The Golden Cat

by Gabriel King

  ‘Eating the heart out. Yes, yes, very good. C’est la même chose. It’s all the same. You understand without knowing it. Ha ha ha!’

  Sealink sat down in confusion.

  ‘Eh bien, cher. Your second question?’

  ‘What the hell’s the point of my asking anything if the answers come back in gibberish?’

  The old cat considered. ‘You know, honey: you locked into somet’ing here and you don’t even know it.’ She mused, eyes half-shut. ‘I once met a cat, chile, a cat who read and he tole me some oddities. Gibberish – ah, t’at’s an interestin’ one. Dat word come from a human man called Geber, an ancient alchemist who hid his knowledge in a secret language which no other human could make sense of.’ She fell silent for a moment, then her eyes opened wide.

  ‘I feel the hand of an alchemist in this. I feel the hand of a human who cannot leave the secrets of the world untouched.’

  ‘But the Alchemist is dead. I saw him die. Him and the Majicou together.’

  ‘What your eyes see is not always the beginning and end of truth.’

  This was enough of metaphysics for Sealink. She was a cat who trusted the evidence of her eyes. ‘Can’t believe nothin’ else,’ she’d always said, and there was still a part of herself which felt this whole journey was no more than a foolish charade, the casting of the bones a ridiculous, superstitious game. Another question was hovering. It seemed inconsequential in comparison to the first, but even so—

  ‘What was in the cadeau I brought to Kiki La Doucette?’

  The Mammy regarded the calico with suspicion.

  ‘You a friend of Kiki’s?’

  ‘Er, no… not exactly.’

  ‘Because if you are, ça finit ici – it ends here.’

  ‘I’m not, truly.’

  Eponine dealt the bones again. This time she cast them high in the air, and when they came down they had formed a rough circle with a single dot of a bone in its centre.

  ‘Gold. It is the symbol for gold.’

  ‘Oh.’

  So there it was. She had dragged a lump of gold through the streets of the French Quarter. But what cat would have a use for inert metal? Her brain struggled with metaphors, then gave up. She’d had an answer in plain English, and she was still no closer. So much for her attempt to seek wisdom, to find the knowledge that would free the cats of New Orleans from the strange affliction that had them in its grasp; so much for understanding why the humans of the city had started to hate them so. Téophine would be disappointed. Téophine, and Red.

  A twists of the stomach, a flush of shame. After the Pestmen had done with them, there would be no Téophine and Red to explain all this to…

  Her last question. Giving up all pretence at selflessness, Sealink decided on this: ‘I had five kittens once upon a time. I believe I know about four of ’em. But if the last is still alive, where can I find it?’

  For the final time, Mammy Lafeet cast the bones. They landed all over the place. She shuffled around them, putting her head on one side then the other. She screwed her face up as if trying to focus on something very small. At last she pronounced:

  ‘Two are with the Great Cat

  Two are with La Mère.

  The fifth lies between.’

  ‘Look. I know you can only tell me what the bones tell you, but at least try to give me some help here,’ Sealink pleaded. ‘This is my kittens we’re talking about. I travelled half the world to find my family.’

  The Mammy sighed. ‘Chile, I tole you the bones could be obscure. But kittens are special. I know that, for my pain.’ She brushed her paw over the bones again. When it reached a particular outlier she groaned. She passed the paw back and forth across it, gazed at it till her eyes crossed. Then she said:

  ‘Seek for a sun of fire in the Fields of the Blessed.’

  Sealink stared hopelessly at her. Then she shrugged. ‘What the hell? I ain’t never believed in any of this stuff in my life. It probably don’t work for disbelievers, huh?’

  Eponine shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, chile. I tried.’

  She leaned across the space between them, the sacred space of the bones, and touched the calico lightly on the muzzle.

  ‘I see somet’ing else, too.’

  She looked the younger cat in the eye and Sealink thought that for a second the Mammy’s milky cataracts seemed to clear, like clouds moving slowly across a moon.

  ‘Sometimes da bones offer a gift, chile. La Verte te bénisse. The Great One must be watchin’ over you. She says you will be healed, cher. Oh yes, your heart will be healed.’

  ‘It ain’t broke.’ At once the calico was all defence, fur bristling.

  The Mammy smiled knowingly. ‘Da bones never lie.’

  ‘Yeah, well they can be damned obscure with the so-called truth. Anyway,’ Sealink deflected hurriedly, ‘what did you mean about it finishing here if I was a friend of Kiki’s?’

  The Mammy rubbed a paw across her face. She looked old and very weary.

  ‘You stay away from Kiki La Doucette. You have a good heart, cher, for all your impatience. And Kiki is – how shall I say? – traîtresse. She is poison, honey: a traitor – to all cats, and especially to me.’

  ‘How do you know that, way out here? Did you read it in the bones?’

  ‘How do I know? Didn’t she usurp my position and drive me out of my city? Why you t’ink I’m out here and she’s queening around callin’ herself La Mère? I know her poison better than most. I should; for I bore her. Elle est la mienne. I am her mother.’

  13

  Between Fire and Water

  That day he had green flames inside him from the moment he woke. They flickered out of the soft place in his head to dance like pale candles on objects in the real world.

  The weather had turned brassy and close. Animal X and his friends followed the river into mixed woodland, where it abandoned them quietly and went off somewhere on its own. The woods were oppressive and full of insects; they were criss-crossed by sandy rides arranged in parallel lines. For much of the day the sense of order these lines gave him kept Animal X from giving in – not just to the dancing flames, but to the voices and echoes and half-memories which filled his head, and which he supposed must be his own. Even so, he left everything to the other two. The kitten was always a hundred yards ahead, looking back impatiently, its restless golden limbs barred with sun; while Stilton, much improved, ambled along behind in the soft sand, talking to himself cheerfully as he went.

  Thunder rolled in the distance all morning. By afternoon it had caught up with them. The woodland rides, full of an oozing, sappy heat, closed up like green tunnels. Animal X could barely breathe. The air thickened and browned, then lightning cracked it apart and suddenly the rain was falling as if someone had turned a switch.

  It was shockingly cold. It fell not as individual drops but as silvery sheets and cataracts, forcing its way down through the trees with an intense rushing sound. Leaves and twigs danced under the force of it; branches bowed low then sprang up again in slow motion. The world vanished behind the blurry curtains, the shifting grey lenses of the rain. Animal X, filled with a terror he could not name, ran about at random, blundering through the tangled undergrowth and calling, ‘Stilton! Stilton!’ The voices in his head made it impossible to tell if Stilton had answered. More by luck than judgement he got back on the nearest ride and ran until he burst out of the woods. There was the river again, and water-meadows, and a village. Black birds flew up from the yews around the village church, and began to circle through the grey sheets of rain. The whole sky seemed to be running and melting into liquid around them. They knew he was there—

  ‘The crows!’ thought Animal X. ‘The crows!’

  He saw Stilton and the kittens come out of the woods and look at him as if he was mad.

  ‘Run!’ he called.

  He saw the light come out of the woods after them and flicker about their heads. It glittered and crackled. Animal X winced away. He flattened his ears a
nd ran towards the river. All around him it was water. Behind him he could hear the green fuse burning. Above him the great black birds swung and banked, shrieking and cawing. He shook his head to clear it. He could hear too many shrieks for the number of crows.

  ‘Run!’ he thought. ‘Run!’

  Halfway across, the fuse burned out, and there was a great soft silent explosion in the woods. Flames sprang up in the meadow around him, turning immediately into little fires which seemed to burn without any fuel. Animal X ran harder. Then he saw the river in front of him. Caught like that between the fire and the water, he was branded with awe and fear. The birds seemed to gather above him. Their cries redoubled. They were ready to swoop down. He knew he couldn’t cross water, even on a bridge: to enter it was beyond him. He was trapped. The little fires were everywhere, like green animals. Suddenly they came together in his head and he was engulfed. All he could hear was the crackle of the flames and the sound of the birds wheeling in the sky above the trees. Animal X felt himself falling. As he fell, something green and glorious inside his head pounced on him and began shaking him and filled him with pain and wonder. It was the same thing which had destroyed the laboratory. He wondered if it had always been inside his head.

  *

  He woke groggily, to hear Stilton explaining, ‘He’s afraid of water. This time it was the rain.’ And then, ‘He won’t cross the river, yet he grumbles if we are away from it for any length of time.’

  A second voice answered, ‘We must be very practical about this. Is he awake yet, do you think? He needs to be able to walk if we’re to help. Can he see? Some of them can’t see very well.’

  The cat who had spoken was a blue-cream longhair. Her dense, silky coat made a kind of nimbus round her in the twilight, so that Animal X wasn’t quite sure where she ended and the soft smoky air began. Her eyes, a startling coppery-orange colour, gave her an occult look, an impression of not quite seeing the known world; to counter this she exuded energy, purpose, a sense of identity. She was out of her first youth. But it was her aim in life (as she put it later) to be ‘uncompromisingly present’ to herself, and in this she seemed to have succeeded.

  ‘I think he can see,’ Stilton hazarded.

  ‘You know quite well I can see,’ Animal X said. ‘Stop talking about me as if I’m not here. I’m all right now.’

  In fact he had rather a headache. He shook his head to clear it and looked around. The rain had stopped. It was evening. Crossing the pasture-land from the direction of the village was a long line of cats. Every shape and size and breed, they pooled around him, rubbing their heads against him, purring in the twilight, eyes like oval mirrors to the greenish afterglow. The warmth of all those cats around him made him feel secure. The golden kitten regarded them with caution, and withdrew into the shadows of the trees. Stilton introduced himself to everyone. ‘Hello,’ he kept saying, ‘I’m Stilton, and I’m—’ Animal X never seemed to catch the rest. He was glad to see Stilton so happy. His headache receded, and he felt emptied out, washed clean by whatever had happened to him, rather light-hearted.

  ‘I can see perfectly well,’ he repeated.

  ‘Good,’ said the longhair. ‘Now: can you walk? Or will you need help with that?’

  Animal X stared at her.

  What followed was a series of strange and disjointed episodes. How he got from one to the next he was never entirely sure. If the fit had left him calm, it had also left him prone to sleep on his feet, with the result that as soon as he got used to being in one place, he found himself somewhere else. As soon as he became comfortable with one conversation, he seemed to be taking part in another—

  *

  The long procession, having barely reached its objective, reformed, and, with the newcomers at its head, made its way back to the village, where individual cats evaporated steadily away into their own houses and gardens until none was left. It was like seeing steam drawn back into the spout of a kettle. Animal X stopped to watch the last of them go. Night had fallen as they came up from the water-meadows: the village lay white-and-thatch under a fattening moon. There was an oak; a cenotaph; a tiny shop from which, senses sharpened by petit mal, he could smell oranges, liquorice, yesterday’s bread. He thought he would remember it all his life – the sweet smell of bread, the cats’ eyes like candles in the night, the blue-cream walking at his side like a beautiful ghost.

  ‘Why did they come out to me?’ he asked her.

  ‘Because you are a cat. And because many of them have had experiences like yours.’

  ‘I don’t—’

  ‘Look!’ she interrupted.

  Before him stood the church he had seen from the river, small, old, set amid yew-shaded graves, with a tower of soft-edged grey stone. Waiting for them in its shadowy wooden porch sat a white cat with bright blue eyes, who said, ‘Well now, Amelie. What have you found for us this time?’

  She was old, but her voice was firm and true. Her gaze went from Stilton to the golden kitten – on whom it rested for some time in a kind of amused maternal delight – and then to Animal X, who felt that he was being assessed by an intelligence rather greater than his own. ‘How interesting,’ she said. And then, as soon as he opened his mouth to speak, ‘Oh, no, no, it’s not a bit of use introducing yourselves. No use your saying anything at all, in fact: I’m as deaf as a board. Deaf as a board.’ After she had enjoyed Animal X’s reaction to this, she went on, ‘I’m the Post Office cat. Although in another life they called me Cottonreel.’ She laughed. ‘The names they give you!’ she said. ‘Such a burden. Mind you, I can’t say I never answered when they called. Come on. We’re going to put you up in the vestry. No-one will bother you there.’

  And without further explanation she led them inside.

  The church was silent, full of a filmy grey moonlight. It smelled of cut flowers and polish. The kitten, raw-nerved and skittish, glared up into the ceiling. It was driven to investigate everything – a hassock which lay in its own reflection on the shiny floor; the brass-bound lectern; the stained glass of the great east window – and would not move on.

  ‘Can’t you hurry him?’ suggested the Post Office cat.

  ‘He becomes angry if you say the wrong thing,’ Animal X was forced to admit.

  ‘Do come along dear!’ urged Cottonreel.

  The kitten gave her a look, then followed grudgingly.

  ‘Now. Here we are,’ she said.

  The vestry, a bleak, white-wainscoted room barely larger than a cupboard, contained a heavy wooden armoire black with time; one bentwood chair, across the seat of which someone had bundled two or three items of human clothing; and a cheval mirror in a mahogany frame. On an iron rack on one wall hung more clothes, mostly white, their shadowed volutes like sculpture in the moonlight.

  Animal X looked round.

  He thought, ‘What a strange place to end up.’

  The Post Office cat twinkled at him, as if she could read his thoughts. ‘You’ll be safe here until morning,’ she promised. ‘We’re quite expert at this. The humans seemed interested at first: we get less help from them now, and keep to ourselves. I daresay they wouldn’t care that we housed you here: but what they don’t know doesn’t hurt them.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘No good thanking me. Can’t hear a word.’

  He was swaying on his feet from tiredness again. He heard her voice go away from him as she explained something to Amelie; and then Stilton saying, ‘I’m Stilton, and I’m hungry.’

  Then he simply fell asleep where he stood.

  *

  He woke alone, an hour or two later. Moonlight fell in a thin bar across the floor from the single window. The vestry was deserted, a little chilly. He found that he had made himself a kind of nest out of the clothes on the chair, which smelled not unpleasantly of dust and human perspiration. He felt quite hungry, though disoriented. He was getting up to go and look for his friends, and see what was happening in the village, when Amelie the blue-cream came quietl
y round the door, sat down beside him and began to groom herself in a self-possessed but companionable fashion. Animal X watched her for a moment or two, hypnotized by the long, soft strokes of her tongue in the cloud of bicolour fur, and rather wishing he could offer to groom her himself. Then he said, ‘Why are you helping us?’

  ‘Because you are cats.’

  She seemed to consider this – as if she might qualify it in some way – but then started off in quite another direction.

  ‘We haven’t been here long ourselves,’ she said. ‘When we came, it was snow.’ She shivered. ‘It was snow everywhere. We had been taken by furriers. They stuff you in cages and drive you about for hours in a filthy vehicle, until you’re sick from oil fumes and being shaken about. Horrible! It was Cottonreel who got us out of that – though she had help from a cat we never saw again – and Cottonreel who kept us together afterwards. To start with we were ordinary cats, rather out for ourselves, unable to relinquish the sheltered self-centred lives we had lost. But Cottonreel wouldn’t have any of it. She is simply the most sensible animal in the world! She made sure we found homes, with humans or without them. And as soon as we were settled we began looking after the others.’

  ‘The others?’

  ‘Cats are always escaping the place you were in,’ said Amelie. ‘One here, a couple there. They find the river if they are lucky, and, if they survive, this is where they end up. We try to help them back to being themselves. The welcome you had this evening—’

  She paused.

  ‘I’m not sure how to say this. They—’

  ‘What?’ said Animal X.

  ‘They feel so much more, the ones who recover. They are so grateful to have their lives. They remember just how bad it was.’

  There was another silence.

  Eventually Animal X broke it by saying, ‘I’m all right, but Stilton has been quite ill.’

  ‘Your friend will be fine,’ she reassured him. ‘You looked after one another as best you could in that place. You looked after one another beautifully. Now: come here and see yourself.’ And she led him over to the cheval mirror in its corner. ‘Do you know what they have done to you?’