Will, стр. 9
I knock on the bedroom door. She’s finally let our cat out of the room and now the creature refuses to budge. I push her out of the way and, holding a plate of toast on which I have painstakingly spread duck rillettes, address the closed door. ‘Come on, you have to eat something.’ The sobbing stops for a moment.
She says, ‘Leave me alone. You have no heart, never have.’ She sounds like someone has forced a wad of fabric into her mouth.
I demand she open the door.
No answer.
‘It can’t go on like this.’
No answer. I hear her sucking in breath for a new round of tears. The cat yowls around my feet, then hooks her claws into my trousers, already angling for the delicatessen on the plate. The all-too-seldom-celebrated poet and once-capable cop just stands there.
‘I’ve got toast with duck rillettes. From the butcher’s on Carnot Straat.’
‘Give it to that filthy cat!’ she shrieks. I clench my fist.
‘I will do if you don’t open this door!’ No answer.
A marriage, dear boy, is an exercise in humiliation till death do us part. What people call ‘living together’ is a many-headed monster. If I strung those moments together, it would look like a cannibal’s trophy. The Hindus understand that too. You should look up their depictions of the goddess Kali some time. She pokes out her red tongue and her blue neck is hung with hollow-eyed skulls that represent the humiliating moments both husband and wife know are best kept private. The only thing that keeps people going is the thought that this union has an unmistakeable purpose: everyone thinks you are part of it. I secretly hated your great-grandmother with a passion, but now I miss her like a typical loner whose life has crumbled away.
‘Here, kitty,’ I say. ‘Mother’s not hungry.’
The cat’s going berserk. She yowls as if she’s going to drop a litter any moment and follows me into the kitchen. Oh, by the way, are you a cat lover? If so, it might be better to skip the next bit. I scrape the meat off the toast and dump it on her saucer. She eats it with relish. I ask if it’s tasty. With a sigh, I plonk myself down. The supermarket vouchers my wife has clipped out of the newspaper are on the table. Ammonia: two for the price of one. Spare ribs on special. Free suntan lotion with the purchase of a deckchair. The washing-up on the worktop is from the day before yesterday. Unheard of. A smell of burnt bacon in the kitchen we haven’t renovated since the sixties, despite your grandfather’s complaints. ‘This is so out of date… How can Mum get anything done in here?’ Nothing doing, money’s money and what works works. The cat has hardly finished her saucer full of the most succulent meat you can buy before she’s started begging and butting my leg again. More, more, more. It’s never enough. Don’t, she’s had enough. And yes, she’s sinking her claws into my trousers again. Meow, meow. Then suddenly she’s sitting on her arse and scratching furiously under her chin. They’re back again: fleas. I reach for my ankle where a stubborn fleabite kept me awake just last week. My wife has resumed her blubbering. Soon she’ll have cried her throat raw. I close the door. The cat won’t stop scratching. I take a bucket out from under the sink and fill it with tepid water. I take an unopened jar of full-cream yogurt and slop two big spoonfuls into a small bowl. ‘Here,’ I say, ‘you bloody fleabag.’
The cat can’t believe her luck and throws herself on the yogurt. The bucket is full. I push the spout out of the way, open the bottom drawer of the cupboard where I keep the gardening tools and pull out my gloves. They’ve hardly been used. Gardening is not for me and since the time she put her back out, it hasn’t appealed to your great-grandmother either. Did you ever meet her? No, you can’t have. Anyway, I pull on the gloves and bend over the cat, who doesn’t look up, of course, lapping and slurping as she is. If she could scratch herself while scoffing food, she would. Gripped by the scruff of the neck, she’s scarcely able to move. She growls, claws the air, then suddenly stiffens with her pupils wide. In a single movement I’ve plunged her deep into the bucket of lukewarm water. She thrashes like mad. Both hands push her deeper. The water goes in all directions. I press her down against the bottom as best I can and wait. Air bubbles rise and burst. I feel my old strength, no longer garnished with rage perhaps, but still. And then it’s like the cat swells up. Immediately afterwards she shoots up out of the water like a rocket, hissing and spluttering like crazy. All my squeezing in vain. Sopping wet, hair on end, she hurls herself against the closed kitchen door like a thing possessed, letting out a growl that no longer sounds like a cat’s. Thump! And again. And bang! Once more. I stare at my wet work gloves.
I hear her calling from the bedroom, ‘What is all that?’
Not a sign of sobbing in her voice. My hand on the doorknob. The cat takes a swipe at my ankle, her claw going through my sock. I make a failed attempt to boot her through the room, then finally open the door. The cat shoots under a wardrobe in the hall, still growling and spitting. An avenging demon has been born. ‘Proud of ourselves, are we?’ I hear her meowing