by Paul Theroux
‘Darwin said that?’
‘More or less.’
‘That cats think we’re cats?’
‘He was talking about dogs and sheep, but, yes,’ she said uncertainly. With conviction she added, ‘Anyway, these cats think I’m one.’
‘What about their natural instincts?’
‘Their instincts tell them no, but their sympathies and learning experience tell them yes. These cats are sympathetic. Listen, I don’t even think of them as cats!’
‘That’s one step further than Darwin,’ I said.
By now I knew a great deal about Miss Duboys’s cats, and quite a lot about Miss Duboys. We had spent the past five Sundays together. Neither of us had much to do on the weekends. It became our routine to have Sunday lunch at an Indian restaurant and, after a blistering vindaloo curry, to return to her apartment and spend the afternoon in bed. When we woke, damp and entangled, from our sudden sleep – the little death that follows sex – we went to a movie, usually a bad, undemanding one, at the Gate Cinema near the Notting Hill tube station. Sunday was a long day with several sleeps – the day had about six parts and seemed at times like two or three whole days – all the exertion, and then the laziness, and all the dying and dreaming and waking.
London was a city that inspired me to treasure private delights. Its weather and its rational, well-organized people had made it a city of splendid interiors – everything that was pleasurable happened indoors: the contentment of sex, food, reading, music, and talk. Margaret would have added animals to this list. When she woke blindly from one of these feverish Sunday sleeps, she bumped me with an elbow and said, ‘I’m neglecting my cats.’
She had no other friends. Apart from me (but I occupied her only one day of the week), her cats were the whole of her society, and they satisfied her. It seemed to me that she was slightly at odds with me – slightly bewildered – because I offered her the one thing a cat could not provide. The cats were a substitute for everything else. Well, that was plain enough! But it made me laugh to think that for Margaret Duboys I represented Sex. Me! It made life difficult for us at times, because it was hard for her to see me in any other way. She judged most people by comparing them with cats. In theory this was trivial and belittling, but it was worse in practice – no one came out well; no one measured up; no humans that she knew were half so worthwhile as any of her cats.
‘I make an exception in your case,’ she told me – we were in bed at the time.
‘Thanks, Marge!’
She didn’t laugh. She said, ‘Most men are prigs.’
‘Did you say prigs?’
‘No, no’ – but she dived beneath the covers.
Usually she was harder on herself than on me. She seemed to despise that part of herself which needed my companionship. We saw each other at parties just as often as before, because we concealed the fact that we had become lovers. I was not naturally a concealer of such things, but she made me secretive, and I saw that this was a part of all friendship – agreeing to be a little like the other person. Margaret thought, perhaps rightly, that in an informal way the Embassy would become curious about our friendship and ask questions – certainly the boys on the third floor would keep us under observation. So we never used the internal Embassy phones for anything except the most boring trivialities. There was plenty of time at the dinner parties for us to make plans for the following Sunday. People were still trying to bring us together! When I did phone her, out of caution I used the public phone box near my apartment, on Prince of Wales Drive. Those were the only times I used that phone box, and entering it – it was a damp, stinking, vandalized cubicle – I thought always of her, and always in a tender way.
She was catlike in the panting gasping way she made love, the way she clawed my shoulders, the way she shook, and most of all in the way she slept afterward, as though on a branch or an outcrop of rock, her legs drawn up under her and her arms wrapped around her head and her nose down.
I don’t think of them as cats. A number of times she repeated this observation to me. She did not theorize about it; she didn’t explain it. And yet it seemed to me the perfect reply to Darwin’s version of domestic animals thinking of us as animals. The person who grew up with cats for company regarded cats as people! Of course! Yet it seemed to me that these cats were the last creatures on earth to care whether or not they resembled an overworked FSO-4 in the Trade Section of the American Embassy. And if that was how she felt about cats, it made me wonder what she thought about human beings.
We seldom talked about the other people at work or about our work. We seldom talked at all. When we met it was for one thing, and when it came to sex she was single-minded. She used cats to explain her theory of the orgasm: ‘Step one, chase the cat up the tree. Step two, let it worry for a while. Step three, rescue the cat.’ When she failed to have an orgasm she would whisper, ‘The cat is still up the tree – get her down.’
From what she told other people at dinner parties, and from Embassy talk, I gathered that her important work was concerned with helping American companies break into the British market. It was highly abstract in the telling: she provided information about industrial software, did backup for seminars, organized a clearing-house for legal and commercial alternatives in company formation, and liaised with promotional bodies.
I hated talking to people about their work. There was, first, this obscure and silly language, and then, inevitably, they asked about my work. I was always reminded, when I told them, of how grand my job as Political Officer sounded, and how little I accomplished. These days I lived from Sunday to Sunday, and sex seemed to provide the only meaning to life – what else on earth was so important? There was nothing to compare with two warm bodies in a bed: this was wealth, freedom, and happiness; it was the object of all human endeavor. I was falling in love with Margaret Duboys.
I also feared losing her, and I hated all the other feelings that were caused by this fear – jealousy, panic, greed. This was love! It was a greater disruption in the body than an illness. But though at certain times I actually felt sick, I wanted her so badly, at other times it seemed to me – and I noted this with satisfaction – as if I had displaced those goddamned cats.
It was now December. The days were short and clammy-cold; they started late and dark; they ended early in the same darkness, which in London was like faded ink. On one of these dark afternoons Erroll Jeeps came into my office and asked whether he could have a private word with me.
‘Owlie Cooper – remember him?’
‘I met him at your house,’ I said.
‘That’s the cat,’ Erroll said. ‘He’s in a bind. He’s a jazzhead – plays trumpet around town in clubs. Thing is, his work permit hasn’t been renewed.’
‘Union trouble?’
‘No, it’s the Home Office, playing tough. He thought it would just be routine, but when he went to renew it they refused. Plus, they told him that he had already overstayed his visit. So he’s here illegally.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Give me a string to pull,’ Erroll said.
‘I wish I had one – he seemed a nice guy.’
‘He laughs a little too much, but he’s a great musician.’
My inspiration came that evening as I walked across Chelsea Bridge to Overstrand Mansions and my apartment. I passed the public phone box on Prince of Wales Drive and thought: Owlie Cooper was a man with a skill to sell – he made music, he was American, he was here to do business. He had a product and he was in demand, so why not treat it as a trade matter, Margaret?
I saw her the next day and said, ‘There’s an American here who’s trying to do business with the Brits. He’s got a terrific product, but his visa’s run out. Do you think you can handle it?’
‘Businessman,’ she said. ‘What kind of businessman?’
‘Music.’
‘What kind?’ she said. ‘Publishing, record company, or what?’
‘He makes music,’ I said. ‘Owlie Cooper
, the jazzman we met at Jeeps’s house.’
Margaret sighed and turned back to face her desk. She spoke to her blotter. ‘He can get his visa in the usual way.’
‘We could help him sell his product here,’ I said.
‘Product! He plays the trumpet, for Pete’s sake.’
‘Margaret,’ I said, ‘this guy’s in trouble. He can’t get a job if he hasn’t got a work permit. Look, he’s a good advertisement for American export initiative.’
‘I’d call it cultural initiative. Get Scaduto. He’s the cultural affairs officer. Music is his line.’ Then, in a persecuted voice, she said, ‘Please, I’m busy.’
‘You could pull a string. Skiddoo doesn’t have a string.’
‘This bastard Cooper –’
‘What do you mean, “bastard”? He’s a lost soul,’ I said. ‘Why should you be constantly boosting multinational corporations while a solitary man –’
‘I remember him,’ Margaret said. ‘He hates cats.’
‘No, it was dogs. And he doesn’t hate them. He was mocking Al Sanger’s dog.’
‘I distinctly remember,’ she said stiffly. ‘It was cats.’
There was a catlike hiss in her cross voice as she said so.
She said, ‘People will say I don’t want to help him because he’s black. Actually – I mean, funnily enough – that’s why I do want to help him – because he’s black and probably grew up disadvantaged. But I can’t.’
‘You can!’
‘It’s not my department.’
I started to speak again, but again she hissed at me. It was not part of a word but a whole warning sound – an undifferentiated hiss of fury and rebuke, as if I were a hulking, brutish stranger. It embarrassed me to think that her secretary was listening to Margaret behaving like one of her own selfish cats.
It was the only time we had ever talked business, and it was the last time. Owlie Cooper left quietly to live in Amsterdam. He claimed he was a political exile. He wasn’t, of course – he was just one of the many casualties of Anglo-American bureaucracy. But I felt that in time he would become genuinely angry and see us all as enemies; he would get lonelier and duller and lazier in Holland.
Two weeks later I was calling Margaret from a telephone booth, the sort of squalid public phone box that, when I entered it, excited me with a vivid recollection of her hair and her lips. She began telling me about someone she had found in the house quite by chance, how he had stayed the night and eaten a huge breakfast, and how she was going to fatten him up.
I had by then already lost the thread of this conversation. I had taken a dislike to her for her treatment of Owlie Cooper. I hated the stink of this phone box, the broken glass and graffiti. What was she talking about? Why was she telling me this?
I said, ‘What’s his name?’
‘Who?’
‘The person who spent the night with you.’
‘The little Burmese?’ she said. ‘I haven’t given him a name yet.’
My parting words were ineffectual and unmemorable. I just stopped seeing her, canceled our usual date, and Sunday I spent the whole day bleeding in my bedroom. She hardly seemed to notice, or else – and I think this was more likely – she was relieved that I had given up.
The Honorary Siberian
One day I returned to my apartment at Overstrand Mansions and found a case of vodka outside the door – a dozen bottles of Stolichnaya Green Label. A week later it was a basket filled with small jars of caviar. Neither of these gifts contained a note or any indication of the name of the sender. But there was no question of my keeping them. I brought them to the Embassy and put them in storage – in the same basement room in which we kept the originals of hate-letters and the left-behind umbrellas – and I had their existence entered in the duty officer’s log. The next parcel was a box of chocolates, and the last one an imitation leather wallet. One thing was clear: whoever was leaving these things was running out of money.
‘You have a secret admirer,’ Everett Horton said. ‘It’s got to be a Russian. They’re noted for their subtlety. Like German jokes, like Mexican food. A few years ago one of our guys on the third floor was approached by a Tass correspondent. They had lunch – our man was wired up. The Russian offered him money for information. Just like that – can you imagine? They still play the tape of the conversation upstairs for laughs.’
‘What should I do, coach?’
Horton said, ‘I’d put him on hold.’
The next week there was no gift at my door. There was a phone call.
‘My name is Yuri Kirilov,’ a man said. ‘You know me.’
I did know him, in the same way that millions of people in the West know Soviet defectors. But Kirilov’s defection – in the middle of a television program on the BBC – had been spectacular.
‘Please to meet my wife,’ Kirilov said, as I threw my lunch bag into the litter bin next to the bench. We were at the Piccadilly side of Green Park.
I was embarrassed for him, because this woman gave me a hot adoring look and took my hand. She said, ‘You have beautiful eyes,’ and kept staring.
Under the circumstances there was nothing I could say except ‘Thank you’ and ‘Yuri didn’t tell me he was married.’
‘He is ashamed!’
I said, ‘If I were married to you I’d never stop boasting about you.’
It was exaggerated and insincere, but what else could I say? She had made a little melodrama out of being introduced to me in Green Park, and I was doing my best to turn it into a farce. Spouses who flirted in front of their partners seemed to me dangerous and stupid, and Helena – that was her name – had taken me by surprise. Kirilov had not mentioned his wife. He merely said that he urgently wanted to see me – somewhere quiet. I suggested my office at the Embassy. He said, ‘Not that quiet.’ I suggested the Serpentine, which I often walked around at lunchtime. ‘Green Park,’ he said. ‘Is better.’ Grin Park: he had not been out of the Soviet Union very long.
‘I must kiss him for these compliments,’ Helena was saying. ‘Take my photo, Yuri.’
Kirilov obediently snapped a picture as Helena sat me down beside her and threw her arms around my neck. We were, for a few seconds, the classic canoodling pair, kissing on a park bench.
‘I like the taste!’ Helena said. ‘One more time, please.’
I tried to restrain her, but it did little good. I was sure that the photograph of this embrace probably looked much more passionate. The kiss made it seem a private moment.
‘There is lipstick on your mouth,’ she said. ‘Your boss will be very shocked!’
I said, ‘It would take more than this to shock my boss.’
‘What if he knew it was Russian lipstick?’ Helena said.
‘He’d send me to Siberia,’ I said.
‘I would follow you,’ Helena said.
I expected Kirilov to hit her, but all he said was, ‘I was in Siberia. I write my novel in Siberia. With a little pencil. With tiny sheets of paper. More than eight hundred sheets, very tiny – very small writing, two hundred words to a sheet. I bring it here. It is Bread and Water. No one want to read it!’
‘Siberia?’ I said. ‘Were you in a labor camp?’
‘No,’ he said impatiently. ‘Writers’ Union! They send me to Siberia to make books.’
Helena said, ‘In Soviet Union, Yuri is famous. Have money. But here, not so famous!’
Kirilov looked rueful. ‘I am honorary Siberian for my work,’ he said. ‘I can sell two hundred thousand copies of novel.’ He made an ugly face. ‘This is nothing. Others can even sell half a million. Even if I go to a shop I hear people say, ‘Kirilov, Kirilov,’ and pulling my sleeve. Moscow shop.’
Helena said, ‘Pop star,’ and smiled foolishly at him.
‘In Soviet Union I have a car,’ Kirilov said. ‘Is better than that one.’
Now we were all sitting on the bench, and Kirilov turned and pointed to a maroon Jaguar. He then let his tongue droop and with big square th
umbs snapped his camera into its leather case.
Helena said, ‘He have no car in London.’
‘I don’t have a car either,’ I said.
‘But you have a job,’ Kirilov said. ‘You have money. You can do what you like. I have nothing.’
‘You have freedom,’ I said.
‘Hah! I have freedom,’ Kirilov said. He twisted his mouth and made it liverish and ugly. ‘All I have is freedom, freedom. Too much, I can say.’
Friddom: he made it sound like persecution.
‘Is better more money,’ Helena said. Each time she mentioned money her face became sensual. She spoke the word hungrily, with an open mouth and staring eyes. It occurred to me that you could know a great deal about a person by asking him to say ‘money.’
Kirilov turned to her and said clearly in English, ‘Now we make our discussion. So you go, Leni. Be careful – people can do tricks to you.’
Before she left, Helena said to me, ‘You can come and visit me.’
‘Perhaps I’ll visit you both,’ I said.
‘Yes, that’s nice,’ she said, and made a soft sucking noise with her pursed lips.
When she was gone, Kirilov said, ‘She likes you.’
‘That’s nice,’ I said. But I wanted to say How do you stand this damned woman?
‘She never likes anyone before in London,’ he said. ‘But you – she like.’
‘She’s a very nice person,’ I said.
Kirilov laughed. He said, ‘No. She is very pretty. With big what-you-can-call. But she is not nice person. We say, she is like a doll – pretty face, grass inside.’ He winked at me. ‘Also, like an animal.’
