“They certainly seem to have killed two or more birds with one stone.” My master’s expression is one of envy.
Today, this twentieth century, quite apart from the heavy traffic and the increased number of banquets, when our nation is in the second year of a war against Russia, is indeed eventful. I, consequently, firmly believe that the time has come for us, the people of this victorious country, to bend our minds to study of the truly Roman art of bathing and vomiting. Otherwise, I am afraid that even the precious people of this mighty nation will, in the very near future, become, like you, dyspeptic. . .
“What, again like me? An annoying fellow,” thinks my master.
Now suppose that we, who are familiar with all things Occidental, by study of ancient history and legend contrive to discover the secret formula that has long been lost; then to make use of it now in our Meiji Era would be an act of virtue. It would nip potential misfortune in the bud, and, moreover, it would justify my own everyday life which has been one of constant indulgence in pleasure.
My master thinks all this a trifle odd.
Accordingly, I have now, for some time, been digging into the relevant works of Gibbon, Mommsen, and Goldwin Smith, but I am extremely sorry to report that, so far, I have gained not even the slightest clue to the secret. However, as you know, I am a man who, once set upon a course, will not abandon it until my object is achieved. Therefore my belief is that a rediscovery of the vomiting method is not far off. I will let you know when it happens. Incidentally, I would prefer postponing that feast of moat-bells and peacocks’ tongues, which I’ve mentioned above, until the discovery has actually been made. Which would not only be convenient to me, but also to you who suffer from a weak stomach.
“So, he’s been pulling my leg all along. The style of writing was so sober that I have read it all, and took the whole thing seriously. Waverhouse must indeed be a man of leisure to play such a practical joke on me,” said my master through his laughter.
Several days then passed without any particular event. Thinking it too boring to spend one’s time just watching the narcissus in a white vase gradually wither, and the slow blossoming of a branch of the blue-stemmed plum in another vase, I have gone around twice to look for Tortoiseshell, but both times unsuccessfully. On the first occasion I thought she was just out, but on my second visit I learnt that she was ill.
Hiding myself behind the aspidistra beside a wash-basin, I heard the following conversation which took place between the mistress and her maid on the other side of the sliding paper-door.
“Is Tortoiseshell taking her meal?”
“No, madam, she’s eaten nothing this morning. I’ve let her sleep on the quilt of the foot-warmer, well wrapped up.” It does not sound as if they spoke about a cat. Tortoiseshell is being treated as if she were a human.
As I compare this situation with my own lot, I feel a little envious but at the same time I am not displeased that my beloved cat should be treated with such kindness.
“That’s bad. If she doesn’t eat she will only get weaker.”
“Yes indeed, madam. Even me, if I don’t eat for a whole day, I couldn’t work at all the next day.”
The maid answers as though she recognized the cat as an animal superior to herself. Indeed, in this particular household the cat may well be more important than the maid.
“Have you taken her to see a doctor?”
“Yes, and the doctor was really strange. When I went into his consulting room carrying Tortoiseshell in my arms, he asked me if I’d caught a cold and tried to take my pulse. I said ‘No, Doctor, it is not I who am the patient, this is the patient,’ and I placed Tortoiseshell on my knees. The doctor grinned and said he had no knowledge of the sicknesses of cats, and that if I just left it, perhaps it would get better. Isn’t he too terrible? I was so angry that I told him,‘Then, please don’t bother to examine her, she happens to be our precious cat.’ And I snuggled Tortoiseshell back into the breast of my kimono and came straight home.”
“Truly so.”
“Truly so” is one of those elegant expressions that one would never hear in my house. One has to be the thirteenth Shogun’s widowed wife’s somebody’s something to be able to use such a phrase. I was much impressed by its refinement.
“She seems to be sniffling. . .”
“Yes, I’m sure she’s got a cold and a sore throat; whenever one has a cold, one suffers from an honorable cough.”
As might be expected from the maid of the thirteenth Shogun’s somebody’s something, she’s quick with honorifics.
“Besides, recently, there’s a thing they call consumption. . .”
“Indeed these days one cannot be too careful. What with the increase in all these new diseases like tuberculosis and the black plague.”
“Things that did not exist in the days of the Shogunate are all no good to anyone. So you be careful too!”
“Is that so, madam?”
The maid is much moved.
“I don’t see how she could have caught a cold, she hardly ever went out. . .”
“No, but you see she’s recently acquired a bad friend.”
The maid is as highly elated as if she were telling a State secret.
“A bad friend?”
“Yes, that tatty-looking tom at the teacher’s house in the main street.”
“D’you mean that teacher who makes rude noises every morning?”
“Yes, the one who makes the sounds like a goose being strangled every time he washes his face.”
The sound of a goose being strangled is a clever description. Every morning when my master gargles in the bathroom he has an odd habit of making a strange, unceremonious noise by tapping his throat with his toothbrush. When he is in a bad temper he croaks with a vengeance; when he is in a good temper, he gets so pepped up that he croaks even more vigorously. In short, whether he is in a good or a bad temper, he croaks continually and vigorously. According to his wife, until they moved to this house he never had the habit; but he’s done it every day since the day he first happened to do it. It is rather a trying habit. We cats cannot even imagine why he should persist in such behavior. Well, let that pass. But what a scathing remark that was about “a tatty-looking tom.” I continue to eavesdrop.
“What good can he do making that noise! Under the Shogunate even a lackey or a sandal-carrier knew how to behave; and in a residential quarter there was no one who washed his face in such a manner.”
“I’m sure there wasn’t, madam.”
That maid is all too easily influenced, and she uses “madam” far too often.
“With a master like that what’s to be expected from his cat? It can only be a stray. If he comes round here again, beat him.”
“Most certainly I’ll beat him. It must be all his fault that Tortoiseshell’s so poorly. I’ll take it out on him, that I will.”
How false these accusations laid against me! But judging it rash to approach too closely, I came home without seeing Tortoiseshell.
When I return, my master is in the study meditating in the middle of writing something. If I told him what