I Am a Cat (65 page)

“A story from Yukie?” says the eldest. “Oh, I do love stories.”

“Will you be telling us again that tale of Click-Clack Mountain?” asks the second daughter.

“Baby-dear a story!” shouts the baby as she rams her knee forward between her squatting sisters. This does not mean that she wants to listen to a story. On the contrary, it means she wants to tell one.

“What! Baby-dear’s story yet again!” scream her laughing sisters.

“Baby-dear, you shall tell us your story afterward,” says Mrs. Sneaze cajolingly, “after Yukie has finished.”

But Baby-dear is in no mood for sops or compromises. “No,” she bellows, “now!” And to establish that she’s totally in earnest, she adds her gnomic warning of a tantrum. “Babu,” she thundered.

“All right, all right. Baby-dear shall start,” says Yukie placatingly.

“What’s your story called?”

“‘Bo-tan, Bo-tan, where you going?’”

“Very good, and what next?”

“I go rice field, I cut rice”

“Aren’t you a clever one!”

“If you tum there, rice go rotten”

“Hey, it’s not ‘tum there,’ it’s ‘if you
come
there.’” One of the girls butts in with a correction. The baby responds with her threatening roar of “Babu,” and her interrupting sister immediately subsides. But the interruption has broken the baby’s train of remembrance so that, stuck for words, she sits there in a glowering silence.

“Baby-dear, is that all?” asks Yukie at her sweetest.

The baby pondered for a moment and then exclaimed, “Don’t want fart-fart, that not nice.”

There was a burst of unseemly laughter. “What a dreadful thing to say! Whoever’s been teaching you that?”

“O-san,” says the treacherous brat with an undisarming smirk.

“How naughty of O-san to say such things,” says Mrs. Sneaze with a forced smile. Quickly ending the matter, she turned to her niece. “Now, it’s time for Yukie’s story. You’ll listen to her, won’t you, Baby-dear? Yes?”

Tyrant though she is, the baby now seems to be satisfied, for she remained quiet.

“Professor Singleman’s lecture went like this,” Yukie began at last.

“Once upon a time a big stone image of the guardian god of children stood smack in the middle of the place where two roads crossed.

Unfortunately, it was a very busy place with lots of carts and horses moving along the roads. So this big stone Jizō, interfering with the flow of traffic, was really an awful nuisance. The people who lived in that district therefore got together and decided that the best thing to do would be to move the big stone image to one corner of the crossroads.”

“Is this a story of something that actually happened?” asks Mrs.

Sneaze.

“I don’t know. The Professor did not mention whether the tale was real or not. Anyway, it seems that the people then began to discuss how the statue could in fact be moved. The strongest man amongst them told them not to worry, for he could easily do the job. So off he went to the crossroads, stripped himself to the waist and pushed and pulled at the big stone image until the sweat poured down his body. But the Jizō did not move.”

“It must have been made of terribly heavy stone.”

“Indeed it was. So terribly heavy that in the end that strongest man of them all was totally exhausted and trudged back home to sleep. So the people had another meeting and talked it over again. This time it was the smartest man amongst them who said, ‘Let me have a go at it,’ so they let him have a go. He filled a box with sweet dumplings and put it down on the ground a little way in front of the Jizō. ‘Jizō,’ he said, pointing to the dumpling box,‘come along here.’ For he reckoned that the big stone fellow would be greedy enough to be lured forward in order to get at the goodies. But the Jizō did not move. Though the clever man could see no flaw in his style of approach, he calculated that he must have misjudged the appetites of Jizō. So he went away and filled a gourd with
saké
and then came back to the crossroads with the drink-filled gourd in one hand and a
saké
cup in the other. For about three hours he tried to tease the Jizō into moving.‘Don’t you want this lovely
saké
?’ he kept shouting.

‘If you want it, come and get it! Come and drink this lovely
saké
. Just a step and the gourd’s all yours.’ But the Jizō did not move.”

“Yukie,” asks the eldest daughter, “doesn’t Mr. Jizō ever get hungry?”

“I’d do almost anything,” observed her younger sister, “for a boxful of sweet dumplings.”

“For the second time the clever man got nowhere. So he went away again and made hundreds and hundreds of imitation banknotes. Standing in front of the big stone god, he flashed his fancy money in and out of his pocket.‘I’ll bet you’d like a fistful of these bank notes,’ he remarked,

‘so why not come and get them?’ But even the flashing of bank notes did no good. The Jizō did not move. He must, I think, have been quite an obstinate Jizō.”

“Rather like your uncle,” said Mrs. Sneaze with a sniff.

“Indeed so, the very image of my uncle. Well, in the end the clever man also gave up in disgust. At which point along came a braggart who assured the people that their problem was the simplest thing in the world and that he would certainly settle it for them.”

“So what did the braggart do?”

“Well, it was all very amusing. First, he rigged himself out in a policeman’s uniform and a false moustache. Then he marched up to the big stone image and addressed it in a loud and pompous voice. ‘You there,’ he bellowed,‘move along now, quietly. If you don’t move on, you’ll find yourself in trouble. The authorities will certainly purpose the matter with the utmost rigor.’ This must all have happened long ago,” said Yukie by way of comment, “for I doubt whether nowadays you could impress anyone by pretending to be a policeman.”

“Quite. But did that old-time Jizō move?”

“Of course it didn’t. It was just like Uncle.”

“But your uncle stands very much in awe of the police.”

“Really? Well, if the Jizō wasn’t scared by the braggart’s threatenings, they couldn’t have been particularly frightening. Anyway, the Jizō was unimpressed and stayed where it was. The braggart then grew deucedly angry. He stormed off home, took off his copper’s uniform, pitched his false moustache into a rubbish bin and reappeared at the crossroads got up to look like an extremely wealthy man. Indeed, he contorted his face to resemble the features of Baron Iwasaki. Can you imagine anything quite so potty?”

“What sort of face is Baron Iwasaki’s?”

“Well, probably very proud. Toffee-nosed, you know. Anyway, saying nothing more, but puffing a vast cigar, the braggart took no further action but to walk around and around the Jizō.”

“Whatever for?”

“The idea was to make the Jizō dizzy with tobacco smoke.”

“It all sounds like some storyteller’s joke! Did he succeed in dizzying the Jizō?”

“No, the idea didn’t work. After all, he was puffing against stone.

Then, instead of just abandoning his pantomimes, he next appeared disguised as a prince. What about that?”

“As a prince? Did they have princes even in those days?”

“They must have, for Professor Kidd said so. He said that, blasphemous as it was, this braggart actually appeared in the trappings of a prince. I really think such conduct most irreverent. And the man nothing but a boastful twerp!”

“You say he appeared as a prince, but as which prince?”

“I don’t know. Whichever prince it was, the act remains irreverent.”

“How right you are.”

“Well, even princely power proved useless. So, finally stumped, the braggart threw his hand in and admitted he could do nothing with the Jizō.”

“Served him right!”

“Yes indeed, and, what’s more, he ought to have been jailed for his impudence. Anyway, the people in the town were now really worried, but though they got together for a further pow-wow, no one could be persuaded to take another crack at the problem.”

“Is that how it all finished?”

“No, there’s more to come. In the end, they paid whole gangs of rickshawmen and other riff-raff to mill around the Jizō with as much hullaballoo as possible. The idea was to make things so unbearably unpleasant that the Jizō would move on. So, taking it in turns, they managed to keep up an incredible din by day and night.”

“What a painful business!”

“But even such desperate measures brought no joy, for the Jizō, too, was stubborn.”

“So what happened?” asks Tonko eagerly.

“Well, by now everyone was getting pretty fed up because, though they kept the racket going for days and nights on end, the din had no effect. Only the riff-raff and the rickshawmen enjoyed the row they made, and they of course were happy because they were getting wages for making themselves a nuisance.”

“What,” asked Sunko, “are wages?”

“Wages are money.”

“What would they do with money?”

Yukie was flummoxed. “Well, when they have money. . .” she began and then dodged the question first by a loud false laugh and then by telling Sunko how naughty she was. “Anyway,” she continued, “the people just went on making their silly noises all through the day and all through the night. Now it so happened that at that time there was an idiot boy in the district whom they all called Daft Bamboo. He was, as the saying goes, simple. He knew nothing, and nobody had anything to do with him. Eventually, even this simpleton noticed the terrible racket. ‘Why,’ he asked ‘are you making all that noise?’ When someone explained the situation, the idiot boy remarked, ‘What idiots you are, trying for all these years to shift a single Jizō with such idiotic tricks.’”

“A remarkable speech from an idiot.’”

“He was indeed a rather remarkable fool. Of course nobody thought he could do any good but, since no one else had done better, why not, they said, why not let him have a go at it? So Daft Bamboo was asked to help. He immediately agreed.‘Stop that horrible noise,’ he said,‘and just keep quiet.’ The riff-raff and the rickshawmen were packed off somewhere out of sight, and Daft Bamboo, as vacuous as ever, then walked up to the Jizō with utter aimlessness.”

“Was Utter Aimlessness a special friend of Daft Bamboo?”

Mrs. Sneaze and Yukie burst into laughter at Tonko’s curious question.

“No, not a friend.”

“Then, what?”

“Well, utter aimlessness is. . . impossible to describe.”

“‘Utter aimlessness’ means ‘impossible to describe’?”

“No, that’s not it. Utter aimlessness means. . .”

“Yes?”

“You know Mr. Sampei, don’t you?”

“Yes, he’s the one who gave us yams.”

“Well, utter aimlessness means someone like Mr. Sampei.”

“Is Mr. Sampei an utter aimlessness?”

“Yes, more or less. . . Now, Daft Bamboo ambled up to the Jizō with his hands in his pockets and said, ‘Mr. Jizō, the people in this town would like you to move. Would you be so kind as to do so?’ And the Jizō promptly replied,‘Of course I’ll do so. Why ever didn’t they come and ask before?’With that he slowly moved away to a corner of the crossroads.”

“What a peculiar statue!”

“Then the lecture started.”

“Oh! Is there more to come?”

“Most certainly. Professor Kidd went on to say that he had opened his address to the women’s meeting with that particular story because it illustrated a point he had in mind.‘If I may take the liberty of saying so,’

he said, ‘whenever women do something, they are prone to tackle it in a roundabout way instead of coming straight to the point. Admittedly, it is not solely women who beat about the bush. In these so-called enlightened days, debilitated by the poisons of Western civilization, even men have become somewhat effeminate. There are, alas, all too many now devoting their time and effort to an imitation of Western customs in the totally mistaken conviction that aping foreigners is the proper occupation of a gentleman. Such persons are, of course, deformed, for, by their efforts to conform with alien ways, they deform themselves. They deserve no further comment. However, I would wish you ladies to reflect upon the tale I’ve told today so that, as occasion may arise, you, too, will act with the same clear-hearted honesty as was shown by Daft Bamboo. For if all ladies did so act, there can be no doubt that one-third of the abominable discords between husbands and wives and between wives and their mothers-in-law would simply disappear. Human beings are, alas, so made that the more they indulge in secret schemes, schemes whose very secrecy breeds evil, the deeper they drive the wellsprings of their own unhappiness. And the specific reason why so many ladies are so much less happy than the average man is precisely because ladies over indulge themselves in secret schemes. Please,’ he begged us as his lecture ended, ‘turn yourselves into Daft Bamboos.’”

“Did he, indeed! Well,Yukie, are you planning to follow his advice?”

“No fear! Turn myself into a Daft Bamboo! That’s the last thing I would do. Miss Goldfield, too, she was very angry. She said the lecture was damned rude.”