Chapter 2
Here She is! She's left her wicker chair, stretched her lovely arms and, judging from the movement of her dress, I think we're going to take a walk. See her behind the rosebushes? Now, with her nails she breaks a leaf from the lemon tree; she's crumpling it up and smelling it. Ah ... I belong to Her, soul and body. With my eyes closed I can divine her presence.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Yes, I see Her. She is quiet and gentle for the time being. He'll leave his paper now to follow her. He'll come out calling, "Where are you?" and sit on the bench, tired out. For _him_, I shall rise politely, and go "do my nails" along the leg of his trousers. Silent, happy companions, we'll listen for the day's departing footsteps. The perfume of the lindens will become sickeningly sweet at the same hour that my seer's eyes grow big and black and read mysterious Signs in the air.... Later on a calm fire will be lit down there, behind the pointed mountain--a circle of glistening rose-color in the gray-blue of the night--a sort of luminous cocoon from which will burst the dazzling edge of the moon. She will sail along, cleaving the clouds.... Then, it will be time to go to rest. He'll carry me in on his shoulder and I'll sleep close to his feet, which are ever mindful of my repose.... Dawn will find me shivering but rejuvenated, sitting face to the sun, in a silvery halo of incense, offered me by the dew. Thus, I am a perfect picture of the god I was in the old, old days.
ON THE TRAIN
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, TOBY-DOG, SHE _and_ HE, _have taken their places in a first-class compartment. The train rolls along towards distant mountains, and the freedom of Summer-time_. TOBY, _on a leash, lifts an inquiring nose to the window_. HE _has strewn the carriage with newspapers_: KIKI-THE-DEMURE, _silent and invisible in a closed basket, is under his immediate protection_. SHE, _leaning back against the dusty cushions, dreams of the mountain she loves best and of the low house on it, weighted down with jasmine and virginia-creeper_.
TOBY-DOG
How fast this carriage goes! It can't be our regular coachman. I haven't seen the horses, but they smell very bad and make black smoke. Oh, Silent Dreamer, look at me and tell me--shall we arrive soon?
(_No response_. TOBY _gets fidgety and blows through his nostrils_.) SHE
Hush! Toby, hush!
TOBY-DOG
I've hardly said a word.... Shall we arrive soon?
(_He turns towards his master, who is reading, and puts a discreet paw on the edge of his knee_.)
HE
'Sh!...
TOBY-DOG, (_resigned_)
Hard luck! No one wants to talk to me. I'm bored and what's more, I don't know this carriage well enough. I'm tired out. They woke me very early this morning. I amused myself by running all over the house. They had hidden the chairs under sheets, wrapped up the lamps, rolled up the rugs. Things were white and changed and awful. There was a horrid smell of camphor everywhere. My eyes filled with water, I sneezed under the chairs and slid on the bare floor in my haste to follow the maids' white aprons. They bustled about among trunks with such unwonted zeal, that I was sure something exceptional was going to happen. At the last minute just as She came in, calling: "Toby's collar and the cat's basket! Quick! put the cat in his basket!"--just as she was saying that, my chum disappeared. It was indescribable! He, terrible to see, swore by all the gods, and struck the floor with his cane, furious because they had allowed his Kiki to get away. She called "Kiki!" at first supplicatingly, then in threatening tones, and the maids brought empty plates, meant to deceive, and yellow paper from the butcher's. I really thought my chum had left this world, when suddenly--there he was perched on top of the book-case, looking down on us with an expression of contempt in his green eyes. She put up her arms: "Kiki _will_ you come down immediately! You are going to make us lose the train!" But he didn't come down and it made me dizzy--though I was on the ground--to see him way up there walking and turning about and miauling shrilly to tell us how impossible he found it to obey. He was about frantic and kept saying: "Heavens, he's going to fall." But She smiled skeptically, went out of the room and came back armed with the whip. The whip said, "crack!" twice only; then a miracle happened I think, 'cause the cat leaped to the floor, softer and more bouncey than our plaything, the ball of wool. _I_ would have broken to pieces falling like that!... He has been in this basket ever since.... (TOBY _goes to the basket_.) Ah! here's a little peek-hole.... I see his whiskers ... they're like white needles. Whew! What eyes! (_He jumps back_.) I'm rather afraid. One can't really shut a cat up; he always manages to get out somehow. ... He must suffer, poor fellow! Perhaps if I speak kindly to him ... (_he calls very politely_) Cat!
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_spitting furiously_)
Khhh!...
TOBY-DOG, (_jumping back_)
Oh, you said a bad word! You look awful! Have you a pain anywhere?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Go away! I'm a martyr.... Go away I tell you, or I'll blow fire at you!
TOBY-DOG, (_ingenuous_)
But why?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Why!--Because you're free, because I'm in this basket, because the basket's in a foul carriage which is shaking me to pieces, and because the serenity of those two exasperates me.
TOBY-DOG
Would you like me to look out and tell you what one sees from the carriage window?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Everything is equally odious to me.
TOBY-DOG, (_having looked out, comes back_)
I haven't seen anything....
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_bitterly_)
Thanks just the same.
TOBY-DOG
I mean I haven't seen anything that's easy to describe. Some green things which pass right close to us--so close and so fast that they give one a slap in the eye. A flat field turning 'round and 'round and over there, a little pointed steeple--it's running as fast as the carriage. Another field all red with blossoming clover has just given me another slap in the eye--a red slap. The earth is sinking in--or else we're going up, I'm not sure which. I see way off, _far_ away, some green lawns dotted with white daisies--perhaps they're cows.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_with sarcasm_)
Or wafers, for sealing letters--or anything you like.
TOBY-DOG
Aren't you the least little bit amused? KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_with a sinister laugh_)
Ha! Ask of the damned ...
TOBY-DOG
Of whom?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_more and more melodramatic, but without conviction_)
... of the damned in his vat of boiling oil, if anything amuses him! Mine is not physical torment. I suffer imprisonment, humiliation, darkness, neglect--
(_The train stops. A conductor on the platform cries "Aw-ll a-bor!!... awl aborr!!"_)
TOBY-DOG, (_bewildered_)
Someone's crying out! There's an accident!! Let's run!!!
(_He throws himself against the carriage door and scratches madly at it_.) SHE, (_half asleep_)
Toby dear, you're a nuisance!
TOBY-DOG, (_distracted_)
Oh, you inexplicable person! How can you sit there quietly? Don't you hear those cries? They're stopping now--the accident has gone away. Wish I'd known ...
(_The train starts again_.)
HE, (_throwing down his paper_)
The poor beast is hungry.
SHE, (_now very wide awake_)
You think so? Well, I am too. But Toby is to eat very little.
HE, (_anxiously_)
And Kiki-the-Demure?
SHE, (_peremptorily_) Kiki sulks, and he hid this morning, so he'll have even less than Toby.
HE
He isn't making a sound. Aren't you afraid he's sick?
SHE
No, he's simply vexed.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_as soon as there's question of himself_)
Me-ow!
HE, (_tenderly and eagerly_)
Come my beautiful Kiki, my imprisoned one, come. You shall have cold roast-beef and some breast of chicken ...
(_He opens the prison basket and_ KIKI _puts forth his_ _head, flattened on top like that of a serpent; then his long, striped body, cautiously, and so very slowly that one begins to think it's coming out by the yard_.)
TOBY-DOG, (_pleasantly)
Ah, there you are, cat! Well, now, proclaim your freedom!
(KIKI, _without replying, smoothes his ruffled fur_.)
TOBY-DOG
Proclaim your freedom I tell you! It's the custom. Whenever a door is opened one must run, jump, twist oneself into half circles and cry out.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
_One_? Who's one, pray?
TOBY-DOG
We dogs.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_seated and very dignified_)
Would you have me _bark_, too?... We have never followed the same rules of conduct, that I know of.
TOBY-DOG, (_vexed_)
Oh very well, I don't insist. How do you like this carriage?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_sniffing fastidiously_)
It's frightful.--However, the cushions are rather good for one's nails.
(_He suits the action to the word_.)
TOBY-DOG, (_aside_)
Now if _I_ did that ...
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_continuing to scratch the upholstery_)
Hon! May this spongy, gray cloth soothe my rage!... Since morning, the whole universe has been in a state of monstrous revolt. He whom I love, and who venerates me, made not the least effort to defend me. I've submitted to humiliating contacts, been jolted to death, piercing whistles have shot through my head from ear to ear. Ho, ho, how good it is to relax the nerves and to imagine that, with gleeful claws, one tears the enemies' flesh in bloody shreds! Ho, ho! S-c-r-a-t-c-h, and lift the paws on high! Lift them high as possible! It's a supremely insolent gesture....
SHE
I say, Kiki, when are you going to stop that?
HE, (_Indulgent and admiring_)
Let him alone. He's doing his nails.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
He has spoken for me. I forgive him. But since it's allowed, I don't care any more about tearing the cushions ... When will I get out of this? Not that I'm afraid; they are both there, and the dog too, with their everyday faces ... I've twinges in my stomach.
(_He yawns. The train stops. A conductor on the platform cries, "Aw-ll a-bor! Aw-ll a-b-o-r-r!!"_)
TOBY-DOG, (_excited_)
Screaming again! Another accident?!--Let's run!...
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Heavens, what a tiresome dog! What does it matter to him, if there _is_ an accident?
I don't believe in it moreover. It's the cry of a man, and men cry out for the pleasure of hearing their own voices.
TOBY-DOG, (_calm again_)
I'm hungry. Can't we hope to eat soon, my mistress? I don't know what time it is in this strange country, but it seems to me....
SHE
Come now, we'll all have our luncheon.
(_She takes the things out of the basket, crumples up some tissue paper and breaks a crisp brown roll_.)
TOBY-DOG, (_chewing_)
What She gave me then must have been very good indeed to seem such a tiny bit. It melted in my mouth, there's not even the memory of it left....
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_chewing_)
Breast of chicken! Purr-rr ... Goodness me! I was purring without knowing it! That won't do. They'll think me resigned to this journey. I must eat slowly, grim, and undeceived, eat for the sole purpose of keeping myself alive ...
SHE, (_to the dog and cat_)
Allow me to have _my_ luncheon now, if you please. _I_ too, like cold chicken and the hearts of lettuce, dipped in salt....
HE, (_anxiously_)
What _shall_ we do to make this cat go into his basket again?
SHE
I don't know. We'll see presently ...
TOBY-DOG
Finished already? I could swallow three times that much. I say Cat, you're eating rather well for a martyr.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_fibbing_)
Trouble digs a hole in one's interior. Move away please, I want to sleep now ... if I can. Perhaps a merciful dream will take me back to the house I've left, to the flowered cushion He gave me.... Home! sweet home! Rugs of bright colors for the delight of my eyes, a palm with nice shoots for me to eat, deep arm-chairs, under which I hide my woolen ball as a future surprise for myself--ah, and the cork hanging by a string to the door-latch! the tables covered with bibelots! I thread my way in and out among them and occasionally it amuses me to break some brittle thing. The dining-room is a temple! The vestibule, full of mystery; there unseen, I can watch those who come and go ... Oh narrow back-stairway, where the step of the milkman rings out for me like a morning angelus--farewell! farewell! my destiny carries me on, and who knows if ever ... But this is _too_ sad! All the pretty things I've been saying have really begun to make me feel badly!!
(_He begins a minute and mournful toilet. The train stops. A conductor on the platform cries, "Aw-ll-a-borr-a-borr!!"_)
TOBY-DOG
There it is again! An acci--Oh bother, I've had enough of that!
HE, (_anxiously_)
We're going to change trains in ten minutes. How about the cat? He'll never allow us to shut him up ...
SHE
We'll see ... Suppose we put some meat in his basket?
HE
Or perhaps petting would ...
(_They approach the redoubtable_ KIKI _and both speak together_.)
HE
Kiki, my beautiful Kiki, come jump on my knee, or on my shoulder. You like that as a rule. You'll doze there and then I'll put you gently into the basket. After all, it's open-work and has a comfortable cushion to protect you from the rough wicker. Come, my dear....
SHE
Listen, Kiki. You must learn to act properly and to take life as it is. You can't stay there like that. We're going to change trains and a horrible guard will appear and say insulting things of you and your race. Besides you'd better obey, because if you don't, I--I'll give you a good whipping.
(_But before she can lift her hand against his sacred fur, Kiki gets up, stretches himself, arches his back, yawns,--to show the rosy lining of his mouth, and then walks to the open basket where he lies down with an admirable air of quiet insolence. He and She exchange eloquent glances_.)
DINNER IS LATE
_A parlor, in the country, at the close of a long summer's day_. KIKI-THE-DEMURE _and_ TOBY-DOG _doze; ears twitching and eyelids obstinately shut. Now_ KIKI'S _lids part in a narrow slit, and disclose eyes the color of purple grapes. He yawns, with the ferocious expression of a small dragon._
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_haughtily_)
You're snoring!
TOBY-DOG, (_who was not really asleep_)
I'm not; it's you.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Impossible! I don't snore, I purr.
TOBY-DOG
Same thing.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_not condescending to a discussion_)
Thank heaven, it isn't! (_A silence_.)
I'm hungry. One doesn't hear the noise of plates in the next room. Isn't it dinner time?
TOBY-DOG, (_gets up, slowly stretches his forepaws and yawns, darting forth a heraldic tongue with curly end_) I don't know ... I'm hungry.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Where is She? How is it you're not at her heels?
TOBY-DOG, (_embarrassed, nibbling his nails_)
She's in the garden I believe, picking up plums.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Those yellow balls that rain about one's ears? I know them. You've seen her then? I bet She scolded you ... What have you been doing now?
TOBY-DOG, (_self-conscious, turning away his wrinkled, toad-like face_)
She told me to return to the house because--because I too, was eating plums.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
She did well! You have depraved tastes--the tastes of men.
TOBY-DOG, (_offended_)
Say--no one ever sees me eating bad fish! And never, _never_ will I understand how you can go into such fits over a dead frog, or that herb.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Valerian.
TOBY-DOG
That's it, I guess ... An herb--is medicine, isn't it?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Medicine, indeed! Valerian ... but no _you_, can't understand ... I've seen Her laugh and go on, as I do over the valerian, after having emptied a glass of fetid wine that jumped dangerously too. As for the dead frog--so dead that it seems a bit of dry russia leather in the form of a frog--it's a sachet, impregnated with rare musk, with which I wish to scent my fur.
TOBY-DOG
Oh, you talk very well--but She always scolds and says that you smell bad after it, and He says the same thing.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
They're nothing but Two-Paws, both of them. You, poor thing, belittle yourself by seeking to imitate them. You stand on your hind legs, wear a coat when it rains, eat plums--for shame!--and those big green balls, the malicious trees let fall sometimes, when I'm passing underneath.
TOBY-DOG
Apples?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Very likely. She picks one up and throws it down the path, crying: "Apple, Toby, apple," and you rush after, in unseemly fashion, gasping for breath, looking like a fool, your tongue and your eyes sticking out....
TOBY-DOG, (_scowling, head resting on his paws_)
One takes one's pleasures where one finds them.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_yawning, shows his pointed teeth and his palate of pink velvet_)
I'm hungry. Dinner is surely late tonight. Suppose you look for Her?
TOBY-DOG
I daren't. She forbade it. She is down there in the hollow, with a big basket. The dew is falling and wetting her feet and the sun's going away. But you know how She is. She sits on the damp ground, looking ahead of her, as if She were asleep--or lies flat on her stomach, whistling and watching an ant in the grass ... She tears up a handful of wild thyme and smells it, or calls the tomtits and the jays--who never come to her by any chance. She takes a heavy watering pot and--ugh! it gives me the shivers--pours thousands of icy, silvery threads over the roses or into the hollows of those little stone troughs, 'way back in the woods. I always look in to see the head of a brindle-bull who comes to meet me and to drink up the pictures of the leaves, but She pulls me back by the collar with: "Toby, Toby, _that_ water is for the birds." ... Then She takes out her knife and opens nuts, fifty, a _hundred_ nuts, and forgets the time ... There's no end to the things She does.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_slyly_)
And what do you do all that time?
TOBY-DOG
I--well--I just wait for her.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
I admire you!
TOBY-DOG
Once in a while, squatting down, She eagerly scratches the earth, toils and sweats over it; then I jump 'round her, delighted to see her at something so useful and so familiar. But her feeble scent deceives her. _I_ never smell mole, or shrew-mouse-of-the-rosy-paws, in the holes _She_ digs. And how explain her utter lack of purpose? Presently, falling back on her haunches, She brandishes a hairy-rooted herb and cries: "I have it, the jade!" I lie in the damp grass and tremble, or dig my nose (She calls it my snout) into the earth to get the complicated odors of it. ... When there are three or four scents all blended, all mixed together, can you distinguish that of the mole from that of the hare which passed quickly, or the bird which rested there?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Certainly I can. My nose is highly educated. It's small, regular, wide between my eyes, delicate at the chamois-skin end of my nostrils; the lightest touch of a blade of grass, the shadow of smoke tickles and makes it sneeze. It doesn't bother about distinguishing the scent of moles from that of--hares, did you say? But it delights in the trace left by a cat in a hedge ... I've a charming nose. She calls it, "his pretty little nose of cotton velvet." Since my eyes opened on this world I've not known the day that someone has not uttered a truthful flattery on the subject of my nose. Now yours--is a rough-grained truffle. What makes you move it so ridiculously? At this very moment.
TOBY-DOG
I'm hungry and I don't hear the plates.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
... your truffle of a nose works up and down and makes another wrinkle in your irregular mug.
TOBY-DOG
She always says, "his square muzzle, his wrinkled truffle," so tenderly and so lovingly!
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
... And you think of nothing but eating.
TOBY-DOG
It's _your_ empty stomach that scolds and complains and wants to quarrel with me.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
I've a charming stomach.
TOBY-DOG
But no, it's your nose that's charming. You just said so.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
My stomach too. There's none more fastidious, more whimsical, stronger and at the same time more delicate. It digests the bones of sole, but meat that's the least bit tainted literally turns it.
TOBY-DOG
Literally's the word. You have _active_ indigestion.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
Yes, the whole house is affected by it. From the very first qualms I'm in terrible distress; the earth gives way under me, my eyes dilate, I hurriedly swallow quantities of salty saliva; involuntary, ventriloquial cries escape me, my sides bulge out--
TOBY-DOG, (_disgusted_)
I say, if it's all the same to you, tell me the rest after dinner.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
I'm hungry. Where can He be?
TOBY-DOG
He's there, in his study, scratching paper.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
He's always doing that. It's a game. Two-Paws play at the same thing for hours and hours. I've often tried to scratch paper gently, as He does, but the pleasure doesn't last long. I prefer newspapers torn into shreds that rustle and fly ... There is a little pot of dark-violet, muddy water on his table. I never sniff it without horror, since the day a rather foolish curiosity made me dip my paw into it. This very paw, so strong and aristocratic, (the tufts of useless hair you see between my toes proclaim the purity of my race) this very paw bore a bluish stain for eight days and the degrading odor of rusty steel clung to it a long time after ...
TOBY-DOG
What's the little pot for?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
He drinks from it doubtless.
(_Silence_.)
TOBY-DOG
She's not back yet! Heaven grant She isn't lost, as I was one day in the streets of Paris!
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
I'm hungry!
TOBY-DOG
I'm hungry! What are we going to eat this evening?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
I saw a chicken. It made a silly noise and dropped red blood on the kitchen floor, soiling it far more than I ever did, or you either--yet no one whipped it. But Emily put it in the fire, to teach it a lesson. I licked up some of the blood ...
TOBY-DOG, (_yawns_)
Chicken ... it makes my mouth water. She'll say: "Here Toby, bones!" and throw me the carcass.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
How badly you speak! He says: "Little chicken bones, Kiki, little chicken bones!"
TOBY-DOG, (_surprised_)
But no _really_ it's, "Here, Toby, bones!" that She says.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE
He speaks better than She does.
TOBY-DOG, (_incompetent_)
Ah?... Tell me, do birds taste anything like chicken?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_whose eyes light up suddenly_)
No ... they're far better, they're alive. Ha, the quivering bird, the warm feathers, the delicious little brain ... you feel it all crackling between your teeth!
TOBY-DOG
Oh, you make me sick! It always worries me to see tiny animals like that flutter about ... and birds are dear, good little things.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_dryly_)
Don't you believe it, they're only good to eat. They're noisy, stupid creatures, infatuated with themselves, _made_ to be eaten. ... You know the two jays?
TOBY-DOG
Not very well.
KIKI-THE-DEMURE They live in the little wood. When I walk by they laugh a sardonic "tiac, tiac," because I wear a bell at my neck. In vain do I hold my head very stiffly and put my paws down _very_ gently, my bell tinkles and the two creatures scream from the top of the fir-tree. Just let me get hold of them, one of these days!...
(_He lays back his ears and raises the hair along his back_.)
TOBY-DOG, (_pensive_) Positively, Cat, there are times when I don't know you. We are talking quietly and suddenly you bristle like a bottle-brush; or we happen to be playing amicably together and I bark behind your back--bow, wow-wow!--just for fun; then,--one doesn't know why, perhaps because my nose has grazed the long hairs on your legs you're so proud of--you become all at once a savage beast, spitting fire, and charging at me like a strange dog. Don't you think that shows a bad character?
KIKI-THE-DEMURE, (_mysterious, eyes half-closed_)
Not at all. It's character, simply. A Cat's character. In such moments of irritability, I'm keenly alive to the humiliation of my present state, and that of my race.