Cat Country (25 page)

I had not been to this side of the street for several days now. The street was as bustling as ever; it brought to mind the swarming of ants, though it didn’t remind one of their industry. I didn’t understand what attraction this broken-down old city possessed that it could arouse such a longing to be in it. Perhaps it was because the rural economy had totally collapsed, making city life appear at least preferable to life on the farms. There was one improvement: because of the frequent rains recently, this section wasn’t nearly as foul-smelling as it had been. It seemed that the Old Man in the Sky had sparked a ‘Sanitation Movement’ for the Cat People!

Old Scorpion was not at home even though I arrived at precisely the agreed time. While I waited, I was entertained by the man who had brought food to me while I was in the reverie forest. Since we were acquaintances of sorts, he told me straight out, ‘If you make an appointment for noon, then you ought to come in the evening; and if you make an appointment for the evening, then you ought to come at dawn. And sometimes, you simply ought to come a few days later. It’s our custom, you know.’ I was very grateful for his advice and went on to ask him who the guests were. I had decided that if there weren’t any people among the guests whom I wanted to meet, I would simply leave now and not come back.

‘The guests are all important personages,’ he said, ‘otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get foreigners to come.’ Fine then, I’d be sure to come back, but where would I go to pass the time meanwhile? I suddenly came up with an idea. I’d interview this man! I still had a few National Souls left in my pocket. I gave them to him. The rest of it, of course, was easygoing. You see, National Souls can unlock Cat People’s mouths. We went up on the roof to conduct the interview. I asked him what the people milling about below did for a living.

‘You mean these people?’ He pointed down to the sea of Cat People on the street. ‘They don’t do anything.’

Here we go again, I thought to myself. ‘Then how do they get their food?’

‘They don’t eat food; they eat reverie leaves.’

‘And where do the reverie leaves come from?’

‘If one man becomes a major official, then a mass of people get enough reverie leaves to eat. In other words, those people down there are all relatives and friends of officials. When a man becomes a great official, he plants and sells reverie leaves; but he sets some aside to distribute to his relatives and friends. If a man becomes a minor official, then he buys reverie leaves and is still able to distribute some to his relatives and friends. And if a man doesn’t become an official at all, then he just waits around for a few reverie leaves to come his way.’

‘There must be a large number of officials then.’

‘Except for the unemployed, everybody is an official. I’m an official myself.’ He smiled ever so slightly. Perhaps he intended this smile as revenge for my contemptuous treatment of him in the past (I had pulled off a piece of his scalp in the reverie forest).

‘Do all officials have money?’

‘Yes. The emperor gives it to them.’

‘But if nobody plants crops or works, how does the emperor get his money?’

‘He sells national treasures and land. You foreigners love to buy our land and national treasures; otherwise we’d have no income.’ He was right. The Museum of Antiquities, the library – all of it fit together in a single piece.

‘And how about you, yourself? Do you see anything wrong in selling off land and treasures?’

‘As long as we get the money, it’s all right.’

‘Then all in all, I take it that you have no economic problems?’

This question seemed a bit too deep for him and it was quite a while before he replied. ‘In years past, economic problems did give us a lot of trouble, but nobody talks about that any more.’

‘You mean that in years past people did till the soil and work?’

‘That’s right. But now the countryside is almost empty. Of course, people in the city still have to buy things, but all these things are now sold by foreigners. And since there’s no longer any need for us to plant crops or work, everyone is idle.’

‘Then why do people still want to become officials? An official certainly can’t be idle. And since a man gets reverie leaves to eat whether he’s an official or not, why does anyone want to burden himself down with official responsibilities?’

‘When you’re an official, you get more money, can buy more foreign imports, and can even take on a few more wives. If you don’t take a post, then all you get is a small allowance of reverie leaves. Furthermore, being an official is certainly no burden, for there are more officials than there are things to do. Sometimes our officials can’t find anything to do even when they want to.’

‘I have another question. If reverie leaves are all you have to eat, how is it that the ambassador’s wife didn’t eat them?’

‘Well, it’s possible to eat ordinary food if you want to, but it’s terribly expensive. If you want meat and vegetables, you have to buy foreign imports. And let me tell you that when
you
insisted on ordinary food back there in the reverie forest, you cost the boss a pretty penny. Madam Ambassador was an oddball. If she had been willing to eat reverie leaves, people would have supplied her free of charge, but nobody had enough money to keep her in meats and vegetables. She used to take her eight sexpots out to the countryside to gather weeds and wild vegetables.’

‘And meat?’

‘There’s no place to get any meat, unless you buy it from abroad. When people were still getting by on a diet of half reverie leaves and half ordinary food – this was a long time back – the people ate up all the fresh meat so there was not a single animal or bird left. Have you ever seen an animal or bird here in Cat Country?’

I thought about it for a while and concluded that he was right. ‘But wait a minute, how about those white-tailed hawks?’

‘You’re right. They’re the only ones left. If it weren’t for the fact that their meat is poisonous, they would have become extinct a long time ago too.’

You Cat People yourselves are on the verge of extinction, I thought to myself. Ants and bees have needs, but no economic problems. But even though they’re free of economic problems, they still have the instinct to go on working; in that respect, they are much superior to Cat People. The Cat People no longer had any economy or government worth speaking of, but even so they still couldn’t resist competing against each other until they had created chaos. I don’t know who had been guilty of creating such inferior products – creatures who had neither the instinct of ants nor the wisdom of human beings. Perhaps the god who had made the Cat People intended them as a joke. They had schools, but no education; politicians, but no government; people, but no personal integrity; faces, but no concept of face. One had to admit that their god had gone a little too far with his little joke.

But no matter what, I was still determined to have a look at those important personages. I had already been forced into admitting my inability in coming up with a solution to the problems of the Cat People; now I’d see if their own bigwigs had any ideas. On the surface of things, the solution to their main problem seemed ridiculously simple: carry out an equal redistribution of reverie leaves and thus bring into being a
Reverie Leaf Everybody Shareskyism
. But this would lead them right down a leaf-strewn path to oblivion! No, that wasn’t the solution. One would have to turn back the clock, prohibit the consumption of reverie leaves, and revive agriculture and industry! That was the only way to really prevent the Cat People from bringing about their own destruction. But who could possibly shoulder a responsibility of such magnitude? For such a task was certainly nothing else than trying to transform gnats and flies into human beings! What monumental strength, what unflagging effort, and what iron decision would be necessary if the Cat People were ever to make that transformation. Were they capable of it? I seemed to be becoming as pessimistic as Young Scorpion.

Old Scorpion returned. He was somewhat thinner than I remembered him being in the reverie forest, but he seemed as wily and full of schemes as ever, if not more so. There was no need for me to stand on ceremony with him, so I asked straight out, ‘Why have you invited all these guests?’

‘No reason in particular. Just getting together for a chat.’

I could tell from this that there was certainly something important afoot. There were many questions that I wanted to ask him, and yet I had somehow or other conceived such a loathing for him that I felt that the less I said to him, the better I would feel.

The guests continued to arrive. I had never seen any of them before, and they weren’t the least bit like ordinary Cat People. No sooner had they been introduced to me than they were calling me ‘old friend’. I rudely announced that I was from Earth. My somewhat impolite intention, of course, was to show that ‘old friend’ was inappropriate. However, they seemed to interpret this sour note in my speech as the sweetest of harmonies, for they went right on calling me ‘old friend’ with redoubled pleasantry. A dozen or so additional guests arrived. I was in luck: they were all politicians. I soon observed that this new group could be divided into three factions.

The first was Old Scorpion’s faction. They used ‘old friend’ very comfortably, although there was something a little strained in the way they said it. The members of this faction were all a bit older than the others and I was reminded of the ‘wily old foxes’ that Young Scorpion had told me about.

The members of the second faction were a bit younger and especially courteous to foreigners. They were constantly smiling, but their smiles were such vacant ones that you could tell at a glance that their pride was based entirely on the fact that they had just begun to learn some of the old foxes’ wicked tricks, though they had not yet mastered their entire line of depravity.

The third faction was the youngest. Their use of ‘old friend’ was so unnatural that one would have thought that they were ashamed of saying it. Old Scorpion made a point of introducing me to this third faction. ‘These “old friends” have just come from
over there
,’ he said. What he meant wasn’t very clear to me, but given the situation, it wasn’t convenient to press him. A bit later it dawned on me that by ‘over there’ he meant the schools. The members of this faction were brand-new hands at politics. I was very curious to find out how people who had just come from ‘over there’ had got hooked up with these old foxes.

The feast began – my first in Cat City. We started with reverie leaves, just as I had expected.

When we finished, I anticipated I might well see some new mischief. I wasn’t disappointed. Old Scorpion announced. ‘In order to welcome our newly-arrived friends from “over there”, we’ll let them select the prostitutes for the evening.’

The ones who had just arrived from ‘over there’ smiled, winked, and were bashful and proud at the same time. They all began mumbling to themselves, ‘
Everybody Sharesky. Everybody Sharesky
.’ I felt as pained as when a loved one is on the verge of death. This then was what their
Everybody Shareskyism
amounted to! When they were still ‘over there’ they had continuously advocated new programmes and
-isms
. But as soon as they arrived ‘over here’ they began
Everybody Sharesky
-ing the local whores. That was the limit! Since there was no point in saying anything, I sat back to see what would happen next.

The prostitutes arrived and everyone had another round of reverie leaves. From beneath the grey hair on the faces of the young politicians a rosy glow began to show through, and they started glancing furtively at Old Scorpion. The latter smiled and said, ‘Please make yourselves perfectly at home. There’s no need to stand on ceremony.’

Upon this invitation, the young politicians took the prostitutes by the hands and led them down below. Old Scorpion, of course, had already prepared pleasure rooms for them.

After they had gone down, he smiled at the two remaining groups of politicians and said, ‘All right, now that they’ve gone, let’s get down to business.’ My guess had been right – he had invited them here because something important was afoot.

‘Have you all heard about it already?’ Old Scorpion asked.

The old ones showed no reaction at all; it seemed that their eyes were all turned inward on their own worlds. One of the middle-aged ones started to nod his head, but sensing that no one else was nodding, simply continued the upward motion of his face to make it look as though watching the sky had been his intention in the first place.

I laughed out loud.

Everyone became even more solemn, a solemnity that they expressed with a serious laugh. You see, they
had
to join me, for I was a foreigner.

A long time passed, then finally one of the middle-aged ones summoned the nerve to speak. ‘I’ve heard a little bit, but I’m not sure – I’ve absolutely no idea as to whether the news is reliable.’

‘It’s reliable enough. My troops have already been defeated!’ Old Scorpion was perceptibly shaken. It must have been his personal bodyguard that had been defeated for him to get that worked-up about it.

Everyone was quiet again. As time passed their breathing slowed so much that one would have thought that they were afraid they’d damage the hair in their nostrils if they breathed too hard.

‘Gentlemen, shall we pick a few prostitutes to keep us company?’ suggested Old Scorpion.

This brought the cat-men back to life. ‘Fine, fine! How can one come up with any good plans without women? Bring on the girls!’

Another group of prostitutes arrived and everyone was quite jovial. By now the sun was about to set, but from start to finish, no one had discussed anything that had anything to do with politics.

‘Thank you! Thank you! See you tomorrow!’ They all led their prostitutes away.

The young politicians crawled back up again, the faint flush in their cheeks now replaced by a touch of greyish-green. They didn’t even say thank you, but just kept muttering ‘
Everybody Sharesky
.’