The letter is signed by a peer. My master, having read it through in silence, replaces it in the envelope. He looks quite unconcerned and shows no sign whatsoever of any readiness to cough up cash. The other day he did actually contribute a few pence for the relief of those whom the poor crops in the northeast had exposed to famine. But ever since he made that gift he has bombarded everyone he meets with complaints that the subscription was a robbery. If he voluntarily subscribed, he can’t possibly call it robbery. It is, indeed, most improper to use a word with such criminal implications. However, my master really does seem to think he really was robbed. I consequently think it most unlikely that he will part with his precious money in response to a mere printed letter, certainly not to a letter so civilly written and unperemptory, even though the cause is as noble as a victory celebration, and its canvasser as noble as a nobleman can be. As my master sees it, before honoring the army, he’d like to be honored himself. After he has been sufficiently honored, he well might honor almost anything; so long as he continues having to scrape along in penny-pinched obscurity, he seems content to leave the honoring of armies to peers who can afford it.
“Oh dear,” he said as he picked up the second envelope, “another printed letter.” He then began, with steadily growing interest, to read what it said.
We offer our congratulations that you and your family should be enjoying good prosperity at this season of chilly autumn.
As you are aware, over the past three years the operation of our school has been greatly hindered by a few overacquisitive men.
Indeed at one stage, things looked very serious. However, having realized that all those difficulties originated in certain of my own fail-ings, I, your humble servant Shinsaku, communed and expostulated most deeply with myself in respect of those regrettable deficiencies and, having endured unspeakable self-criticism, hardships, and priva-tions, I have at long last found a way unaided to obtain sufficient funds to construct the new school building in a style compatible with my own ideals. The fact is that I am about to publish a book entitled The Essentials of the Secret Art of Sewing: A Separate Volume. This book, which I, your humble servant Shinsaku, have composed at immense trouble, is written in strict accordance with that theory and those principles of industrial art which, for many years, I have so painfully been studying. I hope that every household will buy a copy of this book, the price of which is no more than the actual cost of producing it with little or nothing added as profit. For I am convinced that this book will serve to advance the art of sewing. At the same time, the modest profits I anticipate from its sale should be sufficient to finance the needed extensions to the school buildings.
Therefore, I should be most grateful and honored if you would, by way of making a donation toward the construction expenses of the school house, be so kind as to purchase a copy of the aforementioned Essentials of the Secret Art of Sewing, a book which you could, for instance, advantageously put in the hands of your maidservant. I do most humbly and sincerely hope you will grant me your support in this matter.
With the utmost respect and good will, and with nine respectful bows,
Nuida Shinsaku
Principal
Great Japan Women’s High
Graduate School of Sewing
My master indifferently crumpled this courteous letter into a ball and pitched it lightly into the waste-paper basket. I am sorry to say that Mr.
Shinsaku’s nine respectful bows and his many unspeakable hardships all came to nothing.
My master then took up his third letter. This one gleams with quite extraordinary luster. Its envelope is brightly colored with red and white stripes and looks as gay as a signboard advertising boiled sweets. Right in the center of these dazzling slats there is written in a thickly, flowery calligraphic style, “O Rare Dr. Sneaze! With Deep Respect.” Whatever this envelope may contain, its externalities are extremely grand.
Sir,
If I am to dominate the universe, then I would, in one swift go, swallow up the whole world. But if the universe is to rule over me, then I would become no more than a mote of dust. Tell me, I entreat you, what is the correct relation between myself and the universe.
The person who first ate sea slugs deserves respect for his daring. The man who first ate blowfish should be honored for his bravery. He who added sea slugs to our diet performed a service for the nation comparable to Shinran’s founding of the Pure Land sect, and the con-tributor of blowfish may be fairly compared with such a courageous religious innovator as the great Priest Nichiren. But you, dear Dr. Sneaze, your gastronomic genius stretches no further than to dried gourd shavings dressed with vinegared bean-paste. I have yet to meet a man of parts whose prowess was advanced by eating dried gourd shavings dressed with vinegared bean-paste.
Your closest friend might betray you. Your very parents might turn cold toward you. Even your own true love might cast you off. No man, naturally, can put his trust in wealth or worldly honors. Lands and peerages can vanish in the twinkling of an eye. Even a lifetime’s scholarship treasured in one’s head goes moldy in the end. On what, then, Dr. Sneaze, do you intend to rely? What is there in the whole, wide universe on which you dare depend? God? God is a mere clay figure fabricated in the depths of their despair by dreggy persons, by beings themselves so terrified as to be nothing more than stinking lumps of shit. Could it be that you claim nevertheless to find some ease of mind by putting your trust in objects that you know to be untrustworthy? Ah, what a depth of folly! A staggering drunkard, babbling senseless words, totters, however weavingly, straight toward his grave. The oil is all used up. As the wick gutters into darkness, so even one’s passions die down and are gone. When your destined course is run, what flicker of your self will remain or be remembered? Respected sir, had you not better take a sip of tea?
If you disdain others, you have nothing to fear. Why is it, then, that you, who do disdain all others, are nonetheless enraged at the world which disdains you? High-ranking and distinguished persons seem to be puffed up by their disdain for people. However, as soon as they feel themselves disdained, they flare up in real anger. Let them flare up. They are all idiots!
When due regard is given to other people but those other people do not reciprocate, then, instead of just complaining, the discontented are liable, every now and again, to seek redress of their grievance by some positive action. Such spasmodic action is called revolution. Revolutions are not the work of mere grumblers, but are the happy handiwork of high-ranking and distinguished persons who enjoy promoting them.
Honored sir, there is a great deal of ginseng in Korea. Why, dear Dr. Sneaze, don’t you give it a try?
Written from Colney Hatch
and dispatched with two respectful bows
by Providence Fair
The needle-plying Shinsaku had offered nine such bows, but Providence Fair produces only a measly brace, and, since his letter does not ask for money, he must, to the extent of seven respectful bobbings, be that much the more arrogant. Still, even though the letter does not scrounge for cash, its vile construction and indigestible contents make it equally painful to receive. Were it submitted to a magazine, even the scurviest, it would undoubtedly be rejected, and I felt consequently sure that my master, who never likes to put the least strain on his gray matter, would just tear it up. To my immense surprise he reads it over and over again. Perhaps he cannot credit that a posted letter might actually have no meaning and is determined to discover what this one seeks to convey. The world is crammed with conundrums, but none of them are totally meaningless. No matter how incomprehensible a phrase may be, a willing listener can always wring some kind of message out of it. You can say mankind is stupid or that mankind is astute: either way, the statement makes some sense. Indeed, one can go much further. It is not incomprehensible if one says that human beings are dogs or pigs. Nor would it occasion any surprise if one stated that a mountain was low; or that the universe is small. One could well get away with claiming that crows
are white, that living dolls are dead ugly, even that my master is a man of worth. It follows that even a letter as weird as Mr. Fair’s could, if one really bent one’s mind to the effort, be twisted to make sense. And a man like my master, who has spent his whole life explaining the meanings of English words which he does not understand, naturally has small difficulty in wrenching meaning out of mumbo-jumbo totally uninterpretable by anyone else. He is, after all, the very fellow who, when one of his pupils asked why people still say “Good morning” when the weather happens to be bad, pondered that knotty problem for seven days at a stretch. I remember, too, that he once devoted three whole days and three long nights to an attempt at establishing the correct way for a Japanese to pronounce the name of Columbus. Such a man finds no trouble at all in making free interpretations of anything he comes across: he could, for instance, interpret a habit of eating dried gourd shavings dressed with vinegared bean-paste as a sure indicator of inherent ability to achieve world fame, and with similar ease he could identify ginseng-eaters as the instigators of revolutions. In any event, it soon became clear that my master, demonstrating yet again that perspicacity and depth of mind which he once bought to bear on the knotty matter of saying “Good morning” at times of nasty weather, has penetrated to the inner meanings of the crazy letter sent him with two respectful bows.
“This letter,” he breathed in tones of the deepest admiration, “is fraught with profound significance. Whoever wrote these words is an adept of philosophies. The sweep, the range, the grasp of the mind behind this letter are truly stupendous.”Which only goes to show how daft my master is. But, on second thought, perhaps he isn’t quite so stupid at all.
Habitually he values whatever he does not understand, but he is by no means alone in that behavior. Something unignorable lurks in whatever passes our understanding, and there is something inherently noble in that which we cannot measure. For which reason laymen are loud in their praises of matters they do not understand and scholars lecture unintelligibly on points as clear as day. This lesson is daily demonstrated in our universities, where incomprehensible lectures are both deeply respected and popular, while those whose words are easily understood are shunned as shallow thinkers. My master admired his third letter, not because its meaning was clear, but precisely because large tracts of it were utterly incomprehensible. He was touched, I would say, by the total lack of reason for the letter’s sudden irrelevant sallies into such matters as the first consumption of sea slugs and its description of the-ists as terror-frantic shit. Thus, as Taoists are most deeply ravished by the most gnomic sayings of Lao-tzu, as followers of Confucius laud the Book of Changes, and as Zen priests dote on the Collected Thoughts of Lin Chi, so my master admires that letter because he hasn’t the faintest idea what it means. Of course, it wouldn’t do not to understand it at all; so, reading its nonsense in accordance with his gift for free interpretation, he manages to convince himself that he’s grasped its real intent. Well, it’s always pleasant to admire something incomprehensible when you think you understand it. So it was with understandable reverence that my master refolded the florid calligraphy of that precious letter and placed it gently down upon the desk before him. He sits there, lost in meditation, head bowed and his hands sunk deep within his clothing.
Suddenly, there came a loud voice from the entrance. “Hello there!
Can I come in?” It sounds like that of Waverhouse, but most uncharacteristically, it keeps on asking for admission. My master obviously hears the constant calling, but, keeping his hands buried in his clothes, makes no move whatsoever. Perhaps he holds it as a principle that the master of a house should not answer a caller, for in my experience he has never, at least not from his study, ever cried, “Come in.” The maidservant has just gone out to buy some soap and Mrs. Sneaze is busy in the lavatory, so that leaves only me to answer the door. But, frankly, I do not care to.
The matter was, however, settled when the visitor, grown impatient, stepped up onto the veranda by the door, walked in uninvited and left the door wide open. In the matter of civilities, my master and his visitor seem a perfect match. The visitor first went into the living room but, having fruitlessly opened and shut various of its sliding doors, then marched into the study.
“Well, really! What on earth are you doing? Don’t you know you’ve got a visitor?”
“Ah, so it’s you.”
“Is that all you have to say? You should’ve answered if you were in.
The house seemed positively deserted.”
“Well, as it happens, I’ve got something on my mind.”
“Even so, you could at least have said, ‘Come in.’”
“I could have.”
“The same old iron nerves.”
“The fact is that lately I’ve been concentrating on training my mind.”
“Fantastic! And what will become of your visitors if your trained mind makes you incapable of answering the door? I wish you wouldn’t sit there looking so smugly cool. The point is that I’m not alone today.
I’ve brought along someone very unusual. Won’t you come out and meet him?”
“Whom have you brought?”
“Never mind that. Just come out and meet him. He’s most anxious to meet you.”
“Who is it?”
“Never mind who. Just get up. . . There’s a good fellow.”
My master stood up without removing his hands from his clothing.
“I’ll bet you’re pulling my leg again,” he grumbled as, passing along the veranda, he walked into the drawing room with the clear expectation of finding it empty. But there, politely facing the alcove in the wall, sat an old man whose stiffly upright posture expressed both a natural courtesy and a certain solemnity of mind. Involuntarily, my master first brought his hands into view and then immediately sat down with his bottom pushed hard up against the sliding-door. By this precipitate action my master finished up facing in the same westerly direction as the old man, so that it was now impossible for them to bow to each other in formal greeting. And the older generation remains extremely rigid in matters of etiquette.
“Please be seated there,” said the old man urging my master to take his proper place with his back to the alcove.
Up until a few years ago, my master assumed that it did not matter where one sat in a room; but since the day when someone told him that an alcove is a modified form of that upper room where envoys of the Shogun were accustomed to seat themselves, he avoids that place like the plague. Consequently, and especially now that an unfamiliar elderly person is present, nothing will induce him to sit down in the place of honor. Indeed, he cannot even manage a proper greeting. He just bowed once and then exactly repeated the words used by his visitor. “Please be seated there.”
“I beg of you. I am at a loss to greet you properly unless you sit over there.”
“Oh no, I beg of you. Please, you sit over there.” My master seems unable to do anything but parrot his guest.
“Sir, your modesty overwhelms me. I am unworthy. Please don’t stand on ceremony. And please do sit there.”
“Sir, your modesty. . . overwhelms you. . . please,” came the jumbled answer from my scarlet faced master. His mental training does not seem to have had much useful effect. Waverhouse, who has been delightedly watching this ridiculous performance from a position just outside the door, evidently thought it had gone on long enough.
“Move over. If you plant yourself so close to the door, I shan’t be able to find a place to sit down. Get along with you, don’t be shy.” He prodded my master with his foot and then, bending down, unceremoniously shoved at my master’s bottom from behind until he was able to force himself between the two seated figures facing the alcove. My master reluctantly slid forward.
“Sneaze, this is my uncle from Shizuoka of whom you’ve often heard me speak. Uncle, this is Mr. Sneaze.”
“How do you do? Waverhouse tells me that you have been very kind and that you let him come on frequent visits. I’ve been
meaning myself to call on you for a long time and today, as I happened to be in the neighborhood, I decided to come and thank you. I beg to be favored with your acquaintance.”The old man delivers his old-fashioned speech of greeting with great fluency.
Not only is my master taciturn by nature and possessed of few acquaintances, but he has rarely, if ever, met anyone of this antiquated type. He was thus ill at ease from the start, and became increasingly scared as the old man’s flood of language washed about his ears. All thoughts of Korean ginseng, of the shining stripes of that red and white envelope, or of other aids to mental discipline have slipped from his mind, and his incoherent stutter of response betrays his desperation. “I, too. . . yes, I also. . . just meant to call on you. . . pleased. . . yes, indeed. . . most glad to make your acquaintance.”This babble was delivered with his head bowed down to the floor. When he fell silent, he half-lifted his nut only to find the old man still bent politely flat. Jittering with embarrassment, he promptly lowered his head back onto the floor.
The old man, timing it beautifully, lifts his head. “In the old days,” he remarked, “I, too, had a place up here in Tokyo and for many years used to live close to the Shogun’s residence. However, when the shogunate collapsed, I left for the country and have, since then, only seldom visited the capital. Indeed, I find that things have changed so much that now I cannot even find my way around. If Waverhouse is not there to help, I’m as good as lost. Great, great changes.” He shook his head and sighed.
“The shogunate, you know, had been established in the castle here for over three hundred years. . .”
Waverhouse seems to feel that the old man’s observations are taking a tiresome turn, so he quickly interupts. “Uncle, though the shogunate was no doubt a very excellent institution, the present government is also to be praised. In the old days, for instance, there was no such thing as the Red Cross, was there?”
I Am a Cat Page 43
