I Am a Cat (19 page)

“Isn’t it a little unhelpful to say ‘of whatever size you think appropriate’?”

“That’s just my uncle all over.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I ordered a suit which I thought appropriate and sent it to him.”

“How very irresponsible! And did it fit?”

“More or less, I think. For I later noticed in my home-town newspaper that the venerable Mr. Makiyama had created something of a sensation by appearing at the said celebration in a frock coat carrying, as usual, his famous iron fan.”

“It seems difficult to part him from that object.”

“When he’s buried, I shall ensure that the fan is placed within the coffin.”

“Still it was fortunate that the coat and bowler fitted him.”

“But they didn’t. Just when I was congratulating myself that everything had gone off smoothly, a parcel came from Shizuoka. I opened it expecting some token of his gratitude, but it proved only to contain the bowler. An accompanying letter stated, ‘Though you have taken the trouble of making this purchase for me, I find the hat too large. Please be so kind as to take it back to the hatter’s and have it shrunk. I will of course defray your consequent expenses by postal order.’”

“Peculiar, one must admit.” My master seems greatly pleased to discover that there is someone even more peculiar than himself. “So what did you do?” he asks.

“What did I do? I could do nothing. I’m wearing the hat myself.”

“And is that the very hat?” says my master with a smirk.

“And he’s a Baron?” asks my master’s wife from her mystification.

“Is who?”

“Your uncle with the iron fan.”

“Oh, no. He’s a scholar of the Chinese classics. When he was young he studied at that shrine dedicated to Confucius in Yushima and became so absorbed in the teachings of Chu-Tzu that, most reverentially, he continues to wear a top-knot in these days of the electric light. There’s nothing one can do about it.” Waverhouse rubs his chin.

“But I have the impression that in speaking just now to that awful woman you mentioned a Baron Makiyama.”

“Indeed you did. I heard you quite distinctly, even in the other room.”

Mrs. Sneaze for once supports her husband.

“Oh, did I?” Waverhouse permits himself a snigger. “Fancy that. Well, it wasn’t true. Had I a Baron for an uncle I would by now be a senior civil servant.”Waverhouse is not in the least embarrassed.

“I thought it was somehow queer,” says my master with an expression half-pleased, half-worried.

“It’s astonishing how calmly you can lie. I must say you’re a past master at the game.” Mrs. Sneaze is deeply impressed.

“You flatter me. That woman quite outclasses me.”

“I don’t think she could match you.”

“But, Mrs. Sneaze, my lies are merely tarrydiddles. That woman’s lies, every one of them, have hooks inside them. They’re tricky lies. Lies loaded with malice aforethought. They are the spawn of craftiness.

Please never confuse such calculated monkey-minded wickedness with my heaven-sent taste for the comicality of things. Should such confusion prevail, the God of Comedy would have no choice but to weep for mankind’s lack of perspicacity.”

“I wonder,” says my master, lowering his eyes, while Mrs. Sneaze, still laughing, remarks that it all comes down to the same thing in the end.

Up until now I have never so much as crossed the road to investigate the block opposite. I have never clapped eyes on the Goldfield’s corner residence so I naturally have no idea what it looks like. Indeed today is the first time that I’ve even heard of its existence. No one in this house has ever previously talked about a businessman and consequently I, who am my master’s cat, have shared his total disinterest in the world of business and his equally total indifference to businessmen. However, having just been present during the colloquy with Madam Conk, having overheard her talk, having imagined her daughter’s beauty and charm, and also having given some thought to that family’s wealth and power, I have come to realize that, though no more than a cat, I should not idle all my days away lying on the veranda. Nor only that, I cannot help but feel deep sympathy with Coldmoon. His opponent has already bribed a doctor’s wife, bribed the wife of the rickshaw-owner, bribed even that high-falutin mistress of the two-stringed harp. She has so spied upon poor Coldmoon that even his broken teeth have been disclosed, while he has done no more than fiddle with the fastenings of his surcoat and, on occasion, grin. He is guileless even for a bachelor of science just out of the university. And it’s not just anyone who can cope with a woman equipped with such a jut of nose. My master not only lacks the heart for dealing with matters of this sort, but he lacks the money, too.

Waverhouse has sufficient money, but is such an inconsequential being that he’d never go out of his way merely to help Coldmoon. How isolated, then, is that unfortunate person who lectures on the mechanics of hanging. It would be less than fair if I failed at least to try and insinuate myself into the enemy fortress and, for Coldmoon’s sake, pick up news of their activities. Though but a cat, I am not quite as other cats. I differ from the general run of idiot cats and stupid cats. I am a cat that lodges in the house of a scholar who, having read it, can bang down any book by Epictetus on his desk. Concentrated in the tip of my tail there is sufficient of the spirit of chivalry for me to take it upon myself to venture upon knight-errantry. It is not that I am in any way beholden to poor Coldmoon, nor am I engaging in foolhardy action for the sake of any single individual. If I may be allowed to blow my own trumpet, I am proposing to take magnificent unself-interested action simply in order to realize the will of Heaven that smiles upon impartiality and blesses the happy medium. Since Madam Conk makes impermissible use of such things as the happenings at Azuma Bridge; since she hires underlings to spy and eavesdrop on us; since she triumphantly retails to all and sundry the products of her espionage; since by the employment of rickshaw-folk, mere grooms, plain rogues, student riff-raff, crone daily-help, midwives, witches, masseurs, and other trouble-makers she seeks to trouble a man of talent; for all these reasons even a cat must do what can be done to prevent her getting away with it.

The weather, fortunately, is fine. The thaw is something of nuisance, but one must be prepared to sacrifice one’s life in the cause of justice. If my feet get muddy and stamp plum blossom patterns on the veranda, OSan may be narked but that won’t worry me. For I have come to the superlatively courageous, firm decision that I will not put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today. Accordingly, I whisk off around to the kitchen, but, having arrived there, pause for further thought.

“Softly, softly,” I say to myself. It’s not simply that I’ve attained the highest degree of evolution that can occur in cats, but I make bold to believe my brain is as well-developed as that of any boy in his third year at a middle school. Nevertheless, alas, the construction of my throat is still only that of a cat, and I cannot therefore speak the babbles of mankind. Thus, even if I succeed in sneaking into the Goldfield’s citadel and there discovering matters of moment, I shall remain unable to communicate my discoveries to that Coldmoon who so needs them. Neither shall I be able to communicate my gleanings to my master or to Waverhouse. Such incommunicable knowledge would, like a buried diamond, be denied its brilliance and my hard-won wisdom would all be won for nothing.

Which would be stupid. Perhaps I should scrap my plan. So thinking, I hesitated on the very doorstep.

But to abandon a project halfway through breeds a kind of regret, that sense of unfulfillment which one feels when the slower one had so confidently expected drifts away under inky clouds into some other part of the countryside. Of course, to persist when one is in the wrong is an altogether different matter, but to press on for the sake of so-called justice and humanity, even at the risk of death uncrowned by success, that, for a man who knows his duty, can be a source of the deepest satisfaction. Accordingly, to engage in fruitless effort and to muddy one’s paws on a fool’s errand would seem about right for a cat. Since it is my misfortune to have been born a cat, I cannot by turns of the tip of my tail convey, as I can to cats, my thinking to such scholars as Coldmoon, Sneaze, and Waverhouse. However, by virtue of felinity, I can, better than all such bookmen, make myself invisible. To do what no one else can do is, of itself, delightful. That I alone should know the inner workings of the Goldfield household is better than if nobody should know.

Though I cannot pass my knowledge on, it is still cause for delight that I may make the Goldfields conscious that someone knows their secrets.

In the light of this succession of delights, I boldly make to believe my brain is as delightful as well. All right then. I will go.

Coming to the side street in the opposite block, there, sure enough, I find a Western-style house dominating the crossroads as if it owned the whole area. Thinking that the master of such a house must be no less stuck up than his building, I slide past the gate and examine the edifice. Its construction has no merit. Its two stories rear up into the air for no purpose whatever but to impress, even to coerce, the passersby. This, I suppose, is what Waverhouse means when he calls things common or garden. I slink through some bushes, take note of the main entrance to my right, and so find my way round to the kitchen. As might be expected, the kitchen is large—at least ten times as large as that in my master’s dwelling.

Everything is in such apple pie order, all so clean and shining, that it cannot be less splendid than that fabulous kitchen of Count Okuma so ful-somely described in a recent product of the national press. I tell myself, as I slip inside on silent muddy paws, that this must be “a model kitchen.”

On the plastered part of its floor the wife of the rickshaw-owner is standing in earnest discussion with a kitchen-maid and a rickshaw-runner.

Realizing the dangers of this situation, I hide behind a water-tub.

“That teacher, doesn’t he really even know our master’s name?” the kitchen-maid demands.

“Of course he knows it. Anyone in this district who doesn’t know the Goldfield residence must be a deaf cripple without eyes,” snaps the man who pulls the Goldfield’s private rickshaw.

“Well, you never know. That teacher’s one of those cranks who know nothing at all except what it says in books. If he knew even the least little thing about Mr. Goldfield he might be scared out of his wits. But he hasn’t the wits to be scared out of. Why,” snorts Blacky’s bloody-minded mistress, “he doesn’t even know the ages of his own mis-managed children.”

“So he’s not afraid of our Mr. Goldfield! What a cussed clot he is!

There’s no call to show him the least consideration. Let’s go around and give him something to be scared about.”

“Good idea! He says such dreadful things. He was telling his crackpot cronies that, since Madam’s nose is far too big for her face, he finds her unattractive. No doubt he thinks himself a proper picture, but his mug’s the spitting image of a terra-cotta badger. What can be done, I ask you, with such an animal?”

“And it isn’t only his face. The way he saunters down to the public bathhouse carrying a hand towel is far too high and mighty. He thinks he’s the cat’s whiskers.” My master Sneaze seems notably unpopular, even with this kitchen-maid.

“Let’s all go and call him names as loud as we can from just outside his hedge.”

“That’ll bring him down a peg.”

“But we mustn’t let ourselves be seen. We must spoil his studying just with shouting, getting him riled as much as we can. Those are Madam’s latest orders.”

“I know all that,” says the rickshaw wife in a voice that makes it clear that she’s only too ready to undertake one-third of their scurrilous assignment. Thinking to myself, “So that’s the gang who’re going to ridicule my master,” I drift quietly past the noisesome trio and penetrate yet further into the enemy fortress.

Cat’s paws are as if they do not exist. Wheresoever they may go, they never make clumsy noises. Cats walk as if on air, as if they trod the clouds, as quietly as a stone going light-tapped under water, as an ancient Chinese harp touched in a sunken cave. The walking of a cat is the instinctive realization of all that is most delicate. For such as I am concerned, this vulgar Western house simply is not there. Nor do I take cognizance of the rickshaw-woman, manservant, kitchen-maids, the daughter of the house, Madam Conk, her parlor-maids or even her ghastly husband. For me they do not exist. I go where I like and I listen to whatever talk it interests me to hear. Thereafter, sticking out my tongue and frisking my tail, I walk home self-composedly with my whiskers proudly stiff. In this particular field of endeavor there’s not a cat in all Japan so gifted as am I. Indeed, I sometimes think I really must be blood-kin to that monster cat one sees in ancient picture books. They say that every toad carries in its forehead a gem that in the darkness utters light, but packed within my tail I carry not only the power of God, Buddha, Confucius, Love, and even Death, but also an infallible panacea for all ills that could bewitch the entire human race. I can as easily move unnoticed through the corridors of Goldfield’s awful mansion as a giant god of stone could squash a milk-blancmange.

At this point, I become so impressed by my own powers and so conscious of the reverence I consequently owe to my own most precious tail that I feel unable to withhold immediate recognition of its divinity. I desire to pray for success in war by worshiping my honored Great Tail Gracious Deity, so I lower my head a little, only to find I am not facing in the right direction. When I make the three appropriate obeisances I should, of course, as far as it is possible, be facing toward my tail. But as I turn my body to fulfill that requirement, my tail moves away from me.