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Resolve

SOPHIA AND I ARE ASLEEP, sleeping on a foam mattress laid across the floor of the dilapidated kitchen, when we’re awakened by a persistent high-pitched squeal that seems to be coming from somewhere under the sink. I crawl out from under the covers and shuffle along the perimeter of the room, running my hands up and down the walls in search of a light switch. It takes two full circuits before I finally find the switch, and when I do, the switch doesn’t work, apparently our host is in the habit of disconnecting the generator at night. I report this to Sophia, who says nothing, although I can tell from how she’s breathing that she’s upset.

There must be a flashlight somewhere, I suggest, and begin blindly rummaging through the drawers.

By a stroke of luck, in only the second drawer I open, my hand knocks against a box of kitchen matches – the sound of the matches shifting in the box is unmistakable.

I return to Sophia and light a match, holding it under the sink. There, next to a plastic tray filled with cleaning supplies, not four feet from our pillows, a small gray mouse struggles to release itself from a mousetrap to which it is clamped by its tail.

"Oh, the poor thing is suffering!" cries Sophia, crouched in the narrow space between the sink and our mattress. “Look at it; it’s in pain!"

I blow out the match and being stroking Sophia’s back to calm her, and while I stroke Sophia’s back, I attempt to reason through the situation.

If we do not act, I tell myself, the mouse will die a slow painful death in that trap, keeping us awake, horrified, until dawn, or until it finally dies, whichever comes first, and thus the most compassionate and coincidentally most expedient thing to do is to kill the poor thing, and in the swiftest fashion possible. I convey this to Sophia, skipping the part about our being kept awake and never actually stating that we should kill the poor thing but rather that we should “put it out of its misery." Sophia agrees, knowing, as I know, though it remains unspoken, that I, not Sophia, will be responsible for “putting it out of its misery."

Together we search the kitchen for an appropriate object with which to carry out our plan, Sophia lighting our way with matches. Naturally, I would prefer a cast iron skillet or some other large flat heavy weapon-like object, but the only half-suitable thing we can find is a twenty-two ounce economy-sized can of Resolve Foam Carpet Cleaner.

Returning to the sink, I crouch down and on one knee and brace myself against the side of the cabinet to the left. Then, grasping the can upside-down, that is heavy-side up, I extend my arm a few feet under the sink and, without permitting myself even a moment to pause, to reflect on what I am to do, I strike the mouse as hard as I can in an effort to put an end to its suffering, which is to say its suffering as well as ours, the suffering of myself and Sophia, admittedly our suffering chiefly but also the suffering of the mouse, while Sophia, crouched beside me, holds a lit match under the sink so that I can see the mouse and strike it squarely.

I smash the poor thing on its little gray head, but the mouse doesn’t die: I can see its tiny chest, if that’s what it’s called, the place where its lungs must be, fluttering. I hit it repeatedly, using all the force I can muster, limited as I am to about fifteen inches of back swing space. Each time I do so, the mouse issues a short squeal, then flops into the air, together with its trap, each time landing in a slightly different orientation relative to the trap.

Whenever the trap ends up on top of the mouse, covering the mouse, I deliver the next blow to the trap rather than the mouse, reasoning that the force of the blow will be transferred to the mouse, sandwiched as it is between the trap and the floor.

Several times I mistakenly think that I’ve succeeded in killing the mouse, only to have it come back to life and redouble its efforts to escape.

Sophia, who has become increasingly distraught with each unsuccessful blow, begins crying, “This is a nightmare! This is a nightmare!" but rather than comfort Sophia, I redouble my efforts to end the nightmare, that is to kill the mouse, reasoning that the nightmare cannot end until the poor thing is dead.

The first order of business, I reason between blows, is to end the nightmare, while the second is to comfort Sophia. Once the nightmare is over, there will be time enough to comfort Sophia, but there is no point in comforting Sophia until the poor thing is dead, the nightmare over.

I do not reason during the blows themselves, when my entire attention is focused on producing the most effective, that is, most deadly blow possible, but reason rather between blows.

The moment the mouse-plus-trap has flopped into a new position, I assess whether the poor thing is still moving or breathing or showing any signs of life whatsoever, and it is then, during these brief periods of assessment, five or ten seconds at most, that I reason.

There is no turning back, I tell myself once the first blow has been struck, from that moment forward I have no choice but to kill the mouse and end its suffering, suffering that I myself have exacerbated by reaching under the sink and walloping the poor thing with a large can of foam carpet cleaner. By bringing the can down upon the mouse, I have assumed responsibility for its suffering, a responsibility I cannot forgo or escape. The mouse is trapped by the mouse trap, while I am trapped by my responsibility to end its suffering, a responsibility I am shamefully failing to fulfill with each successive blow. Sophia and I have agreed to a certain plan, a certain course of action, both knowing that I would be responsible for carrying it out. In this way I am also responsible to Sophia, who has put her faith in me, in my ability to make our plan a reality.

But the mouse, the object to which my efforts are addressed, clearly has no interest in dying, the mouse is determined to survive, to live, to fight to the last – it is nothing short of a life and death struggle for the mouse, and the poor thing clings to life with a desperation befitting such a struggle.

And so it goes, with Sophia holding match after match under the sink so that I can see the mouse clearly – you obviously can’t hit something you can’t see, or least it’s much easier this way – and with me then clubbing the mouse with a can of carpet cleaner, the bottom end of a can of Resolve All-Purpose Foam Carpet Cleaner with Stain Repel, and with the mouse consequently flopping a few inches into the air and then landing in a new position, but still, whatever the position, alive.

And while all this is happening, in the midst this nightmare – because of course Sophia is right, it is a nightmare; it is a living nightmare, there is no other way to describe it – I suddenly find myself thinking about this line from, of all people, Camus.

Once I think of this particular line from Camus – a line that has always bugged me, always annoyed me, always stuck in my craw – I can’t get it out of head.

I wail on the poor mouse, battered and broken by my hapless attempts at deliverance, and then return in my head to Camus. Between blows that is, between blows to the mouse, I think about Camus, specifically Camus’s essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, specifically the ending to this essay of Camus’s, the final line of this essay, an essay to which I have returned again and again in an effort to understand Camus’s thinking, his reasoning, for it has always seemed to me that he is wrong, that he has no business saying what he says, that he is lying, if not to us then to himself, that he is saying the very opposite of the truth so as to redeem what in truth cannot be redeemed.

Naturally I can see how ridiculous this is, to obsess over a line of philosophy, existential philosophy, at such a moment. But once the passage gets into my head, I can’t get it out, I can’t stop thinking about it, and the more I think about it, the more upset I become.

I strike the mouse, either directly or via the mousetrap, and while waiting to see if I have finally succeeded in killing the wretched creature, finally succeeded in putting it out of its misery, I mull over this passage from Camus’s essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, a passage at the very end of the essay, in which Camus describes how poor Sisyphus turns, having once again witnessed the rock tumble down the night-filled mountain, having once again seen his labors come to nothing, as he knows he must do again and again and again for all eternity, that at this moment, the moment when Sisyphus turns to once again take up his burden, a burden which Camus himself admits has no meaning and which moreover is inescapable, we must imagine him happy.

This is what Camus says, these are Camus’s own words, “The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. We must imagine Sisyphus happy."