Darconville's Cat (41 page)

  I flash a light and look to see lice—

  Then look again and find their nits!

  Look! Trillions of them, fawning and bowed!

  The color of their eyes? Bice. Bice.

        (
pause, to
himself savagely
)

  Will many be burnt? Crowds. Crowds.

              ISABEL

  Dreams! Dreams! You talk like a book!

              DARCONVILLE

  I promise you, I am no dreamer,

  For destiny will pass the dreamer by,

  Because for nothing ever does he ask

  But sits at peace within his very dream;

  Whereas, you see, it must be more than clear

  That even on a night as this one is

  I would freely barter all my soul,

  My body, mind, and disappointed hands

  To free a mere smile in your lovely face.

  But can’t you see that? Can’t you tell?

              (
pause
)

  What then, pray, has he to do with dreams

  Who wakes away the night he wants to see

  In sleep alone: but sleep alone so deems

  The restful dreams I see it keeps from me.

  I can report what takes the place of dreams:

  Red magic, a witch that’s howling a filthy cry,

  Helldogs barking in contrapuntal,

  A taloned pig that slits its throat to die!

  I fear in the night what’s always the same

  And descry through the darkness, coming frontal,

  Suddenly poising to squat on my chest,

  Its eyes dirty gems, its sticky wings high,

  A grinning monstrosity that’s flown up from hell

  To rasp in my ears one word, only “Govert!”

  “Govert!” it rasps; it rasps again “Govert!”

  It queaks. It spits. It chatters in fits.

  The image will harden and then be dispelled.

  I reach to throttle what disappears;

  In midstroke, there, I swipe at its face

  And there again,
again
, the same face
sits!

  It forks out a tongue it wimbles in hate—

  In a rush of murder I behead only space.

              (
pause
)

  The noctambule? The thing doesn’t stay.

  It recedes of course like its antitype true

  To some grey shoreline of fierce unrest

  And out on the Straits of Lurking abides

  Where, if a vow will bind in the modern world

  And luck of design a residue, test

  Me by holy relic and then by oath

  If someday I don’t contrive to meet both.

              ISABEL

  That “someday” has a cruel ring to it.

              DARCONVILLE

  Cruel to devildom, sweet frail?

              (
pause
)

  There is irony, the figure of speech

  Which spits like a bivalve from its cackpipe.

  I have an enemy, lady.

              (
pause
)

  Forgive me. That dissatisfacts.

              ISABEL

  He—

              (
pause
)

  —is not your enemy.

              DARCONVILLE

  He is not my enemy, and I am Jack Ketch:

  And that is two lies, to tell the truth.

              (
pause
)

  But there is, I see, Dutch comfort either way.

  It is you for safety, me for fright—

  And yet a fear my rashness renders lax,

  For with gimp-legged Vulcan I would limp
tonight,

  Hobble out on stilts like poor Amphionax,

  Sit along the yawning edge of hell

  Lest otherwise in safety’s reasoned spell

  Or in the bland assurances of tidiness

  A sacrifice of limit be imposed on us.

  But then do we then balance each other so well

  That as one of us must love the more

  One of us shall love the less?

  Does here some existential burden sore—

  Fidelity, it seems—frighten you so much?

  That you must tempt me with a fruit

  That I can never touch? But always need?

  Shall love then die as dreams that die

  With the very sleep they feed?

  Shall I please to love you then

  Just enough that I don’t tell you so,

  A mysterious veil concealing my face,

  My hidden face concealing its thoughts,

  With each of us destined so to live

  As if the other, not won by love but caught,

  Knew nothing whatsoever of its grace?

              (
pause
)

  This is this, then, and that is that.

  It is as the unmanipulable moon to the fixed

  Eye of my indivinable cat.

              ISABEL

  O this is—! I said nothing, I admit,

  Because you’d seek what was no worth to know,

  To rehearse each moment, to analyze all,

  And inquire, inquire, and then inquire more!

              DARCONVILLE

  It was not that you didn’t say anything;

  You may have said two different things, you see,

  Of unsimilar worth but at a similar time,

  As astrologers will to kings and zanies

  Mutter forth one horoscope for both.

  The tragic fault, perhaps, is—what?

              (
pause
)

  Doubtless. That indeed they both inquired,

  And more inquired, and inquired so again:

  Cast our nativities, Chaldean!

  Is it pleasure that awaits? Or pain?

              ISABEL

  I cannot answer everything you ask:

  Who learns all of everything that’s sought?

              DARCONVILLE

  But for me, sage, only this unmask:

  Has anything happened, intentionally or not,

  Whereby you should suspect I do not love you?

              ISABEL

  No.

              DARCONVILLE

  Considered, declared, exclaimed, indeed. But
meant?

  How so, if once again flits out at night

  That sudden and unholy bat-eared pervert

  Whose boisterous face out-blackens black itself

  And caws at me repeatedly the curse of “Govert!”

              ISABEL

  You’re raving, just as if it so fell out

  You lost yourself and lost, as claimed, not me.

              DARCONVILLE

  I’ve watched madness too long untransfigured in
face

  And to you here confess that evil, defined,

  Is more than that which so cruelly distorts;

  Whoso
allows
distortion is evil in
kind.

  So to the transition that must follow suit:

  How in method illogic a cruel fact can disport,

  Where’s found consolation in murdered grace

  And fate is unshaped at the branch and the root.

  For this I believe, that you wanted to find,

  Or felt that finding was needful for you,

  Some faithless transgression you feared in mind,

  And, finding, confirmed what most you’d rue.

  Thus knowledge is bought of a certain kind:

  The suspension which kills is killed instead

  And respite’s achieved in the midst of dread.

              (
pause
)

  Our first desire is what will last.

              ISABEL

  And the future’s only memory

  If we don’t overcome the past.

              DARCONVILLE

  Perhaps. And yet I must pause in reflection to
ask

  Whether me you consider as future or past

  And how just continuance must keep me so

  If on me the former you now do bestow.

  And yet there’s another who must feel the same:

  A face I don’t know, but a name I can name.

              ISABEL

  Why,
why
must you raise an issue that’s
dead,

  Never really begun, and I’ve told you so!

  Must you hate someone you don’t even know?

              DARCONVILLE

  The countercheck quarrelsome won’t save his head

              (
pause
)

  I could—

              ISABEL

  O say it! Whatever it is will please you, I
think!

              DARCONVILLE

  If my delight be the cause of your wrath

  Why is not, let me ask, this sorrow I feel

  An equal occasion of your solace, pray?

              (
pause
)

  And counterpart Govert? I don’t hate him, no,

  Though not because my soul wouldn’t try,

  For seeing me here he surely would know

  My own mirror-image at seeing him so;

  And what here’s said he too could simply say:

  “There but for the grace of you go I.”

  And so this irony that irony compounds

  As echoes will echo with the same resound.

              ISABEL

  It’s foolish this—and only sorrow brings.

  You were a monk? Then let me say right now,

  Better that monks should analyze such things.

              DARCONVILLE
(
soberly
)

  That’s a secret no one knows but us,

  To the keeping of which you gave your solemn
vow.

  And no one else will hear of it, I trust.

              ISABEL

  O how can this suffering come to an end?

              DARCONVILLE

  When not me, but Govert, is only a friend.

              ISABEL

  This rival, know, has sanction none from me.

              DARCONVILLE

  So from all rivals am I then set free?

              (
pause
)

  No, fairness, we’ll see what waits in store,

  To accept whatsoever fate will be ours.

  If love, then love. There’s need of no more.

  But if to our lot a passion brief does fall

  Where as rubies rare brought side to side

  We gleam to the bad and each other do stain,

  You and I will win experience unique,

  Finding gain is loss and loss the only gain

  And then to lose again what’s found in pain

  And for a lifetime merely seek to seek.

  Passion’s a bondage where’s no planned release;

  You will the pacific, until you’ve found peace.

  A simulacrum of love, so from it estranged,

  Passion’s the madness that is not deranged.

              ISABEL

  I don’t understand you so much of the time.

  In all human actions are there reasons and rime?

  Then why do my grandest hopes also impart

  This fear in my soul which puts fear in my
heart:

  That vision is faulty when vision’s sublime.

              DARCONVILLE

  If words were threads those very ones could
weave

  A perfect shroud for the corpse you’ve made, now
leave.

              (
pause
)

  I will neither tilt with reason nor defend to
you

  The use to which are put to solve or appease

  Matters too complex you say for minds to see,

  But if you leave tonight with any reason true,

  Please God, search for a reason other than me,

  And if it’s true you don’t love me, then please

  Don’t hate me enough to tell me you do.

              ISABEL
(
with strange vagueness
)

  My departure tonight I think is best for all,

  To dream away what dreams cannot be seen

  And live in sleep, in sleep to find my ease:

  There heights are scaled, but one can never
fall.

  And this will sound foolish to you, I know,

  To pretend I’ve found some fairy forest green

  Where as a solitary princess, through the trees

  I’d wander—

              (
pause,
embarrassed
)

  O, I only want to be safe!

              DARCONVILLE

  Say no more to it then, if more you can.

  You put in six words the epitaph of man.

  XLV

  Sounds of the Fundament

  If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this
world,

  let him become a fool, that he may be wise.

        —I Corinthians
3:18

  THE PARLOR DOOR suddenly flew open.

  It was an errand of mercy, anybody could see that,
as Mistresses Boyco and Bowdler, quillbristled in curlers, came
pittypatting into the room and stood by Isabel, hovering over her
like ministering angels. Homely, angular Loretta Boyco lapwinged
down beside her and solicitously took her hand while Harriet
Bowdler, smoothing the nap of her buffy white nightie, turned her
trout’s eyes toward Darconville with a lot less tenderness: talking
was one thing, but this child had been weeping! Confusion gave way
to consensus. The fellowshippers smiled at each other knowingly,
and then Loretta said to Isabel, “Why don’t you take up all your
troubles, put them in a big oP tow sack and give them over to
Jesus?”

  “
We
did,” quacked Harriet, looking
beatific.

  “Amen,” added Loretta.

  Darconville asked: “Do you know this girl?”

  “I’ve seen you in P.E., right?” said Harriet to
Isabel who, bent over almost double, almost exanimate, didn’t
respond one way or the other. Harriet looked up at Darconville.
“We’ve howdied, but we haven’t shook.” She closed her eyes. “I know
the characteristics of the unconverted heart.”

  “It is prone to error,” said Loretta.

  “Idleness, tippling, profanity.”

  “And contention.”

  “ ‘My sin is ever before me, neither is there rest
in my bones because of sin,’ “ quoted Harriet Bowdler.

  Darconville sighed. He felt tired, unsplendid, and
null, bewildered by this visitation and divided as to whether he
should just apologize to everyone and leave or stay there and
somehow try to give honorable and ethical form to something that
had ended as abruptly as a page torn in half. Instead, he stepped
back as the girls administered to Isabel—two Serbs, one beautiful
Croat—with a vocabulary of Bible gems and the slightly dictatorial
attitude that vigorous religious conviction curiously assumes,
especially in the proving, preaching, and perfricative mind of the
Pentecostal. Like fundamentalists, like poppies, thought
Darconville: the more they are trodden on, the more they
flourish.