(urth) Short Story 110: The Cat

[Marc Aramini]

Sounds good. I did mean to imply it was something of her lost innocence,
and of course odilo sends it to leocadia on purpose - he gets revenge for
lomer and sancha.

On Tuesday, August 26, 2014, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote:

> On Tue, Aug 26, 2014 at 1:45 PM, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at gmail.com
> <javascript:;>> wrote:
> > The presence of the doll which appears at Sancha's death and the imagery
> of
> > Domnina associated with dolls after seeing the mirrors is interesting,
> but
> > it seems more likely that this is the toy Inire gave to Sancha as a
> child,
> > one linked especially to her.
>
> I found the thing 'not unlike a doll' to be quite mysterious when I
> first read it.
>
> I thought that it might be the returned form of the cat, but since it
> was buried with Sancha and the cat is supposed to be haunting other
> people, that doesn't work.
>
> The doll theory has a few problems: 1. we're never told that Sancha
> took the second, uncommon, path of being given a toy when Inire is too
> busy, are we? 2. where did the doll go all those years? Sancha tossed
> the *cat* in, not a hypothetical doll (and carrying both a doll and a
> cat sounds a bit excessive). 3. why did it bleed when pricked? 4. if
> it was a doll, why the odd phrasing 'a thing not unlike a doll'? In
> Wolfe, this means 'it looks a bit like but was definitely not a doll,
> can you figure out what it is?' 5. why bury a doll with Sanca?
>
> The thing is clearly a homunculus of some sort. Re-reading the story,
> here is what I think happens: Inire encounters a charming pleasant
> child who is interested in the wider universe, does not give her a toy
> but a story, then takes her to show all his gadgets, when she
> impetuously (as children often do) does something rash and
> ill-considered as toss her beloved pet into mortal danger and with it
> goes her childish innocence and ability to love possibly as a
> sacrifice to enable Inire to retrieve the cat partially as a spiteful
> spirit, with Sancha's lost moral traits returning at the very end as
> 'a lovely child just become a woman' and justly buried with her
> (shades of _The Picture of Dorian Gray_; the malign cat goes on to
> persecute Sancha's enemies.
>
> Picking out some important quotes:
>
> > As every thinking man acknowledges, mighty powers move through this dark
> universe of Briah, though for the most part hidden from us by its infinite
> night. Is it not every man's duty to record what little he has glimpsed
> that may give light to it? And do not such idle tales as I heard by the
> fire but serve to paint yet blacker that gloom through which we grope?
>
> This is quite a black opening and reason for Odilo to record what
> seems like a charming and harmless ghost story. Why is it so sinister?
> (Similar to "Suzanne Delage".)
>
> > She was (so my father said) an extraordinarily charming child, with the
> face of a peri and eyes that were always laughing, darker than most exulted
> children but so tall that she might have been supposed, at the age of seven
> or eight, to be a young woman of sixteen.
>
> So, to set the scene: Sancha is a very nice child. Odilo's father has
> nothing bad at all to say about her, and she is a lovely child who
> appears to almost be a woman.
>
> She meets Father Inire, whose attentions are worth having, but like
> most things worth having, come with risk:
>
> > Permit me to say at once that these children have often benefitted from
> his attention. It is true, perhaps, that they have sometimes suffered for
> it, but that has been seldom and I think by no means by his wish.
>
> The dangers of the mirror system are also mentioned elsewhere:
>
> > In Thecla's story, she and her thirteen year old friend Domnina play
> between Father Inire's two great mirrors, and move candelabra to opposite
> ends of them. Inire appears and warns them there is “an imp who waits in
> silvered glass and creeps into the eyes of those who look into it.” Thecla
> perceives this as an injunction against vanity, but Domnina asks if the imp
> is shaped like a tear. Inire indicates that the thing she has seen is
> someone else and invites her to return the next day to show her.
>
> With the mirrors, you truck with strange powers from out of time and
> space, whose effects may not always be physical (Lovecraft, anyone?).
> And remember Odilo's warning.
>
> Inire speaks with her, but seems to not give her a doll, as the
> description implies gadgetreey:
>
> > some many-hued toy of the kind that wise men and humble men such as I,
> and all women and children, call magical...Should he find that the toy
> remains unbroken
>
> Dolls wouldn't be particularly many-hued, magical, or easily-broken.
> This description doesn't fit the homunculus at the end, either. In
> particular, the incident seems to be Inire's *first* meeting with
> Sancha, when he has spare time after a long meeting, and Sancha has
> only her cat with her:
>
> > Such a pupil Sancha became, one winter morning when she was of seven
> years or thereabout and my father much the same. All her replies must have
> pleased Father Inire; and he was doubtless returning to his apartments in
> our Hypogeum Apotropaic from some night-long deliberation with the Autarch.
> He took her with him; and so my father met them, as he often told me, in
> that white corridor we call the Luminary Way. Even then, when my father was
> only a child himself, he was struck by the sight of them walking and
> chatting together, Father Inire bent nearly double, like a gnome in a
> nursery book, with no more nose than an alouatte; Sancha already towering
> over him, straight as a sapling, sable of hair and bright of eye, with her
> cat in her arms.
>
> (Note again the very positive description of Sancha.)
>
> Things go badly at the end. We don't know exactly what happens after
> the cat goes into the mirror; Odilo quite explicitly speculates and
> has no idea what actually happened:
>
> > Knowing Father Inire as I have been privileged to know him these many
> years, I feel certain he must have promised poor Sancha that he would do
> all that lay in his power to retrieve her pet, and that he must have kept
> faithfully to that promise
>
> So what *did* Father Inire do? The two of them must have done
> something to summon the spirit. Well, what often happens in order to
> traffic with and summon dark spirits...? You sacrifice something.
>
> On top of that, the summoned spirit seems pretty malicious:
>
> > So it became known, and quickly, that the girl Sancha was attended by
> some fey thing. When she and some friend sat alone at play, a pochette was
> knocked from a table and broken, or so it was said. On another occasion, a
> young man who sat conversing with Sancha (who must, I should think, have
> been somewhat older then) observed the ruffled body of a sparrow lying on
> the carpet at her feet, though she could scarcely have sat where she did
> without stepping upon it, had it been present when they began their talk.
>
> Every example is negative: destructive of things on tables, or
> littering dead creatures wantonly slain (pets don't go hungry, and
> certainly not spectral pets). There is no mention of, for example,
> sleeping on her lap or being petted.
>
> Then Sancha changes, becomes scandalous and argumentative and ugly and
> without friends and depending on Father Inire's charity and attracts
> company only for the cheap thrill that there may be a ghost:
>
> > As for Sancha, Aude said she believed the cat the only creature Sancha
> was ever to love, beyond herself; but that, I think, was spite; and Aude
> was but a giddypate, who knew the Chatelaine only when she was old. ...They
> were discovered together in that state which is too easily imagined.
> Sancha's rank and age equally exempted her from formal punishment; her age
> and her rank equally ensured that the disrepute would cling to her for
> life. ...and no one was surprised, my father said, to hear soon after that
> she had wed the heir of Fors-it was a country family not liable to know
> much of the gossip of the court, nor apt to care greatly for what it heard,
> while the Chatelaine was a young woman of some fortune, excellent family,
> and extraordinary beauty ...she returned and requested a suite in this
> hypogeum, which  Father Inire granted in observance of their old
> friendship. ...Her back was as bent as Father Inire's, her teeth had been
> made for her by a provincial ivory-turner, and her nose had become the
> hooked beak of a carrion bird. For whatever reason, her person now carried
> a disagreeable odor; she must have been aware of it, for she had ordered
> fires of sandalwood to counter it. ...Suffice it to say that she had borne
> several children, that her husband was dead, and that her elder son now
> directed the family estate. The Chatelaine did not get along well with his
> wife and had many disagreeable anecdotes to relate of her, of which the
> worst was that she had once denounced the Chatelaine as a gligua, such
> being the name the autochthons of the south employ for one who has traffic
> with diakka, casts spells, and the like. ...As the years passed, the
> Chatelaine Sancha had little need of birds or marmosets. The scandal was
> revived by doddering women who recollected it from childhood, and she
> attracted to herself a host of protegees, the daughters of armigers and
> exultants, eager to exhibit their tolerance and bathe in a notoriety that
> was without hazard.
>
> She doesn't seem terribly loving of her family, and Aude's comment is
> probably right - *after* the incident, she could no longer love
> anyone. Something was lost in the incident, and I don't think it was
> just the cat.
>
> Then the finale:
>
> > At the dying Chatelaine's cry, all turned to look at her. And all saw,
> as did I, that upon the snowy counterpane [bedspread] covering her withered
> body there had appeared the dark pawprint of some animal, and beside it a
> thing not unlike a doll. This was no longer than my hand, and yet it seemed
> in each detail a lovely child just become a woman. Nor was it of painted
> wood, or any other substance of which such toys are made; for when the
> physician pricked it with his lancet, a ruby drop shone forth.
> >
> > By the strict instructions of Father Inire, this little figure was
> interred with the Chatelaine Sancha. Our laundresses having proved
> incapable of removing the stain left by the creature's paw, I ordered the
> counterpane sent to the Chatelaine Leocadia, who being of the most advanced
> age was even then but dim of sight.
> >
> > She has since gone blind, and yet her maids report that she sees the
> cat, which stalks her in her dreams. It is not well for those of high
> station to involve the servants of their enemies in their quarrels.
>
> So as she dies, a silent homunculus reappears with the spirit, Father
> Inire (who knows what happened) orders it buried with Sancha and not
> otherwise, and the spirit goes on to haunt Sancha's enemy. (Open
> question: is it an accident that Odilo sends the haunted bedspread to
> Leocadia, who he noted 'suffered nothing', and closes with moralizing
> against Leocadia?)
>
> At least, this seems to explain everything, puts the key action into
> an explicit lacunae (very Wolfe-like), and indeed justifies Odilo's
> otherwise-hyperbolic opening - sacrificing parts of your soul to dark
> cosmic powers to retrieve a pet is indeed something to warn
> inhabitants of the House Absolute against, inasmuch as they live in
> close proximity to Father Inire & his mirrors.
>
> --
> gwern
> http://www.gwern.net
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