The desire for vengeance is a strange thing. When you mention “Vengeance” to someone, anyone, then the first image that leaps into their mind will almost undoubtably be of a wronged hero seeking to avenge some injustice done to himself or his family. Which is unusual really - because when you think about it, how many of us have actually met a wronged hero? How many times can you honestly say you’ve been sat in a pub somewhere and struck up a conversation with Aeneas? Or been chatting to your future Brother-in-Law and discovered that he once had to hunt down the men who kidnapped his brother?
I guess, at the end of the day, that this is because we live in the silver screen generation. Our mental images these days are formed just as much by what we have seen on the screen as they are by our personnal experiences or anything that our parents have taught us. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Who knows and indeed, who cares. When it comes to acts of vengeance though, it does mean that we tend to think big. We think about all those epic battles and swashbuckling tales and forget that they happen around us every day - be it the man who thinks his neighbour broke his lawn mower so intends to scratch the man’s car, or the young boy who decides to pull his sister’s hair because she told their mother that he’d said a dirty world.
At the end of the day, the desire for vengeance can manifest itself anywhere. Even in the Rodent World.
It was about half way through Kill Bill Vol 1, when we first saw him. Just a flash at first. A movement seen out of the corner of the eye. Both myself and my housemate had noticed it, though neither of us thought it worthy of a mention. Uma Thurman was talking to some bloke about swords - who were we to interrupt that? Everything was good with the world.
About ten minutes later, however, that changed. One minute Miss Thurman was racing through the streets of Hong Kong on a yellow motorcycle the next…
…blackness. Nothing.
“Fuck!” Said my housemate, sighing, “The SCART leads come out again.”
Pausing the DVD, he made his way over to the telly, intent on fixing the wiring. He had just reached the tv when…
“Fuck!”
I looked up from the comic i was reading and saw him take a step back. As he did so a grey flash moved from behind the TV, round the skirtingboard and behind the sofa.
“Mouse!” I shouted grabbing the bit of two-by four beside my chair and moving smoothly and silently into an attack position.
“On it!” Shouted my housemate in acknowledgement. “I’ll block the entry point, you keep it covered.”
Our much rehearsed plan swung into action. Grabbing an old duvet set aside specifically for the purpose, my housemate moved into the kitchen area and blocked up the hole beneath the washing machine. He then grabbed his own bit of two-by-four from next to the table and headed back towards the sofa. Meanwhile, like a shadow, i moved into position at the right hand side of the sofa - the side behind which the mouse had entered.
When we were both in position, we paused and meditated, preparing ourselves for battle.
After several minutes of silent contemplation, we were ready.
“We’ve got him, haven’t we?” Said my housemate, smiling.
“Yes” I replied.
The mouse had made a mistake. The sofa had seemed the easiest place to hide behind - with multiple entry and exit points - and so it had run there. What it had not considered, however, was that we had planned for this very eventuality. A bookshelf had been moved against the left hand side of the sofa, preventing escape that way and an old rug had been rolled up and place behind the sofa - meaning that far from being the perfect escape route, it had become a valley of death.
Carefully my housemate moved the sofa out whilst i stood guard over the one way in or out. Soon we were able to see our trapped foe.
My housemate paused for a second,
“So is it…” He began to enquire.
“No” I said, cutting him short. I knew what he was going to ask. “But the resemblance is uncanny.”
We looked at our cornered enemy. He was small, smaller than the last mouse but otherwise identical. As i looked at him, he glanced up at me and our eyes made contact for a brief second. He looked at me with a look of such anger and hatred that i almost took a step back.
“Ah well” said my housemate, raising his weapon, “It matters not. Scratch up another dead mouse.” He begun to swing his weapon down…
“Hold!”
His swing stopped. He looked at me, curiously, wondering why i had told him to stop.
I turned and addressed the mouse. I had realised who he was.
“Yes.” I said. “It was I who killed your father.”
The mouse looked at me again, and once more i sensed the hatred and anger burning inside his tiny heart.
“There are some things you must understand,” I continued "Your father was a warrior. He understood the dangers that his chosen role in life entailed, and that one day he might pay the ultimate price on the field of battle. He died nobly in combat - he died how he would have wished to die. He died bravely and with honour, you should rejoice in that.
You must understand, little one, that what mattered most to your father was honour - both his own, and his family’s. Yet what you do now is destroying that which he held so dear. Pulling out our SCART cable is not combat. It is not the way of the warrior and not the way of your father, it is an act of vengeance - and there is no honour in vengeance.
Go now and do not return. For if you do you will be further desecrating the memory of the mouse you called ‘father’ and the mouse who we were honoured to call our enemy."
My housemate looked at me.
“So we are letting him go?”
“Yes.”
He paused for a second, thinking, then nodded and moved across to the kitchen. Once there he removed the duvet from the bottom of the washing machine and took a step back, weapon held low.
I raised my weapon, unblocking the gap between rug and wall and opening up the mouse’s escape route. The mouse looked up at me one more time then sprinted out, making his escape through the gap beneath the washing machine.
Silence reigned in the house for a few seconds. Finally, my housemate spoke.
“Did we do the right thing?”
“We did.” I replied “We owed it to his his father.”
My housemate nodded in agreement.
“And if he doesn’t listen? If he returns?”
“Then he dies.”
