The Pedestrian

by Rodolfo Piskorski, on Ray Bradbury’s short story

Miss Hutchins turned off the TV after her after-dinner tube session, stretched her arms
above her head and decided to go check something – anything – in her workshop. She stood up
slowly from the chair due to her aged back, thinking about varnish, strings and maple wood, when
she heard two things at the same time.

One was her cat, meowing from the floor underneath, and another was what sounded like a
police siren wailing once, just outside her window. Ignoring her cat’s reproachful look, she walked
steadily to the window and looked out on the cold, grey streets.

Indeed, there was a police car right in front of her sight, vibrating because of its engine, as
if shaking from the cold, but giving off the sturdy look of a car who does not mind chilly nights.
She saw that the car was keeping a man under its headlights, a rather short man, with a long
overcoat. His head was surrounded by the mist coming from his open mouth, a frost strongly lit by
the car lights, and he looked as though he had his head in the clouds.

Once again she heard two things at the same moment: her cat meowing again, as it jumped
on the windowsill next to her, and, she was sure of that, the police car talking in angry tones to the
man. She couldn’t understand what the car said, but the man was transfixed with fear. As the mist
hiding the man’s face suddenly vanished, probably because he was breathless with shock, she could
see his startled face and recognized him. It was Mr. Wolf.

That’s how she had named him, since he would always pass by her window at night, from
either side of the street, always walking alone apparently aimlessly. Almost every time she would
go near the window to ler her cat in or out, she would see him walking past. Her cat didn’t like him.
It would hiss to the man and get back in very quickly. Because he was always lonely and because he
frightened her cat, she had named him Mr. Wolf.

She could see that the man was talking back to the car, even though he was frozen with
surprise. She knew he was in trouble and considered opening the window to try to aid him in some
way. She couldn’t help but imagine that this was almost the human form her cat could take, the only
other soul roaming the streets, the same sad hopeful eyes, the only other being who seemed to care
about what was outside.

Then she realized that if it weren’t for her cat, she would never pay attention to those
dreary plains that were the streets, even during the day. Her costumers would always come to her to
buy her instruments, and she didn’t need to leave to buy food anymore. She tried to imagine what it
would be like to have a supple back like her cat, to be able to hop from the windowsill and from
there to the flowery sidewalks, to explore the corners of those mysterious streets, the depth of those
urban plains that looked more like inside than outside, not fearing other people or the police car.

She understood, then, why her cat didn’t like Mr. Wolf. It didn’t like the fact that Mr. Wolf
could get caught, could be censored, told off, arrested, pointed at. In its cat nature, it could see the
culpability the man was always under, and it feared that it could be one day guilty of something as
well. Miss Hutchins felt hot in her ears with such realization. So moved indeed, that she felt that the
cat was the window, the only link to the unclogged lanes full of paths and to people who, like Mr.
Wolf, could also see those paths.
 She felt a sudden will to open the window, to shout out, to help, imagining her voice
cracking some kind of icy sheet between her window and the street, a barrier only the cat seemed to
be able to cross. But then one of the car doors popped open in the nightly silence and she was
suddenly scared like Mr. Wolf. Now she was transfixed, too, staring at the man who was slowly
making his way to the open door of the car. She could sense the cat next to her silently watching
him too, perhaps dreading the day the police car would have a cat voice and would stop cats as well.

The man leaned forward and looked inside the car, but there was no one in the front seats,
no one in the back seats. The cat glanced at Miss Hutchins with a puzzled, if ominous, look and she
felt a chill down her spine as if he was the one sitting in the cold metal cell in the back seat of the
car, now driving itself up the street and out of sight.

She looked into the cat’s eyes and she could feel deep fear and loss streaming from her to
the cat and back, as she wondered where the car would take the poor man, and whether he had taken
the only path in those streets from which there was no return and about which the cat seemed to
know all too well.