I Am a Cat Read online

  “And a happy New Year to you,” I say. “How beautifully you’re done up!”

  “Yes, the mistress bought it for me at the end of last year. Isn’t it nice?” and she makes it tinkle for me.

  “Yes indeed, it has a lovely sound. I’ve never seen such a wonderful thing in my life.”

  “No! Everyone’s using them,” and she tinkle-tinkles. “But isn’t it a lovely sound? I’m so happy.” She tinkle-tinkle-tinkles continuously.

  “I can see your mistress loves you very dearly.” Comparing my lot with hers, I hinted at my envy of a pampered life.

  Tortoiseshell is a simple creature. “Yes,” she says, “that’s true; she treats me as if I were her own child.” And she laughs innocently. It is not true that cats never laugh. Human beings are mistaken in their belief that only they are capable of laughter. When I laugh my nostrils grow triangular and my Adam’s apple trembles. No wonder human beings fail to understand it.

  “What is your master really like?”

  “My master? That sounds strange. Mine is a mistress. A mistress of the two stringed harp.”

  “I know that. But what is her background? I imagine she’s a person of high birth?”

  “Ah, yes.”

  A small Princess-pine

  While waiting for you. . .

  Beyond the sliding paper-door the mistress begins to play on her two-stringed harp.

  “Isn’t that a splendid voice?” Tortoiseshell is proud of it.

  “It seems extremely good, but I don’t understand what she’s singing. What’s the name of the piece?”

  “That? Oh, it’s called something or other. The mistress is especially fond of it. D’you know, she’s actually sixty-two? But in excellent condition, don’t you think?”

  I suppose one has to admit that she’s in excellent condition if she’s still alive at sixty-two. So I answered, “Yes.” I thought to myself that I’d given a silly answer, but I could do no other since I couldn’t think of anything brighter to say.

  “You may not think so, but she used to be a person of high standing.

  She always tells me so.”

  “What was she originally?”

  “I understand that she’s the thirteenth Shogun’s widowed wife’s private-secretary’s younger sister’s husband’s mother’s nephew’s daughter.”

  “What?”

  “The thirteenth Shogun’s widowed wife’s private-secretary’s younger sister’s. . .”

  “Ah! But, please, not quite so fast. The thirteenth Shogun’s widowed wife’s younger sister’s private-secretary’s . . .”

  “No, no, no. The thirteenth Shogun’s widowed wife’s private-secretary’s younger sister’s. . .”

  “The thirteenth Shogun’s widowed wife’s. . .”

  “Right.”

  “Private-secretary’s. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Husband’s. . .”

  “No, younger sister’s husband’s.”

  “Of course. How could I? Younger sister’s husband’s. . .”

  “Mother’s nephew’s daughter. There you are.”

  “Mother’s nephew’s daughter?”

  “Yes, you’ve got it.”

  “Not really. It’s so terribly involved that I still can’t get the hang of it.

  What exactly is her relation to the thirteenth Shogun’s widowed wife?”

  “Oh, but you are so stupid! I’ve just been telling you what she is.

  She’s the thirteenth Shogun’s widowed wife’s private-secretary’s younger sister’s husband’s mother’s. . .”

  “That much I’ve followed, but. . .”

  “Then, you’ve got it, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.” I had to give in. There are times for little white lies.

  Beyond the sliding paper-door the sound of the two-stringed harp came to a sudden stop and the mistress’ voice called, “Tortoiseshell, Tortoiseshell, your lunch is ready.” Tortoiseshell looked happy and remarked, “There, she’s calling, so I must go home. I hope you’ll forgive me?” What would be the good of my saying that I mind? “Come and see me again,” she said; and she ran off through the garden tinkling her bell. But suddenly she turned and came back to ask me anxiously, “You’re looking far from well. Is anything wrong?” I couldn’t very well tell her that I’d eaten a rice-cake and gone dancing; so, “No,” I said, “nothing in particular. I did some weighty thinking, which brought on something of a headache. Indeed I called today because I fancied that just to talk with you would help me to feel better.”

  “Really? Well, take good care of yourself. Good-bye now.” She seemed a tiny bit sorry to leave me, which has completely restored me to the liveliness I’d felt before the rice-cake bit me. I now felt wonderful and decided to go home through that tea-plantation where one could have the pleasure of treading down lumps of half-melted frost. I put my face through the broken bamboo hedge, and there was Rickshaw Blacky, back again on the dry chrysanthemums, yawning his spine into a high, black arch. Nowadays I’m no longer scared of Blacky, but, since any conversation with him involves the risk of trouble, I endeavor to pass, cutting him off. But it’s not in Blacky’s nature to contain his feelings if he believes himself looked down upon. “Hey you, Mr. No-name. You’re very stuck-up these days, now aren’t you? You may be living in a teacher’s house, but don’t go giving yourself such airs. And stop, I warn you, trying to make a fool of me.” Blacky doesn’t seem to know that I am now a celebrity. I wish I could explain the situation to him, but, since he’s not the kind who can understand such things, I decide simply to offer him the briefest of greetings and then to take my leave as soon as I decently can.

  “A happy New Year, Mr. Blacky. You do look well, as usual.” And I lift up my tail and twist it to the left. Blacky, keeping his tail straight up, refused to return my salutation.

  “What! Happy? If the New Year’s happy, then you should be out of your tiny mind the whole year round. Now push off sharp, you back-end of a bellows.”

  That turn of phrase about the back-end of a bellows sounds distinctly derogatory, but its semantic content happened to escape me. “What,” I enquired, “do you mean by the back-end of a bellows?”

  “You’re being sworn at and you stand there asking its meaning. I give up! I really do! You really are a New Year’s nit.”

  A New Year’s nit sounds somewhat poetic, but its meaning is even more obscure than that bit about the bellows. I would have liked to ask the meaning for my future reference, but, as it was obvious I’d get no clear answer, I just stood facing him without a word. I was actually feeling rather awkward, but just then the wife of Blacky’s master suddenly screamed out, “Where in hell is that cut of salmon I left here on the shelf? My God, I do declare that hellcat’s been here and snitched it once again! That’s the nastiest cat I’ve ever seen. See what he’ll get when he comes back!” Her raucous voice unceremoniously shakes the mild air of the season, vulgarizing its natural peacefulness. Blacky puts on an impudent look as if to say, “If you want to scream your head off, scream away,” and he jerked his square chin forward at me as if to say, “Did you hear that hullaballoo?” Up to this point I’ve been too busy talking to Blacky to notice or think about anything else; but now, glancing down, I see between his legs a mud-covered bone from the cheapest cut of salmon.

  “So you’ve been at it again!” Forgetting our recent exchanges, I offered Blacky my usual flattering exclamation. But it was not enough to restore him to good humor.

  “Been at it! What the hell d’you mean, you saucy blockhead? And what do you mean by saying ‘again’ when this is nothing but a skinny slice of the cheapest fish? Don’t you know who I am! I’m Rickshaw Blacky, damn you.” And, having no shirtsleeves to roll up, he lifts an aggressive right front-paw as high as his shoulder.

  “I’ve always known you were Mr. Rickshaw Blacky.”

  “If you knew, why the hell did you say I’d been at it again? Answer me!” And he blows out over me great gusts of oven
breath. Were we humans, I would be shaken by the collar of my coat. I am somewhat taken aback and am indeed wondering how to get out of the situation, when that woman’s fearful voice is heard again.

  “Hey! Mr. Westbrook. You there, Westbrook, can you hear me? Listen, I got something to say. Bring me a pound of beef, and quick. O.K.? Understand? Beef that isn’t tough. A pound of it. See?” Her beef-demanding tones shatter the peace of the whole neighborhood.

  “It’s only once a year she orders beef and that’s why she shouts so loud. She wants the entire neighborhood to know about her marvellous pound of beef. What can one do with a woman like that!” asked Blacky jeeringly as he stretched all four of his legs. As I can find nothing to say in reply, I keep silent and watch.

  “A miserable pound just simply will not do. But I reckon it can’t be helped. Hang on to that beef. I’ll have it later.” Blacky communes with himself as though the beef had been ordered specially for him.

  “This time you’re in for a real treat. That’s wonderful!” With these words I’d hoped to pack him off to his home.

  But Blacky snarled, “That’s nothing to do with you. Just shut your big mouth, you!” and using his strong hind-legs, he suddenly scrabbles up a torrent of fallen icicles which thuds down on my head. I was taken completely aback, and, while I was still busy shaking the muddy debris off my body, Blacky slid off through the hedge and disappeared. Presumably to possess himself of Westbrook’s beef.

  When I get home I find the place unusually springlike and even the master is laughing gaily. Wondering why, I hopped onto the veranda, and, as I padded to sit beside the master, noticed an unfamiliar guest. His hair is parted neatly and he wears a crested cotton surcoat and a duck-cloth hakama. He looks like a student and, at that, an extremely serious one. Lying on the corner of my master’s small hand-warming brazier, right beside the lacquer cigarette-box, there’s a visiting card on which is written, “To introduce Mr. Beauchamp Blowlamp: from Coldmoon.”

  Which tells me both the name of this guest and the fact that he’s a friend of Coldmoon. The conversation going on between host and guest sounds enigmatic because I missed the start of it. But I gather that it has something to do with Waverhouse, the aesthete whom I have had previous occasion to mention.

  “And he urged me to come along with him because it would involve an ingenious idea, he said.” The guest is talking calmly.

  “Do you mean there was some ingenious idea involved in lunching at aWestern style restaurant?” My master pours more tea for the guest and pushes the cup toward him.

  “Well, at the time I did not understand what this ingenious idea could be, but, since it was his idea, I thought it bound to be something interesting and. . .”

  “So you accompanied him. I see.”

  “Yes, but I got a surprise.”

  The master, looking as if to say, “I told you so,” gives me a whack on the head. Which hurts a little. “I expect it proved somewhat farcical. He’s rather that way inclined.” Clearly, he has suddenly remembered that business with Andrea del Sarto.

  “Ah yes? Well, as he suggested we would be eating something special. . .”

  “What did you have?”

  “First of all, while studying the menu, he gave me all sorts of information about food.”

  “Before ordering any?”

  “Yes.”

  “And then?”

  “And then, turning to a waiter, he said, ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything special on the card.’ The waiter, not to be outdone, suggested roast duck or veal chops. Whereupon Waverhouse remarked quite sharply that we hadn’t come a very considerable distance just for common or garden fare. The waiter, who didn’t understand the significance of common or garden, looked puzzled and said nothing.”

  “So I would imagine.”

  “Then, turning to me, Waverhouse observed that in France or in England one can obtain any amount of dishes cooked à la Tenmei or à la Manyō but that in Japan, wherever you go, the food is all so stereotyped that one doesn’t even feel tempted to enter a restaurant of the so-called Western style. And so on and so on. He was in tremendous form. But has he ever been abroad?”

  “Waverhouse abroad? Of course not. He’s got the money and the time. If he wanted to, he could go off anytime. He probably just converted his future intention to travel into the past tense of widely traveled experience as a sort of joke.” The master flatters himself that he has said something witty and laughs invitingly. His guest looks largely unimpressed.

  “I see. I wondered when he’d been abroad. I took everything he said quite seriously. Besides, he described such things as snail soup and stewed frogs as though he’d really seen them with his own two eyes.”

  “He must have heard about them from someone. He’s adept at such terminological inexactitudes.”

  “So it would seem,” and Beauchamp stares down at the narcissus in a vase. He seems a little disappointed.

  “So, that then was his ingenious idea, I take it?” asks the master still in quest of certainties.

  “No, that was only the beginning. The main part’s still to come.”

  “Ah!”The master utters an interjection mingled with curiosity.

  “Having finished his dissertation on matters gastronomical and European, he proposed ‘since it’s quite impossible to obtain snails or frogs, however much we may desire them, let’s at least have moat-bells.

  What do you say?’ And without really giving the matter any thought at all, I answered, ‘Yes, that would be fine.’”

  “Moat-bells sound a little odd.”

  “Yes, very odd, but because Waverhouse was speaking so seriously, I didn’t then notice the oddity.” He seems to be apologizing to my master for his carelessness.

  “What happened next?” asks my master quite indifferently and without any sign of sympathetic response to his guest’s implied apology.

  “Well, then he told the waiter to bring moat-bells for two. The waiter said,‘Do you mean meatballs, sir?’ but Waverhouse, assuming an ever more serious expression, corrected him with gravity. ‘No, not meatballs, moat-bells.’”

  “Really? But is there any such dish as moat-bells?”

  “Well I thought it sounded somewhat strange, but as Waverhouse was so calmly sure and is so great an authority on all things Occidental—remember it was then my firm belief that he was widely traveled—I too joined in and explained to the waiter,‘Moat-bells, my good man, moat-bells.’”

  “What did the waiter do?”

  “The waiter—it’s really rather funny now one comes to think back on it—looked thoughtful for a while and then said, ‘I’m terribly sorry sir, but today, unfortunately, we have no moat-bells. Though should you care for meatballs we could serve you, sir, immediately.’ Waverhouse thereupon looked extremely put out and said, ‘So we’ve come all this long way for nothing. Couldn’t you really manage moat-bells? Please do see what can be done,’ and he slipped a small tip to the waiter. The waiter said he would ask the cook again and went off into the kitchen.”

  “He must have had his mind dead set on eating moat-bells.”

  “After a brief interval the waiter returned to say that if moat-bells were ordered specially they could be provided, but that it would take a long time. Waverhouse was quite composed. He said, ‘It’s the New Year and we are in no kind of hurry. So let’s wait for it?’ He drew a cigar from the inside of his Western suit and lighted up in the most leisurely manner. I felt called upon to match his cool composure so, taking the Japan News from my kimono pocket, I started reading it. The waiter retired for further consultations.”

  “What a business!” My master leans forward, showing quite as much enthusiasm as he does when reading war news in the dailies.

  “The waiter re-emerged with apologies and the confession that, of late, the ingredients of moat-bells were in such short supply that one could not get them at Kameya’s nor even down at No. 15 in Yokohama.

  He expressed regret, but it seemed cert
ain that the material for moat-bells would not be back in stock for some considerable time.

  Waverhouse then turned to me and repeated, over and over again,

  ‘What a pity, and we came especially for that dish.’ I felt that I had to say something, so I joined him in saying,‘Yes, it’s a terrible shame! Really, a great, great pity!’”

  “Quite so,” agrees my master, though I myself don’t follow his reasoning.

  “These observations must have made the waiter feel quite sorry, for he said,‘When, one of these days, we do have the necessary ingredients, we’d be happy if you would come, sir, and sample our fare.’ But when Waverhouse proceeded to ask him what ingredients the restaurant did use, the waiter just laughed and gave no answer. Waverhouse then pressingly enquired if the key-ingredient happened to be Tochian (who, as you know, is a haiku poet of the Nihon School); and d’you know, the waiter answered,‘Yes, it is, sir, and that is precisely why none is currently available even in Yokohama. I am indeed,’ he added, ‘most regretful, sir.’”

  “Ha-ha-ha! So that’s the point of the story? How very funny!” and the master, quite unlike his usual self, roars with laughter. His knees shake so much that I nearly tumble off. Paying no regard to my predicament, the master laughs and laughs. He seems suddenly deeply pleased to realize that he is not alone in being gulled by Andrea del Sarto.

  “And then, as soon as we were out in the street, he said ‘You see, we’ve done well. That ploy about the moat-bells was really rather good, wasn’t it?’ and he looked as pleased as punch. I let it be known that I was lost in admiration, and so we parted. However, since by then it was well past the lunch-hour, I was nearly starving.”

  “That must have been very trying for you.” My master shows, for the first time, a sympathy to which I have no objection. For a while there was a pause in the conversation and my purring could be heard by host and guest.

  Mr. Beauchamp drains his cup of tea, now quite cold, in one quick gulp and with some formality remarks, “As a matter-of-fact I’ve come today to ask a favor from you.”

  “Yes? And what can I do for you?” My master, too, assumes a formal face.