I Am A Cat. Natsume Soseki

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СКАЧАТЬ about that time, I began to feel sick. It came on with a quite extraordinary suddenness. All totally unexpected. My wife had poured the medicine into a teacup and placed it in front of me, but as soon as I tried to lift the teacup, some keck-keck thing stormed up from within the stomach. I am compelled to put the teacup down. ‘Drink it up quickly’ urges my wife. Yes, indeed, I must drink it quickly and go out quickly. Mustering all my courage to imbibe the potion I bring the teacup to my lips, when again that insuppressible keck-keck thing prevents my drinking it. While this process of raising the cup and putting it down is being several times repeated, the minutes crept on until the wall clock in the living room struck four o’clock. Ting-ting-ting-ting. Four o’clock it is. I can no longer dilly-dally and I raise the teacup once again. D’you know, it really was most strange. I’d say that it was certainly the uncanniest thing I’ve ever experienced. At the fourth stroke my sickliness just vanished, and I was able to take the medicine without any trouble at all. And, by about ten past four—here I must add that I now realized for the first time how truly skilled a physician we have in Dr. Amaki—the shivering of my back and the giddiness in my head both disappeared like a dream. Up to that point I had expected that I was bound to be laid up for days, but to my great pleasure the illness proved to have been completely cured.”

      “And did you two then go out to the theatre?” asks Waverhouse with the puzzled expression of one who cannot see the point of a story.

      “We certainly both wanted to go, but since it had been my wife’s reiterated view that there was no hope of getting in after four o’clock, what could we do? We didn’t go. If only Amaki had arrived fifteen minutes earlier, I could have kept my promise and my wife would have been satisfied. Just that fifteen minute difference. I was indeed distressed. Even now, when I think how narrow the margin was, I am again distressed.”

      My master, having told his shabby tale, contrives to look like a person who has done his duty. I imagine he feels he’s gotten even with the other two.

      “How very vexing,” says Coldmoon. His laugh, as usual, displays his broken tooth.

      Waverhouse, with a false naivety, remarks as if to himself. “Your wife, with a husband so thoughtful and kind-hearted, is indeed a lucky woman.” Behind the sliding paper-door, we heard the master’s wife make an harumphing noise as though clearing her throat.

      I had been quietly listening to the successive stories of these three precious humans, but I was neither amused nor saddened by what I’d heard. I merely concluded that human beings were good for nothing, except for the strenuous employment of their mouths for the purpose of whiling away their time in laughter at things which are not funny, and in the enjoyment of amusements which are not amusing. I have long known of my master’s selfishness and narrowmindedness, but, because he usually has little to say, there was always something about him which I could not understand. I’d felt a certain caution, a certain fear, even a certain respect toward him on account of that aspect of his nature that I did not understand. But having heard his story, my uncertainties suddenly coalesced into a mere contempt for him. Why can’t he listen to the stories of the other two in silence? What good purpose can he serve by talking such utter rubbish just because his competitive spirit has been roused? I wonder if, in his portentous writings, Epictetus advocated any such course of action. In short, my master, Waverhouse, and Coldmoon are all like hermits in a peaceful reign. Though they adopt a nonchalant attitude, keeping themselves aloof from the crowd, segregated like so many snake-gourds swayed lightly by the wind, in reality they, too, are shaken by just the same greed and worldly ambition as their fellow men. The urge to compete and their anxiety to win are revealed flickeringly in their everyday conversation, and only a hair’s breadth separates them from the Philistines whom they spend their idle days denouncing. They are all animals from the same den. Which fact, from a feline viewpoint, is infinitely regrettable. Their only moderately redeeming feature is that their speech and conduct are less tediously uninventive than those of less subtle creatures.

      As I thus summed up the nature of the human race, I suddenly felt the conversation of these specimens to be intolerably boring, so I went around to the garden of the mistress of the two-stringed harp to see how Tortoiseshell was getting on. Already the pine tree decorations for the New Year and that season’s sacred festoons have been taken down. It is the 10th of January. From a deep sky containing not even a single streak of cloud the glorious springtime sun shines down upon the lands and seas of the whole wide world, so that even her tiny garden seems yet more brilliantly lively than when it saw the dawn of New Year’s Day. There is a cushion on the veranda, the sliding paper-door is closed, and there’s nobody about. Which probably means that the mistress has gone off to the public baths. I’m not at all concerned if the mistress should be out, but I do very much worry about whether Tortoiseshell is any better. Since everything’s so quiet and not a sign of a soul, I hop up onto the veranda with my muddy paws and curl up right in the middle of the cushion, which I find comfortable. A drowsiness came over me, and, forgetting all about Tortoiseshell, I was about to drop off into a doze when suddenly I heard voices beyond the paper-door.

      “Ah, thanks. Was it ready?”The mistress has not gone out after all.

      “Yes, madam. I’m sorry to have taken such a long time. When I got there, the man who makes Buddhist altar furniture told me he’d only just finished it.”

      “Well, let me see it. Ah, but it’s beautifully done. With this, Tortoiseshell can surely rest in peace. Are you sure the gold won’t peel away?”

      “Yes, I’ve made sure of it. They said that as they had used the very best quality, it would last longer than most human memorial tablets. They also said that the character for ‘honor’ in Tortoiseshell’s posthumous name would look better if written in the cursive style, so they had added the appropriate strokes.”

      “Is that so? Well, let’s put Myōyoshinnyo’s tablet in the family shrine and offer incense sticks.”

      Has anything happened to Tortoiseshell? Thinking something must be wrong, I stand up on the cushion. Ting! “Amen! Myōyoshinnyo. Save us, merciful Buddha! May she rest in peace.” It is the voice of the mistress.

      “You, too, say prayers for her.”

      Ting! “Amen! Myōyoshinnyo. Save us, merciful Buddha! May she rest in peace.” Suddenly my heart throbs violently. I stand dead-still upon the cushion, like a wooden cat; not even my eyes are moving.

      “It really was a pity. It was only a cold at first.”

      “Perhaps if Dr. Amaki had given her some medicine, it might have helped.”

      “It was indeed Amaki’s fault. He paid too little regard to Tortoiseshell.”

      “You must not speak ill of other persons. After all, everyone dies when their allotted span is over.”

      It seems thatTortoiseshell was also attended by that skilled physician, Dr. Amaki.

      “When all’s said and done, I believe the root cause was that the stray cat at the teacher’s in the main street took her out too often.”

      “Yes, that brute.”

      I would like to exculpate myself, but realizing that at this juncture it behoves me to be patient, I swallow hard and continue listening. There is a pause in the conversation.

      “Life does not always turn out as one wishes. A beauty like Tortoiseshell dies young. That ugly stray remains healthy and flourishes in devilment. . .”

      “It is indeed so, Madam. Even if one searched high and low for a cat as charming as Tortoiseshell, one would never find another person like her.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ