Mr. Fox

SOME FOXES

I

The little girl feared the fox cub, and the fox cub felt exactly the same way about her.

The woods went on for many miles, and a few foxes lived at the heart of it and didn’t encounter people if they could help it. Yet the girl and the fox cub had been pointed out to each other — the girl’s mother had used a picture book, and the fox cub’s mother had brought him to peer in at a window once, when everyone in the girl’s house was sound asleep — and each had been told: That is your enemy.

They grew up a bit. He learnt things, and so did she. They didn’t unlearn their fear of each other.

The girl was pretty, though. . and stubborn and strange.

And the young fox was curious and courageous and clever. .

It was only natural that they would find each other.

The young girl was in love with mystery and secret knowledge. She learnt the names of demons, and summoned them. They never materialised. She didn’t take offence. She wouldn’t have bothered, either, if she were them. The girl lived with her mother and her elder sister at the mouth of the woods, only a few steps away from town — less than ten steps, probably. Still, they didn’t get many visitors. In the evenings the elder sister studied and studied, but our girl set up lanterns in her room and performed puppet shows with marionettes she had made herself. During his long illness the girl’s father had shown her how to make puppets. Then he’d died. “Come away from the window,” the elder sister would say, sharply, whenever she saw what the girl was doing. “Don’t draw attention to us. Who knows what’s watching from the woods.”

But their mother intervened and told the elder girl to leave the younger be.

Our girl sang songs to accompany her performances, and the puppets cast shadows on the leaves and the grass outside her window. Our young fox observed all this from a distance; he stood stock-still, his narrow eyes just a faint shimmer amongst the shrubs. He heard the singing. The sound meant nothing to him, though it did not displease him. The fox knew about fox business. By now his mother had moved on somewhere, and he didn’t much miss her. His paws were swift, and he wouldn’t let his eyes confuse his mind, so he was good at catching rabbits and squirrels. He slept late and woke early and travelled the whole wood wide, tasting the weather. He knew where the bees went to make their wild honey. He saw when cuckoos visited the nests and knew which birds were going to get a nasty shock come hatching time, and he waited for the spoils. The fox fought no one; he took things easy. When it was time to run away, he ran. But not this time.

What can it mean for a fox to approach a girl? Foxes are solitary. A fox that seeks out human company is planning evil. Or it has something the matter with it. Rabies, or something worse. The fox watched the girl at play, and he didn’t understand what she was doing — it certainly wasn’t fox business. Still, it interested him, and he gazed and gazed at her as she sat surrounded by all that greedy, dangerous fire that she kept in jars. He gazed and gazed though it served no purpose to do so, gazed without feeling satisfied and with the sensation of a deep scratch in his side (this was an awareness of time and its disappointments, the certainty that the girl would put out the lamps before he had looked his fill). And it was through observing the girl at play that our fox learnt to recognise beauty elsewhere in the wood. Whenever he became caught up in useless looking, he knew. Moonlight on the water brought rapture. Think of a fox, dipping his paws in silver, muzzle dripping. He didn’t want to drink the water, only to touch it while it looked like that. Another fox came by and laughed at him. But our fox didn’t care.

As for the girl, she looked into the darkness of the woods, and she saw very little. Occasional motion, perhaps, but nothing definite. Our girl developed a distaste for fact. She stopped going to school. Her mother kept a shop in town, selling food, books, toys, linens, and anything else she could think of, and she did very well out of it. The girl joined her mother at the shop counter. She refused to sell people things she didn’t think they needed, and argued with them until they saw her point. The elder sister grew more wan and studious, folding herself into her textbooks because she didn’t like to live in the mouth of the woods, where things she couldn’t see crept and shuddered at all hours of the day and fell deathly still when she turned to look at them. The elder sister wanted to get away and go to a city, and be unknown and kick up her heels and have fun. All in time. She needed to get top marks first, and go away on a scholarship. “What’s to become of you?” the elder sister asked the younger, who shrugged and laughed and looked out the window and dreamed.

Have you forgotten our fox?

The one who now had an eye for beauty, and an inclination to set it apart from other things. .

The fox wished to thank the girl.

(The fox wished to know the girl.)

It took him a long time to make his mind up. He wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t have a fever and he slept well and his appetite was fine, so he thought he must be well and that everything was all right, and that maybe just this once the things the elder foxes had said were wrong.

So the fox brought the girl berries. Plump, rust-red berries wrapped in the largest, greenest leaf he could find. He left the leaf out overnight first, so that it sparkled with dew. How to give them to her?

He watched and waited. The evening puppet shows had become less frequent; this was because the girl was becoming interested in young men and had begun dressing up to go out to dances with her sister. Their mother had previously refused to let the elder sister go alone. “Young men are animals,” she said. So there were dances, and blushes, and letters written and exchanged, and sighs of longing and — the woods didn’t seem quite as real to the girl anymore. They were just some trees behind her house. A great number of trees, to be sure, but only trees. Men were interesting. They were new puzzles to work at, at least. And if she solved one of them she won a new life, and a new surname, and a companion who wouldn’t tell her off for buying too many music scorebooks and new hats. These days the girl tended to put on a puppet show only when she’d fallen out with a suitor. Then a richly gowned female puppet berated a threadbare male puppet for half an hour at a time.

The fox didn’t like the new tone that the puppet shows had taken. Something about it. . Anyway, here were the berries, and there was the girl and the lantern light. The time was right. He leapt up onto the windowsill with the leaf in his mouth, dropped it, and retreated, farther than a stone’s throw but not so far that they were unable to see each other.

The young woman saw a streak of grey, saw a tail brush the windowpane, saw a green parcel fall. And her puppets fell from her hands with a clatter and lay on the ground with their knees bent as if they meant to spring up again on their own. The lantern flickered. The girl saw a fox a little way down the corridor of trees. The creature was watching her. She moved to the right and its gaze moved to the right. She moved to the left, far left, almost out of the window’s frame, and the fox’s head moved with her. It appeared to be smiling, but that was just a meaningless expression created by the look of its muzzle. There was an unfaltering clarity to the animal’s gaze: thought without emotion. And yet. The fox was quivering. It had brought her something and it had stayed to see what she would do, and it was quivering. So the girl didn’t draw the curtain, and she didn’t turn away. She opened the window and slowly, very slowly, closed her hand around the bulky leaf. The fox did not approach — if anything, it drew farther back. The girl opened the leaf. Berries, but they looked more like jewels. She tasted one, and it was delicious. She ate another and another, and she beckoned the fox. “Come here, come here,” she said in a syrupy voice she used with very small children. The fox did not approach. The fox looked desperately from the girl’s eyes to her berry-stained mouth. She didn’t like the gift. She was angry. What was she saying, what was she saying. .

“Won’t you come closer? You’re the one who sought me out, you know,” the girl said crossly, in her own voice.

The fox had had enough for one night, and fled.

Now the girl wished to thank the fox.

(The girl wished to know the fox.)

She wrapped herself in a shawl, took a lantern in her hand, and slipped out of the house, thinking that she would follow the fox to its den and see how it lived. Our girl raised her lantern as she followed the paths between the trees. She ducked under the bigger branches, but the smaller ones raked her hair; she gasped at first, but then the pull became so frequent that it was caressing, a ceiling of hands. She stepped across shallow, pebbled brooks. Her skirt dragged in the water — the hem would be ruined, she thought, distantly. The fox was nowhere to be seen. The girl stopped beside a fallen log and swung her lantern around behind her, trying to remember the direction she had come from. She couldn’t remember. She was lost, and she didn’t know what to do. She sat down on the log and cried. Unfortunate girl — her tears were beautiful. From his hiding place, the fox watched her weep. All he could think was that she was doing something with her eyes, something that shone. He watched her until she fell asleep, and he kept watch over her while she slept.

This happened in winter. There was ice in the earth. When the sun was down, skin and clothing were of no use outside. You needed fur, or feathers, or you needed to be indoors. The girl caught a chill. A bad chill. Her breath cracked in her chest; she took a fever because her body needed the warmth. Her teeth chattered. She reminded the fox of leaves blown in the wind. When she woke up, she was weak, and, much to the delight of the fox, she lay on her log and wept again. Without knowing it she had walked a long, long way into the wood. Sunrise dazed the redwoods — birches wept, and so did the girl. Eventually she chose a direction and began to walk — the fox followed her, wondering where she was going. Home — her home — was the other way. Discreetly, he rattled some branches. She noticed him, and then he ran, too fast for her to catch him but slow enough for her to keep up. The girl could hardly believe that she was following a fox again — it could be taking her anywhere. To her death in a deep pool, to a shallow pit crammed with tiny bones. Perhaps it didn’t even mean for her to follow it, perhaps it was just bounding along, enjoying its morning. The fox never looked back at her. A different fox?

She heard the search party before she saw them. The air rang with the sound of her name. The fox swerved and dashed past her, back to the heart of the wood. She put out a hand just in time and felt its warm fur against her palm.

There were no more puppet shows after that. Snow fell. The girl sank, and the girl shivered, and the girl raved, and the girl died. The cause of death was twofold — the extreme chill she’d taken alone in the night, and the berries, which were poisonous. The fox didn’t know what was happening. He dared much, so he returned to watch the house. All the curtains were drawn. Steady lamplight escaped from a gap at the top of one pair of curtains, the pair in the girl’s bedroom. He lost interest after a few nights of that view, and returned when he next remembered. There was no light that night. The whole house was dark. It was the same the next night, and the next. The fox was philosophical. From the moment he had recognised loveliness he had known it couldn’t last. And he returned to fox business.

II

Now I will speak of another kind of fox. The other fox was a grey fox; this one is red. I am speaking now of a fox who had been hunted, a beast of the chase who was alive only because of luck and cowering and grim fighting — grim and miserable and low. This fox wasn’t innocent — he had turned hutches into bloodbaths purely to divert himself. But he also knew wounds and weariness, had crawled into holes and lain like a rag wadded deep into the ground. He killed hens because they were there to be killed, and he understood that the hunters sought to do away with him for the same reason. The fox had started his life in a den heaving with cubs, but they had all been hunted down almost as soon as they were grown. A few times he had hidden alongside foxes who had been bred in captivity, but they never got away. Their wits were dull. The horizon made them run around in circles, confused.

This fox had no one. I’ve said that foxes are solitary, but there’s a difference between having no one because you’ve chosen it and having no one because everyone has been taken away. I’m not saying that I myself know what the difference is. But our fox knew.

One afternoon the fox jumped some fences and walked straight up to a farmhouse. He didn’t want to be a fox anymore. He didn’t want to be anything. His head was down, so he didn’t see the farm dogs, looking askance. They bristled and growled, but they didn’t attack, not even when the farmer’s wife came out and commanded it. The farm dogs knew a sick fox when they saw one. The farmer’s wife went inside, but she left the door half open — she was coming back with something. The fox looked at the ground. He appeared to be smiling, but that was just a meaningless expression created by the look of his muzzle. The fox had no plan. Something might happen soon. Or it might not. Either way he was here, at the end of his nature.

A human form appeared near him — the dogs jumped at the sky and bayed in a way that wolves do sometimes when the full moon draws them. The fox didn’t look. This person had been following him about for days. He couldn’t remember when she had begun. He had been badly hurt and she was there, she was just there. She had sticky stuff that he had permitted her to smooth over his wounds. The wounds were just scars now; they’d healed fast. He had been too sore to move, and she had dug up voles and snapped their necks and scraped at them and fed him. With her five fingers and her funny, flat palm she had placed food in his mouth. At night, when he was in too much pain to rest, she counted stars and whispered into the hollow of the tree he lay in, telling him how many she could see, until he fell asleep. There was no reason for her to do such things. He didn’t know what this person wanted from him, and he hadn’t come across anything like her before. So she probably didn’t exist. The fox ignored her as best he could. Now she crouched down beside him and she touched him. She rubbed his neck. She spoke into one of his ears, and he understood. Whenever she spoke, he understood. Her voice had all sorts of sounds in it — the flow of water against rock, an acorn shaken in its shell, a bird asking for morning. Her voice wasn’t loud, but he heard it throughout his body.

Listen. . That woman is looking for a gun.

A gun? Good. . Even if the fox had been able to reply, he wouldn’t have.

She’s found the gun. Quickly: Why did you come here?

The dogs became braver and crept close — she put out a hand and sent them away.

It’s true, then, fox? That you want to die?

He couldn’t tell her the truth; he lacked the language.

She sighed.

Very well. It is your right. Good-bye.

She stroked his back. She strolled away. The sound of the shotgun shattered the air and sent him after her, as hard and as fast as he could go. They both ran, but he overtook her. All things considered, two legs, etc., she wasn’t a bad runner. “Live.” She laughed, breathlessly. “Live, live, live.” And when it was safe to stop, she collapsed against a stile in a fallow field and held her face between her hands and made noises that sounded like “Hic, hic, hic.” He began to pay attention to her. Her eyes were set quite far apart. He had never been so close to one of his hunters, had never been this close to harm.

She told him that she had looked after him because of the white hairs on his forehead that grew into the shape of a star. Sometimes you see that someone is marked and you’re helpless after that — you love. She wanted to tell him that, but she decided it was better not to. He hadn’t known that there were such hairs on his forehead, or that such a thing could be of significance. She sat and he lay near her, and a little time passed, quiet and bright. Then they had to go, in case the farmer had been told of their trespass and decided to look for them.

They parted outside her hut. It was a ramshackle thing beside a stream. It had a heavily dented tin roof, and its windows were coated with dust. All in all, it looked cross, and as if it had plenty of things to say to its inhabitant about having been left alone for so long.

“Come inside,” the woman said to the fox.

The fox demurred. Sadly, the woman watched him go his own way again.

Days went by. The woman made her peace with her hut. She gave it a thorough sweeping, built herself a new roof, washed the windows, plaited rugs. The woman picked herbs and grasses and boiled and bottled various concoctions. Sick people and their relatives sought her out in the forest; she took their money and they took her bottles away and were cured. “Where have you been?” she was asked, again and again. “Weeks we’ve been looking for you.”

And she answered, “I fell in love.”

“Congratulations! Where is he?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know if I’ll see him again.”

And her pupils grew vast as she spoke, as if her eyelids had been opened while she was still in the first stage of sleeping. Women like her are very serious once they have chosen. To everyone who saw her she said, “If you see him, tell me. He wears a white star on his forehead.” She didn’t tell anyone that he was a fox.

One of the village women went into labour, and our woman served as midwife. The days were full of screaming, and the nights were hoarse, and there were three of each until the baby was born. This happened in summer. When our woman came home, she jumped into the stream and washed; the blood and sweat whirled away, and afterwards she sat outside until the sun dried her. She watched lizards and felt humming in her skin; tiny creatures bit her; they were alive and they wanted her to know. Her pulse slowed to its lowest ebb, and sped up again, flashed through her wrists, in her head. She was happy and unhappy. “The fox has forgotten you,” she told herself. Yet all around her she saw white stars. .

Because of a fox?

Because of him.

The woman went into her hut to find clothes to wear and found that she had been robbed. Bottles and picture frames were broken, her table and chairs were overturned, her papers had been rifled through, matches were scattered on the ground. The woman searched the hut for missing things. She wasn’t aware of all her possessions, so really she was just looking for a gap. She found it on her bookshelf. The thief had taken a dictionary. Nothing else. She stood, looking at the gap, and thinking. Then thinking turned to wonder and she smiled into her hand.

Now think of a fox in his den, wrapped round a book. His front paws are resting on the pages, and his eyes are very close to the text. These shapes! They’re useless. They frustrate him. The more he looks at them the more they mock him. He nudges the book into a sack and drags the sack along by its drawstring, through the forest. In the bushes by the village nursery, he listens to children saying their ABCs. He can see the blackboard. The teacher taps it with a ruler, going from letter to letter. His mind wanders. . He bites his paw. Look and listen. His mind wanders again. . He nips at his paw again, savagely this time. And again, and again, until his paw is bloody and he is learning.

First light finds the fox at his stolen book. No one else knows, no one sees what he’s doing. But words are coming. The fox doesn’t hunt anymore — he doesn’t hunt! He eats easy meat, forest rats. He stays near his den or he goes to the nursery school, he listens carefully, he connects pictures with words, he eavesdrops, he steals newspapers, he stumbles in his understanding and snarls and shreds the newspapers to pieces. . But he will know this language, he must have this language.

Because of a woman?

Because of her.

The day came when the fox had words. Only a few but enough to begin to talk to her. He went to the woman’s hut. Her hair was grey, and there were lines on her face, but otherwise, she was the same. She had not been young when they’d met, and two years had tipped the balance. He wasn’t young himself. The woman smiled and touched his forehead. So it was still there, this shape that she liked. Good.

Come inside, the woman said, in that way that he heard from head to toe. One day he would ask her how she could do that.

The fox entered the hut.

The fox had brought the dictionary back. She’d long since bought a new one — just as well, since the stolen one was falling apart. He had also brought words. He had chewed them out of newspapers: long, patient work, and anxious work, too, double-checking that each word meant what he thought it meant. If he had got it wrong, all wrong. . if she laughed at him. .

The woman settled in a chair and watched the fox sort through scraps of paper. She was holding her breath. She believed — she didn’t know what she believed. It could not be. The fox looked lean and crazed. In her mind she ran through a list of concoctions that might do something for the beast. .

Words began to spread at her feet.

Hello.

The fox looked up at her and panted. He curled his tail around his leg in an apprehensive L.

The woman raised her hand and let it fall. “Hello,” she said aloud. She couldn’t see clearly. All these tears. She brushed them away.

Can you help me.

He was very intent as she spoke. She answered three times, to be clear. “I’ll try. Tell me what you need.”

Quickly, remembering the afternoon at the farmhouse, she added, “I can’t help you die.”

The fox shuffled scraps of paper, chose two.

Not die.

He chose three more.

Please change me.

He thumped his paw on the last two words, his eyes on hers. Change me. Change me.

“Change you how?”

Not fox anymore.

He’d had to tear the word “fox” from the dictionary. It was tiny.

“No,” the woman said slowly. “No, I don’t think I can do that. I haven’t the skill.”

The fox lay down and closed his eyes. This lull, after all his striving, was enormous. It was like pain. The woman fell down beside him — her pity made her do it. The woman and the fox faced each other, nose to nose. Then he stood, nudged her aside, chose more words.

Stay with you.

I with you.

Please.

The fox applied himself to living as the woman lived. He ate at the table with her, and slept alongside her in her bed, and scrabbled around with soap in the stream. He read voraciously. He read more than she did. And as more words came to him, he told her of the hunt, of the horses and the hounds behind, and sometimes there were falcons, like a rain of beaks and claws. The woman listened, and as she listened, she realised that she was hearing him — that he was saying words instead of showing her. She made no remark, and treated it as normal. She asked him which would he rather be, if he could change — a horse, a bird, or a hound? None of those, he said. At night he suffered himself to be held, a thing that was unthinkable in the first days of their acquaintance, even when he had been very badly hurt. He had less and less trouble sleeping upright each night. Together they built a bigger hut, and a bigger bed. She saw that his claws had become thin and brittle — they were more like fingernails. Very long nails, it was true, but they weren’t claws anymore.

But what teeth he had. So:

The pleasure of biting. Or letting him. And afterwards the feel of a long, wet tongue light against the hot wound.

The different ways:

the hidden bite

the swollen bite

the point

the line of points

the coral and the jewel

the line of jewels

the broken cloud.

One medicine-making day, as they carried fresh water back to her hut in wooden buckets, he asked her, “How old are we?”

And she answered, “I have forgotten.”

She put down her bucket and tried to count years on her fingers. He watched until she gave up, then put his arms about her — he stood a head higher than she did.

“What’s so funny?” she asked him.

And he said, “Nothing.”

III

I almost forgot to mention another fox I know of — a very wicked fox indeed. But you are tired of hearing about foxes now, so I won’t go on.