The Way of Muri

by Ilya Boyashov

  ‘You’ll get fresh liver every morning,’ he promised, pacing up and down the ceiling. ‘And just wait until you try the local milk… You’ll drink yourself stupid on it, not to mention the soured cream! You’ll only have to put up with this nonsense for a bit longer – he’ll soon grow tired of it!’

  The house spirit was blatantly lying – Kurt’s enthusiasm showed no sign of abating. On the contrary, Muri’s unyielding obstinacy only served to increase his torturer’s determination.

  ‘I’m going to teach you to dance whether you like it or not, Stripy Socks,’ he cried. ‘And I’ll beat the living daylights out of you if you try to escape, so stop turning your head away like that!’

  Alternately tightening and releasing the noose, he continued the drill. It was hardly surprising that Muri’s temper began to fray.

  ‘Don’t even think about it!’ cried the house spirit, who had noticed the cat’s eyes beginning to narrow with fury. ‘It’s against the rules to hurt children, no matter what they do to you! Just put up with it for a bit longer… Kurt will soon get fed up, you’ll see!’

  Kurt wasn’t even close to being fed up. Oblivious to the impending retribution, the boy persisted in his attempts to make the cat waltz.

  ‘Don’t touch the child!’ groaned the house spirit, envisaging the future without any particular difficulty. ‘Just hang in there,’ he whispered.

  ‘Move your paws, you bastard!’ cried Kurt. He pulled the string again, offering Muri yet another glimpse of life after death. When the cat’s bulging eyes returned to their place, his torturer reaffirmed his intentions. ‘I’m going to force you to dance,’ he vowed, ‘just like Ernst forced that fat cat of his, even if I have to rip your tail off and cut your whiskers. Now, dance!’

  That was it. Muri could take it no more. The cat’s impressive claws sank deep into the distorted face of his tormentor. Instantly forgetting the string and the scissors that he had picked up in order to deprive Muri of his magnificent whiskers, the boy stumbled blindly into each of the four walls, dislodging cushions and blankets, knocking his computer screen to the floor and scattering the indifferent soldiers.

  Kurt’s screams shook the house to its very foundations. His unrestrained howl echoed round the living room, the dining room, the bedrooms and even the underground garage. Dreams were instantly banished, beds were vacated and help hurried from all quarters. Kurt’s overweight mother was the first to arrive on the scene, and when she saw what had happened she began to scream too. It was the primal roar of a brutalized female. She was soon joined by the gardener and the maid, who were keen to oblige their employers, though not in too much of a hurry. The cook trailed after them, still half asleep. Kurt’s older brother stood behind their sleepy father with a broad grin on his face and watched as their mother threw herself at her youngest son to try and save him. To Muri’s credit this was not an easy task, even for a ferocious and well-built Austrian woman.

  ‘Get off my boy!’ screeched Kurt’s mother. ‘I’ll kill you! I’ll stab you with a poker! Bring me a spade! Give me something, anything! I’m going to chop that evil monster up into little pieces… His eye, his eye… My son has lost an eye! What a loathsome, ungrateful creature!’

  ‘It must have rabies,’ remarked the gardener, turning to Kurt’s father. ‘Poor child!’

  The house spirit rushed about frantically above their heads. ‘Let go of him!’ he plaintively begged the cat. ‘You’re not doing yourself any favours, you fool! Couldn’t you have waited just a little longer?’

  ‘Humans!’ wheezed Muri. ‘Let that be a lesson to you!’

  Everyone except Kurt’s older brother was howling and yelling, though Kurt’s voice rose above them all. The gardener eventually succeeded in disengaging Muri, who was stuck to the boy’s face like modelling clay. This clearly wasn’t the first errant cat he’d had to deal with. He grabbed Muri firmly by the scruff of his neck, pulling the sides of his face taut in an exaggerated grimace. This infuriated the boy’s mother still further, but the gardener assured her that he would take care of the situation. ‘I’ll chop off his head or skin him alive, whatever you like,’ he promised. ‘But right now, you need to help your son.’

  The simple logic of his words took effect immediately. An ambulance was called and the maid rushed off to find a bandage. The gardener took hold of Muri, who had saliva dripping from his jaws, and went downstairs. The victim’s older brother let them pass with unconcealed sympathy, and the house spirit followed the condemned cat right to the porch. ‘It wouldn’t have hurt you to put up with it for a bit longer,’ he lamented. ‘Maybe you’re not so lucky after all… Farewell!’

  The gardener walked through the snow to the edge of the garden, where he set the cat down under a snow-covered bush and unexpectedly declared, ‘There you go, you poor thing. To tell you the truth, we’ve all had it up to here with that boy and his misadventures. The little devil drove you to it, no doubt! But after everything that’s happened I’m afraid you’ll have to forget about a warm bed by the fire and sardines for breakfast.’

  This rational and decent human being reached out to remove the string from around the cat’s neck, but Muri had already had enough human contact for one night. He broke away and scrambled through the bush and the fence, and when he reached the road he kept running, clawing the ice with every convulsive leap.

  He almost collided with the ambulance, but the driver noticed the cat’s eyes in his headlights and managed to swerve just in time. ‘They never look where they’re going!’ he exclaimed, letting go of the steering wheel. ‘Damned cats! Why can’t they just stay at home?’

  On a small Caribbean island, Johnny Throwbolt, a geographer from Cambridge, sent an email to his esteemed mentor, which included the following extract:

  Dear Dr Stout,

  Following on from my observations of the behaviour of ‘intelligent’ lizards (I had an article on the subject published in National Geographic) I’ve recently discovered another astonishing phenomenon, known locally as the ‘march of the spiny lobsters’. The ocean near these islands is simply teeming with spiny lobsters. I’ve seen them at the market near the port, where they’re taken straight from the boats. They’re fairly large creatures, and I saw one in particular that was positively enormous. Unfortunately I didn’t have my camera with me so you’ll have to take my word for it! It was sold immediately to one of the local bars. Anyway, back to business… The local fishermen are quite approachable – they were the ones who told me about this mysterious phenomenon, which so far no one has been able to explain. Basically once a year spiny lobsters congregate in the shallow waters offshore, where they form long columns and then all march off in the same direction. According to the fishermen they gather in tens, if not hundreds of thousands. No one has yet been able to work out where they go, let alone why – all we know for certain is that they begin their march at night. I was visited on the islands by the American Jonathan Marguse, a recognized expert in the field and a very interesting man. He and his team spent some time here researching the phenomenon, but they left none the wiser. Curious scuba divers have attempted to disrupt these columns, to divert them by introducing panic and confusion into their ranks, but all to no avail. The spiny lobsters just link up again and continue their secret migration.

  I was lucky enough to arrive here just as the march was beginning, so I thought I’d treat myself and rent some good-quality diving equipment for a few days. It wasn’t cheap, but if it was going to enable me to follow the march it was worth it! On my first night one of the local guides, an experienced and entertaining fellow, took me to a beach near a tiny village known locally for its abundance of spiny lobsters. We set out at approximately 2 a.m. local time. At first all we could see was the perfect ocean floor stretching out before us, its individual grains of sand picked out by our torchlight, but then suddenly I caught sight of the procession. Imagine the astonishment and the awe I felt at the sight of so many creatures moving swiftly along one after another in
single file! Despite our best efforts we were unable to reach the head of the column, which was already disappearing into the deep, but we spent about twenty minutes shining our torches onto the lobsters as we swam alongside them. They were moving surprisingly quickly, in a seemingly endless chain. It was unbelievable – a truly mystifying spectacle! My guide and I were unable to work out how these processions actually form; even Marguse is unlikely to be able to shed any light on the matter, in spite of his specialist apparatus and professional divers (recruited in Bali, apparently). And like this esteemed biologist, I can only speculate as to the reasons for this mysterious mass migration. I was unable to resist attempting to separate the individual lobsters, but they instantly found one another again. You know what my imagination is like – I immediately pictured millions of lobsters, marching deeper and deeper into the wilderness of the oceanic abyss. Why? To reproduce in the safety of the open sea? Or as a temporary respite from extermination? (Poor things! The fishermen are relentless in their endeavours. I saw mountains of spiny lobsters being unloaded onto the pier.) What is it that drives them? Incidentally, on the second day I was lucky enough to come across the tail of the column. This was most exciting. The body of the column had already dissolved in the murky depths, and only a few stragglers remained visible – all we could do was to watch them go. I swam behind them for a little while, shining my torch onto their backs, but then the last of them twitched and disappeared into the darkness.

  The fishermen insist that no one will ever truly understand why this astonishing march takes place. ‘There’s no point even trying, mister!’ they said, and they’re so entrenched in their opinions that arguing with them is a waste of time. My guide also took a very sceptical view of attempts to explain the phenomenon scientifically (or even rationally). A superstitious man, he believes that spiny lobsters are the servants of some kind of mythical creature that lives at the bottom of the ocean, and that once a year this monster of the deep calls all his subjects together. I can’t even bring myself to relate all the naive and amusing legends I’ve heard since I’ve been here. Underwater cameras are very expensive and I decided that renting one wasn’t worth the risk, especially since another spectator watching the march had lost one only a few days previously. It just slipped out of his hands and literally dissolved into the ocean, never to be found again.

  As for the weather… We’ve had the most dreadful storm here recently, but it seems to be calming down now. The sand on the beaches is all stirred up and humidity is still very high –my arms are itching, and I constantly feel the need to take my shirt off and wring it out. The spiny lobsters have disappeared, except of course those that are still being sold at the market and in the shops. We won’t hear from them for a while now. Where they have gone and what they are doing there remains a mystery.

  ‘Herr Helmke! You weren’t the one who tied this piece of string round the cat’s neck, were you? You’ve already tied enough bits of rope around things as it is – are you trying to involve animals in your crackpot schemes now?’

  Frau Hosspield the housekeeper pursed her lips as she addressed her dishevelled employer, who was fiddling incessantly with the lever that operated his wheelchair. The doctor of law, who was paralysed from the waist down, was rolling back and forth along the hall of his big old house in a state of some agitation. With its twin towers and sweeping staircase, the house looked rather like a castle. Whenever they weren’t clutching the little lever, Herr Helmke’s dry fingers would begin drumming out a crazy march on the armrests. The housekeeper held Muri close to her bony chest. She had just found him in a deep snowdrift by the front door.

  ‘You and your experiments,’ she chided. ‘The string round his neck had caught on one of your contraptions. The poor thing was half strangled when I found him.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with me! Do you really think I’m mad enough to try and harness a cat?’ asked Herr Helmke.

  ‘I wouldn’t put it past you,’ Frau Hosspield replied laconically.

  Herr Helmke renewed his drumming with trebled energy.

  ‘It’s a sign of good fortune if a cat turns up on your doorstep on the Festival of the First Sausage,’ the housekeeper reminded him. ‘So I decided to take the poor thing in.’

  ‘But the festival was yesterday, Frau Hosspield!’ remarked Herr Helmke. ‘I can’t believe you still buy into all that nonsense.’

  ‘Well, I can’t believe you’re still going on about that cliff,’ retorted the housekeeper. ‘If it’s out of bounds to even healthy young men, how do you expect to climb it at your age and in your condition? You’ve already fallen from it once, anyway – and with such terrible consequences!’

  Herr Helmke released the lever and the long-suffering motor fell silent. His angry breathing was immediately audible, but the housekeeper ignored it.

  ‘For goodness’ sake!’ she exclaimed. ‘When will you see sense? You wouldn’t have been able to climb it when you were younger, let alone today, after the accident… You shouldn’t even be thinking about it! That cliff has already made a cripple out of you. If you ask me, you should stop filling your head with such nonsense.’

  ‘Well I’m not asking you, so stay out of it!’ snapped Herr Helmke, quite rudely.

  ‘So you don’t mind if we keep the cat?’ asked the housekeeper.

  ‘You can do what you like with it,’ answered her employer. ‘It’s not as though you have anything else to occupy you.’

  The housekeeper bore these caustic remarks with stoicism – she was paid well. Herbert Helmke was not only a lecturer. He was also the owner of an art collection that dated back 150 years to the arrival of a German immigrant, Hieronymus Johann von Helmke, who was related on his mother’s side to the Bach family of musicians and on his father’s side to Blücher, a Prussian cavalryman notable for his military leadership during the Napoleonic Wars. Thanks to the endeavours of Herbert Helmke’s ancestors the house contained enough to interest anyone with more than a passing interest in landscape painting. A dark Flemish masterpiece – Morning in Antwerp by Van Tord – dominated one of the walls of the first-floor landing, its mysticism closely resembling that of Bosch. Gustav Doré was also represented by a couple of illustrations. The collection had been enhanced by some French Impressionism after the death of a cousin – specifically three Gauguin canvases, an étude by Cézanne, two Renoir landscapes and a sketch by the relatively unknown but talented Bongé. These rarities were supplemented by a suit of armour belonging to a seventeenth-century Polish king, a pair of Caucasian daggers from the Middle Ages, a Genoese crozier and a silver-encrusted sabre that had belonged to Rafid Ali ibn Basid, founder of a prolific dynasty. However, despite his cultural riches, the stubborn descendant of Hieronymus Johann was preoccupied with things that, to Frau Hosspield’s mind at least, were monstrous and inconceivable.

  ‘I’ll be in the library. When Chesterfield arrives, send him in!’ he ordered. ‘And make me a coffee. Did you hear what I said?’

  The housekeeper wasn’t listening. Her brain was full of cotton wool – an affliction that commonly affects women whenever talk turns to the misfortunes of cats or children, and something that never failed to irk Herr Helmke.

  ‘Poor little thing!’ exclaimed the housekeeper. ‘He’s barely breathing. I’m going to make up a bed for him by the fireplace.’

  ‘Make me a coffee first, I said, and then you can do what you like with the cat,’ answered her employer, unmoved by Muri’s plight. ‘As long as he doesn’t start using my desk as a litter tray.’

  After only a brief respite, the little motor began buzzing again as the wheelchair whisked the doctor out of the hall full of ancient weapons, sombre with the weight of time, and carried him into the library.

  Although he was weak and half suffocated, Muri’s fate was looking up: Frau Hosspield had finally succeeded in removing the string from his neck, and a saucer of soured cream had been placed in the fireplace, right under his nose.

  ‘You can sleep here,
little one,’ sighed the housekeeper. ‘You need to rest and get your strength back.’

  The old spinster went into the enormous kitchen, where the frying pans, the saucepans, the mixers, the grills and the electric ovens had been polished to a maniacal cleanliness over the years. They all knew who was in charge here and worshipped their mistress. The smell of coffee, unrivalled in strength and excellence, began to permeate the rooms with remarkable speed – Frau Hosspield was very good at her job.

  The cat had barely managed to finish his main course of stuffed fish when Chesterfield arrived. The housekeeper led the reserved young climbing instructor directly to the bookcases and ladders in the library. As soon as he saw his guest Herr Helmke got straight down to business, wasting no time on small talk.

  ‘I’ve already worked it all out! The cliff is 350 feet high. We can use belay knots and anchors up to about halfway – I’ve already demonstrated how this would work. The steel hooks arrived the day before yesterday. The first part of the ascent is quite straightforward – I’ll just pull myself up, although obviously I’ll be relying on your belaying skills. Not that I doubt you, of course, young man!’ Helmke exclaimed with childish haste.

  Chesterfield wiped his brow awkwardly. The doctor hurriedly continued.

  ‘We’ll be able to manage about twenty or thirty feet using standard belay knots and hooks. Altogether we’ll need about 300 feet of quality Swiss rope, and we’ll release it like this…’ Helmke held out his cherished sketch. ‘I came up with the idea last night.’ He spoke with the unconcealed fervour of an inventor, desperately searching Chesterfield’s honest face for the slightest spark of interest. ‘I’ve also designed a system of pulleys, using Archimedes’ block and tackle principle. It’s simple and ingenious – using only one lever, I’ll be able to raise myself up at least ten feet with every pull. I’ll also be able to secure myself to the rock each time. All you have to do is belay for me. Do you understand what I’m saying?’