The Mouse and His Child
* * *
DURING THE EVENING that followed the morning of the flag-raising, the elephant was observed to be deep in thought as she stood on the platform looking into the parlor, where the fluttering light of one dim candle alternately gained and lost its little territory in the shadows. “Is anything troubling you, my dear?” the father asked.
“Not exactly troubling me,” said his wife. “But the house seems to want something more, and I cannot for the life of me think what it is.”
“Another flagpole, Mama?” suggested the child.
“No,” said the elephant.
“Carpeting on the stairs?” said the seal.
“No,” said the elephant.
“Lights,” offered a quiet voice from the weeds below.
“Of course!” exclaimed the elephant. “That’s what it is! It’s been so long since I lived indoors that I’d forgotten. This house used to have real lights, not just a few candle stubs.” She paused. “Who said that?” she asked.
Frog went to the edge of the platform and looked down. “Manny Rat,” he said.
“Ugh!” said the elephant. “I thought we had seen the last of that loathsome creature. Send him away.” The bittern launched himself from the platform, and the sometime boss of the dump cowered abjectly in the twilight among the weeds.
“Oh, please,” he cried, “do not send me away! I am nuffing now, and nobody! I can do no harm. Everybody laughs at Manny Rat now, and only yesterday vuh sexton beetle tried to bury me while I was napping. Have pity!”
“He really seems quite harmless now,” said the father.
“I can find some lights and put vem in for you,” said Manny Rat. “I can figure out all kinds of fings. I am handy, and a willing worker.”
“You used to like the dark,” the mouse child said.
“No more!” said Manny Rat. “Oh, a lonely fing is darkness! A fearful fing, and full of hateful laughs and whispers! No good ever came of darkness! Take me in and let me work for you! How beautiful your house would be wif lights!”
“Poor wretch!” the father said. “It’s difficult not to pity him.”
“Mercy!” pleaded Manny Rat. “Fink of it! Fink how I have helped you! Where would you be now if you had not had me to fight against! Could you have won vat victory if vere had been no Manny Rat to be defeated?”
“There is something in what he says,” agreed the frog.
“I won’t have him in my house,” said the elephant.
“Really, my dear,” said her husband, “I think that we no longer need have any fear of Manny Rat. It seems to me he’s learned his lesson.”
“And if he hasn’t,” said the bittern, “I shall be very happy to hammer it into him.”
“Aside from the fact that he’s a black-hearted villain, and not for a moment to be trusted,” said the elephant, “I find him personally offensive.”
“I will take a baff,” promised Manny Rat. “I will get a new dressing gown, and be clean and neat.”
The elephant sighed. “It would be nice to have real electric lights,” she said.
So the ladder was let down for him, and Manny Rat climbed upward once again.
* * *
THE FALLEN MASTER of the dump made good his pledge to bathe, and with the dirt, he seemed to shed the last of his pretensions. Chastened, subdued, and looking very much the humble penitent in his new dressing gown, a clean but coarse scrap of sacking, he dedicated himself to the task of bringing light to the house where he had reveled in darkness.
Having explained that results were not to be hoped for overnight, Manny Rat began his researches at once, and applied himself to a close examination of the traces of old wiring that still remained in the dollhouse. So it was that, looking at the house from the point of view of a diligent workman rather than that of a careless master, he found many other things that wanted doing.
No job was too heavy for him, none too menial: He swept and dusted and he washed the windows; he hewed and carried, and he made repairs and improvements far beyond the modest abilities of the little windup family and the three uncles. His eye was mild, and the old demonic fire that gleamed there once was seen no more. So meek was he, so touchingly grateful for the least kind word, that his transformation would have melted a heart of stone. The elephant, however, as impervious to his present humility as she had been to his past arrogance, made sure that he was kept under a surveillance both strict and constant.
* * *
THE FAMILY being comfortably settled in the dollhouse, the mouse and his child now found leisure time in which the problem of self-winding at last might be attempted. Therefore, taking stock of their spare-parts inventory, they began to consider how it might be done.
“Not only is the solution of such a problem far beyond my abilities,” said Frog, “but when you stop and think about it, it scarcely seems necessary. You have good friends to wind you, and all the clockwork anyone could ever want. An almost unlimited variety of activities is open to you at your convenience. Why would you want anything so tiring as constant motion?”
“You don’t know what it’s like to go through life the way we used to, never knowing where our next winding might be coming from,” the child said.
“It’s the principle of the thing,” said the father. “A mouse wants independence. Having fought for and won our territory, are we to be helpless to patrol its boundaries unassisted?”
The rest of the family withdrew, so that the mouse and his child might confront their problem undistracted. As father and son stood alone on the platform and looked out across the dump, the blue haze of autumn hung in the air; the leaves rattled their flaming colors in the wind; the gleaming railroad tracks converged in silence on the far horizon. The marsh hawk that had brought them to their victory and their house still skimmed above his swamp. The same black crows that cawed over the snowy junkyard almost a year ago now cawed on this day too, and the sound of another winter’s coming was in their voices.
“Key times Winding equals Go,” said the child.
“Go divided by Winding equals Key,” said the father.
“That isn’t getting us anywhere,” said the child. “Let’s start again.”
The father stood motionless, his empty arms held out before him. The child’s hands were poised above the nutshell drum that echoed to his voice. Their old, rusty motor lay on the platform before them as step by step, wheel by wheel, and cog by cog they reasoned their way through the clockwork that had driven them on their journey out into the world. The sunlight faded into dusk, then darkness rose up with its myriad voice below the red glow in the sky. Night passed into silent morning and the dawn; the Dog Star flashed and glimmered. The mouse and his child, beaded with dew, watched the sun come up, and wondered when they should achieve the daring leap of discovery and the X of self-winding.
Another day passed, another night without success and on the following morning they were no nearer to a solution than they had been when they started. Manny Rat, returning home across the silent dump with a coil of electrical wire, found them baffled and irritated, while a yawning bittern stood guard and shook his head.
“Spring times Cog … ” said the child.
“Times Cog times Wheel,” said the father, “and still no X.”
“Excuse me for saying so,” said Manny Rat, “but vere are fings vat simply cannot be figured out.”
“We figured out how to get out of the pond,” said the child, “and we figured out how to take the dollhouse away from you.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” said Manny Rat. “No one wants to listen to a loser.” Something of his old self flashed out from his glance. “Reasoning won’t do it all,” he said. “You have to have a feel for fings.” He put down his wire, picked up two motors from the spare-parts can, and hummed abstractedly to himself as he inspected them. “Going and ungoing,” he murmured, and followed the coils of the steel springs caressingly with his paw. Then he sat down with the motors in his lap, and still humming, retrac
ed the sequence of the gear trains.
Thus peacefully occupied, Manny Rat seemed completely different from his old satanic self, seemed almost another kindly uncle. Watching him, the mouse child found it difficult to believe that this was the cold-blooded murderer of windups whose fond hope only lately had been to smash him and his father.
And Manny Rat, humming placidly as if he were indeed an uncle repairing a favorite nephew’s plaything, had the same surprising thought. He stole a sidewise glance at father and son. They were not unlike him, he realized for the first time; almost they were tin caricatures of himself. In their long exposure to the weather, moss had rooted in the crevices of their tin, and now it covered them like soft green fur. Manny Rat laughed inwardly. Perhaps they were becoming animals, and he, once the most powerful animal in the dump, would turn into a toy. After all, why not? Had not their roles been totally reversed? Had not the hunted become the hunters, the losers winners? Had not they risen to his high place as he fell from it? Just such a spring as these he held had flung the coin that knocked out all his teeth. His nose quivered as he looked down at the worn brass disk that was cool against his chest, and he opened and closed his jaws as if he still could bite. Out of the corner of his eye he noted that the bittern, however sleepy, was alert and watchful. “Ungoing into going and back again,” muttered Manny Rat, and tried to sense how energy released by one spring could be made to wind another spring.
The hours passed unheeded; twilight came again, and evening. The guardian uncles, relieving one another in regular shifts, had rotated five times through their roster. Inside the dollhouse, Frog, coming off duty, lit the candles, and the blue and green and amber windows cast colored lights and shadows on the platform and the figures grouped upon it.
“And vis goes here,” said Manny Rat, “and now we attach vis …” Almost against his will he saw his own paws find the answer that would make the triumph of his enemies complete. He had a sudden craving for treacle brittle, and sadly shook his head.
He reached for the pliers, and made connecting rods from wire so that he could rearrange the gear trains. Then he saw his paws couple the two motors together and wind one up. As the first buzzing spring uncoiled it clickingly wound up the second one, which, running down, rewound the first. Manny Rat put down the motors, stood up, and watched them wind and unwind reciprocally for several minutes. With an odd little questioning smile he picked up his screwdriver and touched the mouse father’s tin with it.
“Go ahead,” said the father, and felt his senses leave him as he and the child were taken apart.
They returned to consciousness to find themselves walking, the springs inside them buzzing and clicking as they alternately expanded and contracted their coils. Manny Rat turned away without a word, dragging with him the wire he had brought home from the dump. The soft light from the windows streamed over him, and his departing shadow passed across the father and the son.
“Look, Papa!” said the child. “He did it! We’re self-winding! Oh, thank you! Thank you, Uncle Manny!”
Manny Rat dropped the wire and whirled around. “What’s vat?” he whispered.
“I didn’t mean —” the child stammered. “I meant —”
“He meant to thank you. That was all,” the father said.
Manny Rat nodded, turned his back on them, and went into the house.
So it was that the mouse and his child became self-winding, that they might unassisted walk the boundaries of the territory they had won from Manny Rat.
AFTER HIS REMARKABLE SUCCESS with the problem of self-winding, Manny Rat sharply accelerated his preparations for the illumination of the dollhouse. He had worked hard before, but now he seemed a driven rat. He was gone for days at a time on research expeditions in the walls of houses in the town. He found and stole miles of wire and masses of old and new equipment: miniature sockets and switches, transformers, fuses, and circuit breakers in quantities sufficient for the electrification of a dozen full-size houses.
His manner changed perceptibly; the meekness that had marked his fresh start came and went in flashes now. What was past was past, his attitude implied, and he was looking to the future. He came and went with more assurance and a brisker step, was impatient of questions and short in his answers as his preliminary work approached completion and the business of the final wiring drew near.
At last all was ready: Wires had been stapled onto walls and ceilings all over the house; sockets had been screwed in place, and switches affixed. Brand-new miniature lightbulbs made their gleaming appearance. A model railroad transformer stood, black and mysterious, in the parlor, where it was quickly covered with a fringed cloth at the elephant’s command.
“Tonight is vuh night!” said Manny Rat, and rubbed his paws together, chuckling.
“I can hardly wait for nightfall,” said the seal. “How pretty the house will look, all lit up!”
“Yes, indeed!” said Manny Rat. “It’ll be seen for miles. I promise you vat.”
“And yet, I shouldn’t like it too bright and glaring,” said the elephant. “I’d like the effect to be warm and cozy, you know.”
“Oh, yes,” Manny Rat assured her with a toothless grin, “it’ll be warm.” And he busied himself with the materials necessary for connecting the wires from the house to those strung from pole to pole along the railroad tracks.
Toward dusk, his preparations nearly finished, the ardent electrician coiled up the wire he would need and placed it on the platform. There he stopped for a lingering look at the mouse and his child, self-windingly and interminably walking their boundaries single file, prevented from going over the edge by a guard rail he had built.
The child wore his little drum as if in constant readiness to sound a call to arms. The father paced the platform with the air of a newly prosperous landowner surveying his broad acres. Behind them, wound by Frog, strolled the elephant and the seal. The elephant, now that she was Mrs. Mouse, had begun to take some little pains with her appearance. Wearing a black eye-patch over the missing eye and a bright kerchief knotted over the missing ear, she achieved a look both charmingly rakish and surprisingly chic. The seal spun a gay parasol on the rod that projected upward from her nose, and the whole little party, in their manifest contentment, mutual esteem, and pride of place, burned their image unforgettably upon the brain of Manny Rat.
Going back into the house, he went to the parlor and took from a cupboard two large, red, brass-tipped cardboard cylinders. With his beer-can opener he tore open both of them and removed a quantity of lead pellets, which he threw out of the window into the weeds below. Next, he made a careful circuit of the parlor, scattering from the cardboard cylinders a train of black powder all around the room. That done, the empty cylinders followed the pellets out of the window.
The bittern, who had been watching him with an unwinking, yellow-spectacle-eyed stare, pointed one large foot at the powder train. “What’s that you’ve spilled on the floor?” he asked.
“Electrical powder,” snapped Manny Rat authoritatively. “You can’t very well have electric lights wifout electrical powder.”
The bittern, born and bred in the marshes, had had no acquaintance whatever with electricity, nor did he recognize shotgun shells and gunpowder when he saw them. So he nodded wisely, pointed his beak straight up to show that he understood, and held his peace.
“Now ven,” said Manny Rat, “it’s time to make connections.” He unwound some of the coils on the platform and led two wires in through the window, but did not connect them to the transformer as he should have. Instead, he placed the wires on the floor about an inch apart, fastened them with insulated staples, then laid the brass good-luck coin across the two bare ends. The words YOUR LUCKY DAY were facing up. Manny Rat heaped gunpowder over the coin and the wires and left the parlor, winking at the bittern as he went.
The ex-boss of the dump’s conversion to goodness, auspiciously as it had begun, had suffered a jolting setback with his gift of self-winding to the mous
e and his child. He had crowned the victory of those who ruined him, and the strain upon his moral fiber was too great; however black his sins had been, such high atonement was a heavy burden on him, and his mind almost gave way beneath it. Manny Rat clutched desperately at sanity, and with a sigh he gave himself again to evil.
It was in that frame of mind that he had resolved to illuminate the dollhouse in a manner very different from his original intention: He decided to burn it down.
He had avoided anything so obvious as matches, and he thoroughly enjoyed the artfulness of his deception. All he need do now was to connect the other ends of the wires to the power lines along the railroad tracks. As soon as that was done, a spark would leap up in the parlor where the coin lay on the wires, the flash would ignite the gunpowder, and the dollhouse would be submitted once again to fire, this time to burn like a torch until there would be nothing left. Manny Rat giggled as he imagined the mouse and his child, charred specters, treading endlessly the ashes of their territory. Then, slinging the loops of wire over his shoulder, he descended the string ladder, unreeling wire as he went.
It was at this point that the elephant, returning from the family promenade, came into the parlor. “Good heavens!” she said. “What’s all this?”
“Electrical powder,” said the bittern knowledgeably. “You can’t very well have lights without it.”
“Nonsense,” said the elephant. “Power is what you mean to say, not powder. I’ve seen electric lights before, and there was never any mess like this. Men simply won’t clean up after themselves — that’s what it amounts to. Wind me up, please, and attach my broom. That rat seems to think that just because he’s got no teeth he can do pretty much as he likes,” she said grimly. “But if he thinks he can turn my house into a dump, he’s very much mistaken.”