The Temptation of Jack Orkney: Collected Stories Volume Two. Doris Lessing
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But that is obviously not all there is to it.’
‘What upset me is that I don’t understand at all why I was so upset then.’
‘What happened? Or don’t you want to talk about it?’
‘I don’t give a damn whether I talk about it or not. You really do say the most extraordinary things, you and Betty. If you want to know, I’ll tell you. What does it matter?’
I would like to know, of course.’
‘Of course!’ she said. ‘In your place I wouldn’t care. Well, I think the essence of the thing was that I must have had the wrong attitude to that cat. Cats are supposed to be independent. They are supposed to go off by themselves to have their kittens. This one didn’t. It was climbing up on to my bed all one night and crying for attention. I don’t like cats on my bed. In the morning I saw she was in pain. I stayed with her all that day. Then Luigi – he’s the brother, you know.’
‘Yes.’
‘Did Betty mention him? Luigi came up to say it was time I went for a swim. He said the cat should look after itself. I blame myself very much. That’s what happens when you submerge yourself in somebody else.’
Her look at me was now defiant; and her body showed both defensiveness and aggression. ‘Yes. It’s true. I’ve always been afraid of it. And in the last few weeks I’ve behaved badly. It’s because I let it happen.’
‘Well, go on.’
‘I left the cat and swam. It was late, so it was only for a few minutes. When I came out of the sea the cat had followed me and had had a kitten on the beach. That little beast Michele – the son, you know? – well, he always teased the poor thing, and now he had frightened her off the kitten. It was dead, though. He held it up by the tail and waved it at me as I came out of the sea. I told him to bury it. He scooped two inches of sand away and pushed the kitten in – on the beach, where people are all day. So I buried it properly. He had run off. He was chasing the poor cat. She was terrified and running up the town. I ran too. I caught Michele and I was so angry I hit him. I don’t believe in hitting children. I’ve been feeling beastly about it ever since.’
‘You were angry.’
‘It’s no excuse. I would never have believed myself capable of hitting a child. I hit him very hard. He went off crying. The poor cat had got under a big lorry parked in the square. Then she screamed. And then a most remarkable thing happened. She screamed just once, and all at once cats just materialized. One minute there was just one cat, lying under a lorry, and the next, dozens of cats. They sat in a big circle around the lorry, all quite still, and watched my poor cat.’
‘Rather moving,’ I said.
‘Why?’
‘There is no evidence one way or the other,” I said in inverted commas, ‘that the cats were there out of concern for a friend in trouble.’
‘No,’ she said energetically. ‘There isn’t. It might have been curiosity. Or anything. How do we know? However, I crawled under the lorry. There were two paws sticking out of the cat’s back end. The kitten was the wrong way round. It was stuck. I held the cat down with one hand and pulled the kitten out with the other.’ She held out her long white hands. They were still covered with fading scars and scratches. ‘She bit and yelled, but the kitten was alive. She left the kitten and crawled across the square into the house. Then all the cats got up and walked away. It was the most extraordinary thing I’ve ever seen. They vanished again. One minute they were all there, and then they had vanished. I went after the cat, with the kitten. Poor little thing, it was covered with dust -being wet, don’t you know. The cat was on my bed. There was another kitten coming, but it got stuck too. So when she screamed and screamed I just pulled it out. The kittens began to suck. One kitten was very big. It was a nice fat black kitten. It must have hurt her. But she suddenly bit out – snapped, don’t you know, like a reflex action, at the back of the kitten’s head. It died, just like that. Extraordinary, isn’t it?’ she said, blinking hard, her lips quivering. She was its mother, but she killed it. Then she ran off the bed and went downstairs into the shop under the counter. I called Luigi. You know, he’s Mrs Rineiri’s brother.’
‘Yes, I know.’
‘He said she was too young, and she was badly frightened and very hurt. He took the alive kitten to her but she got up and walked away. She didn’t want it. Then Luigi told me not to look. But I followed him. He held the kitten by the tail and he banged it against the wall twice. Then he dropped it into the rubbish heap. He moved aside some rubbish with his toe, and put the kitten there and pushed rubbish over it. Then Luigi said the cat should be destroyed. He said she was badly hurt and it would always hurt her to have kittens.’
‘He hasn’t destroyed her. She’s still alive. But it looks to me as if he were right.’
‘Yes, I expect he was.’
What upset you – that he killed the kitten?’
Oh no, I expect the cat would if he hadn’t. But that isn’t the point, is it?’
‘What is the point?’
‘I don’t think I really know.” She had been speaking breathlessly, and fast. Now she said slowly: ‘It’s not a question of right or wrong, is it? Why should it be? It’s a question of what one is. That night Luigi wanted to go promenading with me. For him, that was that. Something had to be done, and he’d done it. But I felt ill. He was very nice to me. He’s a very good person,’ she said, defiantly.
‘Yes, he looks it.’
‘That night I couldn’t sleep. I was blaming myself. I should never have left the cat to go swimming. Well, and then I decided to leave the next day. And I did. And that’s all. The whole thing was a mistake, from start to finish.’
‘Going to Italy at all?’
‘Oh, to go for a holiday would have been all right.’
‘You’ve done all that work for nothing. You mean you aren’t going to make use of all that research?’
‘No. It was a mistake.’
‘Why don’t you leave it a few weeks and see how things are then?’
‘Why?’
‘You might feel differently about it.’
‘What an extraordinary thing to say. Why should I? Oh, you mean, time passing, healing wounds – that sort of thing? What an extraordinary idea. It’s always seemed to me an extraordinary idea. No, right from the beginning I’ve felt ill at ease with the whole business, not myself at all.’
‘Rather irrationally, I should have said.’
Judith considered this, very seriously. She frowned while she thought it over. Then she said: ‘But if one cannot rely on what one feels, what can one rely on?’
‘On what one thinks, I should have expected you to say.’
‘Should you? Why? Really, you people are all very strange. I don’t understand you.’ She turned off the electric fire, and her face closed up. She smiled, friendly and distant, and said: ‘I don’t really see any point at all in discussing it.’
‘I suppose your brother’s coming again?’
‘He might.’
He kept his back bravely turned while he adjusted tie, collar, and jerked his jaw this way and that to check his shave. Then, with all pretexts used, he remained rigid, his hand on his tie knot, looking into the mirror past his left cheek at the body of his wife, which was disposed prettily on the bed, weight on its right elbow, its two white forearms engaged in the movements obligatory for filing one’s nails. He let his hand drop and demanded: ‘What do you mean, he might?’