die for their stupidity? But it was too late for that now.
It began. Cale ran to the large bookcase that stretched from floor to ceiling, packed with Kitty’s accounts. He jumped as high as he could and started heaving on it like a deranged monkey. Luckily it was freestanding and toppled easily and so quickly that he almost fell under it as it crashed to the floor in front of the door and blocked it from opening.
Kitty’s bodyguards started pushing against it with all their strength. Kitty stood up from behind his enormous desk and moved a few steps backward. Was he waiting in terror for his guards to break in or was he calmly preparing himself to tear Thomas Cale into small, meaty pieces? Cale had been beaten by Bosco into believing one thing above all others – once you decide to attack, commit without let or hindrance. Cale took four steps towards Kitty and jabbed the heel of his hand into his face. The scream Kitty let out as he fell shook even Cale. It wasn’t the scream of a man mutilated on the battlefield or a cornered animal, but more like a furious and frightened baby – high-pitched and harrowing. A spot of blood appeared on the linen mask as Kitty wailed and thrashed to get a grip on the polished floor, all the while the red stain spreading. Behind him, the bodyguards were charging the door so heavily that the great frame shook with each blow. Cale turned to the desk and heaved. It was so heavy it might have been screwed to the floor. But fear pumped him up enough to shift the desk an inch, then two, then again with greater and greater speed as his frantic roar of effort mixed with the heaving crashes of the door, until he hit the now shifting bookcase with the desk just as the bodyguards had stepped back for a final push. The collision of desk and bookcase slammed the door shut, taking the fingertips of two men’s hands with it.
His brain was buzzing with the screams inside the room, the cries of agony outside, and his lips throbbed with pins and needles as the power of the Phedra and Morphine began to lag. He stared at Kitty, still shrieking in the corner of the room. Outside the guards had gone silent, planning something.
It is a business full of difficulty, killing a living thing. Even with the means – the blunt object, the useful blade, the stillness induced by dread. Anything more awkward than the wringing of a chicken’s neck takes nerve and practice and familiarity. Cale considered the task ahead. Already his legs and his hands were shaking. Nothing in the room would help, it was more or less empty but for the bound red ledgers on the floor. And what was he dealing with? Kitty the Hare was frightened, to be sure, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t dangerous. Cale felt his artificial powder strength begin to drain away. Could he beat Kitty to death with his fists? And what was behind the veil?
The shoving on the other side of the door began again. He stepped forward and, bending down, grabbed Kitty and shifted him over. He fumbled for his neck and tried to hold it in the crook of his elbow. Kitty realized what he was going to do and began howling and screaming again, so high-pitched it hurt the ears, his feet scrabbling on the polished floor. Terror made him strong and he wrenched free and backed away, still screaming, to the far wall. Again the room-shaking battering from the guards crashing against the door. It was impossible to go on without seeing his face – Cale needed to see who or what was so vulnerable to being hurt. He tore off the peaked cap and bloody linen veil.
Disgust made him pull back, shocked at the ugliness of what he saw. The face and skull seemed to belong to two different creatures, one more deformed than the other. The right side of his head was distended along its entire length, as if the skin had been filled with stones. His right cheek was a mat of warty growths, his lips on one side swollen by three or four inches. But halfway along his mouth the lips narrowed and became quite normal, and with a recognizably human expression. On the left side of his head, above his ear, Kitty had grown the strands of hair more than twelve inches long and combed them over in an effort to hide a huge tumour. His left hand, too, was perfectly ordinary and rather delicate, his right was paw-like but huge, as if it had been cut and healed into three parts, each with the large and pointed nails from which Kitty got his name.
‘Pease! Pease!’ said Kitty. ‘Pease! Pease!’
But it was his eyes that got to Cale, deep brown and delicate as a girl’s, shining with fear and dread. Imagine what it is to beat a living thing to death with weakening hands and aching shoulders. The time it took, the crying out, the blood in Kitty’s throat choking him, the feet scrabbling on the floor. But the blows with his fist and elbow had to carry on no matter what. It must be done.
When it was over, Cale sat back on the floor. He did not feel horror and he did not feel pity. Kitty the Hare didn’t deserve to live; Kitty the Hare deserved to die. But then he, Thomas Cale, probably deserved to die as well for all the horrible things he’d done. But he wasn’t dead and Kitty was. For the moment at any rate.
During the killing of Kitty, the guards had been battering against the door. Now they’d stopped. Cale was soaked in sweat, now cooling, and not just from the effort of putting an end to Kitty. His lips were firing pins and needles ever faster, his head throbbing. ‘It’s midnight, Goldilocks,’ he said aloud, misremembering the story he’d heard Arbell telling her little nieces in Memphis.
He stood up and began opening the drawers in the great ebony desk. Nothing but papers, except for a brass paperweight and a bag of boiled sweets – humbugs. He ate a couple, splintering them in order to get the sugar into his body, then stepped next to the door and banged it three times with the paperweight. He thought he heard whispering.
‘Kitty the Hare. He’s dead,’ said Cale.
A silence, then, ‘Then you’re going to sing him to his rest, shit-bag.’
‘Why?’
‘Why the fuck do you think?’
‘Did you love Kitty? Was Kitty a father to you?’
‘Never you mind about what Kitty was. Prepare to not be.’
‘You want to kill the only friend you have in the world? Kitty’s dead and that means all his enemies, many and unkind, are going to disjoint his goods and services among them. Not including you – your share of the profits is going to be a six-foot by two-foot space in one of Kitty’s illegal rubbish tips in Oxyrinchus.’
Cale was sure he could hear muttering and arguing. This ought to be the easiest part. What he was telling them was true and it was obvious. The trouble was that riffraff had their loyalties and affections like everyone else. And they also were puffed up with the drama and action of the last fifteen minutes. There was going to be violent change one way or the other and Thomas Cale had caused it. If people could be trusted to act in their own best interests it would be a different world. He needed to let tempers cool.
‘Go and get Cadbury. Bring him here and then we’ll talk.’
Silence for a few moments.
‘Cadbury’s buggered off to Zurich.’
‘Anyway,’ shouted the man who’d taken the lead, ‘fuck Cadbury. You talk to us. Let us in.’
The request for Cadbury had backfired. What could he do, after all? He’d expected they’d have taken time to go and find him only to discover he was gone. Now all he’d done was annoyed whoever had taken control. He considered bluster. Dangerous. He chose bluster.
‘I’m Thomas Cale, I’ve just beaten Kitty the Hare to death with my bare hands. I killed Solomon Solomon in the Red Opera in two seconds and there are ten thousand Laconics rotting in the shadow of the Golan Heights, and I was the one who left them there.’ Though he felt dreadful and his situation was dire, declaring his glorious achievements aloud was exhilarating. It all was true, wasn’t it? he thought.
There was no reply.
‘Look. I’ve got nothing against any of you. You were doing what you were paid for. Kitty got his portion and that’s the way it is. You can either work for me, with all the money and whatever privileges Kitty gave you, and a bonus of two hundred dollars and no questions asked, or you can take your chances with General Butt-Naked and Lord Peanut Butter – I’m told that General Butt-Naked keeps his troops lively by stringing the intestines of those who disappoint him across the streets of the slums he controls.’
These lurid stories of Kitty’s rivals were, in fact, true. Even in Switzerland, a civilized place of trade with admirably clean streets where all was ordered, its people prosperous and law-abiding, there were parts of it that were the very bowels of darkness. A stone’s throw from generous streets and the generous souls who lived in them a savagery and a cruelty of a kind that was impossible to imagine except for the fact that it happened took place at all hours and within a short walk. Isn’t it the same with all cities everywhere, and in all times? The civilized and the inhumanly cruel are separated only by a short stroll.
After a few minutes’ more talking, Cale filibustering to draw out the time and let them calm down and see things as they were, he pushed back the desk just enough to give them purchase – no easy matter, his strength was fading in jabs and bursts. He went and sat down, casual, in Kitty’s chair and waited for his bodyguards to push back the heavy bookcase.
So they filed in, obviously wary but also subdued by the body in the middle of the floor. It was not death or blood that worried them – that was their calling, after all – but the sight of unstoppable power suddenly stopped. Kitty was myth – his reach ran everywhere. Now even in the gloom it wasn’t just that death had robbed him of power but that he was revealed as deformed, eaten and swollen by growths, distended and spoilt. What they had feared now revolted them and all the more intensely because of the intensity of that fear. Now their terror demeaned them.
‘I saw a sea-cow,’ said one, ‘dead in the water for a week who looked like that.’ He prodded him with his feet.
‘Leave him alone,’ said Cale.
‘You killed him,’ protested the man.
‘Leave him alone.’
‘Who are you to give us orders?’
That, thought Cale, is a good question.
‘Because I’m the one who knows what to do next.’
Some of the men in the room were stupid, others intelligent and ambitious, but Cale’s assertion threw them badly. It was not that Cale had the answer, because really he had no idea what to do next. His advantage over them lay in realizing that what to do next was the only thing that mattered.
‘How many of you can write?’
Three of the fifteen men slowly put up their hands.
‘Have any of you worked for General Butt-Naked?’
Two hands went up.
‘Peanut Butter?’
Three hands.
‘I want the three of you that can write to set down everything you know on paper. If the rest of you have anything to add then say so.’ He stood up. ‘I’ll be back in three hours. Lock the door behind me and don’t let anyone in or out. If the news of Kitty’s death gets around, you know what that means.’ Then he walked out, full of purpose and clarity. At any moment he expected to be stopped, to be asked the obvious two questions that he couldn’t answer. But no one said anything. He was out of the door and down the stairs to the most welcoming sound he had ever heard: the lock turning behind him.
Feeling sicker with every step, Cale had gone to IdrisPukke on his way to find Vague Henri and Kleist. The relief on IdrisPukke’s face was evident even to Cale, wretched and angry with him as he was; it was the look of a man who’d come to feel he’d done something dreadful but which had turned out all right in the end. Cale told him what had happened and asked him to come with him to see the boys and send someone for a doctor.
It was not easy to astonish IdrisPukke and for the first few minutes of the walk he was silent, then just as they were about to enter the digs, IdrisPukke took Cale’s arm and stopped him.
‘What was it like?’
‘It was a bad do. I can’t say it wasn’t. I don’t feel sorry for Kitty – he got what he deserved – but when I was walking to you after I got out I understood something about why he wanted to make the world afraid of him. What were his choices? Make his living in a freak show with the geek who eats frogs or the boneless wonder? Depend on the kindness of others? Don’t get me wrong, though – I wasn’t thinking that when I bashed his brains out.’
‘I feel I’ve let you down,’ said IdrisPukke. Cale said nothing at first, thinking about what he said. This had all been Vague Henri’s and Kleist’s fault. IdrisPukke had been pretty good to them all, ever since he’d met them, for no very good reason. Cale had asked him to cheat on his brother. But something had been pecking in his soul – even though he couldn’t see why, he agreed that IdrisPukke had in some way been disloyal to him.
‘No. No, you didn’t,’ he said. And they moved on.
Just from the brief glimpse he’d had of them in the house he knew the boys were in bad nick. Now he was able to look them over properly they looked even worse. Kleist was unable to speak his mouth was so swollen. The little fingers on both their left hands had been broken along with the thumbs. Cale told them Kitty was dead.
‘Was it slow?’ said Vague Henri.
‘As slow as you like.’
When the doctor arrived he cleaned them up carefully; it was painful stuff. Except for their faces and hands most of the damage was bruising. Kleist kept spitting blood and the doctor quietly worried to them that there might be a haemorrhage inside. ‘If he starts shitting blood, call me at once.’ Still not altogether down from the Phedra and Morphine, Cale could not help but admire that the stitching of Vague Henri’s face from the wound of the year before had held up nicely. But Kleist didn’t seem all there and kept drifting in and out.
‘Kitty,’ he mumbled.
‘Kitty’s dead.’
‘Kitty,’ he mumbled again, and kept on till he passed out completely.
The doctor put Vague Henri to sleep with a mixture of Valerian and Poppy Oil and Cale and IdrisPukke watched over them.
‘What will you do with them, Kitty’s people, now?’
Cale seemed surprised.
‘Nothing. Let them rot.’
‘There’s too much money and power at stake just to let it go.’
‘You have it then.’
‘I was hoping you’d say that.’
‘You don’t need my say-so.’
IdrisPukke detected the sourness. He did not blame him – he was ashamed of his refusal to help in the rescue of Vague Henri and Kleist but this was too important an opportunity to pass up. An empire of sorts was going begging.
‘I thought I’d send for Cadbury,’ IdrisPukke said. ‘He’ll know the SP on everything Kitty was up to.’
‘I think you’ll make a lovely couple,’ said Cale. And with that he went to sleep.
It did indeed turn out to be a great match, if not one made in heaven. Criminal scum are often sentimental about their mothe
rs but, in general, this is the furthest extent of their loyalty. Outsiders almost by definition, they aren’t usually moved by the idea of innate rank, social order or hierarchy, except when it’s imposed by the continuous threat of violence. Where there are beggars there can never be a king resting easy with his crown.
IdrisPukke surrounded Kitty’s house to prevent the occupants from leaving. He didn’t want a fuss and told them he was waiting for Cadbury to arrive to sort everything out. He also promised to raise their bonus to five hundred dollars. The following morning Cadbury arrived, having been halted during his flight to Oxyrinchus, still amazed by the news of Kitty’s death. Though there was no general affection for Cadbury among those inside the house, he was at least familiar to them and had a reputation for being smart. By now they needed a saviour and the changeover from Kitty the Hare to IdrisPukke and Cadbury was so quick that in barely a week Kitty was already passing into the myth in which he most naturally belonged. From now on, stories would be told about him by mothers sweetly threatening their children to be good or Kitty the Hare would come for them. Then these same children in their later years would scare their younger siblings with blood-curdling accounts of the deformed Kitty wielding a chain and a saw over hapless maids doomed to being dismembered and eaten; and then, as the years passed, his reputation reached the Celts in the east, where they transformed him into a friendly old hare selling pegs and telling ghost stories for a penny a go.
17
As the swellings went down and the bruises came out in purples and browns, Vague Henri became almost ecstatically cheerful. Kleist not so – he seemed to have been struck hard by the events in Kitty’s house. He slept a lot and wouldn’t talk much when he was awake. They thought it best to leave him alone, that he’d come out of it in his own time. Once Vague Henri was up to walking he and Cale went for a stroll along the Promenade des Bastions and watched the girls in their spring dresses forgetting the dreadful rumours of war that were in the air, and the two boys forgot along with them. They bought chocolate cake bursting with cream and Cale tormented Vague Henri by breaking off pieces and almost feeding him but then putting the cake in his own mouth.
