I Am a Cat

by Sōseki Natsume

  Coldmoon still looks restless to have such greatness thrust upon him.

  “No, no,” he says, “maybe it really is some epileptic variant; but the fact remains that the timbre of those sounds moved me to the core. I’ve played and heard the violin time and again since then, but nothing ever has matched the beauty of that random music. There are no words to convey the faintest echo of its magic. . .”

  Nobody paid the slightest attention to Singleman when, rather aptly as it seemed to me, he quoted from an obscure Taoist text: “Only from gems, the jewels in its hilt, could such sweet sounds have issued from the sword.” I felt sorry, not only for Singleman but for Chuang-tzu, too, that the words were left to die.

  “Day after day for many months, I walked past that shop, but I heard that marvelous music only thrice. On the third occasion I decided that, come what might, I would have to buy a violin. Reproof from the people of my own district, sneers from the slobs in neighboring prefectures, thumpings organized by my fellow students, fist-lynchers to a man, not even formal expulsion from the school could budge me from my resolution. I had no choice but to satisfy my all-consuming need. I would buy a violin.”

  “How characteristic of genius. That drive, that total concentration upon fulfillment of an inner need. Ah, Coldmoon, how I envy you! How I have longed, lifelong and always in vain, to experience feelings of such vehemence. I go to concerts and I strain my ears until they ache in an effort to be carried away, but for all my full-hearted striving, nothing seems to happen. How you must pity,” said Beauchamp in tones that mixed black sadness and green envy, “us earth-bound clods.”

  “Count yourself lucky,” Coldmoon answers. “I can speak of my enthrallment now with relative calm. But then it was pure agony.

  Excruciating agony. Anyway, my masters, in the end I took the plunge and bought a violin.”

  “Say on.”

  “It was the eve of the Emperor’s birthday, in November. Everyone in my lodgings had gone off to some hot spring for the night, and the place was empty. I’d reported sick that day and, absenting myself from school, had stayed in bed, where, all day long, I nursed the single thought: this evening I’ll go out and get that violin.”

  “You mean you played truant by shamming illness?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Talent indeed,” says Waverhouse lost in wonder. “Perhaps he really is a genius.”

  “As I lay with my head sticking out of the bedclothes, I grew impatient for the nightfall. To break the tension, I ducked beneath the covers and, with my eyes closed tight, entreated sleep; which did not come. So I pulled my head back out, only to find the fierce autumn sun still fully ablaze on the paper-window six feet long. Which niggled me. I then noticed, high up on the paper-window, a long stringy shadow which, every so often, wavered in the autumn wind.”

  “What was that long, stringy shadow?”

  “Peeled, astringent persimmons strung like beads on raffia cords suspended from the eaves.”

  “Hmm. What happened next?”

  “Next, having nothing else to do, I got up from bed, opened the paper-window and went out onto the veranda. There I detached one of the persimmons that had dried to sweetness, and ate it.”

  “Did it taste good?” My master can be trusted, whatever the subject, to find some childish question to be asked.

  “Excellent. Persimmons down there really are superb. You will not taste their like anywhere in Tokyo.”

  “Never mind the persimmons. What did you do next?” This time it was Beauchamp who was pressing for clarification.

  “Next, I ducked back into bed again, closed my eyes and breathed a silent prayer to all the gods and Buddhas for nightfall to come soon. It then seemed that three, perhaps four, long hours had passed; so thinking the evening must have come, I brought my head out from under the bed clothes. To my surprise, the fierce autumn sun was still fully ablaze on the six-foot paper-window, and, on its upper part, those long and stringy shadows were still swaying.”

  “We’ve heard all that.”

  “The same sequence happened again and again. In any event, I got up from bed, opened the paper-window, ate one persimmon that had dried to sweetness, went back to bed, and breathed a silent prayer to all the gods and Buddhas for nightfall to come soon.”

  “We don’t seem to be making much progress with that promised story about learning to play the violin.”

  “Don’t rush me. Just listen, please. Well, having endured the next three, or perhaps four, hours in my bed until, I thought, surely it must now be evening, I popped my head up out of the covers only to find the fierce, autumn sun still fully ablaze on the paper window while, on its upper part, the long stringy shadows were asway.”

  “You’re getting us nowhere.’

  “Then, I got up from bed, opened the paper-window, went out onto the veranda, ate one persimmon dried to sweetness and. . .”

  “So you ate another one? Is there no end to your dreary guzzle of persimmons dried to sweetness?”

  “Well, my impatience grew worse.”

  “Your impatience! What about ours?”

  “You want everything so rushed along that I find it hard to continue my story.”

  If Coldmoon finds it hard, so does his audience; even the devoted Beauchamp makes little whimpers of complaint.

  “If you all find listening too hard, I have no choice but to bring my story abruptly to its end. In short, I repeated this oscillation between eating persimmons and ducking into bed until all the fruit were gone.”

  “By the time you’d guzzled that lot the sun must surely have gone down.”

  “As a matter of fact, it hadn’t. After I’d eaten the last persimmon I ducked back into bed, and in due course popped my head out yet again, only to find the fierce autumn sun still fully ablaze upon that six-foot paper-window. . .”

  “I’ve had enough of this. It just goes on and on.”

  “Me too. I’m bored stiff with the way you tell your tiresome story.”

  “But it isn’t easy on me, you know.”

  “With the degree of perseverance you have already proven you possess, no enterprise whatsoever could be too difficult. If we had sat here uncomplaining, your autumn sun would have gone on blazing until tomorrow morning. Tell me this: do you, and if so when, intend to buy that violin?” Even the indefatiguable Waverhouse is showing signs of wear. Singleman alone seems unaffected by the slow unrolling (or rather the slow unrolling and rerolling) of Coldmoon’s quaint account. For all he cared, Coldmoon’s autumn sun could go on blazing all through the night; even, perhaps, until the day, or days, beyond tomorrow.

  Coldmoon, too, shows no sign of strain. Calm and composed, he drones on with his story. “Someone has asked me when I intend to buy my violin. The answer is that I intend to go out and buy it just as soon as the sun has set. It is hardly my fault that, whenever I peer out from the bedclothes, the autumn sun is still so brilliantly ablaze. Oh, how I suffered! It was far, far worse, that deep impatience in my soul, than this superficial irritation which seems, so pettily, to irk you all. After I’d eaten the last of the hanging persimmons and saw the day still bright, I could not help but perish into tears. Beauchamp, my dear fellow, I felt so reft of hope that I wept, I wept.”

  “I’m not at all surprised. Your weeping does you credit. All artists are essentially emotional and their tears are distillations of the truth of things. Nevertheless, one does rather wish that you could speed things up a bit.” Beauchamp’s a decent-hearted creature and, even when he’s knee deep in absurdities, maintains his earnest manner.

  “Much as I’d like to speed it up, that laggard sun won’t set. Its hang-up is most hard to bear.”

  “Your endlessly unsetting sun is no less hard on us, your tanned and sweating audience. So, let’s forget the whole interminable tale before its lentor kills us. Scrub it, Coldmoon,” says my master who is now quite clearly nearing the end of his tether.

  “You’d find it harder still if we stopp
ed at this point. For we are now coming to the really interesting part of the story.”

  “All right then. We’re prepared to listen, but only on condition that the sun goes down.”

  “That’s a pretty tall order, but all things yield to my revered teacher, and lo the sun has set.”

  “How extraordinarily convenient.” Singleman uttered his toneless comment with so much nonchalance that everyone broke into laughter.

  “So night, at last, had fallen. You can perhaps imagine my relief. With great stealth I slipped out of my lodgings into the quietness of Saddletree, for so that huddle of poor dwellings had been named. My nature shrinks from noisy places so that, despite the obvious conveniences of a city life, I had at that time chosen to withdraw from the whirl of the world and to live secluded in a snail shell of a dwelling, a farmhouse miles from anywhere in a corner of the countryside scarce trodden by the foot of man.”

  “That ‘scarce trodden by the foot of man’ seems to be piling it on a bit,” objects my master.

  “And that touch about the ‘snail shell dwelling,’” adds Waverhouse, “is insufferably bombastic. Why don’t you say, ‘in a tiny room, too small even to have an alcove?’That would sound much better, if only because a great deal less affected.”

  But Beauchamp, as he immediately makes clear, finds the description praiseworthy. “Whatever the facts of the room’s dimensions, Coldmoon’s phrasing is poetic. I find it very pleasing.”

  The meticulous Singleman chips in with a serious enquiry. “It must have been an exhausting business trudging there and back to school from such a remote shack. How many miles, roughly, would you say?”

  “Perhaps five hundred yards. You see, the school itself was in the remote village. . .”

  “In that case, many of its students would have been boarded in nearby lodgings. Is that correct?” asks Singleman in relentless tones which suggest the far-off baying of bloodhounds.

  “Yes. Most of the farm dwellings had one or two student lodgers.”

  “Yet, did you not describe the place as scarcely trodden by the foot of man?” Singleman moves in for the kill.

  “I did indeed. But for the school the place would have been virtually uninhabited. Now, let me tell you how I was dressed as I slipped out into lonely Saddletree in that deepening dusk. Over a padded handwoven cotton kimono, I wore the brass-buttoned overcoat of my school uniform. With the overcoat’s hood pulled well down over my head to make sure I’d not be recognized, I drifted along the road in such a way as not to attract attention. Being November, the road from my lodgings to the Southern Highway was thick with fallen persimmon leaves. Every step I took set the dead leaves scurrying, and their rustle behind me seemed proof that I was being followed. When I turned and looked back, the dense mass of the Tōrei Temple, blacker even than its surrounding forest, loomed up black above me. As you may know, that temple is the family shrine of the Matsudaira Clan. An extremely quiet and little-visited building, it lies at the foot of Mount Kōshin not more than a hundred yards from where I was then living. Above the forest trees the sky’s vast hollow glittered with moonlit stars, while the Milky Way, slicing across the River of Long Rapids, stretched east and ever east toward. . . now let me see, toward. . . well yes, Hawaii.”

  “Hawaii? That’s quite startling,” said a startled Waverhouse.

  “I walked some two hundred yards along the Southern Highway, entered the township from Eagle Lane, turned into Old Castle Street, up Great Bushel Road and so past First Street, Second Street, and Third Street, all running off Main Street which itself runs parallel to the Road of the Cost of Food. From there I took Owari Street, Nagoya Street, and the Street of the Magic Dolphin into Fishball Lane and thence. . .”

  “You can spare us the topography. What we want to know,” my master rudely interrupts, “is whether or not you bought a violin.”

  “The man who sells musical instruments is Kaneko Zenbei so, using parts of his own name, he calls his shop Kane-zen. But to reach the shop, sir, we’ve still some way to go.”

  “Forget the distance. Just go and buy a violin. And do it quickly.”

  “Your wish, sir, is, as always, my command. Well, when I got to Kane-zen, the shop was ablaze with lantern light and. . .”

  “Ablaze? Oh no. Not that again. How often this time are you going to scorch us with the blazing repetition?” On this occasion it was Waverhouse who raised the fire alarm.

  “Friends, have no fear. It’s only a passing kind of blaze that lights your immediate horizon. It will, I do assure you, flicker and die down. Well, as I peer through the light blaze from the shop, I can see a faint reflection of that glare shining from the polished body of a violin while the roundness of its pinched-in waist gleams almost coldly. So falls the lantern’s light across its tightly drawn strings that only a section of the fiddle’s stringing flings out at me its glistening darts of silver.”

  “Now that,” says Beauchamp almost moaning in his pleasure at the words, “is a truly masterly piece of description.”

  “That’s the one, I thought, that’s the one for me. The blood began pounding in my head and my legs so weakened they could barely hold me up.”

  Behind a scornful smile, Singleman grunted.

  “Instinctively, and with no further thought, I rushed into the shop, yanked out my purse, pulled from it a couple of five-yen notes and. . .”

  “So in the end you bought it?” asked my master.

  “I was certainly going to do so, but then I thought to myself,‘Wait. This is the moment of crisis. If I act rashly I may bungle things. Should I not pause for deeper reflection?’ So, at the eleventh hour, I reined myself in.”

  “Sweet heaven,” groaned my master, “d’you mean to say that even now, after we’ve slogged along behind you across such veritable Australias of balderdash, you’ve still not bought your fiddle. You really do drag things out. And all for some piddling contraption of cheap wood and catgut.”

  “It is not, sir, my intention to drag things out. I can’t help being unable to buy it.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Why can’t I? Because it’s still too early in the evening. There were still too many people passing by.”

  “What does it matter if there are two or even three hundred people in the streets? Coldmoon, you really are an extraordinary man,” my master shouted in his anger and frustration.

  “If they were just people,” says Coldmoon, “even a thousand, even two thousand of them, of course it wouldn’t matter. But many of them were in fact my fellow students; prowling about with their sleeves rolled up and with bludgeons in their hands. There’s a particular group, the Dregs, who pride themselves on being permanently at the bottom of the class. I had to be careful because louts of that kind are invariably good at judo, and I dared not take the risk of any kind of tangle with them. For who knows where even the most trivial brush with violence may end?

  Of course, I yearned to have that violin, but I was also fairly anxious to remain alive. I preferred to go on breathing without playing a violin to lying dead for having played it.”

  “Then am I right in thinking that you didn’t buy a fiddle?” My master struggles on in search of certainties.

  “Oh, but I did make a purchase.”

  “Coldmoon, you’re driving me mad. If you’re going to buy a fiddle, buy it; if you don’t want to buy one, don’t. But for the sake of my sanity, please settle the matter one way or the other.”

  Coldmoon grinned. “Things settle themselves,” he said, “and all too rarely in the way one had most hoped.” With careless care he lit a cigarette and blew out smoke at the ceiling.

  I think it was the smoke which finally snapped my master’s patience.

  In any event, it was at this point that he abruptly rose to his feet, went off into his study and, returning with a musty-looking, foreign book, lay down flat on his stomach and began to read. Singleman had earlier slipped away unremarked, and is now sitting in front of the alcove playing
go by himself. The plain fact is that Coldmoon’s story has proved so boringly long that, one by one, his listeners have abandoned him. Only two of them are still sticking it out: Beauchamp with his unquenchable faith in art and Waverhouse to whom longeur is second nature.

  Coldmoon somewhat crudely blew out a last long stream of smoke and resumed telling his story at the same leisurely pace.

  “Having decided that an immediate purchase of that violin would be ill timed, I now had to decide upon a suitable timing. The early part of the evening had already been found too dangerous and the shop would of course be closed if I came too late. Clearly the ideal time would be somewhere before closing time but after the prowling students had all retired to their lairs. Yet to identify the precise best moment of purchase was not, as I’m sure you, Beauchamp, will appreciate, at all easy.”

  “I can see it would be difficult.”

  “Eventually, I fixed upon ten o’clock as the best time for action. But what should I do until then? I didn’t much like the idea of going back to my lodgings only to sneak out again; while visiting some friend for a time-wasting chat struck me as too selfish. I accordingly decided to pass the waiting period in a simple stroll around town: two or three hours, I thought, could always be quickly and congenially consumed in such a leisured ramble. But on this particular evening so leadenly the time dragged by that I understood as deeply in my heart as if I myself had coined that ancient line which says, ‘A single day seems long as a thousand autumns.’” Coldmoon twisted his features into a pattern which he presumably considered expressive of the agonies of waiting and, confident of some suitable reaction from Waverhouse, turned the full glare of his faked distress upon that subtle aesthete.

  Nor was he disappointed. Waverhouse would interrupt the announcement of his own death sentence for the sake of hearing himself babble, and Coldmoon’s look of open invitation was utterly irresistible.

  “As I recall,” he immediately responded, “the old song tells us not only that it is painful to be kept waiting by the beloved but also, as one might of course expect, that the waiter feels more pain than the awaited. So perhaps that eaves-strung violin actually experienced more bitter pains of waiting than did you on your aimless and dispirited wandering around town like some clueless detective. ‘Dispirited’ is a splendid word. Isn’t it the Chinese who say, ‘dispirited as an unfed dog in a house of mourning?’ Indeed, there’s nothing more dismal than the whining of a homeless dog.”