Lifeless Beast

The Christmas party was fun. There were crowds of guests, big and small. There was even one boy who had been flogged that day—so Katya’s nanny told her in a whisper. This was so intriguing that Katya barely left the boy’s side all evening; she kept thinking he would say something special, and she watched him with respect and even fear. But the flogged boy behaved in the most ordinary manner; he kept begging for gingerbread, blowing a toy trumpet, and pulling crackers. In the end, bitter though this was for her, Katya had to admit defeat and move away from the boy.

The evening was already drawing to a close, and the very smallest, loudly howling children were being got ready to go home, when Katya was given her main present—a large woolly ram. He was all soft, with a long, meek face and eyes that were quite human. He smelt of sour wool, and if you pulled his head down he bleated affectionately and persistently: “Ba-a-a!”

Katya was so struck by the ram, by the way he looked, smelt, and talked, that she even, to ease her conscience, asked, “Mama, are you sure he’s not alive?”

Her mother turned her little birdlike face away and said nothing; she had long ago stopped answering Katya’s questions, she never had time. Katya sighed and went to the dining room to give the ram some milk. She stuck the ram’s face right into the milk jug, wetting it right up to the eyes. Then a young lady she didn’t know came up to her, shaking her head: “Oh, dearie me, what are you doing? Really, giving living milk to a creature that isn’t alive! It’ll be the end of him. You need to give him pretend milk. Like this.”

She scooped up some air in an empty cup, held it to the ram’s mouth, and smacked her lips.

“See?”

“Yes. But why does a cat get real milk?”

“That’s just the way it is. Each according to its own. Live milk for the living. Pretend milk for the unliving.”

The woolen ram at once made his home in the nursery, in the corner, behind Nanny’s trunk. Katya loved him, and because of her love he got grubbier by the day. His fur got all clumpy and knotted and his affectionate “Ba-a” became quieter and quieter. And because he was so very grubby, Mama would no longer allow him to sit with Katya at lunch.

Lunchtimes became very gloomy. Papa didn’t say anything; Mama didn’t say anything. Nobody even looked round when, after eating her pastry, Katya curtseyed and said, in the thin little voice of a clever little girl, “Merci, Papà! Merci, Mamà!”

Once they began lunch without Mama being there at all; by the time she got back, they had already finished their soup. Mama shouted out from the hall that there had been an awful lot of people at the skating rink. But when she came to the table, Papa took one look at her, then hurled a decanter down onto the floor.

“Why did you do that?” shouted Mama.

“Why’s your blouse undone at the back?” shouted Papa.

He shouted something else, too, but Nanny snatched Katya from her chair and dragged her off to the nursery.

After that there were many days when Katya didn’t so much as glimpse Papa or Mama; nothing in her life seemed real any longer. She was having the same lunch as the servants—it was brought up from the kitchen. The cook would come in and start whispering to Nanny, “And he said . . . and then she said . . . And as for you! . . . You’ve got to go! And he said . . . And then she said . . .”

There was no end to this whispering.

Old women with foxy faces began coming in from the kitchen, winking at Katya, asking Nanny questions, whispering, murmuring, hissing: “And then he said . . . You’ve got to go! And she said . . .”

Nanny often disappeared...