by Frances
“Jealous,” Pam North said. “The others first always makes her. But the others came first. He said he’d picked up a couple he didn’t think had stopped drinking since the night before and that he drove them to pick up her husband to explain why she hadn’t been home. He was in a bar and when he got in the cab they had a bottle and everybody had a drink, although the taxi driver said all he wanted was to get them out before the shooting started. Nice Teeney, is the major cat.”
“Oh,” Liza O’Brien said.
“But they just went to another bar and all got out,” Pam said. “An anti-climax, but still interesting. Of course, with taxi drivers, you never—Did you make out all right? They behave at all?”
“Bits and pieces,” Liza O’Brien said. “Want to look?”
Pam looked. Several times, studying the small sketches—all line; all cat—she laughed. She pointed at the one of Gin sitting high, like a rabbit. “The only one I ever knew who did,” she said. “Except in tall grass, of course. To see over it. Gin just likes it. Pretends there’s something up there. These are perfect, you know. If I were Jerry—”
“I hope,” Liza said. “It’s swell of Mr. North to give me a chance.”
“He likes the book,” Pam said. “He liked the things of yours Dorian showed him. So why not?”
Liza flipped the rolled back pages flat on the pad; found brown paper and string in the chair behind her; wrapped up the drawing pad with the assistance of Gin and Sherry. She said she might want to come back, but for the moment she had enough to go on with. She said it was wonderful of Mrs. North—
“Nonsense,” Pam said. “Does the cats honor. You’ve got long hairs? I’d think they’d be harder. I mean, so much fur.”
“They’re easy to make pretty,” Liza said. “Hard to make real. Yes, I know where a fine black kitten is.”
Liza left the Norths’ apartment then, walked a few blocks to have a sandwich at Bigelow’s and then walked some further blocks. She was a small girl, and the drawing pad was large; people she passed turned back to look at her and smiled with a kind of contentment, as if something pleasant had just been proved. Liza found West Kepp Street with no difficulty, having been there before; she walked along it to J. K. Halder’s shop, and down the steps to the door of the shop. She paused, then, before she touched the door, and tapped her fingers lightly on the windowpane. The black kitten rose on hind legs and boxed with the fingers through the glass. Liza turned away and pushed at the door. The door did not open.
This was surprising. “Any time during the afternoon,” the old man had said. “We’re always here.” But now it appeared he was not there.
“Well!” Liza said, and pushed at the door again, and again without result. I could have stayed and had another shot at the Norths’ major cat, she thought. But Mr. Halder had seemed so cooperative, after she had shown him one or two sketches. “You like animals,” he had told her, and she had said, “Of course.”
“No of course about it,” Mr. Halder had told her then, this the Saturday before. “Most of the people I know—” He had broken off, and there had been a look of dislike on his face; it was as if she had annoyed him. But then his face cleared. “Nothing to worry your head about,” he said. He smiled at her.
But that—that sudden look of displeasure, almost of anger on his face—had for some reason prevented her from saying what she had planned to say, from explaining how she had happened to find a black longhaired cat in this particular, so securely hidden, shop in this secretive street. It could come out later; perhaps while she was sketching. “By the way,” she could say, and she had planned the words in her mind, “by the way, I didn’t just happen to come here. You see—” This decision to postpone had been made intuitively, with the idea that it might be better if he knew her first, approved of her, as herself. So arranged, it would seem unarranged, or she had hoped it would. But at the same time she was puzzled why it should be so important, why either arrangement or the absence of arrangement mattered. She supposed she was merely self-conscious about Mr. Halder, of whom she had heard a little, all of which had made him sound difficult.
She pushed at the door again and then looked into the shop. It was only dimly lighted; one hanging bulb, deep in the room, seemed to create rather than to disperse shadows. Then she saw why this was: the light was screened so that glare from it would not fall into the pens along the wall. But now, she thought, it’s the middle of the afternoon. It’s as if—
“Nonsense,” a sharp voice said behind her. “Of course it’ll open. Get out of the way.”
She turned quickly, emerging from the preoccupation of her thoughts. A man was standing on the lowest step of the three leading down to the door level. Even so, her eyes were almost on a level with his; why, she thought, he’s the smallest man. He was also, she thought next, one of the oldest men; he had a little, amazingly wrinkled face and very sharp blue eyes. The eyes stabbed at her, suspiciously, almost angrily.
“Women!” the little man said, and came down the last step. Now he was appreciably less tall than she, which meant he was under five feet. “Why should it be locked?” he demanded, looking up at her, somehow implying that she was attempting to deceive him.
“I don’t know,” she said. “It just seems to be.”
“Crazy old fool,” the little man said. “Afraid somebody’ll want to buy one.” He paused a moment. “You want to buy one?” he demanded.
“No,” she said. “I—I just want to see Mr. Halder. But apparently he isn’t here.”
“Here?” the man said. “Nonsense, girl. Of course he’s here. Where would he be?”
“Look,” Liza O’Brien said, trying somehow to bridge a gap which must, she thought, have a width of more than fifty years. “I hardly know Mr. Halder. But he told me I could come around.” The sharp blue eyes continued to bore at her. “To sketch a cat,” she said, and for some reason almost added, “please.”
“Absurd,” the old man said. “Get out of the way.”
She moved aside. The little old man pushed at the door. When it did not open he turned the knob and then, angrily, shook it. Then he turned to her. “Well,” he said. “He’s a crazy old fool. Tell him so to his face.”
There did not seem to be an answer to this.
“Want to sketch a cat?” the old man said. “Why?”
“For a book,” she said. “A book about them.”
“Books!” he said. “Nonsense. Ever hear of chess?”
“Yes,” the girl said. She felt a little as if she were swimming under water.
“You’re a pretty thing,” he said, next. “Waste your time with books. Sketching cats. No boy?”
“Please,” Liza said, surfacing. “Mr. Halder isn’t in, obviously. It’s very nice of you to be so interested, but I’ll just—”
“Nonsense,” the old man said. “Let you in. Not going to poison the animals, are you? Anyway—”
This time he did not finish. He began to slap the pockets of his dark suit. He found what he wanted and pulled a key from one of the pockets. He unlocked the door and at once went in.
“Well,” he said, over his shoulder and without stopping, “come on in. What’re you waiting for, girl?”
Liza O’Brien went in. The little old man was somewhere in the shadows; then lights came on. He came back to her, looked a little up at her and, suddenly, smiled.
“An old man, girl,” he said. “Old enough for your grandfather. Great-grandfather. Don’t mind me. Where is the old fool?”
He looked into the pen which was the home of the black kitten, almost as if he expected to find Mr. Halder sharing the pen. “Where is he, Electra?” he said, in a quite matter-of-fact voice. “Where’s the old man? Sleeping it off?”
The little cat looked up at him, opened her pink mouth widely, made a very small sound. The cockers in the next pen began to clamor loudly. The little man listened, moved in front of their pen, and looked at them.
“You’ve got no water,” the man said. He sp
oke almost accusingly, as if it were a fault of the cockers. They spoke together, in a frenzy of assent.
The little man turned sharply to Liza O’Brien.
“Something’s the matter,” he said. “They haven’t got water.”
He turned again and began to walk rapidly down the room toward a door at the end. He walked so rapidly it was almost as if he trotted.
The room in which Mr. Halder lived was empty. The bed had been made up, rather sketchily, since it was last slept in. The little old man went to shelves by a refrigerator and looked at the dishes on them. The dishes shone.
Liza had gone to the door, had stood in it watching the little old man. Now, as he turned and started toward her, she moved aside to let him pass. All the wrinkles on the little face seemed even deeper than before; she saw that he was very disturbed, perhaps even frightened.
“J. K.!” he called into the shop, in a high, ancient voice. “J. K.!”
There was no answer. It took them only a few minutes to find out why. Mr. Halder, dressed in black and white, folded so that his knees were against his chest, lying on his side, was in one of the pens. A young boxer in the next pen was as far from him as she could get; she was curled up and she was shivering.
Even as, involuntarily, Liza O’Brien shrank back from the pen in which Mr. J. K. Halder was so grotesquely folded, she heard the little old man beside her suddenly begin to cry. He cried gaspingly, like a child.
And Liza turned to him, involuntarily, as she would have turned to a child. She was shocked, and frightened, to see how the little wrinkled face had changed; how, between one moment and the next, life seemed to have gone out of it. The blue eyes which had been so sharp were now strangely vacant, seemed almost like blind eyes, as if the tears forming in them had washed away sight. The wrinkled cheeks, where color had been bright under the thin, aged skin, were now a kind of yellowish white. The little old man groped around him, uncertainly, as if he were indeed blind, and she reached out to steady him, but he made uncertain gestures which seemed to ward her off. Then, on the other side of the room, she saw a wooden chair and moved quickly and put it within his reach. He sat on it, still uncertainly and then turned in it, resting his arms on the back of the chair and his head on his arm.
“Are you all right?” she said, her voice hurried, carrying the message of her shock and fear. Why, she thought, he’s going to die right there, sitting there! Something terrible is happening to him! And she felt, hopelessly, that there was something to do, some aid to give, and that she, in her terrible youth, her utter lack of knowledge, was uselessly letting him slip into death. She looked around the room in a kind of desperation, trying to see in it some means of helping the little man but not, in that first shocked uncertainty, knowing what she sought. Then it came to her—a stimulant, brandy, perhaps. She remembered the room in the rear and said, “Wait! I’ll get something!” and thought the old head, still resting on the arm, moved in agreement. She went quickly into the room in which Mr. Halder had lived.
She found a glass quickly, in one of the cupboards, but it took her much longer, opening doors, pulling out drawers, in a desperate conviction of the need to hurry, to find the bottle she sought. Then it was whisky, not brandy, but she almost ran as she carried the bottle and the glass back toward the room in which it seemed the little man was dying. She pushed open the door and started to speak as she entered the show room and then, blankly, stopped. The chair was empty. It’s happened, she thought, oh—But then she saw that the little man had not slumped from the chair to the floor; was not, indeed, anywhere in sight. Still carrying the bottle and the glass, she searched rapidly through the room, looked finally, when it could no longer be put off, in the pen in which the body of Mr. Halder was hideously folded. But there was no other body there and she turned away quickly, feeling, as her anxiety flowed away, almost indignant, almost angry. Why, she thought, I’ve been—fooled. He’s just gone; he just got up and went away.
She put glass and bottle down on the chair in which the little old man had been sitting, and went to the door of the shop. It was closed, and she opened it and, holding it open behind her, looked up and down West Kepp Street. But the little man was not in sight. Then she went back into the shop, closing the door behind her. The little old man had, it was clear, merely got up and gone away; perhaps that was what he had all along planned to do. He had left her in this room with the animals; in the room with the grotesquely folded body of Mr. J. K. Halder. “Well!” Liza O’Brien said, aloud, in something approaching her normal voice.
Momentarily, she was tempted to follow the example of the little old man. It would be simple merely to pick up her wrapped sketching pad, go down the length of the shop and out the door into West Kepp Street and leave what was in the room to another’s finding. But she shook her head instantly; even if it weren’t for Brian—Her thoughts broke off. That was it. Before anything else, she must tell Brian. Poor dear, she thought; I was worrying about the little old man, when all the time I should have been thinking of Brian.
It took her only a moment to find the telephone, on a desk in a rear corner of the room. She dialed a number which, although she had used it infrequently, was familiar in her mind because, in a minor way, it was part of Brian. “Mr. Brian Halder, please,” she said to the switchboard operator. “Is Mr. Halder in? Miss O’Brien,” she said to someone else who was not Brian. And then the voice was Brian’s, for the instant blank, a voice answering an office telephone; then, as he heard her voice, or as realization brushed away previous preoccupation, warm and gay. “Liza!” Brian said. “Hel-lo!”
“Brian,” she said and, hearing his voice, she was suddenly close to crying. “Brian—something terrible. Something—”
“Liza,” he said. “What’s the matter?” His voice had changed now; held alarm and concern.
“It’s—it’s your father, Brian,” she said. “I’m at the shop. He’s—he—”
It was hard to say.
“What is it, dear?” Brian said. “Go on, Liza.”
“He’s dead, Brian,” she said. “Something—oh, I’m afraid, Brian. It’s—it’s so strange. So awful. He’s—he’s sort of fallen in—in one of the pens and—”
“Wait,” Brian Halder said. “You’re there, you say? There?”
“I told you,” she said. “I was going to sketch a cat. I—I found him, Brian.”
“Wait,” Brian said. “Who else is there? Have you—told anybody?”
“There was a little man,” she said. “A strange little man. But he’s gone, now.”
“You’re sure he’s dead?” Brian asked.
“Oh, I’m sure,” she said, “I’m—I’m afraid it’s sure, Brian.”
“Let me think,” he said. “We’ll have to—you say he was in one of the pens?” There was incredulity, and something else, in his voice.
“Yes,” she said. “Sort of—sort of folded up. He must have fallen, somehow.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“I don’t see—” Brian Halder began, then, slowly. But then he paused again.
“Wait there,” he said. “I’ll come. Can you—just wait? You say nobody’s been in?”
“Only the little old man,” she said.
“That’s probably—” he began, and again paused. “Never mind,” he said. “I’ll be there in—oh, ten, fifteen minutes. Not more than twenty. Will you just wait until I get there? Can you do that, Liza?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Sit down,” he said. “Don’t think about it—worry about it. He—Dad was an old man, Liza. I suppose—” Again he trailed off. “Wait,” he said, “I’ll hurry.” Then he hung up.
She sat for a few minutes by the telephone, feeling relief because the hard thing was said to Brian, relief because he was coming. But then she found that she was too restless merely to sit, waiting, and got up and began to walk around the room, looking at the animals. Then she remembered what the little old man had said about the cockers havin
g no water and looked into their pen and the other pens, and found that none of the dogs had anything to drink, nor did the Siamese cat. There was still water in the bowl in the little black cat’s pen. She walked back to the rear room, passing as far as she could from the body and found a pitcher and filled it with water. It was only when she tried to pour from the pitcher into the water bowl in the cockers’ pen that she realized she was shaking, as if with a chill. She managed to pour water into that bowl, and into the others, but she spilled some in each pen because she could not stop her hand’s shaking. Then, putting the pitcher down on the floor, she stood for what seemed a long time looking down at the black cat, trying (without too much success) to study the little animal with an artist’s eye, to shut out all other thoughts. But stubbornly her mind kept re-creating another image: a thin old man grotesquely, mockingly, folded in a pen meant for a dog, a cat. Now that there was nothing else to do, nothing else to think of, she could think only of that, and she could feel her whole body trembling.
Yet it was really not much more than twenty minutes before Brian came. He came hurriedly, running down the three steps, but she was at the door, wrenching at the knob, before he quite reached it. She stepped back and he came in, kicking the door to behind him and at the same moment taking her in his arms.
“Oh Brian,” she said, her face against his coat. “Oh Brian!” She was shivering uncontrollably, and he stroked her hair, then held her closer to him, pressing his right hand against her back. “There, baby,” he said. “It’ll be all right, Liza. It’ll be all right.” She breathed deeply, and let her breath out in a sigh, and then her trembling lessened. But she wanted to stay there, held by him, hiding her face against him, shutting out the ugly thing deep in the room. He did not hurry her, but, almost imperceptibly, the pressure of his arms relaxed and, so signalled to, she freed herself and stood back and looked up at him.