FUNERAL RITES
161
his arms. The cat did not budge, but joy was already giving wings to
Riton, who retraced his path, enraptured by hope and a belly already
satisfied.
Th~
tomcat was big and fat. The assassination was atrocious.
Riton tried first to kill the be:ast with a hammer.
Feeling obscurely that he who kills is less guilty when the blow
has no direct and continuous share in the murder such as to sanction
it at each second, he hurled the hammer. Only the fur of the cat
was touched. The cat hid under the bed, but the narrowness of the
room allowed Riton to catch it quickly. Captured, the animal wanted
to scratch him. It fought. Riton wrapped his left hand
in
a towel and
grabbed the cat by the tail. With his right hand he dealt it a blow
on the head with his hammer, but its supple spine allowed the cat the
movements of a suspended serpent. He meowed. He felt death near.
He knew it was inevitable. Riton wanted to strike again, but he missed
his blow. The tool hammered empty air. He struck. Again he missed.
-Bastard!
The scene became silent from beginning to end. Riton struggled
silently against the silence itself, peopled with the child's criminal and
desperate thoughts and the' eat's fear-the cat who had become for
him the Enemy by its stubborn will to live despite everything, by the
skill of its body to avoid blows, by its fur charged with an animal
gentleness, tenderness, protecting the beast, but reaching into Riton's
very heart. The sea flooded this whining, whose noise of waves
deafened Riton. It was a big grey tomcat that he: would have liked
to caress. I can see the kid picking up the cat, the cat climbing up
to his shoulder, where it would sit in a mournful wake near his face,
purring.
Having arisen at the same time as the ide'a of murder by the
hanuner, the idea of strangulation now became more definite, but
Riton did not want to leave the animal in order to look for a cord.
He unbuckled his belt, drew it from the loops of his trousers, and
made, with one hand, a running noose. The cat was waiting silently.
His foot on the little head, Riton drew on the end of the belt, but he
did not strangle the animal, as supple, as lively as ever. Riton was
being tossed in the folds of a sleep of heartbreaking softness. He fixed
the belt to a nail and hung the cat up; the cat, recovering, scraped
the wall, on which he tried to climb. Suddenly a great shudder shook
Riton's body, a shudder vaster and more precise as the idea grew
that the neighbors lay
in
watch behind the door, listening against the
walls to the course of murder, not because they heard cries, moans,
entreaties from the victim, but because the murder itself filled the
