THE CAT, THE RAT & THE BEETLE

by Scott B Robinson

I say this house is as dark as ignorance, though ignorance were as dark as hell…
– Twelfth Night

When I look in the mirror, I often do not recognize myself anymore. And while I believe it is perfectly natural for the onset of age to produce such periodic lapses of identity, it's something quite different that I'm beginning to sense, or rather fail to sense, in that strange face in the small glass above my bathroom sink. Something removed in those gloomy and vacant eyes. Cold, impenetrable. Maybe what I've always assumed my students whisper behind my back has actually become fact. Maybe I really am grown utterly indifferent…though I would've never entertained such an idea until recently. After all, one can hardly go through life believing its heaping of abuses had all been suffered unfeelingly. What type of monster would this create…? That could consciously endure such a crushing self-irony to the very end? And it is for this reason—to prove I am neither a monster nor mad, perhaps to make my final case that I retain a still trickling amount of those frail and intangible qualities which make us human—for this I now confess.

If I ever were in truth uncaring, then would I have taken in Boonnam…?

Boonnam was the tabby I‘d found digging in my garbage a couple weeks before events took a sudden turn. When she poked her head from out of the pail, licking her lip, I thought, ‘At least it's not a rat.' Then I gently lifted her diminutive, orange-speckled frame and carried her inside to wipe the grime from her coat with a moist hand towel, no complaint from her whatsoever. I made certain all the windows and doors were closed before I left to buy some extra fish. When I returned, she was asleep in my chair. The trash must've sufficed her appetite.

I turned off the lamp and went to bed without the desire to read that night, content in the dark to turn over possible names for my new little girl. (I guess I assumed she was female from the start.) I'm not sure if the resulting choice for a nickname came as I was nodding off, or if it came to me in a dream…

Next morning, as was my habit, I sipped tea outside in the small garden I'd cultivated between the surrounding city walls, sitting on a rickety wooden chair. It and I, along with its companion rickety table, were positioned beneath a large mango tree so that in that ephemeral hour when the first light glowed in the east and everything was, if the city ever is, quiet for but an instant, I could lose sight of the buildings behind the foliage and forget the world was even there. And it was during that daybreak's tranquil yet elusive meditation when my little friend decided to rouse and join me. I called her by name and she came promptly to my fingertips. I raised her to my lap and she helped finish my rice. The subsequent caressing of her grain-softened tongue on the back of my hand felt milky warm and tender. And thus in a flash was my usual withdrawal into dawn supplanted by this unforeseen love of a cat. And ever since, come morning we would meet in the garden, like some old married couple, and I would find it difficult to pry myself from the perfect moment in order to catch the bus to the university.

On the way home one afternoon I dallied between transfers in order to purchase a gift for Boonnam. She was visibly irritated at my late arrival. But once she'd finished her share of the evening's meal, all was forgiven and she brushed her whiskered cheek along my thigh as I carefully fitted the black collar with its small shiny silver bell around her neck. The jingling didn't seem to bother much. I think the collar suited her rather well.

It was a delight to now know whether she was lying idle or scampering around, to be able to tell which part of the house she was exploring as I sat or moved about. The frequent tinkling became an extension of her personality and a soothing reminder it was no longer simply my own needs I had to look after. The repetitive tasks of caring for Boonnam acquired an air of ceremony, instilling my days with routine, with a purpose beyond the solitude I'd otherwise come to forget. And as we sat there silently in my armchair one night, me reading my Leibnitz, and Boonnam at last asleep, I knew the bell moreover meant I would never lose her. Or so this was how I conceived it then.

I suppose it is during these extended periods of joy when we fall easiest prey to misfortune. I forget who wrote: We are never as happy as we think . But now that you can envision the modest state of bliss my life had attained, perhaps you can understand how I had been inviting woe into my home this whole time. Of course it is possible to realize these things looking back. Like the denouement of a fairytale ingrained from childhood, I can see each and every step that led to the crucial scene. And as I sit here before you recounting the events, I remember quite clearly how it was that my downfall began with a scent.

It was a most terrible stench that cut short our breakfast that fateful morning, unlike any Bangkok routinely produces. So attuned is man's nose to the reek of death, when the putrid smell of rotting flesh creeps into our nostrils on its heavy, musty air, all we know is to run without asking from where or from what. I dashed my cup and the cat to the ground as I sprung from the chair and scurried inside, trying to wrench back a bitter gag. When I raised my head from the sink, I scanned out the window for Boonnam but didn't see her—just the tipped chair, ceramic shards and the tea stain scattered along the cement. I listened for the bell, then called and called her name, but nothing. Still I couldn't bring myself to go back out and search for her, not while that sour stink was so ripe in my gut. I sat for some while there in the kitchen, my chin tucked unto my folded arms, simply staring out the back door. The hour was getting on. I at last resigned myself to leave to work.

Worry prolonged the day. Each time another student asked some inane question, all I could think was, ‘Are you doing this to torment me? Do you realize how every one of your words is a drop of blood sucked from my heart?'

The ride home was equally awful. All attempts to imagine Boonnam waiting asleep in the chair were so spectrally thin, finally returning and finding the worn green cushion empty was no less than I had ever been able to envision it. What could be done? Nothing terrified me more than the thought of poking around in the dark out back, all along enduring that revolting stink. Or worse, quite possibly stumbling upon its unthinkable source. I had to escape the stench, which was beginning to invade the kitchen, and retreated to my room. Perhaps the cat would come to my bed in the middle of the night.

…Though I wept as I lay under my sheet, it was a relief, and sleep came on steadily. Really I was done fretting and had decided to forget about Boonnam all together. Something else, some other emotion had been secretly creeping over the sadness, and I found myself more prepared for loneliness's return than I maybe care to admit.

I was woken by the sound of scratching. Groggy, I at first wondered if it was a branch blowing as I peered out the palely moonlit window. But the broad silhouetted leaves of the mango hung motionless. No, the steady resonating was not that from glass, but rather deeper and hollow, as from something wooden. And it was without question emanating from within the four walls of my room, faintly yet methodically. From within my closet.

As I crawled from bed and inched to the narrow opening, the noise louder with each step, I was certain I would discover Boonnam's soft ears when I crouched to reach inside. What could my little sweetheart be doing in there? But instead my knuckles rapped against something hard, unrecognizable…unexpectedly inanimate. It was rectangular and solid and heavy, like a chest. My mind was completely bewildered by its existence. Did I own such a thing? As I hurriedly felt around its surfaces, the scratching persisted, as if from right beneath my touch. There was something prickly…countless small points arranged along the object's top. And when my hand settled into a bare section, in unison with the noise I felt a sharp scrape, like that of a needle along my palm. A cold shiver ran through my arm and I leapt back with a start. The scratching had stopped.

I quickly flicked the switch. Brought to sudden light, my room appeared bizarrely ominous in its familiarity. I looked down at my palm, still twinging, but found no wound. My legs trembled as I clung to the bedstead with my good hand for support. The whole room seemed to throb along with the pain lingering up and down my right arm.

Just like one struck nearly by lightening, in whom an echo rings long after the thunder's gone—the dire question pulsed through my head: what had made the noise? I stood paralyzed, too afraid to uncover the sinister thing that still lay unseen in the closet's shadow. My throat clinched, my heart pounded ceaselessly. For it knew that something inside, something alive in that mysterious box could sense and was feeding upon my mounting terror. The floor felt like it was tilting toward the closet, an oppressive gravity pulling me and the entire room inward. My fingertips dug into the wood and I looked away and up to the window, instinctively, desperate for some distracting thought…

There…there was the moon outside…the full moon, awash in the windowpane's reflection of my room. That small, veiled, frozen circle became a point of focus for me, an ungraspable talisman that perhaps promised this experience would truly pass, without harm, beneath its vigilant eye. The moon continued its destined course behind the slowly coloring leaves. What seemed like a moment frozen was pierced through by one indomitable fear—what if the scratching should resume? I thought I would die if I had to hear it another time. If only this perfect silence would endure, time might once again take hold and draw this torture to an end. And slowly my own reflected image faded behind the scene kindling outside; the lamp's fixing glare at last dimmed into the first suffusing rays of light; the black pocket of my closet was no longer sharp and pure; the tingling in my hand had ceased. Somehow I had made it through this most horrible of nights. And the diminutive courage of one who survives finally took seed in my heart…

So starkly differently do we behold the world in the full of day, so unthreatened and in our element, the previous night's dreams would seem embarrassing to us if we were still children. But I'm too old for embarrassment. So what am I to do with nightmares when they are through?

I hardly remember the mundanity of removing the black box from my closet and carrying it to the kitchen table for inspection. It was smaller than I'd imagined (possibly big enough to stick your head into) and made of some sort of dense, black lacquered wood. It was more tall than wide, crouching on four fat and crude legs. On its dusty lid I saw the small jet stones I'd felt the night before, dull and unevenly encrusted. While the box's lid was thick, its tiny tarnished lock looked incapable of keeping it shut. Really the whole thing was so generally antiquated and tacky, like something your grandmother might bequeath, the mystery of its sudden appearance was frankly overweighed by its relatively benign gaudiness. There was nothing to prevent me from trying to open it…and with the lightest of touches, the lock sprung open.

It took me a few moments to understand what strange shape I saw motionless inside that recess which had tasted no light in god knows how long. At first I thought it must be a pile of dried sticks, or perhaps some primitive statuette. But then one of its extremities began to move…and then another…mechanically, like the inner workings of a clock tapped into motion. The shadowy clump dragged itself upward, slowly. A thin barbed claw reached over the box's lip and three menacing spikes emerged into view, followed by the prehistorically helmeted head of a tremendous beetle. The monstrous form, as large as one's hand, filled most its outlet. I stepped back as I watched it pull its smooth, dark brown mass over the ledge and smack onto the tabletop with a dull clack . The giant was not phased. Its triple horns advanced and I withdrew another half-step.

The insect thankfully halted at the table's edge, its antennae unfurling from a clump of orangish hairs under the head and furtively tapping about. Beneath the deep rim of its belligerent crown, you could see the two huge lifeless eyes that seemed to stare at nothing. Did they sense me? How long had this fascinating creature slumbered within the box? How on earth could it have survived…?

And it was then the insect resumed its crawl, counterclockwise, around the table's rim, as if it had reached a decision about the best direction, deliberate and plodding, its antennae navigating about like blind men's canes. The beetle disappeared behind the box.

I'll admit I was afraid when it came round and completed the last of a full rotation, as if it were returning for the one thing it found worthy of attack. But the flashing horns and dead eyes passed me by for another circuit.

Then again.

Then again.

I cannot say how long I stood there watching this repeating cycle. Eventually I pulled a chair under me so I could observe more closely to its level. And each subsequent time it disappeared behind the box, I grew more and more anxious for its return to sight. The thing was amazing. Except for the small yet precipitous curve it followed tirelessly, it seemed utterly oblivious to everything around it. Its path was insanely hopeless, yet it moved as though it knew nothing of it, feared nothing. As if it could clutch the very globe inside the lethal space between its one lower and two upper horns. I thought to myself, ‘It really is the absolute master of this tiny realm. What is it trying to achieve with this dire circumference…? What hex is it attempting to cast?' And I began to imagine that perhaps instead it saw all, that those impenetrable eyes would engulf the entire cosmos if they only wanted. Maybe, just as for the solipsist, what it did not gaze upon didn't even exist. And it was with these sort of meditations that the forgotten hours of the day dissolved away while the creature's lengthening shadow shifted back and forth across the table, like a mad shuttle through an invisible weave, like a swart comet witnessed from irrationally far outside its orbit. My vision solidified. My mind began to penetrate into the crevices of that gloriously perfect shell, as though to glimpse beneath the robes of Phra Phrom himself. Becoming the creature—empty and pure. The insect's mesmerizing silhouette faded into the blackness overtaking the room; its ominous pigment oozed into every corner, out into the world and across the entire city. I could no longer see. I did not notice that it was actually spiraling inward, ever so incrementally with each revolution. And when I at last broke the spell and mustered the sense to turn on the light, its unbreachable armor flashed in my eyes more brilliantly then ever before.

When did the thing suddenly stop before me, so much nearer to the box now than to me? Yet in truth I knew it would stop just then, that it had completed its trek. And I suddenly realized—this was a beetle. It could probably fly. Now was my only chance. I had to snatch the box from the table before the insect was able to withdraw back inside forever…

Without another thought I lunged and arched my reach over the beast, but it spun on its legs like a spring. Its battle-ready carapace instantaneously flared at me in defiance as two grotesque bat-like wings shot out like an infernal gown. It was too late—my weight was in freefall and I was already right upon the demon. A deafening thrum exploded in my face and eclipsed my vision as I flinched and crashed blindly onto the table, knocking shut the lid of the box. I heard a distinct click beneath the low, resonating, satanic chant of the beetle's wings as it thundered past my ear, out the kitchen window and into the bottomless night. I believe it was then that I fell unconscious…

…If only this were the worst of my tale. If it were to miraculously end here, I suppose I would be counted among the fortunate. But the final plunge of the knife came when I was brought to by a soft familiar noise that tore my very heart. It was Boonnam's bell, alive, but muffled inside the dense walls of the box. It jingled again and I struggled desperately to reopen the lid, but the lock held implacably fast. I rushed to and rifled the kitchen drawers for a screwdriver. My love's bell rang again, then a fourth, each time more weakly, from deeper inside the box. Racked by terror and sleeplessness, I pried and pried with all my dwindling strength until I could no more deny the bell sounded only when I myself disturbed the cruel, unyielding prison. I dropped the screwdriver to the floor and sighed. And recognized the horrible container for what it is…

* * *

I eventually discovered the source of the stench that had overtaken my house, the scent I'd forgotten during the short interval the black fiend reigned over my mind: it was a tiny rat that lay dead in the garden behind the trunk of the mango. There was not enough left of it for one to pity. Boonnam must have scratched its face off.