1.
There was a fox that lived on the edge of a dark wood where the brush was so thick that burrowing animals lived in it, one above the other, without the least inconvenience. The fox lived within sight of a tailor’s cottage, and every afternoon the tailor’s wife baked savory meat pies with slit tops and left them on the forest-facing sill to cool. The fox, who was very lean and very greedy, spent many evenings sitting on a tree stump, staring at the pies and trying to concoct a plan to snatch them down and gobble them up himself.
The tailor had three sons, all of them as fat and pink as pigs and each one stupider than the next. The tailor was so prosperous that his sons could spend their days idle. They passed many hours in torpor, staring out the window, where they often saw the fox staring right back. They soon contrived to make the fox their special pet. They brought him scraps of meat and greasy bread and bullied him into learning simple tricks. The fox became quite adept at turning somersaults, and whenever he saw the tailor’s sons through a window he would turn a somersault and wait for them to throw him a tip of sausage or a crust of cheese. Another trick he learned that delighted them particularly was standing upright and walking like a man.
One day, when the tailor was out performing a fitting in town and his wife was at market, the sons became careless and invited the fox into their father’s home. They played at the fox’s being their fourth brother, and made a cap for him out of a dishrag and a cloak out of an old checked tablecloth. They held the fox over a basin of water, that he could see his own reflection, and indeed with his pointed ears covered up he looked very much like a man.
The tailor was one of the most skilled in the land, and his clientele included many of the courtiers and ministers of the Capital, if not the princes themselves. The tailor himself was a humble man and chose for the time being to continue to work at his old cottage, even as such an arrangement became more and more inconvenient. He dreaded the inevitable day he would have to open a shop in the Capital. The tailor’s sons, however, were very prideful, and they led the fox into their father’s musty workroom, which was stacked chin-height with finery of all kinds—topcoats, top hats, fine wool slacks, shirts of Egyptian cotton, and satin vests. The sons puffed out their chests, making themselves even larger than usual, and asked the fox if he was impressed. In truth he was.
Being clever, the fox shed his dishrag hat and tablecloth cloak and stood nuzzling the clothing. The sons, seeing now a new game to play, grabbed hold of the fox and dressed him in the most well-made, stylish outfit in their father’s workroom. They brought the fox their mother’s looking glass so he could admire himself. The fox looked quite handsome in his new clothing, and when the sons had their backs turned he slipped out through a window.
2.
Soon the fox was renting an opulently appointed if small room overlooking a pleasure garden on the river that ran through the Capital. During the day he would do sums at his desk—a simple occupation that made him very wealthy. At night he would watch the fireworks displays over the palace, which was visible from his window. In idle hours he studied the habits and manners of humans, either by watching passers-by through his window or by reading books. Sometimes he would take long walks around the city, past the tidy alleys, bright shops, majestic spires, and expansive squares with their brass statues. Always he wore his top hat, even when he was sitting at a meal. If any human saw his pointed ears, they would realize his true nature and expel him.
While he enjoyed the pleasures of the Capital, he was in many ways not entirely content. He often thought about his home in the woods, particularly his dear friends, a wild boar and a brown bear whom he would never see again. Never again would they entrap a family of hares together and devour them whole while sunning themselves. Furthermore, after coming to the city he developed certain symptoms. His vision would go bleary for no reason he could discern, and he had a constant metallic taste in his mouth. So as not to offend others, he took to chewing parsley. He was often dizzy, and would spend entire days in bed.
3.
One of his lovers was named Isabel. She was the daughter of an industrialist. She had long brown ringlets and a fair, round face. She was the very picture of elegance during daylight, but once night fell she would become sentimental, and in a certain way he despised her. She would beg him to take off his top-hat, so that she could run her fingers through his hair when they made love, but he would rebuff these requests quite brutally. Something about the possibility thrilled him, however, and he had a secret wish that one day she would snatch the hat off, so as to assuage for a moment the anger and contempt that he had felt so unshakably since his move to the Capital.
Once, as they walked together after church through a park, he had a very strong spell of nausea and had to sit for several minutes on a stone bench to collect himself. Isabel sat beside him and caressed him, asking him what was the trouble. He told her of the symptoms he had developed since his move to the city—the dizziness, the metallic taste, and the bouts of confusion. She nodded as if she understood.
That evening she presented him with a tonic that she said would cure his symptoms, which according to her were the result of an affliction relatively common to foreigners living in the Capital. He took the tonic from her, but when she left the room he dumped it out of a window.
4.
He saw before him the wall surrounding the Capital. Each door he opened led to a hall and more doors at the end of the halls. The walls were covered in dingy brown tapestries, and the light was so dim that he could not make out the figures depicted. These tapestries muffled his footfalls, and through them he heard what sounded like whispers. The fox walked on all fours, like a beast. He was clumsy after so much time upright, but he knew that he must practice, as once he returned to his wood he would have to walk on all fours again and forevermore. But he never did return to the wood: after what seemed to be hours, he opened a door and found himself stepping into sunlight. He was still in the Capital, except now on the west side, closer to the Opera House.
5.
The fox sat at a cabaret with Isabel and he spied a gentleman and a lady sitting at the bar. The man was wearing a top hat, even as he was sitting, and his companion had her hair in an intricate, slightly outmoded style that hid her ears. Isabel had been smearing pâté on a hunk of bread and talking about the city’s mayor, who had again made a spectacle of himself at a ball the night before. She stopped talking and followed the fox’s line of vision. He stood resolutely. Isabel touched his coat and said, “You must not speak to them.”
The fox walked toward the bar and, bowing, introduced himself to the couple. The woman became interested in her drink, at which she stared quite impassively. The man cleared his throat and did not meet the fox’s eye. The fox asked them if they were foreign to the country. The woman said, “Please, don’t bother us, and don’t make trouble for us,” so the fox withdrew and returned to his table.
He sat, morose, remembering his old friend the boar, with whom he had as a kit gone on campaigns searching for a legendary crevasse in the heart of the woods. Even if he could quit the Capital, he would never be able to face the boar again. He thought also about his mother, whom a hunter had killed when the fox was very young and of whom he had few memories. Isabel was talking as if to someone behind her: “Please know there is nothing you could tell me that would change my love for you.”
The fox felt as if he were one of the balloons given to children on festival days and that he had just been released, floating upward and away.
6.
Once it happened, as if in a dream, that he saw the tailor’s sons in the Capital. They had grown by now into strapping men, walking with their bellies puffed out wearing fancy cummerbunds, each son’s a different color. They were cramming themselves into a carriage as the fox walked by. The fox pulled his top hat, which he still wore constantly, over his eyes so they would not recognize him as he kept pace behind. The carriage clattered slowly up and down the streets and finally stopped in front of the palace. The sons squeezed out and walked three abreast toward the gilt gates of the palace, where a dozen guards wearing plumed caps stood at attention.
The fox made to follow them, but then he spied a hole in the ground with a staircase leading down into it, as if into a basement with earthen walls. But the staircase led down as far as the fox could see, never reaching a room. Very slowly the fox walked down into the ground, watching the palace as he did so. The palace seemed to grow taller and taller, and the people around him appeared more and more monstrous, and the fox walked toward the whispers, down, down, down, until he was in complete darkness, and the walls became more narrow and the ceiling lower. He could feel the heat of the earth, and he could hear no longer the noises of the city, just the soft scratches of the insects of the ground and the thudding of his own small heart.
Came to my senses & I chilled for a bit 