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The Nature of the Beast

By Thomas Anderson

My second reason for delaying was not so noble: I was seized with such a fit of torpor as marks my most active moods. The sensation of being able only to sit and twitch is not comfortable. And so I let the whole exhausting affair of beasts and beast-buying slide.

I need not have troubled myself so much, however, for when the month of April arrived, and my birthday, my aunt Iris Norp arrived, too, carrying a little wicker basket over her arm. Perhaps you know of Aunt Iris—she wrote Beasts i have Known, and dedicated it to her cousin Ernest. She certainly can be nasty. But she was nice this day; she had brought me a beast.

Although I had considered it long, and had (or so I had every reason to expect) conditioned myself to the idea, the actual presence of the creature unnerved me hopelessly. I was reduced to the consistency of gelatin even before the basket had been opened, for I had never seen a beast. The consummation of my hopes and fears was at hand. But if the thing were fierce? Or if it spoke another language? (I had not until that moment considered whether beasts spoke at all, but the question impressed itself horribly upon me when the necessity of greeting and being polite to this one was at hand.)

Aunt Iris, grinning, opened the basket and brought forth a small brown, white and black bundle and held it out to me. Do I only imagine that I heard a voice from countless miles away saying "isn't he sweet"? Perhaps. My recollection of this moment will be forever confused. My hand groped for support. A chorus of mosquitoes buzzed within my head. All was in flux.

Presently I was brought to. The room had nicely settled down, and the arm-chair within whose arms I lay was gentle. My new-gained composure was somewhat reruffled by my remembrance of the beast; but I remained calm enough to weather the storm.

You will understand, dear reader, the cause of my faintheartedness when I describe the creature fully. It was of a wild cylindrical shape, supported in four places with hinged and mobile posts. Forward, a protuberance terminating in a button snout-like contrivance and from just above the deceptively sad eyes (these fixed in the protuberance) depended silken brown flaps. And from the nether end of the beast, a highly active appendage, capable of jutting out into the air with horrible convulsions, or of hanging limply down. Mercifully, this end of the beast became more docile as time passed, flailing neither so often or so terrifyingly.

I plucked up courage, and decided that, although I was a rustic, and thus ignorant of creatures, nonetheless I owed the thing a citizen's welcome, whatever its form. I laugh bitterly now, when I think that I timidly and gently spoke to it, offering it rich hospitality. I fetched good sherry and poured it out a glass. Aunt Iris, who had stood silent and bewildered (as I see now) during my reflections, smiled tenderly, and muttering indistinctly about wit ambled swiftly to the door and withdrew.

I was at a loss. I knew that taking a beast was like taking a bride—both must be supported and lived with until death came to one or other. But how precisely did one best support a beast? What comforts are peculiar to beasts? I did not know. Nor did the beast help me. No. It sat, or stood in its fashion, and watched me. How, with mere good intentions can one be kind and civil to alien things? Since that time it has been said that I was cruel. Never, I beseech you to believe me, never did I deliberately do a thing against my conscience.

I brought the beast to my very table, and gave it food from my own dish. I treated it well, I thought. I continued to talk to it, though it never once dignified me with an answer. It looked mournfully at me. I offered to take it to concerts (gentlemen in cities did this, I understood), to play chess with it. No response but a reproachful look. I began soon to doubt my own goodness, to think that I tormented the poor creature. But pause, I told myself, pause and consider the lengths to which you have gone to please the thing. It is ungrateful. Yet when at my mind's instance I looked at the sad brown eyes that stared fixedly into my face, I was disarmed. No, I thinght [sic], the fault is mine. Perhaps my kindness arises from selfish motives; perhaps I am trying to impress the tender beast with my generosity and the breadth of my culture—for undoubtedly the beast is sensitive to such crudities, and will not speak to me until I mend my ways.

Imagine, then, with what diligence I examined my conscience. My every action and thought I scrutinized mercilessly. But no ignoble motive could I find!

Suspicion is a distressing thing. It poisons one's hours and days; it leaves the taste of ashes upon the palate; it breeds frustration and restlessness. I began to feel the terrible grip of suspicion. You can surely see why.

You must not think, however, that my suspicion was constant. For whole moments it left me—rays of hope pierced the gloom of my soul. At times the beast seemed companionable, and its terrible aspect was softened by the glow of familiarity and love. Sometimes a flicker of a smile played about its beastly lips. (Shall I forget my doubts? Was the smile sardonic?) Upon two occasions I fell asleep in my chair and dropped the newspaper I had been reading, to be awakened by the beast, now in my lap, the paper between his jaws. Oh I blessed heaven for this sign of soft goodness in the heart of the beast— for if he was loo forward, nevertheless, his was an error of affection, well-meaning.

Yet these intervals were short-lived and infrequent. My hope blossomed into the flower of despair, for the beast always returned to its former ways. Long would it sit, looking up sadly and tormentingly into my eyes, watching me, watching for some sign of my breaking, waiting for the destruction that would inevitably be visited upon me. Oh sympathetic reader, you do see? Slowly, deliberately the beast was ruining me. And its means were subtle and sure—destroy me from within was what it would do! With malice of devilish refinement it sought to increase in me my sense of guilt and remissness towards it, so that I should crack beneath the sense of my sin.

And the beast very nearly succeeded. For almost three weeks I went about attempting to avoid those soft deceptive eyes. Tantalized by the sense of my hidden wickedness, I sought recognition of it or escape from it. But I was not to be completely taken in by the beast. Slowly the knowledge that I have communicated above revealed itself, and the combined oppression of guilt (for one's self-doubt never really disappears in the face of reason) and horror of the Evil One brought enormous pressure to bear upon my sensitive and enervated being. In the confusion of despair my resolve was taken.

"Beast," I cried, "beast, not forever will you thus ruthlessly persecute me!"

The rest is blackness. One thing is clear: I had slain the beast.

The rope is prepared with which I shall hang myself. My confession comes (not that I can hope that you of the city at large will forgive me) in the bitter resolve of making myself understood. l know now, of course, the nature of my crime. What I ask is that you consider my situation: I was, as I have told you, born and brought up in the country, totally unfamiliar with city ways until my twentieth year. And though I worked diligently to make up my loss—to acquire the civilized manners of sophisticated people, (indeed, I lived in deadly fear that my rustic origins would show, and that I would be condemned on their account), there are certain characteristics and areas of knowledge that no late education can hope to convey. There are some differences that distinguish from birth the city-dweller and the rustic. My Aunt Iris brought the thing. She had lived in the city from birth. I knew that having beasts of one sort or another was essential to the finished person. Yet how could I know what beasts were, as city people instinctively do, coming as I did out of the remote countryside? My crime arose out of a dreadful, fated misunderstanding. Forces larger than myself held me irremediably in their grip. Hellish ignorance! And how could I face the city now? I could not—never—my humiliation was complete. The city could never forgive such a travesty of their ancient and laudable customs as mine. My hope lies in death by the rope, my sole refuge in dark death.