Cat Country (29 page)

‘Well, perhaps it will be to the best interests of Cat Country anyway,’ I observed.

‘I’d agree with you that you can attain political power through craftiness, but I’m not sure that you can make the country strong that way. The most important thing to that man are his personal ambitions; the concept of “country” doesn’t even exist in his mind. Those who really love their country spill their blood against its enemies.’

I began to realise that the arrival of enemy soldiers was going to be the fuse to set off a civil war. The passing mass of red cords began to blur before my eyes and then it suddenly turned into an inglorious sea of red blood in which soldiers were floundering about.

We were already well out of Cat City, and for some reason or other that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, I had the feeling that I should never see it again. Before we had gone much further, we ran into a rather singular group of Cat People. They were all very tall and unusually stupid looking. Each of them grasped a blade of grass in his hand. Revery, who hadn’t spoken for a long time, suddenly said, ‘Thank goodness! The Great Mystics from the West have come!’

‘What in the hell are you talking about?’ I had never before seen Young Scorpion angry with Revery, but now he was obviously furious. Revery immediately changed her tune.

‘I don’t really believe in them, Scorpion.’

I knew that if I threw in a question I could deflect some of the anger that he was preparing to heap on Revery. ‘What Great Mystics?’ I asked.

Young Scorpion did not react immediately. Then instead of answering, he asked a question of me. ‘What would you say the greatest weakness of the Cat People is?’

That really was a hard one, and I began to ponder it.

Young Scorpion answered it himself. ‘Mixed up!’ I knew that he didn’t mean me.

We continued walking for a bit and then he said, ‘You see, my friend, our fatal weakness is being always mixed up. Among all of our people you cannot find a single one who fully understands anything. That’s why we are always imitating others: it makes us seem less mixed up and a casual observer might even be misled into believing that the imitation is the real thing and that we really do know and understand a lot. That’s why we sometimes pretend to understand something new even when we don’t.

‘And yet, as you can well see by observing Revery’s reaction to these mystics, whenever catastrophe is imminent, we will toss to one side all of the new terms we’ve memorised, and returning to old ways, we will reach for the most absurd and confused of concepts – concepts which lie stored in the deepest cellars of our spirits – and haul them out again. You see, we are empty to begin with, and as soon as we panic we expose our emptiness and begin calling for mama just like little children. For instance, as soon as the followers of
Everybody Shareskyism
panic, they burn incense and pray to Uncle Karl the Great, blithely oblivious to the fact that their Uncle Karl was one of the greatest enemies of superstition who ever lived. When our revolutionaries panic, they begin the transport of the Great Mystics from the West wholesale, people who are much more mixed up than they are mystical, a muddle-headed crew who only know how to walk around carrying stalks of grass. No one has any understanding of problems, and then when the point arrives where a problem must be solved immediately, they call in the Great Mystics. This is the very reason that we are certain to perish; we are all muddle-headed and confused. Economics, education, military affairs – none is really enough to extinguish a nation – but when every last person is muddle-headed and confused – that is enough to destroy a race. For no one on our entire planet will treat as people, creatures who are as stupid and confused as beasts. This time our defeat is a foregone conclusion, and after our defeat, wait and see if the enemy doesn’t slaughter every last one of us precisely because they don’t regard us as people to begin with. Thus when they do kill us, it will seem to them much more like slaughtering animals than killing people. It will be a slaughter that will elicit absolutely no response from any other country, for no one ever gets all that worked up over the butchering of animals. People are always cruel to those whom they don’t respect. Generally, people don’t respect other people who are hopelessly confused. They will often exterminate such creatures without a second thought. You wait and see if my words aren’t borne out.’

I really felt like going back to see what the Great Mystics from the West were up to, but I couldn’t bring myself to desert Young Scorpion and Revery.

We rested for a while in a village. What I mean by ‘village’ is simply a place where there were the ruins of a few collapsed houses, but no people.

‘When I was little,’ Young Scorpion began, and one could tell from the tone of his voice that he was reminiscing over the idyll of childhood, ‘this was a large village. And that was not too many years ago; and now, there’s not so much as a single shadow! The destruction of an entire people can come about very easily!’ He seemed to be talking to himself, and in order to spare him further pain I refrained from asking him how it was that this village had been destroyed.

Besides, I could almost answer it myself: revolution. War follows in the wake of every revolution; but it is the victorious ones who are helpless. Understanding only how to tear things down, they lack the imagination and ardour necessary to build things up again. And the only result of the revolution is to increase the number of soldiers in arms and the number of corrupt officials preying upon the common people. In this kind of situation the common people will go hungry whether they work or not. And so it had probably been with this deserted village. The villagers had no doubt begun to run into the cities or had joined the army for a few reverie leaves a month. This one dies, and that one becomes a refugee, and before you know it, the village is emptied clean as a barrel. To carry on a revolution without the knowledge necessary for its success – what a terribly dangerous thing that is! Nothing would save the Cat People unless they themselves realise that revolution is nothing but a noose about their necks.

I was just in the midst of this train of thought when Revery suddenly jumped up. ‘Look over there!’

Off to the west a great cloud of grey dust rose high into the sky as though some terrible and unnatural wind had suddenly stirred it up.

Young Scorpion’s lips were visibly trembling as he said, ‘They’re falling back in full rout!’

THE LAST GASP OF A DYING STATE

‘Y
OU TWO
had better hide.’ Although Young Scorpion’s tone was calm, he was obviously worried; I had never before seen such an intense expression in his eyes. ‘Our soldiers don’t show much aggressiveness as they approach the front, but in retreat they run wild. You really ought to hide.’

Still gazing toward the front lines, he said, ‘Friend, I place Revery in your hands!’ Still not turning around, he extended one hand behind his back to feel whether Revery was still there or not. Revery took his hand and said with a tremble, ‘We’ll die together!’

I was totally at a loss as to what to do. Should I take Revery away with me, or stay there and die with them. I wasn’t afraid of dying, but I would have to consider what kind of death would be more worthwhile. I knew that if several hundred soldiers attacked me, then with only a single revolver to rely on I should be overwhelmed. However, I couldn’t afford to waste too much time weighing the pros and cons, and so I grabbed Revery and Young Scorpion each by the hand and ran with them towards a dilapidated old house behind the village. I really can’t say what I had in mind. My plan – I really shouldn’t call it a plan because I had no time to weigh things carefully – was nothing more than a flash of intuition. According to my intuition, there was only one course of action open: the three of us would hide until the main body of the army was past. Then I would foray out, capture one of the stragglers and determine the situation at the front. Then we’d be able to decide what to do on the basis of sound intelligence. If we were discovered by the main body of troops – and there was no guarantee that they wouldn’t bivouac in our area – then I would simply put up as much resistance as I could with my revolver. The rest I would leave to fate.

Before we had gone very far, Young Scorpion stopped and refused to go on. He seemed to have his reasons, but I didn’t have the time to examine them. If he didn’t come, then obviously I had no hopes of Revery going with me. I was once more at a loss. The dust that we had seen to the west was moving ominously closer. I had great respect for the speed and sight of the Cat People, and I knew that if the soldiers got much closer, there would be no more opportunity to hide.

‘You’re not going to die at their hands! I won’t permit it!’ There was urgency in my voice as I tried to pull them towards the dilapidated old house, but Young Scorpion still wouldn’t budge.

‘It’s all over! There’s no point in your dying too. Let Revery do whatever she chooses. I release you from all responsibility.’ Young Scorpion sounded quite determined. In strength, however, I knew that he was no match for me. I grabbed him around the waist and, half-hugging half-pushing, forced him towards safety. Since he wasn’t the rugged type to begin with, he didn’t put up a struggle. Revery, of course, had no choice but to follow. Thus I won out and before long we were all hidden safely away in a dilapidated little house at the back of the village.

I piled broken bricks into a wall that shielded us from view, and then peeked out through the cracks to see what was going on. Revery sat beside me and held Young Scorpion’s hand.

Before long, the main body of troops came our way. It moved forward, looking like a tornado whose vortex was a chaotic mass of debris. And from within the cone of this furry tornado there issued forth one confused roar after another. Then the sound of the roar suddenly died away, as of a wave that has just broken on the beach. I held my breath waiting for the roar to suddenly build up again, but it didn’t. When the cone of the cat-tornado was past and the mass had thinned out a bit, I was able to make out individual soldiers. They didn’t even have the wooden clubs that I had grown used to seeing them carry back in the reverie forest. Their eyes were glued to their toes, as they ran desperately forward as though they were scared out of their wits. Their weird appearance made my blood run cold. An army without the whinnying of horses, without banners, without swords or guns, without rank or file – just a huge chaos of naked cats scurrying madly across the hot sands, each of them apparently pushed to the verge of madness by fright, hurtling forward for his very life. A group of, a field of, an entire horizon of, a whole planet of madmen! I had never before seen such a thing! Had they maintained some semblance of order I shouldn’t have been nearly so frightened, but this was pure random chaos!

I began wondering what point there was in Young Scorpion’s coming out all this way just to see a defeated army in rout. Were these crazed soldiers running back to settle accounts with his father? That would be logical enough, but why shouldn’t Young Scorpion hide from them rather than going out to meet them? I couldn’t figure it out, and my confusion and curiosity made me bold: I decided to venture out of our hideout and capture one of the enemy soldiers. However, on second thought I realised that if I did venture out, I would be spotted immediately, for apart from a few dilapidated houses, there wasn’t a single tree or obstacle behind which I might take cover.

I waited some more, and finally the flow of soldiers dribbled away to almost nothing. However, those soldiers who were hindmost were also running the fastest. They were, no doubt, especially terrified because they had fallen behind the main body of troops and were doing their very best to catch up. It would be pointless for me to try to overtake one of them. I decided that I’d have to come up with some other plan.

All right, then. Why not try my skill with my revolver? I knew that if I wounded one of them, those behind would run right past him without giving him a second glance and those in front of him wouldn’t so much as turn their heads when they heard the crack of my revolver. But how could I guarantee that I should be sufficiently skilful to hit just one of them, and sufficiently accurate to wound him just enough so I could capture him alive? Moreover, even if I were able to hit him in a non-vital spot, would I have the heart to interrogate a man with a slug in him? Never having been a military officer, I seemed to lack the requisite touch of cruelty for such a task. I concluded that my plan was something less than honourable.

There were hardly any soldiers going by now and I realised that if I procrastinated any longer, there wouldn’t be a single one left. I decided to go out and seize one bodily. At any rate there were so few of them left now that at the worst, only a few would be able to gang up on me and my chances would still be pretty good. It was now or never. I drew my revolver and rushed out.

Things are never as easy as we think they should be in the abstract, nor are they as difficult. If the stragglers had bolted upon seeing me, then it was a foregone conclusion that I could chase them the livelong day without catching a single one. But one of them, upon spotting me, actually froze like a frog surprised by a water snake. The rest of it was easy. I threw him across my shoulders like a shawl and carried him back to our hideout the way one brings a pig home from market. He neither cried out nor struggled. He was probably so tired and terrified that he was as good as half dead anyway. I put him down in our dilapidated hideout, but it was a long time before he opened his eyes. He took one look at Young Scorpion, and one would have thought that someone had jabbed him with a pin. He glared so furiously at my young friend that it was obvious he wanted to get up and spring upon him like a tiger. With me beside him, however, it seemed he had nerve enough to get angry but not enough to act.

Young Scorpion didn’t seem to be the least bit interested in him, and merely sat holding Revery by the hand with a blank expression on his face. I knew that if I used a soft approach in interrogating this prisoner, I might well get nothing out of him. I’d have to intimidate him, and when I had him scared enough, I’d ask how the army was defeated.