A Cat In The Maze

                Дорогие читатели! Это перевод на английский язык моего рассказа "Кот в лабиринте", тоже опубликованного здесь на моей странице. (Перевела Мария Миллер Стоун)
               

Helju Rebane               

A Cat In The Maze

     On day three, I realized that I was completely lost, and I sat down onto a chair in one of those countless, absolutely identical little rooms.
     Hard as it was to admit my own stupidity, but I already felt sorry that I had so thoughtlessly signed the contract, which had a condition saying, “the client agrees to spend any amount of time in the maze.” Worse yet, the hosts of The Maze amusement quest were not responsible for my life.
Anyhow, you’re always supposed to sign such stuff in case of hazard. For one, when you’re bungee jumping with a flexible cord. Been there. Done that more than once.
     The maze was monotonously tedious. Each room had three sliding doors on three different sides, a wooden desk in the corner, and a bottle of water and a packed meal in the wall niche. The rooms were super clean and had no ceiling. You could see the sun shine in the daytime, and the stars shimmer at night. It was pretty much like a house, except for the roof.
Of coarse, I was not in that big trouble like the people who got lost in the catacombs, but I noticed that in some rooms, the meals had been eaten. Only a crumpled wrapper lay around in the niche. Which meant that I had already been there. The stocks were not refilled.
The fact that they’d taken away my watch and my cell phone at the entrance, and now I could only figure out the time using the sun or the moon, had seemed thrilling in the beginning.
     I’d sometimes come across roofed rooms or bedrooms. I could spend a night on a narrow bed with a stack of clean bed sheets, a blanket, and a pillow. For whatever reason, the angular iron bed legs had been tightly screwed to the floor. Later, I would understand why. Every here and there I’d come across immaculately clean washrooms. They had no windows, huge vanities and sterile clean toilets. What a service! I wondered how much money the investors had pumped into this ‘amusement’ quest.
Had I a pen and paper, I would have drafted a map of the maze. Had I a ball of yarn or rope, I would have marked my way…
They’d asked me to change at entrance. My outfit had been hung in a dresser, and I’d been given a blue sweat suit, which I was wearing for the time being, milling around the maze. In a fit of despair, at some point, the sweat suit struck me as a clue of sorts – as though there was an easier way out of the maze – to climb up the walls. But the walls were smooth, and their height wouldn’t allow me to reach the upper edge even if I were standing on top of a chair. I’d try placing another chair on top of the chair – but the construction collapsed.
The ‘amusement’ quest was located out of town. On my way here, I’d driven through the very suburbs of the city, seen the empty market stalls up-close, and there was a thick, somber wood whispering right next to the maze entrance. Sure, the land’s cheaper in the outskirts. That’s why they built the maze here, I’d thought to myself approvingly.
At first, everything looked like a harmless joke. Pay and check how inventive and die-hard you can be. There was no need to travel to the pole, to the desert, or single-handedly cross the ocean on a rickety boat. All you had to do was find the way out.
Before long, something strange started happening with the maze. Suddenly, I found myself in a room with not three, but two exits. I stared at the wall in awe. Turns out, the sliding door had locked into it tightly, forming a single, solid stretch together with the wall. I had already been there – there was only an empty packed-meal wrapper in the niche.
The fact that they were changing the game rules along the road (your word for it here) did not excite me at all.
Another two or three days went by when I came across a room with only a single door, an entrance door. It was a dead end. They didn’t leave me any choice – I could only turn back. It was already the third time that I’d come here – somewhere along the line, I started marking the rooms I’d been to, with two scraps of a packed-meal wrapper. The two scraps lay around inside the niche.
Which was when I felt really sick. I recalled the way they’d prompted me: “Thrill? You want it – you got it. Other than that, we do not guarantee anything.”
What if, all of a sudden, all the doors would close around me? For another thing, I’d developed a compulsive idea that there’d been a clause in the contract, according to which “in the event of death of the client, all his property shall be transferred to the owners of the quest.” Bullshit! I’m a man of business, even if single; I’d never sign anything like that! But for some reason, time and time again, my blood would run cold: there definitely had been such a clause.
Somewhere on the tenth day of my wanderings, I saw it. I staggered back, nearly jumping out of my skin.
A gray, perfectly healthy-looking cat materialized in the doorway just as I’d entered another one of those featureless rooms, and, as sound as a bell, tried to snuggle against my legs. It definitely didn’t look like a hallucination.
“Mr. Tomcat,” I said in what seemed like a stranger’s voice after my long-lasted silence. “What are you doing here?”
The cat tilted up its head, looked me fondly in the eye and mewed.
I cast a glance up above – to where a square of an overcast daytime sky could be seen, when it hit me – the cat had been walking along the wide upper edge of the wall and, at some point, lost its balance, and fell off.
The cat, at least, had fallen. While I had come here willingly, out of boredom. My business was running well, I’d traveled the world, and I’d, hands-down, been bored of everything. Which was when I came across that ad in the newspaper: “The Maze For Thrill Seekers.”
For frustration seekers, I would specify now.
“Oh, Mr. Tomcat,” I said, offering it a cracker soaked in water, “Am I glad to see you! Please don’t leave me.”
Even if the cat refused that cracker, it would follow close behind me, and, at night, it would curl up at my feet or snuggle into my chest, mewing softly.
Time ticked by, and my state was becoming more and more dramatic. I had to make an even longer way in order to finally find an unwrapped meal and a bottle of water – every niche held nothing but torn, crumpled wraps, and I had drunk all the water. I stopped searching for the way out, I was looking for food.
The cat followed me in a constantly good mood. And at last, it got used to eating crackers.
“Is this what you wanted?” I’d keep questioning myself before going to sleep. “You wanted thrill? You got it!” I searched my memory struggling to remember the text of the contract.
One of the mornings, I woke up in one of the ‘bedrooms’ and recollected the dream I’d seen at night: a gorgeous blonde snatches up the papers that I’m reading from my hands and disappears into the dark. Bingo! Now I acutely remembered how the signing of the contract had happened. I’d never actually finished reading the last page. My mind’s eye pulled out a vision of a secretary’s lean legs. The girl in a miniskirt had entered the manager’s office exactly when I’d attended to the final page. The page had begun with: “In the event of death of the client, all his property shall pass on to the company.” No, I was not raving. I’d signed it, without reading it to the end. I didn’t want to look like a hair-splitter in the eyes of a beautiful woman. Cherchez la femme, as they say. Everything was clear now. I’ll just perish here with hunger and thirst, and I’ll be the only one to blame for that.
I climbed onto a chair in the nearest to-the-sky room and began to yell at the top of my lungs, “I’ve had enough! Let me out of here! Help!”
My screams didn’t take any effect. Besides, who could possibly hear me?
…It happened when I dozed off, sitting on the chair. I’d already been in this room three times as evidenced by three scraps of paper wrap. The cat was curled up in my lap. When I woke up, I instantly felt that something had changed. Oh God, oh no! The doors had tightly slid into the walls. I was trapped. With no food or drink.
“Cut it out!” I shrieked in despair to the space above my head. I still flickered with hope that now that they recognized my defeat, they’d let me go.
It was growing dark. The rain was pattering. I sat in the chair as if I were strapped. The cat climbed into my lap.
Another two or three agonizing days went by – my mind was reeling, tormented by thirst. I was soaking and I caught cold. In some state of delirium, I was drifting in and out of short naps. Each time, the cat would smack me awake. It darted around the room and mewed. If they wanted to give me aid, they would have done it long ago. Now it’s perfectly clear why the maze is in the outskirts, whirled in my mind. The cat’s mewing was growing loud and mournful.
“We’re a toast, Mr. Tomcat,” I uttered gruffly. “There’s nothing I can do to help you.”
Yet still, I willed myself to get to my feet, peeled off my sweatshirt and my sweatpants, tied them together by the sleeve and the pant leg and tried throwing the other end of my makeshift rope up and beyond the edge of the wall. But the ‘rope’ failed to reach it. Even if it did, and my considerably slimmed down cat would start climbing it, it would instantly fall back down under its own weight.
I need weight. I need to extend the rope. There was nothing but a chair in my entrapment. Anyhow, I wouldn’t have the power to hurl it up that high.
After a few thrusts against the wall, the chair finally cracked and I managed to break off its backrest linked with its leg. I ripped my pants and my coat, and now my rope was much longer. All I had to do was tie it to the backrest. I’d repeatedly hurl up that backrest with my right hand while holding the end of the rope with the left, until I finally figured to tie it to my left hand. With both of my hands involved, I succeeded on the first try. The backrest flew over the top of the wall and hung in the air on the other side. The ‘rope’ was tight.
“Farewell, Mr. Tomcat,” I whispered to the cat as I hoisted it higher on the ‘rope’ tightly pressed to the wall.
The cat deftly climbed up, and next thing I knew, it was on top of the wall. I fell down on the concrete floor and blacked out.
***
…There was my cat, sitting on the edge of the wall. Next to it was what appeared to be someone’s head, and someone said:
“We were wondering why would a cat be mewing so loud. So we climbed up to take him down from here, and look who we found …a man.”