Free Cat in Glass by Nancy Etchemendy Page B

fire in the fireplace. Then I sat down before the box and finished unpacking it. The sculpture was as horrible as I remembered, truly ugly and disquieting. I might never have understood why Father kept it if he had not enclosed this letter of explanation, neatly handwritten on his college stationery:
    To whom it may concern:
    This box contains a sculpture,
Cat in Glass
, designed and executed by the late Alexander Chelichev. Because of Chelichev’s standing as a noted forerunner of Dadaism, a historical account of
Cat’s
genesis may be of interest to scholars.
    I purchased
Cat
from the artist himself at his Zürich loft in December 1915, two months before the violent rampage which resulted in his confinement in a hospital for the criminally insane, and well before his artistic importance was widely recognized. (For the record, the asking price was forty-eight Swiss francs, plus a good meal with wine.) It is known that Chelichev had a wife and two children elsewhere in the city at that time, though he lived with them only sporadically. The following is the artist’s statement about
Cat in Glass
, transcribed as accurately as possible from a conversation held with me during dinner.
    “I have struggled with the devil all my life. He wants no rules. No order. His presence is everywhere in my work. I was beaten as a child, and when I became strong enough, I killed my father for it. I see you are skeptical, but it is true. Now I am a grown man and I find my father in myself. I have a wife and children, but I spend little time with them because I fear the father-devil in me. I do not beat my children. Instead I make this cat. Into the glass I have poured this madness of mine. Better there than in the eyes of my daughters.”
    It is my belief that
Cat in Glass
was Chelichev’s last finished creation.
    Sincerely,
    Lawrence Waters
    Professor of Art History
    I closed the box, sealed it with the note inside, and spent the next two nights in a hotel, pacing the floor, sleeping little. The following Monday, Stephen took the cat to an art dealer for appraisal. He came home late that afternoon excited and full of news about the great Alexander Chelichev.
    He made himself a gin and tonic as he expounded. “That glass cat is priceless, Amy. Did you realize? If your father had sold it, he’d have been independently wealthy. He never let on.”
    I was putting dinner on the table. The weekend had been a terrible strain. This had been a difficult day on top of it—snowy, and the children in my school class were wild with pent-up energy. So were our daughters, Eleanor and Rose, aged seven and four respectively. I could hear them quarreling in the playroom down the hall.
    “Well, I’m glad to hear the horrid thing is worth something,” I said. “Why don’t we sell it and hire a maid?”
    Stephen laughed as if I’d made an incredibly good joke. “A maid? You could hire a thousand maids, for what that cat would bring at auction. It’s a fascinating piece with an extraordinary history. You know, the value of something like this will increase with time. I think we’ll do well to keep it awhile.”
    My fingers grew suddenly icy on the hot rim of the potato bowl. “I wasn’t trying to be funny, Stephen. It’s ugly and disgusting. If I could, I would make it disappear from the face of the Earth.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “What’s this? Rebellion? Look, if you really want a maid, I’ll get you one.”
    “That’s not the point. I won’t have the damned thing in my house.”
    “I’d rather you didn’t swear, Amelia. The children might hear.”
    “I don’t care if they do.”
    The whole thing degenerated from there. I tried to explain the cat’s connection with Delia’s death. But Stephen had stopped listening by then. He sulked through dinner. Eleanor and Rose argued over who got which spoonful of peas. And I struggled with a steadily growing sense of dread that seemed much too large for the facts of the matter.
    When dinner