Barnyard Desires

Leona was awoken by a scratching noise from her ceiling. Furtive rasping claws. Scratch, scratch scratch. She sat up in bed and fixed her eyes on the ceiling, straining to decipher the overhead activity. The landlord had assured her on several occasions that the property was rodent-free, but she had little doubt that the activity was rodent-related. Yes, it was a rodent problem. She did not know what type of rodent, but she had a strong suspicion that they were rats. Judging from their movements. Slow and conspiratorial.

About two weeks later the rodent problem took a turn for the worse. Leona’s landlord, in whom she had placed all hope for a swift solution, refused to return to her apartment or to look further into the problem. He had visited her apartment three times since the first morning, visits that coincided with periods of absolute silence from the ceiling. None of the other tenants, he told her, had mentioned noises. How would they have made it up to her apartment without disturbing anyone else?

After a night of unusually intense activity, Leona made a fourth call to the landlord, who told her that he did not feel comfortable making another visit. She stared at the telephone and said, in the landlord’s slow, patronizing voice, I do not feel comfortable.

Leona knocked with a broom against the ceiling. There is nothing more disgusting than a rat, she said. They were revolting creatures, but she could not stop thinking about them. It was not their stiff tails or their jagged teeth that troubled Leona, it was the idea of their nests. She pictured a star-shaped network of domes connected by damp tunnels. A nest at each of the star’s points, criss-crossed by tunnels, potato-width, one rat at a time.

They had brought dampness into her ceiling. Dampness and building materials. Like the rodents themselves, the nests were surely multiplying, so that Leona felt herself surrounded not with one or two nests but with dozens of nests, each thronging with a new generation of rats—tiny, sightless, unknowing. Clawless and mute, they lay in wait; they would complete the work of their progenitors. She listened dolefully to the chatter of her ceiling, tracking their fitful migrations. Their activities, she noticed, seemed to be concentrated above her bed. I did not ask for this, Leona said.

Sensing that the network was expanding, Leona telephoned her sister. They had not spoken for several months. She carried the telephone to her bed and crawled under the sheets. She was determined not to raise her voice. It was all too easy to raise her voice. Her sister brought this out in her. Rational Nancy. Failure-to-respond Nancy.

“I don’t think you understand. I don’t think you realize the scope of the problem.”

Leona paused, waiting for a response. Her sister did not understand. She had not, for one thing, considered the dampness. Leona pulled her legs under her stomach and adjusted her position in the bed, forming a sort of miniature tent.

“Here you are, now. Nancy, are you listening? Listen. Where do they urinate? Can you tell me that?”

The beseeching edge dropped from Leona’s voice. She seemed to have settled on a definitive point of view.