Doctor Rat (2 page)

In the cage beside them, we actually have three blind rats. In fact, we have twenty-three blind rats, part of a magnificent new experiment initiated by a very ambitious student, whom I’m featuring in this month’s Newsletter. He’s a sensitive chap and it was his exquisite sensitivity that caused him to dream up the item that’s become the latest rage here at the lab: the fabulous removal of the eggs from a female rat’s body and the grafting of them to different parts of a male rat’s body—to the tail, to the ear, to the stomach. And for the past twenty-three days, he’s been grafting them to their eyeballs! So now it’s time we sang that promising young scientist a song. I’m stepping to the center of the maze and climbing the Reward Ladder from which I can be clearly seen by all.

“Brother and Sister Rats, members of the choir, I should like us all to sing ‘Three Blind Rats,’ as part of our research program. Sing:

The voices of the rats in the Hemorrhagic Sore Cage are truly well trained. You will observe one of them being pickled in a few moments. If left too long in the Final Solution the smaller bones will disintegrate. But if taken out in time, they can be scraped and brushed until they’re shining clean, and the Learned Professor likes to see that. Good clean bones every time. It gives him the feeling of a job completely and thoroughly done.

Where was I? Oh yes, that young man with the rat’s eyeball. He’s undoubtedly going to have one of the most unusual papers of the year. It ranks with removing the stomach and connecting the esophagus with the duodenum.

Is that a scream I hear? Oh do, oh do, oh do, oh duodenum, with decapitation as the terminal procedure. I want every one of you to make sure that you die calmly, without any show of fear or twitching, in order that the young scientists will be able to dispense with you neatly and quickly. Remember X-rays can be taken of the rat after its sacrifice by slicing the head with a sharp saw or razor, after which we’ll be cutting up your carcass into four parts with a cleaver.

Isn’t that a scream?

Is that a scream I hear?

Yes, it is, just down the row of cages. Shall we move along and take a few notes?

“Help, help!”

“Please, young fellow, there’s no need to get so worked up about your little contribution to science. Have a bit of pressed biscuit before you die. Eat hearty and remember—death is freedom!”

“What are they doing to me, Doctor Rat?”

“Let me just check my notes…yes, here we are. You’ll be the tenth rat this week to have his brains sucked out by a pneumatic tube.”

“Help, help!”

I comfort my fellow rats where I can. It requires psychological understanding, of course. And having been driven insane, I hold the necessary degree in psychology.

We all smelled it. Every dog in the area suddenly had it in his nose. I was outside, just taking my morning run. My master had always let me have this, an hour or so when I might roam around the neighborhood, but always within whistling distance. Whenever I heard that whistle I went running back, for a delicious bone. But this morning it was different.

There are many smells in the world, some good, some bad, but there is only one smell like this, only one smell that absolutely cannot be denied, so sweetly satisfying is it.

It isn’t a smell from the gutter or from food or from the heat of a female; it isn’t from plants or water or rich black soil. I was padding along down the alleyway when I realized it was in the air. Where was it coming from? I lifted my nose, turned slowly around, finding its direction.

I followed it. Not to follow would have been impossible. I dropped everything and ran. Marvelous bones, hearty breakfasts, loving caresses—none of them could compare to this scent, so familiar and yet so fleeting. Don’t lose it, don’t lose it, any of you. Smell it now—there, around the corner, there, down the street, keep after it, keep chasing, keep picking it out from all the other smells. You must go through fire and water to stay with this scent.

Through the town—out of alleyways and along the streets, back into the alleyways, twisting, turning. There are certain smells that resemble this, but only vaguely, and lacking the overwhelming authority that speaks to us now. The smell of burning candles, the smell of a river at dawn—these are weak approximations, but they do suggest a smell whose nature is made up of the most tantalizing promises which are only hinted at in the candle’s delicate burning and the river’s vagrant mists. It seems to me now that I have, from puppy-hood on, caught a touch of this smell, whose touch opened secret chambers in my heart. But before I could dash into those chambers the smell was gone and I was left standing by a can of garbage, or in a pile of wet leaves, calling myself a dreamer.

Am I dreaming now?

On every side of me, in gathering numbers—dogs, dogs, dogs! We’re at the edge of the city, racing along through the last broken streets where poor and hungry dogs join us from small tarpaper shacks. They’re skinny, snappy creatures, but their spirit is as high as that of the finest pedigree among us, of which there is also a great number.

Yes, there are sparkling collars and jingling tags of every sort. The society dogs as well as the mongrels are drawn by this powerful lure. Together, all of us together—oh, it’s wonderful as we pad along, tails wagging, noses lifted, and the smell all around us.

There are the hounds up ahead. They’ve reached the meeting place first, hounds of every kind, running back and forth in the vacant lot at the end of town. Their noses are to the ground, and they’re barking at a creature who is swifter than any fox or rabbit, a creature who can’t be seen, whose scent alone decrees that he is here. The beagles howl and chase in circles, the bird dogs point in every direction, for the scent is all-pervasive. Into the empty lot, then, come the rest of the dogs—collies and bulls, terriers and greyhounds, little Pekingese on tiny pads, St. Bernards with tremendous paws, and mongrels of every size and shape.

On the hillside above the field, I see alley cats prowling nervously back and forth, watching me. And from the edges of the field, peeking through the grass, come numerous rats, mice, and moles. They’ve all caught the scent. Humans can’t perceive it, for their noses have fallen into disuse. But we animals are intimate with it, upon the vacant lot, as we gather in a sea of fangs and fur.

Naturally we look among us for leaders, for those dogs who might be able to interpret the subtleties of the scent and communicate more of it to us. And from the forest above the city, the wild dogs appear.

“Deceitful dog!”

We have several such dogs in the laboratory, stray mutts who are attempting to inflame our youth with revolutionary material. Naturally, we cut the dogs’ vocal cords as soon as they enter the lab, but it’s not enough, for as I’m sure you are aware, we animals have wordless communication, based on sensory impulses more subtle than language.

I’ve suggested to the Learned Professor time and again that we rats be given our own separate wing, but no. All the animals are here in one enormous room and we may have to pay dearly for it. Our current heatstroke study is utilizing a particularly rebellious mongrel dog, brought in from some alleyway, and he’s filled with vicious propaganda. They have him chained to a treadmill inside a heated glass cage. He runs here, day in and day out, toward his death, which can come none too soon for me. I wish he’d drop dead from heat prostration this very moment, so I wouldn’t have to listen to his twaddle.

He goes on night and day, sending us his inflammatory images. He’s mute, but he’s skillfully using the intuitive wavelength for his dastardly messages. I’m sure you can feel them in the air. His imagery is extremely fine and suggestive. A rat will be lying here, making a real contribution to science by having his trachea severed, and suddenly he’ll be completely plugged into a revolutionary image. His whole body will be suffused with the feeling of freedom. Such feelings cannot be permitted, as you know.

“Good afternoon, Learned Professor!” Here comes the Learned Pro again, but of course he doesn’t acknowledge my greeting, for his intuitive wavelength is encrusted. It’s a great pity because somehow I’ve got to get across to him the fact that he’s got dangerous revolutionaries in his lab.

Oh my, here comes his lovely graduate assistant, her long blond hair curling softly around her shoulders. I’d certainly consider a copulation plug with her. Her ears would quiver as I stroked her on the neck, and after applying digital stimulation to her pelvis, you’d see a sudden curvature in her back, as she surrendered to my learned copulation-response test. Her superficial genitalia would appear in their characteristically blue color, matching her eyes, and she’d run around the wheel several times excitedly, then look at me apprehensively knowing that I, a vigorous white male, would attempt copulation seventy times in twenty minutes, with one or two ejaculations, ha ha!

I do hope I’ve got that right. Having been castrated at birth, I have no real firsthand knowledge of the matter. Naturally I keep my eyes and ears open here in the lab and I make careful field observations whenever a female begins stretching and bracing nervously. This blonde alongside the learned Professor is exhibiting every sign of entering her cycle of maximum sexual receptivity. She makes me feel dizzy, makes me start running around my turntable, round and round. It’s a 12-inch metal disc (for more, see my learned paper, “Rats on the Wheel,”
Psy. Journ.,
1963). I’ve really got it clicking now. The cyclometer says I’ve already done fifteen revolutions!

That’s enough to keep me in shape for a while. Now I must continue my rounds. Being a Learned Mad Professor, I’ve been given complete run of the maze table, which affords me points of contact with nearly every other section of the lab. 

“Doctor Rat, I feel very strange.”

“Certainly you do. Aren’t you the rat who’s being constantly crammed with wholly unsuitable food?”

“Yes, Doctor Rat, but this has nothing to do with that.”

“What week of the diet are you in?”

“My fourth.”

He has two weeks to go and then death will ensue, according to schedule. “I wouldn’t worry about the way you feel, son. It’s probably just the onset of keratinization of the corneal epithelium. You can’t see straight is all.”

“Doctor Rat, it’s not a physical problem.”

“They’ve had you in the maze, have they? Driven you slightly whacky, I imagine. Don’t let it bother you. Once you go completely mad, you’ll qualify for a degree in psychology.”

“Doctor, it’s not a mental problem either.”

“Not physical and not mental? My boy, what else is there?”

“My spirit.”

“Calcified kidneys and brittle bones, that’s all that’s troubling you, with maybe a little hyperirritability.”

“No, Doctor, it’s the very deepest part of me that I’m talking about.”

“You mean deeper than a number eight French rubber catheter tube with a depressed eye can go?”

“Deeper, much deeper.”

“Are you trying to tell me, a Learned Mad Doctor, that there is some part of the rat as yet unknown to man?”

“My light, Doctor, the light inside me…”

“…introduced through the rectum…”

“I saw a fountain of light inside me. Doctor, we come from that fountain.”

“We come from the copulation plug, my lad. How old are you?” It’s unfortunate that we don’t have better sex education here in the laboratory. This is what comes of inserting glass rods into the vaginas of virgins.

“I’m ageless, Doctor, and timeless.”

The poor overstuffed rat looks at me with such a gleam in his eyes that I’m certain he’s being injected with small quantities of sodium amytal. There he goes, hobbling away to talk with the other rats, and spread his doctrine. I haven’t got time for such things. Death is freedom, that’s the all-inclusive doctrine.

The wild dogs, then, are our leaders. They say they’ve been on the scent for years, and it has led them here, to this great gathering of dogs. Now we’ll move together, and move we do, out of the empty lot at the edge of town and into the forest, the wild dogs in the lead. Here they show their clear supremacy, going through the brush with paws that are swift and sure. They have the scent in their noses, and so do we. There are dogs on all sides, yapping through the trees and bushes.

Several old dogs are in our midst, their bellies fat and their eyes weak. Nonetheless they hold firm to the general movement. Those who abandon the march do so because the other scent—the scent of home—proves too strong for them.

I smell it, that old temptation. All of us, except the wild dogs, have to smell it because it’s very strong, compounded of love, longing, and easy meals. We can smell it in the wind, we can smell it on the ground, we can smell it all around us and we run from it, knowing its danger. There are many heavy hearts though, and mine is one of them, for my masters are good and kind, thoughtful and gentle…

But through the forest we plunge, putting the past behind us. We drink at little woodland streams, we sever our ties. And the stray dogs, who know the woods so well, race about us, inspiring us with their calls.

“Come on, dogs, come on!” they cry, and it’s a wonderful, thrilling cry. The wild dogs are saturated with the mysterious scent, and inflamed by it—not mad, but rapturous, and their rapture is contagious. We run on, leaving love behind us.

In its place is a feeling of solidarity such as I forgot existed: to be with one’s own, to follow one’s own law, to hear the sound of one tongue speaking in the wind, with sunlight coming through the leaves, lighting the forest floor. I see a bright hallway of trees ahead of me, endless and beautiful. Out here, racing toward the sunset, my heart is my own and I’m free!