The Black Cat, by Gino
Severini (1910–1911)
Published in 1845
FOR the most wild, yet most homely narrative which I am
about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to
expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad
am I not – and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I
would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world,
plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In
their consequences, these events have terrified – have tortured – have
destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have
presented little but Horror – to many they will seem less terrible than
baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my
phantasm to the common-place – some intellect more calm, more logical, and far
less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail
with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and
effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity
of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me
the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged
by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time,
and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of
character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my
principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a
faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the
nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something
in the unselfish and self-sacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to
the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship
and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a
disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic
pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We
had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal,
entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his
intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with
superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which
regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious
upon this point – and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than
that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto – this was the cat's name – was my favorite pet and
playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house.
It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through
the streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this manner, for several years,
during which my general temperament and character – through the instrumentality
of the Fiend Intemperance – had (I blush to confess it) experienced a radical
alteration for the worse. I grew, day by day, more moody, more irritable, more
regardless of the feelings of others. I suffered myself to use intemperate
language to my wife. At length, I even offered her personal violence. My pets,
of course, were made to feel the change in my disposition. I not only
neglected, but ill-used them. For Pluto, however, I still retained sufficient
regard to restrain me from maltreating him, as I made no scruple of maltreating
the rabbits, the monkey, or even the dog, when by accident, or through
affection, they came in my way. But my disease grew upon me – for what disease
is like Alcohol! – and at length even Pluto, who was now becoming old, and
consequently somewhat peevish – even Pluto began to experience the effects of
my ill temper.
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of
my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him;
when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand
with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no
longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and
a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fiber of my
frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a pen-knife, opened it, grasped the poor
beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I
blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity.
When reason returned with the morning – when I had slept
off the fumes of the night's debauch – I experienced a sentiment half of
horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was,
at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I
again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.
In the meantime the cat slowly recovered. The socket of
the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer
appeared to suffer any pain. He went about the house as usual, but, as might be
expected, fled in extreme terror at my approach. I had so much of my old heart
left, as to be at first grieved by this evident dislike on the part of a
creature which had once so loved me. But this feeling soon gave place to
irritation. And then came, as if to my final and irrevocable overthrow, the
spirit of PERVERSENESS. Of this spirit philosophy takes no account. Yet I am
not more sure that my soul lives, than I am that perverseness is one of the
primitive impulses of the human heart – one of the indivisible primary
faculties, or sentiments, which give direction to the character of Man. Who has
not, a hundred times, found himself committing a vile or a silly action, for no
other reason than because he knows he should not? Have we not a
perpetual inclination, in the teeth of our best judgment, to violate that which
is Law, merely because we understand it to be such? This spirit of
perverseness, I say, came to my final overthrow. It was this unfathomable
longing of the soul to vex itself – to offer violence to its own nature – to do
wrong for the wrong's sake only – that urged me to continue and finally to
consummate the injury I had inflicted upon the unoffending brute. One morning,
in cool blood, I slipped a noose about its neck and hung it to the limb of a
tree; – hung it with the tears streaming from my eyes, and with the bitterest
remorse at my heart; – hung it because I knew that it had loved me, and
because I felt it had given me no reason of offence; – hung it because I
knew that in so doing I was committing a sin – a deadly sin that would so
jeopardize my immortal soul as to place it – if such a thing were possible –
even beyond the reach of the infinite mercy of the Most Merciful and Most
Terrible God.
On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was
done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were
in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my
wife, a servant, and myself, made our escape from the conflagration. The
destruction was complete. My entire worldly wealth was swallowed up, and I
resigned myself thenceforward to despair.
I am above the weakness of seeking to establish a
sequence of cause and effect, between the disaster and the atrocity. But I am
detailing a chain of facts – and wish not to leave even a possible link
imperfect. On the day succeeding the fire, I visited the ruins. The walls, with
one exception, had fallen in. This exception was found in a compartment wall,
not very thick, which stood about the middle of the house, and against which
had rested the head of my bed. The plastering had here, in great measure,
resisted the action of the fire – a fact which I attributed to its having been
recently spread. About this wall a dense crowd were collected, and many persons
seemed to be examining a particular portion of it with very minute and eager
attention. The words "strange!" "singular!" and other
similar expressions, excited my curiosity. I approached and saw, as if graven
in bas relief upon the white surface, the figure of a gigantic cat.
The impression was given with an accuracy truly marvelous. There was a rope
about the animal's neck.
When I first beheld this apparition – for I could
scarcely regard it as less – my wonder and my terror were extreme. But at
length reflection came to my aid. The cat, I remembered, had been hung in a
garden adjacent to the house. Upon the alarm of fire, this garden had been
immediately filled by the crowd – by some one of whom the animal must have been
cut from the tree and thrown, through an open window, into my chamber. This had
probably been done with the view of arousing me from sleep. The falling of
other walls had compressed the victim of my cruelty into the substance of the
freshly-spread plaster; the lime of which, with the flames, and the ammonia
from the carcass, had then accomplished the portraiture as I saw it.
Although I thus readily accounted to my reason, if not
altogether to my conscience, for the startling fact just detailed, it did not
the less fail to make a deep impression upon my fancy. For months I could not
rid myself of the phantasm of the cat; and, during this period, there came back
into my spirit a half-sentiment that seemed, but was not, remorse. I went so
far as to regret the loss of the animal, and to look about me, among the vile
haunts which I now habitually frequented, for another pet of the same species,
and of somewhat similar appearance, with which to supply its place.
One night as I sat, half stupefied, in a den of more than
infamy, my attention was suddenly drawn to some black object, reposing upon the
head of one of the immense hogsheads of Gin, or of Rum, which constituted the
chief furniture of the apartment. I had been looking steadily at the top of
this hogshead for some minutes, and what now caused me surprise was the fact
that I had not sooner perceived the object thereupon. I approached it, and
touched it with my hand. It was a black cat – a very large one – fully as large
as Pluto, and closely resembling him in every respect but one. Pluto had not a
white hair upon any portion of his body; but this cat had a large, although
indefinite splotch of white, covering nearly the whole region of the breast.
Upon my touching him, he immediately arose, purred
loudly, rubbed against my hand, and appeared delighted with my notice. This, then,
was the very creature of which I was in search. I at once offered to purchase
it of the landlord; but this person made no claim to it – knew nothing of it –
had never seen it before.
I continued my caresses, and, when I prepared to go home,
the animal evinced a disposition to accompany me. I permitted it to do so;
occasionally stooping and patting it as I proceeded. When it reached the house
it domesticated itself at once, and became immediately a great favorite with my
wife.
For my own part, I soon found a dislike to it arising
within me. This was just the reverse of what I had anticipated; but – I know
not how or why it was – its evident fondness for myself rather disgusted and
annoyed. By slow degrees, these feelings of disgust and annoyance rose into the
bitterness of hatred. I avoided the creature; a certain sense of shame, and the
remembrance of my former deed of cruelty, preventing me from physically abusing
it. I did not, for some weeks, strike, or otherwise violently ill use it; but
gradually – very gradually – I came to look upon it with unutterable loathing,
and to flee silently from its odious presence, as from the breath of a
pestilence.
What added, no doubt, to my hatred of the beast, was the
discovery, on the morning after I brought it home, that, like Pluto, it also
had been deprived of one of its eyes. This circumstance, however, only endeared
it to my wife, who, as I have already said, possessed, in a high degree, that
humanity of feeling which had once been my distinguishing trait, and the source
of many of my simplest and purest pleasures.
With my aversion to this cat, however, its partiality for
myself seemed to increase. It followed my footsteps with a pertinacity which it
would be difficult to make the reader comprehend. Whenever I sat, it would
crouch beneath my chair, or spring upon my knees, covering me with its
loathsome caresses. If I arose to walk it would get between my feet and thus
nearly throw me down, or, fastening its long and sharp claws in my dress,
clamber, in this manner, to my breast. At such times, although I longed to
destroy it with a blow, I was yet withheld from so doing, partly by a memory of
my former crime, but chiefly – let me confess it at once – by absolute dread
of the beast.
This dread was not exactly a dread of physical evil – and
yet I should be at a loss how otherwise to define it. I am almost ashamed to
own – yes, even in this felon's cell, I am almost ashamed to own – that the
terror and horror with which the animal inspired me, had been heightened by one
of the merest chimeras it would be possible to conceive. My wife had called my
attention, more than once, to the character of the mark of white hair, of which
I have spoken, and which constituted the sole visible difference between the
strange beast and the one I had destroyed. The reader will remember that this
mark, although large, had been originally very indefinite; but, by slow degrees
– degrees nearly imperceptible, and which for a long time my Reason struggled
to reject as fanciful – it had, at length, assumed a rigorous distinctness of
outline. It was now the representation of an object that I shudder to name –
and for this, above all, I loathed, and dreaded, and would have rid myself of
the monster had I dared – it was now, I say, the image of a hideous – of a
ghastly thing – of the GALLOWS! – oh, mournful and terrible engine of Horror
and of Crime – of Agony and of Death!
And now was I indeed wretched beyond the wretchedness of
mere Humanity. And a brute beast – whose fellow I had contemptuously
destroyed – a brute beast to work out for me – for me a man, fashioned
in the image of the High God – so much of insufferable woe! Alas! Neither by
day nor by night knew I the blessing of Rest any more! During the former the
creature left me no moment alone; and, in the latter, I started, hourly, from
dreams of unutterable fear, to find the hot breath of the thing upon my face,
and its vast weight – an incarnate Night-Mare that I had no power to shake off
– incumbent eternally upon my heart!
Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the
feeble remnant of the good within me succumbed. Evil thoughts became my sole
intimates – the darkest and most evil of thoughts. The moodiness of my usual
temper increased to hatred of all things and of all mankind; while, from the
sudden, frequent, and ungovernable outbursts of a fury to which I now blindly
abandoned myself, my uncomplaining wife, alas, was the most usual and the most
patient of sufferers.
One day she accompanied me, upon some household errand,
into the cellar of the old building which our poverty compelled us to inhabit.
The cat followed me down the steep stairs, and, nearly throwing me headlong,
exasperated me to madness. Uplifting an axe, and forgetting, in my wrath, the
childish dread which had hitherto stayed my hand, I aimed a blow at the animal
which, of course, would have proved instantly fatal had it descended as I
wished. But this blow was arrested by the hand of my wife. Goaded, by the
interference, into a rage more than demoniacal, I withdrew my arm from her
grasp and buried the axe in her brain. She fell dead upon the spot, without a
groan.
This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith,
and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I
could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk
of being observed by the neighbors. Many projects entered my mind. At one
period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying
them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the
cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard – about
packing it in a box, as if merchandize, with the usual arrangements, and so
getting a porter to take it from the house. Finally I hit upon what I
considered a far better expedient than either of these. I determined to wall it
up in the cellar – as the monks of the middle ages are recorded to have walled
up their victims.
For a purpose such as this the cellar was well adapted.
Its walls were loosely constructed, and had lately been plastered throughout
with a rough plaster, which the dampness of the atmosphere had prevented from
hardening. Moreover, in one of the walls was a projection, caused by a false
chimney, or fireplace, that had been filled up, and made to resemble the rest
of the cellar. I made no doubt that I could readily displace the bricks at this
point, insert the corpse, and wall the whole up as before, so that no eye could
detect anything suspicious.
And in this calculation I was not deceived. By means of a
crow-bar I easily dislodged the bricks, and, having carefully deposited the
body against the inner wall, I propped it in that position, while, with little
trouble, I re-laid the whole structure as it originally stood. Having procured
mortar, sand, and hair, with every possible precaution, I prepared a plaster
which could not be distinguished from the old, and with this I very carefully
went over the new brick-work. When I had finished, I felt satisfied that all
was right. The wall did not present the slightest appearance of having been
disturbed. The rubbish on the floor was picked up with the minutest care. I
looked around triumphantly, and said to myself – "Here at least, then, my
labor has not been in vain."
My next step was to look for the beast which had been the
cause of so much wretchedness; for I had, at length, firmly resolved to put it
to death. Had I been able to meet with it, at the moment, there could have been
no doubt of its fate; but it appeared that the crafty animal had been alarmed
at the violence of my previous anger, and forbore to present itself in my
present mood. It is impossible to describe, or to imagine, the deep, the
blissful sense of relief which the absence of the detested creature occasioned
in my bosom. It did not make its appearance during the night – and thus for one
night at least, since its introduction into the house, I soundly and tranquilly
slept; aye, slept even with the burden of murder upon my soul!
The second and the third day passed, and still my
tormentor came not. Once again I breathed as a freeman. The monster, in terror,
had fled the premises forever! I should behold it no more! My happiness was
supreme! The guilt of my dark deed disturbed me but little. Some few inquiries had
been made, but these had been readily answered. Even a search had been
instituted – but of course nothing was to be discovered. I looked upon my
future felicity as secured.
Upon the fourth day of the assassination, a party of the
police came, very unexpectedly, into the house, and proceeded again to make
rigorous investigation of the premises. Secure, however, in the inscrutability
of my place of concealment, I felt no embarrassment whatever. The officers bade
me accompany them in their search. They left no nook or corner unexplored. At
length, for the third or fourth time, they descended into the cellar. I
quivered not in a muscle. My heart beat calmly as that of one who slumbers in
innocence. I walked the cellar from end to end. I folded my arms upon my bosom,
and roamed easily to and fro. The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared
to depart. The glee at my heart was too strong to be restrained. I burned to
say if but one word, by way of triumph, and to render doubly sure their
assurance of my guiltlessness.
"Gentlemen," I said at last, as the party
ascended the steps, "I delight to have allayed your suspicions. I wish you
all health, and a little more courtesy. By the bye, gentlemen, this – this is a
very well-constructed house." (In the rabid desire to say something
easily, I scarcely knew what I uttered at all.) – "I may say an excellently
well-constructed house. These walls – are you going, gentlemen? – these walls
are solidly put together;" and here, through the mere frenzy of bravado, I
rapped heavily, with a cane which I held in my hand, upon that very portion of
the brick-work behind which stood the corpse of the wife of my bosom.
But may God shield and deliver me from the fangs of the
Arch-Fiend! No sooner had the reverberation of my blows sunk into silence, than
I was answered by a voice from within the tomb! – by a cry, at first muffled
and broken, like the sobbing of a child, and then quickly swelling into one
long, loud, and continuous scream, utterly anomalous and inhuman – a howl – a
wailing shriek, half of horror and half of triumph, such as might have arisen
only out of hell, conjointly from the throats of the dammed in their agony and
of the demons that exult in the damnation.
Of my own thoughts it is folly to speak. Swooning, I
staggered to the opposite wall. For one instant the party upon the stairs
remained motionless, through extremity of terror and of awe. In the next, a
dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse, already
greatly decayed and clotted with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the
spectators. Upon its head, with red extended mouth and solitary eye of fire,
sat the hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder, and whose
informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up
within the tomb!
In memory of Edgar Allan Poe.
January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849.
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