The Cat Who Had 14 Tales Part 9

"SuSu is not troubled with insomnia," I informed him. "She sleeps twenty hours a day." Mr. Van looked at me with scorn. "You are wrong. Cats never sleep. You think they are sleeping, but cats are the most wakeful creatures on earth. That is-s-s one of their secrets."

After he had gone, I said to Gertrude: "I know you like the fellow, but you must admit he's off his rocker."

"He's just a little eccentric."

"If he has a million dollars' worth of antiques, which I doubt, why is he living in this run-down building? And why doesn't he buy a wheelchair that's easier to operate?"

"Because he's a Dutchman, I suppose," was Gertrude's explanation.

"And how about all those ridiculous things he says about cats?"

"I'm beginning to think they're true."

"And who is the fellow who lives with him? Is he a servant, or a nurse, or a keeper, or what? I see him coming and going on the elevator, but he never speaks-not one word.

He doesn't even seem to have a name, and Mr. Van treats him like a slave. I'm not sure we should go tomorrow night. The whole situation is too strange." Nevertheless, we went. The Hollander's apartment was jammed with furniture and bric-a-brac, and he shouted at his companion: "Move that rommel so the ladies can sit down." Sullenly the fellow removed some paintings and tapestries from the seat of a carved sofa.

"Now get out of here!" Mr. Van shouted at him. "Get yourself a beer," and he threw the man some money with less grace than one would throw a dog a bone.

While SuSu explored the premises we drank our coffee, and then Mr. Van showed us his treasures, propelling his wheelchair through a maze of furniture. He pointed out Chippendale-this and Affleck-that and Newport-something-else. They were treasures to him, but to me they were musty relics of a dead past.

"I am in the antique business," Mr. Van explained. "Before I was-s-s chained to this wheelchair, I had a shop and exhibited at the major shows. Then . . . I was-s-s in a bad auto accident, and now I sell from the apartment. By appointment only."

"Can you do that successfully?" Gertrude asked.

"And why not? The museum people know me, and collectors come here from all over the country. I buy. I sell. And my man Frank does the legwork. He is-s-s the perfect a.s.sistant for an antique dealer-strong in the back, weak in the head."

"Where did you find him?"

"On a junk heap. I have taught him enough to be useful to me, but not enough to be useful to himself. A smart arrangement, eh?" Mr. Van winked. "He is-s-s a smeerlap, but I am helpless without him . . . . Hoo! Look at my little sweetheart. She has-s-s found a prize!"

SuSu was sniffing at a silver bowl with two handles.

Mr. Van nodded approvingly. "It is a caudle cup made by Jeremiah Dummer of Boston in the late seventeenth century-for a certain lady in Salem. They said she was-s-s a witch. Look at my little sweetheart. She knows!"

I coughed and said: "Yes, indeed. You're lucky to have Frank."

"You think I do not know it?" Mr. Van said in a snappish tone. "That is-s-s why I keep him poor. If I gave him wages, he would get ideas. A smeerlap with ideas-there is-s-s nothing worse."

"How long ago was your accident?"

"Five years, and it was-s-s that idiot's fault. He did it! He did this to me!" The man's voice rose to a shout, and his face turned red as he pounded the arms of his wheelchair with his fist. Then SuSu rubbed against his ankles, and he stroked her and began to calm down. "Yes, five years in this miserable chair. We were driving to an antique show in the station wagon. Sixty miles an hour-and he went through a red light and hit a truck. A gravel truck!"

Gertrude put both hands to her face. "How terrible, Mr. Van!"

"I remember packing the wagon for that trip. I was-s-s complaining all the time about sore arches. Hah! What I would give for some sore arches today yet!"

"Wasn't Frank hurt?"

Mr. Van made an impatient gesture. "His-s-s head only. They picked Waterford crystal out of that blockhead for six hours. He has-s-s been gek ever since." He tapped his temple.

"Where did you find this unusual wheelchair?" I asked.

"My dear Mevrouw, never ask a dealer where he found something. It was-s-s made for a railroad millionaire in 1872. It has-s-s the original plush. If you must spend your life in a wheelchair, have one that gives some pleasure. And now we come to the purpose of tonight's visit. Ladies, I want you to do something for me." He wheeled himself to a desk, and Gertrude and I exchanged anxious glances.

"Here in this desk is-s-s a new will I have written, and I need witnesses. I am leaving a few choice items to museums. Everything else is-s-s to be sold and the proceeds used to establish a foundation."

"What about Frank?" asked Gertrude, who is always genuinely concerned about others.

"Bah! Nothing for that smeerlap! . . . But before you ladies sign the papers, there is-s-s one thing I must write down. What is-s-s the full name of my little sweetheart?" We both hesitated, and finally I said: "Her registered name is Superior Suda of Siam."

"Good! I will make it the Superior Suda Foundation. That gives me pleasure. Making a will is-s-s a dismal business, like a wheelchair, so give yourself some pleasure."

"What-ah-will be the purpose of the foundation?" I asked.

Mr. Van blessed us with one of his ambiguous smiles. "It will sponsor research," he said.

"I want universities to study the highly developed mental perception of the domestic feline and apply the knowledge to the improvement of the human mind. Ladies, there is-s-s nothing better I could do with my fortune. Man is-s-s eons behind the smallest fireside grimalkin." He gave us a canny look, and his eyes narrowed. "I am in a position to know."

We witnessed the man's signature. What else could we do? A few days later we left on vacation and never saw Mr. Van again.

Gertrude and I always went south for three weeks in winter, taking SuSu with us. When we returned, the sorry news about our eccentric neighbor was thrown at us without ceremony.

We met Frank on the elevator as we were taking our luggage upstairs, and for the first time he spoke. That in itself was a shock.

He said simply, without any polite preliminaries: "They took him away."

"What's that? What did you say?" we both clamored at once.

"They took him away." It was surprising to find that the voice of this muscular man was high-pitched and rasping.

"What happened to Mr. Van?" my sister demanded.

"He cracked up. His folks come from Pennsylvania and took him back home. He's in a nut hospital."

I saw Gertrude wince, and she said: "Is it serious?" Frank shrugged.

"What will happen to all his antiques?"

"His folks told me to dump the junk."

"But they're valuable things, aren't they?"

"Nah. Junk. He give everybody that guff about museums and all." Frank shrugged again and tapped his head. "He was gek."

In stunned wonderment my sister and I reached our apartment, and I could hardly wait to say it: "I told you your Dutchman was unbalanced."

"Such a pity," she murmured.

"What do you think of the sudden change in Frank? He acts like a free man. It must have been terrible living with that old Scrooge."

"I'll miss Mr. Van," Gertrude said softly. "He was very interesting. SuSu will miss him, too."

But SuSu, we observed later that evening, was not willing to relinquish her friend in the wheelchair as easily as we had done.

We were unpacking the vacation luggage after dinner when SuSu staged her demonstration. She started to gurgle and prance, exactly as she had done all winter whenever Mr. Van was approaching our door. Gertrude and I watched her, waiting for the bell to ring. When SuSu trotted expectantly to the door, we followed. She was behaving in an extraordinary manner. She craned her neck, made weaving motions with her head, rolled over on her back, and stretched luxuriously, all the while purring her heart out; but the doorbell never rang.

Looking at my watch, I said: "It's eight-thirty. SuSu remembers."

"It's quite touching, isn't it?" Gertrude remarked.

That was not the end of SuSu's demonstrations. Almost every night at half past eight she performed the same ritual.

I recalled how SuSu had continued to sleep in the guest room long after we had moved her bed to another place. "Cats hate to give up a habit. But she'll forget Mr. Van's visits after a while."

SuSu did not forget. A few weeks pa.s.sed. Then we had a foretaste of spring and a sudden thaw. People went without coats prematurely, convertibles cruised with the tops down, and a few hopeful fishermen appeared on the wharf at the foot of our street, although the river was still patched with ice.

On one of these warm evenings we walked SuSu down to the park for her first spring outing, expecting her to go after last year's dried weeds with snapping jaws. Instead, she tugged at her leash, pulling toward the boardwalk. Out of curiosity we let her have her way, and there on the edge of the wharf she staged her weird performance once more- gurgling, arching her back, craning her neck with joy.

"She's doing it again," I said. "I wonder what the reason could be." Gertrude said, almost in a whisper: "Remember what Mr. Van said about cats and ghosts?"

"Look at that animal! You'd swear she was rubbing against someone's ankles. I wish she'd stop. It makes me uneasy."

"I wonder," said my sister very slowly, "if Mr. Van is really in a mental hospital."

"What do you mean?"

"Or is he-down there?" Gertrude pointed uncertainly over the edge of the wharf. "I think Mr. Van is dead, and SuSu knows."

"That's too fantastic," I said. "Really, Gertrude!"

"I think Frank pushed the poor man off the wharf, wheelchair and all-perhaps one dark night when Mr. Van couldn't sleep and insisted on being wheeled to the park."

"You're not serious, Gertrude."

"Can't you see it? . . . A cold night. The riverfront deserted. Mr. Van trussed in his wheelchair with a blanket. Why, that chair would sink like lead! What a terrible thing!

That icy water. That poor helpless man."

"I just can't-"

"Now Frank is free, and he has all those antiques, and n.o.body cares enough to ask questions. He can sell them and be set up for life."

"And he tears up the will," I suggested, succ.u.mbing to Gertrude's fantasy.

"Do you know what a Newport blockfront is worth? I've been looking it up in the library. A chest like the one we saw in Mr. Van's apartment was sold for hundreds of thousands at an auction on the East Coast."

"But what about the relatives in Pennsylvania?"

"I'm sure Mr. Van had no relatives-in Pennsylvania or anywhere else."

"Well, what do you propose we should do?" I said in exasperation. "Report it to the manager of the building? Notify the police? Tell them we think the man has been murdered because our cat sees his ghost every night at eight-thirty? We'd look like a couple of middle-aged ladies who are getting a little gek." As a matter of fact, I was beginning to worry about Gertrude's obsession-that is, until I read the morning paper a few days later.

I skimmed through it at the breakfast table, and there-at the bottom of page seven-one small item leaped off the paper at me. Could I believe my eyes?

"Listen to this," I said to my sister. "The body of an unidentified man has been washed up on a downriver island. Police say the body had apparently been held underwater for several weeks by the ice . . . . About fifty-five years old and crippled . . . . No one fitting that description has been reported to the Missing Persons Bureau." For a moment my sister stared at the coffeepot. Then she left the breakfast table and went to the telephone.

"Now all the police have to do," she said with a quiver in her voice, "is to look for an antique wheelchair in the river at the foot of the street. Cast iron. With the original plush." She blinked at the phone several times. "Would you dial?" she asked me. "I can't see the numbers."

Stanley and Spook When I first met Jane she used to say: "I'd rather have kittens than kids." Ten years later she had one of each: Stanley and Spook, a most unusual pair. She also had a successful engineer for a husband and a lovely house in the Chicago suburbs and a new car every year.

In the interim we had kept in touch, more or less, by means of Christmas cards and vacation postcards. Then one spring I attended a business conference in Chicago and telephoned Jane to say h.e.l.lo.

She was elated! "Linda, you've got to come out here for a visit when you've finished with your meetings. Ed has an engineering job in Saudi Arabia, and I'm here alone with Stanley and Spook. I'd love to have you meet them. And you and I can talk about old times."

She gave me directions: "When you get off the freeway, go four miles north, then take a left at the cider mill until you come to Maplewood Farms. It's a winding road. We're the last house-white with black shutters and an enormous maple tree in front. You can't miss it."

Late Friday afternoon I rented a car and drove to the affluent suburbs, recalling that we had once lived contentedly in tents. Now Jane lived in Maplewood Farms, and I had an apartment with a view on New York's Upper East Side.

When Jane and I first met, we were newly married to a pair of young engineers who were building a dam in the northern wilderness. The first summer, we lived in a sprawling "tent city" and thought it a great adventure. After all, we were young and still had rice in our hair. Eventually, cottages were built for the engineers. Shacks would be a better description. Jane decorated hers, I remember, with pictures of cats, and for Christmas Ed gave her an amber Persian that she named Maple Sugar. That's when she made her memorable announcement about kittens and kids. All that seemed ages ago.

Arriving at Maplewood Farms I was driving slowly down the winding avenue, admiring the well-landscaped houses, when I noticed a fire truck at the far end. People were grouped on the lawns and the pavement, watching, but there was no sign of anxiety.

Actually, everyone seemed quite happy.

I parked and approached two couples who were standing in the middle of the street, sipping c.o.c.ktails. "What's happening?" I asked.

A woman in a Moroccan caftan smiled and said: "Spook climbed up the big maple and doesn't know how to climb down."

"Third time this month," said a man in an embroidered Mexican shirt. "Up go our taxes! . . . Would you like a drink, honey?"

The other man suggested: "Why don't they cut down the tree?"

"Or put Spook on a leash," the first woman said. Everyone laughed.

The fire truck had extended its ladder high into the branches of the big maple, and I watched as a fireman climbed up and disappeared into the leafy green. A moment or two later, he came back into view, and a cheer went up from the bystanders. He was carrying a six-year-old boy in jeans and a Chicago Cubs sweatshirt.

Jane, waiting at the foot of the ladder, hugged and scolded the child-an adorable little boy with his father's blond hair and his mother's big brown eyes. Then she and I had a tearful, happy reunion.

"I thought Spook was your cat, " I said.

"No, Stanley is the cat," Jane explained. "There he is on the front step. He's dying to meet you."

Stanley was a big, gorgeous feline with thick blond fur and a spotless white bib. He followed us into the house, his plumed tail waving with authority and aplomb.

Jane instructed her son: "Show Aunt Linda to the guest room, and then bring her out to the deck for c.o.c.ktails."

Spook lugged my overnight case upstairs and showed a great deal of curiosity about its contents when I unpacked. "Are you my aunt?" he wanted to know.