The Beast (14 page)

He sat in the corridor and felt excited; he did have a chance. He hadn’t been totally destroyed and corrupted. He still had a chance.

He jumped up and ran down the corridor to the kitchen.

Giovanna fed the cat before she left every day—left it lung, or spleen, or fish, or liver. Today there was some sort of meat in the green plastic bowl.

He took one of the largest lumps of meat and cut it into three small pieces; with the point of the knife he made a tiny hole in each piece, and slipped, into each piece, one of the barbiturates he had taken from the hospital.

He took the three pieces of meat in his hand and went to look for the cat. He found her in his bedroom, rolling on his white carpet that had a blood stain on it, and still smelled of pee though he had asked Giovanna to clean it. But it didn’t really matter. A new carpet was a small price to be paid for his freedom from the cat.

He crouched down and offered her a piece of meat; she smelled it and he dropped it on the carpet and she ate it; she ate the second piece, and the third, and purred. He guessed it would be about five minutes before she rolled over, and died.

Then he would be free of her; she would be the first to go. After her, Edward. After Edward, Edward’s friends. After the friends, Giovanna and the apartment—and after that, possibly, Mozart, Shakespeare, and Fra Angelico. Then he would be free. There would be nothing that tied him. He would be completely free. At the age of thirty-two he would have finished his education, would have graduated with the highest honours, and would be free.

*

Two hours later he went to his bathroom. The cat was lying on her side when he opened the door, but when he walked in she stood up unsteadily and looked at him with amber eyes. She had vomited all over the white carpet; throwing up the pills he had given her, and quite a lot else besides.

He stared at her and sweated; sweated because it was hot, but also because he felt, for the first time, a sort of panic. The cat seemed determined to live, seemed to be death-proof. When he had tried to drown her she had gotten out of the bath. O.K. That had been one up for her. Then when he had tried to stab her—well, that had been sort of comic—stabbing himself instead. But now—he stared at the animal, and she seemed to grow larger in front of his eyes. She didn’t want to die. She wanted to live. But she couldn’t. She had to die. He had to kill her. He had to be free of her. She hated him. He hated her. She was Edward’s, and Edward was dying. She should die with Edward. He had to kill her. He had to be free of her first; Edward and his friends and the apartment would follow naturally then. But to have that first step towards freedom blocked by a vicious, screaming cat—he stared at her and whispered, as if he were explaining something to her, and asking for her co-operation, ‘You’ve got to die.’

He told himself, again, that it would be easier to let her go out, wander off, find a mate; but he couldn’t let her do it. She mustn’t be free. She had to die.

Tomorrow though. Today he couldn’t do anything more. He couldn’t even think of another way to kill her. Tomorrow. There was sweat running down his forehead, and down his chest. He ran his fingers through his hair and his hair was wet. He smelled his finger-nails and his finger-nails smelled of sweat. He decided to go back to the hospital. At least it was cool there. He would ask them to put another bed in Edward’s room; he would sleep there tonight, and every night until Edward was dead.

He left immediately, without taking anything with him. Tomorrow he would return. He would kill the cat and pack a bag and live in the hospital until the end came. He had made his plans. He knew what to do now. It was just a matter of waiting for the end—and killing the cat.

*

The following afternoon he threw the cat off the terrace. He threw, and then looked down, and saw she had landed in a small tree on the terrace of the apartment below. He walked down the stairs and rang the bell of the apartment and said that his cat had fallen off his terrace and could he have her back; the woman who answered the door looked at him accusingly, as if she knew what he had done, and hesitantly let him come in, go across her living room, open the french windows, go onto her terrace and pick up the cat who was sitting, waiting for him.

He felt he was going mad. The cat, as he carried her upstairs, nestled quietly against him as if she felt sorry for him; he thought that if he had been her he would have bitten and scratched and not let him come near her; but she, who hated him and had hated him all her life, now
that he was trying to kill her seemed to love him. Obviously it was just because she was on heat—but even so, she didn’t press up against him in a frenzied, sexual way; she was almost tender. She seemed to be trying to tell him that she knew what he was trying to do, and she didn’t mind—but that she couldn’t help him. She was helpless, entirely at his mercy—but she couldn’t die. She was obliged to go on living, though she had been condemned to death.

He opened the front door of his apartment and threw her inside and closed the door and went back to the hospital—and as he went, lying in the back of a taxi, sweating, he imagined he could hear her screaming. He had an image of Edward, consumed and shrivelled up, lying on his bed, and he heard the cat screaming, and he sweated and wanted to cry, and felt he was going mad.

He looked out of the taxi at the people in the street—women in summer dresses, blonde German tourists in shorts, dark boys with open shirts—and felt that he had lost contact with them, as if he were living on another planet; a planet with a hot apartment and a cool hospital, a planet inhabited only by Edward, and himself, and the cat. He looked out of the taxi at the people in the street, doing their shopping, talking, walking arm in arm, chatting, looking happy or sad—and he felt that he belonged there, with them, in the street; but he couldn’t join them. He was on another planet, and was merely passing by in his hot taxi; passing from his hot apartment with its living cat, to the cool hospital with its dying Edward.

Next day he tried to hang her. She watched him, screaming, flinging herself about the floor, as he made a noose out of a length of cord. She watched him as he tied one end of the cord over the curtain rail round his shower. She watched him as he picked her up and put her small cat head into the noose and tightened it; she watched him as he let go of her; and she watched him as she hung there, by the neck, as he watched her. Perhaps she wasn’t heavy enough. Perhaps it was the wrong sort of cord. Perhaps he should have greased the cord. But the noose didn’t tighten and he would have had to pull on her, grab her kicking legs and heave downwards; and he couldn’t do it; he couldn’t touch her dangling, furry body—couldn’t pull until the neck broke or something obscene happened, like her head coming right off. Besides, standing watching her, he remembered that people when they were hanged peed and shitted and did God knows what else as well, and he couldn’t stand and watch that, couldn’t assist at that sort of horror. He untied the cord from the shower rail and lowered the cat to the ground. She ran off, screaming, into another room—and Billy stood there, sweating, until he had stopped trembling; then he went back to the hospital.

He tried to shoot the cat, but he missed. He had always kept a pistol in the bottom of one of his drawers—a souvenir of his youth.

He had gone home to change, to leave some clothes for Giovanna to wash, and while he was in his room, naked, he remembered the pistol. He took it out of the drawer and fired without aiming properly at the cat, who was lying in his bathroom on the white carpet, in front of his full-length mirror. He caught sight of himself standing, with sweat running down his face, pointing the pistol; then the image vanished. He had shot the mirror. The cat ran, fastidiously, away from the falling glass, and jumped onto his bed.

He locked her in the kitchen and turned the gas on; fifteen minutes later the
portiere
came up with some letters for Edward; she smelled gas. Billy assured her that there was no leak in his apartment, but she said she’d have to call the gas company; so he said he would check in his kitchen. The woman stood at the front door and watched him as he went down the corridor, so he was obliged to open the kitchen door. The cat slipped out, and he walked across the stinking room, closed the gas taps, opened the window, and went back and told the
portiere
that she had been right.

Edward was slipping further and further down—it was incredible how deep one had to go before death actually took one. Billy no longer slept at the hospital; he sat up all night, hoping to catch one or two words, hoping that the destroyed thing in the bed might, for a few more minutes, become Edward again.

He sweated with tiredness when he was at the hospital; when he went out, went home for an hour to change, he sweated, with tiredness and heat and exhaustion; and the cat still screamed and moaned. He no longer hated her. She was like a mathematical problem that had to be solved; there was a solution—it was just taking some time to find it. He felt detached now; there was no panic, no hurry. However many times he failed he would, eventually, succeed. He knew that. He knew he would succeed as surely as he knew that Edward would die. His body had given up the struggle against the heat and lack of sleep; but his consciousness still hung on, like a ship-wrecked man to a raft, to the three facts. Edward was going to die. The cat was going to die. And he was going to live. Edward was going to die. The cat was going to die. And he—took the elevator down.

*

He came home the next afternoon and went into the kitchen and found some lighter fuel and went into his bathroom where the cat lay and squirted the fuel at her and threw a lighted match down at the same time. He burned a hole in his white carpet and the cat rushed off to wash herself indignantly. He couldn’t go on. After he had poured water onto the carpet he crawled across the floor and pulled himself up onto his bed. He couldn’t go on.

He fell asleep.

The telephone rang at five the next morning. It was the hospital. This was the end.

Billy splashed water onto his face and looked around the early morning apartment. It was cool. He opened the shutters of his bedroom and looked up at the sky. It looked as though it might rain. There were clouds, grey in the dawn.

He dressed and the apartment was quiet, and suddenly he felt very lonely and frightened. This was it. This was the end and the beginning. This was the end of thirteen years of happiness. This was the end. Not in ten days’ time. Not even tomorrow. Now, in this dawn. He wanted to cry. He was trembling. He didn’t want to be alone. He couldn’t be alone. Why weren’t Edward’s friends with him? Where were all the living and dead people Edward had introduced him to? Why didn’t they come now, and help him? Oh, Edward had refused to see anyone in the last two months, but even so—he ran to the telephone and dialled Giovanna’s number. Her husband answered sleepily, angrily; Billy apologized for calling and asked if he could speak to Giovanna; he said that Edward was dying. While he was waiting for Giovanna to come to the phone the cat came up to him and rubbed herself against him—but she did it without urgency. She was coming off heat. Billy felt tears coming to his eyes, and he closed them.

Giovanna said ‘Pronto,’ and he told her that Edward was dying and asked her, begged her to come to the hospital. She said ‘O mio dio,’ and told him she would get a taxi immediately. He thanked her and put the phone down. The cat stared up at him, piteously, and he shook his head and wondered if she realized what was happening. He whispered ‘I’m sorry Kate,’ and leaned over and picked her up, and ran down the corridor to the kitchen with her.
If Giovanna didn’t come today—and God knew how long they’d be at the hospital—Kate wouldn’t have anything to eat. He put her on the floor in the kitchen and looked in a cupboard. There was a jar of caviar and a tin of pâté. He opened them quickly and put them on a plate and put the plate on the floor. Kate purred.

He took a taxi home. It was still raining. The apartment, when he opened the door, was cool and silent; cool and silent as it had been when he had left it at five. Only when he had left Edward had been alive, and now Edward was dead. When he had left he had left Edward’s house. Now the house, and everything in it, was his. He was alone. He was free. He was alone.

There was no sound from Kate, and he went to look for her. He looked in his bathroom, but she wasn’t there. He looked in Edward’s bedroom, but she wasn’t there. He went down the corridor to the kitchen, and Kate was there. She was lying beside a white plate full of black caviar and a grey-brown pâté. She was lying beside the plate, and she was, quite obviously, dead.

Billy stared, and shook his head. He was no longer living. He was dreaming. It was impossible. He picked up the empty pâté tin that he’d left on the kitchen table and saw that there was a great dent in one side of it he hadn’t
noticed before, when he’d opened it. The tin had been damaged. The pâté had gone bad. Kate had eaten it. And now she was dead.