Cat Country (22 page)

In terms of appearance, the junior scholars were far better than their seniors. They were neither filthy nor emaciated and, what’s more, they were full of life. They bowed to Revery, greeted me, and then sat down. To me this was all very gratifying and I began to feel that there was still some hope for Cat Country after all.

Young Scorpion whispered to me, ‘These are the young scholars I told you about who have spent several years abroad and know everything there is to know.’

Revery brought out the reverie leaves and they all started wolfing them down with real gusto. I felt a chill pass over my heart.

After eating their fill of leaves, they started chatting. But what was it they were talking about? I couldn’t make out a single word! In my association with Young Scorpion I had already picked up quite a few of the new words that had been taken into Felinese, but I still couldn’t understand the conversation of these young scholars. I could only hear sounds:
Gulu-baji, didung-didung, hwala-fuszji
– it sounded something like that.

Since I was anxious to understand what they said, I began to get a bit flustered. Furthermore, they were continually talking at me and I couldn’t say anything in return, but was reduced to nodding my head like an idiot. Then a few words began to get through.

‘Mr Foreigner, what is that you’re wearing on your legs?’

‘Trousers,’ I answered. I was a bit mixed-up at this point.

‘What are they made of?’ asked a young scholar.

‘How are they made?’ asked another.

‘What academic rank does the wearing of trousers betoken?’ asked yet another.

‘Does your honourable country have two classes, the trousered and the trouserless?’

What was I to answer? The only thing I could do was play the fool and put on a forced smile. Obviously disappointed at not having obtained a reply from me, they came over and began to feel my raggedy trousers with their hands. Having finished their examination, they all started up again with that
gulu-baji, didung-didung, hwala-fuszji
until I thought I’d be smothered under their blanket of unintelligible sounds. After an interminably long time, they all left and I had a chance to ask Young Scorpion what they had been talking about. ‘You’re asking me,’ he said with a smile, ‘but who am I supposed to ask? As far as I know, they weren’t talking about anything.’

‘But what did
hwala-fuszji
mean? That’s one sentence that stuck with me,’ I said.

‘
Hwala-fuszji
? They also said
tung-tung-fuszji
a lot, do you remember? They say lots of things like that. For the most part, when they talk, they just string a lot of foreign nouns together so that nobody understands them. They don’t understand what they’re saying themselves, but they enjoy the lively atmosphere that all those foreign sounds create. You have to be able to speak like that in order to be considered a modern scholar.
Hwala-fuszji
seems to be the most popular expression these days. It doesn’t matter whether parents beat a child, or the emperor eats reverie leaves, or a scholar commits suicide – you can use
hwala-fuszji
to cover every case. Actually, the expression means “chemical action”. The next time you run into them, all you have to do is babble out “
hwala-fuszji
,
tung-tung
-
fuszji
,” and “
fuszji
everybody”, and they’ll all think that you are a scholar too. Just use these sounds in places where you can throw in nouns. Don’t worry about verbs, and if you want to turn one of them into an adjective just add an -
ous
and say something like “
hwala-fuszji-ous
”.’

‘What did they mean by examining my trousers?’ I asked.

‘The girls ask about high heels and the modern scholars ask about trousers; it’s all the same thing. The young scholars are all a bit effeminate. They’re vitally interested in cleanliness, aesthetic appeal and new fashions; the old scholars are only vitally interested in a frontal assault on a woman’s “that”. The modern scholars are terribly concerned with making a good impression on people, and I’ll be quite surprised if they aren’t all wearing trousers within the next few days. You mark my words!’

The atmosphere in the room felt suddenly stifling, and, without paying any further attention to my host, I went out for air. Just outside the door I ran into Young Scorpion’s blossoms; they were using the wall to support themselves while they practised walking on their toes with a piece of brick tied under each heel.

BOOKS AND RELICS BY THE POUND

T
HERE ARE
things to be said for the pessimist; for one thing, it takes
some
thought before one arrives at it. Granted, the pessimist’s thought may be unsound and his will weak; but at least he uses his brain. Thinking in this vein, I came to like Young Scorpion a bit more. As far as the two groups of scholars were concerned, I pinned all my hopes on the younger ones. Perhaps they were just as mixed-up as their seniors, but on the outside at least they were lively and optimistic, and I thought that a touch of this lively optimism was just what Young Scorpion lacked. If he could only rouse his own courage and be as lively and happy as the young scholars, who knows what great enterprises he’d be able to undertake in order to benefit his fellow cat-men? If he could only secure the aid of a few optimists! I was anxious to meet with the young scholars again to see if they’d be willing to help. I found out where they lived from Revery and the girls.

On the way I passed several schools, but I didn’t have the heart to go in and see what they were like on the inside. It wasn’t that I was going to take Young Scorpion’s word for everything, but rather that the schools were all of the same uninviting style: four earthen walls surrounding a stretch of open ground. Even if they weren’t as bad as Young Scorpion had painted them, I had to admit that there didn’t seem to be much about them that was worth seeing. I did glance about at the male and female students who were walking past on the street though, and that was enough to depress anybody. Their attitude, especially those who were a bit older, was exactly like that of the seven cat-men who served as Old Scorpion’s bearers – inordinately proud and self-satisfied, as though each of them thought himself a living god and was at the same time totally oblivious to the fact that Cat Country was a disgrace throughout the planet. I thought that perhaps I ought to make some allowances for them, for their teachers must certainly have been utter ignoramuses in order for the students to get that way in the first place. And yet how was it possible for young people of twenty or so to be callous and insensitive enough to actually remain unaware of what was going on around them? How could they manage to live in this kind of hell and still saunter about with such a self-satisfied and arrogant air? What did they have to be so self-satisfied about? Didn’t they have any feelings? I was almost on the point of grabbing one of them and demanding an answer, but I decided not to waste my time.

One of the modern scholars that I was looking for was a curator at the Museum of Antiquities. I decided to pay him a visit and at the same time take advantage of the opportunity to make a tour of the museum. The structure in which the collection was housed was rather large; it was at least two or three hundred feet long. A doorman sat outside the main entrance; his cat-head was tilted back against the wall and he was lost in a sweet and mellow nap. I poked my head inside and looked about, but no one else was around. Was it possible that the museum could open all of its doors to the public without anyone around to look after things? That was strange, especially when you consider how fond of stealing things the Cat People were. Not daring to disturb the doorman, I went right on in. After passing through two empty rooms, I came upon my new friend. He proved to be extremely clean, lively and well-mannered; without thinking about it one way or another, I began to like him. I learned that his name was Cat Lafuszji. I knew for a fact that Lafuszji was not a common name in Cat Country and concluded that he must have taken it during his studies abroad. I was terribly afraid that if we got into a conversation, he would deluge me with a flood of words with
fuszji
tacked on the end of them, and, therefore, I told him straight out that I’d like to see the museum and hoped that he would be good enough to give me the guided tour. I was sure to be all right as long as I could keep him from
fulaszji
-ing.

‘After you, after you! Please go in!’ Cat Lafuszji was in high spirits and acted most graciously. As we entered an empty room, he said, ‘This is where we store the stone implements that were used ten thousand years ago; they are displayed according to the most modern methods. Look around at your leisure.’

I looked all about, but there was nothing there! ‘Well, here we go again,’ I thought to myself. Before I had a chance to ask him what the joke was, he pointed to the wall and said, ‘This is a stone jar, ten thousand years old. It has foreign characters inscribed on it and is worth at least three million National Souls.’

So that was it! Now I began to understand. There was a row of small characters inscribed on the wall; what he probably meant was that a stone jar worth three million National Souls at one time had been displayed in that location.

‘This is a stone axe from ten thousand and one years back; it’s worth two hundred thousand National Souls. This is a set of stone bowls from ten thousand and two years back; they are worth one and a half million. This is . . . three hundred thousand; this is . . . four hundred thousand!’

Everything else aside, I really admired him for being able to remember the value of every ancient relic with such fluency. We entered another empty room and with the same attentive courtesy as before, he said, ‘This is the room where we store books and documents from fifteen thousand years back. They are the most ancient on the entire planet and are all arranged in strict accordance with the most modern methods of classification.’ He began reciting prices and titles from memory, but there was nothing to be seen save a few black bugs on the wall.

After having seen ten such rooms in a row, Cat Lafuszji had all but exhausted my patience. But just as I was on the point of thanking him and saying goodbye in order that I might escape to the outside and get a breath of fresh air, he led me towards a room outside of which more than twenty cat-men stood on guard, clubs in hand. Now this room certainly couldn’t be empty! Thank heaven! I was glad that I hadn’t left earlier, for as long as there was one room filled with things, my trip would not have been in vain, even though I had to travel through ten empty rooms to get there.

‘You’ve come at precisely the right time. Had you come a few days later, you wouldn’t have got to see any of these things,’ said Cat Lafuszji in the most sincere and courteous of tones. ‘In this room we have some pottery from twelve thousand years back, all of it displayed in accordance with the most modern methods of classification. Twelve thousand years ago our pottery was the most exquisite on the entire planet. Later on – about eight thousand years ago – the pottery industry died out, so that today nobody knows how to make it any more.’

‘Why?’ I asked.

‘
Yaya-fuszji
!’

Now what was
yaya-fuszji
supposed to mean? Before I had a chance to ask, he continued, ‘These pieces of pottery are the most valuable things on the whole planet. To date, we’ve sold a total of three hundred billion National Souls’ worth of them abroad! Our asking price really wasn’t very high either; if the government hadn’t been so anxious to sell, we probably could have got at least
five
hundred billion. We once sold some stone implements that were not even ten thousand years old and got two hundred billion for them, but this time the government was just too anxious, and consequently the sale was a flop.

‘The government’s failure in agreeing to sell for such a low price is not really all that important, but the fact that we who work in this line had to take a cut in kickbacks
was
something worth worrying about. What are we supposed to live on? Our salaries haven’t been paid for several years now. If we hadn’t hit upon the device of taking kickbacks on the sale of antiquities, we’d have been reduced to a daily diet of air a long time ago. Of course, the amount made through the sale of ancient relics is nothing to be sneezed at, but you have to bear in mind that those of us who are responsible for looking after the national antiquities are all modern scholars; living expenses are much higher for us than for the old-fashioned scholars. Everything that we use has to be brought in from abroad, and the money we spend for a single item would cover the living expenses of the old-fashioned scholars for a good long time. It’s really quite a problem!’ A hint of melancholy actually crept across Cat Lafuszji’s otherwise perpetually happy face.

Why had they allowed the pottery industry to die out?
Yaya-fuszji
, whatever that meant. And why had they sold their ancient relics? So that the scholars could get their kickbacks! Of the hopes that I had pinned on the modern scholars, not one shred remained. I no longer had the heart to continue with my questioning; I could no longer even bring myself to stoop to talking with the man. I simply felt like clasping one of those ancient relics to my breast and having a good cry. There was no point in asking anything more. The government treated the sale of ancient relics as one of its sources of finance, and the modern scholars were only interested in getting kickbacks or reporting the prices of the ancient relics . . . what more was there to ask? However, I just had to ask one more thing.

‘When you’ve sold everything and there are no more kickbacks to be had, what are you going to do then?’

‘
Yaya-fuszji
.’

At this point it finally dawned on me that by
yaya-fuszji
they meant what Young Scorpion did by ‘muddling through’, magnified ten thousand times! I began to hate Cat Lafuszji, and to hate his
yaya-fuszji
even more.