I Am a Cat (36 page)

“Where do you do this grinding?”

“In the university laboratory of course. I start grinding in the morning. I take a short rest for lunch, and then continue grinding until the light fails. It’s not an easy job.”

“D’you mean to say that you go down to the university day after day, including Sundays, simply to grind glass balls? Is that what keeps you, as you’re always telling us, so inexorably busy?”

“That’s correct. At this stage in my studies I have no choice but to grind glass balls morning, noon, and night.”

“I seem to recall,” says Waverhouse, now very much in his element, “a Kabuki play in which one character gains his ends by disguising himself as a gardener.” He strikes an attitude and quotes, “‘As I was luckily brought up among civilian non-officials, no one knows my face: so I enter as a cultivator of chrysanthemums.’ You, Coldmoon, seem bent on gaining your ends disguised as a cultivator of crystals. For I’m sure that when the mother of all noses learns of your ardor, your single-minded dedication to your work, your selfless devotion to the grinding of glass balls, she cannot fail to warm toward you.

Incidentally, the other day I had some work to do in the university library and, as I was leaving, I chanced to bump into an old colleague, Knarle-Damson, at the door. Thinking it peculiar that, years after his graduation, he should still be using the library, I said to him, ‘Knarle-Damson,’ I said, ‘I’m most impressed, Knarle-Damson, to find you still imbibing at the fount of learning.’ He gave me a very odd look and explained that, far from wanting to consult a book, he’d been caught short as he passed the university and had just popped in for a pee. A curious use for a seat of learning. However, it’s just occurred to me that you and Knarle-Damson both exemplify, though in contrasting styles, how to misuse a university. You will, of course, have read that Chinese classic which is constructed from pairs of parallel anecdotes, one ancient and one modern, about famous men. I am proposing to bring out a new selection along similar lines and, with your permission, will include therein a short section on glass balls and urinals.”

My master, however, took a more serious view of the matter. “It’s all very well,” he said, “to pass your days frotting away at glass but when do you expect to finish your thesis and get your doctorate?”

“At my present rate of progress, maybe in ten years.” Coldmoon seems far less concerned than my master about the doctorate.

“Ten years, eh? I think you’d better bring your grinding to a halt rather sooner than that.”

“Ten years is an optimistic estimate. It could well take me twenty.”

“That’s terrible. You can’t, then, hope for a doctorate for a long time.”

“No. Of course I’d be only too happy to get it quickly, and so set the young lady’s mind at rest, but until I’ve got the glass ball properly ground, I can’t even launch out on my first experiment.” Coldmoon’s voice trailed off into silence as though his mind were staring into the lens of a frog’s eyeball but, after a brief pause, he continued. “There’s no need, you know, to get so worried about it. The Goldfields are fully aware that I do nothing but grind away at these glass balls. As a matter of fact, I gave them a fairly detailed explanation when I saw them just a few days back.” He smiled in quiet complacence.

Mrs. Sneaze who, though hardly understanding a word of it, has been listening to the three men’s conversation, interjects in a puzzled voice,

“But the whole Goldfield family has been away at the seaside, out at Oiso, since last month.”

This flummoxes even Coldmoon, but he maintains a pretense of innocence. “How very odd,” he says, “I can’t understand it.”

There are occasions when Waverhouse fulfills a useful social function.

When a conversation flags, when one is embarrassed, when one becomes sleepy, when one is troubled, then, as on all other occasions, Waverhouse can be relied upon to have something immediate and diverting to say. “To have met someone a few days back in Tokyo who had gone to Oiso last month is engagingly mysterious. It is an example, is it not, of the exchange of souls. Such a phenomenon is likely to occur when the sentiment of requited love is particularly poignant. When one hears of such a happening, it sounds like a dream, but, even if it is a dream, it is a dream more actual than reality. For someone like you, Mrs. Sneaze, who were married to Sneaze not because you loved him or because he loved you, life has never given an opportunity for you to understand the extraordinary nature of love: so it is only natural that you should find odd the disparities you mentioned. . .”

“I don’t know why you should say such nasty things. Why are you always getting at me like this?” Mrs. Sneaze rounds snappishly on Waverhouse.

“What’s more, you yourself don’t look like a man who has any experience of the pangs of love.” My master brings up reinforcements in surprising support of the frontline position manned by his wife.

“Well, since all my love affairs were over long before the nine days back that might have made them wonders, you doubtless don’t remember them. But it remains a fact that it was a disappointment in love that has made me, to this day, a lonely bachelor.” Waverhouse leveled a steady look upon each of his listeners, one after the other.

It was Mrs. Sneaze who laughed, though she added, “But how interesting.”

My master said, “Bosh,” and turned to stare off into the garden.

Coldmoon, though he grinned, said politely, “I would like, for my own future benefit, to hear the story of your ancient love.”

“My story, too, contains elements of the mysterious. So much so that, if he were not lamentably dead, it must have moved the interest of the late Lafcadio Hearn. I am, I must confess, a little reluctant to tell this painful tale but, since you insist, I’ll confide in you all on the sole condition that you listen carefully to the very end.” They promised, and he starts.

“As well as I can recollect. . . it was. . . hum. . . how many years ago was it, I wonder. . . Never mind, let’s say it was maybe fifteen or sixteen years ago.”

“Incorrigible,” snorts my master.

“You do have a very poor memory, don’t you, Mr. Waverhouse?” Mrs.

Sneaze puts in a jabbing oar.

Coldmoon is the only person who, keeping the promise, says nothing but wears the expression of a man eagerly waiting for the remainder of a story.

“Anyway, it was in the winter, some years back. Having passed through the Valley of the Bamboo Shoots at Kambara in Echigo, I was climbing up through the Pass of the Octopus Trap on my way to the Aizu territory.”

“What odd-named places!” My master interrupts again.

“Oh, do keep quiet and listen. This is getting interesting.” Mrs. Sneaze reins back her husband.

“Unfortunately, it was getting dark. I lost my way. I was hungry. So, in the end, I was obliged to knock at the door of a hut way up in the middle of the Pass. Explaining my predicament, I begged for a night’s lodging. And do you know, the minute that I saw the face of the girl who, thrusting a lit candle out toward me, answered, ‘Of course, please enter,’ my whole body began to tremble. Since that moment I’ve been very acutely conscious of the supernatural power of that blind force we call love.”

“Fancy that,” says Mrs. Sneaze. “Are there really, I wonder, many beautiful girls living up there in those godforsaken mountains?”

“It hardly matters that I found her in the mountains. It might just as well have been beside the seaside. But, oh Mrs. Sneaze, would that you could have seen her, if only for a glance. . . She wore her hair in the high-dressed fashion of a marriageable girl. . .”

Mrs. Sneaze, rendered speechless by the wonder of it all, gives vent to a long-drawn sigh.

“On entering the hut, I found a big fireplace sunk in the center of an eight-mat room, and soon the four of us—the girl, her grandfather, her grandmother, and myself—were sitting comfortably around it. They said I must be very hungry. And I was. Very. So I asked for some food, anything, no matter what, so long as I might have it quickly. The old man said,‘It’s seldom we have visitors, so let’s prepare snake-rice in honor of our guest.’ Now then, this is where I come to the story of my disappointment in love, so listen carefully.”

“Of course we’ll listen carefully,” says Coldmoon, “but I find it hard to believe that even out in the wilds of Echigo there are snakes around in the winter.”

“Well, that’s a fair observation. But in a romantic story such as this, one shouldn’t be too scrupulous over the logic of its details. Why, in one of Kyoka’s novels, you’ll find a crab crawling out of the snow.”

“I see,” said Coldmoon who thereupon resumed his serious attitude of listening.

“In those days I was outstandingly capable, really in the champion class, of eating ugly foods, but, being more or less wearied of locusts, slugs, red frogs, and such like, I thought snake-rice sounded like a welcome change. So I told the old man I’d be delighted. He then set a pot on the fire and put some rice inside it. Slowly it began to cook. The only oddity was that there were about ten holes of various sizes in the lid of the pot. Through these holes, the steam came fuffing up. I was really fascinated by the effect and I remember thinking how ingenious these country people were. Just then, the old man suddenly stood up and went out of the hut. A while later, he came back with a large basket under his arm and, when he put it casually down beside the hearth, I took a look inside. Well, there they were. Snakes, and all of them long ones, coiled up tight, as Coldmoon will appreciate, in their winter torpor.”

“Please stop talking about such nasty things. It’s quite revolting,” says Mrs. Sneaze with a girlish shudder.

“Oh I can’t possibly stop, for all these matters lie at the bottom of my broken-heartedness. Well, by and by, the old man lifted the pot’s lid with his left hand while with his other he nimbly grabbed up a wad of snakes from the basket. He threw them into the pot and popped the lid back on. And I must admit that, though I’m neither squeamish nor particularly scared of snakes, the old man’s nonchalant action did, at that moment, leave me gasping.”

“Oh, please do stop. I can’t stand gruesome stories.” Mrs. Sneaze is actually quite frightened.

“Very soon now I’ll be coming to the broken-hearted bit, so please just do be patient. Well, barely a minute had passed when, to my great surprise, a snake’s head popped out of a hole in the lid. I’d barely realized what it was before another one popped its face out from a neighboring hole, and I’d barely registered that second head before another and another and another erupted into view until the whole lid was studded with snakes’ faces.”

“Why did they stick their heads out?” asks my master.

“Because, in agony, they were trying to crawl away from the heat building up inside the pot. After a while the old man said, speaking, naturally, in his local dialect, something like, ‘Right then, give ’em the old heave-ho.’ His wife said, ‘Aye’ and the girl said, ‘Yes’ and each of them, grasping a snake’s head firmly, gave it a savage yank. While the flesh remained in the pot, the head and a length of bones came waggling free in their hands.”

“What you might call boned snake?” asks Coldmoon with a laugh.

“Yes, indeed. Boned, or even spineless. But wasn’t it all exceedingly clever? They lifted the lid, took a ladle, stirred the rice and the snake-flesh into one great wonderful mishmash and then invited me to tuck in.”

“Did you actually eat it?” asks my master in a slightly edgy sort of voice.

His wife makes a sour face and grumblingly complains. “I do so wish you’d all stop talking about it. I’m feeling sick right down to my stomach, and I shan’t dare eat for days.”

“You only say that, Mrs. Sneaze, because you’ve never had the luck to taste snake-rice. If you but tried it once, you’d never forget its exquisite flavor.”

“Never. Nothing on earth could induce me to touch the nasty stuff.”

“Anyway, I dined well. I forgot the bitter cold. I studied the girl’s face to my heart’s content and, though I could happily have stared at her forever, when they suggested I should go to sleep, I remembered that I was in fact dog tired from my traveling. So I took their advice and laid down, and before long everything blurred and I was fast asleep.”

“And what happened then?” This time it’s Mrs. Sneaze who urges him to continue.

“When I woke up next morning, heartache had set in.”

“Did anything happen to you?” asks Mrs. Sneaze.

“No, nothing special happened to me. I just woke up and, while I was smoking a cigarette, I chanced to look out through the back window, and there I saw, washing its face in the water flowing from a bamboo-pipe, someone as bald as a kettle.”

“The old man,” asks my master, “or the old woman?”

“At first I couldn’t tell. I sat there watching it in vague distaste for quite some time and, when at last the kettle turned towards me, I got the shock of my life. For it was the girl to whom I had already lost my heart.”

“But you said earlier that she wore her hair in the style of a marriageable girl,” my master promptly objects.

“The night before, unmitigated beauty: in the morning, unmitigated kettle.”

“Really! What balderdash will you trot out next.” As is usual when he feels put out, my master stares at the ceiling.

“Naturally, I was most deeply shocked, even a little frightened, but, making myself inconspicuous, I continued to watch. At long last the kettle finished washing its face, featly donned the wig waiting on a nearby stone and then came tripping primly back to the hut. I understood everything. But though I understood, I have from that moment been a man incurably wretched, a man with a broken heart.”