by Hiro Arikawa
The silver van gave a little beep of its horn before turning a corner, sending dust into the air and leaving the bed and breakfast far behind.
‘It would have been perfect if they could have looked after you.’
There you go again, Satoru. That’s just sour grapes. Mount Fuji’s now well behind us.
If you intend to come and fetch me back one day, then you shouldn’t leave me there in the first place.
I was standing on my hind legs and pawing the top of the back seat to see out of the rear window, and Satoru laughed. ‘The sea might not have been your cup of tea, but you do seem to have taken a liking to Mount Fuji.’
’Cause Mount Fuji doesn’t make that belly-shaking roar, and doesn’t have that perpetual motion that’ll swallow me up.
‘I hope we can see it again together. Yeah, let’s do that someday. And let’s visit Sugi and Chikako again. We had such a nice view of Mount Fuji from our bedroom, and also – you liked that old picture-tube TV, too, didn’t you?’
Yes, that’s the ticket! That box-shaped TV was perfect. Just the right size to lie down, all toasty warm. Say, Satoru, what if we were to get a box-shaped TV like that?
‘Sorry that ours is the thin type. They don’t sell tube TVs any more.’
Ah, such a pity.
But that’s okay. I can think of it as a special attraction for when we visit the Sugis next time.
And one other thing: the next time we visit, I bet you Toramaru will wag his tail at us.
IN THE EVENING, a reservation came in at the bed and breakfast for that night.
‘Maybe we should keep Toramaru tied up.’
‘True, he might still be worked up because of his fight with Nana.’
Sugi took Toramaru outside and chained him to the kennel. Then he turned to Chikako, who had followed him.
‘About what Satoru said a little while ago …’
‘What? Are you bothered by that?’ Chikako asked.
Ouch. That hit home. ‘No, it’s not that,’ Sugi stammered. ‘I was just wondering how you would have taken it if Satoru had told you he liked you when we were still in high school.’
‘Who knows?’ Chikako said, shrugging. ‘Unless we could go back in time, I don’t know how I would have reacted.’
A spot-on answer, to which he had no reply.
‘It might have been nice, though, to be a young girl wavering between the affections of two boys.’
‘Wavering?’
This took him by surprise and he couldn’t help but ask her what she meant.
‘Of course I would have wavered.’ Chikako laughed. ‘If I’d had two boys liking me at the same time, then that would definitely have piqued my interest.’
Sugi felt like weeping, but managed to control himself.
I don’t know which of us two she would have chosen, he thought. But at least I was included in the line-up.
And he felt his sense of inferiority and jealousy diminish a little.
The next time I see Satoru, I know I can be a much better friend.
Now that is a happy thought.
3 ½
BETWEEN FRIENDS
A HUGE WHITE ship was docked beside the wharf of the harbour.
The mouth at the bow was open wide and Satoru told me that we were going to drive our van right into it. It swallowed up any number of cars into its belly and yet it didn’t sink. I must say, humans really do create some amazing things.
I mean, who in the world came up with the idea of floating a huge lump of iron on top of water? Must have had a couple of screws loose, whoever it was. It stands to reason that a heavy object will sink. No other animal in the world would try to defy the laws of nature, but humans are a very peculiar species.
Satoru hurried over to the ferry terminal to buy our ticket, but when he came back his face was all flushed.
‘I’m afraid we’ve got a problem. They won’t let you travel as a passenger like me, Nana.’
He explained that he had written my name on the passenger form.
When the official at the reception desk found out that Nana Miyawaki (age six) was a cat, he had a good laugh, apparently. Sometimes Satoru can be spectacularly dense.
‘Shall we get on board?’
A string of cars was already lined up and driving into the gaping mouth of the ferry, and I was starting to feel just a little bit anxious.
‘Nana, why is your tail all puffed up like that?’
Oh, come on. If, worst-case scenario, the ship does actually sink, we’ll be thrown overboard into the sea, won’t we? I don’t think I can imagine a fate more terrible.
I recalled the sea we’d visited when we were on our way back from Yoshimine the farmer’s, and how that vast expanse of water, the weighty crash of the waves, had made me feel. The thought of being flung straight into it made even an intrepid cat like me shiver. Cats are no good at swimming and detest the water (though there are a few exceptions; some cats actually like to have a bath, but these are just instances of spontaneous feline mutation).
Even Satoru would have great trouble swimming to shore with me perched on top of his head clinging on for dear life.
Despite my misgivings, the silver van entered the belly of the beast. Walking with his suitcase in his left hand and my basket in his right seemed to wear Satoru out. Not long ago, he could have carried both easily.
Maybe I should walk on my own?
I scratched at the lock of the basket from the inside, and Satoru told me to stop. He tilted the basket so the door was facing upwards. Whoa, I said, and slipped backwards on to my bottom.
‘Animals aren’t allowed loose on the ferry, so you’ll just have to be patient.’
By animals, this would include dogs, too, I assumed. Fair enough. There are plenty of hotels that allow pets in general but turn away cats. They complain that cats sharpen their claws on the furniture, and so on. But for guests with cats, all they need to do is add an extra fee to cover any repairs, right?
Plus, this animal smell that bothers humans is much less strong in cats than it is with dogs, am I right?
Even so, this dogs okay, cats not okay attitude is really offensive from a feline perspective. In that sense, it’s much easier to accept if neither cat nor dog is allowed. The upshot? I was liking this ferry.
Satoru took me to the pet room in the ship, where all the travelling animals were kept.
It was a spartan, neat room, and several spacious cages were stacked up to the ceiling. Today, there seemed to be a lot of passengers travelling with animals, for almost all ten of the cages were occupied. There was a white chinchilla, but that was the only other cat. The rest were a mix of dogs of varying sizes.
‘This is Nana. Please be nice to him until we arrive.’
Satoru went out of his way to greet the passengers already in the pet room, and put me into one of the cages.
‘Will you be okay, Nana? You won’t be too lonely?’
Lonely, surrounded by all these other dogs and a cat? Hardly! In fact, I’d prefer somewhere more peaceful. The dogs seemed to want to talk, and because there were so many of them, they were all yapping back and forth. And muttering complaints about me, like, Well, look at this, will you? A mongrel moggy that the human dragged in. Well, hey, sooorry!
‘I really wish we could have gone the whole way in the van. I’m sorry about that,’ Satoru said.
Not to worry. It’s only for a day, so I can put up with it. Cats might not seem it, but we are nothing if not patient.
On this trip, it seems like we’ll still have a long way to travel even after the ferry has docked. And Satoru gets tired easily these days.
‘I’ll come as often as I can to check on you, so if you get lonely, just hang in there.’
Any chance you can refrain from the over-protective comments in front of the others? You’re embarrassing me.
‘Hello there. I hope you two cats will get on.’
Satoru was peering into the cage just below mine, the one with the
chinchilla in it. I was in my cage, so I couldn’t see, but since the moment we arrived it had been curled up in a corner.
‘This one seems lonely, too. Maybe he’s feeling afraid, with all the dogs around today.’
No, you guessed wrong. The curled-up chinchilla’s tail had been twitching all this time, and it was obvious to me that what he was feeling was annoyance and irritation at the dogs’ incessant chatter.
‘Okay, I’ll see you later, Nana.’
His suitcase in hand, Satoru left, closing the door carefully behind him.
And the dogs immediately tried to make conversation.
So – tell me – where ya from, and where ya headed? What kind of guy is your master? In an instant, I understood exactly how the chinchilla felt, curled up there in disgust, and I copied his way of dealing with it.
I was still curled up in the back of my cage, pretending to be asleep, when the door opened wide and in stepped Satoru.
‘I’m sorry, Nana. I guess you really are lonely in here.’
After that, he came back to check on me another ten times. With Satoru popping in and out more often than the other owners, before long the dogs started teasing me about it. Every time Satoru left the room, there would be a noisy chorus of Pampered! Pampered!
Knock it off, you hounds! I growled, and was about to curl up again in the back of the cage when the chinchilla, directly below me, addressed the room.
Carrying on like a bunch of brats – you chaps are really starting to annoy me. Don’t you understand? It’s his master who’s the lonely one?
For an expensive-looking long-haired breed, this cat had quite a mouth on him. The dogs all grumbled back, Yeah, but … You see, Nana’s master said Nana was lonely, didn’t he?
For dogs, you lot have a rubbish sense of smell. That master gives off a smell that says he’s not going to be around for long. So he wants to spend as much time as possible with his darling cat.
In an instant, the dogs had piped down. It’s too bad. The poor guy, they started to mumble in hushed voices. To tell you the truth, they weren’t very subtle about it. But I forgave them. They were all young dogs, and none too bright.
Thank you for that.
I aimed this at the invisible cage below me, and the chinchilla shot back with a sullen They were getting on my nerves, that’s all.
The next time Satoru appeared, the scolded hounds all wagged their tails enthusiastically at him. ‘Wow,’ Satoru said happily, ‘you guys really are happy to see me, aren’t you?’ and he reached in through the bars of one or two of the cages to stroke the occupants. Not the sharpest pencils in the box, these dogs, but I’d have to say they were pretty docile and decent types.
After this, we cats occasionally joined in the dogs’ idle chatter, and time passed by on our unremarkable sea voyage. Most of the time, though, we talked at cross purposes. We couldn’t fathom, for instance, why the dogs were so into snacks like canine chewing gum and other stuff.
At midday the following day, the ferry arrived safely at its destination – the island of Hokkaido. Satoru came to fetch me first thing.
‘I’m sorry, Nana. You must have been lonely.’
Not at all. I had a good chat with that barbed-tongued chinchilla. I was just thinking it would be great if I could say my goodbyes to him face to face, when Satoru turned my basket around so the open door was facing the room.
‘Nana, say goodbye to everyone.’
See you all, I said, and the hounds’ tails wagged in unison.
Guddo rakku!
This from the chinchilla, in some language I didn’t understand.
Guddo … what?
It means ‘good luck’. My master often says it.
Come to think of it, the chinchilla’s master, a foreigner with a Japanese wife, had come to see him during the journey. The cat had learned human language mainly from Japanese people, but apparently understood a lot of what his master said, too.
Thanks. Guddo rakku to you, too.
We bid farewell to the pet room, made our way down to the car deck and climbed into our silver van.
When we emerged from the mouth of the ferry, we were greeted by wall-to-wall blue sky.
‘Hokkaido, at last, Nana.’
The land was flat and sprawling. Outside the window was what looked like an ordinary city, but everything seemed much more spread out. The roads, for instance, were far wider than those around Tokyo.
We drove for a while before reaching the suburbs. There wasn’t much traffic, and we enjoyed a leisurely drive, listening to upbeat music as we went.
The road was bordered with a lovely profusion of purple and yellow wildflowers.
You could just leave the roads in Hokkaido as they were and they’d look pretty gorgeous. Not at all like the roads in Tokyo, which are surrounded by endless concrete and asphalt. Even in the more built-up areas here, the hard shoulders are all dirt. Because of that, perhaps, it’s easy for the soil to breathe and the flowers to thrive. The scenery was very soothing.
‘The yellow ones are called goldenrods, but I don’t know about the purple ones.’
The flowers had caught Satoru’s eye, too. The jumble of colours was that striking. The purple wasn’t one block of colour but various gradations from light to dark.
‘What do you say we stop for a bit?’
Satoru pulled over in a layby. I got out, with Satoru carrying me. An occasional car passed by, so he held me safely in his arms and wouldn’t let me down as he climbed up to the purple flowers.
‘They might be wild chrysanthemums. I had imagined them to be a bit neater and tidier, though …’
The wildflowers pushing up vigorously from the soil had stems covered with blooms, like an upside-down broom. Not at all what you’d call graceful; more forceful and vigorous than that.
Oh!
As soon as I spotted it, I reached out my paw. A honeybee was buzzing among the flowers.
‘Careful, Nana. You might get stung.’
Hey, what are you going to do? It’s instinct. I clawed at the bee and Satoru brought my paws together in his hand and held them there.
Damn it. It’s exciting to play with the insects flying around. Let me go, I said, straightening my legs against his arms to get free, but Satoru held me tight and put me back in the van.
‘If you just caught them, that would be fine, but I know you’ll eat them, too. And we can’t have you getting stung inside your mouth.’
Well, you catch something, you’ve got to take a bite out of it. Back in Tokyo, when I killed cockroaches I’d always take a bite. The hard wings were like cellophane so I didn’t eat those, but the flesh was soft and savoury.
Every time Satoru found the remains of a cockroach I’d left, he’d scream. I don’t understand why humans have such an aversion to them. Structurally, they’re not so different from kabutomushi and drone beetles, the kind kids collect as pets. If it was one of those beetles, you can bet he wouldn’t scream like that. But from a feline point of view, their speed makes them both challenging and fun to catch.
We continued our drive along a river, then down a hill, and emerged on a road that ran alongside the sea.
Waa—
‘Wow.’
We both shouted out at almost the same instant.
‘It looks just like the sea.’
He was talking about the pampas grass which spread out along both sides of the road. Its white ears covered the flat, sprawling fields from one end to the other, and swayed in the wind like white, cresting waves.
It hadn’t been long since we last stopped, but Satoru pulled over again.
Even though there were so few cars on the road, Satoru came around to the passenger side and carried me out. He must have been afraid I might leap out. A little over-protective, I thought, but if that makes him feel better, I’m happy to let him take charge. Satoru had big hands and I felt secure and calm whenever he held me.
I wanted to see this scenery from a slightly higher vantage point
, so I slipped from his hands on to his shoulder and stretched my neck. I was now just at Satoru’s eye level.
The wind was rustling, the ears of the pampas grass swaying. The waves were rolling further than the eye could see.
It was just as Satoru had said. This was like a sea on land. Unlike the sea, though, there was no heavy booming sound. In this kind of sea, I might be able to swim.
From his shoulder, I leapt down to the ground and nosed my way into the pampas grass.
The path before me was blocked by the thick stems. I lifted my head and saw, far above me, the white ears waving against a clear blue sky.
‘Nana?’
Satoru’s worried voice reached my ears.
‘Nana, where are you-uuu?’
There was the sound of dry grass being trampled so I knew that Satoru had entered the pampas grass sea, too. I’m here, just here, just near you.
But as he called me, Satoru’s voice drifted further away. From where I was, I could see Satoru, but he couldn’t see me, hidden as I was by the pampas.
I guess I have no choice, I thought, and followed quickly after Satoru so he wouldn’t get lost.
‘Nana?’
Right here! I answered him, but it seemed like my voice was being carried away by the wind and didn’t reach him.
‘Naaaaana!’
Satoru began to sound desperate.
‘Nana! Nana, where are you-uuuuu?’
Satoru started to call out into the distance and, unable to bear it, I let out a loud shout, as big as I could make it.
I’m right heeeere!
And then there he was, framed against the sky, gazing down at me. The instant our eyes met, his stern look melted. His eyes softened and light caught the trails of water sliding down his cheeks.
Without a word, he knelt down on the earth, placed his big hands around my middle and hugged me. That hurts! My guts are going to squeeze out.
‘You silly thing! If you wander off in here, I’ll never be able to find you!’
Satoru’s whole body shook with his sobs.
‘For someone your size, this field is like a sea of trees!’
A ‘sea of trees’ is how Satoru had described it to me earlier. Inside a forest like that, internal compasses don’t function and you totally lose your way.