I Am a Cat

by Sōseki Natsume

  It is just not natural to knit one’s brows, to blow one’s nose, or to draw great sighs over the misfortunes of complete strangers. I simply do not believe the human animal is capable of showing such understanding and compassion. People sometimes squeeze out a few tears or try looking sorry as a kind of social obligation, a sort of tax-payment due in acknowledgement of having been born into a community. But such gestures are never heart felt, and their effective performance, like any other act of chicanery, does in fact demand a high degree of skill. Persons who perform these trickeries most artfully are regarded as men of strong artistic feelings and earn the deepest respect of their less-gifted fellows.

  It follows, of course, that those who are most highly esteemed are those most morally dubious, an axiom which can easily be proved by putting it to the test. My master, being extremely ham-handed in matters of this kind, commands not the least respect and, having no hope of winning respect by crafty misrepresentation of his true feelings, is quite open in expressing his inner cold-heartedness. The sincerity of his indifference emerges very clearly from the way in which he fobs off poor young Yore’s repeated pleas for help with repetitions of the same old formulae: “Well, I don’t know” and “Hmm, I wonder.” I hasten to comment that I trust my readers will not begin to dislike so good a man as my master just because he happens to be cold-hearted. Coldness is the inborn natural condition of the human heart, and the man who does not hide that fact is honest. If in circumstances such as I’ve described, you really are expecting something more than cold-heartedness, then I can only say that you have sadly overestimated the worth of humankind.

  When even mere honesty is in notably short supply, it would be absolutely ridiculous to expect displays of magnanimity. Or do you seriously believe that the Eight Good Men have stepped out of the pages of Bakin’s silly novel in order to take up residence in our neighborhood?

  So much for my master. Let us now consider his womenfolk tittering away together in the living room. They, in fact, have gone a stage beyond the pure indifference of my master and, naturally adapted as they are to the comic and the grotesque, are thoroughly enjoying themselves. These females regard the matter of the love letter, a matter of excruciating concern to that miserable crophead, as a gift from a kindly heaven. There is no particular reason why they regard it as a blessing. It just seems like one to them. However, if one analyzes their mirth, the simple fact is that they are glad that Yore’s in trouble. Ask any female whether she finds it amusing, even a cause for outright laughter, when other people are in trouble, and she will either call you mad or affect to have been deliberately insulted by a question so demeaning to the dignity of her sex. It may well be true that she feels she’s been insulted, but it is also true that she laughs at people in trouble. The reality of this ladylike position is that, inasmuch as the lady intends to do something that would impugn her character, no decent person should draw attention to the fact.

  Correspondingly, the gentleman’s position is to acknowledge that he steals but to insist that nobody should call him immoral because an accusation of immorality would involve a stain on his character, an insult to his good name. Women are quite clever: they think logically. If one has the ill luck to be born a human being, one must prepare oneself not to be distressed that other people will not so much as turn to look when you are being kicked and beaten up. And not just that. One must learn to think it a pleasure to be spat upon, shat upon, and then held up to be laughed at. If one cannot learn these simple lessons, there is no chance of becoming a friend of such clever creatures as women. By an understandable error of judgement the luckless Lancelot Yore has made a sad mistake and is now greatly humiliated. He might possibly feel that it is uncivilized to snigger at him behind his back when he is thus humiliated, but any such feeling on his part would simply be a demonstration of pure childishness. I understand that women call it narrow-mindedness if one gets angry with persons who commit a breach of etiquette. So, unless young Yore is prepared to acquire that further humiliation, he’d best belt up.

  Finally, I will offer a brief analysis of Yore’s own inward feelings. That infantile suppliant is a living lump of quivering anxiety. Just as Napoleon’s massive head was bulgy with ambitions, so Yore’s gurt skull is bursting with anxiety. The occasional puppylike quivering of his pudgy nose betrays that this inner distress has forced a connection with his nasal nerves so that, by the nastiest of reflex actions, he twitches without knowing it. Now for several days he has been at the end of his tether, going around with a lump in his stomach as though he’d swallowed a cannon ball. Finally, at his wits’ end and in the extremity of his desperation, he has come to humble his head before a teacher he most cordially dislikes. I imagine the addled thinking behind this desperate act was that, since teachers are supposed to look after their pupils, perhaps even the loathed Sneaze might somehow help him. Lost in the miasma of his inner agony is any recollection of his habitual ragging of my master; forgotten, too, is the fact that he spent his witless days in egging on his fellow hooligans to hoot and mock old Savage Tea. He seems to believe that, however much he’s made a nuisance of himself he’s actually entitled to his teacher’s help for the single reason that he happens to be a member of that teacher’s class. He is indeed a very simple soul. My master did not choose the class he teaches: he was directed to that work by order of the headmaster. I am reminded of that bowler hat of Waverhouse’s uncle. It was no more than a bowler hat in name. The idea of my master as a teacher who is also the mentor of his pupils is equally unreal. Teacher, sneacher. A name means nothing. If it did, any marriage broker would by now have been able to interest some aspiring bachelor in a girl with a name as beautiful as that snow river name of Yukie’s. The dismal Yore is not only daftly egocentric but, daftly overestimating human kindliness, assumes that his fellow creatures are under some form of obligation to be nice to him. I’m sure he has never dreamt that he might be laughed at, so at least he’s learning some useful home truths about his species from his visit to the home of the “person in charge.” As a result, he will himself become more truly human. His heart, benignly chilled, will grow indifferent to other people’s troubles and, in time, he’ll even learn to jeer at the distressed. The world will come to swarm with little Yores, all doing their best to stretch themselves into full-blown Goldfields. For the lad’s sake, I do hope he learns his lesson quickly and grows up soon into his full humanity. Otherwise, no matter how hard he worries, no matter how bitterly he repents, no matter how fervently his heart may yearn to be reformed, he can never so much as hope to be able to achieve the spectacular success of that model of humanity, the highly respected Goldfield. On the contrary, he will be banished from human society. Compared with that, expulsion from some piddling middle school would be as nothing.

  I was idly amusing myself with these reflections when the sliding door from the hall was roughly jerked aside and half a face suddenly appeared at the opening. My master was mumbling, “Well, I really don’t know,” when this half-face called his name. He wrenched his head around to find a shining segment of Avalon Coldmoon beaming down upon him.

  “Why, hello,” says my master making no move to get up,“come along in.”

  “Aren’t you busy with a visitor?” the visible half of Coldmoon asks politely.

  “Never mind about that. Come on in.”

  “Actually, I’ve called to ask you to come out with me.”

  “Where to? Akasaka once again? I’ve had enough of that district. You made me walk so much the other day that my legs are still quite stiff.”

  “It will be all right today. Come on out and give those legs a stretch.”

  “Where would we go? Look, don’t just stand there. Come along in.”

  “My idea is that we should go to the zoo and hear their tiger roar.”

  “How dreary. I say, old man, do come in if only for a few minutes.”

  Coldmoon evidently came to the conclusion that he would not succeed by negotiating from a distance
so, reluctantly removing his shoes, he slouched into the room. As usual, he is wearing gray trousers with patches on the seat. These patches, he is always telling us, are not there either because the trousers are old or because his bottom is too heavy. The reason is that he has just started to learn how to ride a bicycle, and the patches are needed to resist the extra friction involved. Greeting Yore with a nod and a brief hello, he sits down on the veranda side of the room. He has, of course, no idea that he is now sitting down with a direct rival in the lists of love, with the very person who has sent a love letter to that damsel now regarded by all and sundry as the future Mrs. Coldmoon.

  “There’s nothing particularly interesting about a tiger’s roar,” observed my master.

  “Well, not just at this exact moment. But my idea is that we should walk about for a bit and then go on to the zoo around eleven.”

  “So?”

  “By then, the old trees in the park will be darkly frightening like a silent forest.”

  “Well, possibly. Certainly, it will be a little more deserted than by daytime.”

  “We’ll follow a path as thickly wooded as possible, one where even in daytime few people pass. Then, before you know it, we’ll find ourselves thinking we’re far away from the dusty city and a feeling, I’m sure, will grow within us that we’ve somehow wandered away into far-off mountains.”

  “What does one do with a feeling like that?”

  “Feeling like that, we’ll just stand there, silent and motionless for a little while. Then, suddenly, the roar of a tiger will burst upon us.”

  “Is the tiger trained to roar precisely at that moment?”

  “I guarantee he’ll roar. Even in broad day that fearsome sound can be heard all the way over at the Science University. So, after dark, in the very dead of night, when not a soul’s about in the deep-hushed loneliness, when death can be felt in the air and one breathes the reek of evil mountain spirits. . .”

  “Breathing the reek of evil mountain spirits? Whatever does that mean?”

  “I understand it’s an expression used to signify a condition of extreme terror.”

  “Is it indeed. Not an expression in common use. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard it before. Anyway, what then?”

  “Then the tiger roars. A savage shattering roar that seems to strip each shaking leaf from the ancient cedar trees. Really, it’s terrifying.”

  “I can well believe it is.”

  “Well then, how about joining me for such an adventure? I’m sure we’ll enjoy it. An experience to be treasured. Everyone, sometime, that’s how I see it, really ought to hear a tiger roar from the depths of night.”

  “Well,” says my master, “I don’t know. . . ” He drops on Coldmoon’s enthusiastic proposal for an expedition the same wet blanket of indifference with which he has muzzled Yore’s agonized entreaties.

  Up until this moment that dim nincompoop has been listening, enviously and in silence, to the talk about the tiger, but as a hypnotist’s key phrase will bring his subject to his senses, my master’s repetition of his indifference snapped Yore smartly back into remembrance of his own dilemma. “Revered teacher,” he muttered from his broken trance, “I’m worried sick. What, what, shall I do?”

  Coldmoon, puzzled, stares at that enormous head. As for me, I feel suddenly moved, for no particular reason but the feeling, to leave this trio to themselves. Accordingly, I excuse myself from their company and sidle around to the living room.

  There I find Mrs. Sneaze with the giggles. She has poured tea into a cheap china cup and, placing that cup on a nasty antimony saucer, says to her niece, “Would you please take this to our guest?”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “Why not?” The mistress sounds surprised and her giggling stops abruptly.

  “I’d just rather not,” says Yukie. She suddenly adopts a peculiarly supercilious expression and, firmly seating herself on the matting, bends forward and low to study some rag of a daily newspaper.

  Mrs. Sneaze immediately resumes negotiations. “What a funny person you are. It’s only Mr. Coldmoon. There’s no reason to act up.”

  “It’s simply that I really would prefer not to.” The girl’s eyes remain fixed on the newspaper, but it’s obvious that she’s too het up to be able to read a word of it. What’s more, if anyone points out that she isn’t reading, there’ll be another flood of maidenly tears.

  “Why are you being so shy?” This time, laughing, Mrs. Sneaze deliberately pushes the cup and saucer right onto the newspaper as it lies there flat on the floor.

  “What a nasty thing to do!” Yukie tries to yank the paper out from under the tea things, knocks them flying and the spilled tea shoots all over the paper and the living room matting.

  “There, now!” says the mistress.

  With a cry expressing a curious mixture of anger, shock, and embarrassment, Yukie scrambles to her feet and runs out into the kitchen. I imagine she’s gone to fetch a mop. I find this little drama rather amusing.

  Mr. Coldmoon, totally unaware of the female flurry which his visit appears to have stirred up in the living room, continues, somewhat oddly, his conversation with my master.

  “I notice,” he says, “that you’ve had new paper fixed on that sliding door. Who did it, if I may ask?”

  “The women. Quite a good job they made of it, don’t you think?”

  “Yes, very professional. You say ‘the women.’ Does that include that college girl who sometimes comes here visiting?”

  “Yes, she lent a hand. In fact she was boasting that, since she can make such an obviously splendid job of papering a sliding door, she is also obviously well qualified to get married.”

  “I see,” says Coldmoon still studying the door. “Down the left side, there,” he eventually continued, “the paper has been fixed on taut and smooth, but along the right-hand edge it seems to have been inadequately stretched. Hence those wrinkles.”

  “That was where they started the job, before they’d really got the hang of it.”

  “I see. lt’s certainly less well done. The surface forms an exponential curve irrelatable to any ordinary function.” From the abyss of his scientific training Coldmoon dredges up monstrosities.

  “I dare say,” says my master, indifferent as ever.

  That dispassionate comment, it would seem, at last brings home to our hooligan scribe the complete hopelessness of hoping that even the most searing of his supplications could ever melt my master’s chilly disconcern. Suddenly lowering his huge skull to the matting,Yore in total silence made his farewell salutation.

  “Ah,” said my master, “you’re leaving?”

  Yore’s crestfallen appearance provided his only answer. We heard him dragging his heavy cedar clogs even after he’d gone out through the gate.

  A pitiable case. If someone doesn’t come to his rescue, he could well compose one of those rock-top suicide poems and then fling his stupid body over the lip of Kegon Falls. Come what may, the root-cause of all this trouble is the flibbertigibbet self-conceit of that insufferable Miss Goldfield. If Yore does do himself in, it is to be hoped that his ghost will find the time to scare that girl to death. No man need regret it if a girl like that, even a brace or more of them, were removed from this already sufficiently troubled world. It seems to me that Coldmoon would be well advised to marry some more ladylike young person.

  “Was that, then, one of your pupils?”

  “Yes.”

  “What an enormous head. Is he good at his work?”

  “Rather poor for that size of head. But every now and again he asks original questions. The other day he caught me off balance by asking for a translation of the meaning of Columbus.”

  “Maybe the improbable size of his braincase leads him to pose such an improbable question. Whatever did you answer?”

  “Oh, something or other off the cuff.”

  “So you actually did translate it. That’s remarkable.”

  “Children lose faith in a la
nguage teacher who fails to provide them, on demand, with a translation of anything they may ask.”

  “You’ve become quite a politician. But to judge by that lad’s look, he must be terribly run down. He seemed ashamed to be bothering you.”

  “He’s just managed to get himself into something of a mess. Silly young ass!”

  “What’s it all about? The mere sight of him moves one’s sympathy.

  What’s he done?”

  “Rather a stupid thing. He’s sent a love letter to Goldfield’s daughter.”

  “What? That great numbskull? Students nowadays seem to stop at nothing. Quite astonishing! Really, I am surprised.”

  “I hope this news has not upset you?”

  “Not in the very least. On the contrary, I find it most diverting. I do assure you, it’s quite all right by me, however, many love letters may come pouring in upon her.”

  “If you feel that self-assured perhaps it doesn’t matter. . .”

  “Of course it doesn’t matter. I really don’t mind at all. But isn’t it rather remarkable that that great muttonhead should take to writing love letters?”

  “Well, actually, it all started as a kind of joke. Because that girl was so stuck-up and conceited, my precious trio got together and. . .”

  “You mean that three boys sent one love letter to Miss Goldfield? This business grows more whacky by the minute. Such a joint letter sounds rather like three people settling down to share one portion of a Western-style dinner. Don’t you agree?”

  “Well, they did divide the functions up between them. One wrote the letter, another posted it, and the third loaned his name for its signature. That young blockhead whom you saw just now, quite the silliest of them all, he’s the one who lent his name. Yet he actually told me that he’s never even set eyes on the girl. I simply can’t imagine how anyone could do such a ludicrous thing.”

  “Well, I think it’s spectacular, a wonder of our times, a real masterpiece of the modern spirit! That that oaf should have it in him to fire off a love letter to some unknown woman. . . Really, it’s most amusing!”