KIKI-THE-DEMURE

One would think me asleep because the narrow slit made by my parted eyelids, seems but the continuation of that velvety line, that bold crayon-stroke, a sort of Oriental make-up, uniting my eyelids and my ears.  But I’m awake, keeping watch like a yogi, in a state of blissful ankylosis, conscious of all that’s going on around me....  My privileged eyes, Fire, do but behold you better when they’re closed and I can count the various essences you mingle in a sparkling bouquet.  Here in a flame of mauve-color and blue, glows the soul of a branch of arbor-vitae.  Yesterday it waved a plume-like shadow on the garden walk ...  To-day, with its delicate twigs, it is but a writhing skeleton.  She cut it with one stroke of the pruning scissors.  Why?  That it might breathe out its fervent blue and mauve-colored soul?  For like me, She delights in your dance, Fire, and chastises you when you’re quiet, with a stern pair of tongs.  Sitting there with her head bent and her arms hanging along her sides, what does She read, I wonder, in that fiery rose which is the labyrinthian heart of you?...  She knows a great deal certainly, but not as much as a Cat.

That thick tear on the log represents the anguish of a very old fir-tree, killed by the assiduous ivy.  Just a short time ago I saw it struck down, lying on the grass, its foliage looking like a beautiful head of reddish hair.  I saw the axe that felled it, too.  Its trunk weeps tears of resin, which trail along in drivel, then change to heavy, creeping flame.  But the dry red locks break into lines of living fire, whistle and shoot innumerable jets of many colors underneath a broad gold wave that rolls voluptuously....

Ah, love ... hunting ... fighting....  It’s your light, Fire, that discovers these passions in the depths of my being.  It’s time the little winged creatures searching withered berries came near.  I’ll have them soon!  I’ll watch, motionless in the brushwood, wildly wishing that the earth itself might hide me, the muscles of my legs twitching with desire to make the spring, my chin trembling....  Then, if I don’t betray my hiding-place by an irrepressible quavering, frightening them away in one great commotion of wings and rustling branches!...  But no, I’m master of myself.  One bound at exactly the right moment and my feeble prey is panting under me.  Oh, the ridiculous effort of a weak animal—­its tiny ineffectual claws and pointed wings beating against my face!  My jaws will open to the splitting point and my perfect nose wrinkle ferociously, for the joy of holding a living, terrified body.  I’ll know the intoxication of battle!  I’ll prance victoriously, shaking my head to torment the bird a little, for it faints away too soon between my teeth!  Terrible to see I’ll gallop towards the house, singing in a strangled voice, without loosening my grip, for He must stop his scratching to admire me, and She must give chase with distracted cries:  “Wicked, savage cat!  Drop that bird! drop that bird!!  Oh, I beg of you!  It hurts me so....”  Ha!  She never can have hunted....