How long this went on has been figured: scientists doubt if the tiger, his respiration shut off, could have lasted more than a minute before beginning to weaken. At the end of some such period, though to Greg it seemed much longer, the writhing subsided to jerks, the jerks to feeble twitches, as the eyes started to glaze, the tongue to turn white, and the paws to die off to weak little slaps. Greg, watching, wiped himself off on the sheet, which the tiger was lying on. He felt no elation, he would like to make clear, only compassion, and a surge of the same affection he had felt at the outset, when the inquisitive nose explored him. He watched the striped flank, still pulsating in its futile surge for air, and drew the sheet over the chest, so its corners met back of the shoulders. He twisted them into a knot and tugged convulsively. An inch or two at a time, he dragged the tiger over, and having just enough sheet left, tied him up to the radiator pipe, where it entered the floor.
As he leaned back to pant from this exertion, a voice called from outside: “Mr. Hayes? Are you there, Mr. Hayes?”
“Yeah,” he quavered. “I’m here.”
“You all right, Mr. Hayes? Police talking.”
“Oh, I’m fine,” he said. “Yeah, I’m all right.”
“How about that tiger, sir?”
“Tiger’s fine too.”
“Then open the window, please. We got a rifle—”
But at that, from half-stupor, Greg came to life with a rush. Lurching to his knees, he flung open the window, seeing for the first time the lights of police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances, to say nothing of a throng of people that was rapidly becoming a mob. But disregarding all that, he yelled: “Lay off with that gun! Don’t shoot into this room!”
“Mr. Hayes, it’s the city police!”
“I don’t care, I said lay off! You keep away till I tell you to come! Is Mr. Biedermann there?”
“Here! Here, Mr. Hayes. Right here!”
“I got your tiger tied up.”
“You... what?”
“I say I got him tied!”
“Are you kidding, are you nuts?”
“I’m not kidding, and if I’m nuts I still got him tied! Get some men, get some rope, get a pole, but make it quick! He’s dying. I had to choke him, but he might still be saved — if you cut out the talk and step on it!”
“Hold everything, Mr. Hayes!”
At this point, he heard Rita call, and reassured her with a shout. Then he foundered to the closet to put a robe on. Now, it strikes him as ironical that he could have saved himself all along by ducking in there in the first place and shutting himself in. “But what you didn’t think of in time doesn’t do you much good later.” As soon as his bloody garb was covered, the door of the room burst open, and the police were there, with Mr. Biedermann, a trainer, a keeper, a dozen circus roustabouts, and a swarm of press photographers. He took charge himself, urging Mr. Biedermann, “Tie him up — get hitches over his feet, then slip your pole through — and out with him, to his cage. Soon as he’s in there I’ll do what I can to save him.” It was done quicker than he thought possible — the keeper winding the rope on, Mr. Biedermann slipping the pole through, one of those used on the tent, and grabbing a pillow case, which he slipped over the lolling head, to protect the men who, with quick, half-running strides, hustled their burden out, to a cage that had been backed up to the yard by hand. They flung the tiger in, and Mr. Biedermann threw off the ropes and snatched off the pillow case.
Then Greg, still having had no chance to explain what had happened, climbed in the cage alone. On the floor was a piece of bone, the remnants of a knuckle, lovingly licked to the size of a tennis ball. He seized it, jammed it between the jaws, well back so they couldn’t close. Then, grabbing the tongue with one hand and pulling it out, he shoved the other hand down the rough throat and began pulling out plastic. He got several pieces, threw them aside. Then at last he touched what he wanted: the first piece he had used, that had popped down the great gullet. Pulling slowly, as carefully as a surgeon, taking no chance on breaking it, he drew it out, a limp, sticky twist that glittered in the glare of headlights. He waited, put his hand on the quivering flank, and when it lifted, and a gagging, sad moan told of a breath entering the lungs, he patted the head, and climbed out.
As Mr. Biedermann reached for his hand and the keeper banged the door shut, Rita gathered him in her arms. But the two little girls screamed at what he looked like.
It so happened, when his hospital term was finished, that he came out a national celebrity, with TV hungry to present him, along with the tiger, whose name, it turned out, was Rajah. So the two of them appeared. The emcee did most of the talking, with Greg saying: “Yeah, that’s how it happened, sure did.” But then Rajah put in his two cents’ worth. At first, recognizing Greg, and doing obeisance to his conqueror, he slunk back in his cage and cowered. Then Greg, leaning to the bars, stuck his nose out. Rajah, after staring, jumped out and stuck his nose out. When the two noses touched, it was a tremendous kick for the ten million kids who were watching, and also a kick for Greg. “It’s a wonderful thing, isn’t it,” he reflects, “to save the life of a friend? But then when he thanks you for it, that’s really something. I’ve heard of that pal’s handshake, but that kiss through the bars, that big wet nose touching my nose, meant just as much to me — maybe more.”
(Esquire, September 1961)
3. The Light Novel
Introduction
It was a gloomy January 1, 1937. Cain was sitting in his study on Beiden Drive, feeling down and pondering how he could be so famous and broke and not be able to write. He kept thinking about Walter Lippmann’s remark that when he reached a state when he could not write, he wrote — anything! Then Cain heard his own voice telling him: “How you write ’em is write ’em.” The next day he started a story intended as a magazine serial and, with luck, a sale to the movies.
At this point in his life, he was intensely preoccupied with singing and music, two loves that dated back to his childhood. His mother was an accomplished vocalist who gave up a promising career to marry a Yale man she was in love with. For a brief time when he was around 20, Cain flirted with the idea of becoming an opera singer. But after a summer of music lessons and discouraged by his mother (who did not think he had either the voice or the temperament to sing grand opera), he decided against a musical career. But he never gave up his love of music or singing. And music — like sex and food — was part of the creative mix that produced Cain’s novels.