“We’re going to have a splendid day,” he said.
“Yes.”
Daily the rat grew stronger, bolder about venturing out in the daytime, but he was also learning more about protecting himself, even against people. He might make a dash as if to attack a person who was lifting a broom, a stick, a crate to smash him, and the person, man or woman, would retreat a step, or hesitate, and in that instant the rat could run in any direction, even past the person, if that direction meant escape.
More female rats. When in the mood, the rat had his pick of the females, because other males were afraid of him, and their challenges, if any, never came to a real fight. The rat with his heavy, rolling gait and his evil, single eye had a menacing air, a look that said nothing would stop him but death. He thrust his way through the maze of Venice, at seven months rolling like an old sea captain, sure of himself and sure of his ground. Mothers pulled their small children away from him in horror. Older children laughed and pointed. Mange attacked his stomach and head. He rolled on cobblestones to relieve the itching sometimes, or plunged into water despite the cold. He ranged from the Rialto to San Trovaso, and was familiar with the warehouses on the Ponte Lungo which bordered the broad Canale della Giudecca.
The Palazzo Cecchini lay between the Rialto and the cusp of land which held the warehouses. One day Carlo was returning from the local grocery store with a big cardboard carton meant for the Dalmatian Rupert to sleep in. Rupert had caught a cold, and Carlo’s mother was worried. Carlo spied the rat emerging from between two wooden crates of fish and ice outside a shop.
It was the same rat! Yes! Carlo remembered vividly the two feet cut off, the stabbed eye. Not hesitating more than a second, Carlo slammed the carton upside down on the rat, and sat on the carton. He had him! Carlo sat gently but firmly.
“Hey, Nunzio!” Carlo yelled to a chum who happened to be passing. “Go call Luigi! Tell him to come! I’ve caught a rat!”
“A rat!” Nunzio had a fat loaf of bread under his arm. It was after six, getting dark.
“A special rat! Call Luigi!” Carlo yelled more forcefully, because the rat was hurling himself against the sides of the carton and soon he’d start chewing.
Nunzio ran.
Carlo got off the carton and pressed the bottom down hard, and kicked at the sides to discourage the rat from gnawing. His big brother would be impressed, if he could keep the rat till he got here.
“What’re you doing there, Carlo, you’re in the way!” yelled the fishmonger.
“I gotta rat! You oughta gimme a kilo of scampi for catching one of your rats!”
“My rats?” The fishmonger made a gesture of menace, but was too busy to shoo the boy off.
Luigi came on the run. He had picked up a piece of wood on the way, a square end of a crate. “A rat?”
“Same rat we had before! The one with the feet off! I swear!”
Luigi grinned, set his hand on the carton and gave its side a good kick. He raised the carton a little at one side, his piece of wood at the ready. The rat darted out, and Luigi came down on its shoulders.
The rat was breathless, and hurt. Another blow fell on his ribs. The rat’s legs moved, and he wanted frantically to escape, but he could not get to his feet. He heard the boys’ laughter. He was being borne away, in the big carton.
“Let’s throw him downstairs! Drown ’im!” said Carlo.
“I want to see him. If we found a cat, we could see a good fight. That black and white cat—”
“She’s never around. The water’s high. Drown ’im!” The downstairs room fascinated Carlo. He had fantasies of gondolas floating through the door, dumping passengers who would drown in that awful semi-darkness, and finally cover the marble floor with their corpses, which would be seen only when the tide ran out. The ground floor of the Palazzo Cecchini might become another gruesome attraction of Venice, like the dungeons past the Ponte dei Sospiri.
The boys climbed the front steps and entered the Palazzo Cecchini whose tall wooden doors were slightly ajar. Their mama was singing in the kitchen where the transistor played a popular song. Carlo kicked the door shut, and their mother heard it.
“Come and eat, Luigi, Carlo!” she called. “We’re going to the cine, don’t forget!”
Luigi cursed, then laughed. “Subito, mama!”
He and Carlo went down the steps that led to the ground floor.
“You got the carton?” yelled their mother.
“Si, si!—Gimme the wood!” Luigi said to his brother. Luigi grabbed the square of wood and tipped the carton at the same time. Luigi remembered the bite on his wrist, and had a particular fear of this rat. The rat tumbled into the water. Yes, it was the same! Luigi saw the two stumps of his legs. The rat sank at once, and barely felt the clumsy blow that Luigi gave with the edge of the wood.
“Where is he?” asked Carlo. He was ankle-deep in water, standing on the first step, not caring about sandals and socks.
“He’ll be up!” Luigi, on the step above, held the wood poised, ready to throw it when he saw the rat surface for air. The boys scanned the dark water that now heaved because of some motor boat that had just passed beyond the door.
“Let’s go down! Scare ’im up!” Carlo said, with a glance at his brother, and Carlo at once went down into water up to his knees, and began kicking to make sure the rat didn’t come near him.
“Luigi!” their mother shrieked. “Are you down below? You’ll get a beating if you don’t come up now!”
Luigi twisted around to shout a reply, mouth open, and at that instant saw the rat clumsily climbing the top step into the first floor of the house. “Mama mia!” he whispered, pointing. “The rat’s gone up!”
Carlo grasped the situation at once, though he didn’t see the rat, raised his eyebrows, and silently climbed the steps. They couldn’t tell their mother. They’d have to follow the wet trail of the rat and get him out of the house. Both the boys understood this without speaking. When they entered the front hall, the rat had vanished. They peered about for a wet trail, but saw no sign of drops on the gray and white marble floor. Two salon doors were open. The downstairs toilet door was ajar. The rat could even have gone upstairs—maybe.
“Are you coming? The spaghetti is on the plates! Hurry!”
“Sissi, subito, mama!” Luigi pointed to Carlo’s wet feet, and jerked a thumb to the upstairs, where Carlo’s clothing mostly was.
Carlo dashed up the stairs.
Luigi took a quick look in the toilet. They couldn’t tell their mother what had happened. She’d never leave the house or let them go to the film tonight, if she knew there was a rat loose. Luigi looked in one of the salons, where six chairs stood around an oval table, where more chairs stood beside wine tables near the walls of the room. He stopped, but still he saw no rat.
Carlo was back. They went down some steps into the kitchen. Papa had nearly finished his spaghetti. Then came bistecca. The plump dog watched with his muzzle on his paws. He salivated. He was tied again to a foot of the tile stove. Luigi looked around, covertly, for the rat in the corners of the kitchen. Before the meal was over, Maria-Teresa, the baby-sitter, arrived. She had two books under her arm. She smiled broadly, unbuttoned her coat and loosened the scarf that covered her head.
“I am early! I am sorry!” she said.
“No-no! Sit down! Have some torta!”
The dessert was a delicious open-faced pie with peach slices. Who could resist, especially with the appetite of a seventeen-year-old? Maria-Teresa sat and had a slice.
Papa Mangoni had a second piece. Like Rupert he was putting on weight.
Then the family was off, in a hurry, the smallest child in papa’s arms, because they’d be four minutes late, by papa’s calculations, even if they ran. Papa liked the advertisements that preceded the feature, and he liked saying hello to his
chums.
The television set had been moved from the parents’ bedroom into the room where the two-month-old Antonio lay as if in state in a cradle high off the ground and covered in white lace which hung nearly to the floor. The cradle was on wheels. Maria-Teresa, humming a song softly, saw that the baby was asleep, and rolled the cradle farther away from the television, which was in a corner, then switched the set on with the volume low. The program didn’t look interesting, so she sat down and opened one of her novels, a love story whose setting was the American West of the last century.
When Maria-Teresa looked at the television screen several minutes later, her eye was caught by a moving gray spot in the corner. She stood up. A rat! A big, horrible-looking thing! She moved to the right, hoping to shoo it towards the door on her left, which was open. The rat advanced on her, slowly and steadily. It had one eye only. One of its front feet had been cut off. Maria-Teresa gave a little cry of panic, and ran out of the door herself.
She had no intention of attempting to kill the thing. She hated rats! They were the curse of Venice! Maria-Teresa went at once to the telephone in the downstairs hall. She dialed the number of a bar-café not far away, where her boy friend worked.
“Cesare,” she said. “I want to speak with Cesare.”
Cesare came on. He heard the story and laughed.
“But can you come? The Mangonis went to the cinema. I’m all alone! I’m so scared I want to run out of the house!”
“Okay, I’ll come!” Cesare hung up. He swung a napkin over his shoulder, grinning, and said to one of his colleagues, a bar-man, “My girlfriend’s baby-sitting and there’s a rat in the house. I’m supposed to go over and kill it!”
“Ha-ha!”
“That’s a new one! What time you coming back, Ces?” asked a customer.
More laughter.
Cesare didn’t bother telling his boss he was leaving for a few minutes, because the Palazzo Cecchini was one minute away if he trotted. From the pavement outside, Cesare picked up an iron bar four feet long which went across the inside of the door when they closed up. It was heavy. He trotted, and imagined stabbing the bar at a cornered rat, killing it, and imagined the gratitude, the rewarding kisses he would get from Maria-Teresa.
Instead of the door being opened by an anxious girl, his beloved whom he would comfort with a firm embrace, words of courage before he tackled the little beast—instead of this, Cesare was met by a girl crumpled in tears, trembling with terror.
“The rat has eaten the baby!” she said.
“What?”
“Upstairs—”
Cesare ran up with the iron bar. He looked around in the nearly empty, formally furnished room for the rat, looked under a double bed which had a canopy.
Maria-Teresa came in. “I don’t know where the rat is. Look at the baby! We’ve got to get a doctor! It just happened—while I was telephoning you!”
Cesare looked down at the shockingly red, blood-covered pillow of the baby. All the baby’s nose—It was horrible! There wasn’t any nose! And the cheek! Cesare murmured an invocation of aid from a saint, then turned quickly to Maria-Teresa. “The baby’s alive?”
“I don’t know! Yes, I think!”
Cesare timidly stuck a forefinger into the baby’s curled hand. The baby twitched, gave a snuffling sound, as if he were having trouble breathing through blood. “Shouldn’t we turn him over? Turn him on his side! I’ll—I’ll telephone. Do you know any doctor’s number?”
“No!” said Maria-Teresa who was already imagining concretely the blame she was going to get for letting this happen. She knew she should have fought the rat out of the room instead of telephoning Cesare.
Cesare after one vain attempt to reach a doctor whose name he knew and whose number he looked up in the telephone book, rang the main hospital of Venice, and they promised to arrive at once. They came via a hospital boat which docked on the Canale Grande some fifty yards away. Cesare and Maria-Teresa even heard the noise of the fast motor. By this time Maria-Teresa had wiped the baby’s face gently with a damp face towel, mainly with an idea of facilitating the baby’s breathing. The nose was gone, and she could even see a bit of bone there.
Two young men in white gave the baby two injections, and kept murmuring “Orribile!” They asked Maria-Teresa to make a hot water bottle.
The blood had gone from Cesare’s usually ruddy cheeks, and he felt about to faint. He sat down on one of the formal chairs. Gone was his idea of a passionate embrace with Maria-Teresa. He couldn’t even stand on his legs.
The interns took the baby away in the boat, the baby wrapped in a blanket with the hot water bottle.
Cesare recovered a bit of strength, went down to the kitchen and after a search found half a bottle of Strega. He poured two glasses. He was keeping an eye out for the rat, but didn’t see it. The Mangonis were due back soon, and he would have preferred to be elsewhere—back at his job—but he reasoned that he ought to stand by Maria-Teresa, and that this excuse would be a good one for his boss. A baby nearly killed, maybe dead now—who knew?
The Mangoni family arrived at 10:40 p.m., and there was instant chaos.
Mama screamed. Everyone talked at once. Mama went up to see the bloody cradle, and screamed again. Papa was told to telephone the hospital. Cesare and the oldest three of the brothers and one of the sisters went on a complete search of the house, armed with empty wine bottles for bashing, knives, a wooden stool from the kitchen, a flat iron, and Cesare had his iron bar. No one saw a rat, but several pieces of furniture received nicks inadvertently.
Maria-Teresa was forgiven. Or was she? Papa could understand her telephoning for help to her boyfriend who was near. The hospital reported that the baby had a fifty-fifty chance to live, but could the mother come at once?
The rat had escaped via a square drain in the kitchen wall at floor level. His jump had put him in the Rio San Polo nearly three meters below, but that was no problem. He swam with powerful thrusts of his two good legs, all his legs, plus sheer will power, to the nearest climbing point, and got on to dry land feeling no diminution of his energy. He shook himself. The taste of blood was still in his mouth. He had attacked the baby out of panic, out of fury also, because he hadn’t at that point found an exit from the accursed house. The baby’s arms and fists had flailed feebly against his head, his ribs. The rat had taken some pleasure in attacking a member of the human race, one with the same smell as the big ones. The morsels of tender flesh had filled his belly somewhat, and he was now deriving energy from them.
He made his way in the darkness with a rolling gait, pausing now and then to sniff at a worthless bit of food, or to get his bearings with an upward glance, with a sniff at the breeze. He was making for the Rialto, where he could cross by means of the arched bridge, pretty safe at night. He thought to make informal headquarters around San Marco, where there were a lot of restaurants in the area. The night was very black, which meant safety for him. His strength seemed to increase as he rolled along, belly nearly touching the dampish stones. He stared at, then sprang at a curious cat which had dared to come close and size him up. The cat leapt a little in the air, then retreated.
Engine Horse
When the big mare, Fanny, heard the rustle in the hay, she turned her head slowly, still chomping with unbroken rhythm, and her eyes, which were like large soft brown eggs, tried to look behind her and down. Fanny supposed it was one of the cats, though they seldom came close. There were two cats on the farm, one ginger, one black and white. Fanny’s looking back had been casual. A cat often came into the stable in search of a quiet spot to nap in.
Still munching hay from her trough, Fanny looked for a second time and saw the little gray thing near her front foot. A tiny cat it was. Not one of the household, not one of the small cats belonging to either of the larger cats, because there weren’t any just now.
It was sunset in the month of July. Gnats played around Fanny’s eyes and nose, and made her snort. A small square window, closed in winter, was now open and the sun flooded directly into Fanny’s eyes. She had not done much work that day, because the man called Sam, whom Fanny had known all her twelve years, had not come, either today or yesterday. Fanny had not done anything that she could remember except walk with the woman Bess to the water tank and back again. Fanny had a long period of munching in daylight, before she lay down with a grunt to sleep. Her vast haunch and rib cage, well covered with fat and muscle, hit the bed of hay like a carefully lowered barrel. It became cooler. The little gray kitten, which Fanny could now see more clearly, came and curled herself up in the reddish feathers behind Fanny’s left hoof.
The little cat was not four months old, an ash-gray and black brindle, with a tail only the length of a king-sized cigarette, because someone had stepped in the middle of it when she was younger. She had wandered far that day, perhaps three or four miles, and turned in at the first shelter she had seen. She had left home, because her grandmother and great-grandmother had attacked her for an uncountable time, one time too many. Her mother had been killed by a car just a few days ago. The little cat had seen her mother’s body on the road and sniffed it. So the little kitten, with an instinct for self-preservation, had decided that the great unknown was better than what she knew. She was already wiry of muscle, and full of pluck, but now she was tired. She had investigated the farmyard and found only some muddy bread and water to eat in the chickens’ trough. And even at that hour in July the little cat was chilly. She had felt the warmth coming from the huge bulk of the red-brown mare, and when the horse lay down, the kitten found a nook, and collapsed.
The mare was somehow pleased. Such a dainty little creature! That size, that weight that was nothing at all!
The horse and the kitten slept.
The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder Page 9
