I Am a Cat (77 page)

“Dear, dear, this is becoming rather heavy going. But if Sneaze, you really do propose to make an exhaustive and scholarly analysis of the psychological maladies of our times, I feel that I,Waverhouse in person, must be granted an opportunity to lodge a full complaint against the civilization I seek to grace.”

“You are always free to say what you like. But generally you don’t say anything. You just talk.”

“On the contrary, I have a very great deal to say. It was you, Sneaze, who, only a brief week back, fell down and worshiped a police detective. Yet here you are today, making ugly comparisons between detectives and pickpockets. You are an incarnation of the principle of contradiction. Whereas I am a man who, through every earlier life right to this present day of my present incarnation, has never wavered in the certi-tudes of my opinions.”

“Police detectives are police detectives. The other day is the other day. And today’s today. Never to change one’s opinions is to demonstrate a petrifaction of mind that prevents its least development. To be, as Confucius put it in the
Analects
, willfully ignorant beyond all hope of education, is, my dear Waverhouse, to be you.”

“That’s really rather rude. Still, even a detective when he tries to speak his honest mind can be rather sweet.”

“Are you calling me a detective?”

“I simply meant to say that, since you are not a detective, you’re an honest man, and that that’s good. There, there. No more quarrels. Let’s listen to the rest of your formidable argument.”

“The heightened self-awareness of our contemporaries means that they realize only too well the wide gap between their own interests and those of other people; as the advance of civilization daily widens that gap, so this so-called self-awareness intensifies to a point where everyone becomes incapable of natural or unaffected behavior. William Henley, the English poet, once said that his friend Robert Louis Stevenson was so continuously unable to forget himself that, if he happened to be in a room with a mirror on the wall, he could not pass in front of the glass without stopping to study his reflection. Stevenson’s condition is a telling example of the general modern trend. Because this overweening consciousness of self never lets up, not even when one sleeps, it is inevitable that our speech and behavior should have become forced and artificial. We impose constrictions on ourselves and, in that process, inhibitions on society. In short, we conduct our whole lives as if we were two young people at their first meeting in the context of a marriage negotiation. Words such as serenity and self-composure have become no more than so many meaningless strokes of a writing brush.

It is in this sense that people nowadays have become like detectives and burglars. A detective’s job is essentially to make profit by being sneaky and self-effacing; only by cultivating an intense awareness of himself can he even believe in his own existence. To no less a degree the rapacious burglar is obsessed with me, me, me, because the thought of what will happen to him if he’s caught is never out of his mind. Modern man, even in his deepest slumber, never stops thinking about what will bring him profit or, even more worrying, loss. Consequently, as with the burglar and the detective, his self-absorption grows daily more absolute.

Modern man is jittery and sneaky. Morning, noon, and night he sneaks and jitters and knows no peace. Not one single moment’s peace until the cold grave takes him. That’s the condition to which our so-called civilization has brought us. And what a mess it is.”

“Most interesting. A penetrating analysis of our case,” says Singleman who rarely resists any opportunity to thicken the clouds when high flown, cloudy matters are discussed. “I consider Sneaze’s explanation is very much to the point. In the old days, a man was taught to forget himself. Today it is quite different: he is taught not to forget himself and he accordingly spends his days and nights in endless self-regard. Who can possibly know peace in such an eternally burning hell? The apparent realities of this awful world, even the beastliness of being, are all symptoms of that sickness for which the only cure lies in learning to forget the self. This dire situation is well summarized in that ancient Chinese poem whose author was one of those

Who simply sit and, sitting all night through

Under a drifting moon, themselves withdrew

Themselves from Self and thereby came to be

Free of the world and from all Being free.

Modern man lacks naturalness even when performing acts of genuine kindness. The English, as is well-known, are vastly proud of being nice, both in the sense of their refined behavior and in the sense of common kindness; however, one may fairly suspect the hearts behind the niceness of the English as packed with self-regard. Perhaps I might remind you of the story of that member of the English royal family who, during some visit to India, was invited to a banquet. Among those present was an Indian prince who, momentarily forgetful of the nature of the occasion but perfectly naturally in terms of Indian custom, reached out for a potato, picked it up in his fingers and put it on his plate. Realizing his gaffe, he was terribly ashamed. But the English gentleman, immediately and with apparently equal naturalness, proceeded to help himself to potatoes with his fingers. An act of the most refined and kindly politeness? Or an act so-seeming but ultimately taken in order that it should be remembered, as it clearly has been, to the enhancement of English royalty?”

“Is it the English custom,” asks Coldmoon, missing the point of the story, “to eat potatoes with their fingers?”

Disregarding Coldmoon’s question, my master spoke. “I’ve heard another such story about the English. On some occasion at their barracks in England a group of regimental officers gave a dinner in honor of one of their non-commissioned officers. Toward the end of the meal, when finger bowls filled with water were placed in front of each diner, the non-commissioned officer, a man not used to banquets, lifted the bowl to his mouth and swallowed the water down in a single gulp.

Immediately, the colonel of the regiment raised his own finger bowl in a toast to the non-commissioned officer’s health and gulped its water down. His lead was promptly followed by every officer present.”

“I wonder if you’ve heard this one,” says Waverhouse who does not like to remain silent. “When Carlyle was presented to the queen, he, being an eccentric and anyway a man totally unschooled in court procedures, suddenly sat down on a chair. All the chamberlains and ladies-in-waiting standing ranged behind the queen began to giggle. Well, not quite. They were about to start giggling when the queen turned around toward them and signaled them also to be seated. Carlyle was thus saved from any embarrassment. I confess I find this courtly courtesy somewhat elaborate.”

“I don’t suppose,” said Coldmoon rather shortly, “that, being the man he was, Carlyle would have been the least embarrassed if only he and the queen were seated while all the rest stayed standing.”

“To be self-aware when one is actually being kind to other people may be all right,” Singleman started up again, “but being self-aware does make it that much harder to be genuinely kind. It is widely held that the advance of civilization brings with it a moderation of combative spirit and a general easing of relationships between individuals. But that’s all nonsense. When individual awareness grows so strong, how can mutual gentleness be expected? It’s true of course that modern relationships seem superficially calm and easy-going, but they are in fact extremely tough; rather like the relationship between two
sumo
wrestlers who, immobilized by cross-grips in the middle of the ring, are nevertheless butting each other with their vast potbellies as hard as they can heave.”

“In former times disputes were settled by the relatively healthy means of brute force, whereas nowadays the means and mentality have become so specialized that the intensity of the combatant’s self-awareness has inevitably increased,” says Waverhouse, taking it to be now his turn to talk. “Sir Francis Bacon observed in his
Novum Organum
that one can only triumph over nature by obeying the laws of nature. Is it not peculiar that modern quarrels so closely follow the pattern identified by Bacon in that, as in a
jūjutsu
contest, one defeats one’s opponent by an exploitation of that opponent’s own strength.”

“Or again, it is, I suppose, something like the generation of hydro-electricity. One makes no effort to oppose the flow of water, but merely diverts its force into the production of power.”

Coldmoon had obviously only just begun to express an interesting idea, but Singleman butted in to add, “And therefore, when one is poor, one is tied by poverty; when rich, entrapped in wealth; when worried, tangled by anxiety; and when happy, dizzied by happiness. A talented man falls at the hand of talent, a man of wisdom is defeated by wisdom, and a quick-tempered man like Sneaze is quickly provoked into rashness and goes rushing headlong out into the deadfalls dug by his artful enemies.”

“Here, here,” cried Waverhouse clapping his hands. And when my master, actually grinning, said, “Well, you won’t in practice catch me quite as simply as that,” everyone burst out laughing.

“By the way, I wonder what sort of thing would finish off a fearful fellow like Goldfield?”

“His wife will obviously be toppled over by the weight of her nose, while the hardness of his heart will crush that usurer to death. His henchmen will be trampled to death by stampeding detectives.”

“And the daughter?”

“Well, I’m not sure about her, and I have never in fact clapped eyes on her. But it seems likely that she’ll be suffocated by clothes or food or even drinking. I can’t imagine that she’ll die of love, though I suppose she might end up as a roadside beggar like that fabled beauty O-no-no-Komachi.”

“That’s a bit unkind,” objected Beauchamp who, after all, had written some new-style poems for the girl.

“And therein lies the importance of the moral injunction that one must have a merciful heart and never lose one’s subjectivity. Unless one reaches and sustains that condition of mind, one will suffer torment throughout eternity.” That benighted Singleman waffles on as usual as though he were the sole proprietor of enlightenment.

“Don’t be such a moralizing twerp. The chances are,” said Waverhouse, “that you will meet your just deserts upside-down in one of your own oft-quoted flashes of Zen lightning. In the spring, of course.”

“One thing at least is certain,” said my master. “If civilization continues its rapid development along its present lines, I would not wish to live and witness it.”

“The choice is yours. As Seneca advises, no man should carp at life when the road to freedom runs down every vein. Why don’t you do yourself in?”Waverhouse helpfully enquired.

“I care rather less for dying than I do for living.”

“No one seems to pay much attention when he’s being born, but everybody makes no end of a fuss about his departure.” Coldmoon offers his own cool comment.

“It’s the same with money,” says Waverhouse. “When one borrows money, one does so lightly, but everyone worries like crazy when it comes to paying it back.”

“Happy are they who don’t worry about repayment; as happy as those who do not worry about death,” intoned Singleman in his most lofty and unworldly style.

“I suppose you’d argue that the bravest in the face of death are those who are most enlightened?”

“Most certainly. Perhaps you know the Zen phrase ‘The iron-ox-heart of an iron-ox-face: the ox-iron-heart of an ox-iron-face?’”

“And are you claiming to be so ox-and-iron-hearted?” Waverhouse, who happened to know that the phrase meant to have a heart so strong as to be undisturbed by anything, doubted that Singleman would dare make such a claim.

“Well, no, I wouldn’t go that far. But,” said Singleman for no very obvious reason, “the fact remains that neurasthenia was an unknown ailment until after people became worried about death.”

“It’s plain that you must have been born and bred before the invention of nervous prostration.”

This weird dialogue held so little interest for Coldmoon and Beauchamp that my master had no difficulty in retaining them as an audience for a further airing of his grievances against civilization. “The key question,” he announced, “is how to avoid repaying borrowed money.”

“But surely no such question can arise. Anything borrowed must always be repaid.”

“All right, all right. Don’t get so up in the air. This is just a discussion between intelligent men, so listen and don’t interrupt. I ask how can one borrow without repaying in order to lead in to the parallel question as to how can one contrive to avoid dying. Though it is no longer much pursued, that used to be the key question: hence the ancient concern with alchemy. However, the alchemists achieved no real success and it soon became deadly clear that no human being could ever dodge death.”

“It was deadly clear long before the alchemists confirmed it.”

“All right, but since this is just an argument, you just listen. Right?

Now, once it became clear that everyone was bound to die, then the second question arose.”

“Indeed?”

“If one is certain to die, what’s the best way to do so? That is the second question. Once this second question had been formulated, it was only a matter of time before the Suicide Club would be founded.”