Chapter 34 ~ Inside The Cat’s Eyes
August 5, 2010
I sat across the table from Norris, staring at the book in front of me, trying to make sense of what I was reading.
A cat and a griffin – half eagle, half lion – on a desert island, with a pirate who looked like a matinee idol or a cowboy, dressed in blue, blond hair blowing in the island breeze, no sign of scars nor wounds, the cutlass attached to his hip little more than for show.
The griffin sat on a rock, watching the blue pirate.
Even though this was a reading book for five-year-olds, it was a feat of mental gymnastics just to make sense of the images, let alone the words. Why was that eagle’s head and shoulders on a lion’s body? It didn’t make sense. Why did the blue pirate look so composed when he was meant to be drunk on rum and sunshine?
“Try again,” Norris said, patiently now, an easy interaction that we’d slipped into in the weeks since our first, horrifying introduction.
I put my finger under the words.
“T… h…e… The…”
He nodded approval and encouragement.
“T… r… e… a…” looked up at him, trying to judge whether I was doing good, whether I might be caught out at any moment. His only response was a nod; continue.
“… s… u… r… e… Tree…”
“Treh.”
“Treh… Trehzure! Treasure! The treasure.” I smiled up at him, filled with success from two words.
He nodded.
“The treasure,” he said, “what comes next.”
He pointed at the page, tapping it lightly with his long, delicate, bony fingers. I looked at the words there, still feeling the elation of two words successfully spoken.
My eye was continually drawn back to that griffin sitting on the rock, chatting to the cat, watching the blue pirate and his meaningless cutlass.
Norris watched me. Intently. Hard.
I watched words blur before me as tears began to prick my eyes.
The pressure.
I couldn’t read. I could not read.
He tapped the page.
I could not read.
His finger lifted, came up to my chin, tilting it to face him. I looked at his glasses; light glinting made it difficult to read any expression or emotion within his eyes.
I was forced to trust his slight, empathetic smile.
“Kenny,” he said, “calm down. We have as long as it takes, we’re in no rush.”
“I don’t want to read anyway,” I grumbled, “reading’s stupid.”
This actually stopped him, a frown creasing his forehead for a moment. In the time it took to pucker and fade, I really wished I could see past the reflective lenses of his spectacles. But his frown was gone, passing through like a cloud.
“One day, Kenny,” he said, voice of empathy once more, “you will come to realise how wrong that statement is. I hope you can remember this conversation because I swear, it will make you laugh out loud. Now, do you want to tell me…”
“That griffin is…”
“Huh?”
“The griffin,” I continued, “he knows that the blue pirate is just pretending. He’s told the cat. The cat is laughing but keeping it inside. He doesn’t want to upset the pirate.”
A pause while he replayed what I had said.
“Why… er… why not?”
“Because the pirate feeds him, keeps him on the blue pirate ship where he can get fed on the ship rats and scraps from the table. That cat, he doesn’t want to have to live on the island if the blue pirate leaves him behind, so he doesn’t want to upset the blue pirate. No way, no how. He doesn’t want to upset the pirate.”
“That’s what you see in the picture?”
“Uh-huh.”
I sat back, concerned that I’d done something wrong, that he was going to break his tranquil mentorship and turn nasty.
“Uh… When did you… Er…. Make all that up?”
I looked at him; my turn to be perplexed.
“What?”
“All that, er…” he looked confused, “all that about the cat and the pirate. About the ship.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t make it up. It’s in the story.”
A long look. Searching my eyes.
“Kenny. It’s not in the story.”
“Yes it is.”
I pointed at the page.
“Kenny,” his voice gained a little force, “we’re on the third page. We know the content we’ve already read. There simply are not enough words to convey the story you just told.”
I looked at him. Confused. “But… But it’s in the book.”
“Kenny. It is not.”
I pointed at the picture, at the cat, perched on the rock, looking at the Griffin.
“What?” Norris said.
I tapped the picture again.
“I don’t see anything.” He peered at the picture.
“Look in the cat’s eyes,” I said, my voice choking, “look in its eyes.”
I sat back in the chair and began to cry.
He looked at the picture for a long time, unaware that he was trying to understand the nature of an emptiness inside me that could make a cartoon cat speak of motive, duplicity, calculation and odds.
