I Am a Cat (21 page)

“You’re taking it all extremely lightly! And have you composed your poem?”

“I’ve made a start. The first line goes ‘A Conker Festival takes place in this face.’”

“And then?”

“‘At which one offers sacred wine.’”

“And the concluding line?”

“I’ve not yet got to that.”

“Interesting,” says Coldmoon with a grin.

“How about this for the missing line?” improvises Waverhouse. “‘Two orifices dim.’”

Whereupon Coldmoon offers, “‘So deep no hairs appear.’”

They were thus thoroughly enjoying themselves by proposing wilder and wilder lines when from the street beyond the hedge came the voices of several people shouting “Where’s that terra-cotta badger? Come on out, you terra-cotta badger. Terra-cotta badger! Yah!”

Both my master and Waverhouse look somewhat startled and they peer out through the hedge. Loud hoots of derisive laughter are followed by the sound of footsteps running away.

“Whatever can they mean by a terra-cotta badger?”Waverhouse asks in puzzled tones.

“I’ve no idea,” replies my master.

“An unusual occurrence,” says Coldmoon.

Waverhouse suddenly gets to his feet as if he had remembered something. “For some several lustra,” he declaims in parody of the style of public lecturers, “I have devoted myself to the study of aesthetic nasofrontology and I would accordingly now like to trespass on your time and patience in order to present certain interim conclusions at which I have arrived.” His initiative has been so suddenly taken that my master just stares up at him in silent blank amazement.

Coldmoon’s tiniest voice observes, “I’d love to hear your interim conclusions.”

“Though I have made a thorough study of this matter, the origin of the nose remains, alas, still deeply obfuscated. The first question that arises reflects the assumption that the nose is intended for use. The functional approach. If that premise is valid, would not two mere vent-holes meet the case? There is no obvious need either for such arrogant profusion or for the nasal arrogation of a median position in the human physiognomy. Why then should the nasal organ thus,” and he paused to pinch his own, “thrust itself forward?”

“Yours doesn’t stick out much,” cuts in my master rather rudely.

“At any rate it has no indentations, no incurvations; still less could it be described as countersunk or infundibular. I draw your attention to these facts because if you fail to make the necessary distinction between having two holes in the medio-frontal area of the face and having two such holes in some form of protuberance, you will inevitably be unable to follow the quintessential drift of my dissertation. Now, it is at least my own, albeit humble, opinion that it is by an accumulation of human actions trifling in themselves, for who could attach major importance to the blowing of one’s nose, that the organ in question has developed into its present phenomenal form.”

“How very humbly you do hold your humble views,” interjects my master.

“As you will know, the act of blowing the nose involves the coarctation of that organ. Such stenosis of the nose, such astrictive and, one might even venture to say, pleonastic stimulation of so localized an area results, by response to that stimulus and in accordance with the well-established principles of Lamarckian evolutionary theory, in the development of that specific area to a degree disproportionate to the development of other areas. The epidermis of the affected area inevitably indurates and the subcutaneous material so coagulates as eventually to ossify.”

“That’s a bit extreme. Surely you can’t turn flesh to bone just by blowing your nose.” Coldmoon, as behoves a bachelor of science, lodges a protest. Waverhouse continues to deliver his speech with the utmost nonchalance.

“I can well appreciate your natural dubieties, but the proof of the pudding is the eating. For, behold, there is bone there, and that bone has demonstrably been molded. Nevertheless, and despite that bone, one snivels. If one snivels one has to blow the nose, and in the course of that action both sides of the bone get worn away until the nose itself acquires the shape of a high and narrow bulge. It is indeed a terrifying process.

But just as little taps of dropping water will eventually bore through granite, so has the high, straight ridge of the nasal organ been smithied by incessant nose-blows. Thus painfully was fangled the hard straight line on one’s face.”

“But yours is flabby.”

“I deliberately refrain from any discussion of this particular feature as it may be observed in the physiognomy of the lecturer himself; for such a purely personal approach involves the dangers of self-exculpation, the temptation to gloss over, even to defend, one’s individual defects or deficiencies. But the nose of the honorable Mrs. Goldfield is such that I would wish to bring it to your attention as the most highly developed of its kind, the most egregiously rare object, in the world.”

Coldmoon cries out in spontaneous admiration. “Hear, hear.”

“But anything whatever that develops to an extreme degree becomes thereby intimidating. Even terrifying. Spectacular it may be, but simultaneously awesome, unapproachable. Thus the bridge of that lady’s nose, though certainly magnificent, appears to me unduly rigid, unacceptably steep. If one pauses to consider the nature of the noses of the ancients, it seems probable that those of Socrates, Oliver Goldsmith, and William Thackeray were strikingly imperfect from the structural point of view, but those very imperfections had their own peculiar charms. This is, no doubt, the intellection behind the saying that a nose, like a mountain, is not significant because it is high but because it is odd. Similarly, the popular catch-phrase that ‘dumplings are better than nosegays’ is no doubt a corruption of some yet more ancient adage to the effect that dumplings are better than noses. From which it follows that, viewed aesthetically, the nose of Citizen Waverhouse is just about right.”

Coldmoon and my master greet this fantastication with peals of appreciative laughter, and even Waverhouse joins in.

“Now, the piece I have just been reciting. . .”

“Distinguished speaker, I must object to your use of the phrase ‘reciting a piece’: a somewhat vulgar word one would only expect from a storyteller.” Coldmoon, catching Waverhouse in the use of language which only recently Waverhouse had criticized, feels himself revenged.

“In which case, sir, and having with your gracious permission purged myself of error, I would now like to touch upon the matter of the proper proportion between the nose and its associated face. If I were simply to discuss noses in disregard of their relation to other entities, then I would declare without fear of contradiction that the nose of Mrs.

Goldfield is superb, superlative, and, though possibly supervacaneous, one well-placed to win first prize at any exhibition of nasal development which might be organized by the long-nosed goblins on Mount Kurama.

But alas! And even alack! That nose appears to have been formed, fashioned, dare I say fabricated, without any regard for the configuration of such other major items as the eyes and mouth. Julius Caesar was undoubtedly dowered with a very fine nose. But what do you think would be the result if one scissored off that Julian beak and fixed it on the face of this cat here? Cats’ foreheads are proverbially diminutive. To raise the tower of Caesar’s boned proboscis on such a tiny site would be like plonking down on a chessboard the giant image of Buddha now to be seen at Nara. The juxtaposing of disproportionate elements destroys aesthetic value. Mrs. Goldfield’s nose, like that of Caesar’s, is, as a thing in itself, a most dignified and majestic protuberance. But how does it appear in relation to its surroundings? Of course those circumjacent areas are not quite so barren of aesthetic merit as the face of this cat.

Nevertheless, it is a bloated face, the face of an epileptic skivvy whose eyebrows meet in a sharp-pitched gable above thin tilted eyes.

Gentlemen, I ask you, what sort of nose could ever survive so lamentable a face?”

As Waverhouse paused, a voice could be heard from the back of the house. “He’s still going on about noses. What a spiteful bore he is.”

“That’s the wife of the rickshaw-owner,” my master explains to Waverhouse.

Waverhouse resumes. “It is a great, if unexpected, honor for this present lecturer to discover at, as it were, the back of the hall an interested listener of the gentle sex. I am especially gratified that a gleam of charm should be added to my arid lecture by the bell-sweet voice of this new participant. It is, indeed, a happiness unlooked for, a serendipity. To be worthy of our beautiful lady’s patronage I would gladly alter the academic style of this discourse into a more popular mode, but, as I am just about to discuss a problem in mechanics, the unavoidably technical terminology may prove a trifle difficult for the ladies to comprehend. I must therefore beg them to be patient.”

Coldmoon responds to the mention of mechanics with his usual grin.

“The point I wish to establish is that such a nose and such a face will never harmonize. In brief, they cannot conform to Zeising’s rule of the Golden Section, a fact which I propose to prove by use of a mechanical formula. We should first designate H as the height of the nose, and α as the angle between the nose and the level surface of the face. Please note that W is, of course, the weight of the nose. Are you with me thus far?”

“Hardly,” breathes my master.

“Coldmoon, what about you?”

“I, too, am slightly at a loss.”

“You distress me, Coldmoon. Sneaze doesn’t matter, but I’m shocked that you, a bachelor of science, should fail to understand. This formula is a key part of my lecture. To abandon this portion of my argument must render the whole endeavor pointless. However, such things can’t be helped. I’ll omit the formula and merely deliver the peroration.”

“Is there a peroration?” asks my master in genuine curiosity.

“Why, naturally! A lecture without a peroration is like a Western dinner shorn of the dessert. Now, listen, both of you, carefully. I am launching on my peroration. Gentlemen, if one reflects upon the theory which I have advanced on this occasion and gives due weight to the related theories of Virchow and of Wisemen, one is bound also to take appropriate account of the problem of the heredity of congenital form.

Furthermore, though there is a substantial body of evidence to support the contention that acquired characteristics are not hereditarily transmissible, one cannot lightly dismiss the view that the mental conditions associated with hereditarily transmissible forms are themselves also transmissible. It is consequently reasonable to assume that a child born to the possessor of a nose of such enormity will have an abnormal nose.

Because Coldmoon is still young, he has not noticed any particular abnormality in the structure of Miss Goldfield’s nasal organ. But the genes lurk. The products of heredity take long to incubate. One never knows. Perhaps it would need no more than a sharp change of climate for the daughter’s snout suddenly to germinate and, in a mere instant, to tumesce into a replica of that of her most honorable mother. In sum, I believe that in the light of my theoretical demonstration, it would seem prudent to forswear any idea of this marriage. Now, while it is still possible to do so. I would go so far as to claim that, quite apart from the master of this house, even his monstrous cat asleep among us, would not dissent my conclusions.”

My master sits up at last. “Of course,” he says “no one in his senses would ever marry a daughter of that creature! Really, my dear Coldmoon,” he insists in real earnest, “you simply must not marry her.”

I seek in my own humble way to second all these sentiments by mewing twice. Coldmoon, however, does not seem to be particularly alarmed. “If you two sages share that opinion, I would be prepared to give her up, but it would be cruel if the consequent distress brought the person in question into poor health.”

“That,” burbled Waverhouse happily, “might even be regarded as a sort of sex crime.”

Only my master continues to take the matter seriously. “Don’t joke about such things. That girl wouldn’t wither away, not if she’s the daughter of that forward and presumptuous creature who strove to humiliate me from the moment she set an uninvited foot in my house.” My master again works himself up into a great huff.

At which point there is a further outbreak of laughter from, by the sound of it, three or four people on the far side of the hedge. A voice says, “You’re a stuck-up blockhead.” Another jeers, “I bet you’d like to live in a bigger house.”A third loud voice announces, “Ain’t it a pity! You swagger around but you’re only a silly old windbag.”

My master goes out on to the veranda and shouts with matching violence, “Hold your tongues. What do you think you’re doing making this sort of disturbance so close to my property?”

The laughter gets even louder. “Hark at him. It’s silly old Savage Tea.

Savage Tea. Savage Tea.”They set up an abusive chant.

My master, looking furious, turns abruptly, snatches up his stick and rushes out into the street.

Waverhouse claps his hands in pure delight. “Up guards and at ’em” he shouts, urging my master on.

Coldmoon sits and grins, twisting his purple fastening-strings.

I follow my master and, as I crawl out through a gap in the hedge, find him standing in the middle of the street with his stick held awkwardly in his hand. Apart from him, the street is empty. I cannot help but feel that he’s been made to make a ninny of himself.