Copyright 2019 by Gary L. Pullman
Although The Cat's
Pajamas, published in 2004, may
not be one of Ray Bradbury's finest collections of short stories, it
does contain some good ones.
“The
Island,” in which a family of four (Mrs. Benton, her daughters
Alice and Madeline, and her 15-year-old son Robert) live in a large
house, isolated from the larger world and imprisoned by their
paranoia, may not be an altogether successful story. It does,
however, show Bradbury's talent for indirection.
It
seems that Mrs. Benton's fears have infected her children. Bedridden,
the matriarch fears that her home may be invaded, either by robbers
seeking to steal the $40,000 she's hidden beneath her bed, to rape
her and her daughters, or to do both before killing them all. The
children share her fears. Their defenses are to arm themselves and to
ensure that “the house was locked and bolted” (15).
They
have also discontinued their telephone service, except for a
battery-powered “intercommunication phone circuit” (18) that lets
them talk to one another in their separate rooms. Preferring not to
rely upon the world beyond their own house, they've also discontinued
the electric service, opting for “oil lamps” and the light and
heat of logs blazing in the house's fireplaces (20). To protect
themselves, each of the family members, except Mrs. Benson, keeps a
pistol at hand in his or her bedroom. These decisions add to their
jeopardy after they hear one of the downstairs windows break and fear
that a stranger has invaded the sanctuary of their isolated home.
According
to the omniscient narrator, everyone hears the breaking of the
window. The family responds as the reader might predict, based upon
Bradbury's characterization of them: “Rushing en masse, each [to a]
room, a duplicate of the one above or below, four people flung
themselves to their doors, to scrabble locks, throw bolts, and attach
chains, twist keys” (20). (Bradbury makes a mistake in having his
omniscient narrator declare that “ four people flung themselves to
their doors,” etc., since Mrs. Benton is bedridden. Confined to her
bed, she would not be able to rush back to her room or lock her door;
indeed, she would never have gotten out of bed to begin with.)
The
Maid as Killer
Has
the maid been killed by an intruder, someone who'd entered the house,
perhaps to steal the money hidden under Mrs. Benton's bed, to rape
her and her daughters, or to kill the family?
The
maid might have a motive: the $40,000. As the person who cleans the
house, she might have found the cache, although, since Mrs. Benton is
bedridden, it seems unlikely. The maid could have heard of the money,
perhaps when, “in the years before,” Alice and her mother debated
the wisdom of locking the house and of keeping the large sum of money
on hand:
“But all a robber has to do,” said Alice, “is
smash a window, undo the still locks, and—”
“Break
a window! And warn us?
Nonsense!”
“It
would all be so simple if we only kept our money in the bank.”
“Again,
nonsense! I learned in 1929 to keep hard cash from soft hands!
There's a gun under my pillow and our money under my
bed! I'm the First
National Bank of Oak Green Island!”
“A bank worth forty thousand dollars?!”
“Hush!
Why don't you stand at the landing and tell all the fishermen?
Besides, it's not just cash that the fiends would come for. Yourself,
Madeline—me!” (17)
All
the maid would have to do is to break a window. Then, as panic ensues
among the members of the family, she could visit the room of each,
individually, and murder them, one by one. Neither Mrs. Benton nor
Robert is said to fire a weapon at their killer. Madeline does and
miss her aim. Alice also fires at her attacker—three times, in
fact—but with her eyes closed, so it is easy to imagine that Alice
misses her target, as the omniscient narrator verifies for the
reader, stating that one bullet penetrates “the wall, another . . .
the bottom of the door, [and the] third . . . the top” of the door
(26).
Alice
as the Killer
Three
of the family members are attacked and killed (or otherwise dies) in
their respective bedrooms. Alice, who is in the library, alone
survives. Shooting three times at the stranger who seeks to enter the
library—and missing each time—Alice falls from the window she's
opened, the sill of which she straddles, and makes good her escape
through the snow. Was the maid also murdered? Is Alice, the sole
survivor, the killer?
Because
of the indirect style that Bradbury employs, which often describes
actions, frequently in fragments without much context, and offers
only snippets of conversation, while flitting from one character to
another, either possibility seems to exist: either the maid or Alice,
it appears, could be the killer.
Either
could have broken a downstairs window, thereby precipitating the
family's panic, and picked the victims off, one by one.
If
Alice is the murderer, she certainly has the means (her gun) and the
opportunity (she lives in the same house as the victims, her family),
but what about the motive? What reason would she have to kill her
mother, her sister, and her brother? After all, as a member of the
family, she already enjoys the benefits such status confers upon her:
food, clothing, shelter, even luxury.
However,
she also must suffer the isolation, the deprivation (there is neither
telephone service beyond the house nor electricity; nor is there much
companionship, and there is no normalcy) in the “outrageous house,”
which is occupied by eccentric and paranoid family members. With
$40,000, she might start life anew. She alone is in the library,
which suggests she has an interest in the wider world and in art and
culture, articles which are in short supply in the madhouse in which
she lives.
At the
end of the story, objectivity appears in the figure of “the sheriff
and his men” (26). Finally, there are individuals from the wider
world, authorities trained to respond to emergencies and to solve
crimes. Alice has been away; she has escaped; now, “hours later,”
she has returned “with the police” (26).
The
sheriff, observing the open front door, is surprised by the audacity
of the intruder: “He must have just opened up the front door and
strolled out, damn,
not caring who saw!”
(27)
The
sheriff and his men also confirm the second set of footprints leading
“down the front porch stairs into the white soft velvet snow.”
The footprints are “evenly spaced,” suggesting “a certain
serenity” and confidence (27).
Alice
is amazed at the size of the footprints and the implication of their
dimensions: “Oh, God, what a little man”
(27).
Could
they be the maid's footprints? Alice thinks they are the footprints
of a man, but Alice never saw the person at the door to the library
who'd sought to get to her; she'd fired at the library door with her
“eyes shut” when she'd observed the doorknob turning, and all
three of “her shots had gone wide” (26).
If
the maid faked her own death, prior to killing the other family
members, maybe the footprints are the maid's and not those of a male
intruder. Maybe Alice has merely supposed
the footprints are those of a man. After all, her mother often warned
that rapists could assault them: “Besides, it's not just cash that
the fiends would come for. Yourself, Madeline—me!”
she'd told Alice (17). In this case, the maid left the footprints
descending the front porch stairs and parading from the house
“neatly” and “evenly spaced, with a certain serenity,” and
Alice left the other set of footprints, those that begin outside the
library window and run “away from silence” (26-27).
The
first set of footprints could also be those of Alice herself. But
what about the other set of footprints that Alice sees when she
returns with the police, those “in the snow, running away from the
silence” of the house? They are not the same set of footprints that
she sees and calls to the attention of the sheriff and his men, those
which lead down the front porch's stairs and across the lawn,
“vanishing away into the cold night and snowing town” (27). Does
this second set of footprints constitute an insurmountable problem
for the idea that Alice is the killer?
After
opening the front door, she could have left it open and run down the
porch stairs and across the lawn to notify the police of the alleged
intruder's dastardly deeds. This would be the reason that the
footprints are small for a man; they were not left by a male intruder
at all, but by Alice herself. The footprints that Alice sees fleeing
from the library's open window could be imaginary footprints, which
only she alone sees, possibly as a means of supporting her fantasy
that an intruder, rather than she herself, murdered her family.
If
this is the case, it makes sense that, suffering guilt, she would try
to obliterate the only set of footprints at the scene, those of the
“little man”
(Alice herself): “Alice bent and put out her hand. She measured
then tried to cover them with a thrust of her numb fingers.” And it
makes sense that she stops crying only after “the wind and the
winter and the night did her a gentle kindness. . . [by] filling and
erasing” the incriminating evidence “until at last, with no
trace, with no memory of their smallness, they were gone” (27).
Interestingly,
the omniscient narrator states only that Alice saw the set of
footprints leading from the open library window, but acknowledges
that both she and the police see the footprints descending the front
porch stairs and heading across the lawn, toward the distant,
“snowing town.” Is one sight a hallucination, the other a
reality?
Thanks
to Bradbury's indirect communication, maybe not. The omniscient
narrator does not tell the reader that the police see this second set
of footprints. The omniscient narrator states only that “she
[Alice] saw her footprints in the snow, running away from silence.”
If Alice is the killer, after dispatching the maid, her mother, her
brother, and her sister, she could have “fallen” out the library
window and run to the front porch, covering her footprints as she
went, the same way the wind eliminates the “small” footprints of
the presumed intruder, by “smoothing and erasing them until at last
. . . they were gone” (27).
An
Intruder as a Killer
Alternatively,
the killer could be a stranger, an intruder, come to rob or rape the
women of the house, as Mrs. Benton has long imagined and feared might
happen. This is the story's straightforward interpretation, and,
despite a few incredulities, such as the intruder's remaining alive
despite being the target of several shots fired by different
individuals, the small footprints said to be his, the unlikelihood of
his knowing about the cache of cash, and his breaking and entering
without knowing what he risks he might face from the family inside
the house, is a plausible—and perhaps the most
plausible—interpretation of the plot.
Thee Family Are the Killers
Finally,
another interpretation is possible concerning the killer's
identity—or identities.
Maybe
neither an intruder, the maid, nor Alice is the murderer. Perhaps the
family members each killed him- or herself or died of fright. They
are paranoid. Each has a loaded gun at hand. Although panicked by the
breaking of a window, they allow (at first) that the broken window
could have resulted from nothing more sinister than “a falling tree
limb” or a thrown snowball. It's only after they hear a second
sound, that of “metal rattling,” that they irrationally conclude
that a window has been raised and that an intruder has entered their
home (19). Their frantic telephone calls to one another fan the
flames of their panic, as do the sounds of each successive gunshot,
as the family members suppose one of their own seeks to defend him-
or herself against the intruder.
Mrs.
Benton sees (or imagines) her door opening, and she does not respond
thereafter to Alice's frantic pleas over the telephone (24). Did she
somehow take her own life?
Does
an intruder actually enter the house and kill its occupants?
Do the
family members kill themselves, while Alice kills the maid?
Thanks
to Bradbury's indirect style, the possibilities multiply. While some
may seem less likely than others, each is apt to have its own
subscribers.
Among
the other stories in The Cat's Pajamas that I found
particularly interesting are “Ole, Orozco! Siqueiros, Si!”
and “The Completist,” each of which will be murdered and
dissected in future Chillers and Thrillers posts.