“Eddie, you are one hell of a mouse!” (illustration credit 25.8)
The cat is pacing angrily in the kitchen, his hands behind his back and his eyebrows drawn down in a V. In a bubble above his head a wish appears: He is operating a circular saw that moves slowly, with high whining sounds, along a yellow board. At the end of the board is the mouse, lying on his back, tied down with ropes. The image vanishes and is replaced by another: The cat, wearing an engineer’s hat, is driving a great train along a track. The mouse is stretched across the middle of the track, his wrists fastened to one rail and his ankles to the other. Sweat bursts in big drops from the mouse’s face as the image vanishes and is replaced by another: The cat is turning a winch that slowly lowers an anvil toward the mouse, who is tied to a little chair. The mouse looks up in terror. Suddenly, the cat lets go of the crank and the anvil rushes down with a whistling sound as the winch spins wildly. At the last moment, the mouse tumbles away. The anvil falls through the bubble onto the cat’s head.
The cat understands that the mouse will always outwit him, but this tormenting knowledge serves only to inflame his desire to catch the mouse. He will never give up. His life, in relation to the mouse, is one long failure, a monotonous succession of unspeakable humiliations; his unhappiness is relieved only by moments of delusional hope, during which he believes, despite doubts supported by a lifetime of bitter experience, that at last he will succeed. Although he knows that he will never catch the mouse, who will forever escape into his mousehole a half inch ahead of the reaching claw, he also knows that only if he catches the mouse will his wretched life be justified. He will be transformed. Is it therefore his own life that he seeks, when he lies awake plotting against the mouse? Is it, when all is said and done, himself that he is chasing? The cat frowns and scratches his nose.
The cat stands before the mousehole holding in one hand a piece of white chalk. On the blue wall he draws the outline of a large door. The mousehole is at the bottom of the door. He draws the circle of a doorknob and opens the door. He steps into a black room. At the end of the room stands the mouse with a piece of chalk. The mouse draws a white mousehole on the wall and steps through. The cat kneels down and peers into the mousehole. He stands up and draws another door. He opens the door and steps into another black room. At the end of the room stands the mouse, who draws another mousehole and steps through. The cat draws another door, the mouse draws another mousehole. Faster and faster they draw: door, hole, door, hole, door. At the end of the last room, the mouse draws on the wall a white stick of dynamite. He draws a white match, which he takes in his hand and strikes against the wall. He lights the dynamite and hands it to the cat. The cat looks at the white outline of the dynamite. He offers it to the mouse. The mouse shakes his head. The cat points to himself and raises his eyebrows. The mouse nods. The stick of dynamite explodes.
The cat enters on the left, wearing a yellow hard hat and pushing a red wheelbarrow. The wheelbarrow is piled high with boards. In front of the mousehole, the cat puts down the handles of the barrow, pulls a hammer and saw from the pile of boards, and thrusts a fistful of black nails between his teeth. He begins sawing and hammering rapidly, moving from one end of the room to the other as a cloud of dust conceals his work. Suddenly, the dust clears and the cat beholds his creation: he has constructed a tall guillotine, connected to the mousehole by a stairway. The blue-black glistening blade hangs between posts high above the opening for the head. Directly below the opening, on the other side, stands a basket. On the rim of the basket the cat places a wedge of cheese. The cat loops a piece of string onto a lever in the side of the guillotine and fastens the other end of the string to the wedge of cheese. Then he tiptoes away with hunched shoulders and vanishes behind a fire shovel. A moment later, the mouse climbs the stairs onto the platform of the guillotine. He stands with his hands in the pockets of his robe and contemplates the blade, the opening for the head, and the piece of cheese. He removes from one pocket a yellow package with a red bow. He leans over the edge of the platform and slips the loop from the lever. He thrusts his head through the head hole, removes the piece of cheese from the rim of the basket, and sets the package in its place. He ties the string to the package, slides his head back through the hole, and fits the loop of the string back over the lever. From his pocket he removes a large pair of scissors, which he lays on the platform. He next removes a length of rope, which he fastens to the lever so that the rope hangs nearly to the floor. On the floor, he stands cross-ankled against the wheel of the barrow, eating his cheese. A moment later, the cat leaps onto the platform. He looks up in surprise at the unfallen blade. He crouches down, peers through the head hole, and sees the yellow package. He frowns. He looks up at the blade. He looks at the yellow package. Gingerly, he reaches a paw through the opening and snatches it back. He frowns at the string. A cunning look comes into his eyes. He notices the pair of scissors, picks them up, and cuts the string. He waits, but nothing happens. Eagerly, he thrusts his head through the opening and reaches for the package. The mouse, eating his cheese with one hand, lazily tugs at the rope with the other. The blade rushes down with the sound of a roaring train; a forlorn whistle blows. The cat tries to pull his head out of the hole. The blade slices off the top half of his head, which drops into the basket and rolls noisily around like a coin. The cat pulls himself out of the hole and stumbles about until he falls over the edge of the platform into the basket. He seizes the top of his head and puts it on like a hat. It is backward. He straightens it with a half turn. In his hand, he sees with surprise the yellow package with the red bow. Frowning, he unties it. Inside is a bright-red stick of dynamite with a sizzling fuse. The cat looks at the dynamite and turns his head to the audience. He blinks once. The dynamite explodes. When the smoke clears, the cat’s face is black. In each eye a ship cracks in half and slowly sinks in the water.
(illustration credit 25.9)
The mouse is sitting in his chair with his feet on the hassock and his open book face down on his lap. A mood of melancholy has invaded him, as if the brown tones of his room had seeped into his brain. He feels stale and out of sorts: he moves within the narrow compass of his mind, utterly devoid of fresh ideas. Is he perhaps too much alone? He thinks of the cat and wonders whether there is some dim and distant possibility of a connection, perhaps a companionship. Is it possible that they might become friends? Perhaps he could teach the cat to appreciate the things of the mind, and learn from the cat to enjoy life’s simpler pleasures. Perhaps the cat, too, feels an occasional sting of loneliness. Haven’t they much in common, after all? Both are bachelors, indoor sorts, who enjoy the comforts of a cozy domesticity; both are secretive; both take pleasure in plots and schemes. The more the mouse pursues this line of thought, the more it seems to him that the cat is a large, soft mouse. He imagines the cat with mouse ears and gentle mouse paws, wearing a white bib, sitting across from him at the kitchen table, lifting to his mouth a fork at the end of which is a piece of cheese.
The cat enters from the right with a chalkboard eraser in one hand. He goes over to the mousehole, bends down, and erases it. He stands up and erases the wall, revealing the mouse’s home. The mouse is sitting in his chair with his feet on the hassock and his open book face down on his lap. The cat bends over and erases the book. The mouse looks up in irritation. The cat erases the mouse’s chair. He erases the hassock. He erases the entire room. He tosses the eraser over his shoulder. Now there is nothing left in the world except the cat and the mouse. The cat snatches him up in a fist. The cat’s red tongue slides over glistening teeth sharp as ice picks. Here and there, over a tooth, a bright star expands and contracts. The cat opens his jaws wider, closes his eyes, and hesitates. The death of the mouse is desirable in every way, but will life without him really be pleasurable? Will the mouse’s absence satisfy him entirely? Is it conceivable that he may miss the mouse, from time to time? Is it possible that he needs the mouse, in some disturbing way?
As the cat hesitates, t
he mouse reaches into a pocket of his robe and removes a red handkerchief. With swift circular strokes he wipes out the cat’s teeth while the cat’s eyes watch in surprise. He wipes out the cat’s eyes. He wipes out the cat’s whiskers. He wipes out the cat’s head. Still held in the cat’s fist, he wipes out the entire cat, except for the paw holding him. Then, very carefully, he wipes out the paw. He drops lightly down and slaps his palms together. He looks about. He is alone with his red handkerchief in a blank white world. After a pause, he begins to wipe himself out, moving rapidly from head to toe. Now there is nothing left but the red handkerchief. The handkerchief flutters, grows larger, and suddenly splits in half. The halves become red theatre curtains, which begin to close. Across the closing curtains, words write themselves in black script: “The End.”
| 2004 |
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A good anthology sidles up to you and brushes its sleek flanks against your shins. It claims you. But who can lay claim to it? This anthology, certainly, was a collective endeavor, and the collective includes Roger Angell, Jordan Awan, Katia Bachko, Jennifer Backe, Chris Curry, Deanna Donegan, Noah Eaker, Hendrik Hertzberg, Trevor Hoey, Whitney Johnson, Susan Kamil, Mina Kaneko, Anthony Lane, Rachel Lee, Maria Lokke, Bob Mankoff, Pam McCarthy, Chloe McConnell, Caitlin McKenna, Wyatt Mitchell, Françoise Mouly, Lynn Oberlander, Erin Overbey, Beth Pearson, James Pomerantz, David Remnick, Joshua Rothman, Eric Simonoff, and—last only alphabetically!—Susan Turner. Some of these worthies pounced on permissions or swatted away dangling impediments; others groomed for errors, chased down archival images, scratched out page designs, or simply gave inspiration by combing their whiskers and looking wise. Special thanks go to the cat-herding Henry Finder and to Giles Harvey, who clawed through the magazine’s copious archives, finding the fun among the fur balls.
CONTRIBUTORS
MARGARET ATWOOD is a poet, novelist, and literary critic. Her books include The Handmaid’s Tale, which won the Arthur C. Clarke Award; The Blind Assassin, which won the Booker Prize; and the MaddAddam trilogy, featuring quasi-humans endowed with the ability to purr.
THOMAS BELLER began contributing to The New Yorker in 1991. He is the author of a short-story collection, Seduction Theory; a novel, The Sleep-Over Artist; and a memoir, How to Be a Man: Scenes from a Protracted Boyhood.
SALLY BENSON (1897–1972) was a screenwriter who also contributed many short stories to The New Yorker, some of which served as the basis for the film Meet Me in St. Louis.
BURKHARD BILGER has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2001. He is the author of Noodling for Flatheads, which was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award. His work has been anthologized three times in Best American Science and Nature Writing, twice in Best American Sports Writing, and once each in Best Food Writing, Best Technology Writing, and Best American Science Writing.
ELIZABETH BISHOP (1911–1979) published her first poem in The New Yorker in 1940. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1956 for Poems: North & South—A Cold Spring and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1976.
T. CORAGHESSAN BOYLE has published nine short-story collections and fourteen novels, including T. C. Boyle Stories II, The Women, and When the Killing’s Done.
MAEVE BRENNAN (1917–1993) joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1949 and for many years wrote the column “The Long-Winded Lady” for the Talk of the Town. She published two volumes of short stories, In and Out of Never-Never Land and Christmas Eve, most of which appeared originally in The New Yorker.
JOHN BROOKS (1920–1993) joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 1949 and wrote numerous pieces for the magazine about the world of high finance. His books include Once in Golconda: A True Drama of Wall Street 1920–1938 and The Takeover Game: The Men, the Moves, and the Wall Street Money Behind Today’s Nationwide Merger Wars.
HENRI COLE is a poet whose books include Touch, Blackbird and Wolf, and Middle Earth, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He teaches at Ohio State University and is the poetry editor of The New Republic.
HENRY S. F. COOPER began contributing to The New Yorker in 1969. From 1969 to 1987, he wrote a regular column called “Letter from the Space Center.” He has written eight books about NASA and space exploration, including Apollo on the Moon and The Evening Star: Venus Observed.
ROALD DAHL (1916–1990) was a novelist, short-story writer, and poet and one of the world’s bestselling children’s authors. His books include James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Fantastic Mr. Fox, My Uncle Oswald, and Kiss Kiss.
WOLCOTT GIBBS (1902–1958) joined The New Yorker in 1927 as a writer and editor. He became known for the varied Profiles, parodies, and reminiscences he contributed and for his exacting editing of others. In 1940, he became the magazine’s drama critic, and in 1950 his play Season in the Sun (adapted from his earlier book about Fire Island bohemianism) became a Broadway hit.
BRENDAN GILL (1914–1997) joined The New Yorker in 1936 and wrote the long-running “Sky Line” column for the magazine. His numerous books include Many Masks: A Life of Frank Lloyd Wright and Here at the New Yorker, a memoir of his time at the magazine.
DANA GOODYEAR joined The New Yorker in 1999. She is the author of two books of poems, Honey and Junk and The Oracle of Hollywood Boulevard, and a book about foodie culture, Anything That Moves.
ROBERT GRAVES (1895–1985) was born in London and produced more than 120 books in his long life, including the First World War memoir Goodbye to All That, the historical novel I, Claudius, and The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. His poems appeared in The New Yorker for a quarter of a century, starting in 1950.
EMILY HAHN (1905–1997) was an American author and journalist whose many books include Look Who’s Talking!, on animal communication, and No Hurry to Get Home, a memoir.
VICKI HEARNE (1946–2001) was a writer and animal trainer. Her books include Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by Name.
HENDRIK HERTZBERG, a senior editor and staff writer, was a New Yorker Talk of the Town reporter from 1969 to 1977. After a fifteen-year hiatus as a White House speechwriter and then editor of The New Republic, he returned to The New Yorker in 1992. He is the author of Politics: Observations and Arguments, 1966–2004 and ¡Obamanos!: The Birth of a New Political Era.
TED HUGHES (1930–1998) was a poet and children’s writer whose books include Crow, Birthday Letters, and The Iron Man. He was the British poet laureate from 1984 until his death.
WELDON KEES (1914–1955) was a poet, novelist, and painter whose books include The Last Man and The Fall of the Magicians.
JAMAICA KINCAID began contributing to The New Yorker in 1974. Her books include At the Bottom of the River, Annie John, The Autobiography of My Mother, and See Now Then.
E. F. KINKEAD (1906–1992) was a staff writer and editor at The New Yorker for fifty-eight years. His books include Wilderness Is All Around Us: Notes of an Urban Naturalist and Central Park.
KATHERINE T. KINKEAD (1910–2001) joined the staff of The New Yorker in 1942. She was one of the first women reporters for the magazine.
ANTHONY LANE joined The New Yorker in 1993. In addition to his biweekly film reviews, he contributes book reviews and other works of criticism, for which he has received a National Magazine Award. Nobody’s Perfect, a collection of his pieces for the magazine, was published in 2003.
ARIEL LEVY joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2008. She is the author of Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture.
IVY LITVINOV (1889–1977) was the author of several novels, including The Questing Beast and His Master's Voice.
The Big New Yorker Book of Cats Page 43
