“Well, what about Wellington then? His troops used to call him Nosey. Did you know that?”
“Why on earth are you so batty about noses? Surely it doesn’t matter if a nose happens to be round or pointed.”
“On the contrary, it matters very much. D’you know about Pascal?”
“Questions, questions! Am I supposed to be taking an exam or something? No, I don’t know about Pascal. What did he do?”
“He had this to say.”
“What to say?”
“‘Had Cleopatra’s nose been a little bit shorter, the history of the world would have been changed.’”
“Did he now!”
“Perhaps now you see why one can’t afford to underestimate the importance of noses.”
“All right, I’ll be more careful in future. By the way, I dropped in today because there’s something I’d like to ask you. It’s about a chap you used to teach. Avalon something or other. I can’t remember his other name, but I understand that you and he see a lot of each other.”
“You mean Coldmoon?”
“That’s it, Coldmoon. Well, I’ve really come to make enquiries about him.”
“About a matrimonial matter?”
“One might say that. You see, I called in earlier on the Goldfields. . .”
“The Nose herself came sniffing round here only the other day.”
“Did she? Well, as a matter of fact she mentioned that she’d called. She said she’d paid a visit in order to present her respects to Mr. Sneaze and to entreat his assistance in a matter of information, but that Waverhouse was present and made so many and such frivolous interruptions that she just got muddled.”
“It was all her own fault. Coming round here with a nose like that.”
“She spoke of you with the deepest respect. She’s just regretful that the performance put on by Waverhouse made it impossible to ask you certain personal questions about Coldmoon, and she has therefore asked me to speak on her behalf. For what it’s worth, I’ve never before played the part of an honest broker in matters of this sort, but if the two parties most directly concerned are not against the idea, it’s not a bad thing to serve as a go-between and so bring about a marriage. Indeed, that’s the reason for my present visit.”
“How kind of you to call,” commented my master somewhat acidly.
But, though he could not explain his feeling, he was inwardly a little moved by that phrase about “the two parties most directly concerned.”
Its slightly sentimental appeal made him feel as though a wraith of cool air had drifted through his sleeves on a hot and humid summer’s night.
It is true that my master’s character is based on so firm an inborn bedrock of cold reserve and obstinacy that he is, by nature, one of this world’s wet blankets. Nevertheless, his nature is of a completely different type from that of the vicious, heartless products of modern civilization. The antique mold of his nature is clearly evidenced in the way in which he flares up at the slightest provocation. The sole reason for his barney with Madam Conk was that he could not stand her modern-day approach. But his flat dislike of the mother was no fault of her daughter.
Similarly, because he abominates all businessmen, he finds Goldfield acutely distasteful: yet here again, no blame can be laid on the daughter.
Sneaze bears no real ill-will toward her, and Coldmoon is his favorite pupil and he loves that lad more deeply than he would a brother. If Suzuki is correct in his statement that the two parties most directly concerned do, in fact, love each other, then it would be an act unworthy of a gentleman even indirectly to hinder true love’s course. Sneaze is quite convinced that he himself is a gentleman, so his only remaining question is whether Coldmoon and Miss Goldfield are in love. He must, if he is to amend his attitude, first be sure of the facts.
“Tell me, does that girl really want to marry Coldmoon? I don’t care what Goldfield or the Nose feel about the matter, but what are the girl’s own feelings?”
“Well, you see. . . that is, I understand. . . well, yes, I suppose she does.” Suzuki’s answer is not exactly clear-cut. Thinking that all he had to do was to find out more about Coldmoon, he came unbriefed on Opula’s view of the match; so even this slippery lad now finds himself in a bit of a jam.
“The word ‘suppose’ implies some measure of uncertainty.” My master, tactless as ever and not a man to be put off, goes in again like a bull at a gate.
“True enough. Perhaps I should have expressed myself more clearly.
Now, the daughter certainly has a certain inclination. Indeed, that’s true.
What? Oh yes, Mrs. Goldfield told me so herself, though I gather she sometimes says some awful things about Coldmoon.”
“Who does? D’you mean the daughter?”
“Yes.”
“What impudence! That snip of a girl disparaging Coldmoon! Well, it can hardly mean that she cares for him.”
“But that’s just it. Odd you may think it, but sometimes people do run down precisely those they love.”
“I can’t conceive that anyone could be so deranged as to behave like that.” Such intricate convolutions of human nature are quite beyond my master’s blunt and simple mind.
“In fact the world is full of such people. Certainly that’s how Mrs.
Goldfield interprets her daughter’s comments. She said to me ‘My daughter must be quite taken with that young Coldmoon, for I’ve even heard her say he looks like a bewildered gourd.’”
These revelations of the strangeness of the human heart leave my master dumbstruck. Wide-eyed and wordless, he stares in astonishment at Suzuki as though he were some soothsayer wandered in from the street. Suzuki seems to have the mind to sense the danger implicit in my master’s unbelief and, fearful lest further discussion should wreck his whole approach, quickly changes the subject to aspects of the matter which even my master cannot fail to understand.
“Consider these facts,” he said. “With her good looks and money that girl can marry almost where she chooses. Now Coldmoon may be a splendid fellow, but comparing their relative social positions. . . No, such comparisons are always odious and could be taken as offensive. So let me put it this way: that, in terms of personal means, the couple are obviously ill-matched. Surely then, you can see that if the Goldfields are so worried that they ask me to come round here and talk to you, that very fact indicates the strength and nature of their daughter’s yearnings?” One can’t deny Suzuki’s clever. He is relieved to notice that my master seems impressed by his latest line of argument, but realizing that the question of the degree of bleeding in Miss Goldfield’s heart is likely to be re-opened if he allows the conversation to loiter on her feelings about Coldmoon, he concludes that the best way to complete his mission is to drive the discussion forward as quickly as possible.
“So, you see, as I’ve just explained, the Goldfields aren’t expecting money or property; what they’d like instead is that Coldmoon should have some status of his own, and by status they mean the public recognition of qualification that is symbolized in a senior degree. It’s not that they’re so stuck-up as to say that they’ll only consider giving him their daughter if he holds a doctorate. You mustn’t misunderstand them.
Things got jumbled up the other day when Mrs. Goldfield called on you purely because Waverhouse chose to amuse himself with his usual display of verbal fireworks and distorting mirrors. No, no, please don’t protest. I know it was none of your fault. Mrs. Goldfield spoke in admiration of you as a frank and honest man. I’m certain that the blame and any awkwardness that may have arisen must be laid at Waverhouse’s door. Anyway, you see, the nub of the matter is this: if Coldmoon can get a doctorate, he would have independent status. People would naturally look up to Dr. Coldmoon, and the Goldfields would be proud of such a son-in-law. So what are the chances of Coldmoon’s making an early submission of his thesis and receiving his doctorate? You see, so far as the Goldfields themselves are concerned, they’d be the last to demand a doctor’s
degree, they wouldn’t even ask for a bachelor’s. But they have to consider what the world and his wife will say, and when dealing with the world one simply cannot be too careful.”
So presented, the Goldfields’ request for a doctorate seems not altogether unreasonable, and anything he deems not altogether unreasonable qualifies for my master’s support. He feels inclined to act as Suzuki suggests. Suzuki, it is clear, can twiddle my master around his artful little finger. I recognize my master as indeed a simple, honest man.
“Well, in that case, next time Coldmoon drops around, I’ll urge him to get on with his thesis. However, I feel that I must first question him closely to ascertain whether or not he really wants to marry that Goldfield girl.”
“Question him closely! If you act with such meticulous formality, the business will never get settled. The quickest way to a happy ending is to sound his mind, casually, in the course of an ordinary conversation.”
“To sound his mind?”
“Yes, but perhaps the word ‘sound’ is not quite right since it can be thought to smack of indirection. Of course I’m not suggesting deception of any kind. What I mean is that you would understand the drift of his mind in this matter from simply talking with him about generalities.”
“You might understand, but I wouldn’t unless I ask him point-blank.”
“Ah well, I suppose that’s up to you. But I don’t think it would be reasonable to ruin a romance by slinging cold water on it, quite unnecessarily and even for fun, like Waverhouse. Perhaps one doesn’t need actually to jostle them into marriage, but surely in matters of this sort, the two parties most directly concerned should be left undistracted by irrelevant outside influences to settle their future for themselves. So next time Coldmoon calls, try, please, not to interfere. Of course I don’t mean you yourself. I’m referring to Waverhouse; nobody emerges scatheless whom Waverhouse discusses.” Since Suzuki could not very well speak ill of my master, he spoke thus bitterly against Waverhouse, when, talk of the devil, who should come floating unexpectedly in on a spring breeze through the kitchen but Waverhouse himself.
“Hello,” he said, throwing the accent onto the second syllable, “a visitor from the past! I haven’t seen you in years. You know,” he rattled on,
“Sneaze treats intimate friends like me with scant ceremony. Shocking behavior! One ought to visit him roughly once a decade. Those sweets, for instance, you wouldn’t get those if you called here often.” Scanting all ceremony,Waverhouse reaches over and crams his mouth with a large piece of red-bean sugar-paste confection from the well-known Fujimura shop. Suzuki fidgets. My master grins. Waverhouse munches. As from the veranda I watched this interlude, I realized that good theater need not depend upon speech, that high dramatic effect can be achieved with mime. The Zen sect practices instantaneous mental communication of truth from mind to mind in dialogues of silence. The dumb show going on within the room is, no doubt, a version of that practice; and the dialogue, though brief is pretty sharply worded. It was, of course, Waverhouse who broke the silence.
“I’d thought, Suzuki, that you’d become a bird of permanent passage, always coming or going somewhere, but I see you’ve landed back. The longer one lives, the greater the chance that something odd will turn up.” Waverhouse babbles away to Suzuki with that same complete absence of reserve which characterizes his conversations with my master. Though they lodged together in their student days, still it would be normal for a man to address someone whom he hasn’t seen for at least ten years with a little more formality. Except when that man is Waverhouse. That he pays not the least regard to the requirements of convention marks him out as either a superior soul or a rightdown job-bernowl. But which one cannot say.
“That’s a little hard. Aren’t you being a trifle pessimistic,” commented Suzuki noncommittally, but his way of fingering his watch-chain betrayed a continuing unease.
“Tell me, have you ever ridden on a tram?” My master shot this sudden and peculiar enquiry at Suzuki.
“It seems that I’ve come here today simply to provide you two city-wits with a laughingstock on which to hone your singular sense of humor. Though it’s true that I’m very much up from the provinces, I actually happen to own some sixty shares in the Tram Company of your precious city.”
“Well, that’s not to be sneezed at! I myself once used to own eight hundred and eighty-eight and a half of them. But I’m sorry to say that the vast majority have now been eaten by insects, so that I’ve nothing but one single half-share left. If you’d come up to Tokyo a little bit earlier, I would gladly have given you some ten shares that, until very recently, the moths had not yet got at. What a sad misfortune.”
“I see you haven’t changed your personal style of ridicule. But joking apart, you’re bound to do well if you just hang on to stocks of that quality. They cannot fail, year after year, to climb in value.”
“Quite right. Even half a share, provided one holds it for roughly a thousand years, will end up making you so rich you’ll need three stron-grooms. You and I, razor-minded fellows with our senses keyed to the economic inwardness of these stirring times, are, of course, keenly conscious of the significance of stocks. But what about poor Sneaze? Just look at him. To him,” said Waverhouse, conferring on my master a look of withering pity, “stocks are no more than some vague kind of gillyflower.” He helped himself to another piece of confectionery. His appetite is contagious, for my master, too, stretches out his arm toward the sweet dish. It is in the immutable nature of the human world that positivity should triumph, that initiative be aped.
“I do not care two hoots about stocks or shares, but I do wish poor old Sorosaki had lived to ride, if only once, on a tram.” With morose concentration my master studies the pattern cut by his teeth in his half-eaten sweet.
“Had Sorosaki ever got into a tram, sure as egg is egg, he’d have finished up at the end of the line in Shinagawa. He was an absent-minded man. He’s better off where he is now, engraved upon a weight-stone as Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man. At least he knows where he is.”
“I’d heard that Sorosaki had died. I’m sorry. He was a brainy chap,” says Suzuki.
“Brainy, all right,”Waverhouse chipped in, “but when it came to cooking rice he was a positive imbecile. Every time it came round to Sorosaki’s turn to do the cooking, I contrived to keep body and soul together by eating out on noodles.”
“True, Sorosaki’s rice had the peculiar characteristics of smelling burnt yet being undercooked. I, too, used to suffer. What’s more, he had an odd way with the accompanying bean-curds. Uncooked and so cold that one could not eat them.” Suzuki dredges up a grievance ten years old.
“Even in those days Sneaze was Sorosaki’s closest friend. They used to trot off together every evening to gulp down rice-cakes swamped in red-bean soup, and, as a proper and inevitable result, Sneaze is now a martyr to dyspepsia. As a matter of fact, since it was Sneaze who always guzzled most, he should by rights have predeceased his crony.”
“What extraordinary chains of logic do run around in your contraption of a mind. Anyway,” remarked my master, “there was nothing particularly reprehensible about my going out for sweet-bean soup. As I remember it, your own evening expeditions took the form of haunting a graveyard in order to beat up tombstones with a bamboo stick. You called it physical exercise, but that didn’t save you from a right old rap on the knuckles when the priest came out and caught you.” In this exchange of student reminiscence I thought my master’s counter-swipe with the tombstones far more telling than that dribble of soup from Waverhouse. Indeed, by his laughter,Waverhouse himself acknowledged the defeat.
“Indeed,” he said, “I well remember that priest. He told me I was thumping on the noddles of the dear departed, which would disturb their sleep. So, would I please desist. All I did was to make some practice passes with a bamboo wand, but General Suzuki here, training his body with wrestlers’ drills, engaged those stones in violent personal combat. I recall that on o
ne occasion he wrestled loose and overthrew three monuments of assorted sizes.”
“That did annoy the priest. He got quite fierce about it, insisting I restore my victims to their original positions. I asked him to hold his horses for a moment while I went and hired some navvies for the job, but he wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Navvies,’ he said, ‘won’t do. Only your own hands can purge the evil they have done. The dead will accept no penitence but yours.’”
“And what a sight you were! Moaning and groaning through those muddy puddles in a calico shirt and a loincloth tied with string. . .”
“And I remember you, with a coldly serious face you stood and sketched me as I struggled with those goddam stones. Such utter heartlessness. I’m very slow to anger, but at that time, from the bottom of my heart, I ached to kill you for your insultingly dispassionate detachment.
I can still remember what you said that day. Can you, I wonder?”
“How could anyone remember what was said ten years ago. I do, however, recall the words engraved on one of the stones: Returning Fountain Hall, Lord Yellow Crane the Great Deceased, January 1776.
The stone, moreover, was antique and elegant. I was tempted to make off with it. Its general style was Gothic and chimed entrancingly with those aesthetic principles I cherish.” Waverhouse is off again, flaunting his gimcrack knowledge of aesthetics. Whoever heard of Japanese Gothic from 1776. . .
“That’s as may be, but listen to what you said. These are your very words. ‘Since I propose to devote my days to the study of aesthetics, I must, for future reference, grasp each and every opportunity to set down upon paper any event of interest in this universe which comes before my eyes.’What’s more, you were kind enough to dispassionately add ‘A man such as I, one totally and exclusively committed to the pursuit of learning, cannot permit himself the luxury of such personal feelings as those of pity or compassion.’ I could have done you in for such nonchalance. But all I did, in fact, was to grab your sketchbook with my muddied hands and rip the thing to ribbons.”
I Am a Cat Page 19