I Am a Cat (46 page)

I pretended not to look while looking; looking, in particular, for a chance to snatch a piece of anything edible. Those who do not know how to look while not looking must give up any hope of ever eating good fish. My master pecked in silence at the fish, but soon put down his chopsticks as if to say that he didn’t much like the taste. His wife, seated directly opposite him in matching silence, is anxiously watching how his chopsticks move up and down and whether my master’s jaws are opening and closing.

“I say,” he suddenly asked her, “give that cat a whack on the head.”

“What happens if I whack it?”

“Never you mind what happens: just whack it.”

“Like this?” asks his wife, tapping my head with the palm of her hand.

It didn’t hurt at all.

“Well, look at that! It didn’t give the least miaow.”

“No,” she says, “it didn’t.”

“Then whack it again.”

“It’ll be just the same, however often I try.” She gave me another tap on the head.

Since I still felt nothing, I naturally kept quiet. But what could be the point of these peculiar orders? As a prudent and intelligent cat, I find my master’s behavior utterly incomprehensible. Any person who could understand what he’s driving at, would then know how to react, but it’s not that easy. His wife is simply told to “whack it,” but she, the whack-er, is self-statedly at a loss to know why she should whack; I, the unfortunate whackee, am no less lost to understand what it’s all about. My master is becoming a little edgily impatient, for twice already his instructions have failed to produce the result which he only knows that he desires. It is therefore almost sharply that he says, “Whack it so that it miaows.”

His wife assumed a resigned sort of expression and wearily asking,

“Why on earth should you want to make the wretched thing miaow?”

gave me another, slightly harder, slap. Now that I know what he wants, it’s all absurdly easy. I can satisfy my master with a mere miaow, but it’s really rather depressing, not just to witness but actually to participate in, yet another demonstration of his addlepated conduct. If he wanted me to miaow, he should have said so. His wife would have been spared two or three totally unnecessary efforts, and I would not have needed to endure more than a single whack. An order to whack should only be given when only a whack is wanted, but in this case what was wanted was simply a miaow. Now whacking may indeed fall within his sphere of responsibility, but miaowing lies in mine. It’s a damned impertinence that he should dare to assume that an instruction to whack includes, or implies, an instruction to miaow, which is a matter totally within my discretion. If he is taking my miaows for granted, indeed he presumes too far. Such failure to respect another person’s personality, a deadly insult to any cat, is the sort of crude insensitivity which one must expect from creatures like my master’s own particular pet aversion, the nauseous Mr.

Goldfield. But the same behavior on the part of my master, a man so confident of his open-heartedness that he struts about stark-naked, can only be seen as an act of unwonted weakness. Yet, as I know, my master is not mean. From which it follows that his venture into whacking was not motivated by any deviousness or malice. In my opinion, his orders were hatched in a brain as guileless and dim as that of a mosquito larva.

If one gobbles rice, one’s stomach becomes full. If one is cut, one bleeds.

If one is killed, one dies. Therefore, such reasoning runs, if one is whacked, one must perforce miaow. Though I have done my best to justify my master’s ways toward me, I regret to be bound to point out the clottish absurdity of such a style of logic. For if one were to concur in that logic, it would follow that if one falls in a river, one is required to drown; that if one eats fried fish, one must then get the squatters; that if one gets a salary, one must turn up for work; and that if one studies books, one cannot fail to make oneself a great name in the world. If that were the way things worked, there’d be some a bit embarrassed. I, for instance, would find it annoying to be obliged to miaow when whacked.

What, I ask, would be the point of being born a cat if, like the bell-clock at Mejiro, one is expected to give off sounds every time one’s struck?

Having thus mentally reprimanded my presumptuous master, then and then only I obliged him with a mew.

As soon as I miaowed, my master turned to his wife. “Hear that?” he said. “Now tell me, is a miaow an interjection or an adverb?”

The question was so abrupt that Mrs. Sneaze said nothing. To tell the truth, my own immediate reaction was to think that, after all, he really had been driven out of his mind by his experiences in the bathhouse. He is, of course, well-known in the neighborhood for his eccentricities. I’ve even heard him called a clear case of neurosis. However, my master’s self-conceit is so unshakable that he insists that, far from being a neurotic himself, it is his detractors in whom neurotic tendencies are clear. When his neighbors call him a dog, he calls them, in mere fairness, so he puts it, filthy pigs. He seems, indeed, besotted with maintaining his ideas of fairness: to the point of being a positive public nuisance. He really sees nothing odd in asking questions as ludicrous as that last enquiry to his wife about the proper parsing of a cat’s miaow, but to the general run of his listeners his questions do suggest a certain mental instability. In any event, his wife, understandably mystified, makes no attempt to answer him. For obvious reasons, I too can offer nothing in reply.

My master waited for a moment and then, in a loud voice, suddenly shouted out, “Hey!”

His wife looked up in surprise and answered, “Yes?”

“Is that ‘yes’ an interjection or an adverb? Tell me now, which is it?”

“Whichever it is, it surely doesn’t matter. What a silly thing to ask!”

“On the contrary, it matters a very great deal. That grammatical problem is an issue currently preoccupying the best brains among leading authorities on linguistics in Japan.”

“Gracious me! You mean that our leading authorities are bending their brains to a cat’s miaow? What a dreadful state of affairs. Anyway, cats don’t speak in Japanese. Surely, a miaow is a word from the language of cats.”

“That’s precisely the point. The problem is a hard one in the very difficult field of comparative linguistics.”

“Is that indeed so?” It is clear that she is sufficiently intelligent to be disinterested in such silly matters. “And have these leading authorities yet discovered what part of speech compares with a cat’s miaow?”

“It’s so serious a problem that it can’t immediately be resolved.” He munches away at that fish, and then proceeds to tuck into the next course of stewed pork and potatoes.

“This will be pork, won’t it?”

“Yes, it’s pork.”

“Huh,” he grunted in tones of deep disdain. “Huh,” and then guzzled it down. Thereafter, holding out a
saké
cup, “I’ll have another cup.”

“You’re drinking rather a lot today. Already you look quite red.”

“Certainly I’m drinking,” he began, but broke off to veer away on a new mad tack. “Do you know,” he demanded, “the longest word in the world?”

“I think I’ve heard it somewhere. Let me think now. Yes. Isn’t it ‘Hoshoji-no-Nyudo-Saki-no-Kampaku-dajodaijin?’”

“No, I don’t mean a title like that ‘Former Chief Adviser to the Emperor and Prime Minister.’ I mean a true, long word.”

“Do you mean one of those crab-written sideways words from the West?”

“Yes.”

“Well then, no. That I wouldn’t know. But I do know that you’ve had quite enough
saké
. You’ll have some rice now, won’t you? Right?”

“Wrong. First I’ll drink some more. Would you like to know that longest word?”

“All right. But after, you’ll have some rice?”

“The word is ‘Archaiomelesidonophrunicherata.’”

“You made it up.”

“Of course I didn’t. It’s Greek.”

“What does it mean in Japanese?”

“I don’t know what it means. I only know its spelling. Even if written sparingly it will cover about six and a quarter inches.”

It is my master’s singularity that he makes this sort of statement, which most men would vouchsafe in their cups, in dead cold sobriety.

All the same, it’s certainly true that he’s drinking far too much tonight.

He normally limits himself to no more than a couple of cups of
saké
, and he’s already tossed back four. His normal dosage turns his face quite red, so the double dosage has inevitably flushed his features to the color of red-hot tongs. He looks to be in some distress, but he keeps on knocking them back. He extends the cup again. “One more,” he says.

His wife, finding this really too much, makes a wry face. “Don’t you think you’ve had enough? You’ll only get a pain.”

“Never mind the pain. From now on, I’m going to train myself into a steady drinker. Oinachi Keigetsu has recommended that I devote myself to drink.”

“And who may this Keigetsu be?” Great and famous though he is, in the eyes of Mrs. Sneaze he isn’t worth a ha’penny.

“Keigetsu is a literary colleague, a first-rate critic of these present times. He has advised me to spend less time at home communing with a cat, to get out and about, and to drink on all occasions. Since he’s almost a doctor, albeit one of literature, it would seem all right to drink on doctor’s orders.”

“Don’t be so ridiculous! I don’t care what he’s called or who he is.

It’s none of his business to urge other people to drink; especially people who happen to have weak stomachs.”

“He didn’t just recommend drinking. He also said I ought to be more sociable and take a fling at the fast life: wine, women, song, even travel.”

“Are you actually trying to tell me that a so-called first-class critic has been making such outrageous suggestions? What kind of a man can he be? Truly, I’m shocked to learn that presumably responsible literary figures would recommend that a married man should go out on the loose.”

“There’s nothing wrong with living it up. If I had the money, I wouldn’t need Keigetsu’s encouragement before giving it a try.”

“Well then, I’m very glad that you don’t have the money. It would be quite awful if a man your age started gallivanting about with wanton girls and drunken half-wit critics.”

“Since the idea seems to shock you, I’ll scrap my plans for kicking over the traces. However, in consideration of that connubial self-sacrifice, you’ll have to take better care of your husband and, in particular, serve him better dinners.”

“I’m already doing the best I can on what you give me.”

“Really? Well in that case, I’ll postpone my investigation of the fast life until I can afford it, and, for tonight, I won’t take any more
saké
.”

With what might just pass for a smile, he held out his rice bowl for his wife to fill from the container. As I remember it, he thereupon got through three great bowlfuls of mixed rice and tea.

My meal that night consisted of three slices of pork and the grilled head of that nameless fish.

 
VOLUME III
 

 
I

W
HEN I WAS describing my fence trotting exercises,I must have mentioned that bamboo fence which encloses my master’s garden. Beyond that fence to the south of us there is another dwelling, but it would be an error to assume that our neighbors are just anybody. Admittedly, it is a low-rent area, but Mr. Sneaze is a person of some standing, and certainly not the sort of man to establish chatty relationships across a backyard fence with any old Tom, Dick, or Harry. On the other side of our particular fence there is an open space about thirty feet deep at the far end, in which stands a dark green row of five or six heavily foliaged cypresses. If one looks at this scene from our veranda, the impression it creates is of a deep and thickly wooded forest, and one feels that here is a lonely house in a glade where some learned sage, indifferent to fame, and wealth, leads out his solitary life with only a nameless cat for his companion. However, the cypresses do not, in fact, grow quite as thickly as I’d like to make out, for through their greenery one can, with hurtful clarity, descry the undistinguished roof of a cheap boarding house of which the only redeeming feature is its soul-astounding name: Crane Flock Manor. You will appreciate that it consequently takes a real effort of the imagination to fit my master as I’ve hitherto described him into such a high-falutin’ background. Yet, if that crumby boarding house can bear so grand a name, then surely my master’s home deserves at least to be known as the Cave of the Sleeping Dragon. Since there’s no tax on house names, one might as well select a name which sounds impressive. Anyway, this open space to the south of us, of a north-south depth of some thirty feet, extends on an east-west axis for about sixty feet along our bamboo fence, and then turns at a right angle northward to run along the eastern side of the Cave of the Sleeping Dragon. Now it is in this northern area that trouble has arisen.