A World Without Color: A True Story Of the Last Three Days With My Cat

by Bernard Jan

  Love, do not leave me!!!

  You raise your head on standby, like a submarine periscope getting ready to surface. Who is ringing? Who is coming? You stretch your neck in anticipation. I am no longer interesting to you while I pet you on the top of your head and scratch under your grayish chin. Something else is happening now. Something new, something more important.

  I absorb into my memory your big, yellow-green and somewhat tired eyes, knowing that a little longer, a little bit longer, and their flame will disappear. Although they will still be open, they will no longer watch me, nor will I see them. Never again....

  You relax when you see Saša come. My poor old guy, you must be surprised by seeing him again in such a short time. If you only knew the reason for his arrival.... If you only knew about his mission as the angel of death....

  Or, maybe you know why he’s here? So you heroically await your destiny as you heroically endured all the pain and all the adversity that has befallen your languid body....

  Saša, Mom and I, each from our own side, form a triangle of love in which we place you. True to himself, Dad is still hiding in the kitchen, looking for illusory comfort and drawing a non-existent strength from who knows which glass in a row. From the bag Saša takes and prepares two needles, comforting Mom and me. Mom is complaining that she doesn’t have strength any more, that she lost three cats already (considering you the third loss). Saša listens to her attentively and expresses disbelief when he hears that after her return from London the veterinarians, in cold blood, told her that her Fanika was wrapped in a bag in a cage where they had put her after failed uterus surgery. Lulu, a big, yellow neighbor’s cat, who fed at Mom’s and her parents’ place and visited them when they were still living in the city center, was killed by a car. And now it’s your turn. Now it is time for you to leave her too. Mom is crying. I am also crying, but this time I don’t look for a refuge by hiding in another room. I wipe my tears with my hand while Saša is trying to find a muscle in your left hind leg where he intends to give you the injection. Astonished, he finds only fur and flabby tissue because your illness has eaten everything else. The injection finally finds its way, and Saša explains what he gave you and what effect it will have on you. Not even five minutes have passed, and you, boosted by a supernatural power you got somewhere, abruptly push up on your front legs and vomit. Saša asks what is that white thing you ate, and I try to prevent you from jumping off the three-seater. Mom quickly returns from the bathroom with a paper towel on which you three times throw up pieces of undigested chicken. Before you calm down again, I see your indigo blue tongue. Love, you’re sicker than I thought, and although I know the injections are bringing you much desired relief, I can’t help but feel all the intensity of the pain you feel.

  I lay you back down on the pillow and you relax. Your tummy rises and falls at more regular intervals. Saša talks. Explains. Usually it takes ten to fifteen minutes until the injection takes effect, but in your completely exhausted body, its effect is faster and almost everything happens in an instant. Saša and I sit with you, caressing you, and wait until you are fully asleep. Until you dream a dream from which you will not wake up. Or just fall asleep and forget about everything: illness, time, space, the injection you received, about all the beautiful and ugly goings on in your life, us who surround you, torn by indescribable pain and boundless love and who have become and were your family.

  With the syringe needle Saša tests the reflexes on the pads of your toes. He moves his hand in front of your eyes and checks whether you sleep. You are gone, love. You are completely unaware—of everything. He prepares a second injection and warns us that what is coming next is not nice and it might be better that we leave until he finishes. Mom is a little reluctant, but leaves. I’m staying. I had already decided that I would be with you until the very end, as I was determined when, a few days ago, I said in front of Mom, Dad and Saša that you should take your last trip from your home, from your bed. Although Saša mentioned the possibility of taking you to the clinic, I condemned my parents and myself to additional suffering. But it was the right thing to do. That was the last thing we could do for you for all the wonderful years you have given to us. And for which I will be thankful to you for the rest of my life.

  Saša and I switch places because his shadow is disturbing him while he approaches you with the second injection. Once again he warns me it is an ugly scene. The injection will stay pinned in your body. But I want to know all that will happen and ask him whether he will give it to your heart. No, this injection which causes death is administered directly into the lungs and stops breathing. Asking him questions and listening to his answers, I don’t notice when your lungs stopped moving. I also don’t see Mom arrive. At about the same time Saša and I notice that you begin to urinate and Saša apologies for you, saying it happens to everyone when they die. As if he should apologize for you! Mom again jumps in with a paper towel by putting it under you.

  It’s over.

  It is over....

  You are not here anymore.

  You’re gone.

  I do not know exactly when. And I do not know how. How I missed that moment. Which I dreaded. For so long. And which I’ve feared. That will tear us apart. And make us each go our separate ways.

  Forever?!

  Saša puts this syringe on the table as well and asks whether we have prepared a bag in which he will carry you.

  I caress your motionless body and steal one more touch.

  Saša says we did the right thing. Extending your life would be a real agony for you and there was a high probability you would die of suffocation. None of us wanted to put you through that, love, none of your angels of death.

  I glance at the wall clock above the door. It is twenty past seven. I’m counting minutes backwards and estimating that you died about seven fifteen. From Mom I take a black garbage bag and unroll it while Saša is wrapping you in your blankets.

  You’re a little too big for them so the ball in which Saša rolled you opens. A breath of warmth that is leaving your body streams like a kiss down my hand when Saša puts you in the bag. You are so soft, so gentle, fragile, and beautiful. Saša closes the bag and I don’t see you anymore....

  We put the black bag into another one so it’s easier for Saša to carry you. I regret we didn’t wrap you in one of your bigger blankets, but Saša says it isn’t necessary. It’s just your body in the bag. Saša also won’t care what happens to his body when he dies, where they will put it. I agree with him. I’d prefer to be cremated too, and scattered in several places—in the rivers, deserts, on the glaciers, mountains and in savannahs, so no one knows where I rest. Closing you in the bag, he tells me to look after Mom and Dad and gestures towards the syringes for me to toss them in the trash.

  Mom goes to the bathroom to throw in the toilet the paper towel on which you urinated and now settles accounts with Saša. We both know Saša doesn’t charge for a full service when he tells the price. He takes money only for the costs of injections and remains consistent about that. We don’t owe him anything else. It’s not that we couldn’t pay him; I believe he decided that because of you and because he loved you. Because of loving you, he went through this Calvary with us, and it will last for him while he carries you. Until you become ashes and turn into the dust from which you came.

  On leaving, he finds strength once again to encourage us. Sometimes the animals are so sick they walk on the edge of the abyss, but they don’t have strength to jump into it. They wait for us to push them over the edge and for that they are grateful. Little one, I hope your fall wasn’t painful.

  What happens next is a little chaotic. I don’t know who exactly does what, when Dad comes out of the kitchen and where he disappears after that, through which tunnels and catacombs Mom walks. I wander from room to hall to another room and back, confused and with red eyes from crying, knowing I must catch another look at the blue bag at the tram stop. From the corner of my eye and completely by accident I see two
syringes on a table in the living room, neatly placed next to one another. I grab them while no one is around and take them to my room. I hide them in the drawer of my desk on which my computer is seated. Then I go out to the balcony and spot Saša. Instead of waiting at the tram stop, he is going on foot down our side of the street. Carrying the blue bag in his right hand.

  With a light step, bowed head and stoop-shouldered, he makes his way through the parked cars and the street crowded with bulky waste. The garbage workers still haven’t taken it away. How ironic. You are leaving on the day when the tenants in the street are disposing of the unnecessary things they have piled up in their basements and attics. They discard things they no longer want and need, and I have to throw away what I love so much and without which I do not want to live. You.

  Reaching the Exit Theater, he has to get off the sidewalk and step on the tram tracks because going through the waste and stacked cars is impossible. This is the last time I see you. The day is paler and the evening darker, and several clouds traveling over this part of Zagreb grow darker and sadder. I stand on the balcony. My heart wants to tear my chest and jump out of it. Tears are streaming down my face. As if the sky sympathizes with me, it lets from the cloud a few drops which drizzle on my face. A light rain starts. Silent, light and rare.

  Mom joins me, and the two of us stay a little longer on the balcony, looking in the direction in which you left. We conclude that Saša has to carry you in the rain, and he doesn’t even have an umbrella. It is only when we go back to the room that the reality lifts its blade and swings it over our heads.

  Drowning his pain, Dad drinks a glass too many and stumbles to bed. Soon after, a burst of sobs comes from the room. When Mom goes to comfort him, he chases her away, saying we have ruined his life and to leave him alone.

  Mom sits in front of the television with a hypnotized look on her face, trying to follow a program with me. In fact, both of us sit like logs, not knowing where to go or what to do with ourselves. Now I’m choking, she says, placing her hand on her chest, and I don’t know what to answer to her. I remember Saša’s words—to look after Mom and Dad—and wonder how. How, Saša, when I am barely alive? The pain gains a new dimension, and, as the hours pass, it escalates to proportions which drive me to madness.

  Mom and I start to talk. We talk about you. I tell her that the second injection didn’t look as bad as Saša was saying, but, rather, the first one. The first injection was the one that determined your fate; the second only ended what had already started. Mom says it is hard for her to talk about you even with me, so only tomorrow will she phone uncle and others. Everything melts, sways, moves and disappears in the rebellion of emotions.

  I killed you!!! Although I didn’t give you the injections myself, but Saša did it, he was only the executor of my decision. Though my parents arranged everything with Saša before I came home, somehow we knew the last word would be mine, that I would be the one to decide how many days, hours, minutes you would have left. I brought you home fourteen years, eight months and twenty-seven days ago. I decided that after fourteen years, eight months and twenty-seven days you would leave your home. I killed you, and I don’t want to seek justification in the words putting down and euthanasia! To hell with embellishing! I killed you, I, your angel of death. I took your life just as I gave it to you once, putting before my parents and grandmother a fait accompli they had to accept you in our home. What to call someone who kills a loved one, even only out of mercy???

  My life, I am breaking down and rejecting you, and this evening has no end. It is so long. So painfully far the dawning is....

  Thinking I have the strength, I go to my room and search for the button on my cell with Snježana’s number. She will be the first person I will tell you are no longer with us. I’ll ask her to let the others know, because I’m not sure I will have the nerve for another call. I can’t even send the e-mails about your death. For two days already I’ve had problems with my computer and I can’t log on the Internet today. Everything goes wrong tonight....

  Snježana answers with a cheerful voice, but deep breathing and silence from my end. She repeats my name, and somehow I squeeze between breaths, It’s not good. Marcel.... Marcel is gone.... And I crack like a century-old glacier, fractured by global warming. I blubber and choke in tears, pain and humiliation, but I am relieved for calling her. Snješko..., I say, and with someone else’s voice distorted by crying, I tell her about you.

  The pain in my head is so strong that I can’t sleep a wink. This time it isn’t a migraine. Or maybe it is, but increased with another pain that pulses with internal pressure as if my head will burst. I am clogged up with tears, and I feel as though I am sinking to the bottom of the sea. With each new foot death is approaching, but it doesn’t bring me relief; instead the pain is intensifying to the point of being unbearable. What is the level of tolerance? Where are the limits of human endurance?

  I toss and turn in bed. One moment I’m sweating and the next uncovering myself. Then I cover myself with a quilt all the way to my chin. I’m cold, very cold, even though temperatures are much higher these days and there’s no reason for me to be so cold. No, this coldness is not climate caused. My body moans and weakens from lack of sleep and fatigue, whipped by pain.

  With the sleeve of my pajamas I wipe my eyes and I turn my back to the window, irritated by the orange light of the street lamps. My eyelashes are sticky with tears and I blink through them at the empty space under the table where you lay this morning. My brain projects your outlines and, for a moment, I materialize you. I blink my eyes and you’re gone again. The illusion melts and soaks into a pillow. Once more I call you to reality, but I’m suffocating, fighting for air like you. I hold onto that little sanity on this frenzied carousel of emotions.

  I’m thankful for people like Snježana, who understand this kind of pain, because by some miracle they have evolved above the mediocrity of this world. Today I called no one else. I will leave everything for tomorrow because tomorrow is a new day. When I go out, when I go among the predators of my kind, it will be easier for me to hold back and conceal my grief. Then it will be easier to talk to others and send e-mails about your death to my friends and respond to text messages of condolence that will arrive during the day. I cannot cry anymore, love. I mean, I can. I have enough tears stored in me and I could cry until dehydration, but I am tired. My body trembles, my head is splitting, and for days I have felt a latent pain in my chest. I am fragile and crushed, like the millennial parchment carried by an eagle in his talons.

  The dream refuses to give me forgiveness. I won’t be granted mercy. I stay awake in agony while minutes tick by into the future.

  Where are you now, doll? Does your body still exist as I remember it, or is it scattered in ashes and flying with smoke, free to the open skies? Are the traces of your existence already erased or will you disappear only the next day? I don’t know in which hour you materialized in this world. I also don’t know when you left it. Maybe Saša will tell us one day, but is that so important? Will that change a thing?

  The emptiness will remain unfilled.

  I don’t know where people draw the strength to cope with such a loss. I don’t know where Snježana finds the strength to cope with her losses. In four years she lost five of your brothers and sisters, but she is persistent in carrying and watching out for those who remain. Jelena survived disease, bullets, being under the wheels, poisons, crazy neighbors, but she still takes care of her animal kingdom, while Anita has a few small graves in the house yard in Berlin.

  Your grave doesn’t exist. You will never have it. You will stay buried in me. Mom and Dad will also carry you in their memory. And wherever I go, whatever I do, I will try to let you also feel a touch of the world through which we will walk together. I’ll be your eyes. My heart will beat for you. My lungs will soak up the scents of the seasons, and the music from the radio will lull us to sleep together.

  And I will tell people about you. Face to fac
e, but also with this monument, whose construction with every click on the keyboard is nearing its end. My fingers are swollen from rapid typing. They slide and miss the keys from the strength of the strokes and then they return again. My hands and strokes are heavier and heavier from cramps, while tears, instead of sweat, wash the dust of carved emotions off my face. I will also tell them with the photographs you’ve left behind, this pathetic sentimentality before which I buckle, letting it enslave me. And I will be a happy slave, because I am a slave to something beautiful, to someone I love.

  Now I stand even stronger in my assurance to spend the rest of my life helping and fighting for others. For those like you. This is the meaning that fills me, my motivating force (we can call it love, we can call it thirst for justice), until a rule of one law on this planet applies to everyone. I spend myself and will spend myself until the end, in order for every one of us to win the right to our own life. To life in which no one will exploit and oppress anybody, with no suffering, pain, fear. The right to live and not to be killed, tortured or abused in the name of the higher purpose, with no one asking us beforehand do we agree with that. The intellectual superiority and developed, modern, mechanized killing systems are not a cover for the crimes that my species commits on others, every moment, including this one, everywhere on our amazing, haunted planet of death. No excuse. There is just no excuse.