But Only Thee and Me
Cont’d from Part I:
And she, that deep wise cat, laughed again at me and said: But no, there is no third one in your rooms, for the cat in the mirror is in too far and too deep to ever come out again, she doesn’t know the glass like I do, and I am not your Theo, and will never change places again, for I like it much better out here where it is warm.
Part II
Gentlemen, I am sorry, I looked out a new book for Dora and it took some searching, but I couldn’t just continue on as though nothing had changed; write it in the same book might as well be to call her by the same name. I must hide it in a different place, too, under the couch cushions I think.
Oh, it isn’t any good to write that here, I ought to have written it in the first book, by the time you read this you will know already where you found it. This will cause some distress to your file management systems and I am sorry, I am sorry, I am wretched, I am sorry. Fidelity to order is the treasure last held, first betrayed. Can you be faithful to a thing before you betray it once and know its value? No! No. That is easy virtue and I do not respect it.
I called her Dora as she were the other half of Theo, but that was to please her and lull her. Why I should have wished to please her—why I let her have a part-share in a name I had bestowed fully on another, that was mine to give or withhold—these questions prickle me and I do not like to hear them, please you will put them away.
To exorcise her up into the aether or down to Hell would not bring Theo back, which was my primary concern in the beginning, however it may have gotten cloudy in the later. She was an opportunist and a thief, and she frightened me, my Floradora, my intruder, but she was no devil; she was—she was the other.
I was telling you this before: that I recognized it at once, I had nothing to do with a Theo possessed; Theo possessed would be my Theo still, and this was not she.
There is something I don’t want to tell you
I skip around so, you will think my mind disordered but I don’t want to put things in order, that’s all
[Transcriber’s note: There is to be expected a certain natural derangement of the senses in a Client after several years of retaining our Services.]
Look here I of course OF COURSE I asked her.
That was the first thing I did was I asked her.
I asked her, the creature, the beast, I looked her in her dark topaz eyes and I said How do I get Theo back? It was the first thing I said when I had taken hold of myself, and I had hold of her by the foot still, I had conceded nothing. I was in the ascendancy, you see; this was my Home and the Homeowner has always got the advantage.
I asked it to her as one might speak who is dead or made of wood, because I thought I knew the answer I would get; or the type of answer, and I thought there were two types. The first: Never, never, never, never. That’s the one I feared the most. Ha! that’s a lie. But I was afraid.
The second type of answer I thought I might get was a list of instructions—impossible ones, impossible for me, in my time of life, to carry out. To carry out? Well, to attempt. I have a bad back, a bad neck, a bad shoulder. Instructions, I mean such as: You shall have your Theo back when you atone in such-and-such a manner,
when you give me the first item you spy in your household on opening our eyes in the morning; when you black out all the windows and guess right when is the time when the sun reaches its zenith and no shadows are; when you cut off your fourth finger and dip it in wax and burn it in a little silver censer you think you have lost long ago, in your travels, but you haven’t lost it, and I know where it is, and o! the pain is terrible but you mustn’t howl out, and o! the smoke is terrible, terrible, but you mustn’t cough a single time, or all is lost, and the finger too, for nothing. Do these things, do them perfectly, and then shall Theo return to you.
That was what I expected, really, and all my bracing was for a shock in the specifics. Already I knew I would not be able to do it, whatever it was, for it would involve bravery and I traded my bravery to a stair-goblin for five extra years of life a long time back and I have never been sorry, not once in my life, for I thought it would be five more years with Theodora, and for that there is no virtue I would not have traded away, which is what Love means. And I have a bad back, like I say.
What she did say, the creature, in a voice in a voice warm as water and soft as milk, was this:
"When you learn to love me more than you love her, then shall you have her back whether you will or no.
And," she added stretching meaningfully, "you will not. It cannot be accomplished by your will."
And then I had to go away and be sick, and inevitably in the mean-time I let go her back left paw
and you know, down to the lowest clerk I expect you know, that if I’d forced her into the mirror back-foot-first, heel-to-reflection’s-heel, where the snake bruised Eve as the story is, when the old serpent bit her and she fell down into the apple-cart and the first Advocate said, Look how thou hast bruised the apples of my garden.
When I had her, if I could have done it, it would have snapped the trick right off at once, reversed the polarities, sent them back to their own places each again and nothing so very terrible would have ever happened to me, or to Theo, except she would have suffered a dreadful fright down there in the grey-glass and would be more deferential afterwards, which can hardly be anything but a positive outcome all in all, and I would have a new story to tell people, when I see people, and you know I never see people.
No, I would have a new story to whisper to the Egg, and the next evening and the next morning I would make Theo check to see whether the story had grown in the Egg, and if it had, we would have murdered it together. But I would have made her look, because I get frightened sometimes you see, and it is her job to calm me. We have all got to do our jobs! Gentlemen, I insist that you do your jobs!
You never let go a cat by the back foot when you have her by the back foot, or you can’t get hold of it again. I am telling you this for your good. All of your mothers told you when you were small boys in small wigs darning small stockings in your small frock coats and you didn’t listen, did you, or you’d have homes of your own. No, you didn’t listen and you didn’t creep quietly and you don’t have the seizing hand, or you wouldn’t sleep in the glass-fronted cases now and mope when your wigs come unstarched, not if you ever had caught a cat by the back foot, like what I have, although I let it go again.
[Transcriber’s note: the decedent’s idea of the legal profession is most curious; correct in certain particulars, altogether too many particulars, and wrong in others, with no discernible pattern of error.]
[Editor’s note: Someone has been talking outside his guild. When he reads this, the paper will know him as his sin shines out of his eyes, and as I have made a twin to it, with this same note copied o'er in my own blood and folded in my breast pocket, e’en as his eyes pass over it will my copy cry out his name in a thin shrill voice and cry to my heart there in my breast pocket, and then we will have him, Gentlemen, and his name will be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law and he shall sleep in the flat files forever. By my hand, etc.]
Now, a strange deadness came over me at Dora’s words —I believe that is when I began to call her Dora, that early; I was thinking of Pandora and how the gods made her all out of little parts, Hephaestus in particular, down in his workshop installing the ball-bearings and the springs and the little jewels and the greater jewels, at the behest of Zeus, to punish Man and to have himself a little fun at the same time. For the thrifty way, the industrious way is to never do one thing at one time when you might do two.
It came over me, the deadened feeling, because I believed her without question and I knew it was impossible that this should ever happen. I am a faithful woman. I love what I love and I never stop. I don’t start again. I mean I wouldn’t if I did, but I don’t.
I knew I couldn’t do it, you see, and it had nothing to do with my bad back after all, or my tricky shoulder either, and why should I even have them if they were not going to be of service in my time of trouble I don’t know. Transference, the transference of Love from one creature to another because of a trick of physical resemblance, or because of loneliness, or because of self-deception, is another word for Wickedness, and I’m against it. This Dora had an old-fashioned convent school education, that’s what she told me, although of course I don’t quite know if she was lying all the time, so she understood my feelings about Wickedness and we were able to speak about it with some degree of understanding on both sides.
I never asked her if she had her own name. Isn’t that funny!
“If I,” I said—is it odd to you, gentlemen, that it did not make me hate the Interloper to hear her say I must love her to get back that which was mine? It was shock I suppose, and she had a certain insinuating quality from the first—”If I were to do such a thing, which would deform my own soul only to satisfy my own wishes, your bears of Artemis would tear my arms from the joints of my shoulders in the afterworld—” (for in the afterworld, the Arktoi become real bears, with real bear claws and real bear jaws: this is their reward, so the priestesses say) “—and my ribs they would make into the vault of a cathedral for cats such as yourself to wander in and out of, and what is more I should deserve it.”
“That is so,” said Dora equably, “that is true enough; and would it be only to satisfy your own wishes? That is interesting. I thought perhaps you might do it for pity of Theo, or a little bit for that. She is very cold now, do you know? I cannot see her in the mirror anymore, I see only my own reflection now” (she blinked at it solemnly) “so assuredly she is very far in and very frightened.”
“But that is all very well with me, you know; you know I like to be here. For my part, no fear of punishment could have kept me from breaking through to be here, with you.”
I made a wild swing of my arm at her and she danced away prettily, not at all alarmed. To be invaded I could endure—but to be insulted—Theo could not have borne the insult against me, if she had been there to hear it; she would have flung herself against the invader even if, being quite frail and half-hearted in all her gestures, not robust and graceful like the Deceiver, she would have lost the fight. And where, I found myself thinking resentfully, is Theo now? Who is to protect me from these terrible suggestions that I love her insufficiently? Very little she must have thought of me, when it all came down to it, to be dragged into the Glass so easily.
But I knew these thoughts for what they were, and glared them back into Dora until she blinked again and curled in back towards me again, still not afraid but suddenly sleepy.
I could have broken her neck as she lay against me, snoring her little snores, caring nothing for her ill-used twin, trusting me for absolutely no reason I can think of. I didn’t, of course. I thought of Theo swimming faithfully out to me, as she thought, paddling herself along with all four long shaggy feet but in the wrong direction, peeping a few tentative peeps into the grey fog. I wept a little, or I thought about weeping and how it would be a good idea in such a situation, poetic or what you like, and I rubbed Dora’s silken ears (they were quite as pointed as Theo’s, with a little thatch of hair at the tips) and petted her along the curved backbone to make myself feel better, and I fell asleep as well.
I forgot to check the egg that night. I remember this now. NOW I remember it NOW
I lost track of time. I went out sometimes and came in again, and the porter was not always in his wall niche, and betimes I had to fumble with my own keys. Once, I saw this very clearly, he did not look happy to see me when I came back. Looking happy to see me is a very important part of his function! Why will people not do their JOBS? Some of us do not even know what our jobs ARE! The poison in the kernel of an apricot is sweet, like the happy looks he used to give me were sweet, only he did not smile because to smile can be disrespectful. But I knew. So I knew when his happiness left him. Am I to believe this is my fault? Is everything my fault? Did the heavens first fall out of the skies because of something I did?
[Editor’s note: Consult our records. Was it something she did?]
And when I came back in again, after going out, Dora would come running with my pipe and slippers and it was quite like old times, except Theo was never so prompt, and only ever seemed dutiful whereas Dora did it with relish and zest. But that was because it was a game to her, of course. I said to her once, I said, it was only a remark,
“How happy I should have been, if Theo had only had your bright zeal and energy, or you her gentleness”—
and I was afraid because she opened her jaws very wide, and cats do not laugh, or not like that, but I can’t think what else she could have been doing. A yawn? It comes to me now that a yawn is like that. But I am never boring. A curious action, I made a mental note at the time to investigate what it could mean.
and then I was afraid of what I had said, and at once I said “But I HAVE a preference, I prefer Theo, I have always said so, and you cannot pretend I meant any different, you can’t win by a trick"—”
and she said, “But what is this winning? You know I want to stay with you; for where else should I go and be happy? While-so-long as you keep your little preference, as you call it, I remain and I win. As you call it. You had forgotten that, I think, you are so mixed around.”
She was right, so I bellowed at her and overturned a chair. I wasn’t really angry, only shaken, it was all camouflage, you see
Did I forget to check the egg again that night
and another time I came back, from being out, and I said something along those same lines (for I am forgetful)—”Dora,” I perhaps said, “how pleasant it is to see you reading something serious—Wittgenstein, is it? You must tell me how you find it. Theo, you know, made quite a show of investigating my library (to please me) but cheap novels were always her favorite, not that one can blame the poor thing.”
And she looked up with me with such reproach it burned me, I have a scalding-burn on my breastbone where my heart smote me from the inside, she looked and she said:
“Why, Maxim, I have always read widely, but you know my opinions on serious subjects bore you, you wanted me to be light, as a balloon is light, or a ship is light on the ocean, and so I have always tried to be.”
And I ran from the room making a dreadful noise, but I told myself the noise came from the Egg, which seemed less terrible at the time, and shut the bedroom door against everyone, everyone, everyone.
Now I am calm enough to be writing this all for you some several minutes later, I am not sure why that should have seemed less terrible, because
[Transcriber’s note: When this Firm’s representatives arrived at the Palazzo, the porter let us in as if by pre-arrangement, though it was no pre-arrangement of ours. We note that the Author, discovered in her closed chambers, did not collapse mid-sentence, as this transcription might suggest; legal testing of the disposition of the ink and the disposition of the departed soul confirm that fully an hour passed between the final word and the Event.
I did not speak to the cat. I will transcribe no words of the cat. This is no part of my present salary negotiations: I will not and I shall not do it. I serve at the pleasure of the Firm and will resign at the pleasure of the Firm.]
[Editor’s note: An inclination to melodrama is common to all clerks and is to be disregarded as if unread. By my hand, &c.
A curious addendum, which I place here for ease of record-keeping : Shortly after entering, while the coroner and the senior Partner did their sordid business with the soul and the Egg and so forth, I peered and spied around the spacious apartments (as are traditionally the Editor’s duties, I remind the record) until I saw, under a long and low and luxurious green sopha a pair of round hazel eyes. I am known in many kingdoms as a kind and fair man, and it was no surprise to me that the cat came out from under the sopha quite easily and without fear. By this time the first Book had been found and read, and the contents of the second were then being communicated to me.
“Are you,” I said to the cat, “Theo, or Dora? For I am sorry to disturb you in your hour of bereavement, but we find ourselves in some confusion.”
She gazed at me—and rarely have I felt myself so swiftly understood by man or beast and still more rarely have I felt it from a look alone—and said (I am no transcriber but I remember it well): “Sir, my name is Theodora, and I am sorry to add to your no doubt onerous duties, but there is only one of me and always has been. I am the cat who lives here. At the last, you see” (she blinked her topaz eyes and now it was I who understood her perfectly) “at the last, my companion’s wits seemed to slip in a way I cannot quite describe (and is it right for me, a poor Beast, to describe the decline of my betters, if even I could?)"
[“She gazed at me, and rarely have I felt myself so well understood”]
“—for I am not so well-read as she thought me—a dilettante in many things, and unworldly, all my life I have lived here, except for before, and I don’t remember that.
“I see,” I said, and I did see. “You are, you know, an heiress of sorts, and when the estate is settled you will need to become just a little more worldly—to fend off fortune-hunters, don’t you know. Never fear—” I was becoming exceedingly kindly, for she had raised a trembling forefoot and her diffidence was charming—“never fear that you have been left destitute; traveling in her wits your Mistress may have been in her later days (we have ample evidence of that!), but she did not fail to provide for you, and as you know your own name there will be no trouble about that. You may certainly stay here until the title is transferred; hard-hearted, many think us, but we are not about to evict a small and harmless cat who never offended a living soul, I am sure!”
I am not sure how I became so hearty at the end, but I did mean what I said, surely.
And she said: “Sir, you are too good. I am only frightened of a night here alone. There are the memories, you know, and—” (she shuddered gently, rippling a little down her striped shoulders) “—and the mirrors, I don’t like them, I have never liked them.”
I could see that the presumption of making the request would fairly kill her outright, she was that well-mannered, so I simply offered. Editors, you know, receive houses and pensions and have not got to sleep in the glass-front cases as the first-decaders do, so, “You know,” I said, “Theodora, if I may call you Theodora, neither I nor my Wife have been blessed with a cat of our own, and we have a Beagle, but he aggravates. And I assure you it will be no trouble at all to turn him out into the snow tonight in order to make room for a guest such as yourself.
“If you should choose to honor us by staying more than one night, so much the better, and the Beagle may look out for himself as he may. Stand on his own four feet for once out in the great World, eh?” And I laughed, again more heartily than I usually do, but I think it put her at her ease and where was the harm. And she said she would come along with me, and gladly. And so everything was all right.]
[Transcriber’s note: I have been promoted to Editor ahead of schedule. There will be no more transcriber’s notes. By my hand, M—th--y, Esq.]