I Am a Cat (71 page)

Night-long held safe, frets free from fret:

My treasured violin.

Of course violins don’t have frets, but what of that? One can’t expect a nitpicking accuracy of detail in such a splendid example of new-style poetry.”

Beauchamp, poor fellow, is a literal-minded youth and his serious mold of character cannot accommodate itself to the verve and shimmers of frivolity. “I’m afraid,” he says, “that, unlike
haiku
, new-style poems cannot be constructed off the cuff. They need deep thought, deep feeling, arduous fabrication. But once they’re properly composed, their exquisite tonation, working on the inmost soul, can call up spirits from the vasty deep.”

“Can they really? Well, I never,” says Waverhouse at his falsely ingenuous best. “I’d always thought that only the smoke of hemp stalks, correctly burnt at the Feast of the Hungry Dead, could lure souls back to earth. Do you mean to say that new-style poetry is equally efficacious?”

Letting his game go hang, he concentrates on teasing Beauchamp.

“You’ll get trounced again if you keep on babbling rubbish,” my master warns him.

But Waverhouse takes no notice. “I myself am quite indifferent to winning or losing, but it just so happens that my opponent is now immobilized, squashed up tight like an octopus in a saucepan. And it’s only to while away the tedium of waiting for him to decide upon his next wee wriggle of a move that I am forced to join you in your concourse of violins.”

Singleman snorts in his exasperation. “For goodness sake,Waverhouse, it’s your move now. I’m the one who’s being kept waiting.”

“Ah? So you’ve made a move?”

“Of course I have—ages ago.”

“Where?”

“I’ve extended this diagonal of whites.”

“So you have. . .

Diagonal and white

His hand extends

The line that in disaster ends.

“Well, in that case my response shall be. . . shall be. . . I know not what, but it shall be the terror of this earth.

As I was saying, ‘I plan, I plan,’

Daylight darkened

And the night began.

“I tell you what. Out of the extreme kindness of my heart I shall grant you an extra move. Place a stone anywhere you like.”

“You can’t play
go
like that.”

“You refuse my generosity? Then you leave me no choice but to. . . what? Suppose I set a piece down here, over in this relatively unsettled territory, right in the corner. Incidentally, Coldmoon, your fiddle can’t be up to much if even the rats don’t like it. Why don’t you splash out on a better one? Shall I get one of those antique models, at least three hundred years old, from Italy?”

“I could never thank you enough—especially if you were also so kind as to foot the bill.”

“How could anything as old as that be any use whatever?” His ignorance does not stop my master from speaking his mind.

“I think, Sneaze, you’re comparing antique fiddles with antiquated men. They’re not the same, you know. Yet even among men, some of the older models—Goldfield for example—become more valuable with age. And when it comes to violins it’s invariably a case of the older the better. . . Now, Singleman, will you please get a move on. Being myself no windbag, indeed a man succinct if not actually terse in speech, I will not waste time on a full quotation from the relevant Kabuki play, but have we not been warned by Keimasa that autumn days draw swiftly to their close?”

“It’s pure agony playing
go
with a feckless galloper like you. There’s never time to think. Well, if you insist on headlong play, that’s the way of it. I shall place one here.”

“What a pity! You’ve escaped my clutches after all. I had so hoped you wouldn’t make that move, and I’ve been racking my brains to think up enough rubbish to distract you. All, I fear, in vain.”

“Naturally. Some of us concentrate on the game, not on trying to cheat.”

“Sir, I never cheat. I may pay less regard to the game than to games-manship, but that is precisely the teaching of the school of Hon’imbō, of the Goldfield School, and of the School of Modern Gentlemen. I say, Sneaze, you remember those sharpish pickles that Singleman gobbled down at Kamakura? They seem, after all, to have done him good. He’s not much use at
go
, but nothing now seems able to perturb him. I take my hat off to his pickled nerves. They’re steady as steel.”

“Then why,” says my master with his back still turned toward Waverhouse, “doesn’t an inconsequential fidget like yourself make the effort to imitate his steadiness and sense?”

Waverhouse, unusually, said nothing but just stuck out a large, red tongue.

Singleman, seemingly unconcerned by these exchanges, tries once again to interest Waverhouse in their game. “It’s you to go,” he says.

As Waverhouse takes back his tongue and looks down at the board, Beauchamp turns to Coldmoon. “Tell me, when did you start playing the violin? I’d very much like to learn, but they say it’s terribly difficult.”

“Anyone can learn to play a little.”

“It’s always been my sneaking hope that, given the similar nature of all arts, persons with an aptitude for poetry ought to be quick at mastering music. Do you think there’s anything in it?”

“Perhaps. I’m sure you’d do all right: indeed, very well.”

“When did you start your own study of the art?”

“In high school. Have I ever told you,” said Coldmoon turning to my master, “how I first came to learn the violin?”

“No, not yet.”

“Was it perhaps,” asks Beauchamp, “that you had some high school music teacher who encouraged you to learn?”

“No, no teacher; in fact no human encouragement at all. I simply taught myself.”

“Quite a genius.”

“Being self-taught doesn’t necessarily mean that one’s a genius,” says Coldmoon looking sour. He is, I think, the only being who’d resent being called a genius.

“The point’s irrelevant. Just tell us how you taught yourself. It would he useful to know.”

“And I’d be happy to tell you. Sir,” he addresses my master, “have I your permission to do so?”

“Of course. Please carry on.”

“The streets these days are chock-a-block with bright, young men walking along with violin cases in their hands. But when I was a high school lad, very few of us could play any Western instrument whatsoever. My own particular school was way out in the sticks where, since life was lived in accordance with a strong tradition of extreme simplicity, nary a student played the violin.”

“An interesting story seems to have started over there, Singleman, so let’s pack up this game right now.”

“There are still a few points left undecided.”

“Forget them all. I’m only too happy to make you a present of the lot.”

“But I can’t accept that.”

“What a meticulous man you are, totally insensitive to that broad approach one expects from a scholar of Zen. All right then, we’ll finish it off in double quick time. Coldmoon, my dear fellow, I’m fascinated by your account of that high school. Am I right in thinking yours must be that one where all the students went barefoot?”

“It’s true, I attended the school about which so many such lying yarns have been told.”

“But I’ve heard you drilled without shoes and that, from a thousand about-turns, the soles of your feet grew inches thick.”

“Absolute nonsense! Whoever stuffed you up with such a ludicrous canard?”

“Never mind who. But they also said that every student brings in for his lunch an enormous rice-ball, as big as a summer orange, hanging from his hip on a string. Is that a canard too? It’s further said that the students gobble the rice like mad, unsalted though it is, in order to get at the pickled plum allegedly buried inside. They certainly sound an extremely vigorous and hardy group of youngsters. Are you listening, Singleman? This is exactly the sort of story that appeals to you.”

“I’m not at all sure that I get the story’s point, but I do indeed approve of simplicity and sturdiness.”

“As to simplicity, there’s yet another characteristic of that area which should earn your praise. It is, in fact, so simple that they’ve not yet heard of making ashtrays by sectioning bamboo. A friend of mine who was once on the staff of Coldmoon’s school tried to buy such an ashtray, even one of the roughest hew, and the shopkeeper simply told him that, since anyone could go and cut himself an ashtray in the forest, there was no point in trying to make them as objects for sale. Now that’s what I call true simplicity. True sturdiness as well. Singleman, you agree?”

“Yes, yes, of course I do. But if you’re going to secure your position, Waverhouse, you must immediately put down a reinforcing piece.”

“Right. I’ll make assurance doubly, doubly sure. A stone placed there should finish the game. You know, Coldmoon, when I heard your account of your early struggles I was frankly amazed. It’s quite astonishing that in such a backward place you should, unaided, have taught yourself to play the violin. More than two thousand years ago, in the high days of the Han, that marvelous man Ch’ü Yüan was writing poems, still unmatched, about the wonders of a life withdrawn from the madding crowd. It could be, Coldmoon, you were born to be our new Ch’ü Yüan.”

“That I should very much dislike.”

“Well than, how about being the Werther of our times? What’s that, Singleman? You want me to pick up my stones and count them? What a pernickety bore you are! There’s no need for counting. It’s perfectly obvious that I’ve lost.”

“But one cannot leave things hanging in the air. One wants to know the score.”

“All right, then. Be so good as to do my counting for me. I really can’t be bothered with such a dull accountant’s chore when it is my solemn aesthetic duty to learn how the most gifted Werther of our day started learning to play the violin. Would you have me shunned by my ancestors? Therefore,” says Waverhouse, “you must excuse me.” Sliding his cushion away from the gameboard, Waverhouse moved to sit near Coldmoon. Singleman stayed where he was, methodically gathering stones and marshaling them in little armies to be counted. Coldmoon resumes the telling of his story.

“It was not only that the land was rugged, its inhabitants were philistine and coarse. They considered that any student with even the mildest interest in the arts would get them all laughed at for effeminacy by the students of other prefectures, so their persecution of anyone guilty of refinement was unremittingly merciless.”

“It’s a sad fact,” says Waverhouse, “but the students in Coldmoon’s part of the country really are uncouth. Why, for instance, are they always dressed in those dark blue, skirted trousers? The color itself is odd enough, but it looks unpleasantly worse against their near-black skin which is, presumably, occasioned by the high degree of sea salt in the local air. Of course, it doesn’t greatly matter how dark the men become, but, if their women-folk are similarly blighted, it must affect their marriage prospects.” As usual, when Waverhouse joins in a conversation, its original drift is soon diverted into new and unlikely channels.

“The women there are no less black than the men.”

“Do the men show any wish to marry them?”

“Since they’re all as black as each other, no one seems to notice.”

“What a ghastly state of affairs. One’s heart bleeds, doesn’t it, Sneaze, for all those muddy women.”

“Well, if you’re asking me, my opinion of women is that the blacker they are the better. A light skinned female tends to grow more and more conceited every time she sees herself in a mirror. And all women, all the time, are incorrigible, so anything,” says my master with a heavy sigh,

“that makes them less delighted with themselves is very much to be wished for.”

“But if the entire population is dark skinned, won’t black become beautiful and the blackest most fair?” Beauchamp puts his Finger on a tricky point.

“The world would be a better place if we were only rid of them all.”

My master puts his view in a nutshell.

“If you go around saying things like that,” laughs Waverhouse, “your wife will give you what-for later on.”

“No danger of that.”

“She’s out?”

“Yes, she went out quite some while ago with the children.”

“No wonder it’s been quiet. Where’s she gone?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea. She goes out where and when she likes.”

“And she comes home as she likes?”

“More or less. You two don’t know how lucky you are to be single. I envy you both from the bottom of my heart.”

Beauchamp looks slightly uncomfortable, but Coldmoon keeps on grinning.

“All married men grow to feel like that,” says Waverhouse. “What about you, Singleman? Does your wife drive you crazy?”

“Eh? Hang on a tick. Six fours are twenty-four, plus one and one and one makes twenty-seven. Waverhouse, you managed to do better than it looked from the layout on the board. The margin in my favor is no more than a measly eighteen stones. Now then, what was that you asked?”