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One of our textbooks in English class was a small blue volume of short stories, one of which was “The Cask of Amontillado,” and one was something by Stevenson. (I seem to recall the title of the Stevenson story as “The Master of Ballantrae,” but that’s impossible, because that’s the title of a novel. So I don’t know what the Stevenson story may have been, and, God forgive me, I don’t care either.)
I don’t know what else I may have retained from the seventh grade, but one thing I held on to was that story, “The Cask of Amontillado.”
“For the love of God, Montresor!”
“Yes,” I said, “for the love of God!”
They don’t write ’em like that anymore, and I knew that even then. But somehow I got it into my head that the author’s initials were R.L.S., not E.A.P. Now and then it would come up in conversation, and someone would say I meant Poe, didn’t I? And I’d say yes, of course, and stand corrected-but not for long, because my memory remained inexplicably loyal to Stevenson.
Well, really. Where did I get off looking to win an Edgar? If the Red Sox could go that long without a World Series win just because their cheapjack owner let go of Babe Ruth, what did I expect?
And then, of course, everything changed.
Because I started keeping company with a young woman named Ly
And why, you may ask, should that serve to lift the curse of Amontillado? Perhaps the answer will become clear when I tell you that the maiden name of Ms. Wood’s mother, Emilie, was Poe.
She was not the first person I’d met with that surname. Back in the eighth grade, a mere year after I’d read about Montresor and the ill-named Fortunato, I had a classmate named William Poe. His family had just moved north from Alabama, and that made him an exotic creature indeed at PS 66 in Buffalo, New York. We teased him relentlessly about his accent-and I wouldn’t be surprised if that helped reinforce the curse, now that I think about it. I don’t know that anyone asked if he was related to the Poe, but he very likely would have answered that he was, because they all are. The Poes, that is.
Of course, none of them are direct descendants of Edgar Allan, because the poor fellow had no living issue. But he has plenty of collateral descendants, and one of them was named Emilie, and she had a daughter named Ly
Reader, I married her.
And within the year my short story “By the Dawn’s Early Light” was nominated for an Edgar. Ly
It has, I blush to admit, been joined by others in the years that followed. Coincidence?
I don’t think so.
Lawrence Block once read “The Bells” at a New York Parks Department event at the Poe House in the Bronx and, flying in the face of popular demand, repeated the performance at a similar gala a year or two later. As editor of Akashic’s forthcoming anthology Manhattan Noir II-The Classics, he made a point of including “The Raven,” figuring you can’t get a whole lot noirer than that. His sole other co
The Black Cat
FOR THE MOST WILD yet most homely narrative which I am about to pen, I neither expect nor solicit belief. Mad indeed would I be to expect it, in a case where my very senses reject their own evidence. Yet, mad am I not- and very surely do I not dream. But to-morrow I die, and to-day I would unburden my soul. My immediate purpose is to place before the world, plainly, succinctly, and without comment, a series of mere household events. In their consequences, these events have terrified-have tortured-have destroyed me. Yet I will not attempt to expound them. To me, they have presented little but horror-to many they will seem less terrible than baroques. Hereafter, perhaps, some intellect may be found which will reduce my phantasm to the commonplace-some intellect more calm, more logical, and far less excitable than my own, which will perceive, in the circumstances I detail with awe, nothing more than an ordinary succession of very natural causes and effects.
From my infancy I was noted for the docility and humanity of my disposition. My tenderness of heart was even so conspicuous as to make me the jest of my companions. I was especially fond of animals, and was indulged by my parents with a great variety of pets. With these I spent most of my time, and never was so happy as when feeding and caressing them. This peculiarity of character grew with my growth, and, in my manhood, I derived from it one of my principal sources of pleasure. To those who have cherished an affection for a faithful and sagacious dog, I need hardly be at the trouble of explaining the nature or the intensity of the gratification thus derivable. There is something in the unselfish and selfsacrificing love of a brute, which goes directly to the heart of him who has had frequent occasion to test the paltry friendship and gossamer fidelity of mere Man.
I married early, and was happy to find in my wife a disposition not uncongenial with my own. Observing my partiality for domestic pets, she lost no opportunity of procuring those of the most agreeable kind. We had birds, gold-fish, a fine dog, rabbits, a small monkey, and a cat.
This latter was a remarkably large and beautiful animal, entirely black, and sagacious to an astonishing degree. In speaking of his intelligence, my wife, who at heart was not a little tinctured with superstition, made frequent allusion to the ancient popular notion, which regarded all black cats as witches in disguise. Not that she was ever serious upon this point-and I mention the matter at all for no better reason than that it happens, just now, to be remembered.
Pluto-this was the cat’s name-was my favorite pet and playmate. I alone fed him, and he attended me wherever I went about the house. It was even with difficulty that I could prevent him from following me through the streets.
Our friendship lasted, in this ma
One night, returning home, much intoxicated, from one of my haunts about town, I fancied that the cat avoided my presence. I seized him; when, in his fright at my violence, he inflicted a slight wound upon my hand with his teeth. The fury of a demon instantly possessed me. I knew myself no longer. My original soul seemed, at once, to take its flight from my body; and a more than fiendish malevolence, gin-nurtured, thrilled every fibre of my frame. I took from my waistcoat-pocket a penknife, opened it, grasped the poor beast by the throat, and deliberately cut one of its eyes from the socket! I blush, I burn, I shudder, while I pen the damnable atrocity. When reason returned with the morning-when I had slept off the fumes of the night’s debauch-I experienced a sentiment half of horror, half of remorse, for the crime of which I had been guilty; but it was, at best, a feeble and equivocal feeling, and the soul remained untouched. I again plunged into excess, and soon drowned in wine all memory of the deed.