Eleven

by Patricia Highsmith

  “No,” Charles agreed.

  Edith was sitting up in bed. “The awful thing is, it looks uncatchable.”

  Charles began to unbutton his shirt. “Uncatchable. What a word. Nothing’s uncatchable. Maybe it’s a ferret. Or a squirrel.”

  “Couldn’t you tell? It went right by you.”

  “Well!” He laughed. “It was pretty fast. You’ve seen it two or three times and you can’t tell what it is.”

  “Did it have a tail? I can’t tell if it had or if that’s the whole body—that length.”

  Charles kept silent. He reached for his dressing gown, slowly put it on. “I think it’s smaller than it looks. It is fast, so it seems elongated. Might be a squirrel.”

  “The eyes are in the front of its head. Squirrels’ eyes are sort of at the side.”

  Charles stooped at the foot of the bed and looked under it. He ran his hand over the tucked foot of the bed, underneath. Then he stood up. “Look, if we see it again—if we saw it—”

  “What do you mean if? You did see it—you said so.”

  “I think so.” Charles laughed. “How do I know my eyes or my mind isn’t playing a trick on me? Your description was so eloquent.” He sounded almost angry with her.

  “Well—if?”

  “If we see it again, we’ll borrow a cat. A cat’ll find it.”

  “Not the Masons’ cat. I’d hate to ask them.”

  They had had to throw pebbles at the Masons’ cat to keep it away when the bluetits were starting to fly. The Masons hadn’t liked that. They were still on good terms with the Masons, but neither Edith nor Charles would have dreamed of asking to borrow Jonathan.

  “We could call in an exterminator,” Edith said.

  “Ha! And what’ll we ask him to look for?”

  “What we saw,” Edith said, annoyed because it was Charles who had suggested an exterminator just a couple of hours before. She was interested in the conversation, vitally interested, yet it depressed her. She felt it was vague and hopeless, and she wanted to lose herself in sleep.

  “Let’s try a cat,” Charles said. “You know, Farrow has a cat. He got it from the people next door to him. You know, Farrow the accountant who lives on Shanley Road? He took the cat over when the people next door moved. But his wife doesn’t like cats, he says. This one—”

  “I’m not mad about cats either,” Edith said. “We don’t want to acquire a cat.”

  “No. All right. But I’m sure we could borrow this one, and the reason I thought of it is that Farrow says the cat’s a marvelous hunter. It’s a female nine years old, he says.”

  Charles came home with the cat the next evening, thirty minutes later than usual, because he had gone home with Farrow to fetch it. He and Edith closed the doors and the windows, then let the cat out of its basket in the living-room. The cat was white with grey brindle markings and a black tail. She stood stiffly, looking all around her with a glum and somewhat disapproving air.

  “Ther-re, Puss-Puss,” Charles said, stooping but not touching her. “You’re only going to be here a day or two. Have we got some milk, Edith? Or better yet, cream.”

  They made a bed for the cat out of a carton, put an old towel in it, then placed it in a corner of the living-room, but the cat preferred the end of the sofa. She had explored the house perfunctorily and had shown no interest in the cupboards or closets, though Edith and Charles had hoped she would. Edith said she thought the cat was too old to be of much use in catching anything.

  The next morning Mrs. Farrow rang up Edith and told her that they could keep Puss-Puss if they wanted to. “She’s a clean cat and very healthy. I just don’t happen to like cats. So if you take to her—or she takes to you—”

  Edith wriggled out by an unusually fluent burst of thanks and explanations of why they had borrowed the cat, and she promised to ring Mrs. Farrow in a couple of days. Edith said she thought they had mice, but were not sure enough to call in an exterminator. This verbal effort exhausted her.

  The cat spent most of her time sleeping either at the end of the sofa or on the foot of the bed upstairs, which Edith didn’t care for but endured rather than alienate the cat. She even spoke affectionately to the cat and carried her to the open doors of closets, but Puss-Puss always stiffened slightly, not with fear but with boredom, and immediately turned away. Meanwhile she ate well of tuna, which the Farrows had prescribed.

  Edith was polishing silver at the kitchen table on Friday afternoon when she saw the thing run straight beside her on the floor—from behind her, out the kitchen door into the dining-room like a brown rocket. And she saw it turn to the right into the living-room where the cat lay asleep.

  Edith stood up at once and went to the living-room door. No sign of it now, and the cat’s head still rested on her paws. The cat’s eyes were closed. Edith’s heart was beating fast. Her fear mingled with impatience and for an instant she experienced a sense of chaos and terrible disorder. The animal was in the room! And the cat was of no use at all! And the Wilsons were coming to dinner at seven o’clock. And she’d hardly have time to speak to Charles about it because he’d be washing and changing, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t mention it in front of the Wilsons, though they knew the Wilsons quite well. As Edith’s chaos became frustration, tears burned her eyes. She imagined herself jumpy and awkward all evening, dropping things, and unable to say what was wrong.

  “The yuma. The damned yuma!” she said softly and bitterly, then went back to the silver and doggedly finished polishing it and set the table.

  The dinner, however, went quite well, and nothing was dropped or burned. Christopher Wilson and his wife Frances lived on the other side of the village, and had two boys, seven and five. Christopher was a lawyer for Pan-Com.

  “You’re looking a little peaked, Charles,” Christopher said. “How about you and Edith joining us on Sunday?” He glanced at his wife. “We’re going for a swim at Hadden and then for a picnic. Just us and the kids. Lots of fresh air.”

  “Oh—” Charles waited for Edith to decline, but she was silent. “Thanks very much. As for me—well, we’d thought of taking the boat somewhere. But we’ve borrowed a cat, and I don’t think we should leave her alone all day.”

  “A cat?” asked Frances Wilson. “Borrowed it?”

  “Yes. We thought we might have mice and wanted to find out,” Edith put in with a smile.

  Frances asked a question or two about the cat and then the subject was dropped. Puss-Puss at that moment was upstairs, Edith thought. She always went upstairs when a new person came into the house.

  Later when the Wilsons had left, Edith told Charles about seeing the animal again in the kitchen, and about the unconcern of Puss-Puss.

  “That’s the trouble. It doesn’t make any noise,” Charles said. Then he frowned. “Are you sure you saw it?”

  “Just as sure as I am that I ever saw it,” Edith said.

  “Let’s give the cat a couple of more days,” Charles said.

  The next morning, Saturday, Edith came downstairs around nine to start breakfast and stopped short at what she saw on the living-room floor. It was the yuma, dead, mangled at head and tail and abdomen. In fact, the tail was chewed off except for a damp stub about two inches long. And as for the head, there was none. But the fur was brown, almost black where it was damp with blood.

  Edith turned and ran up the stairs.

  “Charles!”

  He was awake, but sleepy. “What?”

  “The cat caught it. It’s in the living-room. Come down, will you?—I can’t face it, I really can’t.”

  “Certainly, dear,” Charles said, throwing off the covers.

  He was downstairs a few seconds later. Edith followed him.

  “Um. Pretty big,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I dunno. I’ll get the dustpan.” He went into the kitchen.

  Edith hovered, watching him push it onto the dustpan with a rolled newspaper. He peered at the gore, a chewed windpipe, bones.
The feet had little claws.

  “What is it? A ferret?” Edith asked.

  “I dunno. I really don’t.” Charles wrapped the thing quickly in a newspaper. “I’ll get rid of it in the ashcan. Monday’s garbage day, isn’t it?”

  Edith didn’t answer.

  Charles went through the kitchen and she heard the lid of the ashcan rattle outside the kitchen door.

  “Where’s the cat?” she asked when he came in again.

  He was washing his hands at the kitchen sink. “I don’t know.” He got the floor mop and brought it into the living-room. He scrubbed the spot where the animal had lain. “Not much blood. I don’t see any here, in fact.”

  While they were having breakfast, the cat came in through the front door, which Edith had opened to air the living-room—although she had not noticed any smell. The cat looked at them in a tired way, barely raised her head, and said, “Mi-o-ow,” the first sound she had uttered since her arrival.

  “Good pussy!” Charles said with enthusiasm. “Good Puss-Puss!”

  But the cat ducked from under his congratulatory hand that would have stroked her back and went on slowly into the kitchen for her breakfast of tuna.

  Charles glanced at Edith with a smile which she tried to return. She had barely finished her egg, but could not eat a bite more of her toast.

  She took the car and did her shopping in a fog, greeting familiar faces as she always did, yet she felt no contact between herself and other people. When she came home, Charles was lying on the bed, fully dressed, his hands behind his head.

  “I wondered where you were,” Edith said.

  “I felt drowsy. Sorry.” He sat up.

  “Don’t be sorry. If you want a nap, take one.”

  “I was going to get the cobwebs out of the garage and give it a good sweeping.” He got to his feet. “But aren’t you glad it’s gone, dear—whatever it was?” he asked, forcing a laugh.

  “Of course. Yes, God knows.” But she still felt depressed, and she sensed that Charlie did, too. She stood hesitantly in the doorway. “I just wonder what it was.” If we’d only seen the head, she thought, but couldn’t say it. Wouldn’t the head turn up, inside or outside the house? The cat couldn’t have eaten the skull.

  “Something like a ferret,” Charles said. “We can give the cat back now, if you like.”

  But they decided to wait till tomorrow to ring the Farrows.

  Now Puss-Puss seemed to smile when Edith looked at her. It was a weary smile, or was the weariness only in the eyes? After all, the cat was nine. Edith glanced at the cat many times as she went about her chores that weekend. The cat had a different air, as if she had done her duty and knew it, but took no particular pride in it.

  In a curious way Edith felt that the cat was in alliance with the yuma, or whatever animal it had been—was or had been in alliance. They were both animals and had understood each other, one the enemy and stronger, the other the prey. And the cat had been able to see it, perhaps hear it too, and had been able to get her claws into it. Above all, the cat was not afraid as she was, and even Charles was, Edith felt. At the same time she was thinking this, Edith realized that she disliked the cat. It had a gloomy, secretive look. The cat didn’t really like them, either.

  Edith had intended to phone the Farrows around three on Sunday afternoon, but Charles went to the telephone himself and told Edith he was going to call them. Edith dreaded hearing even Charles’s part of the conversation, but she sat on with the Sunday papers on the sofa, listening.

  Charles thanked them profusely and said the cat had caught something like a large squirrel or a ferret. But they really didn’t want to keep the cat, nice as she was, and could they bring her over, say around six? “But—well, the job’s done, you see, and we’re awfully grateful . . . I’ll definitely ask at the plant if there’s anyone who’d like a nice cat.”

  Charles loosened his collar after he put the telephone down. “Whew! That was tough—I felt like a heel! But after all, there’s no use saying we want the cat when we don’t. Is there?’

  “Certainly not. But we ought to take them a bottle of wine or something, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, definitely. What a good idea! Have we got any?”

  They hadn’t any. There was nothing in the way of unopened drink but a bottle of whiskey, which Edith proposed cheerfully.

  “They did do us a big favor,” Edith said.

  Charles smiled. “That they did!” He wrapped the bottle in one of the green tissues in which their liquor store delivered bottles and set out with Puss-Puss in her basket.

  Edith had said she did not care to go, but to be sure to give her thanks to the Farrows. Then Edith sat down on the sofa and tried to read the newspapers, but found her thoughts wandering. She looked around the empty, silent room, looked at the foot of the stairs and through the dining-room door.

  It was gone now, the yuma baby. Why she thought it was a baby, she didn’t know. A baby what? But she had always thought of it as young—and at the same time as cruel, and knowing about all the cruelty and evil in the world, the animal world and the human world. And its neck had been severed by a cat. They had not found the head.

  She was still sitting on the sofa when Charles came back.

  He came into the living-room with a slow step and slumped into the armchair. “Well—they didn’t exactly want to take her back.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It isn’t their cat, you know. They only took her on out of kindness—or something—when the people next door left. They were going to Australia and couldn’t take the cat with them. The cat sort of hangs around the two houses there, but the Farrows feed her. It’s sad.”

  Edith shook her head involuntarily. “I really didn’t like the cat. It’s too old for a new home, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so. Well, at least she isn’t going to starve with the Farrows. Can we have a cup of tea, do you think? I’d rather have that than a drink.”

  And Charles went to bed early, after rubbing his right shoulder with liniment. Edith knew he was afraid of his bursitis or rheumatism starting.

  “I’m getting old,” Charles said to her. “Anyway, I feel old tonight.”

  So did Edith. She also felt melancholy. Standing at the bathroom mirror, she thought the little lines under her eyes looked deeper. The day had been a strain, for a Sunday. But the horror was out of the house. That was something. She had lived under it for nearly a fortnight.

  Now that the yuma was dead, she realized what the trouble had been, or she could now admit it. The yuma had opened up the past, and it had been like a dark and frightening gorge. It had brought back the time when she had lost her child—on purpose—and it had recalled Charles’s bitter chagrin then, his pretended indifference later. It had brought back her guilt. And she wondered if the animal had done the same thing to Charles? He hadn’t been entirely noble in his early days at Pan-Com. He had told the truth about a man to a superior, the man had been dismissed—Charles had got his job—and the man had later committed suicide. Simpson. Charles had shrugged at the time. But had the yuma reminded him of Simpson? No person, no adult in the world, had a perfectly honorable past, a past without some crime in it. . . .

  Less than a week later, Charles was watering the roses one evening when he saw an animal’s face in the hole of the birdhouse. It was the same face as the other animal’s, or the face Edith had described to him, though he had never had such a good look at it as this.

  There were the bright, fixed black eyes, the grim little mouth, the terrible alertness of which Edith had told him. The hose, forgotten in his hands, shot water straight out against the brick wall. He dropped the hose, and turned toward the house to cut the water off, intending to take the birdhouse down at once and see what was in it; but, he thought at the same time, the birdhouse wasn’t big enough to hold such an animal as Puss-Puss had caught. That was certain.

  Charles was almost at the house, running, when he saw Edith standing in the
doorway.

  She was looking at the birdhouse. “There it is again!”

  “Yes.” Charles turned off the water. “This time I’ll see what it is.”

  He started for the birdhouse at a trot, but midway he stopped, staring toward the gate.

  Through the open iron gate came Puss-Puss, looking bedraggled and exhausted, even apologetic. She had been walking, but now she trotted in an elderly way toward Charles, her head hanging.

  “She’s back,” Charles said.

  A fearful gloom settled on Edith. It was all so ordained, so terribly predictable. There would be more and more yumas. When Charles shook the birdhouse in a moment, there wouldn’t be anything in it, and then she would see the animal in the house, and Puss-Puss would again catch it. She and Charles, together, were stuck with it.

  “She found her way all the way back here, I’m sure. Two miles,” Charles said to Edith, smiling.

  But Edith clamped her teeth to repress a scream.