The Universal Obsession of Max Preensworthy

This is the story of Max Preensworthy, a man addicted to exactly the same thing as you or I. I'll come back to that. First about Max:

Max is almost 52, so his childhood is almost lost to him. His school teachers have forgotten him and he has no close friends. If cats lived longer, one would remember him. He remembers her. 

It was England, 1973, Max was ten years old. Every morning he skirted Lister’s Farm to avoid the snapping sheepdogs, crossed a couple of empty fields, and walked along the back of a row of sandstone cottages to Chinsbrook Primary School.

Tess lived in one of those cottages. On summer afternoons she would lie stretched out in the sun on the warm stones of the wall that marked the edge of her territory. Max would fondle her ears. She rolled on to her back and stretched her spine. He read nothing in those yellow eyes, but the exchange made sense. He enjoyed squeezing and pinching the sinewy tissues of her ears, and she must be grateful because she purred, which meant that she was happy.

On the day of his eleventh birthday party, Max walked slowly with his classmates through Chinsbrook, and along behind the row of sandstone cottages. His house was small and too full of books, his parents old and their clothes drab. He was in no hurry to show them to his classmates, but he had no choice.

Then he saw Tess lying on the wall. She sat up sharply and looked at the gaggle of chattering boys, nose twitching, ears angled towards them. Max stepped forward. She knew him, she allowed herself to be picked up. Other boys fondled her ears, she purred while Max held her. The boys grew bored. Max showed them how to hold her by the scruff of the neck, so that she couldn't reach them with her teeth or claws. He shook her like a bag and they giggled. That was good, it's good when other boys laugh. So he shook her some more and she yowled pathetically and they laughed even more. So he swung her and threw her against the stone wall. She yelped, and in a flash was on her feet and away. Some of the boys laughed even louder and some were so impressed that they said nothing at all.

Then Max led the boys to his house, walking out in front now, the others following behind. They ate spaghetti bolognese. He managed to keep his classmates away from the rooms with the books in, his father wasn't there, and no one said anything about his mother. It was good.

Later, when he was alone, Max thought about the cat. Where was she and what was she thinking about now? It was summer, not yet dark, so he walked around the farm and across the fields to the stone wall where she often sat. She was not there. The air felt cold and damp. The shadows seemed deeper than Max would have liked. Tess was not on the wall the following morning either. But that evening she lay in her usual place in the sun. She stiffened and stood up as he approached. He walked slowly so as not to scare her. She allowed him to touch her head. She allowed him to stroke her. He squeezed and stretched the sinewy tissue of her ears. She purred. It was good. 

When Max was 18 he went to work in a bank. He bought a house. He worked steadily. Property values rose. He never married or had children. By the age of 48 he was almost ready to retire. Then his aunt died. Her son was already dead. Max inherited over twenty million pounds. 

Max flew to the island of Karbok in South East Asia, and went to a hotel by the beach. At the reception, a lady with black hair and skin the colour of gingerbread smiled with white teeth, and said that she was grateful he had chosen to stay in the hotel. That was good. She bowed slightly as she spoke. That was good, it meant that she respected him. When the spaghetti bolognese was not as soft as he liked, the brown waiter apologised. That was good. Near the beach men with surf boards or fishing boats called him “sir.” That was good.

The hotel had fifteen bungalows and a pool shaded by coconut trees. Other people with brown skin bowed and smiled. Max couldn't understand what they said. At sunset the clouds burned and unseen birds launched into strange songs. At the restaurant there was a waitress with wide eyes, called Clara. Her skin was as brown as cinnamon. When she smiled, Max somehow couldn't see anything else. She only came up to his nipples. She smelled of lemons and something else he couldn’t describe, something damp and enticing. Max decided to stay longer. 

Ever since the birthday party with Tess, Max had tried to treat animals well. In Karbok people don’t feed cats, or let them into their houses, or neuter them, so they are in a bad state, usually flea-ridden and starving. Clara explained that in Karbok people associated cats with evil spirits. So with her help Max used a small amount of his money to set up a cat sanctuary. He paid for any cat to be treated and neutered, paid small boys to build homes for the wild cats, and distributed free cat food. The cats in Karbok are now among the sleekest and healthiest in the region.

After a few months on the island Max fell into a routine. Each morning he would lie in bed until ten, then walk along a narrow stone path to the restaurant. He would eat and spend the day by the pool. In the evenings he would play chess or talk to the owner of the hotel, a Chinese man called Ken. Ken didn't seem to try very hard at chess, and Max usually won. Max once noticed Ken making an illegal move, but one that served no purpose he could see. Ken spoke English with a strange accent, but better than any of the brown people. He could also speak Chinese, and the other language that the brown people spoke.

Sometimes Max would go to the hotel spa, where a brown lady with soft hands and a heavy bosom touched him in a way that was good. She reminded him of his mother. Sometimes Max thought about Clara touching him in the same way. It was good, but he didn't do anything about it yet.

Whenever Max passed a brown person on the paths around the hotel they would stop and smile and wait for him to pass. It was good. One day a man with pink skin and a swaying, hairy belly was waddling along the path, but he didn't stop for Max, and he didn't smile. Max had to step out of the way for him. Another day a pinky-brown person with grey hair asked Max to stop staring at her. It didn’t feel good.

Max thought about the pink people. He told Ken about them. They talked for a long time. Max had twenty million pounds. So he bought the hotel. Then there were no more pink people, only Ken, Clara, the woman with soft hands, and the other brown people. That was good. When Max transferred the money to Ken, Ken smiled every day for a long time.

Now that there were no more pink people, Max could stare as he liked. He stared at Clara a lot and thought about that damp smell. Sometimes Ken stared at Clara too but that didn’t really matter. 

Max talked to Ken about making some changes in the hotel, now that he was the only guest. The brown people should bow a little more deeply, and they should call him “Mr Preensworthy”, not “Max.” Only Ken called him that now. Cats should be allowed to roam freely, not be chased away. He experimented with different bungalows, found the one where he slept the best, and had the others boarded up. He moved the spa to a vacant bungalow near the pool, so that the lady with soft hands could touch him more often. It was good.

One day, Max was eating spaghetti bolognese for lunch in the restaurant. It was Clara's day off. A brown teenager was serving him. He called Max “Mr Preensworthy” and he bowed. But he spoke too loudly, and his smile went too high up his cheeks. His eyes shone too much, there was something light and airy about him which was not very respectful. Max said nothing, but later he told Ken that only Clara should serve him at the restaurant, and she should wait by the pool whenever he was there.

The next day, when Max went to the lady with the soft hands, he told Clara to wait outside the door. She looked at him with those brown eyes, and smiled with those white teeth. It wasn't the way the lady at reception had smiled. Nor was it the light and eyeful smile of the teenage boy who spoke too loudly in the restaurant. It was slow and heavy. It reminded him a little of the way Ken smiled. But she did as he had told her, and when the lady with soft hands touched him, it was good to know that Clara was nearby.

That night in bed, Max thought about how much his life had changed. He was far from Chinsbrook. He didn't need to worry about the bank, or the pink people. The brown people bowed and smiled. Ken listened to him, and smiled, and nodded, and smiled, and smiled. The lady with the soft hands touched him whenever he liked. It was good. Today Clara had waited for him outside the spa. He drifted off to sleep thinking about those delicate cinnamon hands.

He dreamed of a lemon grove with a river running through it. The soil was soft and dark, the air thick with that damp enticing fragrance he’d smelled on Clara. She was on the other side of the river. She was saying something, but her voice was drowned out by the sound, not of the river, but of howling cats.

During the night, Max awoke to unfamiliar noises. He listened. Nothing but darkness. He drifted into sleep again, for a time, it was difficult to know how long. Then he awoke again, and heard a cat mewl, and then the shhlp-shhlp sound of sandalled feet moving in a hurry. Max became more alert, eyes half open. He noticed something in his nostrils like wood or varnish, then he became aware of an orange glow. He ran outside. 

Every building was aflame.

* * *

The fire wiped out Max's money, because he owned the buildings, not the land underneath. Ken owned that. Ken sheltered Max for the night and bought him a ticket back to Chinsbrook. Max still had his house there, and in a few weeks he found a job. 

The job came with a uniform, a wide, stiff, flat cap and a dark jacket with gold epaulettes on the shoulder and vertical yellow bands on the front. He walked up and down the seafront, where there were several restaurants which cooked spaghetti just how he liked it, nice and soft. All manner of people, pink, brown and pinky-brown, and Chinese like Ken, stepped out of his way on the pavements. Occasionally people would shout at him, but usually they gave him stiff smiles that were not too light or eyeful. Sometimes they hurried away when they saw him. Many people apologised when he put a piece of paper on their car. If they did well enough, he took it off again.

He became a traffic warden. 

It was bloody fantastic.

* * *

I said that Max had the same addiction as you and I. You must be thinking that Max is quite unlike either of us. But we all have the same obsession: We think too much about what other people say and do, and too little about what they really feel. We fixate on the social illusion not the internal reality. Happily you and I are more interested in other people's reality than Max was. That’s why we read high-quality, thought-provoking new fiction in Reedsy’s Prompted magazine, and don’t plan to become traffic wardens.