I Am a Cat (35 page)

“You’re sure it’s all right?” Even my master looks somewhat concerned. Mrs. Sneaze, genuinely anxious, squeaks, “Please, you’d better stop. It would be terrible to spoil so fine a hat.”

Only its owner wants to keep going. “But it can’t be spoiled. That’s the wonder of it.” He heaves the crumpled object out from under his bottom and jams it on his head. It sprang back into shape.

“Indeed it’s a very strong hat. Isn’t it extraordinary? Quite amazing.”

Mrs. Sneaze is more and more impressed.

“Oh, there’s nothing extraordinary about it. It’s just that kind of hat,” says Waverhouse smirking out from under its brim.

A moment later Mrs. Sneaze turns to her husband. “I think you, too, had better buy a hat like that.”

“But he’s already got a splendid boater.”

“Just the other day the children trampled on it and it’s all squashed out of shape.” Mrs. Sneaze persists.

“Oh dear. That was a pity.”

“That’s why I think he should buy a hat like yours, strong and splendiferous.” She has no idea what panama hats can cost, so nothing moderates the urgency of her proddings. “Really, my dear, you must get one, just like this. . . ”

At this point Waverhouse produces from his right sleeve a pair of scissors in a scarlet sheath. “Mrs. Sneaze,” he says, “forget the hat for a moment and take a look at these scissors. They, too, are fantastically handy. You can use them in fourteen different ways.” If it hadn’t been for those scissors my master would have succumbed to wifely pressure in the matter of the hat. He was extremely lucky that the inborn female sense of curiosity diverted his wife’s attention. It crossed my mind that Waverhouse had acted of intent, helpfully and tactfully, but after careful consideration I’ve concluded that it was pure good luck that saved my master from painful outlay on a panama hat.

No sooner has Mrs. Sneaze responded with a, “What are the fourteen ways?” than Waverhouse is off again in triumphantly full flow. “I shall explain each of them, so listen carefully. All right? You see here a crescent-shaped opening? One sticks one’s cigar in here to nip its lip-end before smoking. This gadget down here by the handle can cut through wire as though it were mere noodle. Now if you put the scissors flat down upon paper, there’s a ruler for you. Here, on the back-edge of this blade, there’s a scale engraved so the scissors can be used as a measure.

Over here there’s a file for one’s fingernails. Right? Now then, if you push this blade-tip out, you can twist it around and around to drive screws. Thus, it serves as a hammer. And you can use this blade-tip to lever open with the greatest of case even the most carefully nailed lid.

Furthermore, the end of this other blade, being ground to so fine a point, makes an excellent gimlet. With this thing you can scrape out any mistakes in your writing. And finally, if you take the whole thing to pieces, you get a perfectly good knife. Now, Mrs. Sneaze, there’s actually one more especially interesting feature. Here in the handle there’s a tiny ball about the size of a fly. You see it? Well, take a peep right into it.”

“No. I’d rather not. I’m sure you’re going to make fun of me again.”

“I’m grieved that you should have so little confidence in me. But, just this once, take me at my word and have a little look. No? Oh, please, just one quick squint.” He handed her the scissors.

Mrs. Sneaze takes them very gingerly and, setting her eyeball close to the magic spot, does her best to see into it.

“Well?”

“Nothing. It’s all black.”

“All black? That won’t do. Turn a little toward the paper-window and look against the light. Don’t tilt the scissors like that. Right, that’s it.

Now you can see, can’t you?”

“Oh, my! It’s a photograph, isn’t it? How can a tiny photograph be fixed in here?”

“That’s what’s so remarkable.” Mrs. Sneaze and Waverhouse are now absorbed in their conversation. My master, silent now for some time but intrigued by the idea of the photograph, seems suddenly possessed by an urge to see it. He asks his wife to let him but she, her eye still glued to the scissors, just babbles on. “How very lovely. What a beautiful study of the nude.” She won’t be parted from the scissors.

“Come on, let me see it.”

“You wait. What lovely tresses, all the way down to her hips. How movingly her face is lifted. Rather a tall girl, I’d say, but indeed a beauty!”

“Damn it, let me see.” My master, now distinctly marked, flares up at his wife.

“There you are then. Gawp away to your heart’s content.” As she was handing the scissors over, the servant trundles in from the kitchen with an announcement that Waverhouse’s meal has been delivered. Indeed she carries with her two lidded bamboo plates loaded with cold buckwheat noodles.

“Aha,” says Waverhouse, “so here, Mrs. Sneaze, is the lunch I bought myself. With your permission, I propose to eat it now.” He bows respectfully. As he seems to have spoken half in earnest and half in jest, Mrs.

Sneaze is at a loss how best to answer, so she just says lightly, “Please do,” and settles back to watch.

At long last my master drags his eyes away from the photograph and remarks, “In weather as hot as this, noodles are bad for one’s health.”

“No danger. What one likes seldom upsets one. In fact I’ve heard,” says Waverhouse, lifting one of the lids, “that a little of what you fancy does you good.” He appears satisfied by what he’s seen on the plate for he goes straight on to observe, “In my opinion noodles that have been left to stand are, like heavily bearded men, never to be relied upon.” He adds green horseradish to his dish of soy sauce and stirs away like mad.

“Steady on,” says my master in genuinely anxious tones, “if you put in that much spice it’ll be too hot to eat.”

“Noodles must be eaten with soy sauce and green horse-radish. I bet you don’t even like noodles.”

“I do indeed. The normal kind.”

“That’s the stuff for pack-horse drivers. A man insensitive to cold buckwheat noodles spiced like this is a man to be devoutly pitied.” So saying, Waverhouse digs his cedar-wood chopsticks deep into the mass of noodles, scoops up a hefty helping and lifts it some two inches. “Did you know, Mrs. Sneaze, that there are several styles for eating noodles?

Raw beginners always use too much sauce and then they munch this delicacy like so many cattle chewing the cud. That way, the exquisite savor of the noodles is inevitably lost. The correct procedure is to scoop them up like this. . . ” Waverhouse raises his chopsticks above the bamboo plate until a foot-long curtain of noodles dangles in the air. He looks down at the plate to check that he’s lifted his lading clear of the plate but finds a dozen or so of the tail-ends still lying coiled within it.

“What very long noodles! Look, Mrs. Sneaze, aren’t they the longest that you ever saw?” Waverhouse demands that his audience should participate, if only by interjections.

“Indeed, they are lengthy!” she answers, as if impressed by his dissertation.

“Now, you dip just one-third of these long strands in the sauce, then swallow them in a single gulp. You mustn’t chew them. Mastication destroys their unique flavor. The whole point of noodles is in the way they slither down one’s throat.” He thereupon raises his chopsticks to a dramatic height and the ends of the longest strands at last swing clear of the plate. Then, as he starts to lower his arm again, the tail-ends of the noodles slowly start submerging into the sauce dish held in his left hand.

Which, in accordance with Archimedes’ Law, causes the sauce slowly to rise in the dish as its volume is displaced by noodles. However, since the dish was originally eight-tenths full of sauce, the level of the liquid reached its brim before Waverhouse could get even one-quarter, let alone the connoisseur’s one-third, of the length of his wriggling noodles into the sauce.

The chopsticks appear paralyzed about five inches above the dish and so remain for an awkward pause while Waverhouse considers his dilemma. If he lowers the noodles one more fraction of an inch, the sauce must overflow, but if he does not lower them, he must fail to conform with the standards he has established for the proper style of stuffing oneself with noodles. No wonder he looks moithered and half-hesitates. Then, suddenly, jerking his head and neck forward and downward like a striking snake, he jabbed his mouth at the chopsticks,There was a slushy slurping sound, his throttle surged and receded once or twice and the noodles were all gone.

A few tears oozed from the corners of his eyes. To this day I am not sure whether those tear drops were a tribute to the strength of the green horseradish or evidence of the painful effort such gurgitation must involve.

“What an extraordinary performance! How on earth,” enquires my flabbergasted master, “do you contrive to gulp down such a mass of vermicelli in one consuming go?”

“Amazing, isn’t he!” Mrs. Sneaze is equally lost in admiration.

Waverhouse says nothing, puts down the chopsticks, and pats his chest an easing couple of times. “Well, Mrs. Sneaze,” he eventually answers, “a plate of noodles should be consumed in three and a half, at most in four, mouthfuls. If you drag out the process longer than that, the noodles will not taste their best.” He wipes his face with a handkerchief and sits back to take a well-earned breather.

At this point who should walk in but Coldmoon. His feet are soiled with summer dust but, for no reason I can offer, despite the broiling heat he’s wearing a winter hat.

“Hello! Here comes our handsome hero! However, since I’m still in the middle of eating, you must excuse me.” Waverhouse, totally unabashed, settles down to finishing off the noodles. This time, rather sensibly, he makes no effort to give a repeat performance as a vermicelli virtuoso, and is consequently spared the indignities of needing support from handkerchiefs and breathers between mouthfuls. Eating normally he empties both the bamboo plates in a matter of minutes.

“Coldmoon,” says my master, “how’s your thesis coming along?” And Waverhouse adds, “Since the delectable Miss Goldfield is yearning to be yours, you should in common kindness submit the finished text as fast as possible.”

Coldmoon breaks as usual into his disconcertingly idiot grin.

“Inasmuch as waiting is a cruelty to her, I’d like indeed to finish it quickly,” he replies, “but the nature of its subject is such that a great deal of drudging research is unavoidable.” He spoke with measured seriousness of things he couldn’t possibly himself be taking seriously.

“Quite so,” says Waverhouse adopting Coldmoon’s style with contra-puntal skill. “The subject being what it is, naturally it cannot be handled just as Coldmoon wishes. Nevertheless, that nasality her mother being the snorter that she is, naturally it would be prudent to trim one’s sails to the way she blows.”

The only relatively sensible comment comes from my master. “What did you say was the subject of your thesis?”

“It is entitled ‘The Effects of Ultraviolet Rays upon Galvanic Action in the Eyeball of the Frog.’”

“Remarkable. Just what one might expect from Coldmoon. I like both the rhythm and the substantial originality of that last bit, the electrifying shock in that ‘eyeball of the frog.’ How about it, Sneaze? Ought we not to inform the Goldfields of at least the title before our scholar finishes his paper?”

My master, disregarding these waggeries from Waverhouse, asks Coldmoon, “Can such a subject really involve much drudgery of research?”

“Oh yes, it’s a complicated question. For one thing, the structure of the lens in the eyeball of the frog is by no means simple. Hundreds, even thousands, of experiments will have to be carried out. For a start I’m planning to construct a round glass ball.”

“A glass ball? Surely, you could find one quite easily in a glass shop?”

“Oh, no, far from it,” says Coldmoon, throwing out his chest a little.

“To begin with, things like circles and straight lines are pure geometrical concepts, and neither actual circles nor actual straight lines can, in this imperfect world, ever realize such idealities.”

“If they can never exist, hadn’t you better abandon the attempt to create them?” butts in Waverhouse.

“Well, I thought I’d begin by making a ball suitable for my experiments and, in fact, I started on it the other day.”

“And have you finished it?” asks my master as if the task were an easy matter.

“How could I?” says Coldmoon, but then, realizing perhaps that he’s getting close to self-contradiction, hurries on to explain. “It’s really frightfully difficult. After I’ve filed it for some time, I notice that the radius on one side is too long, so I grind it fractionally shorter, but this leads on to trouble, because now I find the radius on the other side excessive. When, with great effort I grind that excess off, the entire ball becomes misshapen. After I’ve at last corrected that distortion, I discover that the diametrical dimensions have, somehow or other, once more gone agley. The glass ball, originally the size of an apple, soon becomes a strawberry and, as I patiently struggle for perfection, it rapidly shrinks to no more than a bean. Even then, it’s not a perfect sphere. Believe me, I have striven. . . I have dedicated my whole life to the grinding of glass balls.

Since New Year’s Day no less than six of them, admittedly of differing sizes, have melted away to nothing in these hands. . .” He speaks with such rare passion that no one could say whether or not he’s telling the truth.