The Hungarian Cat Curse

Nesta história,

Do livro, Momma and the Meaning Of Life,

de Irvin D. Yalom,

Ernest Lash,

personagem do livro Mentiras no Divã do mesmo autor,

tenta tratar Merges

um violento gato falante de alemão, na sua nona e última vida.

Merges é um personagem bastante viajado, que numa vida anterior, fora amigo de Xanthippe, um gato que vivia em casa de Heidegger, e assombrava agora, sem dó nem piedade, Artemis, amante de Ernest.

Durante um sonho, após uma noite de sexo com Artemis, Ernest e Merges têm um diálogo fascinante...

Um diálogo que Yalom deseja que seja lido no seu funeral: 

"To Magda, 

my dear daughter, 

on her seventeenth birthday, 

in the hope that this message is neither too late nor too early.

It is time for you to know the answers to the important questions in your life. 

Where have we come from? 

Why have you been uprooted so many times? 

Who and where is your father? 

Why have I sent you away and not kept you with me? 

The family history, which I write here, is something you must know and must pass on to your daughters.

(...)

 I stayed unmarried and lived my small happy life with my cat, Cica. 

And then a monster, Mr. Kovacs, moved into the upstairs flat and with him his cat, Merges. Merges means "rageful" in Hungarian, and that beast was well named.

He was a vicious, hideous, black-and-white cat direct from Hell and terrorized my poor Cica. Over and over Cica returned home cut and bleeding. She lost an eye to infection, one of her ears was half torn off.

And Kovacs terrorized me. I barricaded my doors at night against him. And closed the shutters because he wandered around the outside of the house peering in through every crack.

Once, I put aside my pride and pleaded with him to keep Merges inside for only an hour a day so Cica could go out in safety. "Nothing wrong with Merges," he sneered. "My cat and I are alike, we both want the same thing—sweet Hungarian pussy." 

Yes, he would agree to keep Merges at home—for a price. And the price was me!

 Merges went berserk: all night long screeching, yowling, scratching at the wall of my house, and flinging himself against my windows.

As if Merges and Kovacs were not pestilence enough, Budapest at that time was infested by huge Danube river rats, which swarmed through my neighborhood...One day my landlord helped me set a trap-cage for the rats in the cellar, and that very night I heard ungodly squeals. Then, by the flickering candle, I saw the cage and, peering out from its bars, the largest, most horrible rat I had ever seen or, in mv worst dreams, imagined. I flew back up the stairs and decided to call for help when my landlord awoke. But an hour later, as dawn broke, I ventured back down and took another look. It was no rat. It was worse—it was Merges! As soon as he saw me, he hissed and spit and tried to claw me through the bars of the cage. God, what a monster! I knew just what to do, and it was with great pleasure that I threw an entire pitcher of water on him.

He kept on hissing and I picked up my skirts and pranced with joy three times around the cage. But then what? What should I do with Merges, who now was howling an ungodly song. Something within me made the decision without my knowing it. For the first time in my life, I would take a stand. 

For me! For women everywhere! I would fight back. I put an old blanket over the cage, lifted it by the handle, walked out of the house—the streets still empty, no one up yet— and marched to the train station. I bought a ticket for Esztergom, about an hour away, but then, deciding it was not far enough, I rode all the way to Szeged, about two hundred kilometers away. When I got off the train, I walked a few blocks, then stopped, took the cover off the cage, and prepared to release Merges.

As I looked at him, his eyes slashed at me— sharp, like a razor, and I shuddered. There was something about his wild look, so hateful, so relentless, that I knew then, with an eerie certainty, that Cica and I would never be free of him. Animals have been known to return home from across a continent. No matter how far I took Merges, he would return. He would track us from the ends of the earth. 

I picked up the cage and walked a few squares farther until I came to the Danube. I walked to the center of the bridge, waited until there was no one in sight, and threw the cage into the water. It floated for an instant, then began to sink As it sank lower in the water, Merges never stopped looking at me and hissing. Finally the Danube stilled him, and I waited until I saw no more bubbles, until he had reached his riverbed grave, until I was safe forever from the hellcat. Then I boarded a train for home.

For the first time in my life, I felt free.

But not for long. 

That night, an hour or two after I fell asleep, I heard Merges's yowling outside. It was, of course, a dream, but a dream so vivid, so tangible, that it was more real than my life awake. 

I heard Merges clawing and scraping a hole in the wall of my bedroom. Staring at the splintering wall, I saw his paw thrust into the room. More scraping, plaster falling all over my room. Then Merges burst into my bedroom. A big cat to start with, he had grown to now double, maybe triple his old size. Soaking wet, the dirty water of the Danube still dripping off him, he spoke to me.

The beast's word are frozen in my mind. 

"I am old, you murdering bitch," he hissed, " and I have already lived eight of my lives. I have a single lifeleft and I swear here and now to dedicate it to revenge. I will dwell in the dream dimension, and I will haunt you and your female descendants forever. You separated me forever from Cica, the bewitching Cica, the great passion of my life, and now I will make certain that you will forever be separated from any man who ever shows an interest in you. I'll visit them when they are with you"— here he hissed most terribly— "and drive them from you in such terror that they will never return— they will forget your very existence."

At first I felt exultant. 

Stupid cat! Cats are, after all, simple-minded, pinheaded animals. Merges had no real understanding of me. His brilliant revenge—that I would no longer be able to be with a man twice! Not revenge but a blessing, a blessing exceeded only by my being forbidden to be with a man even once. 

Never again to touch or even see a man—that would be paradise.

"What you feel toward men will be changed forever. Now you shall know desire. You shall be like a cat, and when your heat comes each month, your desire will be irresistible. But never fulfilled. You will please men, but never be pleased, and each man you please will leave you, never to return or even to remember you. You shall bear a child, and your child's child shall know what I and Kovacs feel. This shall be for all time."

Suddenly overcome, I began to tremble and beg for you, my unborn daughter. 

"Please punish me, Merges. I deserve it for what I did to you. I deserve a loveless life. But my children and my children's children, I beg you." 

And I bowed low before him and pressed my forehead to the ground.

"There is only one exit for your children. None for you."

"What is the exit?" I asked.

"Redress the wrong," said Merges, now licking—with a tongue larger than my hand—his monstrous paws and cleaning his hideous face.

"Redress the wrong? How? What should they do?" 

I moved toward him, pleading.

But Merges hissed and brandished his unsheathed claws. 

As I stepped back, he faded away. The last thing I saw of him were those terrible claws.

The rest you know. 

A year later, I conceived you. I never knew who your father was. Now you know why. And now you know why I could never keep you with me and why I sent you away to school. 

Knowing this, Magda, you must decide on what you will do when you graduate. 

You may, of course, always come to me in New York. 

Whatever you decide, I shall continue to send you money each month. 

In other ways, I cannot help you. I cannot help myself.

Your Mother, 

Klara"

"Merges's recipe for lifting the curse—Redress the wrong— did you ever find out what that meant?"

Ernest was awakened by Merges's howling. 

Again, he felt the room shake; again, the scratching and scraping at the wall of the house. Fear flickered, but he got quickly out of bed and—shaking his head vigorously and inhaling deeply—calmly opened the window wide, leaned out, called, 

"This way, this way, Merges. Save your claws. The window is open."

Sudden silence. Then Merges bounded in, ripping and shredding the thin linen curtains. Hissing, his head raised, his red eyes blazing, his glistening claws unsheathed, he circled Ernest.

"I've been expecting you, Merges. Won't you please sit down?" 

Ernest settled into a massive redwood burl chair next to the night table, beyond which all was darkness. The bed, Artemis, and the rest of the room had vanished.

Merges stopped hissing. He looked up at Ernest, spittle dripping from his fangs, his muscles tensed.

Ernest reached into his overnight bag. 

"Won't you have something to eat, Merges?" he said, opening some of the dinner containers he had carried upstairs.

Merges peered cautiously into the first container. "Five Mushroom Beef! 

I hate mushrooms. That's why she always makes them. That chanterelle ragout!" 

He uttered these last words in a high-pitched, mocking singsong, then repeated them, 

"Chanterelle ragout! Chanterelle ragout!"

"Here, here," Ernest said, in the soothing drone he used sometimes in a therapy session. 

"Let me pick out the beef pieces for you. Oh, my God, I am so sorry! I could have gotten the whole baked cod. Or the Peking Duck. Even the Hunan Meatballs. Perhaps the Pork Shue Mai. 

Or the Beggar's Chicken. Or the Ming's beef. Or the—"

"All right, all right" Merges snarled. 

He swiped at the chunks of beef and devoured them in a single gulp.

Ernest droned on: 

"Or I could have gotten the Seafood Delight, the salted shrimp, the whole roasted crab, the—"

"You could have, you could have, you could have, but you didn't, did you?

And even if you had, then so what? 

Is that what you think? That some stale scraps would redress the wrong? That I would settle for leftovers? That I am nothing but brute appetite?"

Merges and Ernest stared silently at one another for a moment. 

Then Merges nodded toward the container with the Rolling Chicken and Cilantro

in Lettuce Cups. 

"And what's in there?"

"It's called Rolling Chicken. Delicious. Here, let me pick out the chicken for you."

"No, leave it be," said Merges, batting the container out of Ernest's hand. 

"I like the green stuff. I come from a family of Bavarian grass eaters. Hard to find good grass that's not soaked in dog piss." 

Merges gobbled down the cilantro and chicken, then licked the lettuce cups clean. 

"Not bad. So you could've gotten roast crab?"

"I only wish I had, but as it was, I got too much meat. Turns out Artemis is a vegan."

"Vegan?"

"A vegetarian who eats no animal products at all—not even dairy products."

"So she's stupid as well as a murdering bitch. And I remind you again that you're stupid, too, if you think you'll redress the wrong by courting my stomach."

"No, Merges, I don't think that. But I fully understand why you'd be suspicious of me or anyone who approaches you in a friendly fashion. You haven't been treated well in your life."

"Lives —not life. I've had eight of them, and every one, without exception, has ended the same way—in unspeakable cruelty and murder. 

Look at the last one! Artemis murdered me! Threw me into a cage and nonchalantly tossed it into the river and watched me sink slowly until the filthy water of the Danube covered my nostrils. The last thing I saw in that life was her triumphant leer as my final breath bubbled out of me. 

And do you know what my crime was?"

Ernest shook his head.

"My crime was that I was being a cat."

"Merges, you're not any ordinary cat. You are an unusually intelligent cat. I hope I may speak frankly to you."

Merges, who was licking the sides of the empty Rolling Chicken container, growled assent.

"Two things I must say. 

First, of course, you realize it was not Artemis who drowned you. It was her grandmother, Klara, now long dead. Secondly—"She smells the same to me—Artemis is Klara in a later life. Didn't you

know that?"

Ernest was thrown off guard. Needing time to ponder that notion, he merely continued, 

Secondly, Klara did not hate cats. In fact, she loved a cat. She was no murderer: it was in her effort to save the life of Cica, her own dear cat, that she acted against you."

No answer. 

Ernest could hear Merges breathing. 

Am I, he wondered, being too confrontational, not showing enough empathy? 

"But," he said gently,

"perhaps this is all beside the point. I think we should stick to what you said a minute ago—that your only crime was being a cat."

"Right! I did what I did because I am a cat. Cats protect their turf, they attack other, threatening cats, and the best of the cats— those bursting with catness-let nothing, nothing, stand in their way when they whiff the sweet muskiness of a cat in heat. I was doing nothing more than fulfilling my catness."

Merges's comment gave Ernest pause. 

Wasn't Merges being true to Ernest's favorite of Nietzsche's maxims: 

"Become he who you are?" 

Wasn't Merges right? Wasn't he simply fulfilling his own feline potential?

"There was once a famous philosopher," Ernest began, "that is, a wise man

or a thinker—"

"I know what a philosopher is." 

The cat broke in, crossly. "In one of my first lives, I lived in Freiburg and made nighttime visits to Martin Heidegger's home."

"You knew Heidegger? said Ernest, amazed.

"No, no. Heidegger's cat, Xanthippe. She was something! Hot! Cica, hot as she was, was nothing compared to Xanthippe. It was many lives ago, but I remember well that army of heavyweight Teutonic bullies I had to battle to get to her. Tomcats came all the way from Marburg when Xanthippe entered heat. Ah, those were the days!"

"Well, let me finish my point, Merges." 

Ernest tried not to allow himself to be distracted. 

The famous philosopher I'm thinking of—he was German, too —often said that one must become who one is, must fulfill one's ordained destiny or potential. 

Isn't that exactly what you were doing? 

You were fulfilling your basic catness. Where is the crime in that?"

At Ernest's first words, Merges had opened his mouth to protest, but slowly closed it again when he realized that Ernest was agreeing with him. He began grooming himself with wide swipes of his tongue.

"There is, however," Ernest continued, "a problematic paradox here—a fundamental conflict of interest—in that Klara was doing exactly what you were doing: becoming herself. She was a nurturer and protector and cared for nothing in the world more than her cat. She wanted only to protect Cica and keep her safe. Thus, Klara's actions were all in the service of fulfilling her own basic loving nature."

"Hmmpf!" scoffed Merges. 

"Do you know that Klara refused to mate with my master, Kovacs, who was a very strong man? Just because Klara hated men, she assumed that Cica did, too. Hence, there is no paradox. Klara acted not for Cica but in the service of her illusion about what Cica wanted.

Believe me, when Cica was in heat, she was hot for me! Klara was unspeakably cruel to keep us apart."

"But Klara feared for her cat's life. Cica had suffered many grievous wounds."

"Wounds? Wounds? Mere scratches. Toms intimidate and subdue the lady.

Toms claw the hell out of other toms. That's how we woo. That is catdom.

We are being cats. Who is Klara, who are you, to judge and condemn catness?"

Ernest backed off. 

Nothing there, he decided. He tried another tack.

"Merges, a few minutes ago you said that Artemis and Klara were the same, and that was why you continued to haunt Klara."

"My nose does not He."

"When, in one of your early lives, you died, did you remain dead for a while before entering another life?"

"Only for an instant. Then I was reborn into another life. Don't ask me how.

There are some things even cats don't know."

"Well, even so, you're certain that you're in one life, then cease to be, and then enter another. Correct?"

"Yes, yes, get on with it!" 

Merges growled. Like all ninth-lifers, he had little patience with picayune semantic discussions.

"But, since for some years Artemis and her grandmother, Klara, were both alive at the same time and spoke to each other many times, how can Artemis and Klara be the same person in different lives. It's not possible. I don't mean to question your nose, but perhaps you were sensing the genetic connection between the two women."

Merges silendy considered Ernest's comment as he continued to groom himself, licking a massive paw and scrubbing his face with its dampness.

"I was just thinking, Merges, is it possible you didn't know that we humans have only one life?"

"How can you be so sure?"

"Well, that's what we believe. And isn't that the important thing?"

"Perhaps you have many lives and don't know it."

"You say you remember your other lives. We don't. If we have new lives and don't remember the old ones, then it still means that this life—this existing me, the consciousness that is here right now—is going to perish."

"The point! The point!" 

The beast growled. 

"Get on with it. God, how you talk and talk and talk."

"The point is that your revenge was wonderfully effective. It was good revenge. It ruined the rest of Klara's one and only life. She lived in great misery. And her crime was only to take one of your nine lives. Her sole life for one of your nine lives. Seems to me the debt has been paid many times over. Your revenge is complete. The slate is clean. The wrong redressed." 

Exultant at his persuasive formulation, Ernest leaned back in his chair.

"No," hissed Merges, glowering and thumping the floor with his powerful tail. 

"No, it is not complete! Not complete! The wrong has not been redressed! Revenge will go on and on! Besides, I like the way this life goes."

Ernest didn't allow himself to flinch. He rested a moment or two, caught his second wind, and began again from another perspective.

"You say you like the way your life goes now. Will you tell me about your life? What is your typical day like?"

Ernest's unruffled manner seemed to relax Merges who stopped glowering, sat back on his haunches, and responded calmly. 

"My day? Uneventful. I don't remember much of my life."

"What do you do all day?"

"I wait. I wait until I am called bv a dream."

"And between dreams?"

"I told you. I wait."

"That's it?"

"I wait."

"And that's your life, Merges? And are you satisfied?"

Merges nodded. 

"When you consider the alternative," he said, as he gracefully rolled over and set to work grooming his belly..

"The alternative? You mean not living?"

"The ninth life is the last."

"And you want this last life to go on and on forever."

"Wouldn't you? Wouldn't anyone?"

"Merges, I'm struck by an inconsistency in what you're say-ing."

"Cats are highly logical beings. Sometimes that is not appreciated because of our ability to make lightning quick decisions."

"Here's the inconsistency 

- You say you want your ninth life to go on and on, but in fact you're not living your ninth life. You're merely existing in some state of suspended animation."

"Not living my ninth life?"

"You said it yourself: you're waiting. 

I'll tell you what comes to my mind. 

A famous psychologist once said that some people so fear the debt of death that they refuse the loan of life."

"Meaning what? Talk plainly," said Merges who had stopped grooming his belly and now sat on his haunches.

"Meaning that you seem so fearful of death that you refrain from entering into life. It's as though you fear using up life. Remember what you taught me just a few minutes ago about essential catness? 

Tell me, Merges, where is the territory you defend? 

Where are the toms you battle? 

Where are the lustful, howling females you subdue? And why," 

Ernest asked, emphasizing each word, 

"do you allow your precious Merges spermseeds to rot unused?''

As Ernest spoke, Merges's head bowed low. 

Then, somewhat mournfully, he asked, 

"And you have only one life? How far are you into it?"

"About halfway through."

"How can you stand it?"

Suddenly Ernest felt a sharp pang of sadness. 

He reached for one of the napkins from the Chinese dinner and dabbed at his eyes.

"I'm sorry," said Merges, unexpectedly gendy, "to have caused pain."

"Not at all. I was prepared, as this turn in our conversation was inevitable,"

Ernest said. 

You ask how I can stand it? 

Well, first of all, by not thinking about it. 

And more, sometimes I even forget about it. And at my age that's not too hard."

"At your age? What does that mean?"

"We humans go through life in stages. 

As very young children, we think about death a great deal, some of us even obsess about it. 

It's not hard to discover death. We simply look around and see dead things: leaves and lilies and flies and beedes. Pets die. We eat dead animals. Sometimes we're privy to the death of a person. And before long, we realize that death will come to everyone—to our grandma, to our mother and father, even to ourselves. We brood about this in private. Our parents and teachers, thinking it's bad for children to think about death, keep silent about it or give us fairy tales about a heaven and angels, eternal reunion, immortal souls." 

Ernest stopped, hoping that Merges was following his words.

"And then?" Merges was following, all right.

"We comply. We push it out of our minds, or we openly defy death with great feats of daredevilry. 

And then just before we become adults, we brood a great deal about it again. 

Although some cannot bear it and refuse to go on living, most of us put aside our awareness of death and immerse ourselves in the tasks of adulthood—building a career and family, personal growth, acquiring possessions, exercising power, winning the race. 

That's where I am now in life. 

After that stage, we enter the later era of life, where awareness of death emerges again and now is distinctly menacing— in fact, imminent. At that point, we have the choice of thinking about it a great deal and making the most of the life we still have, or pretending in various ways that death is not coming at all."

"So, what about you, yourself? Do you pretend to yourself that death will not come?"

"No, I can't really do that. Since, in my work as a psychiatrist, I talk to many people who are terribly troubled, I have to face it all the time."

"Let me ask you again, then"—Merges's voice, now soft and weary, had lost all its menace—"how you stand it? How can you take pleasure from any part of life, any activity at all, with death looming ahead and only one life?"

"I'd turn that question upside down, Merges. 

Perhaps death makes life more vital, more precious. 

The fact of death bestows a special poignancy, a bittersweet quality, to life's activities. 

Yes, it may be true that living in the dream dimension confers immortality upon you, but your life seems to me to be soaked in ennui. 

When I asked you, a while back, to describe your life, you answered with the single phrase: 

'I wait.' Is that life? Is waiting living? 

You still have one life left, Merges. Why not live it to the fullest?"

"I cannot! I cannot!" Merges said, bowing his head deeper. 

"The thought of no longer existing, of not being among the living, of life going on without

me, is—is—simply too terrible."

"So the point of the curse is not perpetual revenge, is it? 

You use the curse to avoid coming to the end of your last life."

"It is simply too terrible to just end. To not be."

"I have learned in my work," said Ernest reaching over and patting Merges's great paw, "that those who most fear death are the ones who approach it with too much unlived life inside them. It's best to use all of life. Leave death nothing but the dregs, nothing but a burned-out castle."

"No, no," moaned Merges shaking his head, "it is simply too terrible."

"Why so terrible? Let's analyze precisely what's so fearful about death.

You've already experienced it more than once. You said that each time your life ended, there was a brief interval before the next life began."

"Yes, that's right."

"What do you remember of those brief moments."

"Absolutely nothing."

"But isn't that the point, Merges? Much of what you fear about death is how you imagine it might feel to be dead and yet to know that you can no longer be among the living. But when you're dead, you have no consciousness.

Death is the extinguishing of consciousness."

"Is that supposed to be reassuring?" Merges growled.

"You asked me how I can stand it? That's one of my answers. 

I've also always gotten comfort from the maxim of another philosopher, who lived a

long, long time ago: 

'Where death is, I am not; where I am, death is not'."

"Is that any different from 'When you're dead, you're dead'?"

"A big difference. In death there is no 'you.' 'You' and 'dead' cannot coexist."

"Heavy, heavy stuff," Merges said, his voice barely audible, his head almost touching the floor.

"Let me tell you about another perspective that helps me, Merges,

something I learned from a Russian writer—"

"Those Russians—this isn't going to be cheery."

"Listen. Years, centuries, millennia, passed before I was born. Right?"

"No denying that." Merges nodded wearily.

"And millennia will pass after I'm dead. Right?"

Merges nodded again.

"Thus, I picture my life as a brilliant spark between two vast and identical pools of darkness: the darkness existing before my birth and the darkness following my death."

That seemed to strike home. Merges was listening hard, his ears pricked up.

"And doesn't it astound you, Merges, how much we dread the latter darkness and how indifferent we are to the first?"

Suddenly Merges stood and opened his mouth in an enormous yawn, his fangs gleaming faindy in the moonlight streaming through the window.

"Guess I've got to be shuffling along," he said, and trudged toward the window with a heavy, uncadike gait.

"Wait, Merges, there's more!"

"Enough for today. A lot to ponder, even for a cat. Next time, Ernest, the roast crab. And more of that green-grass chicken."

"Next time? What do you mean, Merges, next time? 

Haven't I redressed the wrong?"

"Maybe yes, maybe no. I told you, too much to think about all at once. I'm out of here!"

Ernest plopped back into his chair. 

He was pooped, his patience exhausted.

Never before had he had a more nerve-wracking and exhausting session.

And now to see it all go for naught! 

Watching Merges trudge off Ernest muttered to himself, 

"Go! Go!" And then added "Geh Gesunter Heit" — that Yiddish, mocking, phrase of his mother.

At the words, Merges stopped dead in his tracks and turned back. 

"I heard that."

Uh-oh, thought Ernest. But he held his head high and faced the oncoming Merges.

"Yes, I heard you. I heard you say, 'Geh Gesunter Heit.'' 

And I know what that means—didn't you know that I speak good German? You blessed me.

Even though you didn't imagine I would hear, you wished me to go in good health. And I am moved by your blessing. Very moved. I know what I've put you through. I know how much you want to liberate this woman—not only for her sake but also for yours. 

And yet even after your tremendous effort, and after your not knowing whether you were successful in redressing the wrong, even then you still had the grace and the lovingkindness to wish for my good health. That may be the most generous gift I have ever received. Good-bye, my friend."

"Good-bye, Merges," said Ernest, watching Merges stroll away, more perky now and with a graceful cat gait. 

Is it my imagination, he thought, or has Merges grown appreciably smaller?

"Perhaps we'll meet again," said Merges, without breaking stride. 

"I'm considering settling in California."

"You have my word, Merges," 

Ernest called after him. 

"You'll eat well here. Roast crab—and cilantro—every night."

Darkness again. 

The next thing Ernest saw was the roseate glow of dawn.

Now I know the meaning of a "hard day's night," he thought, as he sat up in bed, stretched, and contemplated the sleeping Artemis. 

He felt certain that Merges would depart from the dream dimension. 

But what about the rest of the cat curse? 

None of that had been discussed. 

For a few minutes. Ernest considered the prospect of being involved with a woman who might, every so often, be sexually ferocious and voracious. 

Quietly he slipped out of bed, dressed, and went downstairs.

Artemis hearing his footsteps, called out, 

"Ernest, no! Something's changed. I'm free. I know it. I feel it. 

Don't go, please. You don't need to go."

"Be right back with breakfast. Ten minutes," he called from the front door.