I Am a Cat

by Sōseki Natsume

  “And it was from precisely that moment that my talent as a creative artist, up until then widely accepted as remarkably promising, was nipped in the bud, never to bloom again. I have my own whole skeleton of bones still to pick with you.”

  “Don’t be so daft. If anyone’s entitled to a grudge, it’s me.”

  “Waverhouse, from as far back as my mind can reach, has always been a windbag.” My master, having munched his sweet to extinction, rejoins the conversation. “He never means what he says and has never been known to keep a promise. Pressed hard for an explanation, he never apologizes but trots out endless pretexts and prevarications. Once when the myrtles were in bloom in the temple yard, he told me that he would complete a treatise he was writing, on those same old cherished principles of aesthetics, before the flowers fell. ‘Impossible,’ I said. Can you guess his answer? He claimed, despite appearances, to be of iron will.‘If you doubt my word,’ he said, ‘just name your bet.’ I took him up on it and we agreed that the loser should stand a dinner at a Western restaurant over in Kanda. I took the bet because I was certain that he’d never get his writing done in time, but I confess that, not in fact having the cash to pay for the dinner if I lost, I remained a little nervous that he still might work a miracle. Anyway, he showed no signs of getting down to work. A week went by, three weeks went by, and still he hadn’t written a single page. At last the flowers of the myrtle fell, and, though the tree stood empty, Waverhouse stood calm. Looking forward to my Western meal, I pressed our friend to meet his obligation. Not to put too fine a point upon his answer, he told me to get lost.”

  “No doubt,” chimed in Suzuki, “he offered this, that and the other reason?”

  “Indeed he did, the barefaced rogue. You can’t imagine how obstinate he was. ‘Say what you will,’ he said, ‘about my other flaws and faults. I admit them all, and readily. But the fact remains that in strength of will I’m stronger than the pack of you.’”

  “Do you mean,” asked Waverhouse himself, “that, having written nothing, I still claimed not to have lost the bet?”

  “Of course you did. You said the bet was not about finishing the treatise but about your iron will. And in respect of that iron quality, so you most willfully informed me, you would yield to none. You conceded that your memory might be poor; so poor indeed that you had next day forgotten that you intended to write a paper on the principles of aesthetics; but you maintained that your will to write it remained ferric to the core. The fault lay in your memory, not in your will. So, though the myrtle flowers were fallen and the treatise still unwritten, you made it painfully clear that you saw no reason why you should come across with my dinner.”

  “Now that’s very interesting. And so very typical of Waverhouse.” I can’t see what in that rather tedious story should so particularly interest Suzuki, but the tone of his comments is markedly different from that which he used before Waverhouse came in. Perhaps such variousness is a sign of a clever man.

  “Not in the least interesting.” My master interjects a sharpish contradiction.

  “It distresses me that you should still be feeling so put out about it, but is it not for that very reason that I’ve had men out with lanterns searching high and low for those peacocks’ tongues I promised you?

  Don’t be so huffy, Sneaze. Just wait a while and all shall be made up.

  Incidentally, this talk about writing a treatise reminds me that I’ve called today with some especially odd news.”

  “Since you bring round odd news every time you visit, I’ll take that statement with a pinch of salt.”

  “But today’s odd news truly is sensational. Cross my heart and hope to die, it’s stunning. Coldmoon’s started writing his thesis. What about that? Since in his own quaint way Coldmoon has a fairly elevated opinion of himself, I wouldn’t have expected him to engage in such a mundane, tasteless chore as getting a thesis actually written, but it appears that he, too, is tainted with wordly ambition. Now don’t you think that odd? You’d better let that Goldfield woman know that she may now start dreaming of decking her family tree with a full-blown doctor of acorns.”

  At the first mention of Coldmoon’s name, Suzuki begins jerking his chin and twitching his eyes at my master in silent pleas that nothing should be said of their recent conversation. My master fails to notice these entreating galvanisms. A short while back, under the suasion of Suzuki’s moral lecture, he had felt sufficiently sorry for the love-lorn daughter not to indulge his unabated antipathy toward her mother. But as soon as Waverhouse referred to Madam Conk, his recollection of his recent row with that virago came flooding back in full spate. That the row had had its comic aspects did not make it any the less provoking. But the news that Coldmoon had started to write his thesis, that was really marvelous. He was grateful to Waverhouse, who had more than fulfilled his boast of having something startling to say, for bringing such a welcome present. It was, indeed, a stunning piece of news; stunning but singularly pleasant. It doesn’t greatly matter, one way or the other, whether Coldmoon marries the girl, but it is certainly an excellent thing for the lad to get his doctorate. In surprising ways my master knows himself, and would with absolute humility accept that not a tear need fall if a botched wooden statue is left undecorated to rot away in some dark back-corner of a sculptor’s shop. But when a statue is superbly carved, when its basic quality is noble, then no effort should be spared and no time wasted in ensuring that it be given gilding of appropriate splendor.

  “Are you really telling me that Coldmoon’s started writing?” my master enquires eagerly and paying no attention at all to the jittering Suzuki.

  “What a suspicious mind you’ve got! Don’t you ever believe what I tell you? Yes, he’s started, but I regret I cannot tell you whether his thesis will be concerned with the stability of acorns or with the mechanics of hanging. Whatever the subject, a Coldmoon thesis must be a glorious snub for the Nose.”

  Suzuki has been getting more and more restive as Waverhouse repeats and develops his discourteous references to Madam Conk;Waverhouse, not noticing, sails unconcernedly on.

  “I have,” he said, “carried out some further research into noses and am happy to advise you of an interesting treatment of the subject in the Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Had Sterne but known of that mountain of relevant material, how greatly it would have helped him. The sadness of chronology! To think that that staggering organ, eminently qualified as it is to gain immortal nose-fame, should be born, like many another nosegay, to blush unseen! One’s heart is filled with an immense compassion. When next it thrusts itself upon us, I shall sketch that vast promontory of flesh for my future reference in the study of aesthetics.” There’s no restraining Waverhouse.

  “But I hear that the Goldfield girl is yearning to be Coldmoon’s bride.” My master makes a fair summary of Suzuki’s representations, while the latter, annoyance twitching from every feature on his face and electric messages flashing from his eyes, signals desperately for disengagement. My master, like some nonconducting substance, remains immune to these distraught discharges.

  “How bizarre. It strains the mind to think that the daughter of such a man might fall in love. . . Not, I would imagine, that it could be love of any quality, just rubbing noses.”

  “Whatever its nature,” my master commented, “let’s hope that Coldmoon marries her.”

  “What’s that?” said Waverhouse. “Who’s now hoping Coldmoon marries her? Only the other day you were dead against such a disastrous match. Have you gone soft or something?”

  “It’s not a matter of going soft. I never go soft, but. . .”

  “But something’s happened? That’s it, isn’t it? Now look here, Suzuki, since you’re some kind of lower life-form in the business jungle, let me give a piece of advice to guide your future slitherings. It’s with reference to that grunting Goldfield and his piglet daughter. The idea that reasonable persons might be called upon to treat that creature with the respect due to the
wife of Mr. Avalon Coldmoon, that talented national figure, why, man, the thing’s impossible. They’d no more balance each other than would a paper-lantern and a big bronze bell. No one who calls himself a friend to Coldmoon could stand by and not speak against the folly of such a misalliance. Surely, Suzuki, even you, looking at it as a businessman, can see the sense in what I’m saying.”

  “What a kerfuffle you do still manage to kick up! Always something stirring, eh? You haven’t changed one little bit in all of these ten years.

  Really, it’s remarkable.” Suzuki tries to slither round the question.

  “Since you compliment me as being remarkable, let me display some more remarkable dollops of learning appropriate to this case. The ancient Greeks set very high store by physical prowess and encouraged its pursuit by awarding valuable prizes to the winners of all sorts of athletic contests. But, strangely enough, there is no record that they ever offered prizes for intellectual prowess. Until recently this curious circumstance incessantly puzzled me.”

  “I see,” says Suzuki still trying to make himself agreeable. “That does seem odd.”

  “However, just the other day, I chanced, in the course of my researches into aesthetics, to light upon the explanation. Years of accumulated worrying fell instantly away from me and, in that blessed trice, as though disburdened of all errors and earthly delusions, I found myself transported to that pure realm of infinite enlightenment where my soul rejoiced in its transcendence of the world and its attainment of pansophic self-awareness.”Waverhouse departs on such a flight of gongoristic drivel that even the toadying Suzuki allows his face to slip into the lineaments of having had enough. “He’s at it again” may be read in my master’s resigned expression as, with eyes cast down, he sits there tapping, kan-kan-kan, on the rim of the cake-dish with his ivory chopsticks.

  Nowise disconcerted,Waverhouse blathers on.

  “And to whom do you think we are indebted for that brilliant logical analysis, which, by its simple explanation of this seeming anomaly, has rescued us forever from the dark abyss of doubt? It was that famous Greek philosopher, the greatest of all scholars since scholarship began, the renowned founder of the Peripatetic School, Aristotle himself. His explanation—I say, Sneaze, please stop flogging that cake-dish and pay a little more attention—may be summarized thus. The prizes awarded at Greek contests were worth more than the performances that earned them, for the prizes were intended not only to stimulate effort but to reward achievement. Consequently, if one were to give a prize for intellectual prowess, for knowledge itself, one would have to find something to award which was more valuable than knowledge. But knowledge already is the rarest gem in the world. The Greeks, unwilling to debase the value of knowledge, piled up chests all crammed with gold to the height of Mount Olympus. They gathered in the wealth of Croesus, and wealth beyond that wealth, but in the end they recognized that the value of knowledge cannot be matched, let alone exceeded. So, masters of reason that they were, they decided that the prize should be nothing at all. From this, Suzuki, I trust you will have learnt that, whatever the color of your money, it is worthless stuff compared with learning. Let us accordingly apply this revealed truth, this fundamental principle, to the particular problem that has arisen today. Surely you’re bound to see that Goldfield’s merely a paper man, a bill of exchange with eyes and a nose scrawled onto it. If I may put it epigrammatically, the man’s no more than an animated banknote. And if he’s money in motion, currency one might say, his daughter’s nothing but a circulating promissory note. In contrast, now, let us consider Coldmoon. With consummate ease he graduated with the best degree of his year from the highest seat of learning in our land. On leaving the Imperial University, he showed no sign of slackening of effort. On the contrary, fiddling with the antique fastening-strings of his short surcoat, he devotes himself both day and night to intensive study of the thorny problem of the stability of acorns. And in addition to all that, this indefatigable servant of learning is just about to publish a thesis which, unquestionably, will embody intellectual concepts beside whose depth, originality, and scope those adumbrated by the great Lord Kelvin must pale into insignificance. It is true he was concerned in an abortive attempt at suicide, but that was no more than a passing fancy of a kind common among lads of spirit. Certainly the incident can cast no serious doubt upon his reputation as a vast repository of learning and intelligence. If I may adapt to Coldmoon’s case one of my own earlier turns of phrase, I should describe him as a circulating library. He is a high-explosive shell, perhaps only a twenty-eight centimeter, but compactly charged with knowledge.

  And when at the properly chosen time this projectile makes its impact upon the world of learning, then, if it detonates, detonate it will.”

  Waverhouse, unbelievably, seems to have run out of steam. Confused by his own jumble of metaphors, he almost flinches, and his flow of language peters pointlessly out. As the saying goes, the dragon’s head of his opening remarks has dwindled down to a snake’s tail of an ending.

  However, though Waverhouse may falter, he’s unlikely to shut up. In a matter of seconds he’s off again.

  “In that inevitable explosion things like promissory notes, though there be thousands of them, will all be blasted into dust. It follows that, for Coldmoon, such a female simply will not do. I cannot consent to so ill-suited an alliance. It would be as though an elephant, that wisest and most noble of all animals, were to marry the greediest piglet of a greedy farrow.” With a final burst of speed Waverhouse breasts the tape. “That’s so, isn’t it, Sneaze?” My master, silent, resumed his melancholy tapping on the cake-dish.

  Looking a bit depressed and obviously at his wit’s end for a suitable answer, Suzuki mumbles something about not being able to entirely agree.

  His position is, indeed, delicate. His hands, as it were, are still wet with blood from his verbal assassination, barely a half-hour back, of Waverhouse’s character, and a man as outrageously tactless as my master might, at any moment, come straight out with anything. Suzuki’s soundest tactic is to receive, and if possible smother, the Waverhouse attack, and then, in the general confusion, to wriggle away to safety as quickly as he can. Suzuki’s clever.Very much a man cast in the modern mold, he seeks to avoid head-on collisions and considers it positively medieval to enter into arguments that, of their nature, can have no practical result. In his opinion the purpose of life is not to talk, but to act. If events develop as one wishes, then life, its purpose thus fulfilled, is good. But if events not only develop as one wishes but do so without difficulties, fret, or altercation, then life, its purpose slitheringly fulfilled, is paradisal. Suzuki’s unwavering devotion to this Elysian principle of slithering had brought him great success in the business world he’d entered after graduating from the university. It had brought him a watch of eighteen-carat gold. It had brought him a request from the Goldfields that he should do them a small favor.

  It had even enabled him to maneuver Sneaze nine-tenths of the way toward doing what the Goldfields wished. Then Waverhouse descends upon the scene. Out of the ordinary, careless of all conventions, totally eccentric, he manifests himself as an incarnation of capriciousness operating in accordance with a psychological pattern never previously observed in the human creature. No wonder that Suzuki feels a bit bewildered. Though Suzuki’s principle was invented by a variety of clever gentlemen seeking success in Meiji circumstances, its prime practitioner is Suzuki Tōjūrō himself, and it is consequently he who is most signally stumped when the principle proves inapplicable.

  “It’s only because you’re out of your depth,”Waverhouse pressed on,

  “that you sit there looking supercilious and offer no more useful contribution than the cool comment that you can’t entirely agree. But if you’d been here the other day when that Nose came throwing her weight around, even you, businessman to the backbone though you are, even you would have felt like throwing up. It’s true, Sneaze, isn’t it? Go on, tell him. I thought you handled the
situation magnificently.”

  “But I’m told,” my master almost smirked, “that my conduct on that occasion created a more favorable impression than did yours.”

  The answering laugh was a mixture of pity and scorn. “What incredible self-confidence! I begin to understand how you manage to sail along at school unperturbed by the mockery of your colleagues and your pupils’ shouts of Savage Tea. In matters of willpower I’m a match for anyone, but when it comes to sheer nerve, I’m just not even in your class. I humble myself in the presence of such staggering self-confidence.”

  “Why on earth should I be moved by such puerile carryings-on? Their grumbles don’t scare me. Though Sainte-Beuve was perhaps the greatest of all critics, his lectures at the Sorbonne proved so unpopular that, whenever he walked in the streets, he was obliged to carry a dagger up his sleeve to defend himself against attacks from students. Similarly, when Brunetière’s lectures attacked the novels of Zola. . .”

  “Come off it, Sneaze. You’re not a professor or a university lecturer.

  For a mere teacher of the English Reader to start comparing himself with world-famous professors is like a minnow demanding to be treated as a whale. If you keep on saying things like that, you’re bound to be laughed at.”

  “That’s just your opinion. As I see it, Sainte-Beuve and I, considered as scholars, are of roughly the same standard.”

  “What fantastic self-esteem! But if I were you, I’d give up any idea of going around with a dagger. You might cut yourself. Of course, if university professors do go armed with dirks, it might be reasonable for a teacher of the English Reader to carry a folding penknife. But even so, any edged tool is dangerous. What you ought to do is to toddle along to the Nakamise arcade down in Asakusa and get yourself a toy pop-gun.

  You could carry it slung from your shoulder. You’d make a charming picture. What d’you think, Suzuki?”