“There is the mountain where Charlemagne is said to lie,” the two-legs said, indicating another peak. “It is said he will rise again when he is needed. It is no accident that I have my residence opposite it.”
“What does it mean?” Hrurr cried out, imagining that Blondi might know.
“That he rule everything,” Blondi replied, “and that I serve, wherever he goes.”
“We shall win this war,” the two-legs said. Behind him, two other creatures were shaking their heads. The fair-furred woman touched his arm.
“Let us go inside, my Führer,” one man said.
* * * *
The chalet’s picture window was bright with light. Hrurr sat below, watching silhouetted shapes flutter across the panes. Earlier in the night, the fair-furred woman had appeared on the balcony above; she had kindly dropped a few bits of food, glancing around nervously as if afraid someone might see her.
“Well?”
Hrurr turned his head. Ylawl was slinking toward him, eyes gleaming in the dark. “I see that Blondi’s still there.” The dog, a shadow outlined by the light, was now gazing out the window.
“Her master still holds her,” Hrurr said. “I think she would even die for him.” He paused. “Come with me, Ylawl.”
“Where will you go?”
“Down to the valley, I suppose.” He thought of returning to Mewleen, wondering if he would ever find her again.
“It’s a long way.”
“I wish I could go to a place where there are no two-legged ones.”
“They are everywhere. You’ll never escape them. They’ll swallow the world, at least for a time. Best to take what they offer and ignore them otherwise.”
“They serve no one except themselves, Ylawl. They don’t even realize how blind and deaf they are.” Hrurr stretched. “I must leave.”
The smaller cat lingered for a moment, then slipped away. “Goodbye, then,” Ylawl whispered.
* * * *
Hrurr made his way down the slope, keeping away from the roads, feeling his way through the night with his whiskers. The mindless bark of a guard dog in the distance occasionally echoed through the wood; the creature did not even bother to sound warnings in the animals’ tongue. He thought of Blondi, who seemed to know her two-legs’s language better than her own.
By morning, he had come to the barbed-wire fence; slipping under it, he left the enclosure. The birds were singing, gossiping of the sights they had seen and the grubs they had caught and chirping warnings to intruders on their territory
“Birds!” Hrurr called out. “You’ve flown far. You must know where I would be safe. Where should I go?”
“Cat! Cat!” the birds replied mockingly. No one answered his question.
* * * *
He came to the road where he had left Mewleen and paced along it, seeking. At last he understood that the broken mirror was gone; the omen had vanished. He sat down, wondering what it meant.
Something purred in the distance. He started up as the procession of metal beasts passed him, moving in the direction of the distant town. For a moment, he was sure he had seen Blondi inside one beast’s belly, her nose pressed against a transparent shield, death in her eyes.
When the herd had rolled past, he saw Mewleen gazing at him from across the road, bright eyes flickering. He ran to her, bounding over the road, legs stretching as he displayed his speed and grace. Rolling onto his back, he nipped at her fur as she held him with her paws; her purring and his became one sound.
“The fragments are gone,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m in my own world again, and the dog has been taken from the cage.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Mewleen asked.
He rolled away. “It’s nothing,” he replied, scrambling to his feet. He could not tell Mewleen what he had seen; better not to burden her with his dark vision.
“Look at you,” she chided. “So ungroomed—I imagine you’re hungry as well.” She nuzzled at his fur. “Do you want to come home with me now? They may shoo you away at first, but when they understand that you have no place to go, they’ll let you stay.”
He thought of food and dark, warm places, of laps and soft voices. Reluctantly, he was beginning to understand how Blondi felt.
“For a while,” he said, clinging to his freedom, “Just for a while.” As they left the road, several birds flew overhead, screaming of the distant war.
AFTERWORD TO “THE MOUNTAIN CAGE”
Not long ago, a friend of mine mentioned a writer he knew who had begun researching a novel set during World War II about the Nazi high command. This writer soon gave up on this project, largely because having to live in that world imaginatively over a long period of time was driving him crazy. There are those who argue that the Nazis, the Holocaust, and the events surrounding them may not be fit subjects for fiction, at least not until more time has passed and the last of the survivors have had their say. Others have claimed that to write fiction about such horrors risks trivializing them, since the evil reality so far exceeds anything imagination and artistic transformation might yield.
All of which may help to explain why I approached this subject warily and chose to glimpse it obliquely, through the eyes of cats.
MADAME JOLICŒUR’S CAT, by Thomas A. Janvier
Being somewhat of an age, and a widow of dignity—the late Monsieur Jolicœur has held the responsible position under Government of Ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées—yet being also of a provocatively fresh plumpness, and a Marseillaise, it was of necessity that Madame Veuve Jolicœur, on being left lonely in the world save for the companionship of her adored Shah de Perse, should entertain expectations of the future that were antipodal and antagonistic: on the one hand, of an austere life suitable to a widow of a reasonable maturity and of an assured position; on the other hand, of a life, not austere, suitable to a widow still of a provocatively fresh plumpness and by birth a Marseillaise.
Had Madame Jolicœur possessed a severe temperament and a resolute mind—possessions inherently improbable, in view of her birthplace—she would have made her choice between these equally possible futures with a promptness and with a finality that would have left nothing at loose ends. So endowed, she would have emphasized her not excessive age by a slightly excessive gravity of dress and of deportment; and would have adorned it, and her dignified widowhood, by becoming dévote: and thereafter, clinging with a modest ostentation only to her piety, would have radiated, as time made its marches, an always increasingly exemplary grace. But as Madame Jolicœur did not possess a temperament that even bordered on severity, and as her mind was a sort that made itself up in at least twenty different directions in a single moment—as she was, in short, an entirely typical and therefore an entirely delightful Provençale—the situation was so much too much for her that, by the process of formulating a great variety of irreconcilable conclusions, she left everything at loose ends by not making any choice at all.
In effect, she simply stood attendant upon what the future had in store for her: and meanwhile avowedly clung only, in default of piety, to her adored Shah de Perse—to whom was given, as she declared in disconsolate negligence of her still provocatively fresh plumpness, all of the bestowable affection that remained in the devastated recesses of her withered heart.
To preclude any possibility of compromising misunderstanding, it is but just to Madame Jolicœur to explain at once that the personage thus in receipt of the contingent remainder of her blighted affections—far from being, as his name would suggest, an Oriental potentate temporarily domiciled in Marseille to whom she had taken something more than a passing fancy—was a Persian superb black cat; and a cat of such rare excellencies of character and of acquirements as fully to deserve all of the affection that any heart of the right sort—withered, or otherwise—was disposed to bestow upon him.
Cats of his perfect beauty, of his perfect grace, possibly might be found, Madame Jolicœur grudgingly admitted, in the Persia
n royal catteries; but nowhere else in the Orient, and nowhere at all in the Occident, she declared with an energetic conviction, possibly could there be found a cat who even approached him in intellectual development, in wealth of interesting accomplishments, and, above all, in natural sweetness of disposition—a sweetness so marked that even under extreme provocation he never had been known to thrust out an angry paw. This is not to say that the Shah de Perse was a characterless cat, a lymphatic nonentity. On occasion—usually in connection with food that was distasteful to him—he could have his resentments; but they were manifested always with a dignified restraint. His nearest approach to ill-mannered abruptness was to bat with a contemptuous paw the offending morsel from his plate; which brusque act he followed by fixing upon the bestower of unworthy food a coldly, but always politely, contemptuous stare. Ordinarily, however, his displeasure—in the matter of unsuitable food, or in other matters—was exhibited by no more overt action than his retirement to a corner—he had his choices in corners, governed by the intensity of his feelings—and there seating himself with his back turned scornfully to an offending world. Even in his kindliest corner, on such occasions, the expression of his scornful back was as a whole volume of wingéd words!
But the rare little cat tantrums of the Shah de Perse—if to his so gentle excesses may be applied so strong a term—were but as sunspots on the effulgence of his otherwise constant amiability. His regnant desires, by which his worthy little life was governed, were to love and to please. He was the most cuddlesome cat, Madame Jolicœur unhesitatingly asserted, that ever had lived; and he had a purr—softly thunderous and winningly affectionate—that was in keeping with his cuddlesome ways. When, of his own volition, he would jump into her abundant lap and go to burrowing with his little soft round head beneath her soft round elbows, the while gurglingly purring forth his love for her, Madame Jolicœur, quite justifiably, at times was moved to tears. Equally was his sweet nature exhibited in his always eager willingness to show off his little train of cat accomplishments. He would give his paw with a courteous grace to any lady or gentleman—he drew the caste line rigidly—who asked for it. For his mistress, he would spring to a considerable height and clutch with his two soft paws—never by any mistake scratching—her outstretched wrist, and so would remain suspended while he delicately nibbled from between her fingers her edible offering. For her, he would make an almost painfully real pretense of being a dead cat: extending himself upon the rug with an exaggeratedly death-like rigidity—and so remaining until her command to be alive again brought him briskly to rub himself, rising on his hind legs and purring mellowly, against her comfortable knees.
All of these interesting tricks, with various others that may be passed over, he would perform with a lively zest whenever set at them by a mere word of prompting; but his most notable trick was a game in which he engaged with his mistress not at word of command, but—such was his intelligence—simply upon her setting the signal for it. The signal was a close-fitting white cap—to be quite frank, a night-cap—that she tied upon her head when it was desired that the game should be played.
It was of the game that Madame Jolicœur should assume her cap with an air of detachment and aloofness: as though no such entity as the Shah de Perse existed, and with an insisted-upon disregard of the fact that he was watching her alertly with his great golden eyes. Equally was it of the game that the Shah de Perse should affect—save for his alert watching—a like disregard of the doings of Madame Jolicœur: usually by an ostentatious pretense of washing his upraised hind leg, or by a like pretense of scrubbing his ears. These conventions duly having been observed, Madame Jolicœur would seat herself in her especial easy-chair, above the relatively high back of which her night-capped head a little rose. Being so seated, always with the air of aloofness and detachment, she would take a book from the table and make a show of becoming absorbed in its contents. Matters being thus advanced, the Shah de Perse would make a show of becoming absorbed in searchings for an imaginary mouse—but so would conduct his fictitious quest for that supposititious animal as eventually to achieve for himself a strategic position close behind Madame Jolicœur’s chair. Then, dramatically, the pleasing end of the game would come: as the Shah de Perse—leaping with the distinguishing grace and lightness of his Persian race—would flash upward and “surprise” Madame Jolicœur by crowning her white-capped head with his small black person, all a-shake with triumphant purrs! It was a charming little comedy—and so well understood by the Shah de Perse that he never ventured to essay it under other, and more intimate, conditions of night-cap use; even as he never failed to engage in it with spirit when his white lure properly was set for him above the back of Madame Jolicœur’s chair. It was as though to the Shah de Perse the white night-cap of Madame Jolicœur, displayed in accordance with the rules of the game, were an oriflamme: akin to, but in minor points differing from, the helmet of Navarre.
Being such a cat, it will be perceived that Madame Jolicœur had reason in her avowed intention to bestow upon him all of the bestowable affection remnant in her withered heart’s devastated recesses; and, equally, that she would not be wholly desolate, having such a cat to comfort her, while standing impartially attendant upon the decrees of fate.
* * * *
To assert that any woman not conspicuously old and quite conspicuously of a fresh plumpness could be left in any city isolate, save for a cat’s company, while the fates were spinning new threads for her, would be to put a severe strain upon credulity. To make that assertion specifically of Madame Jolicœur, and specifically—of all cities in the world!—of Marseille, would be to strain credulity fairly to the breaking point. On the other hand, to assert that Madame Jolicœur, in defense of her isolation, was disposed to plant machine-guns in the doorway of her dwelling—a house of modest elegance on the Pavé d’Amour, at the crossing of the Rue Bausset—would be to go too far. Nor indeed—aside from the fact that the presence of such engines of destruction would not have been tolerated by the other residents of the quietly respectable Pavé d’Amour—was Madame Jolicœur herself, as has been intimated, temperamentally inclined to go to such lengths as machine-guns in maintenance of her somewhat waveringly desired privacy in a merely cat-enlivened solitude.
Between these widely separated extremes of conjectural possibility lay the mediate truth of the matter: which truth—thus resembling precious gold in its valueless rock matrix—lay embedded in, and was to be extracted from, the irresponsible utterances of the double row of loosely hung tongues, always at hot wagging, ranged along the two sides of the Rue Bausset.
Madame Jouval, a milliner of repute—delivering herself with the generosity due to a good customer from whom an order for a trousseau was a not unremote possibility, yet with the acumen perfected by her professional experiences—summed her views of the situation, in talk with Madame Vic, proprietor of the Vic bakery, in these words: “It is of the convenances, and equally is it of her own melancholy necessities, that this poor Madame retires for a season to sorrow in a suitable seclusion in the company of her sympathetic cat. Only in such retreat can she give vent fitly to her desolating grief. But after storm comes sunshine: and I am happily assured by her less despairing appearance, and by the new mourning that I have been making for her, that even now, from the bottomless depth of her affliction, she looks beyond the storm.”
“I well believe it!” snapped Madame Vic. “That the appearance of Madame Jolicœur at any time has been despairing is a matter that has escaped my notice. As to the mourning that she now wears, it is a defiance of all propriety. Why, with no more than that of color in her frock”—Madame Vic upheld her thumb and finger infinitesimally separated—“and with a mere pin-point of a flower in her bonnet, she would be fit for the opera!”
Madame Vic spoke with a caustic bitterness that had its roots. Her own venture in second marriage had been catastrophic—so catastrophic that her neglected bakery had gone very much to the bad. Still more closely to the point, M
adame Jolicœur—incident to finding entomologic specimens misplaced in her breakfast-rolls—had taken the leading part in an interchange of incivilities with the bakery’s proprietor, and had withdrawn from it her custom.
“And even were her mournings not a flouting of her short year of widowhood,” continued Madame Vic, with an acrimony that abbreviated the term of widowhood most unfairly—“the scores of eligible suitors who openly come streaming to her door, and are welcomed there, are as trumpets proclaiming her audacious intentions and her indecorous desires. Even Monsieur Brisson is in that outrageous procession! Is it not enough that she should entice a repulsively bald-headed notary and an old rake of a major to make their brazen advances, without suffering this anatomy of a pharmacien to come treading on their heels?—he with his hands imbrued in the life-blood of the unhappy old woman whom his mismade prescription sent in agony to the tomb! Pah! I have no patience with her! She and her grief and her seclusion and her sympathetic cat, indeed! It all is a tragedy of indiscretion—that shapes itself as a revolting farce!”
It will be observed that Madame Vic, in framing her bill of particulars, practically reduced her alleged scores of Madame Jolicœur’s suitors to precisely two—since the bad third was handicapped so heavily by that notorious matter of the mismade prescription as to be a negligible quantity, quite out of the race. Indeed, it was only the preposterous temerity of Monsieur Brisson—despairingly clutching at any chance to retrieve his broken fortunes—that put him in the running at all. With the others, in such slighting terms referred to by Madame Vic—Monsieur Peloux, a notary of standing, and the Major Gontard, of the Twenty-Ninth of the Line—the case was different. It had its sides.
“That this worthy lady reasonably may desire again to wed,” declared Monsieur Fromagin, actual proprietor of the Épicerie Russe—an establishment liberally patronized by Madame Jolicœur—“is as true as that when she goes to make her choosings between these estimable gentlemen she cannot make a choice that is wrong.”
The Second Cat Megapack: Frisky Feline Tales, Old and New Page 8
