turned his head. Ylawl was slinking toward him, eyes gleaming in the dark. “I see that Blondi’s still there.” The dog, a shadow outlined by the light, was now gazing out the window.
“Her master still holds her,” Hrurr said. “I think she would even die for him.” He paused. “Come with me, Ylawl.”
“Where will you go?”
“Down to the valley, I suppose.” He thought of returning to Mewleen, wondering if he would ever find her again.
“It’s a long way.”
“I wish I could go to a place where there are no two-legged ones.”
“They are everywhere. You’ll never escape them. They’ll swallow the world, at least for a time. Best to take what they offer and ignore them otherwise.”
“They serve no one except themselves, Ylawl. They don’t even realize how blind and deaf they are.” Hrurr stretched. “I must leave.”
The smaller cat lingered for a moment, then slipped away. “Goodbye, then,” Ylawl whispered.
* * * *
Hrurr made his way down the slope, keeping away from the roads, feeling his way through the night with his whiskers. The mindless bark of a guard dog in the distance occasionally echoed through the wood; the creature did not even bother to sound warnings in the animals’ tongue. He thought of Blondi, who seemed to know her two-legs’s language better than her own.
By morning, he had come to the barbed-wire fence; slipping under it, he left the enclosure. The birds were singing, gossiping of the sights they had seen and the grubs they had caught and chirping warnings to intruders on their territory
“Birds!” Hrurr called out. “You’ve flown far. You must know where I would be safe. Where should I go?”
“Cat! Cat!” the birds replied mockingly. No one answered his question.
* * * *
He came to the road where he had left Mewleen and paced along it, seeking. At last he understood that the broken mirror was gone; the omen had vanished. He sat down, wondering what it meant.
Something purred in the distance. He started up as the procession of metal beasts passed him, moving in the direction of the distant town. For a moment, he was sure he had seen Blondi inside one beast’s belly, her nose pressed against a transparent shield, death in her eyes.
When the herd had rolled past, he saw Mewleen gazing at him from across the road, bright eyes flickering. He ran to her, bounding over the road, legs stretching as he displayed his speed and grace. Rolling onto his back, he nipped at her fur as she held him with her paws; her purring and his became one sound.
“The fragments are gone,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m in my own world again, and the dog has been taken from the cage.”
“Whatever do you mean?” Mewleen asked.
He rolled away. “It’s nothing,” he replied, scrambling to his feet. He could not tell Mewleen what he had seen; better not to burden her with his dark vision.
“Look at you,” she chided. “So ungroomed—I imagine you’re hungry as well.” She nuzzled at his fur. “Do you want to come home with me now? They may shoo you away at first, but when they understand that you have no place to go, they’ll let you stay.”
He thought of food and dark, warm places, of laps and soft voices. Reluctantly, he was beginning to understand how Blondi felt.
“For a while,” he said, clinging to his freedom, “Just for a while.” As they left the road, several birds flew overhead, screaming of the distant war.
AFTERWORD TO “THE MOUNTAIN CAGE”
Not long ago, a friend of mine mentioned a writer he knew who had begun researching a novel set during World War II about the Nazi high command. This writer soon gave up on this project, largely because having to live in that world imaginatively over a long period of time was driving him crazy. There are those who argue that the Nazis, the Holocaust, and the events surrounding them may not be fit subjects for fiction, at least not until more time has passed and the last of the survivors have had their say. Others have claimed that to write fiction about such horrors risks trivializing them, since the evil reality so far exceeds anything imagination and artistic transformation might yield.
All of which may help to explain why I approached this subject warily and chose to glimpse it obliquely, through the eyes of cats.
MADAME JOLICŒUR’S CAT, by Thomas A. Janvier
Being somewhat of an age, and a widow of dignity—the late Monsieur Jolicœur has held the responsible position under Government of Ingénieur des Ponts et Chaussées—yet being also of a provocatively fresh plumpness, and a Marseillaise, it was of necessity that Madame Veuve Jolicœur, on being left lonely in the world save for the companionship of her adored Shah de Perse, should entertain expectations of the future that were antipodal and antagonistic: on the one hand, of an austere life suitable to a widow of a reasonable maturity and of an assured position; on the other hand, of a life, not austere, suitable to a widow still of a provocatively fresh plumpness and by birth a Marseillaise.
Had Madame Jolicœur possessed a severe temperament and a resolute mind—possessions inherently improbable, in view of her birthplace—she would have made her choice between these equally possible futures with a promptness and with a finality that would have left nothing at loose ends. So endowed, she would have emphasized her not excessive age by a slightly excessive gravity of dress and of deportment; and would have adorned it, and her dignified widowhood, by becoming dévote: and thereafter, clinging with a modest ostentation only to her piety, would have radiated, as time made its marches, an always increasingly exemplary grace. But as Madame Jolicœur did not possess a temperament that even bordered on severity, and as her mind was a sort that made itself up in at least twenty different directions in a single moment—as she was, in short, an entirely typical and therefore an entirely delightful Provençale—the situation was so much too much for her that, by the process of formulating a great variety of irreconcilable conclusions, she left everything at loose ends by not making any choice at all.
In effect, she simply stood attendant upon what the future had in store for her: and meanwhile avowedly clung only, in default of piety, to her adored Shah de Perse—to whom was given, as she declared in disconsolate negligence of her still provocatively fresh plumpness, all of the bestowable affection that remained in the devastated recesses of her withered heart.
To preclude any possibility of compromising misunderstanding, it is but just to Madame Jolicœur to explain at once that the personage thus in receipt of the contingent remainder of her blighted affections—far from being, as his name would suggest, an Oriental potentate temporarily domiciled in Marseille to whom she had taken something more than a passing fancy—was a Persian superb black cat; and a cat of such rare excellencies of character and of acquirements as fully to deserve all of the affection that any heart of the right sort—withered, or otherwise—was disposed to bestow upon him.
Cats of his perfect beauty, of his perfect grace, possibly might be found, Madame Jolicœur grudgingly admitted, in the Persian royal catteries; but nowhere else in the Orient, and nowhere at all in the Occident, she declared with an energetic conviction,
