I Am a Cat

by Sōseki Natsume

  Some seven minutes later in comes the anticipated Coldmoon. Since he’s due to give his lecture this same evening, he is not wearing his usual get-up. In a fine frock-coat and with a high and exceedingly white clean collar, he looks twenty per cent more handsome than himself. “Sorry to be late.” He greets his two seated friends with perfect composure.

  “It’s ages that we’ve now been waiting for you. So we’d like you to start right away. Wouldn’t we?” says Waverhouse, turning to look at my master. The latter, thus forced to respond, somewhat reluctantly says,

  “Hmm.” But Coldmoon’s in no hurry. He remarks, “I think I’ll have a glass of water, please.”

  “I see you are going to do it in real style. You’ll be calling next for a round of applause.” Waverhouse, but he alone, seems to be enjoying himself.

  Coldmoon produced his text from an inside pocket and observed,

  “Since it is the established practice, may I say I would welcome criticism.”That invitation made, he at last begins to deliver his lecture.

  “Hanging as a death penalty appears to have originated among the Anglo-Saxons. Previously, in ancient times, hanging was mainly a method of committing suicide. I understand that among the Hebrews it was customary to execute criminals by stoning them to death. Study of the Old Testament reveals that the word ‘hanging’ is there used to mean ‘suspending a criminal’s body after death for wild beasts and birds of prey to devour it.’According to Herodotus, it would seem that the Jews, even before they departed from Egypt, abominated the mere thought that their dead bodies might be left exposed at night. The Egyptians used to behead a criminal, nail the torso to a cross and leave it exposed during the night. The Persians. . .”

  “Steady on, Coldmoon,” Waverhouse interrupts. “You seem to be drifting farther and farther away from the subject of hanging. Do you think that wise?”

  “Please be patient. I am just coming to the main subject. Now, with respect to the Persians. They, too, seemed to have used crucifixion as a method of criminal execution. However, whether the nailing took place while the criminal was alive or simply after his death is not incontrovertibly established.”

  “Who cares? Such details are really of little importance,” yawned my master as from boredom.

  “There are still many matters of which I’d like to inform you but, as it will perhaps prove tedious for you . . .”

  “ ‘As it might prove’ would sound better than ‘as it will perhaps prove.’ What d’you think, Sneaze?” Waverhouse starts carping again but my master answers coldly, “What difference could it make?”

  “I have now come to the main subject, and will accordingly recite my piece.”

  “A storyteller ‘recites a piece.’An orator should use more elegant diction.”Waverhouse again interrupts.

  “If to ‘recite my piece’ sounds vulgar, what words should I use?” asks Coldmoon in a voice that showed he was somewhat nettled.

  “It is never clear, when one is dealing with Waverhouse, whether he’s listening or interrupting. Pay no attention to his heckling, Coldmoon, just keep going.” My master seeks to find a way through the difficulty as quickly as possible.

  “So, having made your indignant recitation, now I suppose you’ve found the willow tree?” With a pun on a little known haiku, Waverhouse, as usual, comes up with something odd. Coldmoon, in spite of himself, broke into laughter.

  “My researches reveal that the first account of the employment of hanging as a deliberate means of execution occurs in the Odyssey, volume twenty-two. The relevant passage records how Telemachus arranged the execution by hanging of Penelope’s twelve ladies-in-waiting. I could read the passage aloud in its original Greek, but, since such an act might be regarded as an affectation, I will refrain from doing so. You will, however, find the passage between lines 465 and 473.”

  “You’d better cut out all that Hellenic stuff. It sounds as if you are just showing off your knowledge of Greek. What do you think, Sneaze?”

  “On that point, I agree with you. It would be more modest, altogether an improvement, to avoid such ostentation.” Quite unusually my master immediately sides with Waverhouse. The reason is, of course, that neither can read a word of Greek.

  “Very well, I will this evening omit those references. And now I will recite. . . that is to say, I will now continue. Let us consider, then, how a hanging is actually carried out. One can envisage two methods. The first method is that adopted by Telemachus who, with the help of Eumaeus and Philoetios, tied one end of a rope to the top of a pillar: next, having made several loose loops in the rope, he forced a woman’s head through each such loop, and finally hauled up hard on the other end of the rope.”

  “In short, he had the women dangling in a row like shirts hung out at a laundry. Right?”

  “Exactly. Now the second method is, as in the first case, to tie one end of a rope to the top of a pillar and similarly to secure the other end of the rope somewhere high up on the ceiling. Thereafter, several other short ropes are attached to the main rope, and in each of these subsidiary ropes a slip-knot is then tied. The women’s heads are then inserted in the slipknots. The idea is that at the crucial moment you remove the stools on which the women have been stood.”

  “They would then look something like those ball-shaped paper-lanterns one sometimes sees suspended from the end-tips of rope curtains, wouldn’t they?” hazarded Waverhouse.

  “That I cannot say,” answered Coldmoon cautiously. “I have never seen any such ball as a paper-lantern-ball, but if such balls exist, the resemblance may be just. Now, the first method as described in the Odyssey is, in fact, mechanically impossible; and I shall proceed, for your benefit, to substantiate that statement.”

  “How interesting,” says Waverhouse.

  “Indeed, most interesting,” adds my master.

  “Let us suppose that the women are to be hanged at intervals of an equal distance, and that the rope between the two women nearest the ground stretches out horizontally, right? Now α1, α2 up to α6 become the angles between the rope and the horizon. T1, T2, and so on up to T6 represent the force exerted on each section of the rope, so that T7 = X is the force exerted on the lowest part of the rope. W is, of course, the weight of the women. So far so good. Are you with me?”

  My master and Waverhouse exchange glances and say, “Yes, more or less.” I need hardly point out that the value of this “more or less” is singular to Waverhouse and my master. It could possibly have a different value for other people.

  “Well, in accordance with the theory of averages as applied to the polygon, a theory with which you must of course be well acquainted, the following twelve equations can, in this particular case, be established:

  T1 cos αl=T2 cos α2......(1)

  T2 cos α2=T3 cos α3......(2)”

  “I think that’s enough of the equations,” my master irresponsibly remarks.

  “But these equations are the very essence of my lecture.” Coldmoon really seems reluctant to be parted from them.

  “In that case, let’s hear those particular parts of its very essence at some other time.” Waverhouse, too, seems out of his depth.

  “But if I omit the full detail of the equations, it becomes impossible to substantiate the mechanical studies to which I have devoted so much effort. . .”

  “Oh, never mind that. Cut them all out,” came the cold-blooded comment of my master.

  “That’s most unreasonable. However, since you insist, I will omit them.”

  “That’s good,” says Waverhouse, unexpectedly clapping his hands.

  “Now we come to England where, in Beowulf, we find the word ‘gallows’: that is to say ‘galga.’ It follows that hanging as a penalty must have been in use as early as the period with which the book is concerned.

  According to Blackstone, a convicted person who is not killed at his first hanging by reason of some fault in the rope should simply be hanged again. But, oddly enough, one finds it stated in The Vision
of Piers Plowman that even a murderer should not be strung up twice. I do not know which statement is correct, but there are many melancholy instances of victims failing to be killed outright. In 1786 the authorities attempted to hang a notorious villain named Fitzgerald, but when the stool was removed, by some strange chance the rope broke. At the next attempt the rope proved so long that his legs touched ground and he again survived. In the end, at the third attempt, he was enabled to die with the help of the spectators.”

  “Well, well,” says Waverhouse becoming, as was only to be expected, re-enlivened.

  “A true thanatophile.” Even my master shows signs of jollity.

  “There is one other interesting fact. A hanged person grows taller by about an inch. This is perfectly true. Doctors have measured it.”

  “That’s a novel notion. How about it, Sneaze?” says Waverhouse turning to my master. “Try getting hanged. If you were an inch taller, you might acquire the appearance of an ordinary human being.” The reply, however, was delivered with an unexpected gravity.

  “Tell me, Coldmoon, is there any chance of surviving that process of extension by one inch?”

  “Absolutely none. The point is that it is the spinal cord which gets stretched in hanging. It’s more a matter of breaking than of growing taller.”

  “In that case, I won’t try.” My master abandons hope.

  There was still a good deal of the lecture left to deliver and Coldmoon had clearly been anxious to deal with the question of the physiological function of hanging. But Waverhouse made so many and such capriciously-phrased interjections and my master yawned so rudely and so frequently that Coldmoon finally broke off his rehearsal in mid-flow and took his leave. I cannot tell you what oratorical triumphs he achieved, still less what gestures he employed that evening, because the lecture took place miles away from me.

  A few days passed uneventfully by. Then, one day about two in the afternoon, Waverhouse dropped in with his usual casual manners and looking as totally uninhibited as his own concept of the “Accidental Child.” The minute he sat down he asked abruptly, “Have you heard about Beauchamp Blowlamp and the Takanawa Incident?” He spoke excitedly, in a tone of voice appropriate to an announcement of the fall of Port Arthur.

  “No, I haven’t seen him lately.” My master is his usual cheerless self.

  “I’ve come today, although I’m busy, especially to inform you of the frightful blunder which Beauchamp has committed.”

  “You’re exaggerating again. Indeed you’re quite impossible.”

  “Impossible, never: improbable, perhaps. I must ask you to make a distinction on this point, for it affects my honor.”

  “It’s the same thing,” replied my master assuming an air of provoking indifference. He is the very image of a Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man.

  “Last Sunday, Beauchamp went to the Sengaku Temple at Takanawa, which was silly in this cold weather, especially when to make such a visit nowadays stamps one as a country bumpkin out to see the sights.”

  “But Beauchamp’s his own master. You’ve no right to stop him going.”

  “True, I haven’t got the right, so let’s not bother about that. The point is that the temple yard contains a showroom displaying relics of the forty-seven ronin. Do you know it?”

  “N-no.”

  “You don’t? But surely you’ve been to the Temple?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I am surprised. No wonder you so ardently defended Beauchamp. But it’s positively shameful that a citizen of Tokyo should never have visited the Sengaku Temple.”

  “One can contrive to teach without trailing out to the ends of the city.” My master grows more and more like his blessed Natural Man.

  “All right. Anyway, Beauchamp was examining the relics when a married couple, Germans as it happened, entered the showroom. They began by asking him questions in Japanese, but, as you know, Beauchamp is always aching to practice his German so he naturally responded by rattling off a few words in that language. Apparently he did it rather well.

  Indeed, when one thinks back over the whole deplorable incident, his very fluency was the root cause of the trouble.”

  “Well, what happened?” My master finally succumbs.

  “The Germans pointed out a gold-lacquered pill-box which had belonged to Otaka Gengo and, saying they wished to buy it, asked Beauchamp if the object were for sale. Beauchamp’s reply was not uninteresting. He said such a purchase would be quite impossible because all Japanese people were true gentlemen of the sternest integrity. Up to that point he was doing fine. However, the Germans, thinking that they’d found a useful interpreter, thereupon deluged him with questions.”

  “About what?”

  “That’s just it. If he had understood their questions, there would have been no trouble. But you see he was subjected to floods of such questions, all delivered in rapid German, and he simply couldn’t make head or tail of what was being asked. When at last he chanced to understand part of their outpourings, it was something about a fireman’s axe or a mallet—some word he couldn’t translate—so again, naturally, he was completely at a loss how to reply.”

  “That I can well imagine,” sympathizes my master, thinking of his own difficulties as a teacher.

  “Idle onlookers soon began to gather around and eventually Beauchamp and the Germans were totally surrounded by staring eyes.

  In his confusion Beauchamp fell to blushing. In contrast to his earlier self-confidence he was now at his wit’s end.”

  “How did it all turn out?”

  “In the end Beauchamp could stand it no longer, shouted sainara in Japanese and came rushing home. I pointed out to him that sainara was an odd phrase to use and inquired whether, in his home-district, people used sainara rather than sayonara. He replied they would say sayonara but, since he was talking to Europeans, he had used sainara in order to maintain harmony. I must say I was much impressed to find him a man mindful of harmony even when in difficulties.”

  “So that’s the bit about sainara. What did the Europeans do?”

  “I hear that the Europeans looked utterly flabbergasted.” And Waverhouse gave vent to laughter. “Interesting, eh?”

  “Frankly, no. I really can’t find anything particularly interesting in your story. But that you should have come here specially to tell me the tale, that I do find much more interesting.” My master taps his cigarette’s ash into the brazier. Just at that moment the bell on the lattice door at the entrance rang with an alarming loudness, and a piercing woman’s voice declared, “Excuse me.” Waverhouse and my master look at each other in silence.

  Even while I am thinking that it is unusual for my master’s house to have a female visitor, the owner of that piercing voice enters the room.

  She is wearing two layers of silk crepe kimono, and looks to be a little over forty. Her forelock towers up above the bald expanse of her brow like the wall of a dyke and sticks out toward heaven for easily one half the length of her face. Her eyes, set at an angle like a road cut through a mountain, slant up symmetrically in straight lines. I speak, of course, metaphorically. Her eyes, in fact, are even narrower than those of a whale. But her nose is exceedingly large. It gives the impression that it has been stolen from someone else and thereafter fastened in the center of her face. It is as if a large, stone lantern from some major shrine had been moved to a tiny ten-square-meter garden.

  It certainly asserts its own importance, but yet looks out of place. It could almost be termed hooked: it begins by jutting sharply out, but then, halfway along its length, it suddenly turns shy so that its tip, bereft of the original vigour, hangs limply down to peer into the mouth below.

  Her nose is such that, when she speaks, it is the nose rather than the mouth which seems to be in action. Indeed, in homage to the enormity of that organ, I shall refer hence forward to its owner as Madam Conk.

  When the ceremonials of her self-introduction had been completed, she glared around the room and remarked,
“What a nice house.”

  “What a liar,” says my master to himself, and concentrates upon his smoking. Waverhouse studies the ceiling. “Tell me,” he says, “is that odd pattern the result of a rain leak or is it inherent in the grain of the wood?”

  “Rain leak, naturally” replies my master. To which Waverhouse coolly answers, “Wonderful.”

  Madam Conk clearly regards them as unsociable persons and boils quietly with suppressed annoyance. For a time the three of them just sit there in a triangle without saying a word.

  “I’ve come to ask you about a certain matter.” Madam Conk starts up again.

  “Ah.” My master’s response lacks warmth.

  Madam Conk, dissatisfied with this development, bestirs herself again. “I live nearby. In fact, at the residence on the corner of the block across the road.”

  “That large house in the European style, the one with a godown? Ah, yes. Of course. Have I not seen ‘Goldfield’ on the nameplate of that dwelling?” My master, at last, seems ready to take cognizance of Goldfield’s European house and his incorporated godown, but his attitude toward Madam Conk displays no deepening of respect.

  “Of course my husband should call upon you and seek your valued advice, but he is always so busy with his company affairs.” She puts on a “that ought to shift them” face, but my master remains entirely unimpressed. He is, in fact, displeased by her manner of speaking, finding it too direct in a woman met for the first time. “And not of just one company either. He is connected with two or three of them and is a director of them all, as I expect you already know.” She looks as if saying to herself, “Now surely he should feel small.” In point of fact, the master of this house behaves most humbly toward anyone who happens to be a doctor or a professor, but, oddly enough, he offers scant respect toward businessmen. He considers a middle school teacher to be a more elevated person than any businessman. Even if he doesn’t really believe this, he is quite resigned, being of an unadaptable nature, to the fact that he can never hope to be smiled upon by businessmen or millionaires.