486
PARTISAN REVIEW
except the light rustling of the mice, or whatever they are, burrowing
their holes through his, at once intruders upon and victims to him.
But toward the end there is a new noise, one he cannot under–
stand. At first he thinks it is a horde of little creatures besetting
him,
and he begins to make preparations with trenches to trap them. He
waits for a long time, and the noise continues, but no horde of mice
arrives. Frenzy possesses him. He must find some other explanation,
so that he may defend himself accordingly. The noise, which resolves
itself into a continuous whistling sound, seems to have no location;
it comes from all sides, sometimes distant, sometimes near. He finds
himself calling it "The Whistler" and thinking of
it
as one big animal
rather than many small ones. He begins to suspect that it is surround–
ing him, and that all the barricades to which he has dedicated
his
life are nothing against this. The big beast will not even see his bar–
ricades, it is likely not even aware of him. It
will
crash through
his
dwelling and demolish everything.
And the noise continues. We leave him delivered up to terror,
utterly helpless in his hole.
What the creature does not realize is that the new and bigger
being perhaps drilling a burrow of its own in his vicinity is to
him
as he is to the mice. He has told us in an awed and almost reverent
way, as
if
he were talking in a whisper, like primitives about God,
of the big earth-creatures that devour you, and that treat you not
as though you were in your own house but in theirs. This is the way
he treats the "small fry." They are just creeping about their own
business, digging their own minute passages which make a network
through his. They don't bother him much. When he feels hungry,
he catches and eats a few; otherwise he leaves them alone.
Obviously they don't know he is there, for they don't wish to
be eaten and would scramble away in panic if they knew.
As
he
has said about the big earth creatures, "Their very victims can
scarcely have seen them." He is only death that descends upon the
mice from the unknown. There is no way for them to find out about
him or to learn to defend themselves against him. His burrow is not
recognizable to them as belonging to another creature. From their
point of view it is only something put there by nature like caves and
valleys, and if they are at all conscious of him or his scratching
in
