The longer I trotted along behind this proud invalid and had to look at all his misery, the more insistent became the question of who or what had victimized him. Accidents, particularly car accidents, are the most frequent cause of death for my kind. A false reaction, a faulty calculation while crossing the street, or a sudden fright, invariably followed by mindless flight across a road, and in no time your intestines are stamped into a tire tread. Very few survive their spectacular, firsthand encounter with a Mercedes-Benz or Rabbit. And, as for those who do, do they look like this?
I had often had the opportunity of witnessing such accidents and their consequences. As a rule, their victims could be divided up into three categories. Ninety-nine percent died immediately, on the spot, to bequeath posterity nothing more than an unsavory, scarcely recognizable self-portrait on asphalt. The second category of collision candidates only had very close calls, but were initiated into the mysteries of a concussion for the better part of a week, until they recuperated with completely changed views on progress and technology. The worst fate befell the third category. They had to submit to the torture of depressing disfigurements, or of even more depressing psychological traumas, usually leading to a premature death. In all these cases the only winners were veterinarians and dog lovers; the latter, because they once again had an opportunity to make cynical remarks on the intelligence of my kind. But what perverse car accident would it have taken to have punctured an eyeball, cleanly cut off a tail, and to have mutilated a right front paw?
An accident as involved as that could only have been dreamed up by an exceedingly cunning scriptwriter. But my own imagination had wings, and naturally I couldn't help but think of another explanation (though I wished I hadn't)—that Bluebeard's disfigurements weren't caused by a car accident but by a sadist, a thoroughly insane can opener. Since sadists possess surgical skills only in the rarest cases, they usually tend to torture the victims of their insanity in a crudely unprofessional manner.
As much as I tried to find a logical explanation for Bluebeard's condition, I couldn't arrive at any plausible conclusion. Of course, I could have simply asked him about it, but as I had gradually learned to appreciate the obstinate ways of my companion, I didn't expect him to tell me what had really happened. I knew that it would be a long time before I would be initiated into his medical history.
In the meantime, we had gone a long way from the house, which had now disappeared behind walls and trees. We had reached the center of the district and were thus on foreign turf, which I admit did frighten me a little, since I could well picture how my amiable brothers and sisters would deal with intruders on their turf. Like an escaped convict, I kept glancing left and right, expecting any moment to see one of my kind going psychotic at the sight of my humble self. Despite my fear, I memorized the topography of the neighborhood because I had to assume that it would be my home from now on.
While my eyes shifted back and forth in my state of increasing paranoia, I was able to take a good look through the back windows of the old houses. It was always the same old story, with those feelings welling up in you at the sight of those warm, golden windows illuminated by the setting sun, of those rectangles, bright in the dusk, that radiated trust, security, confidence, love, a whole goddamned intact world. You really could imagine the entire family assembled around a massive oak table, having supper, the children chattering away all at once, the father occasionally making an off-color joke, which would make his wife predictably admonish him not to make remarks like that when the children were around. And you, you were there too, waiting under the table for someone in the family, or maybe all of them, to hand you a choice tidbit. It was Christmas behind these windows flushed with the glow of sunset, Christmas forever!
Naturally, that nasty, wrinkled, little old man who always makes himself heard in my mind when I get too sentimental now told me the truth, that no such thing as Christmas had ever existed. Sitting around behind those windows were the same old ordinary, flaky people with their flaky opinions and their flaky lives. It was always the same old story: some boring marriage crisis, someone fooling around with someone else, some recent, successfully concluded divorce, some abused child, some tumor whose surprising appearance out of nowhere some old, fatherly M.D. would confirm when the lab test results came back, some hopeless loser with alcohol problems, some eternally lonely people, some miserably pathetic suicide attempt that as usual didn't come off, someone weeping and bawling about life's missed opportunities, some hysterical laughter at the bad jokes of a bad comedian on the tube with a smile so wide you could count his false teeth, some stupid, meaningless, laughable things. No, it wasn't a Frank Capra film being staged behind those windows, but the same old shabby commercial urging you to go on living while not naming one single reason why.
Suddenly, behind a gable window that looked like it had been filched from a cathedral, I saw an animal. I must admit that it sounds grotesque for me to use the word animal in referring to one of my kind. But it only took one glance for me to see that the strange creature at the window of one of those old buildings that had been renovated to the point of nonrecognition only had the remotest relation to my kind. It was very young, nearly a baby, so that even its more dominant markings were hard to distinguish. A layman would have thought right away that it was a member of our
