by Denny Taylor
“I’m nervous,” Cat said, “When Et gets back with X-it our time in the split second will end and I’m not happy about that.” Turning her head around as far as it would go she tugged out a tuft of fur from her back. “See,” she said, this time her voice muffled. “I’m losing my fur again.”
“Stop that!” Word said. “You’re not losing your fur. But you are losing your mind.”
“I don’t have a mind,” Cat said.
“You’re just being neurotic,” Word said as she tried to help Cat get the fur out of her mouth.
“Can you be neurotic without a mind?” Cat asked.
Cat spat and a clump of fur landed on Word’s lap.
“Did you know Michel de Montaigne had a Cat?” Word asked ignoring the flying fur and trying to distract her.
“Yes,” Cat said, with an apologetic smile. “Me.”
“Me what?” Word asked, picking the wet fur off her lap.
“I was Montaigne’s Cat.”
“Really?” Word asked, surprised that this very silly conversation had suddenly taken an interesting turn. “Do you want to tell me about that?”
“You sound like a therapist,” Cat said, with her usual Cheshire Cat grin, but looking relieved that they had found something to talk about while they waited for Et to bring back X-it.
“‘Qui sçait si elle passe son temps de moy plus que je ne fay d’elle?’ ”Word said, quoting from the original writings of Montaigne that she had read and remembered. “The literal translation is ‘who knows if she’ –” Word stopped to explain, “– ‘she’ is Montaigne’s Cat –” and then she began again, “– the literal translation is ‘who knows if she passes her time more with me than I do with her?’”
“He could be asking that question about us – you and me – don’tyathink?” Cat said. “Now we’d say – ‘When I am playing with my Cat, how do I know she’s not playing with me?’”
“Were you serious about being his Cat?” Word asked, suddenly doubtful. It sounded far-fetched.
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Cat said. “I was Montaigne’s Cat. ‘Hope to die’ – Death dying – that’s pretty funny.”
“How did you manage?” Word said. “Wars, the plague, a lot of people died,” Word said.
“There are between seven and eight billion people on the planet,” Cat said. “There were less than five hundred million in Montaigne’s time. I had a much easier time. Being with him actually helped me cope – I’ve always been highly strung you see. Playing with Michel –” Cat paused “– well, he was very special.”
“Late in his life Montaigne wrote that he knew Cat was playing with him,” Word said, smiling at Cat. “How did you come to know the sixteenth century Gascon nobleman?”
“His baby daughter died when she was two months old,” Cat said, “so naturally I was there. He also lost his younger brother who was killed by a blow from a tennis ball. A tragic death. A bit weird. On top of that his friend Etienne de La Boétie died of plague, and his father had a prolonged and agonizing death from a kidney stone. Also there was a religious war spreading across France with massacres and murders and –”
“Got it,” Word said. “Danse macabre, you helped Montaigne survive all the deaths in his life – the way you’re helping me –”
“Sort of,” Cat said. “Did you know Montaigne was a Truth Keeper?”
“I figured that,” Word said. “My mother had some of his original manuscripts and copies of others. She spent years studying them.”
“I liked playing with him,” Cat said. “He was often very melancholy but he found the truth in simple pleasures and I was one of them. He was skeptical about everything and would mutter to himself ‘what do I know?’ – ‘Que sais-je?’ –”
“Did he know?” Word asked.
“What? That I’m Death?” Cat asked. “No. No. You’re the only one I’ve ever told.”
“I’m honored,” Word said, still picking Cat’s hair off her pants.
“When I met him he was quite young – it was just before he gave up his public life and retired to his ancestral château to brood on the death of the people he loved and to wait for his own death,” Cat said.
“Wait for Death?” Word said. “Sometimes –”
“He didn’t have to wait long,” Cat said, Cheshire smiling at her own joke. “I became his Cat and he wrote about me.”
“Do you think you changed his mind about dying?” Word asked more seriously, totally caught up with this unexpected story that connected Montaigne and Cat with her mother’s scholarship.
“I can’t take credit,” Cat said, “but he spent a lot of time playing with me. He turned away from his meditations on death – ‘to philosophize is to learn to die’ became transformed into ‘living happily, not … dying happily, that is the source of human happiness.’”
“My understanding is that Montaigne thought that human arrogance is ignorance,” Word said, “and that animals live with nature and humans live in opposition to nature.”
“Yes,” Cat said. “And Montaigne thought meditating on animal communication would help humans step outside themselves and lead to a new conception of what it means to be human. I like to think I contributed to that.”
“Just by being with you,” Word said, patting Cat. “I’ve had to reimagine being human. My life. I’ve had to step outside myself. That’s what this split second is about isn’t it? Shaking things up. Making me see myself differently. You’ve also challenged my understandings of the ways my species thinks about Death and Eternity. I haven’t worked it all out but I am thinking differently.”
“Do you feel different?” Cat asked.
“Yes, I do,” Word said, “and it’s a good thing, don’t you think?”
“There’s more to it, you know,” Cat said, her voice dropping, as if what she was about to say was a secret. She stared at Word, her yellow eyes reduced to black slits.
“Et?” Word said, guessing. “Was she there?”
Cat nodded.
“She knew Montaigne too?” Word asked, lowering her voice, but not sure why. “Is it okay that I know?”
Cat nodded again.
Word frowned. “What is it I know?” she whispered.
Cat looked around at the room. The Fire sent out sparks and glowed red. The Walls rippled and the Four Corners moved closer.
“Should we be talking about this?” Word asked, feeling nervous, not wanting to upset the Fire or the Four Corners.
“We have to talk about it,” Cat said. “The Fire, Walls, and Four Corners all agree.” The Fire sent flames up the chimney and the Walls stood tall with the Four Corners at exactly 90 degrees.
“Et stayed with Montaigne for many years, walking with him in his gardens, learning from him as he learned from her,” Cat said. “She was like his adopted daughter.”
“Marie de Gournay?” Word asked. “I’ve read about her. She lived with Montaigne and his family for the last five years of his life.”
“He was only sixty when he died,” Cat said, her eyes closing and her head drooping.
“Marie was arguably the first feminist writer of literary criticism,” Word said, hurrying on before Cat started losing her fur again. “She gathered Montaigne’s last writings together after his death and left over one thousand pages of her own writing. My mother studied them. Marie wrote, ‘Happy are you, reader, if you do not belong to this sex to which all good is forbidden!’”
“Doesn’t that sound like something Et would write?” Cat said. “It was particularly nice for me that she was there with Montaigne because I got to sit on her lap – a lot!”
“I remember reading,” Word said, caught up in Cat’s revelations, “that Flaubert told a depressed friend, ‘If you want to get in touch with life read Montaigne. You will love him, you’ll see.’”
“Exactly,” Cat said, “that was my experience, and Et’s, but –”
“What happened?” Word asked.
The Walls shuddered, the Four C
orners became acute, and the Fire for all pretense and purposes went out.
“Tell me!” she said, shivering suddenly and feeling cold.
“Descartes happened,” Cat said. “I met him first when he was a small child and his mother died so it was very easy to feel sorry for him.”
“Descartes is thought to have ushered in the modern world,” Word said. “‘Cogito ergo sum’ – I think, therefore I am,”
“Exactly,” Cat said, whispering again. “He was Montaigne’s opposite. Rather than define and divide things – Montaigne wanted to bring them together in the quest for commonality rather than difference. Descartes wanted to mathematically divide everything up. Slice and dice. Chop. Chop.”
“My mother said Montaigne considered human relations the primal scene of knowledge and that through human relationships trust is restored and truth follows,” Word said. “We often discussed the dynamic relationships between knowledge, human relationships, trust, and truth.”
“Exactly,” Cat said, “but Descartes thought differently. He was a bitter man, reclusive, cantankerous, and a loner, living in a small room without real friendships, and with a war going on. His quest for certainty led to his severing of mind and body and his severing of humans from their animal counterparts – chop, chop.” Cat looked at Word. “Doesn’t matter what people feel, only what powerful men think – that’s how we’ve ended up the A-I, minds without bodies.”
“So what happened?” Word asked, wanting to know more about Et and Montaigne.
“All of a sudden Et couldn’t see the future,” Cat said. “Normally she could see forty five million centuries into the past and even more millions of centuries into the future – and all of a sudden she couldn’t see forward – the future disappeared.”
“But that was five hundred years ago?” Word said, not getting it.
“Well, Et could see that far,” Cat said, “but in the grand scheme of things, when she had always been able to see backward and forward hundreds of millions of years, it was a big deal. And, Et knew that it was the philosophy of Descartes that was taking humans along the wrong path – metaphorically and literally.”
“Makes sense to me,” Word said. “Every aspect of modern life is based on his Cartesian ways of thinking – science, the economy, education – the paranoiac test, test, prove-it, quest for certainty. The twisted, I-think-therefore-I-am-important, bad, daft, minds of powerful men can be traced back to Descartes.”
“Exactly,” Cat said, impressed by Word’s articulation of the problem and wanting to show her own prowess. “The quest has been for the unlimited power of male domination – omnipotence – creating existential risks that could wipe out humanity within this century.”
“So Et cut out?” Word said.
“You could put it that way,” Cat said. “Although I don’t think she actually did that.”
“What I don’t understand is, if she could see the last five hundred or so years,” Word said, “she must have known that X-it and I would arrive on her doorstep, don’t you think?”
“I do think,” Cat said, “and I also think for the past five hundred years she’s been trying to figure out what to do to save humans from becoming extinct. True, I’ve been splitting seconds when people die – just because there are so many of them and only one of me – but Et is the only one who can come up with a split second solution.”
Twenty-Seven
“Where’s Et?” X-it asked, standing in front of the Fire with his elbow on the mantle, smiling at Word.
The embers glowed and the Walls wrinkled in what looked like smiley faces, while the Four Corners drew closer and relaxed their right angles.
“You’re back!” Word said, quickly getting up and giving him a hug. “We thought Et was with you.”
“I thought she was with you,” X-it said, hugging her back and showing no signs of letting her go.
Word gently pushed him away and turned and looked quizzically at Cat whose persona changed suddenly to her quirky and distinctly original Kiss-Bowie self.
“It’s close to show time,” Death said. “Et’s back out on reconnaissance. She’s worried about what happens when we return to Riverside Park and the scene by the Hudson River.”
“I was thinking about that,” X-it said.
Death stretched out her right arm with the flat of her hand less than an inch from X-it’s face. “Don’t think,” she said. “Not till Et gets back.” She turned her hand so X-it was looking at her long black fingernails. “Do you like them?” she said.
X-it looked at Word and then at Death. He nodded. “Yes,” he said. “You need sparkles on them.”
“You’re right,” Death said, without moving her hand away from his face. “Something like this?”
“Beautiful,” X-it said, mesmerized by the stars in the night sky that had appeared in front of him. He nodded, knowing that Cat was not playing with him. “I had two dreams while I had a nap,” he said, making sure that they knew he was making sure he did not think about what had happened in Riverside Park or about going back.
Word sat back down on the chair. “Tell us,” she said cautiously, knowing that with X-it in the room without Et there could be a security breach that would put an end to Et’s split second solution.
Death resumed her Cat persona and jumped up on Word’s lap. She padded around in a circle before sitting so that her eyes were fixed on X-it.
“Well,” X-it said, nodding at Cat and then blowing a kiss to Word. He chose his words carefully. “The first dream took place in a room very much like this one. I was sleeping on a rug in front of the Fire and I pulled the blanket up to my chin, and lay on my side watching the flames as they leapt up the chimney and licked the pot of soup that was bubbling, sending savory smells into the room.”
Word smiled at X-it and Cat gave him her widest and most lop-sided of Cheshire grins.
“It was such a lucid dream,” X-it said. “Far away I could hear the clattering of pans and the stirring of spoons, but I lay still enjoying the last moments of the night. Then like a nightmare I remembered a great storm, and for a moment I couldn’t breathe and the noise of the freight train filled my head.”
Word rested her hand on Cat’s back. Both were alert and worried, realizing that X-it was not making the dream up.
“I thought of my mother and father,” X-it said. “Where were they? Were they looking for me? Had they found Max? I tried not to think about Max. I concentrated on the new smells in the air, which joined the smell of the soup, still bubbling in the pot that hung over the Fire.”
Word felt Cat relax.
“In my dream I realized I was in my grandmother’s house,” X-it said, caught up with storytelling. “And I decided I would get up and follow the mouthwatering smells, and I made my way through the rooms of the old house to the kitchen.”
Cat tucked her front paws under her and Word stroked her.
“The room was filled with the smell of freshly baked cookies and flakey buttermilk biscuits,” X-it said, “sweet jams and jellies, pungent cheeses, mixed together with smoked meats, strings of onions and bunches of dried herbs hung on hooks from the wooden beams of the ceiling. They filled the room. Coppery pots bubbled on an old iron range and a shiny kettle whistled hoarsely as it waited to scald and brew my grandmother’s tea.”
Imagining all these smells drew Cat in and Word tapped her to remind her to stay alert when she started purring.
“I stood in the doorway mesmerized by the clattering, sweet smelling room,” X-it said. “And then a voice greeted me from somewhere in the muddle. ‘Good morning!’ my grandmother sang, her voice lilting. She was wrapped in layers of flannel nightgowns, all tied up by the strings of her apron that gathered her in the middle and kept her gowns from dragging on the floor. In the morning light she seemed smaller, older and more wrinkled than I remembered her. She had wispy hair and a scrawny neck, but her sharp black eyes gave her strength and made her look both fierce and wise.
“‘I’m
making bread,’ she said, and I asked her if I could try. My grandmother waved her hand towards the dough and I dug my fingers deep in the dough and moved them around trying to do as she had done but all I made was a sticky mess.
“‘Let me show you,’ my grandmother said, giving me a push out of the way. ‘Twist and push.’ This time I watched more carefully. Then I tried again, keeping my fingers out of the dough as I kneaded it into a respectable shape. ‘Twist and push,’ I said. ‘How’s this?’
“‘That’s it!’ my grandmother said. ‘That’s how you knead dough!’ Then she began to laugh. ‘Now you can make bread.’
“‘Breakfast,’ my grandmother said, as she put some sausages in a pan to fry. ‘The biscuits are still warm and there’s a jug of milk on the table.’
“‘You cooked a lot of food,’ I said.
“‘I enjoy cooking,’ she said, ‘and I don’t get many opportunities to cook. I eat like a bird, just nibble, nibble, nibble, except for soup. I have soup every night for supper. Help yourself!’
“I took a plate and a cup from a shelf and ate biscuits, thick with butter, and drank glasses of milk in record time. Then my grandmother put some sausages on my plate and I took more biscuits, poured another glass of milk, and began eating all over again.
“My grandmother washed the dishes in an old stone sink, and then lowered herself into the sagging cushions of her favorite kitchen chair and watched me eat.
“‘You have a good appetite,’ she said, pleased that her cooking was so appreciated.
“‘I’m so hungry!’ I said.
“My grandmother smiled. ‘Eat up,’ she said. ‘When you’ve finished I’ll help you find your way through the woods. You must leave this morning.’
“‘Please let me stay,’ I said to her, in a small flat voice. ‘I’m so tired. I’ll leave early tomorrow morning.’
“‘No!’ my grandmother said sharply. ‘No one stays here!’
“‘The storm destroyed my home!’ I said, trying not to cry. ‘I can’t find my mother and father,’ I sobbed, no longer able to hold back the tears, ‘and I’ve lost my dog!’ I shouted.
