Almost No Memory Read Online Free Page A

steps were silent; they could wait for a person longer than a person would wait for them.
    A person has other concerns, but at each moment in its life, a cat has only one concern. This is what gives it such perfect balance, and this is why the spectacle of a confused or frightened cat upsets us: we feel both pity and the desire to laugh. It faces the source of danger or confusion and its only recourse is to spit a foul breath out between its mottled gums.
    The prisoners were all small men that year. They had committed crimes which could not be taken very seriously and they were treated with leniency. Now, although small men are often inclined to take pride in their good health, these prisoners began to develop rashes and eczemas. The backs of their knees and the insides of their elbows stung and their skin flaked all over. They wrote angry letters to the governor of their state, who also happened to be a small man that year. The cats, they said, were causing reactions.
    The governor took pity on the prisoners and asked the warden to take care of the problem.
    The warden had not been inside the hall in years. He entered it and wandered around, sickened by the curious smell.
    In the dead end of a corridor, he cornered an ugly tomcat. The warden was carrying a stick and the cat was armed only with its teeth and claws, besides its angry face. The warden and the cat dodged back and forth for a time, the warden struck out at the cat, and the cat streaked around him and away, making no false moves.
    Now the warden saw cats everywhere.
    After the evening activities, when the prisoners had been shut up in their cell blocks, the warden returned carrying a rifle. All night long, that night, the prisoners heard the sound of shots coming from the hall. The shots were muffled and seemed to come from a great distance, as though from across the river. The warden was a good shot and killed many cats—cats rained down on him from the dome, cats flipped over and over in the hallways—and yet he still saw shadows flitting by the basement windows as he left the building.
    There was a difference now, however. The prisoners’ skin condition cleared. Though the bad smell still hung about the building, it was not warm and fresh as it had been. A few cats still lived there, but they had been disoriented by the odors of gunpowder and blood and by the sudden disappearance of their mates and kittens. They stopped breeding and skulked in corners, hissing even when no one was anywhere near them, attacking without provocation any moving thing.
    These cats did not eat well and did not clean themselves carefully, and one by one, each in its own way and in its own time died, leaving behind it a different strong smell which hung in the air for a week or two and then dissipated. After some months, there were no cats left in the prison recreation hall. By then, the small prisoners had been succeeded by larger prisoners, and the warden had been replaced by another, more ambitious; only the governor remained in office.

WIFE ONE IN COUNTRY
    Wife one calls to speak to son. Wife two answers with impatience, gives phone to son of wife one. Son has heard impatience in voice of wife two and tells mother he thought caller was father’s sister: raging aunt, constant caller, troublesome woman. Wife one wonders: is she herself perhaps another raging woman, constant caller? No, raging woman but not constant caller. Though, for wife two, also troublesome woman.
    After speaking to son, much disturbance in wife one. Wife one misses son, thinks how some years ago she, too, answered phone and talked to husband’s raging sister, constant caller, protecting husband from troublesome woman. Now wife two protects husband from troublesome sister, constant caller, and also from wife one, raging woman. Wife one sees this and imagines future wife three protecting husband not only from raging wife one but also from troublesome wife two, as well as constantly calling