Doctor Rat Read online

  I stare into the corner of my cell. There is straw and water. The voices of the other inmates float in the air, but none of them has an answer. None of them knows the secret of the room—how it came into being, why we were born here, and where we are going.

  I must have slept. I sleep a great deal and eat a lot. The inmates are whispering and grunting about something. Occasionally one of us has a nightmare or some little thought that seems brand-new. It quickly makes the rounds of all the cells and then fades into obscurity. Which of us could ever say with certainty: I know what’s outside; I know what awaits us.

  Nonetheless, we listen to this latest dream. One of the inmates has had a wild vision. My neighbor grunts the substance of it through the walls of his cell. He dares not come too close to me or peer over at me, for he knows I will strike at him with all my clumsy might if he does.

  “A vow has been taken.”

  “A vow?”

  “A powerful creature has taken a vow. He has sworn to save us.”

  “Who is he?”

  “I feel him in my sinew. His strength is great. It’s a fiercely knotted power.”

  A jumble of images invades me, memories that are my most sacred possession: a little patch of green grass and a bit of a winding path. I saw these once, when the great doors swung open. And I see them now, once again, in my mind. For that’s what a savior would mean to me—the green grass and a little path struck by warm gentle light.

  But the savior is just the mad vision of one of our inmates. There have been many strange dreams here. They come and go, but the mechanical winds are constant. They soon blow away all dreams, all visions, all saviors.

  “Come on! Get out!”

  The guards! The doors!

  Everyone is moving. We’re all being moved. Weak-kneed, stumbling, we walk. Waddling, falling, I make my way toward the door. There is the grass! There is the little winding path! Has the savior really come?

  So this is the day! The day, the streaming light, the little winding path. My heart leaps—look how far the eye can see. Look at the distant green!

  Vast! Tremendous! Beyond believing—the world is large as a hundred rooms! In the air there hangs a great blazing light. What a room this is!

  “The vow has been fulfilled!”

  “We’re free!”

  “Look! How much we can see!”

  Along the little winding path we go. The path is soft and so wonderful to look at. Walking is difficult, but even so, even so…

  “Go on! Get up there!”

  The path has ended. A ramp lies before me, leading into another room, a little darkened room. No!

  “Get in!”

  They push and prod us up the ramp, into the dark little room. Our bodies are quickly pressed together. Our hearts pound one against the other. The doors slam shut. The room begins to rumble, to shake. We fall against each other, we crash against the walls. I’m ill already; I’m gasping for air.

  Have I slept? Am I awake now, or dreaming? We’re caught all together in the dark rumbling room. The world is impossibly strange. I can’t comprehend any of it. The path was so wonderful and already it’s gone. This dark room is horrible. I’m standing on someone’s face. I think he’s dead. What does it matter. The world is confusion; nothing is certain. Why was I born? Am I a slave? Did I commit some unremembered crime?

  Am I real? Do I really exist at all?

  Yes, yes! I do exist. I am some sort of being—fat, suffocating, plunged in ignorance—

  I am me!

  But what is it to be me, this ball of fat in the halls of darkness? Who can answer me in my dilemma! I’m terrified! I see through the cracks in this rumbling room. I hear the rumbling and I hear the cries of those who are jammed in here beside me.

  I am the thing in the dark; yes, that’s it, I’m this thing in the dark—frightened and fat. I mustn’t lose sight of that. That is my precious self.

  Confusion, confusion. Help me!

  What of these others? Are they real beings like me? Are they aware that they exist? I hear their cries; I feel their hearts. They’re like me in every way—eyes, ears, nose, mouth. I believe that they too know themselves.

  They are suffering just like me. The only one of us who didn’t come today is the cold female. She stayed behind. I don’t know if she knows herself. I think perhaps she has no real existence. Never did I feel her thoughts or her pounding heart.

  But I feel all of you! I feel you with me here! We exist!

  Don’t we?

  Blood is trickling out my nose. It bubbles up from my throat. My insides are all shaken and undone. If I weren’t real, if I were some sort of unfeeling mechanical creature, then my blood would not now be bubbling so painfully. I feel pain. I know that I’m suffering.

  So I must be real!

  I seek these assurances, over and over, as the room rumbles. I want my reality to be ascertained beyond any doubt. Flung into existence, I know that I live.

  Are the guards educating me? Is this what the rumbling room is supposed to do? Does it make me realize once and for all that I am real?

  Are the guards my secret benefactors?

  My life is spinning madly. I crouch in the darkness, crouching in the selfness of my self. I huddle against other bodies, huddling with myself. There’s the floor; there are the cracks.

  There are the other faces. I know this. The room is rumbling.

  There’s a being, there’s a being, undeniably a being. He is here, in the darkness, he is here, he is me. Undeniably me. I stand in the rumbling darkness, undeniably a being. My breath. My heaving belly.

  Can anyone deny this?

  No one denies it.

  It can’t be denied. I am in a rumbling room. And the rumbling has gotten less violent.

  The rumbling has stopped.

  I’ve learned something. I exist, without any question. The rumbling room has taught me that. The guards are therefore my benefactors. The condition of our existence is markedly this: We must learn that we’re alive.

  Very well, I know it now. The rumbling room, though it has caused me to bleed and caused some of the others to die, has taught me that I am an individual creature. That is an important lesson.

  The doors swing open.

  The light! Am I now to enjoy it? Now that I have truly ascertained that I exist, am I to enjoy my new awareness?

  They prod us, they pull us, they drive us down the ramp. The light is mine for an instant—and gone!

  We’re in another room. It doesn’t rumble. I smell a jumble of smells. They push us forward, we crash against each other. Those who fall are trampled; we move over their squirming bodies.

  Many lights, many shadows. Long narrow hallways. Straw strewn around.

  A guard approaches me, grabs my ear, pierces it!

  And now a red tag hangs down beside my eye, swaying to and fro as I walk. My ear is hurting, but I have a tag. I am singled out in this way. The proofs of my individuality are mounting. The guards don’t seek to deny me; no, they mark me with a tag. I see it flopping from my ear.

  I hear the sound of running water. Are we to get a bath?

  Perhaps they will clean us and then present us at long last to the ruler of all rooms. For I feel that there must be some sort of great overseer, who guides me along, who tags me, who wants me to be clean. There is purpose behind all this.

  Purpose is the one thing I’ve never had. The mysterious guards all have it. They have it today. It is their power.

  None of us has any purpose. We eat, we sleep, we loved the cold female. My whole purpose could be fulfilled just by standing on the little winding path all day, and looking at the grass and the sky. I wouldn’t ask for more.

  But I hear the sound of mechanized things. I feel the intricate purpose of the guards. They move us along again. Wooden ramps and lights. The smell of blood. Many of us must have bled in the rumbling room.

  We turn a corner. The guard leans over. Yes, I’m real. You fed me and tagged me. You…you tie a c
hain around my leg. I feel it. I’m me. Is this my lesson? I submit myself to your teaching. I would like to learn the great purpose of all this; I’m frightened, but I exist and that’s the essential thing. I exist and I know it.

  Wrenched upside down! One leg in the air! My fat pulls against the chain. I’ve split open somewhere…

  Split open inside somewhere. Hanging upside down, swinging. They swing me along, and I squirm. There’s some mistake…don’t you see…you wouldn’t want to do this to me…to the one who knows the little path and the sky…no, you don’t realize that I’m completely awake…completely…

  The walls slip past me. I bump them and move, swinging, my leg stretched horribly…horribly…and the others are hanging beside me.

  I can see the white stone walls. I can see the guards. My legs run in the air, kicking the air. I want to tell the guards about the little path and the cracks in the rumbling room. They’re my proof…of…me.

  The guards have taken hold of the one beside me. They have hold of his head. He squirms but they hold him. The guards have a bright shining thing. They pass it into his neck! He quivers—a gushing of blood, a gushing! I see his nerves, his inner throat, it’s all exposed, it’s bursting with blood, and his head flops crazily, barely attached.

  They take hold of me. No, you wouldn’t do that to me! Let me go! No, not to me! If you knew me…if you knew that I am me…if you only knew…

  …passing through me. Red path shooting. Room cut in two. This way and that.

  The goddamn rebel wheels have suddenly stopped. The whole lab has been silenced. I can feel a quick command passing through the rebel ranks.

  Suddenly their wheels are spinning again, in the opposite direction! What does it mean!

  Cyclometers clicking, wheels spinning wildly, drawing my learned gaze into the whirlpool, into their depths. I cling to the Reward Ladder and turn my head away. But the whirling lights attract me; the rebels are shifting intuitive gears, another revolutionary scene…

  …but how strange. All I see here are ladies in white uniforms, sitting by some machines. Nothing revolutionary in this. Just ordinary American industry, somewhere in the good old USA.

  Rebel cameras are panning… Here comes a young man into the scene, pushing a cart full of pig’s guts. Nothing unusual in that. The ladies in uniform flirt with the young man as he dumps the pig’s guts at one end of the machinery. He makes a little joke, the ladies smile.

  This is just an ordinary working day. I don’t get it. The rebels must be losing their intuitive focusing powers. There’s nothing incendiary here. The parts of the pig’s body are being fed into the machinery…

  Now the camera zooms in on the other end of the machine. Out pop little sausages, all wrapped in plastic. They sort of squirt out the end of the machine. All in neat little links. Twelve links to a package.

  Lady wraps them, tosses them in a bin.

  Sausages, hot dogs, beautifully produced. It’s a comical machine, the way it squirts out those frankfurters, twelve to the minute. But what does it have to do with the revolution? The revolutionary directors must have forgotten to edit the footage. Camera panning again, and the door opens once more.

  Live pig in the other room, staring around wildly.

  Door closes. Back to the sausage machine, twelve to the minute.

  CUT

  Christ, this rebel cinema is jerky. Where the hell are we now? I seem to be under somebody’s chair. You don’t expect rats to be first-class union cameramen, but this is ridiculous!

  Quick dissolve going on here, camera jerking around, I see somebody’s head or something and…focus this fucking thing, will you! Hey, projectionist!

  Close-up of an ordinary American family having their dinner. Man cutting up the sausage.

  CUT

  Back in the meat-packing plant. Rerunning the door-opening sequence. Door opens, there’s the pig, staring around wildly.

  Sound track finally coming in, scratchy, not well-recorded. This rebel equipment…

  “You…you tie a chain around my leg… I feel it… I exist and I know it…”

  Mouth opening. Sausage on end of fork.

  THE END

  The exercise wheels slow down, and I dive away from them before they start to turn again.

  This revolution needs a good advertising agency to put its shit together. But who am I to suggest?

  Slipping through the shadows, I pick my tail up in my mouth and chew on it softly. My god, what’s that horrible rattling and banging going on above me?

  Quietly I slip out from the shadows and take a peek:

  Oh no! The rebels have started turning the Great Central Exercise Drum. Every rat in the lab is crawling into it and running his tail off. Look at it go! I’ve never seen it spinning so fast. The intuitive lights flashing out of it are fantastically brilliant. The Drum is humming; up rises a whirling disc of light from which hideous laughter emerges!

  I, the hyena, watch the entrance of the imperial bird. He comes, majestic in chains, down the road of our great prison. His head is white and he has the tremendous wings of his kind, and these are certainly impressive, but most impressive of all are his eyes, which burn with an intensity I have never seen before, not in man, nor beast, nor bird. These eyes, brilliant and strange as they fall upon mine, give no personal recognition; they’re sovereign, beyond relationships, the eyes of heaven, and the overwhelming energy in them sends me into a fit of nervous laughter as the keepers wheel him by in his cage.

  Nearby, the leopard springs up with a howl, suspending himself for a moment by his claws upon the wire mesh. The eagle turns his head but slightly, hardly acknowledging the greeting. As his eyes come back to my view, I see only one consideration in them—flight.

  So intense is the entrance of the Emperor of Heaven that animals far distant in this wide-flung prison send up cries and howls. The lions on their vast open field—a sunken field from which they shall never leap—emit their superb guttural roar. Various birds begin a squawking racket, some of the voices cynical, some sad, most of them wretched.

  Indeed, the atmosphere of our prison is always marked with gloom, and the capture and imprisonment of a great king such as the Imperial Eagle drives in upon us as never before the wretchedness of our kingdom, with its bars and walls and insufferable oppressiveness. Now, with such a High One amongst us, our despondency must become still greater—I can feel it passing from cage to cage. We spend our idle hours dreaming, dreaming of those who are far from here in the ancient native lands. And our dream of freedom helps us to bear our confinement. For we are part of them, and they are roving, right this moment, on the far-off plains and in the deep sweet valleys. But with the entrance of this Lord of the Sky, I can feel our dreams fading. That one so wild, whose nature is of the freest and most high, that such a one should be taken and brought here fills us with the terrible reality of our situation, that we are prisoners to the end of our days and no power on earth or in heaven can ever save us.

  Thus does the gorilla, deep within his glass house, pound on his chest in frustration and hammer on the glass that walls him in. I hear his stamping and banging, we all hear it—the eagle certainly hears it too, but at the moment he’s being transferred to his permanent cage and, thinking that the door which has opened before him might lead to freedom, he makes a mad dash. But he meets only heavy wire, on four sides.

  I am fortunate enough to be just across the road from his cage. Of course, the daily sight of him increases my personal anguish tenfold, but at the same time I am so totally fascinated by his presence that my suffering seems like nothing, especially when compared to his, for the wilder the creature the greater is his anxiety when he comes here. The rodents, for example, have adjusted fairly well to prison life, for they have certain domestic qualities in them. But passing only a few steps upward, to the fox or the raccoon, one finds a growing grief over captivity. And when one hears the burning cry of the wolves, and observes the incessant pacing of the jaguar, day in and day
out, one comes to know the true depths of despair. It is boundless misery, and it is madness. Certainly, we are all half-mad here.

  They have put a branch of wood on the floor of the eagle’s cage. He stands upon this branch, clutching it with his long gnarled talons. From time to time he opens his wings like a huge black cape, and flaps, going nowhere, his wing tips striking on either side of the cage.

  And then he paces, back and forth upon the branch, closed up in his cage, deep in concentration, as if his pacing will somehow free him. But his steps carry him only from one end of the small cage to the other. Really, they’ve given him a space far too small (as if any barred space would be sufficient), but of course they don’t understand his nature.

  In summer, which comes to torture us with smells, the visitors naturally are many. The Imperial Eagle is a great attraction, and children bang at his cage. He has no time for them; he paces, back and forth, opening his wings, raising himself aloft for a beat or two and descending again on his dead branch, far above the jeers and ridiculous questions of those who mock him on the lawn. I recall one moment in particular, which seems to me most loathsome: A woman stood in front of the Sovereign’s cage, and from a leather bag she removed a piece of glass, in which she caught the rays of the summer sun, reflecting them directly into the King’s eyes. I howled with indignation, but he simply stared into the glaring light. He, who had flown so high, who had so often climbed straight toward the sun, was not tormented by the flashing glass.

  I cannot forget the woman, and yet I understand; she wanted to attract the attention of the splendid bird, wanted something of his powerful spirit to touch her. I too seek that exalted gaze each day, and watch it grow ever more intense. I fear a fever will develop and destroy him, for how could such intensity continue without burning itself to ashes?

  He never weakens for a moment. At night I can hear him still moving, back and forth, and in the moonlight I see the shadow of his wings sweeping against the cage. It was on such a moonlit night that I first received his signal, which struck me so hard I thought it was I who had taken a fever. My body grew hot, my ears roared, my fur stood on end. This peculiar phenomenon repeated itself, night after night, when most of the other animals slept.