The Spirit Cabinet (16 page)

The airport disappeared abruptly and the vehicle sambaed into the desert.

Samson grew at an alarming rate, his limbs sprouting visibly. He was a miserable beast, for the most part, shunned and reviled by the other animals. Total whiteness is freakish beyond conception. A God so absent-minded as to forget to put colour into a creature was capable of anything. So Samson was hissed and swatted at by the other big cats. General Bosco seemed to share this unkindly view. He would snap his whip with what was either very good or very poor aim—instead of cracking the air just above Samson’s head, the stinging tip would tear at his ear, or at the end of his snout, and for an instant the albino leopard would experience excruciating pain. The only moments of happiness came when Samson was close to Rudolfo, the boy with hair of similar colourlessness. It was to please Rudolfo that Samson learned the basic stuff, to rear up on to his hind legs and paw in a mincing way at the emptiness before him. Samson learned to jump through a hoop, although he found it very boring to do so, no less so when the hoop was set aflame. He’d found that very
surprising
, the first time, but boring nonetheless.

Samson found himself thinking of other, untried stunts. Somersaulting, for example. He’d seen the men with the painted faces do that, and it seemed to delight the human beings, especially the smaller ones. So Samson worked on somersaulting, although his head was too large to simply turn to the side, and his back end, comparatively puny, often waggled in the air in an unbecoming manner. Samson worked on this when perhaps he should have been applying himself to other things, and he worked on it with such single-mindedness that he was often unaware that other things were going on. Such as the time General Bosco, ramming his hands on his hips and staring daggers in Samson’s direction, shouted,
“He, Schneewittchen! Mach dass du den Arsch hoch kriegst.”

Samson continued his somersaulting. He’d developed a kind of sideways roll, pivoting on one of his shoulders and snapping
his little pelvis mid-air to gather momentum. He was in the midst of one of these turns when the tip of General Bosco’s whip flicked his rear-end.

For the first, and only, time in his life, Samson knew what it was to be wild. His mind was licked clean by a tongue of fire. The pain filled his being so completely that his claws seemed to give off sparks, his moist snout steam.

He completed the somersault and landed upright on his paws. His mouth was wide open, the skin pulled back so far that it gathered in tight folds just under his eyeballs and revealed much glistening pink gum and many white teeth. Samson made a sound that he’d never made before—and has never made since—a musical howling that seemed to make the bars of the cage vibrate, to make the air sound with eerie polyphony. Then he rushed forward. That is, he
rushed
in the sense that he covered the twelve feet that separated him from General Bosco in a thrice, although his motion was very methodical, gross muscular actions that rippled the sinew.

General Bosco attempted to crack the whip again, but he was clearly flustered, and the snap came well above Samson’s head. Or perhaps the General was desperately trying to demonstrate that he still possessed the lion tamer’s knack, using the whip to startle rather than hurt, but Samson was beyond caring. He sank his teeth into General Bosco’s leg and clamped his jaws together with all the force he could muster. Indeed, the bite itself was not the most serious aspect of that first injury, even though the teeth ripped apart the beautifully defined calf, making it pop and deflate like a balloon. More serious from a medical point of view was the fact that Samson had cracked the tibia, webbing it with fractures. General Bosco screamed, not just from the excruciating pain, but also from the realization that he would now be cursed with a gimpy and embittering gait.

“Das genügt,”
said Rudolfo gently, and he watched the
tension disappear from Samson’s body. Samson removed his mouth from around General Bosco’s leg, walked away and then sagged to the ground, laying his pale head upon the sawdust disconsolately. General Bosco, in the second he had left before fainting, turned and speared him with a hateful look. As Bosco collapsed, Rudolfo understood that he’d spoken too calmly; at least, too calmly for Bosco’s liking, although if you want to quiet a panicking animal, it is much better to whisper than to shriek. His choice of words could have been better, too, Rudolfo supposed calmly.
Das genügt
, as though some measure of the torture were acceptable, even called for.

The other big cats roiled and writhed upon their stands. They were reared up onto their hind legs, their upper bodies twisting in serpentine undulations. Their master was down, dead apparently, and they were an inch away from rioting, from destroying the cage and running wild in the howling streets. One—it was Frederick, the last lion Rudolfo would have expected to behave this way—slinked down from its stand and batted General Bosco across the head, leaving behind three neat rows of gash. The sawdust darkened with blood. General Bosco woke up momentarily, sat bolt upright. Some part of his system must have deemed the situation hopeless, because he immediately lay back down again and closed his eyes, seeking refuge in a black coma.

Rudolfo kicked Frederick in the snout and called, “Back!” Frederick, startled, obeyed. Rudolfo surprised even himself with the evenness of his tone; then again, he didn’t fear death in any profound manner, having never found life that precious a gift. So when Helmut bounced down from his stand almost playfully, Rudolfo swung around to confront the cat and momentarily stilled the beast with a look of almost holy quiescence.

Now, Helmut, he was the
first
lion you’d expect to take part in an insurrection. He had always been recalcitrant, ever since he
was a cub; indeed, Helmut hadn’t been trained to any real degree. He could leap on and off his half-barrel, but he would do this almost at his own discretion. Whenever another cat performed a stunt, Helmut would hog a portion of the applause, jumping down, roaring briefly, leaping back aboard with more lethal grace than his companion. The rest of the time Helmut spent in restless motion, picking up and replacing his huge paws on the smallish circle that was his roost. The only time he quieted was when General Bosco performed the old head-between-the-jaws routine, when Helmut would stare at Bosco and Gregor—old Gregor, hoary and grizzled and virtually toothless—with a look of calm menace.
Hey
, Helmut’s eyes said,
try some of that shit with me
.

So that explains the eagerness with which he descended to the ground. When Rudolfo snapped his whip and stung the tip of his ear, Helmut pulled back his lips and grinned. Rudolfo continued to snap the whip as Helmut crossed over and gingerly mouthed Bosco’s foot, testing it for tenderness. He spit it out disdainfully, roared at Rudolfo, crossed over to the other side of Bosco’s body and tenderly licked at the hip.

Only then, and with some reluctance, did Rudolfo draw his weapon, the war-vintage Luger that hung at his side. He had never used the gun, was afraid of back- and misfirings, and he was fond of Helmut, for all his faults. But he raised the gun and aimed it as best he could, concentrating on Helmut’s head. The head, after all, was the largest target. Rudolfo might have preferred to shoot at the hindquarters, to cripple young Helmut rather than destroy him, but that might only anger the cat, leaving him with enough rage-filled life to kill not only General Bosco but Rudolfo and all the other cats as well.

Rudolfo turned toward the rest of the lions, who were now sending up a unified howl, an eerie chorus. He hushed them sternly; they lowered the volume but did not stop.

Then he pulled the trigger.

Rudolfo’s memory of the event is made up of a series of stark images, Rudolfo’s logic forcing them into order. First, there’s a picture of Helmut chewing into the General’s chest, apparently having elected it as the choicest cut. The image of Helmut lifting his head with nothing but a shiny gold button caught between his teeth comes next and must coincide with Rudolfo’s pulling of the trigger.

Which means, of course, that the lion’s head was no longer Rudolfo’s target.

What he hit instead was General Bosco, exploding the brocaded jacket that covered his heart and sending up a geyser of blood. He then aimed once more at Helmut, knowing that the cat was about to explode, just as all the cats would, driven senseless by the proximity of death.

But Helmut instead turned away indolently and remounted his stand. He collapsed his bones with feline laziness and dropped the gold button daintily between his forepaws.

Rudolfo glanced down and saw that the albino leopard was beside him, quivering with fear, pressed up against his leather boot. “Yeah,” said Rudolfo, one outcast to another, “let’s get out of here.”

The cab rolled to a stop, the tires crunching heavily on the drive. Rudolfo had a small tote bag cinched around his waist; he unzipped it and fished out one of the hundred-dollar bills that were always there. He handed it to the driver and waved his hand brusquely, indicating that the man should stop looking for change. The man, actually, had been doing no such thing. He had lifted the bill up until it was but inches away from his face, flipping it over and over. He was, likely, examining the bill for signs of counterfeiting, but it seemed somehow conceivable that he’d never seen one before.

Rudolfo pushed open the front door of the mansion, startled at how easily it moved. He and Jurgen had paid something on the order of a hundred thousand dollars for their security system, but far from being an impenetrable fortress, the mansion seemed as accessible as a derelict barn. The hinges howled; there was a creaking sound like the cracking of old bones. And then silence. He was reminded briefly of the discovery of his dead mother—the dead thing that had pretended to be his mother—how the silence had hunched over her, as though the silence itself were the culprit and had been caught red-handed.

And where, it occurred to him, were the underlings? Where was, for example, Tiu, a young women curiously obsessed by dust and dirt? She should certainly be hovering about, a feather duster trembling in her hand, her lips set with grim zeal.

His stomach, already made tender by the single glass of champagne, suddenly soured and crumpled. He made a low sound, a musical hum of misery, because he was not far away from hopelessness, and never had been. The sound lasted many seconds, and just before it died away, Jurgen appeared.

He emerged from the gloom just in front of Rudolfo, walking out from behind a curtain of shadow. Rudolfo was both relieved and startled, an odd combination that left behind a residue of annoyance. When Jurgen said, “Hi,” Rudolfo sidestepped the greeting with the grace of a matador.

“Jimmy the headfuck never at the airport showed up,” he snarled. “That headfuck is fired.”

“Jimmy is confused,” said Jurgen. That gave Rudolfo pause, and he tilted his head and stared at his partner. There was something not right. For a moment he thought it was simply that Jurgen was smiling, when ordinarily he maintained a visage of stern propriety. Or perhaps it was the eyes, which were contained in little nests of wrinkles. This was due in part to the smile, Rudolfo thought, but there were clear signs of fatigue, even ill-health.
Jurgen had lost all control of his eyelids, which were raising and lowering at random intervals and frequencies.

But as odd as all that was (very odd), it was Jurgen’s hair that caught and held Rudolfo’s attention. It was messy. The curly fringe that ordinarily lay across his square brow with such precision was bolt upright and fashioned into a series of little tufts and horns. And the whole disaster area was pointed with more little white hairs.

“Guess what?” asked Jurgen, still smiling.

“What?” snapped Rudolfo, craning his neck this way and that, disturbed at the stillness that existed inside
das Haus
.

“I got new card trick.”

“How nice is that for you.”

“Say the name of a card. Any card.”

“Nine of diamonds.”

“Ta da!” intoned Jurgen tunelessly. He snapped his thick fingers in the air and the nine of diamonds appeared there.

“Good,” muttered Rudolfo, but he didn’t really give a fuck. Why would all the animals be sleeping at this time of day?

“I could do it in
die Schau
,” suggested Jurgen shyly.

“You do it
die Schau
already.”

“In Up Close and Personal, you mean?
Nein, nein
. Is not same trick.”

Das eindrucksvollste Haus im Universum
should have been echoing the soft, rhythmic sounds of little padded paws. “Holy Jesus,” Rudolfo said suddenly. “You didn’t feed the animals.”

“Uh-oh.” Jurgen looked instantly remorseful, although the grin remained carved into his face. “I lost track of time.”

Rudolfo stormed away. As he went he let out a series of whistles and grunts, and animals rose out of their torpors and began to gather behind him. They followed with dangling, dry tongues and wet eyes. Those that had tails wagged them weakly.

Samson climbed down from the sofa in front of the huge
television. Actually, he didn’t climb down so much as fall off, his old bones sending up a clatter. Then he stretched, achingly, because he hadn’t moved from the sofa since Rudolfo had left. He’d watched old movies and black-and-white sitcoms. Toward the middle of the third day, just before Rudolfo’s reappearance, Samson had begun to think just how appealing Mary Tyler Moore looked, appealing as in
succulent and juicy
. But here was Rudolfo, his love and his life, so Samson fell in behind. They walked through the house and out onto the grounds beyond.

The big cats were howling.