The Animal-Lover's Book of Beastly Murder (9 page)

Cesare looked down at the shockingly red, blood-covered pillow of the baby. All the baby’s nose—It was horrible! There
wasn’t
any nose! And the cheek! Cesare murmured an invocation of aid from a saint, then turned quickly to Maria-Teresa. “The baby’s
alive
?”

“I don’t know! Yes, I think!”

Cesare timidly stuck a forefinger into the baby’s curled hand. The baby twitched, gave a snuffling sound, as if he were having trouble breathing through blood. “Shouldn’t we turn him over? Turn him on his side! I’ll—I’ll telephone. Do you know any doctor’s number?”

“No!” said Maria-Teresa who was already imagining concretely the blame she was going to get for letting this happen. She knew she should have fought the rat out of the room instead of telephoning Cesare.

Cesare after one vain attempt to reach a doctor whose name he knew and whose number he looked up in the telephone book, rang the main hospital of Venice, and they promised to arrive at once. They came via a hospital boat which docked on the Canale Grande some fifty yards away. Cesare and Maria-Teresa even heard the noise of the fast motor. By this time Maria-Teresa had wiped the baby’s face gently with a damp face towel, mainly with an idea of facilitating the baby’s breathing. The nose was gone, and she could even see a bit of bone there.

Two young men in white gave the baby two injections, and kept murmuring “
Orribile!
” They asked Maria-Teresa to make a hot water bottle.

The blood had gone from Cesare’s usually ruddy cheeks, and he felt about to faint. He sat down on one of the formal chairs. Gone was his idea of a passionate embrace with Maria-Teresa. He couldn’t even stand on his legs.

The interns took the baby away in the boat, the baby wrapped in a blanket with the hot water bottle.

Cesare recovered a bit of strength, went down to the kitchen and after a search found half a bottle of Strega. He poured two glasses. He was keeping an eye out for the rat, but didn’t see it. The Mangonis were due back soon, and he would have preferred to be elsewhere—back at his job—but he reasoned that he ought to stand by Maria-Teresa, and that this excuse would be a good one for his boss. A baby nearly killed, maybe dead now—who knew?

The Mangoni family arrived at 10:40 p.m., and there was instant chaos.

Mama screamed. Everyone talked at once. Mama went up to see the bloody cradle, and screamed again. Papa was told to telephone the hospital. Cesare and the oldest three of the brothers and one of the sisters went on a complete search of the house, armed with empty wine bottles for bashing, knives, a wooden stool from the kitchen, a flat iron, and Cesare had his iron bar. No one saw a rat, but several pieces of furniture received nicks inadvertently.

Maria-Teresa was forgiven. Or was she? Papa could understand her telephoning for help to her boyfriend who was near. The hospital reported that the baby had a fifty-fifty chance to live, but could the mother come at once?

The rat had escaped via a square drain in the kitchen wall at floor level. His jump had put him in the Rio San Polo nearly three meters below, but that was no problem. He swam with powerful thrusts of his two good legs, all his legs, plus sheer will power, to the nearest climbing point, and got on to dry land feeling no diminution of his energy. He shook himself. The taste of blood was still in his mouth. He had attacked the baby out of panic, out of fury also, because he hadn’t at that point found an exit from the accursed house. The baby’s arms and fists had flailed feebly against his head, his ribs. The rat had taken some pleasure in attacking a member of the human race, one with the same smell as the big ones. The morsels of tender flesh had filled his belly somewhat, and he was now deriving energy from them.

He made his way in the darkness with a rolling gait, pausing now and then to sniff at a worthless bit of food, or to get his bearings with an upward glance, with a sniff at the breeze. He was making for the Rialto, where he could cross by means of the arched bridge, pretty safe at night. He thought to make informal headquarters around San Marco, where there were a lot of restaurants in the area. The night was very black, which meant safety for him. His strength seemed to increase as he rolled along, belly nearly touching the dampish stones. He stared at, then sprang at a curious cat which had dared to come close and size him up. The cat leapt a little in the air, then retreated.

Engine Horse

W
hen the big mare, Fanny, heard the rustle in the hay, she turned her head slowly, still chomping with unbroken rhythm, and her eyes, which were like large soft brown eggs, tried to look behind her and down. Fanny supposed it was one of the cats, though they seldom came close. There were two cats on the farm, one ginger, one black and white. Fanny’s looking back had been casual. A cat often came into the stable in search of a quiet spot to nap in.

Still munching hay from her trough, Fanny looked for a second time and saw the little gray thing near her front foot. A tiny cat it was. Not one of the household, not one of the small cats belonging to either of the larger cats, because there weren’t any just now.

It was sunset in the month of July. Gnats played around Fanny’s eyes and nose, and made her snort. A small square window, closed in winter, was now open and the sun flooded directly into Fanny’s eyes. She had not done much work that day, because the man called Sam, whom Fanny had known all her twelve years, had not come, either today or yesterday. Fanny had not done anything that she could remember except walk with the woman Bess to the water tank and back again. Fanny had a long period of munching in daylight, before she lay down with a grunt to sleep. Her vast haunch and rib cage, well covered with fat and muscle, hit the bed of hay like a carefully lowered barrel. It became cooler. The little gray kitten, which Fanny could now see more clearly, came and curled herself up in the reddish feathers behind Fanny’s left hoof.

The little cat was not four months old, an ash-gray and black brindle, with a tail only the length of a king-sized cigarette, because someone had stepped in the middle of it when she was younger. She had wandered far that day, perhaps three or four miles, and turned in at the first shelter she had seen. She had left home, because her grandmother and great-grandmother had attacked her for an uncountable time, one time too many. Her mother had been killed by a car just a few days ago. The little cat had seen her mother’s body on the road and sniffed it. So the little kitten, with an instinct for self-preservation, had decided that the great unknown was better than what she knew. She was already wiry of muscle, and full of pluck, but now she was tired. She had investigated the farmyard and found only some muddy bread and water to eat in the chickens’ trough. And even at that hour in July the little cat was chilly. She had felt the warmth coming from the huge bulk of the red-brown mare, and when the horse lay down, the kitten found a nook, and collapsed.

The mare was somehow pleased. Such a dainty little creature! That size, that weight that was nothing at all!

The horse and the kitten slept.

And in the white, two-story farmhouse, the people argued.

The house belonged to Bess Gibson, a widow for the last three years. Her grandson Harry had come with his bride Marylou, a few days ago, for a visit, Bess had thought, and to introduce Marylou. But Harry had plans also. He wanted some money. His mother hadn’t enough, or had refused him, Bess gathered. Bess’s son Ed, Harry’s father, was dead, and Harry’s mother in California had remarried.

Now Harry sat in the kitchen, dressed in cowboy clothes, a toothpick alternating with a cigarette between his lips, and talked about the restaurant-drive-in-bar-and-café that he wanted to buy his way into.

“If you could only see, Gramma, that this farm isn’t even paying its way, that the money’s sitting here doing nothing! What’ve you got here?” He waved a hand. “You could get a hundred and twenty thousand for the house and land, and think for a minute what kind of apartment in town you could have for a fraction of that!”

“That’s true, you know?” Marylou parroted. She was dawdling over her coffee, but she’d whipped out a nailfile and was sawing away now.

Bess shifted her weight in the wooden chair, and the chair gave a creek. She wore a blue and white cotton dress and white sandals. She suffered from dropsy. Her hair had gone completely white in the last couple of years. She realized that Harry meant an apartment in town, and town was Danville, thirty miles away. Some poky little place with two flights of stairs to climb, probably belonging to someone else to whom she’d have to pay rent. Bess didn’t want to think about an apartment, no matter how many modern conveniences it might have. “This place pays its way,” Bess said finally. “It’s not losing money. There’s the chickens and ducks—people come to buy them or their eggs. There’s the corn and the wheat. Sam manages it very well—I don’t know about the immediate future, with Sam gone,” she added with an edge in it, “but it’s home to me and it’s yours when I’m gone.”

“But not even a tractor? Sam still uses a plow. It’s ridiculous. That one horse. What century are you living in, Gramma?—Well, you could
borrow
on it,” Harry said not for the first time, “if you really want to help me out.”

“I’m not going to leave you or anybody a mortgaged house,” Bess replied.

That meant she was not completely convinced of the safety of what he wanted to do. But since Harry had been over this ground, he was too bored to go over it again. He merely exchanged a glance with Marylou.

Bess felt her face grow warm. Sam, their handyman—hers and her husband Claude’s for seventeen years, a real member of the family—had left two days ago. Sam had made a speech and said he just couldn’t stand Harry, he was sorry. Sam was getting on in years, and Harry had tried to boss him around, as if he were a hired hand, Bess supposed. She wasn’t sure, but she could imagine. Bess hoped Sam would write to her soon, let her know where he was, so she could ask him back when Harry left. When she remembered old Sam with his best jacket on and his suitcase beside him, hailing the bus on the main road, Bess almost hated her grandson.

“Gramma, it’s as simple as this,” Harry began in the slow, patient voice in which he always presented his case. “I need sixty thousand dollars to buy my half with Roscoe. I told you Roscoe’s just a nickname for laughs. His name is Ross Levitt.”

I don’t care what his name is, Bess thought, but she said a polite “Um-hm.”

“Well—with sixty thousand dollars each, it’s a sure thing for both of us. It’s part of a chain, you know, twelve other places already, and they’re all coining money. But if I can’t put up my part in a few days, Gramma—or can’t give a promise of the money, my chances are gone. I’ll pay you back, Gramma, naturally. But this is the chance of a lifetime!”

To use such words, Bess was thinking, and to be only twenty-two! Harry had a lot to learn.

“Ask your lawyer if you’re in doubt, Gramma,” Harry said. “Ask any banker. I’m not afraid of the facts.”

Bess recrossed her thick ankles. Why didn’t his mother advance the money, if it was so safe? His mother had married a well-to-do man. And here was her grandson, married, at twenty-two. Too early for Harry, Bess thought, and she didn’t care for Marylou or her type. Marylou was pretty and silly. Might as well be a high school crush, not a wife. Bess knew she had to keep her thoughts to herself, however, because there was nothing worse than meddling.

“Gramma, what fun is it here for you any more, all alone in the country? Both the Colmans dead in the last year, you told me. In town, you’d have a nice circle of friends who could . . .”

Harry’s voice became a drone to Bess. She had three or four good friends, six or eight even in the district. She’d known them all a long time, and they rang up, they came to see her, or Sam drove her to see them in the pick-up. Harry was too young to appreciate what a home meant, Bess thought. Every high-ceilinged bedroom upstairs was handsome, everyone said, with curtains and quilts that Bess or her own mother had made. The local newspaper had even come to take photographs, and the article had been reprinted in the . . .

Bess was stirred out of her thoughts by Harry’s getting up.

“Guess we’ll be turning in, Gramma,” he said.

Marylou got up with her coffee cup and took it to the sink. All the other dishes were washed. Marylou hadn’t much to say, but Bess sensed a terrible storm in her, some terrible wish. And yet, Bess supposed, it probably wasn’t any worse or any different from Harry’s wish, which was simply to get his hands on a lot of money. They could live on the grounds behind the restaurant, Harry had said. A fine house with swimming pool all their own. Bess could imagine Marylou looking forward to that.

The young people had gone up to the front bedroom. They’d taken the television set up there, because Bess had said she didn’t often watch it. She did look at it nearly every night, but she’d wanted to be polite when Harry and Marylou first arrived. Now she wished she had the set, because she could have done with a little change of thoughts, a laugh maybe. Bess went to her own sleeping quarters, which in summer was a room off the back porch with screened windows against mosquitoes, though there weren’t ever many in this region. She turned on her transistor radio, low.

Upstairs, Harry and Marylou talked softly, glancing now and then at the closed door, thinking Bess might knock with a tray of milk and cake, as she had done once since they’d been there.

“I don’t think she’ll be coming up tonight,” Marylou said. “She’s sort of mad at us.”

“Well, that’s too bad.” Harry was undressing. He blew on the square toes of his cowboy boots and passed them once across the seat of his Levi’s to see if the shine came up. “Goddamn it, I’ve heard of these situations before, haven’t you? Some old person who won’t turn loose of the dough—which is really
coming
to me—just when the younger people damn well need it.”

“Isn’t there someone else you know who could persuade her?”

“Hell—around here?” They’d all be on his grandmother’s side, Harry was thinking. Other people were the last thing they needed. “I’m for a small snort. How about you?” Harry pulled from a back corner of the closet a big half-empty bottle of bourbon.

“No, thanks. I’ll have a sip of yours, if you’re going to put water in it.”

Harry splashed some water from the porcelain pitcher into his glass, handed the glass to Marylou for a sip, then added more bourbon for himself, and drank it almost off. “You know Roscoe wanted me to call him up yesterday or today? With an answer?” Harry wiped his mouth. He wasn’t expecting a reply from Marylou and didn’t get one.
I damn well wish she was dead now
, Harry thought, like a curse that he might have said aloud to get the resentment and anger out of his system. Then suddenly it came to him. An idea. Not a bad idea, not a horrible idea. Not too horrible. And safe. Well, ninety percent safe, if he did it wisely, carefully. It was even a simple idea.

“What’re you thinking?” Marylou asked, propped up in bed now with the sheet pulled up to her waist. Her curly reddish hair glowed like a halo in the light of the reading lamp fixed to the bed.

“I’m thinking—if Gramma had something like a hip injury, you know—those things old people always get. She’d—” He came closer to the bed and spoke even more softly, knowing already that Marylou would be with him, even if his idea were more dangerous. “I mean, she’d have to stay in town, wouldn’t she—if she couldn’t get around?”

Marylou’s eyes swam in excited confusion, and she blinked. “What’re you talking about?” she asked in a whisper. “Pushing her down the stairs?”

Harry shook his head quickly. “That’s too obvious. I was thinking of—maybe going on a picnic, the way she says she does, you know? With the horse and wagon. A watermelon, sandwiches and all and—”

“And beer!” Marylou said, giggling nervously knowing the climax was coming.

“Then the wagon turns over somewhere,” Harry said simply, shrugging. “You know, there’s that ford by the stream. Well, I know it, anyway.”

“Wagon turns over. What about us? If we’re in it?”

“You don’t have to be in it. You could’ve jumped off to lay the cloth, some damn thing. I’ll do it.”

A pause.

“You’re serious?” Marylou asked.

Harry was thinking, with his eyes almost closed. Finally he nodded. “Yes. If I can’t think of anything else. Anything better. Time’s getting short, even for promises to Roscoe. Sure. I’m serious.” Then abruptly Harry went and switched on the television.

To the little gray cat, Fanny the horse had become a protectress, a fortress, a home. Not that Fanny did anything. Fanny merely existed, giving out warmth in the cold of the night before dawn. The gray kitten’s only enemies were the two older cats, and fortunately these chose to be simply huffy, ready with a spit, a swipe of a paw full of claws. They made life unpleasant, but they were not out for the kill, or even to drive her off the premises, which was something.

The kitten spent not much time in the stable, however. She liked to play in the ducks’ and the chickens’ yard, to canter towards a chick as if with evil intent, then to dodge the lunge, the terrible beak of the mother hen. Then the kitten would leap to an upright of the wooden fence and sit, washing a paw, surveying alertly the area in front of her and the meadow behind her. She was half-wild. She was not tempted to approach the back door of the house. She sensed that she wouldn’t be welcome. She had never had anything but ill-treatment or indifference at best from the creatures that walked on two legs. With her grandmother and great-grandmother, she had eaten the remains of their kills, what was left of rats, birds, now and then a small rabbit, when her elders had eaten their fill. From the two-legged creatures came nothing reliable and abundant, maybe a pan of milk and bread, not every day, not to be counted on.

But the big red horse, so heavy, so slow, the gray kitten had come to recognize as a reliable friend. The kitten had seen horses before, but never any as huge as this. She had never come close to a horse, never touched one before. The kitten found it both amusing and dangerous. The kitten loved to feel amused, to feel as if she were playing tricks on other creatures (like the chickens) and on herself, because it eased the realities of existence, the fact that she could be killed—in a flash, as her mother had been—if the gigantic horse happened to step on her, for instance. Even the horse’s big feet had metal bottoms: the kitten had noticed this one evening when the horse was lying down. Not soft, like the horse’s long hair there, but hard, able to hurt.