I Am a Cat (14 page)

Today is a Sunday and the weather fine. The master has therefore crept out of his study, and, placing a brush, an ink stone, and a writing pad in a row before him, he now lies flat on his belly beside me, and is groaning hard. I watch him, thinking that he is perhaps making this peculiar noise in the birth pangs of some literary effort. After a while, and in thick black strokes, he wrote, “Burn incense.” Is it going to be a poem or a
haiku
? Just when I was thinking that the phrase was rather too witty for my master, he abandons it, and, his brush running quickly over the paper, writes an entirely new line: “Now for some little time I have been thinking of writing an article about Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man.” At this point the brush stops dead. My master, brush in hand, racks his brains, but no bright notions seem to emerge for he now starts licking the head of his brush. I watched his lips acquire a curious inkiness. Then, underneath what he had just written, he drew a circle, put in two dots as eyes, added a nostrilled nose in the center, and finally drew a single sideways line for a mouth. One could not call such creations either
haiku
or prose. Even my master must have been disgusted with himself, for he quickly smeared away the face. He then starts a new line. He seems to have some vague notion that, provided he himself produces a new line, maybe some kind of a Chinese poem will evolve itself.

After further moonings, he suddenly started writing briskly in the colloquial style. “Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man is one who studies Infinity, reads the
Analects
of Confucius, eats baked yams, and has a runny nose.” A somewhat muddled phrase. He thereupon read the phrase aloud in a declamatory manner and, quite unlike his usual self, laughed. “Ha-ha-ha. Interesting! But that ‘runny nose’ is a shade cruel, so I’ll cross it out,” and he proceeds to draw lines across that phrase.

“Though a single line would clearly have sufficed, he draws two lines and then three lines. He goes on drawing more and more lines regardless of their crowding into the neighboring line of writing. When he has drawn eight such obliterations, he seems unable to think of anything to add to his opening outburst. So he takes to twirling his mustache, determined to wring some telling sentence from his whiskers. He is still twisting them up and twirling them down when his wife appears from the living room, and sitting herself down immediately before my master’s nose, remarks, “My dear.”

“What is it?” My master’s voice sounds dully like a gong struck under water. His wife seems not to like the answer, for she starts all over again.

“My dear!” she says.

“Well, what is it?”

This time, cramming a thumb and index finger into a nostril, he yanks out nostril hairs.

“We are a bit short this month. . .”

“Couldn’t possibly be short. We’ve settled the doctor’s fee and we paid off the bookshop’s bill last month. So this month, there ought in fact to be something left over.” He coolly examines his uprooted nostril hairs as though they were some wonder of the world.

“But because you, instead of eating rice, have taken to bread and jam. . .”

“Well, how many tins of jam have I gone through?”

“This month, eight tins were emptied.”

“Eight? I certainly haven’t eaten that much.”

“It wasn’t only you. The children also lick it.”

“However much one licks, one couldn’t lick more than two or three shillings worth.” My master calmly plants his nostril hairs, one by one, on the writing pad. The sticky-rooted bristles stand upright on the paper like a little copse of needles. My master seems impressed by this unexpected discovery and he blows upon them. Being so sticky, they do not fly away.

“Aren’t they obstinate?” he says and blows upon them frantically.

“It is not only the jam. There’s other things we have to buy.” The lady of the house expresses her extreme dissatisfaction by pouting sulkily.

“Maybe.” Again inserting his thumb and finger, he extracts some hairs with a jerk. Among these hairs of various hue, red ones and black ones, there is a single pure white bristle. My master who, with a look of great surprise, has been staring at this object, proceeds to show it to his wife, holding it up between his fingers right in front of her face.

“No, don’t.” She pushes his hand away with a grimace of distaste.

“Look at it! A white hair from the nostrils.” My master seems to be immensely impressed. His wife, resigned, went back into the living room with a laugh. She seems to have given up hope of getting any answer to her problems of domestic economy. My master resumes his consideration of the problems of Natural Man.

Having succeeded in driving off his wife with his scourge of nostril hair, he appears to feel relieved, and, while continuing that depilation, struggles to get on with his article. But his brush remains unmoving.

“That ‘eats baked yams’ is also superfluous. Out with it.” He deletes the phrase. “And ‘incense burns’ is somewhat over-abrupt, so let’s cross that out too.” His exuberant self-criticism leaves nothing on the paper but the single sentence “Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man is one who studies Infinity and reads the
Analects
of Confucius.” My master thinks this statement a trifle over-simplified. “Ah well, let’s not be bothered: let’s abandon prose and just make it an inscription.” Brandishing the brush crosswise, he paints vigorously on the writing pad in that watercolor style so common among literary men and produces a very poor study of an orchid. Thus all his precious efforts to write an article have come down to this mere nothing. Turning the sheet, he writes something that makes no sense. “Born in Infinity, studied Infinity, and died into Infinity.

Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man. Infinity.” At this moment Waverhouse drifts into the room in his usual casual fashion. He appears to make no distinction between his own and other people’s houses; unannounced and unceremoniously, he enters any house and, what’s more, will sometimes float in unexpectedly through a kitchen door. He is one of those who, from the moment of their birth, discaul themselves of all such tiresome things as worry, reserve, scruple, and concern.

“‘Giant Gravitation again?’” asks Waverhouse still standing.

“How could I be always writing only about ‘Giant Gravitation?’ I’m trying to compose an epitaph for the tombstone of Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man,” replied my master with considerable exaggeration.

“Is that some sort of posthumous Buddhist name like Accidental Child?” inquires Waverhouse in his usual irrelevant style.

“Is there then someone called Accidental Child?”

“No, of course there isn’t, but I take it that you’re working on something like that.”

“I don’t think Accidental Child is anyone I know. But Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man is a person of your own acquaintance.”

“Who on earth could get a name like that?”

“It’s Sorosaki. After he graduated from the University, he took a post-graduate course involving study of the ‘theory of infinity.’ But he over-worked, got peritonitis, and died of it. Sorosaki happened to be a very close friend of mine.”

“All right, so he was your very close friend. I’m far from criticizing that fact. But who was responsible for converting Sorosaki into Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man?”

“Me. I created that name. For there is really nothing more philistine than the posthumous names conferred by Buddhist priests.” My master boasts as if his nomination of Natural Man were a feat of artistry.

“Anyway, let’s see the epitaph,” says Waverhouse laughingly. He picks up my master’s manuscript and reads it out aloud. “Eh . . .‘Born into infinity, studied infinity, and died into infinity. Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man. Infinity.’ I see. This is fine. Quite appropriate for poor old Sorosaki.”

“Good, isn’t it?” says my master obviously very pleased.

“You should have this epitaph engraved on a weight-stone for pickles and then leave it at the back of the main hall of some temple for the practice-benefit of passing weight lifters. It’s good. It’s most artistic. Mr. the-late-and-sainted may now well rest in peace.”

“Actually, I’m thinking of doing just that,” answers my master quite seriously. “But you’ll have to excuse me,” he went on, “I won’t be long.

Just play with the cat. Don’t go away.” And my master departed like the wind without even waiting for Waverhouse to answer.

Being thus unexpectedly required to entertain the culture-vulture Waverhouse, I cannot very well maintain my sour attitude. Accordingly, I mew at him encouragingly and sidle up on to his knees. “Hello,” says Waverhouse, “you’ve grown distinctly chubby. Let’s take a look at you.”

Grabbing me impolitely by the scruff of my neck he hangs me up in midair. “Cats like you that let their hind legs dangle are cats that catch no mice. . . Tell me,” he said, turning to my master’s wife in the next room, “has he ever caught anything?”

“Far from catching so much as a single mouse, he eats rice-cakes and then dances.” The lady of the house unexpectedly probes my old wound, which embarrassed me. Especially when Waverhouse still held me in midair like a circus-performer.

“Indeed, with such a face, it’s not surprising that he dances. Do you know, this cat possesses a truly insidious physionomy. He looks like one of those goblin-cats illustrated in the old storybooks.” Waverhouse, babbling whatever comes into his head, tries to make conversation with the mistress. She reluctantly interrupts her sewing and comes into the room.

“I do apologize. You must be bored. He won’t be long now.” And she poured fresh tea for him.

“I wonder where he’s gone.”

“Heaven only knows. He never explains where he’s going. Probably to see his doctor.”

“You mean Dr. Amaki? What a misfortune for Amaki to be involved with such a patient.”

Perhaps finding this comment difficult to answer, she answers briefly:

“Well, yes.”

Waverhouse takes not the slightest notice, but goes on to ask, “How is he lately? Is his weak stomach any better?”

“It’s impossible to say whether it’s better or worse. However carefully Dr. Amaki may look after him, I don’t see how his health can ever improve if he continues to consume such vast quantities of jam.” She thus works off on Waverhouse her earlier grumblings to my master.

“Does he eat all that much jam? It sounds like a child.”

“And not just jam. He’s recently taken to guzzling grated radish on the grounds that it’s a sovereign cure for dyspepsia.”

“You surprise me,” marvels Waverhouse.

“It all began when he read in some rag that grated radish contains diastase.”

“I see. I suppose he reckons that grated radish will repair the ravages of jam. It’s certainly an ingenious equation.” Waverhouse seems vastly diverted by her recital of complaint.

“Then only the other day he forced some on the baby.”

“He made the baby eat jam?”

“No, grated radish! Would you believe it? He said, ‘Come here, my little babykin, father’ll give you something good. . .’Whenever, once in a rare while, he shows affection for the children, he always does remarkably silly things. A few days ago he put our second daughter on top of a chest of drawers.”

“What ingenious scheme was that?” Waverhouse looks to discover ingenuities in everything.

“There was no question of any ingenious scheme. He just wanted the child to make the jump when it’s quite obvious that a little girl of three or four is incapable of such tomboy feats.”

“I see. Yes, that proposal does indeed seem somewhat lacking in ingenuity. Still, he’s a good man without an ill wish in his heart.”

“Do you think that I could bear it if, on top of everything else, he were ill-natured?” She seems in uncommonly high spirits.

“Surely you don’t have cause for such vehement complaint? To be as comfortably off as you are is, after all, the best way to be. Your husband neither leads the fast life nor squanders money on dandified clothing.

He’s a born family man of quiet taste.”Waverhouse fairly lets himself go in unaccustomed laud of an unknown way of life.

“On the contrary, he’s not at all like that. . .”

“Indeed? So he has secret vices? Well, one cannot be too careful in this world.” Waverhouse offers a nonchalantly fluffy comment.

“He has no secret vices, but he is totally abandoned in the way he buys book after book, never to read a single one. I wouldn’t mind if he used his head and bought in moderation, but no. Whenever the mood takes him, he ambles off to the biggest bookshop in the city and brings back home as many books as chance to catch his fancy. Then, at the end of the month, he adopts an attitude of complete detachment. At the end of last year, for instance, I had a terrible time coping with the bill that had been accumulating month after month.”

“It doesn’t matter that he should bring home however many books he may like. If, when the bill collector comes, you just say that you’ll pay some other time, he’ll go away.”

“But one cannot put things off indefinitely.” She looks cast down.

“Then you should explain the matter to your husband and ask him to cut down expenditure on books.”

“And do you really believe he would listen to me? Why, only the other day, he said,‘You are so unlike a scholar’s wife: you lack the least understanding of the value of books. Listen carefully to this story from ancient Rome. It will give you beneficial guidance for your future conduct.’”