Roscuro squeezed through the bars and crept slowly over the damp, weeping stones of the cell floor.
When he was close to the man, he said, “Ah, welcome, welcome. We are delighted to have you.”
The man lit a match and looked at Roscuro.
Roscuro stared longingly into the light.
“Go on,” said the prisoner. He waved a hand in the direction of Roscuro and the match went out. “Yer nothing but a rat.”
“I am,” said Roscuro, “exactly that. A rat. Allow me to congratulate you on your very astute powers of observation.”
“What do ye want, rat?”
“What do I want? Nothing. Nothing for my sake, that is. I have come for you. I have come to keep you company here in the dark.” He crawled closer to the man.
“I don’t need the company of a rat.”
“What about the solace a sympathetic ear can provide? Do you need that?”
“Huh?”
“Would you like to confess your sins?”
“To a rat? You’re kidding, you are.”
“Come now,” said Roscuro. “Close your eyes. Pretend that I am not a rat. Pretend that I am nothing but a voice in the darkness. A voice that cares.”
The prisoner closed his eyes. “All right,” he said. “I’ll tell you. But I’m telling you because there ain’t no point in
The man cleared his throat. “I’m here for stealing six cows, two Jerseys and four Guernseys. Cow theft, that’s my crime.” He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. He laughed. He closed his eyes again. “But there’s something else I done, many years ago, another crime, and they don’t even know of it.”
“Go on,” said Roscuro softly. He crept closer. He allowed one paw to touch the magical red cloth.
“I traded my girl, my own daughter, for this red tablecloth and for a hen and for a handful of cigarettes.”
“Tsk,” said Roscuro. He was not alarmed to hear of such a hideous thing. His parents, after all, had not much cared for him, and certainly, if there was any profit in it, they would have sold him. And then, too, Botticelli Remorso, one lazy Sunday afternoon, had recited from memory all the confessions he had heard from prisoners. What humans were capable of came as no surprise to Roscuro.
“And then . . .,” said the man.
“And then,” encouraged Roscuro.
“And then I done the worst thing of all: I walked away from her and she was crying and calling out for me and I did not even look back. I did not. Oh, Lord, I kept walking.” The prisoner cleared his throat. He sniffed.
“Ah,” said Roscuro. “Yes. I see.” By now, he was standing so that all four of his paws were touching the red cloth.
“Do you find comfort in this cloth that you sold your child for?”
“It’s warm,” said the man.
“Was it worth your child?”
“I like the color of it.”
“Does the cloth remind you of what you have done wrong?”
“It does,” the prisoner said. He sniffed. “It does.”
“Allow me to ease your burden,” said Roscuro. He stood on his hind legs and bowed at the waist. “I will take this reminder of your sin from you,” he said. The rat took hold of the tablecloth in his strong teeth and pulled it off the shoulders of the man.
“Hey, see here. I want that back.”
But Roscuro, reader, was quick. He pulled the tablecloth through the bars of the cell,
“Hey!” shouted the prisoner. “Bring that back. It’s all I got.”
“Yes,” said Roscuro, “and that is exactly why I must have it.”
“You dirty rat!” shouted the prisoner.
“Yes,” said Roscuro. “That is right. That is most accurate.”
And he left the man and dragged the tablecloth back to his nest and considered it.
What a disappointment it was! Looking at it, Roscuro knew that Botticelli was wrong. What Roscuro wanted, what he needed, was not the cloth, but the light that had shone behind it.
He wanted to be filled, flooded, blinded again with light.
And for that, reader, the rat knew that he must go upstairs.
19
IMAGINE, IF YOU WILL, having spent the whole of your life in a dungeon. Imagine that late one spring day, you step out of the dark and into a world of bright windows and polished floors, winking copper pots, shining suits of armor, and tapestries sewn in gold.
Imagine. And while you are imagining things, imagine this, too. Imagine that at the same time the rat steps from the dungeon and into the castle, a mouse is being born upstairs, a mouse, reader, who is destined to meet the light-bedazzled rat.
But that meeting will occur much later, and for now, the rat is nothing but happy, delighted, amazed to find himself standing in so much light.
“I,” said Roscuro, spinning dizzily from one bright thing to the next, “I will never leave. No, never. I will never go back to the dungeon. Why would I? I will never torture another prisoner. It is here that I belong.”
The rat waltzed happily from room to room until he found himself at the door to the banquet hall. He looked inside and saw gathered there King Phillip, Queen Rosemary, the Princess Pea, twenty noble people, a juggler, four minstrels, and all the king’s men. This party, reader, was a sight for a rat’s eyes. Roscuro had never seen happy people. He had known only the miserable ones. Gregory the jailer and those who were consigned to his domain did not laugh or smile or clink glasses with the person sitting next to them.
Roscuro was enchanted. Everything glittered. Everything. The gold spoons on the table and the jingle bells on the juggler’s cap, the strings on the minstrels’ guitars and the crowns on the king’s and the queen’s heads.
And the little princess! How lovely she was! How much like light itself. Her gown was covered in sequins that winked and glimmered at the rat. And when she laughed, and she laughed often, everything around her seemed to glow brighter.
“Oh, really,” said Roscuro, “this is too extraordinary. This is too wonderful. I must tell Botticelli that he was wrong. Suffering is not the answer.
And he made his way into the banquet hall. He lifted his tail off the ground and held it at an angle and marched in time to the music the minstrels were playing on their guitars.
The rat, reader, invited himself to the party.
20
THERE WAS, in the banquet hall, a most beautiful and ornate chandelier. The crystals that hung from it caught the light of the candles on the table and the light from the face of the laughing princess. They danced to the rhythm of the minstrels’ music, swaying back and forth, twinkling and beckoning. What better place to view all this glory, all this beauty?
