Vertical Motion

by Can Xue

  “Has he been to the newspaper office?” My owner seemed fearful as he asked this.

  “I asked the receptionist. I was told that he just stood in the lobby for three minutes and then left.” The old man sipped his beer calmly, his eyes flashing maliciously: he was obviously taking pleasure in my owner’s misfortune.

  “Are you sure he said three minutes?”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  My owner slumped onto the sofa: a load had been lifted from his shoulders.

  The old clerk had left some time ago, but my owner was still agitated by the news he had brought. I couldn’t figure out whether my owner was happy that the black man had gone to his workplace or whether he was fearful. My owner was so jumpy that he couldn’t sit still, couldn’t eat much, and couldn’t sleep. I noticed that he was dazed as he sat on the sofa. He sat there for two hours, often simpering, as if he’d picked up something valuable. While he was in this trance, disaster befell me: he completely overlooked my existence. Sometimes I was hungry and thirsty and jumped onto his lap and kept meowing, but my entreaties didn’t move him at all! In desperation, I tried to open the refrigerator myself, but I couldn’t. Finally, thank God, he thought of food. My stomach was grumbling, and my paws kept quivering. I snagged a sausage from his hand and ate it, but I wanted another and there weren’t any more. He was preoccupied with eating, and didn’t even hear my cries. My owner’s behavior infuriated me: after all, I was a living thing, not an ornament. I had to eat, drink, shit, and piss every day, just as he did. In his care, I had long since become aware of my equal rights. I had to make him notice this! I decided to start championing my rights. When my owner opened the refrigerator, I scurried in: I wanted to eat to my heart’s content!

  He didn’t see me, and he closed the refrigerator door on me. I found the fried ocean fish that he’d been saving and wolfed it down right away. While I was eating, I felt more and more that something was wrong. The frightening chill not only coursed through my hair, but also pierced my guts. It quickly became difficult for me to take even a tiny step. Crouching on the refrigerator shelf, I soon lost consciousness. I had a long, troubling dream, in which the sky was filled with frost-shaped butterflies. Two of them fluttered and landed on the tip of my nose. After moistening my hot breath, they melted into two streams that ran down my face: I couldn’t stop sneezing.

  This nap came close to killing me. When I woke up, I was lying on the rug in my owner’s bedroom. It was the first time I’d been to his bedroom, for I had always considered it his inner sanctum. The furnishings were so simple that they lent the room an air of poverty: a hard wooden bed, wooden chairs, a rough desk, and a bookshelf heaped with documents. This room used to have windows, but my owner had hammered them shut with plywood: not a thread of light could get in. On the right-hand wall was a weak fluorescent light—the only source of light in the room. I wanted to cry out, but my frozen mouth and throat hadn’t recovered yet. I couldn’t move, either.

  “Why do you have to learn my ways? A few days ago, I hanged myself at home: this was psychologically necessary. It’s only because I’m a person that I have these peculiar needs. You’re a cat: even if you understood me better, you couldn’t become a human. So you can’t possibly have the kind of psychological needs that I have. Isn’t that right? Now look at the state you’re in. I feel terribly guilty. You shouldn’t have gone into the refrigerator. You don’t belong there. If you’re so hungry, you can always take a bite out of my leg. Why didn’t you do that? You’re too soft, and that isn’t good for either of us. It will just make me even more treacherous. Even more cold-blooded. Can you hear me? If you can, move your eyeballs, please!”

  I had never thought of my owner as an ugly person, but after he finished talking to himself, I thought he was extremely ugly. Yet, he talked so reasonably! He’d been at his desk, with his back to me, when he said these things. He wouldn’t see me move my eyeballs, even if I did. I made an effort to open my eyes, but he had slumped into deep thought. I heard someone going up and down the stairs. Was it he?!

  =

  After the refrigerator incident, I had a bum leg and now I limped inelegantly. Overcome by remorse, my owner raised my standard of living. I had fresh fish and milk at almost every meal. And because I ate too much and exercised too little, I frequently had diarrhea. My injury left a big impression on my owner. He was worrying about me more and more, so he had to change his ways. Every morning, he had to go to the market and buy food—and not just for himself. His main concern now was giving me three meals a day. Now and then, he also added some delicacies to my diet—things like seaweed and dried fish. He was gradually beginning to live like an ordinary person. Inwardly, I had conflicting reactions to this. Although I was secretly happy, I also felt guilty and a little uneasy. I felt that my owner was making sacrifices for me, and that this could lead to unfortunate consequences. For sure, he wasn’t an ordinary person, but one with special requirements. Now, he was reining in his very nature: Could this lead to an outbreak of its dark side? You have to know that, before I came into his life, he had lived for decades without caring about anything, and he had never compromised himself for anything, either.

  But, gradually, it became apparent that I was worrying too much. My injury hadn’t made my owner any more abnormal. Quite the opposite: he perked up a little. He had a lot more to do and was no longer as idle as he used to be. If people were a little particular about their daily lives, fixing three meals a day and cleaning the apartment could take up a lot of time. When I was first hurt, my owner was still not enamored of doing these things, because he’d long been accustomed to a simple life. At that time, everything in the refrigerator was prepared food, but now he had to buy fresh food and he had to cook especially for me. So sometimes he was almost scurrying about. Since he was very capable, he quickly had the housework under control. Recently, he even seems quite enthusiastic about doing the housework, for he whistles as he works! As it is now, he doesn’t have much time for woolgathering—except after he gets up in the morning, when he can’t help but sink into daydreams for a short time. Then, as if he’s heard an alarm, he springs up and “plunges into the flood of daily work” (this is the sentence I use to describe him).

  Something occurred that surprised me a lot. One day, when I returned from a stroll, I saw the black man standing at our door. He seemed irresolute, but then he went in. Five seconds later, he came out again. He looked the same: teeth clenched, eyes menacing. Like a thick black shadow, he dodged into the elevator and quietly descended. When I went inside, my owner was wearing an apron and busying himself with cooking fish soup. What had transpired in those five seconds? Had they had a brief talk, or had my owner not even seen this uninvited guest for whom he lived day and night? After looking into it, I decided the latter was the most likely. Could it be that the idol in his heart was collapsing?

  The next day, I looked at him even more carefully. I stared at him early in the morning when he was daydreaming on the balcony. My observation told me that what he hoped for from the bottom of his heart hadn’t faded at all, but was even more intense because of the telescoped time. Gripping the railing convulsively, he was looking at the horizon: I was afraid he would jump from this high building. After a while, tears of regret filled his eyes. What did he regret? Had he been unaware of the black man’s presence and then learned of it later from traces that had been left behind? Then why had he grown so numb that he even missed the arrival of the person whom he yearned for day and night? As I saw it, although the black man moved as if floating on water, he couldn’t be completely soundless. I could only conclude that everyday life had numbed my owner’s senses. By the time I thought of this, he had already calmed down. He rinsed his feverish face with cold water. Then, without looking back, he picked up his shopping basket and went to the market. He had a lot more self-control now.

  He must have been working much more efficiently. Sometimes I saw him go into his inner sanctum and re-emerge within the ho
ur. And in his work he seemed even more flushed with success. He still wasn’t close to anyone: he was sticking to his lonely bachelor’s existence. It was from the old clerk’s mouth that I learned of my owner’s promotion: I heard the old man call him “big boss.” He also reproached him for living so simply, and said he should try to have some fun. At the time, I had a sudden thought—if the black man told him to give up everything and go with him to the ends of the earth, would he do it? What followed proved me absolutely wrong.

  =

  As a rule, my owner went to the office only once every two weeks, because another big boss was in charge of the day-to-day work. My owner frequently discussed work with him on the phone. Sometimes someone from the office also telephoned, but not very often. Recently, all of this had changed a lot: now our phone rang all the time. From my observations, in general, these people weren’t calling him about work, but were complaining about some old scores that hadn’t been evened up. These people evidently belonged to all kinds of opposing factions. They were all attacking each other. My owner’s responses seemed very odd—he showered compliments on everyone who called, and parroted what they said, so on the phone everyone was happy. As a spectator, I heard a lot of conflicting words coming out of his mouth. Today he said this, the next day he said that: he was glib on the phone, but after hanging up, he kept sighing and was endlessly remorseful, absolutely fed up. Still, the next time the phone rang, he rushed to answer it again. Sometimes this meant he had to put off doing the housework. I was very much repulsed by those “gossips” from the newspaper office. I thought they were all vermin. At the same time, I was captivated: How could an aloof, idiosyncratic character like my owner care about his despicable underlings, even going so far as to mingle with them in the cesspool? To show my revulsion, I jumped on the tea table several times and pretended it was an accident when I knocked the phone off the hook so that there couldn’t be any incoming calls. But my owner had recently become especially vigilant. Every once in a while he checked to see whether the phone was back on the hook. It was as if he had eyes in the back of his head, so my little plot failed.

  Things grew more and more serious. Phone calls weren’t enough for those people: I heard them pressuring my owner to deal with their disputes. It seemed that everyone who called asked my owner to “give evidence” on his behalf. I secretly felt things were going from bad to worse. I grumbled to myself that my owner was too unprincipled: he shouldn’t mingle with those people and intervene in their filthy mess. After each phone call he was terribly distressed, and didn’t get over it for a long time. After a few more days, these people began to press their demands even more forcefully, and there were even a few menacing implications. One of them mentioned the black man: he said the black man had presented himself at the newspaper office’s lobby and was waiting for my owner to meet him there. After my owner took this phone call, he paled and grew weak in the knees. In a daze, he tidied up a little and then rushed to the newspaper office. The rest of the day, I felt as if I had dropped into hell. I believed that his going there this time boded ill—that a collective plot to murder him was going to be actualized.

  It was late at night before he returned. Not only had he not lost his life, but he was in such high spirits that he was singing in the bathroom. After a bath, he was full of energy as he went into his inner sanctum to work.

  The next day, the phone was ringing off the hook again: my owner kept using vulgar language on the phone and telling dirty jokes. He seemed a changed man, but except for the phone calls, he was still treating me well. He found time for housework and seemed in good spirits. I thought I’d better get used to his new ways. I should make an effort to observe his train of thought and catch up with it. In the afternoon, the black man asked someone to phone and tell him to go to the office (I figured this out from my owner’s expression). When he heard this, he took off immediately, beside himself with agitation. After these two times, I finally got it: it was the black man’s idea that my owner should mingle with the others in the cesspool!

  That evening, he brought two ugly guys back with him. Each one sat on the sofa, crossed his legs, chain-smoked, and spat on the floor. Before they’d been here even a minute, they began talking about the old clerk, hinting that he was a sycophant. I knew that my owner and the clerk were on very good terms, and that they agreed about everything in their work. I couldn’t understand why he was letting these people slander him. He sat there listening gravely and nodding his head slightly, indicating that he sided with them. Thus encouraged, the older one was emboldened to suggest that my owner tell the old clerk “to get another line of work” and give his position to someone else. As the old guy was talking, the door creaked and opened: the black man was standing there. In the light from the corridor, his face looked ashen and was etched with deep grief. Pea-sized beads of perspiration rolled down from his forehead. He was shaking badly. The old guy stopped talking, and everyone stared at the black man outside the door. Suddenly, it was as if the black man had been shot in the neck: all at once, his head drooped. An invisible force was dragging him back, all the way to the elevator door. As soon as the door opened, he tumbled into the elevator, and it slid swiftly down.

  “He’s a guy who really means well and always has to be in the thick of things, even if they’re none of his business.” The ugly old guy sighed, “If he knew that someone as dishonest as the old clerk was mixed up with us, he’d want you to get rid of him, too. What do you say?”

  “I guess you’re right. I guess so.”

  My owner was agreeing absent-mindedly, but he was still staring at the elevator, as though the black man would suddenly step out of it. I was not pleased with my owner’s behavior. It had never crossed my mind that he could change so much. Sometimes he looked almost like a “scoundrel.” But why on earth was the black man grieving so deeply? It also occurred to me that since my owner was able to get along with people now, perhaps he no longer needed me. I had always thought he did. When I was alone with him, it was the two of us against the world. I reveled in this. Now that this defiance was gone, would he kick me out? After all, he’d agreed to get rid of the old clerk, hadn’t he? The more I thought about this, the more I despaired. If he kicked me out, all I could do was hang out on the stairs, because I couldn’t be so heartless as to abandon him. Someday, he would need me.

  I was most repelled by the younger visitor. He didn’t talk, but he was constantly drumming his feet, jiggling the table so much that the soft drinks fell to the floor and made a mess of the rug. You have to remember that this rug was my bed. I really wanted to bite his leg, but this guy was as agile as an acrobat. And so I not only didn’t succeed in biting him, but I also landed on the floor, unable to move, when he kicked me in the back.

  My owner said, “My cat always has to get the best of others.”

  This infuriated me.

  My owner was probably afraid the guy would hurt me again, so he carried me to his bedroom, put me on the wooden bed, and then closed the door. I fell asleep and didn’t even know when those people left.

  I woke up at midnight and saw my owner scribbling excitedly at the table, his inspiration gushing like a spring. From behind, he looked like a lunatic. I didn’t understand the things he wrote—newspapers were out of my element—but I did know that this time my owner had climbed to a very high plane and was more exhilarated than other people could ever be. I was happy for him. You have to remember that only a few hours earlier I was worried that he had become a “scoundrel.” His rapid change was beyond my comprehension.

  Seeing that I was awake, he walked over and sat next to me, sighing as he talked.

  “Old Cat, why did you have to offend my colleagues? You really should stop being so self-righteous. See, you learned a painful lesson this time. I also know that you purposely took the phone off the hook so that my colleagues couldn’t get through. Why did you bother? You must realize that even if they can’t get through on the phone, they can think of other ways to
get in touch with me. No one can keep them away. Even though you’re one smart cat, you’d better understand that my thoughts are a lot more profound than yours. For example, these colleagues of mine: you think they’re too vulgar for words, and so you scorn them. I don’t see it that way. They truly care about me; otherwise, they wouldn’t come so far to see me. You mustn’t be hostile toward them; you should think of them as friends. That would be a big help to me. Old Cat, you have to believe me. If even you don’t believe me, what meaning would my life have?”

  By the end, he was talking quite tearfully. Although I didn’t appreciate his words one bit, his affection moved me. So I also cried. Both of us wept.

  After I had cried for a while, my back also felt much better. I had no reason not to believe my owner. No matter what kind of person he was, I had to believe him, come hell or high water. I made up my mind: even if he sometimes got fed up with being a person of integrity and wanted to be a “scoundrel,” I would still be loyal to him. As he said, he was much more profound than I was, so I’d better not judge his behavior on the basis of superficial things.

  After I had thought this through, my back pain vanished. I stood up, climbed onto his lap, and snuggled at his chest. The two of us wept silently again. I wasn’t too sure why I was crying. Was I touched? Was it a mix of sadness and happiness? Or was it a certain regret? Or a certain sympathy? My owner’s tears must have meant something even more complex. Since I couldn’t figure it out, I would just muddle along and stick with him. My owner, who had been so excited in the daytime, was now shedding so many tears that my hair was all wet. He kept repeating in a hoarse voice, “Ai, Old Cat—ai, Old Cat . . .”