The July Featured Story is by Robin Tiffney

You can email Robin at: brucerobin.tiffney@gmail.com

A BLOT IN CYRILLIC

by Robin Tiffney

I never meant to live alone, if you believe a person with books ever lives alone. My black cat Blot would also object to the 'alone', but everything's about to change. I've found myself a good prospect in James, and I mean to follow through this time.

All those years past I used my mother as an excuse; she's gone now, off to the reward she anticipated every day of her life. I remember her saying when I was old enough to speak my own first words, "Katie, you must be resigned. We all must die, and I shall lay me down with a will." And then she'd quote Robert Lewis Stevenson, and as I grew older, I would try to see if I could drown it out with bits of the Beatles -- only inside my own mind, of course for my mother was always so sweet that no one, not even the police when they explained my father's disappearance as a likely death, could bear to disappoint her. None of my friends understood why I always took the idea of death so casually, but I owe it all to my mother.

While I was at college I used to imagine her setting up an extra cup of tea in the afternoon and putting out a few cookies in case this was the day Death chose to arrive. All metaphorical, but that was the image that rose in my mind. She didn't miss me; she told me on the phone every weekend that this was just a preparation for the Great Divide that would come between us and I should learn to enjoy my freedom. And that is of course why I had to come back home and get a job in Stephen's Row, assisting Grant Kemming to run the bookstore.

In a Vermont town, you can make ends meet with a bookstore, because people read, and tourists expect the quaint booke shoppes scattered about in random old barns. They come and collect musty books that no sane Vermonter would let into the house. So when Grant died, I bought out his widow and settled down to take care of mum and the store, and the cats that came and went through our lives. Sometimes I too, made cookies for guests, but none of them happened to be Death, and mum got restless.

One afternoon in late September I smelled a candle burning in her room and heard Blot say in an indignant squeak "Nyet!"

"Mum, what are you doing?" I asked, for I hadn't any idea why she would be standing in her room, the rugs rucked up to one side and a candle flaming in her upraised hand. Her face seemed set in wood, so concentrated was her expression.

"My, Katie," she said, "you gave me a start. I think I almost had it."

"Had what?" I asked, but she said nothing, folded up the corners of her mouth like an envelope, blew out her candle with the careful puff one learns will not spread wax droplets everywhere, and turned away. Not her usual courtesy at all.

I picked up Blot. His warm pudgy body felt taut and he turned his head as if to track her. I soothed him with my hand and headed out, ducking the door frame which sure wasn’t made for people of my height. I made my way back downstairs thinking someday I'd have those stairs rebuilt so all the steps came equal.

"So, Blot," I said. "That was different."

He turned on a purr that seemed bigger and better than the simple pat deserved, and returned to the soft furry mode I expected.

Less than twelve hours later I went in to wake mum for her morning tea and realized that her anticipated guest had finally arrived. She looked disapproving, which I did not expect, and I experienced a shocked surprise, which I also did not expect.

Indeed after the usual services and ceremonies, I found that the house felt strange, not, curiously, as if I'd lost a housemate, but as if there were another resident, whose steps were always too quiet, and who always moved out of my line of sight just before I came around a corner. These old houses frequently breed such feelings and lots of mice, and I figured the best thing to do would be to get another cat.

But I knew Blot. He preferred people and more teas, so that he could get his tithe of forbidden cream cakes and oatmeal cookies from the softhearted. I know cats aren't supposed to like treats of these kinds, but Blot was an exception. I recall the day the wedding cake I made for Dorothy turned out to have half a cup of whipped white chocolate icing licked off its backside. Blot avoided me for a whole two hours after.

Another cat seemed like a lot of persuasion and effort, so instead I had many neighbors over to tea, and that's how the reading group got started. James was there. I'd always had this sneaking suspicion I might like him if he ever spoke, and that he liked me, which could be why he never spoke. Except for 'Yes, Miss,' and 'Hallo, Miss' when he cleaned out the kitchen trap or put a new washer on the hose bib, that is. We went to the old school on Bridges Street together all the way through twelfth grade, but we didn’t talk. He's a good plumber now, the best and only in town, and he took over the business from his Dad who was even less chatty.

James has a face that's been lived and thought in, long winters and short summers and everything in between, with a nose that's too big and a mouth that ought to smile more, good lines from weather and a cracking deep laugh. He looks ready and willing to be pleased which is why it's hard to understand why he never got married.

We all knew the reading group was an excuse for spending time in company and competing over who could make the best muffins, but no one minded. We would be literary, and friendly, and have something more than weather to talk over. I wondered if we'd all been yuppified by our tourists, but I squelched that notion soon as James nodded his dark head and looked like he thought 'yes' when he was asked to join the reading group.

It was the same day we decided on a reading group and set up the rules that I went up to mum's room for a tablecloth I'd stored there and saw someone had slept in the bed.

Or that's what it looked like. Not the slight mussing of a careless hand, but a series of folds and runnels, shaped and compressed. As if I had let a dog sleep there. A big dog that pulled the covers back on the diagonal and crept in between the sheets, then slipped back out after a time. The pillow was dented too. I didn't want to touch it.

"And I laid me down with a will," I quoted.

Mice, I thought. Mice do crazy things, or maybe Blot's taken up this new nest. Who knows what he does when I'm at the book barn down Stephen's Row? I went below stairs and Blot made much of me when I talked to him about the bed, and I decided it must be his doing. The good Lord knows he's a funny cat.

Next day, James showed up at the store. He stood in the doorway; gave me a bit of a start since my head was in other realms than Vermont.

"Miss Kate," he said. That shocked me. He'd never called me by name even when we attended elementary school together under Miss Barker's hard ruler. "I'd like your best Beowulf."

James blushed.

"Best to look at or best translation?" I asked, and wanted to bite my tongue.

He shrugged and so I babbled on.

"I only have Raffel," I said, "and nothing in Anglo Saxon. Is Beowulf what you'll present to the reading group when it's your turn?"

He nodded and hunched his shoulders, taking off his painter's cap as if he'd suddenly remembered it. He said nothing when I handed over the book. He'd been to the community college, I remembered, while I'd gone off on a scholarship draped in ivy. I followed a half memory, rummaging through the index cards in the file by the desk.

"You had an account here once," I said. "here's your card."

"Haven't used it in a time," he said.

"So shall I put this on? You're paid up, paid up as of five years ago October."

That was the month I'd got my job in the store, and I most carefully didn't look at him. Seemed like he used to read books like people eat potatoes around here, until I came.

"Yup," he said, and went.

I looked out after him. Autumn was winding down, with the leaves slopping off wet and depressed after the flare of color in October, and with them went the tourists. No one asking for my attention in the store -- James could've stayed. On the other hand, this was the most words I'd heard out of his mouth in a string since the time he'd dropped the ax on his foot in the schoolyard when he was about sixteen.

When I got home early I went upstairs, determined to make the bed. No more nonsense. Even suppose mum had come back a revenant, she'd give me the backside of her tongue for leaving a bed unmade that way. I ducked my head through the doorway and stopped. The bed was made, the way I'd left it after mum's death. Smooth, the candle tufts marching in their pattern. I stood fighting a jumpy feeling, and looked around the room. The curtains hung starched and white at the window, sogged browns and yellows of autumn wavering through the old glass. The afternoon was spoiling and though it was scarcely four, the light had near gone. I squinted as if I might see something new.          

I must've made the damned bed myself. Maybe I'd twitched the covers into place and smoothed my hand over. Maybe I'd misremembered how rumpled the spread was. When I turned, I saw a book on the floor. Only the corner showed under the old empty wardrobe. Must be why I'd missed it when I cleaned the room after mum died, but I have to admit it gave me the creepies to go and tug it out from under. I left the room, making myself stop in the doorway to check once more around the room. Nothing more to notice.

Blot met me at the stair bottom and he made a peculiar noise.

"Woh mow," he said, his round green eyes glowing. "Oh wow!"

I'd never heard a cat say anything so clear in English before, but it lightened me and I scooped him up and snuzzled his smooth black head. Nothing bad could possibly be happening when I had a cat who greeted me with 'oh wow.' I took him into the kitchen and stoked up the Atlantic range before I gave him a dinner of leftover chicken bits. I did give him some that weren't exactly left over, but mum wasn't looking and there's comfort in watching a cat wash his face and paws after a super dinner.

I sat down with my own bowl of soup and set the book by. I finished eating quickly enough and got a kettle going. Now the room was warm with the fire burning hot and steady in the stove, I had my cup of tea at hand and the book. I picked it up.

Worn brown leather covered boards, fine calf, so the grain had a sweetly silky feel. Sewn binding, foxed end papers, deckled stock. Rag, of course. Older, near two hundred years, could be.

I recognized it -- part of last year's inventory at my barn, and I’d stuffed it into foreign languages for later sorting because I got it in the sweeps from a clearance company, the kind of company you hire when you're from New York City and a high rise life and can't be bothered to go through Great Aunt Martha's three story and barn yourself before you put it on the market as a bed and breakfast. I looked over the cover, stained with the grease and sweat of many hands, and realized that it couldn't be a book of sermons. Not, and receive this heavy use. Opening it I found the pages were set up like verse, hand typesetting with notes written in the margins in faded inks.

Blot came and took to my lap. He sniffed over the cover of my book, gave it an experimental scrape with his incisor and settled himself for the evening.

When I paged through I found candy colored post-its stuck here and there. I would have removed that sort of thing before categorizing a book, even in my first cut. Folk like to find old photos and embroidered bookmarks because that seems like eavesdropping on history. They disapprove of vulgar post-its. Besides, the acid in a post-it is bad news.

Mum liked post-its. They'd been the one frivolity I could buy for her, and I did because it cured her of her old habit of dog-earing pages. Sometimes she came up hill to the book barn, always hoping, I used to suspect, for a handy heart attack. She must have picked up this book. I looked down at Blot's rhythmically rising and falling side, the glossy black fur all smoothed, and I sounded out the first Cyrillic letters.

I don't know if you know Cyrillic, but I'd discovered when I was playing with the pronunciation that you can make a fair guess at what Russian means if you sound it out. Not by the names of the letters any more than you'd do that for English, or you’d be saying things like tvyawrdy znak, which sure sounds like no English I ever heard -- but going by the phonetics. It didn't seem to be working. I couldn't make out the title because half of it was gone. No author, no publication date, and it would take detective work to figure out the provenance.

I turned to the pink post-it. There stood a few lines in a larger face. I whispered the sounds and Blot woke up. He hopped down and went off to his cat box. I could hear him rearranging litter in his usual fanatical fashion in the bathroom. So much for psychic cats. I went to the lime green post-it, where I made out a penciled note 'spell for stuffing quilts' in English. A spell book? That made me smile. I'd need a dictionary.

I opened to the lemon yellow post-it and a folded piece of pink paper fell out. My mother's writing. I never saw her write any foreign language and would have said she'd no interest, but here it was. Some crossed out bits: still the text was clear. It went to prove that a person always harbors surprises, even for those nearest and most accustomed.

I got up and stretched. Time for bed.

*****

I was back at the store next day, rummaging, when I heard the bell and looked up, half my hair hanging over my face from bumping my head under the desk.

There stood James, and I thought he looked angry. The long lines showed in his face.

"Should've known better than to get an answering machine," he said, fast, for him. "Sounded like your voice on it, Miss. Something about a... a toilet?"

"Wasn't me," I said, "so far's I know everything's working fine."

"Oh. Thought it might be you. Well, when people have guests, that's always when the plumbing goes. O.K., now I haveta figure out who it was called me."

He'd almost made it out the door before I asked.

"Guests?"

"You've a guest," he said, turning and looking at me with a level patience that made me feel stupid. "Sorry if I intruded on your privacy, it's just, I saw him yesterday when I went over to Winslows' for their bath."

"When?"

"Evening. Their shower cartridge went. Water in the wall."

"I'm sorry. But where'd you see this guest? My driveway?"

"Nope. In your kitchen. I didn't mean to look. Sorry I said anything."

He was perishing to get out the door now, only an elbow and his head still remained inside my bookstore. It's true my kitchen faces on Main Street where the way curves before starting down to the river. Doesn't take much to see in since I forget to draw those chintz curtains mum loved over the sink window.

"I don't have a guest," I said. Something in my voice stopped James and pulled him right up.

"Tall guy. Basketball tall. Dressed spooky; oh hell, like something outta Tolkien."

"Drop the outta," I said, going persnickity, "You went to college just like I did."

"As," he said. "But he can't be there and you don't know. He was right in the kitchen behind you with his outdoor coat on and hood pulled up like he was going out."

"Someone slept in mum's bed," I said. "And made it up again, after."

He came back into the bookstore.

"I got a good imagination," he offered, "but everyone knows..."

"I know," I said, "there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio."

"No," said James "everyone knows no one oughta live alone."

"That's not what you were going to say."

"Nope. But it's true."

"So now what," I said. "Blot, my cat, he isn't upset. He didn't seem to know anyone was there."

"Maybe he likes whoever it is? He was in your lap when you were sitting there reading. Why did you look like a caterpillar?"

I scowled at him.

"You looked like you were eating words, your mouth kept moving like a caterpillar munching a leaf."

"I was reading Cyrillic," I said, with dignity. I swept up the hair that had come loose and pinned it up. "I don't understand it so I have to pronounce everything out loud."

"And did that help?"

"No. I'm bringing home a dictionary tonight."

He made a sound like a grunt.

"I have to find out whose toilet's acting up. See you tonight," James said and closed the door after him.

Of course. Tonight was the readers' group.

So I closed up early again and went along the road clutching my dictionary and back up the driveway all strewn with dead leaves to the house where I found Blot waiting for me with an anxious look on his furry black face. He sat just by the door and went in fast when I opened it. Well, I thought, if there's anything to pets giving warnings, inside the house was better than out. This time I went straight upstairs and saw the covers moving on mum's bed. It didn't half give me a turn, I can tell you. I backed out, whacking my head on that damned low frame and I got down the stairs before the pain registered. Someone was pounding on the door.

I opened it and found James, looking fussed.

"You okay?" he said. "Decided to stop by because I was just passing and that was some yell you gave."

"Coincidence," I said between gritted teeth. "But there's something in mum's bed. Moving."

He barely said 'may I' before he was past me, not fast but very sure up the stairs.

"Duck," I snapped as he reached the door. It barely missed scraping his scalp anyway. He stopped and I peeked around his arm. Nothing moving now, only the funny appearance as if a person lay atop the bed.

James took one step forward, reached to tug the coverlet straight, and it wouldn't smooth. It straightened to the part that was wrinkled, as if it were weighed down there.

"Shit," said James. "Downstairs."

I beat him down; the stairs are narrow and I was closer.

"It's not my mother."

"No."

I looked at him. Some men might have tried to show off by hitting that bed or yelling before running down the stairs with me. I liked his style better even if he did look as white as I felt.

"Way too heavy," he said, "and too long. Too tall. Your mum was a little lady."

"At least he's not dirty."

"What?"

"I mean, this time he wasn't in the bed but on top of the covers. I assume no one would lie down naked in front of strangers, and so he's got to be in his clothes, possibly shoes, but there's no dirt on the candletuft."

"Maybe we're not strangers to him."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know."

He had to have some idea or he'd never have made that comment. However, when a Vermonter closes his mouth in a certain way you'll only make a fool of yourself trying to open it.

Blot came walking up in the most casual way and James studied him. Blot gave him a smile, that trick cats have of lifting up their faces and squinting up their eyes, and rubbed round his ankles once to see if that might bring forth some kind of treat. Then he decided I was the better bet and mewed.

"Nothing bothering that cat but his stomach," James said. "Want me to stay?"

"It's my house," I said. "And I live alone. Nothing here's hurt me yet except running into the door frame, and I'm not asking for a personal guard. Thank you."

I made that forceful and no regrets.

He grunted and chose the big chair by the door, setting down his cap and crossing his legs like he’d heard none of that.

I shrugged. I remembered enough from grade school to figure it was more than my time was worth to try and move him.

I walked into the kitchen, cat in my arms, and stopped short. The kitchen had been used, not messed up by a cat. Some utensils stood about and an empty pot leaned in the sink. The stove had been brought up to cooking heat in my absence and cooled part of the way back down. I checked, but it was properly banked as though my guest hadn't been sure if I'd be home soon. Something so domestic confused my feelings.

"Who the hell are you," I said out loud, and froze. A stir of cold passed over the back of my neck. Blot ducked out of my arms leaving trackways down my leg and disappeared as if he'd a better reason than wedding cake frosting. I was sure that whoever' had been on the bed wasn't there any more. He was here, and James hadn’t seen him pass. Somehow I had a feeling of someone's profound disapproval as if my question or way of speaking had offended. I finally turned and there was nothing for me to see but the usual furniture in its stolid New England rigidity and mum's rag rugs just as they should be. I could barely see the toe of James’ sock. He must’ve taken off his workboots and settled in.

I forced myself back into the kitchen and set cookies and tarts on platters for the meeting, grateful I'd done the cooking a day ago for there would have been burning in the offing if I hadn't. I peered hard at the pot left in the sink before I picked it up and washed it. Doubly a fool, I guess, because it looked as clean as if it had come straight from the shelf.

Nothing odd happened during the reading group and no drifts of cold air troubled anyone. Blot made his discrete way around the room, glossy with approval, snagging a tart rim here and a spoonful of cream filling there. I cannot for the life of me recall what book we talked about that night, though we must have all made appropriate noises and appreciations since I have the memory that everyone left in an air of satisfaction.

James lingered in the doorway but I didn't encourage his staying on for a late meal because I had a notion. While Blot curled up around his bloated stomach in a still-warm chair, I brought the book mum had left full of post-its, and pulled out her pink note. Now for the dictionary.

On the sixth word as I sounded it out, I felt cold and looked up, indignant, figuring James had invited himself back. I more than half way expected him. The front door hadn't opened. I looked around at the closed windows and quiet curtains. Not a stir of movement, no disturbance. I mouthed the next word without a breath. Definitely it was the text of an invitation.

Blot sat up, his round green eyes popping, and said clear as could be "Nyet!"

I stopped and stared at his fuzzy face.

"So you think you figured it out and just like one of those molasses-brained girls in horror movies you decided to give it a try?" said a voice behind me. "Your cat has more sense."

"James, you scared the hell outta me," I said and then the icy breeze happened again. I could see he felt it too from the look on his face.

"Someone didn't like that."

"I'm sorry," I said, and I was. "It's Death."

James looked round-eyed like Blot.

"You know how my mum was always talking about dying? Well from what I can guess she got impatient and wanted to hurry things up."

He looked like he was still chewing over the earlier bit.

"I figure she spent her life making Death welcome and when he finally came by, he found it too cozy to leave."

James sat down, his hand going out to stroke Blot as if James needed soothing.

"That's pretty wild. Or it would be if I hadn't gone upstairs. Or if I hadn't seen a guy maybe seven foot tall in black standing behind your chair just now when I looked in through the window. I don't get what the book has to do with it."

"This is an old Russian spell book. I don't know exactly, but I'd guess mum tried this part -- it's an invitation that she wrote out, an invocation for Death. Think about it. All those afternoons with mum saying, 'I'll make a little extra', whether it was cookies, rolls, or soup or tea, 'just in case'. She didn't mean in case guests come by, she meant in case Death arrived. There must be the ghosts of so much food and drink in this house intended just for him that Death could enjoy them quite a while. If he's a slight eater, he could stay a hundred years, I bet. Every time she made the bed she was wondering if she'd die in it. She even cleaned house for him. I bet he's never found a welcome like this before."

"So you're telling me that's Death sleeping upstairs..."

"Not any more. I think he doesn't like swearing, because that's the second time I said something I shouldn't and got a really bad feeling about it. I woke him up and he's around and about again."

"And Blot? How come he doesn't mind?"

"You ever meet a cat who wasn't comfortable with Death?"

He shrugged.

"Suppose you're right, then how're you going to dis-invite Death, get him out of the house? Somehow I don't think fumigation…"

"I guess I can live with him all right, so long as I forgo swearing. He must be busy most of the time in other parts. He's not a messy sort and he makes no noise, and Blot seems to like him just fine."

"Well I don't," James said. "I think it's time you left this house and this idea of living here alone and...."

"And what?" I said. "I wouldn't be alone here really, if you think on it."

"You know when we were seventeen and someone wrote up your name and mine together?"

"Yes."

"Well I'd never seen you so burned."

"I wouldn't have been if I’d thought you liked it."

"I'm the one who did it. I thought I might find out if you could stomach the idea, and as I said I never saw you so mad."

"I wouldn't have been ticked off if I hadn't liked you even then."

"Even then?"

"You are a pest," I said.

He grinned at me.

*****

I don't think we'll ever move back. The store is doing well, so's the plumbing, taxes are tolerable and we've never needed the income so that we had to disturb the old house or its tenant. Sometimes I've seen him through the window, or thought I did. Maybe the old glass makes him visible, but I'm not about to ask.

The other day  Blot made his arthritic way down the street. I watched him turn the corner, moving slow and careful but as cheerful as ever through the thin first snow of the season. That afternoon I went by the old house going to the grocery for some hamburger.  I saw the little round prints going up to the spot by the door as if he'd gone and sat there until someone let him in. Haven't seen Blot since and I miss him. I guess another cat will come along, they always do, but I bet it won't know how to say 'oh wow.'

Robin Tiffney's first attempt at writing was a manuscript on 'Chickens and their Diseases,' penned and illustrated while in second grade. Since then she has received various awards for horror, science fiction and narrative fiction and had her story 'Number Seven' published in the Crosstime Science Fiction Anthology VIII 2009, where it won first place.

She has lived in a variety of homes though the most influential have been Nigeria, New Hampshire and currently the Central Coast of California. Her other career, as Robin Gowen, centers on oil painting, both landscape and figure. She is married to a paleobotanist, who corrects the science in both her paintings and her writings, and they have a daughter who also loves to write. Their cats frequently steal pens but so far have not published any stories of their own.