These frogs really had it better than anyone else. Here, due to the moisture, grew the only weeds in the village, and this odd variety of mountain frog, mottled green and white, was hopping and splashing, swimming. They say the air is the final home of the soul, but I think that as far as the senses go you probably can’t find a sweeter medium than water. So the life of those frogs must have been beautiful, and they fulfilled their ideal, it seemed to me, as they coasted by our feet with those bright wet skins and their white legs and the emotional throats, their eyes like bubbles. While the rest of us, represented by Romilayu and me, were hot and sweaty, burning. In the thatch-intensified shadow of evening my face felt as if it were on fire, as if it were the opening of a volcano. My jaws were all swelled out and I half believed that if I had turned off the flashlight we could have seen those frogs in the cistern by the glare emanating from me.
“They’ve got it very good, these creatures,” I said to Romilayu, “while it lasts.” And I swung the big flashlight to and fro over the water in which they were massed. Under other circumstances I might have taken a tolerant or even affectionate attitude toward them. Basically, I had nothing against them.
“What fo’ you laugh, sah?”
“Am I laughing? I didn’t realize,” I said. “These are really great singers. Back in Connecticut we have mostly cheepers, but these have bass voices. Listen,” I said, “I can make out all kinds of things. Ta dam-dam-dum. Agnus Dei—Agnus Dei qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere no-ho-bis! It’s Mozart. Mozart, I swear! They’ve got a right to sing miserere, poor little bastards, as the hinge of fate is about to swing back on them.”
“Poor little bastards” was what I said, but in actual fact I was gloating—yuck-yuck-yuck! My heart was already fattening in anticipation of their death. We hate death, we fear death, but when you get right down to cases, there’s nothing like it. I was sorry for the cows, yes, and on the humane side I was fine. I checked out one hundred per cent. But still I hungered to let fall the ultimate violence on these creatures in the cistern.
At the same time I couldn’t help being aware of the discrepancies between us. On the one side these fundamentally harmless little semi-fishes who were not to blame for the fear they were held in by the Arnewi. On the other side, a millionaire several times over, six feet four in height, weighing two hundred and thirty pounds, socially prominent, and a combat officer holding the Purple Heart and other decorations. But I wasn’t responsible for this, was I? However, it remains to be recorded that I was once more fatally embroiled with animals, according to the prophecy of Daniel which I had never been able to shake off—“They shall drive you from among men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field.” Not counting the pigs, to whom I related myself legitimately as a breeder, there was an involvement with an animal very recently which weighed heavily on my mind and conscience. On the eve of my assault on the frogs it was this creature, a cat, I was thinking of, and I had better tell why.
I have told about the building remodeled by Lily on our property. She rented it to a mathematics teacher and his wife. The house had no insulation and the tenants complained and I evicted them. It was over them and their cat that Lily and I were having our row when Miss Lenox dropped dead. This cat was a young male with brown and gray smoky fur.
Twice these tenants came over to the house to discuss the heating. Pretending to know nothing about it, I followed the matter with interest, spying on them from upstairs when they arrived. I listened to their voices in the parlor and knew Lily was trying to conciliate them. I was lurking in the second-floor hall in my red bathrobe and the Wellingtons from the barnyard. Subsequently when Lily tried to discuss it with me I said to her, “It’s your headache. I never wanted strangers around anyway.” I believed that she had brought them on the place to make friends of them and I was opposed. “What bothers them? Is it the pigs?” “No,” Lily said, “they haven’t said a word against the pigs.” “Hah! I have seen their faces when the mash was cooking,” I said, “and I can’t understand why you have to have a second house fixed up when you won’t even take care of the first.”
The second and last time they came much more determined to make their complaint, and I watched from the bedroom, brushing my hair with a pair of brushes; I saw the smoky tom cat following them, bounding through the broken stalks of the frozen vegetable garden. Broccoli looks spectacular when the frost hits it. The conference began below, and I couldn’t stand it any more and started to stamp my feet on the floor above the parlor. Finally I yelled down the stairs, “Get the hell out of here, and move off my property!”
The tenant said, “We will, but we want our deposit and you ought to foot the moving bill too.”
“Good,” I said, “you come up and collect the money from me,” and I pounded in the stairwell with my Wellingtons and yelled, “Get out!”
And so they did, but the point is they abandoned their cat, and I didn’t want a cat going wild on my place. Cats gone wild are bad business, and this was a very powerful animal. I had watched him hunting and playing with a chipmunk. For five years once we had suffered with such a cat who lived in an old woodchuck burrow near the pond. He fought all the barn toms and gave them septic scratches and tore out their eyes. I tried to kill him with poisoned fish and smoke bombs and spent whole days in the woods on my knees near his burrow, waiting to get him. Therefore I said to Lily, “If this animal goes wild like the other one, you’ll regret it.”
“The people are coming back for him,” she said.
“I don’t believe it for a minute. They’ve dumped him. And you don’t know what wild cats can be like. Why, I’d rather have a lynx around the place.”
We had a hired man named Hannock, and I went to the barn and said to him, “Where’s the tom those damned civilians left behind?” It was then late in the fall and he was storing apples, tossing aside windfalls for what pigs there were left. Hannock was very much opposed to the pigs, which had ruined the grass and the garden.
“He’s no trouble, Mr. Henderson. He’s a good little cat,” said Hannock.
“Did they pay you to take care of him?” I said, and he was afraid to say yes and lied to me. In actuality they had given him two bottles of whisky and a case of dried milk (Starlac).
He said, “Naw, they didn’t, but I will. He ain’t no trouble to me.”
“There’s going to be no animal abandoned on my property,” I said, and I went over the farm calling, “Minnie-Minnie.” Finally the cat came into my hands and didn’t fight when I lifted him by the scruff and carried him to a room in the attic and locked him in. I sent a registered letter special delivery to the owners and gave them until four o’clock next day to come for him. Otherwise, I threatened, I’d have him put away.
I showed Lily the receipt of the registered letter and told her the cat was in my possession. She tried to prevail on me and even got all dressed at dinner time, with powder on her face. At the table I could feel her tremble and knew she was about to reason with me. “What’s the matter? You’re not eating,” I said, for she normally eats a great deal and I have had restaurant people tell me they never saw a woman who could put away the food like that. Two plank steaks and six bottles of beer are not too much for her when she’s in condition. As a matter of fact, I am very proud of Lily’s capacity.
“You’re not eating, either,” was Lily’s answer.
“That’s because I’ve got something on my mind. I’m extremely sore,” I said. “I’m in a state.”
“Baby, don’t be like that,” she said.
But the emotion, whatever it was, filled me so that my very flesh disagreed with the bones. I felt terrible.
I didn’t tell Lily what I was planning to do, but at 3:59 next day, no answer having come from the ex-tenants, I went upstairs to carry out my threat. I carried a shopping bag from Grusan’s market and in it was the pistol. There was plenty of light in the small wallpapered attic room. I said to the tom cat, “They’ve cast you away, kitty.” He flatt
ened himself to the wall, arched and bristling. I tried to aim at him from above and finally had to sit on the floor, sighting between the legs of a bridge table which was there. In this small space, I didn’t want to fire more than a single shot. From reading about Pancho Villa I had picked up the Mexican method of marksmanship, which is to aim with the forefinger on the barrel and press the trigger with the middle finger, because the forefinger is the most accurate pointer at our disposal. Thus I got the center of his head under my (somewhat twisted) forefinger, and fired, but my will was not truly bent on his death, and I missed. That is the only explanation for missing at a distance of eight feet. I opened the door and he bolted. On the staircase, with her beautiful neck stretched forth and her face white with fear, was Lily. To her a pistol fired in a house meant only one thing—it recalled the death of her father. The shock of the shot was still upon me, the empty shopping bag hung by my side.
“What did you do?” said Lily.
“I tried to do what I said I would. Hell!”
The phone began to ring and I went past her to answer it. It was the tenant’s wife, and I said, “What did you wait so long for? Now it’s almost too late.”
She burst into tears and I myself felt very bad. And I yelled, “Come and take your bloody damned cat away. You city people don’t care about animals. Why, you can’t just abandon a cat.”
The confusing thing is that I always have some real basic motivation, and how I go so wrong, I can never understand.
And so, on the brink of the cistern, the problem of how to eliminate the frogs touched off this other memory. “But this is different,” I thought. “Here it is clear, and besides, it will show what I meant by going after that cat.” So I hoped, for my heart was wrung by the memory, and I felt tremendous sorrow. It had been a very close thing—almost a deadly sin.
Facing the practical situation, however, I considered various alternatives, like dredging, or poisons, and none of them seemed advisable. I told Romilayu, “The only method that figures is a bomb. One blast will kill all these little buggers, and when they’re floating dead on top all we have to do is come and skim them off, and the Arnewi can water their cattle again. It’s simple.”
When my idea did get across to him at last, he said, “Oh, no, no, sah.”
“What, ‘No, no, sah!’ Don’t be a jerk, I’m an old soldier and I know what I’m talking about.” But it was no use arguing with him; the idea of an explosion frightened him and I said, “Okay, Romilayu, let’s go to our shack then and get some sleep. It’s been a big day and we’ve got lots to do tomorrow.”
So we went back to the hut, and he began to say his prayers. Romilayu had begun to get my number; I believe he liked me, but it was dawning on him that I was rash and unlucky and acted without sufficient reflection. So he sank on his knees and his haunches pressed on the muscles of his calves and spread them; his big heels were visible beneath. He pressed his hands together, palm to palm, with the fingers spread wide apart under his chin. Often I would say to him, or mutter, “Put in a good word for me,” and I half meant it.
When Romilayu was done praying he lay on his side and tucked one hand between his knees, which were drawn up. The other hand he slipped under his cheek. In this position he always slept. I, too, lay down on my blanket in the dark hut, out of range of the moonbeams. I don’t often suffer from insomnia but tonight I had a lot of things on my mind, the prophecy of Daniel, the cat, the frogs, the ancient-looking place, the weeping delegation, the wrestling match with Itelo, and the queen having looked into my heart and telling me of the grun-tu-molani. All this was mixed up in my head and excited me greatly, and I kept thinking of the best way to blow up those frogs. Naturally I know a little something about explosives, and I thought I could take out the two batteries and manufacture a pretty good bomb in my flashlight case by filling it with powder from the shells of my .375 H and H Magnum. They carry quite a charge, believe me, and could be used on an elephant. I had bought the .375 especially for this trip to Africa after reading about it in Life or Look. A fellow from Michigan who had one went to Alaska as soon as his vacation started; he flew to Alaska and hired a guide to track a Kodiak bear; they found the bear and chased him over cliffs and marshes and shot him at four hundred yards. Myself, I used to have a certain interest in hunting, but as I grew older it seemed a strange way to relate to nature. What I mean is, a man goes into the external world, and all he can do with it is to shoot it? It doesn’t make sense. So in October when the season starts and the gunsmoke pours out of the bushes and the animals panic and run back and forth, I go out and pinch the hunters for shooting on my posted property. I take them to the Justice of the Peace and he fines them.
Thus having decided in the hut to take the shells and use them in my bomb, I lay grinning at the surprise those frogs had coming, and also somewhat at myself, because I was anticipating the gratitude of Willatale and Mtalba and Itelo and all the people; and I went so far as to imagine that the queen would elevate me to a position equal to her own. But I would say, “No, no. I didn’t leave home to achieve power or glory, and any little favor I do you is free.”
With all this going on within me I couldn’t sleep, and if I were going to prepare the bomb tomorrow I needed my rest badly. I am something of a crank about sleep, for somehow if I get seven and a quarter hours instead of eight I feel afflicted and drag myself around, although there’s nothing really wrong with me. It’s just another idea. That’s how it is with my ideas; they seem to get strong while I weaken.
While I was lying awake I had a visit from Mtalba. Coming in, she shut off the moonlight in the doorway and then sat down near me on the floor, sighing, and took my hand, and talked softly and made me touch her skin, which was certainly wonderfully soft; she had a right to be vain of it. Though I felt it, I acted oblivious and refused to respond, but my bulk lay extended on the blanket and I fixed my gaze on the thatch while I tried to concentrate on putting together the bomb. I unscrewed the top of the flashlight (in thought) and dumped the batteries in the front end; I cut open the shells and let the powder trickle into the flashlight case. But how would I ignite it? The water presented me with a special problem. What would I use for a fuse, and how would I keep it from getting wet? I might take some strands from the wick of my Austrian lighter and soak them for a long time in the fluid. Or else a shoelace; a wax shoelace might be perfect. Such was my line of thought, and all the while Princess Mtalba sat beside me licking me and smooching my fingers. I felt very guilty about that and thought, if she knew what offenses I had committed with those same hands, she might think twice before lifting them to her lips. Now she was on the very finger with which I had aimed the revolver at the cat and a pang shot through it and into my arm and so on through the rest of the nervous system. If she had been able to understand I would have said, “Beautiful lady” (for she was considered a great beauty and I could see why)—“Beautiful lady, I am not the man you think I am. I have incredible things on my conscience and am very fierce in character. Even my pigs were afraid of me.”
And yet it isn’t always easy to deter women. They do take such types of men upon themselves—drunkards, fools, criminals. Love is what gives them the power to do it, I guess, canceling all those terrible things. I am not dumb and blind, and I have observed a connection between women’s love and the great principles of life. If I hadn’t picked this up by myself, surely Lily would have pointed it out to me.
Romilayu didn’t wake but slept on with one hand slipped under his scarred cheek and the hair swelled out from his head to one side. Glassy rainbows from the moon passed across the doorway, and there were fires outside made with dried dung and thorn branches. The Arnewi were sitting up with their dying cattle. As Mtalba continued to sigh and caress and smooch me and lead my fingertips over her skin and between her lips, I realized she had come for a purpose, this mountainous woman with the indigo hair, and I lifted my arm and let it fall on Romilayu’s face. He opened his eyes then but didn’t remove the hand f
rom under his cheek or otherwise change his position.
“Romilayu.”
“Whut you want, sah?” said he, still lying there.
“Sit up, sit up. We have a visitor.” He was unsurprised by this and he rose. Moonlight came in by way of the wickerwork and the door, the moon growing more clean and pure, as if perfuming the air, not only lighting it. Mtalba sat with her arms at rest upon the slopes of her body. “Find out what is the purpose of this visit,” I said.
And so he began to talk to her, and addressed her formally, for he was a great stickler, Romilayu, for correctness, African style, and was on his court manners even in the middle of the night. Then Mtalba started to speak. She had a sweet voice, sometimes rapid and sometimes drawling in her throat. From this conversation the fact came out that she wanted me to buy her, and, realizing that I didn’t have the bride price, she had brought it to me tonight. “Got to pay, sah, fo’ womans.”
“That I know, pal.”
“You don’ pay, womans no respect himself, sah.”
Then I started to say that I was a rich man and could afford any kind of price, but I realized that money had nothing to do with it and I said, “Hah, that’s very handsome of her. She is built like Mount Everest but has a lot of delicacy. Tell her I thank her and send her home. What time is it, I wonder. Christ, if I don’t get my sleep I’ll be in no condition to take on those frogs tomorrow. Don’t you see, Romilayu, the thing is up to me alone?”
But he said all the stuff she had brought was lying outside, and she wanted me to see it, and so I rose, highly unwilling, and we went out of the hut. She had come with an escort, and when they saw me in the moonlight with my sun helmet they began to cheer as if I were the groom already—they did it softly as the hour was late. The gifts were lying on a big mat, and they made a large mound—robes, ornaments, drums, paints, and dyes: she gave Romilayu an inventory of the contents and he was transmitting it.