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Memories, forever

Alain Marciano

    I.
    It is one of these glorious Sundays that springs sometimes offer. An impossibly blue sky and a sweetly salted breeze coming from the sea that cools down the temperature in the city. A perfect moment. A gift. Everyone enjoys it because it will not last and will never come back. Even Dan is going to relax too, very soon, in a few minutes.
    “Dan, are you with us? ” asks Barbara, his second wife. They married two months ago.
    “Yes, I’m coming”, Dan answers. Installed in a chaise longue, he gazes at his wife and her children and grand-children playing in the swimming pool. “Just checking the meetings planned next week” and he opens his leather-bound datebook and, ahead of him in the coming week, here it is, written in red ink, the only non-professional event mentioned among many business appointments: next Wednesday, it is the cat’s day.
    II.
    Dan does not need any datebook to remind him this damned Saturday evening, about 7 years ago. He remembers the whole incident. He remembers that he was back home after a tennis game that he had won—winning, even an inconsequential game against an old friend, always filled him with confidence and satisfaction and the feeling that he had a firm grasp on his life and that he had got over one more obstacle, reached for another bar on the ladder of life. He remembers the beatitude he was feeling on entering their apartment this very day, welcomed by darkness—the lights were off—and silence—just a slight undisturbing noise, the gurgling of the central heater probably. He remembers how the anticipation of a drink, alone, seated in his favorite armchair had almost made him shiver. He remembers how, an instant, he felt better than ever. He also remembers how it disappeared. Instantaneously. From the living room, he heard the voice of Margot, his wife—shit, she is there, why she is not ... elsewhere— who was saying something that he had not understood.
    Dan patiently removed his shoes, and put them away in the closet, gone to the bathroom and looked at his face in the mirror and then started to cautiously wash his hands. Most of the time, he did not pay attention to what his wife said. Nothing premeditated, nothing against her, personally. He was only careful and conscientious about what he was doing. And that Saturday evening, focusing on the clear water rushing out of the faucet and the soap foam covering his hands, he also wondered why she was staying in the dark. Another of her whims.
    Not exactly. Margot had prepared a surprise for her husband and, knowing that he would not like it, she wanted him to discover it at the very last moment. She was shouting now, “I said, darling, do you listen, I told you that I did not expect him that early. Do you hear me? Did you win?”.
    “Yes, I won”, he cried back, decided not to hurry, “Easily, it was against ...” and stopped. The gurgling noise was more precise, clearer and it no longer seemed likely that it was the heater gurgling. But rather an É He ran to the living room. “What’s that? Did I hear a ... an animal?”, a flash of panic in his voice. He hated animals of all size, form, breed or species—actually, he hated the small ones and feared the bigger but did not admit it—and he could not imagine, not even a split second that there was one in his apartment.
    His wife laughed, “Yes, darling, absolutely, it’s a cat”.
    He turned the lights of the living room on and there they were. Dan remembers the shiver than run down his spine at this precise moment. She was seated in the armchair he had plan to seat, and this should have irritate him. Any other day, he would have asked a litany of questions—why has it to happen this way? Is there a sort of necessity for you to behave like that? Are you malicious? Stupid? Both? Why do you always make the wrong decisions, and choose what I dislike the most and hurts me. Like being seated in my armchair. But his eyes were attracted by the strange animal she was holding in her arms. Is it a cat? The normal shape of a cat, yes, but with leopard-like dots, a big round head and sharp teeth and piercing green eyes. A cat? A louder than usual growl. A cat? Dan looked at it without comprehension, then back at her and down at the animal again. A cat?
    “Wow, it’s a panther or a lynx or something like that”.
    “No, darling, more a leopard than anything else, actually but it’s an Ashera, if you must know. It looks like a leopard, maybe but it’s much, much smaller. Same size as a house cat. It’s just an expansive house cat but a house cat all the same”.
    “And what does this thing do in my apartment?”, a flash, as the words came out of his mouth, a sequence of images and sounds that came from his brain, throughout his tensed nerves to his mind and consciousness, the doorbell was ringing and he opened the door and there was, benevolently smiling, a neighbor, thank you for having taken care of the cat, it was very kind and everything was be over and he was going to have a drink and seat in his armchair. But nothing had materialized and his wife said, “Darling, this is our cat” and then to the ... cat, “Say hello to your new daddy”. Am I hearing that? Daddy? My God, what is it? “Say hello to our cat, darling”. And then she was speaking to the cat again, “Say hello, Freddy”.
    “Freddy?” Dan almost felt sorry for the poor animal, What a ridiculous name?, “Our Cat?”, he asked looking at her like she was crazy. “Don’t tell me you bought a cat, please, no, ...”, he hesitated, my God, please, tell me it’s not happening.
    “Funny reaction, darling. Money, money, money, is it what you can think only to?” and, after a long pause, looking at him accusingly, “you do not buy a cat, darling. This is a living being”. And then, smiling again, radiant and purring as the É cat, she was a human being mimicking an animal, she turn back, patted its head, “My little baby, baby, baby, baby”.
    “Are you insane?”, Dan had shouted, “Are-you-insane? Yes, you are insane. This is not a baby. This is not a human being. You and I already have two children. Are they not sufficient?” You have a husband too, had he planned to add but carefully avoided any mention to their marriage.
    “We do have children. Two, yes. I am perfectly aware of that”, her voice was calm, indifferent and she had not mentioned him neither, “How would I forget our children? I love them and I sacrificed everything I had to to raise them. You remember, I quit my job because you told me that I would need time and you were right. You were not much helpful ... and ... and ... don’t you understand that I need someone to spend time with, someone who is not complicated, who does what I want, who ... No, you do not understand”.
    A kid, a grown up kid with a plastic doll and she believes this is a human being.
    “Oh, yes I perfectly understand. Look at it, this is not a house cat, this is a leopard, a fucking beast, a savage creature and I can’t believe you did that to me”. His voice had rise to a ridiculous piercing falsetto, almost hysterical.
    “But this is a cat, darling and, yes, he is ours, I adopted him”. She was not lying. This is how the guys at the local animal shelter officially call the procedure. Adoption or not, living being or not, leopard or not, the price to pay had been substantial. A 5-digit figure shocking to any average man or woman, those who do not care what an Ashera is or wether they exist or not. And know of normal ways of spending their husband’s money. My God.
    III.
    Moments later, in the middle of the night—another precise memory, 3.17 said the green light of the alarm clock – and, fists and teeth clenched in fear, he would not have been ashamed to admit, Dan was trying to fight sleep away. He knew the danger to have a so-called cat in his home from when he was a kid. He easily imagined the animal jump on the bed in a freakish fit and gouge his eyes away with its sword-like paws and then eat them ignoring his terrible cries of pain. Impossible, keep calm, it won’t happen. His wife had eventually accepted to chain it at the other end of the apartment. Thank God. But convincing her has not been easy. She has refused to lock it outside, where it belonged, “On the balcony?”, did she say, “Don’t even think of it”. He had insisted. Calmly and then, no longer able to control himself, he had threatened her and warned her that he would not hesitate to throw the animal throughout the window or drown it or burn it—he cautiously avoided to look at the cat while uttering his threats, of course, but felt his small and clear eyes set upon him and he did not like that, at all. And he did not like hearing this loud growling-purring noise either. Especially now, is it not louder? No, it’s closer. I am sure that it has freed itself from the leash. What is this happening? Why? Do I deserve that? And this is when he caught from the corner of the eye a dark shape against the false darkness of the urban night. Its eyes, small golden slits, set on him. He turned very slowly, cautiously his head. Oh my...
    For some reason, maybe to break the spell, Dan thought that he should say something. “What do you want?”, he asked in the direction of the animal, and added “Go away, I want to sleep”.
    “Hi man, nice to see you again”, replied the cat with a soft and gentle voice.
    Dan almost choked with fear. Is it talking? I must be dreaming, of course, I am dreaming, breathe, breathe, breathe..., but the cat was speaking, saying: “No, you’re not dreaming, it’s me, don’t you see it’s me”. Wow, what a dangerous game to play and you’d better not step in; it will drive you mad. The cat, again, “After all this time, quite normal if you do not recognize me”. And it chuckled, or it is what Dan heard, a cat chuckling. It was unbearable and Dan almost shouted when he said “I-do-not-know-you, got it, cats don’t talk so don’t bullshit me and go away”.
    “Oh, okay, I confess, it was not me, maybe a great-great-great uncle or a friend or even the friend of a friend, but I know them and this makes us buddies”. Dan was trying to get a grip again on the situation and he pretended it was not happening and it did not work. The cat was going on to make a point, as if it was here on purpose. “And it was a long time ago, I agree, and you were young, granted too, and who can blame a young guy for throwing animals from the third floor, for pushing fireworks in a poor youngling’s asshole and ... worse, did you do something worse? I can’t remember”.
    Yes, it was a long time ago and yes, he did make mistakes and no, he had not forgotten anything—like these acts contributed to develop a capacity to memorize more precisely more details than any normal man. But he was another man, he did not doubt about that. And he did not doubt either that no judgment could fall down on him in the middle of a night through a cat. The messenger of some god? Of the devil? It does not work like that.
    He hesitated. Should he wake up his wife? She would laugh at him and then would probably get angry at his stupidity. Without tuning his head, he whispered “Go away, leave me alone, Go away” but the cat was no longer there to listen to him and his wife was snoring besides him and everything was quietly normal again. Oh my ... Bloody tricky bastard, gone as swiftly and silently as it had arrived and capable of talking with that, no one would believe me. He would have to be cautious, now, on his guard and attentive like he was a stranger in his own apartment, among his family. It was not new. But on this very night, the feeling that their life had been calamitous since the first day after their marriage overcame him and was in his mind when he woke up and the green figures on the alarm clock by the bed indicated 9.58 am. To him, who had always got up around 5.00 am because he did not sleep well, this was just an additional disturbing sign. As were the loud music and the fragments of a conversation – the voice of his wife and the laughs of his children – coming from the kitchen. She was probably recounting their quarrel but he did not understand what she was saying. He felt lonely and depressed. The irritating growling had ceased but it did not soothe him, and he could not believe the cat had gone after their discussion and it has been just a bad dream. Indeed, the imaginary cat was there, lying, half-sleeping in the kitchen. He had seen it as soon as he had entered the room.
    V.
    For a few days—yes, Dan also remembers that— he decided that the cat was imaginary. There was no cat. The strategy failed. The quasi-continuous growls and purrs and the noise of the paws on the floor were impossible to ignore and continued to make Dan nervous. He was always looking around him to find out where the cat was, always listening to any noises in case it would be the cat. Starting for no reason. He was afraid to eat something in its presence, for he was certain that it would jump at him and hurt him. And he did not like that the cat sometimes slept on their bed or sat down in his favorite armchair.
    So, what next? Not so many alternatives were available. He told Margot and the children that they had to get rid of the animal. She replied with a warm laugh but the warmth was swept away by the inelegant bitterness of the tone with which she said “No way. I will keep it for me and for the kids and you’d better accept it”. It was the last sentences she exchanged with him. The children, God knows where they sleep, had disappeared after this last incident. And the cat ... each and every time their paths crossed, Dan tried to kick it but, most of the time, he missed it. Once he even had tried the worn-out belt that his father used to punish him and that left red painful marks on his legs and thighs and with which he had also punished his kids when they were young. After all, if it was good for me and them, why would it not be for an animal? He felt an extreme and insane joy and lowered his guard. It was just another mistake.
    There were other awful nights. He he lied down, fists and teeth clenched, afraid of both the cat and the darkness. The same fear that overwhelmed the kid he was, years ago, during those endless nights, when he was lying in the darkness of his child’s room and his parents refused to let a small lamp on in his room. It was like going to bed in the dark just for the sake of going to bed in the dark. He always got up very tired and very sad and unsure about what to do. Unsure about why all that was happening. And it was all happening again. Why? Is there a reason? One morning, he was exhausted when he got up. But he had made a decision. It was definitive: he had no other choice but cooling the cat. A first-class one-way ride to where it belongs.
    It took Dan a few days to sort out an effective solution. This was easy, after all it was just an animal and not a human being. The only way that had appeared possible was poisoning it, simple, neutral, as detached as possible. Then, a few more days to polish the plan, which poison to use, rat poison had seemed imperative, a form of irony that pleased him, where to buy it, a supermarket would do, and how to force the cat to eat it, not a problem, once in a while his wife left it at home and he would manage it quite easily.
    And that was it, ... bye-bye, Freddy... who died with evident pain. The silvery foam at the corners of the mouth, the painful stiffness of the limbs and the immense void in the eyes had struck him as pathetic but not particularly remarkable. He had done what he had to do, Dan had thought going to bed the night after he had killed the cat. He had slept like a 3-year old baby.
    VI.
    “Dan, are you with us? ” asks Barbara. They married two months ago after a long, interminable divorce procedure. “I’m coming”. His ex-wife did not bear very well the death of the leopard and the children had seemed affected, depressed too. “Just checking the meetings planned next week”. Wednesday, the seventh anniversary of the day he had poisoned the animal—not a human being, not even a house cat—and it’s written, in red ink, the only non-professional event mentioned among many business appointments in his leather-bound datebook. But no, he has not forgotten and does not need any help to remind him the incident.

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