Anatole sat up and rubbed his knee. The room into which they had fallen was very cold and so tiny that when Uncle Terrible stood up, his head brushed the ceiling.
“Are you injured?” asked Uncle Terrible.
“No,” said Anatole, and in the same instant both of them saw what had hurt him: a large iron ring anchored to a door in the floor.
Uncle Terrible gave a whoop of joy. Together they grabbed the ring and pulled.
Below them lay another room, much larger, also empty, and another trap door exactly like the first. First Anatole and then Uncle Terrible jumped down and tried to pull open this door also. It did not budge.
“Pull harder,” said Uncle Terrible, and the door broke free.
Anatole knelt, and Uncle Terrible squatted beside him, holding it lest it should slam shut and wake the tailor below. A rush of warm air rose to meet them.
They were looking directly into the shop itself. Here was the jade plant and the back of the framed picture of John F. Kennedy, and behind the cash register a partition which hid the workshop from the view of customers. But nothing was hidden from Anatole and Uncle Terrible, who saw below them the tailor’s worktable and the pegboard on which he hung his threads, as bright and various as the feathers of birds, and his portable sewing machine and his straight-backed chair. His shears and electric iron gleamed on the worktable. The shelf behind the table was crammed with bolts of cloth and books, which bulged with swatches and patterns. Tacked over the empty clothes rack was a sign:
FINISHED WORK
“Let’s go down,” said Anatole.
“My dear Anatole,” exclaimed Uncle Terrible. “Do you think I’m Superman? Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound?”
“Then I’ll go alone,” said Anatole. And holding fast to the snakeskin, he climbed through the trap door and let himself down.
He landed—thud!
The spools, the shears, the threads—everything trembled. Out of sight in a room beyond this one, Anatole heard pots and dishes rattle.
“Can you find where he keeps his golden needles?” Uncle Terrible called softly.
Anatole lifted the books and patterns and swatches one after another. Nothing under them but a Chinese newspaper. He peered behind bolts of tweed and twill and gabardine.
Nothing. Nothing.
He tiptoed to the room at the back and found himself in the tailor’s kitchen, which smelled pleasantly of ginger. Past the stove, the icebox, the table big enough for one, to yet another door—ah, here was the tailor himself, fast asleep in his bed, his teeth shining in a glass of water on the nightstand.
The tailor sighed and turned over on his stomach. His breathing moved the covers up and down, up and down.
Anatole hurried back to Uncle Terrible.
“I can’t find the needles.”
“If only the shears could speak,” said Uncle Terrible, “or the sewing machine. They’d tell us.”
“But they can speak,” said Anatole, and he laid the snakeskin on the sewing machine.
The sewing machine gave a hoarse wheeze of astonishment.
“Can you please tell me,” said Anatole, “where the tailor keeps his golden knitting needles?”
“Mrrrrssssrs,” answered the machine. “Krrrwwwwooow.”
Hastily Anatole took away the snakeskin for fear the machine would wake the tailor and laid it on the pegboard over the threads. The threads all began to chatter at once in shrill voices.
“Can you tell me where the tailor—” began Anatole, but they did not hear him; they had too many quarrels to settle with one another. Again he took the snakeskin away.
“I’ll try the shears,” he said, feeling rather desperate, for the window showed him the blue light of early morning.
And he laid the snakeskin on the shears.
The shears clip-clapped, once, twice.
“At last,” murmured the shears in an oily voice. “At last I’m appreciated. After thirty years of service, I can tell my story.”
“Please, can you tell me—”
“I’ve walked for miles and miles,” continued the shears, “up velvet and down linen, over the gabardine highway, along the satin turnpike, and where has it gotten me?” And the shears clapped its two halves together like legs.
“Please,” said Anatole. “I need the tailor’s golden needles. It’s a matter of life and death.”
“Can’t help you, can’t help you,” said the shears. “The tailor sleeps with them every night in his pocket, and now he’s got them working on a magnificent cape, and he keeps both the needles and cape in bed with him. Keeps an eye on things, keeps an eye on things.”
Anatole cast a longing glance at the tailor’s bedroom, and the shears clip-clapped once, twice, and said, “If you’re thinking of stealing them, think again. They won’t go. They’ll screech at you, jab you, stab you—oh, think again. They’re spoiled things. Brought up among royalty. Think themselves finer than the rest of us.”
Anatole considered this remark.
“Does the tailor need an apprentice?” he asked.
“There’s only one thing the tailor needs,” replied the shears.
“What?” called down Uncle Terrible.
The shears gave a little shriek of alarm.
“Who’s that hiding in the ceiling?”
“That’s my friend,” said Anatole. “You can tell him.”
For several minutes the shears would not speak but only clipped the air nervously. At last the oily voice resumed. “A cat. That’s what he needs. The mice in this building are driving him crazy.”
Anatole felt his right wrist tingle.
“A cat!” repeated Uncle Terrible. “We have no cat. We are undone.”
“No, we’re not, Uncle Terrible,” said Anatole. He held up his right hand and shook it. Something unwound itself and hung there, grinning.
It was the face of a cat, black from the ears to the nose, with a white chin and two dark spaces for the eyes.
“Mother said if I put it on, I’ll be a cat for twenty-four hours,” said Anatole.
“Anatole, don’t,” said Uncle Terrible. “Don’t put on that mask.”
“Take care of this,” said Anatole, and he tossed the snakeskin into the air. It floated up, up, and curled itself into Uncle Terrible’s hand. The thread of death he untied from his waist and wound around his finger.
“Anatole—” said Uncle Terrible.
But Anatole was already slipping the mask over his face.
The instant he did so, his ears shrank to pointed tents, whiskers crisp as celery sprang from his cheeks, and his whole body sank low as a footstool and grew fur, nicely patterned in black and white like a tuxedo. His tail stood up straight as a wand.
He flicked the tail to get the feel of it. He bowed and stretched his paws and discovered his claws. They gleamed, then disappeared into the wonderful sheaths at the tip of each paw. Wrapped around a claw on his right paw, the thread of death might have been a dustball, a feather, a scrap of tweed.
Anatole scampered into the tailor’s bedroom and bounded to the foot of the bed. He heard the trap door close. He tucked his paws under him and waited for the tailor to wake up.
The street noises began: cars passed the tailor’s shop, a bus groaned and stopped, groaned and started. Women’s voices drew near and faded away. The tailor sat up. He saw the cat at the foot of the bed, and his mouth fell open.
“Good morning,” said Anatole.
“A talking cat! Mother of God!” cried the tailor.
He sprang out of bed and darted into the far corner of the bedroom. And wonder of wonders, right behind him danced twelve golden needles, and on the needles danced the golden cloak of Arcimboldo the Marvelous, and the needles were clacking away, for they never wasted a moment from the time the tailor opened his eyes to the time he closed them.
“Didn’t you wish for a talking cat?” asked Anatole.
The tailor squeezed himself behind the nightstand, and what a strange figure he made, hugging himself in his nightshirt while the cloak gathered itself around him and the needles went on knitting, click, click, click.
“Think hard,” said Anatole. “Didn’t you wish for a talking cat? Because if there’s been a mistake, I can go back where I came from.”
Though the tailor was terribly frightened, he did not want to lose so rare a companion as a talking cat. He put his teeth in and adjusted them.
“I have often wished for a cat since my old cat died,” said the tailor. “But I don’t think I ever wished for a talking cat.”
“I’m the deluxe model,” said Anatole. “And I’ll stay with you and catch your mice and keep you company, on one condition.”
“What condition?” asked the tailor.
“Never tell anyone I can talk.”
“I won’t tell a soul,” said the tailor.
“And now,” said Anatole, “if you’ll be so kind as to bring me my breakfast.”
“Of course,” said the tailor.
And he bustled joyfully about the tiny kitchen, lit the gas burner, and set the table with two white porcelain bowls, one for himself and one for Anatole.
“Grape Nuts?” he asked. “My old cat loved Grape Nuts.”
“I love Grape Nuts,” said Anatole.
They ate in silence, the tailor leaning forward on his stool, drinking tea with one hand and stroking Anatole with the other. From deep inside Anatole rose a purr, which surprised him, for he did not know he was making it. He had a most unfamiliar urge to wash his face. The tailor poured himself tea from the porcelain pot and said, “I shall call you Pai Shan. All my cats are called Pai Shan. You are the fourth to carry that name.”
“And I shall call you Noble Master,” said Anatole, because it seemed the proper thing to do.
The tailor looked perfectly delighted.
“Noble Master,” said Anatole, “I’ve never before seen needles that knit by themselves. I suppose you take great care of them.”
“Great care,” said the tailor. “A thief tried to steal them once, and they nearly killed him. No matter where I go, they stick by me. Watch.”
“THEY ATE IN SILENCE, THE TAILOR LEANING FORWARD ON HIS STOOL, DRINKING TEA WITH ONE HAND AND STROKING ANATOLE WITH THE OTHER.”
He rose from the table and walked out of the kitchen into the workroom. The needles bobbed right after him, whisking the cloak behind them, and the clatter and clack of needle upon needle sounded like the grinding of teeth.
“They won’t follow anyone else,” the tailor said proudly.
“They are wonderful,” said Anatole. “I suppose you got them from a great magician?”
“I got them from my father, who got them from his father, who was given them by the emperor of China, in exchange for making the empress’s wedding gown.”
“And where did the emperor get them?” inquired Anatole.
“Oh, that’s a story,” said the tailor, smiling. “When the emperor was an infant, his grandmother gave him a golden teething ring. When he grew up, he had all the teeth he wanted and no hope of cutting any more, so he had the ring melted down and forged into these needles.”
The needles gathered themselves into a crown over the tailor’s head, and the golden cloak slipped off and rolled down his shoulder in buttery waves.
“Is the cloak finished?” asked Anatole.
“All finished, and just in time,” said the tailor. “Come, Delicious. Come, Winesap. Come, McIntosh, and Jonathan, and Rome Beauty. Come, Bonum and Fallawater and Yellow Newton and Fall Pippin and Russet and Northern Spy. Come, my most beautiful Gloria Mundi.”
The tailor stroked Anatole between the ears.
“My father was fond of apples, but in China he seldom got any. In America he liked to buy apples at the fruit stand on Orchard Street. The apple man always said, ‘What kind do you want?’ And when my father learned how many different kinds of apples grow in America, he could only say, ‘How wonderful apples are!’ and he named his needles after the apples. ‘The needles are wonderful,’ he would say, ‘and the apples are wonderful too.’”
Bang, bang, bang!
“It’s the wizard come for his cloak,” exclaimed the tailor, and he tossed the cloak on the counter and, followed by the twelve golden needles, ran into the bedroom to fetch his clothes. Anatole seized the end of the cloak in his claws. So strong is the thread of life that the cloak did not tear, but row by row, from the bottom up, it began to unravel, and it was half gone by the time the tailor returned, pulling his trousers over his nightshirt.
But the tailor was too excited to notice. He opened the door, and the first customer of the day strode into the room, shaking the snow off himself like a dog.