Six Lives of Fankle the Cat (10 page)

Occasionally, on one of the flights of stairs, or in the garden, Girl of Tulips and the minister would come face to face. One cold face, one face that was a looking glass of joy, confusion, beseeching, pain, hopelessness.

Every time, Girl of Tulips shook her head.

The minister would bow, turn, and go about his business.

Then, at her ankle, the caress of black silk. The cat with no name was never far from his mistress.

It could not go on forever, that strange wooing. One morning Girl of Tulips came into the weaving chamber. She found red words pinned to the loom. “The lord the Minister of Commerce requests of Girl of Tulips the happy and well-handed mistress of the looms (once a poor river girl) that she become his lady and the mistress of all this broad and beauteous and fruitful estate. I have written this with the blood of my heart. Answer soon. Answer sweetly.” “Love is cruel,” said Girl of Tulips to her cat. She wept. Then she seized a piece of charcoal and wrote
NO
in large reckless letters across the page. She went out into the garden then. She did not cry any more. She sat still, with the black cat in her lap, cold as a statue.

She did not sit for long. Three men from the minister's bodyguard approached through the flowers. They had ropes in their hands. They seized her without a word.

I forgot to say that the minister had, on his estate, apart from the flutes, the dragon grotto, fountain, and winepress, an underground dungeon. There, in the blackness, Girl of Tulips was imprisioned. The walls dripped dampness. Occasionally a chain rattled in the distance. She would be wakened from her sleep by a thin lost shriek.

Her only comfort was the little black engine of delight that trembled upon her shoulder.

Time had no meaning in that dungeon. What did her unloved lover mean to do with her? She thought, after a seventh pang of hunger had gone through her, that he must have sentenced her to death by starvation.

A rat stirred in the corner of her cell. She cried out in terror. The black cat flowed from her shoulder, and the rat withdrew into its hole.

The terrible place intruded into her dreams. A white shape lay stretched on the floor, bound and staked. A figure in a dark robe bent over the helpless one. “Love!” it commanded. “Love! Love!” “No,” whispered the victim.

The torturer nodded. Half-naked men with torches and knives approached. Their faces were blank ...

When Girl of Tulips woke, sweating, from that dream, the sweetest moment she had ever experienced was the song of the black cat on her shoulder, and his eyes like diamonds in the gloom.

Before she dropped off to sleep again, she heard a prolonged thrilling echo. A fanfare of silver trumpets was being sounded from the gate above. There was a muted pulse of drums. Some great event was about to happen.

Girl of Tulips whispered, “What is love? ...” Then she was folded softly, in the poppy of sleep.

***

The Emperor had arrived. That was the reason for the ceremonial music at the gate. The Emperor and his retinue had arrived, having given only an hour's notice. The Emperor had decided to make a leisurely progress through his four kingdoms. At every great house, beginning with his Minister of Commerce, he would have to be expensively entertained.

The banquet was spread in the great hall, overlooking the garden.

The Emperor sat at the head of the table, the Minister of Commerce sat at the foot. A hundred lords and ladies ate and drank. Stylish words were spoken across the table. It was as if an intricate web of wit and delight was being woven.

In the middle of the third course – young eaglets soused in strawberry wine – grains of spice got into the Emperor's nostril. He sniffed, he grew rigid, there was no breath left in the royal nasal passages for a full half-minute. The idle elegant chatter around the board ceased. Mouths gaped. The minister made agitated signs to one of the flunkeys. The flunkey picked up a silk napkin from the sideboard and rushed with it to the Emperor and thrust it into his hand. It was not a moment too soon. The Emperor's head shattered, twice. His royal nose exploded into the silk napkin.

Then all around the light laughter and chatter broke out again. The minister called on the musicians to play a piece of music to unleash the digestive juices.

“You keep pungent spices in your kitchen,” said General Wo, the Emperor's aide-de-camp.

Little fountains of laughter leapt up here and there around the table. The next course, pears and apricots chilled in mountain ice, was announced.

Why was the Emperor so preoccupied? Ever since his sneezes, he had been gazing at the crumpled silk in his hand. He said at last, “How comes it, minister, that you have a better silk-weaver in your house here than I have in the Imperial Palace?”

“It is a matter of chance, your majesty,” said the minister.

“I have never handled silk like this,” said the Emperor, “of such purity and softness, of such incomparable artistry. What is the name of your silk-weaver?”

“She is called Girl of Tulips,” said the Minister of Commerce, and bit his lip.

“I wish to see this silk-weaver,” said the Emperor.

“Alas,” said the minister, “Girl of Tulips is not here. Girl of Tulips has been sent away. Girl of Tulips has woven her last silk.” The Emperor drew his brows together. It was as if a thundercloud had settled there.

“Where is she?” he said. “Tell me where this girl is. I will send out horsemen. She must be brought here as soon as possible. I delight in fine silk.”

The Minister of Commerce began to stammer. “Majesty ... The truth is ... This Girl of Tulips is a very common person. Her true name is Bat-ye, which means ‘poor river girl' ... That is exactly what this person is. When I first saw her she was in rags, she was smelling of brine ... She is nothing ... I would not have your eyes insulted ... Her behaviour is as common as her appearance ... She is ignorant, impudent ... For certain things she did recently here in this house, I got rid of her ... Think no more of Bat-ye, that common, filth, your majesty.”

The musicians hung breathless upon their flutes.

“I want the girl for my looms,” said the Emperor at last. “Minister, you will produce the girl, wherever she is, within a week. Otherwise, there will be a certain rearrangement of personnel within my council of state.”

The household had never seen such woe begone looks on the face of their master – not even on the morning of his wife's death.

At last he crooked a finger at the chief flunkey, and whispered in his ear. He pointed downwards, through the floor, into the darkness under the foundation stone.

The next course was announced: sharks' fins and honey sauce. The minister ate nothing.

***

Girl of Tulips was free! There was a sudden torrent of light and fresh air into her cell. At first she thought they had come to summon her to the stake.

It was not the ferocious guards. It was her two handmaidens who stood, smiling, on each side of the door. They drew her along a corridor that rang like an evil bell, and up iron stairs smelling of rust and pain and blood, and out at last into the garden. (The garden was a miracle of light and leaf, bee and shadow, blossom and scent, to the freed girl.) She was not allowed to linger in the garden. She was taken inside, the clothes smelling of earth-damp were stripped from her, she was laid languorously in a warm fragrant bath. Then the fine clothes she had worn before her imprisonment were, newly laundered, arrayed on her.

“What is happening?” said Girl of Tulips. “Where will you take me now?”

The handmaidens could not say. They touched their fingers to their lips. They kissed her. They put delicate smiles on her.

Upstairs, downstairs, through a long corridor with music at the end of it, a confusion of voices, and such aromas of food that it was like an emerald sword entering her stomach. (She had not eaten for three days.)

She saw, seated at the long table, all the beauty and valour of the region. At the far end, like a man sentenced, slumped the Minister of Commerce.

A stranger more splendid than any peacock rose to his feet as she entered. A single trumpet was sounded.

“Kneel,” whispered one of the handmaidens. She went down on her knees. How was she to know who he was? He was so handsome and richly attired he could have been one of the gods from the snow mountain.

He spoke. She dared to take her eyes from the floor. Her heart thumped erratically. He had the kindest, sweetest face she had ever seen on a man. If he had been a brine-smelling fisherman from the delta, with such a face she would have loved him ... His words, till now, had been only a confused music in her ears. She strove to understand; “... command you therefore, Girl of Tulips, to return with us at once to the Imperial Palace. The sight of you pleases us. A place will be found for you, suitable to your beauty and talents.”

“Speak to the Emperor,” whispered one of the handmaidens. “Answer.”

“Of course I'll go with you,” said the honest girl from the river. “But not because you're an emperor and can give me whatever I desire. No. I will go with you because I love you.”

She said these last words with her eyes on the ground.

The Emperor was suddenly kneeling beside her. He took her by the hands. He whispered, so that only she could hear, “It is not only the silk. I would love you, Girl of Tulips, if you patched rags in a garret.”

Then he kissed her.

All the guests shouted and clapped their hands. They drowned the music of the flutes. The ladies laughed falsely. “All happiness to your majesty!” shouted the guests. “Happiness – prosperity – peace.”

The Minister of Commerce, at the foot of the table, buried his face in his hands.

The Emperor raised Girl of Tulips to her feet. He kissed her fingers that still smelt faintly of rust and earth mould.

In the heart of all that pageantry and excitement, a small black cat strolled nonchalantly under the table, and began to devour the scraps and fragments of food that had fallen from the feast. (Remember, he had not eaten for three long days.) Afterwards he gave his face a lick, yawned, and curled up at the entangled feet of his new master and mistress.

Before he dropped off to sleep, the black cat heard the Emperor say sternly, “As for you, Minister of Commerce, my impulse is to have you executed at once. Impalement, disembowelling – a death like that seems suitable. She who is to be Empress has spoken on your behalf. You have suffered much, she says, and most of the time you are a just man. She has mentioned a fragrant ghost, your wife. You will therefore be left in peace. Let this be sufficient punishment – the knowledge that once you came within a few days of starving the future Empress to death.” So it happened. The Emperor and Girl of Tulips were married with great state in the Imperial Palace. The celebrations went on for a month. The fisher people of the river heard at last that there was a new Empress, but they did not know that it was their friend Bat-ye.

The last dead firework lay in the imperial garden, one summer dawn.

It was time for the Emperor to return to his arduous duties.

Arduous they were – far more difficult than the tasks of a fisherman beside the river, or a fowler, or a hunter of tigers, or a silk weaver.

One morning, a month after the wedding, the Emperor came into his wife's chamber, after a council-of-state meeting, wringing his hands.

“A whole fleet of merchant ships!” he cried. “Scattered in a storm! Half of them sunk. It was a very precious cargo, tea and jade and spices! Two merchants in the sea port will be ruined!”

The Empress stroked her black cat, and said nothing.

The Emperor went out again. Who expects advice from a woman? He went to consult this maritime adviser and that.

The black cat stopped purring. It spoke to the Empress for the first time. It laid its head on her shoulder and whispered things into her ear.

When the Emperor returned to his wife's chamber, for a glass of tea and a few consoling kisses, she said, “I wouldn't worry about the merchants so much. They're well insured against storm and shipwreck. They make a hundred times more than they ever lose. There will be sailors' widows now in all the little villages along the coast. Winter is coming on. See that the women and the children are all right. They are the ones who really suffer, after a disaster like this.”

The Emperor looked at the Empress with astonishment. He had never looked at the situation from this particular angle.

“I think there's truth in what you say,” he said.

The black cat slept, or pretended to sleep, on his favourite stool that was patterned with flowers and peacocks.

That weekend the families of the drowned sailors were given silver and an imperial guarantee of food and shelter until the following spring. The great merchants grumbled and said it could not be afforded. But they were not noticeably poorer themselves.

Five or six weeks later the Emperor came into his wife's chamber clasping his head in both hands. The council of state had just finished an emergency sitting. “Terrible!” he cried. “A revolt! My own people, that I love dearly, to take up swords and catapults against me! They will suffer for this. There will be heads rotting in the wind along a hundred miles of mountain road. Those gentle people from the mountains – goatherds, falconers, timbermen – who would have thought they would rise against their Emperor!”

The Empress stroked the black cat and was silent.

The Emperor went out, to consult a few generals. What does a woman, however beautiful and good, know about treason and force of arms?

The black cat murmured certain words into the ear of his friend.

When the Emperor returned, to forget his worries for a while in his wife's arms, she pushed him away, gently, and said, “There are no finer people than the mountain tribes. No people have shown you more loyalty and love. But people will do desperate things when they have a dragon for a governor. If I were you, I would make enquiries – urgent enquiries – into the character and behaviour of the mountain governor. He is an evil man. Examine the account books. Of every six trees felled on the mountain, the governor takes four for himself and one for you. It's the same with the falconers and the goatherds. The governor has set up a flogging post in every village. The fine house of the governor is teeming with slaves – girls that were, until last year, the happy daughters of the mountain men.”