Читать книгу I Am A Cat - Natsume Soseki - Страница 9

III

TORTOISESHELL is dead, one cannot consort with Rickshaw Blacky, and I feel a little lonely. Luckily I have made acquaintances among humankind so I do not suffer from any real sense of boredom. Someone wrote recently asking my master to have my photograph taken and the picture sent to him. And then the other day somebody else presented some millet dumplings, that speciality of Okayama, specifically addressed to me. The more that humans show me sympathy, the more I am inclined to forget that I am a cat. Feeling that I am now closer to humans than to cats, the idea of rallying my own race in an effort to wrest supremacy from the bipeds no longer has the least appeal. Moreover, I have developed, indeed evolved, to such an extent that there are now times when I think of myself as just another human in the human world; which I find very encouraging. It is not that I look down on my own race, but it is no more than natural to feel most at ease among those whose attitudes are similar to one’s own. I would consequently feel somewhat piqued if my growing penchant for mankind were stigmatized as fickleness or flippancy or treachery. It is precisely those who sling such words about in slanderous attacks on others who are usually both drearily straight-laced and born unlucky. Having thus graduated from felinity to humanity, I find myself no longer able to confine my interests to the world of Tortoiseshell and Blacky. With a haughtiness not less prideful than that of human beings, I, too, now like to judge and criticize their thoughts and words and deeds. This, surely, is equally natural. Yet, though I have become thus proudly conscious of my own dignity, my master still regards me as a cat only slightly superior to any other common or garden moggy. For, as if they were his own and without so much as a by-your-leave to me, he has eaten all the millet dumplings; which is, I find, regrettable. Nor does he seem yet to have dispatched my photograph. I suppose I would be justified if I made this fact a cause for grumbling, but after all, if our opinions—my master’s and mine—are naturally at difference, the consequences of that difference cannot be helped. Since I am seeking to behave with total humanity, I’m finding it increasingly difficult to write about the activities of cats with whom I no longer associate. I must accordingly seek the indulgence of my readers if I now confine my writing to reports about such respected figures as Waverhouse and Coldmoon.

Today is a Sunday and the weather fine. The master has therefore crept out of his study, and, placing a brush, an ink stone, and a writing pad in a row before him, he now lies flat on his belly beside me, and is groaning hard. I watch him, thinking that he is perhaps making this peculiar noise in the birth pangs of some literary effort. After a while, and in thick black strokes, he wrote, “Burn incense.” Is it going to be a poem or a haiku? Just when I was thinking that the phrase was rather too witty for my master, he abandons it, and, his brush running quickly over the paper, writes an entirely new line: “Now for some little time I have been thinking of writing an article about Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man.” At this point the brush stops dead. My master, brush in hand, racks his brains, but no bright notions seem to emerge for he now starts licking the head of his brush. I watched his lips acquire a curious inkiness. Then, underneath what he had just written, he drew a circle, put in two dots as eyes, added a nostrilled nose in the center, and finally drew a single sideways line for a mouth. One could not call such creations either haiku or prose. Even my master must have been disgusted with himself, for he quickly smeared away the face. He then starts a new line. He seems to have some vague notion that, provided he himself produces a new line, maybe some kind of a Chinese poem will evolve itself. After further moonings, he suddenly started writing briskly in the colloquial style. “Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man is one who studies Infinity, reads the Analects of Confucius, eats baked yams, and has a runny nose.” A somewhat muddled phrase. He thereupon read the phrase aloud in a declamatory manner and, quite unlike his usual self, laughed. “Ha-ha-ha. Interesting! But that ‘runny nose’ is a shade cruel, so I’ll cross it out,” and he proceeds to draw lines across that phrase. “Though a single line would clearly have sufficed, he draws two lines and then three lines. He goes on drawing more and more lines regardless of their crowding into the neighboring line of writing. When he has drawn eight such obliterations, he seems unable to think of anything to add to his opening outburst. So he takes to twirling his mustache, determined to wring some telling sentence from his whiskers. He is still twisting them up and twirling them down when his wife appears from the living room, and sitting herself down immediately before my master’s nose, remarks, “My dear.”

“What is it?” My master’s voice sounds dully like a gong struck under water. His wife seems not to like the answer, for she starts all over again. “My dear!” she says.

“Well, what is it?”

This time, cramming a thumb and index finger into a nostril, he yanks out nostril hairs.

“We are a bit short this month. . .”

“Couldn’t possibly be short. We’ve settled the doctor’s fee and we paid off the bookshop’s bill last month. So this month, there ought in fact to be something left over.” He coolly examines his uprooted nostril hairs as though they were some wonder of the world.

“But because you, instead of eating rice, have taken to bread and jam. . .”

“Well, how many tins of jam have I gone through?”

“This month, eight tins were emptied.”

“Eight? I certainly haven’t eaten that much.”

“It wasn’t only you. The children also lick it.”

“However much one licks, one couldn’t lick more than two or three shillings worth.” My master calmly plants his nostril hairs, one by one, on the writing pad. The sticky-rooted bristles stand upright on the paper like a little copse of needles. My master seems impressed by this unexpected discovery and he blows upon them. Being so sticky, they do not fly away.

“Aren’t they obstinate?” he says and blows upon them frantically.

“It is not only the jam. There’s other things we have to buy.” The lady of the house expresses her extreme dissatisfaction by pouting sulkily.

“Maybe.” Again inserting his thumb and finger, he extracts some hairs with a jerk. Among these hairs of various hue, red ones and black ones, there is a single pure white bristle. My master who, with a look of great surprise, has been staring at this object, proceeds to show it to his wife, holding it up between his fingers right in front of her face.

“No, don’t.” She pushes his hand away with a grimace of distaste.

“Look at it! A white hair from the nostrils.” My master seems to be immensely impressed. His wife, resigned, went back into the living room with a laugh. She seems to have given up hope of getting any answer to her problems of domestic economy. My master resumes his consideration of the problems of Natural Man.

Having succeeded in driving off his wife with his scourge of nostril hair, he appears to feel relieved, and, while continuing that depilation, struggles to get on with his article. But his brush remains unmoving. “That ‘eats baked yams’ is also superfluous. Out with it.” He deletes the phrase. “And ‘incense burns’ is somewhat over-abrupt, so let’s cross that out too.” His exuberant self-criticism leaves nothing on the paper but the single sentence “Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man is one who studies Infinity and reads the Analects of Confucius.” My master thinks this statement a trifle over-simplified. “Ah well, let’s not be bothered: let’s abandon prose and just make it an inscription.” Brandishing the brush crosswise, he paints vigorously on the writing pad in that watercolor style so common among literary men and produces a very poor study of an orchid. Thus all his precious efforts to write an article have come down to this mere nothing. Turning the sheet, he writes something that makes no sense. “Born in Infinity, studied Infinity, and died into Infinity. Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man. Infinity.” At this moment Waverhouse drifts into the room in his usual casual fashion. He appears to make no distinction between his own and other people’s houses; unannounced and unceremoniously, he enters any house and, what’s more, will sometimes float in unexpectedly through a kitchen door. He is one of those who, from the moment of their birth, discaul themselves of all such tiresome things as worry, reserve, scruple, and concern.

“‘Giant Gravitation again?’” asks Waverhouse still standing.

“How could I be always writing only about ‘Giant Gravitation?’ I’m trying to compose an epitaph for the tombstone of Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man,” replied my master with considerable exaggeration.

“Is that some sort of posthumous Buddhist name like Accidental Child?” inquires Waverhouse in his usual irrelevant style.

“Is there then someone called Accidental Child?”

“No, of course there isn’t, but I take it that you’re working on something like that.”

“I don’t think Accidental Child is anyone I know. But Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man is a person of your own acquaintance.”

“Who on earth could get a name like that?”

“It’s Sorosaki. After he graduated from the University, he took a post-graduate course involving study of the ‘theory of infinity.’ But he over-worked, got peritonitis, and died of it. Sorosaki happened to be a very close friend of mine.”

“All right, so he was your very close friend. I’m far from criticizing that fact. But who was responsible for converting Sorosaki into Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man?”

“Me. I created that name. For there is really nothing more philistine than the posthumous names conferred by Buddhist priests.” My master boasts as if his nomination of Natural Man were a feat of artistry.

“Anyway, let’s see the epitaph,” says Waverhouse laughingly. He picks up my master’s manuscript and reads it out aloud. “Eh . . .‘Born into infinity, studied infinity, and died into infinity. Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man. Infinity.’ I see. This is fine. Quite appropriate for poor old Sorosaki.”

“Good, isn’t it?” says my master obviously very pleased.

“You should have this epitaph engraved on a weight-stone for pickles and then leave it at the back of the main hall of some temple for the practice-benefit of passing weight lifters. It’s good. It’s most artistic. Mr. the-late-and-sainted may now well rest in peace.”

“Actually, I’m thinking of doing just that,” answers my master quite seriously. “But you’ll have to excuse me,” he went on, “I won’t be long. Just play with the cat. Don’t go away.” And my master departed like the wind without even waiting for Waverhouse to answer.

Being thus unexpectedly required to entertain the culture-vulture Waverhouse, I cannot very well maintain my sour attitude. Accordingly, I mew at him encouragingly and sidle up on to his knees. “Hello,” says Waverhouse, “you’ve grown distinctly chubby. Let’s take a look at you.” Grabbing me impolitely by the scruff of my neck he hangs me up in midair. “Cats like you that let their hind legs dangle are cats that catch no mice. . . Tell me,” he said, turning to my master’s wife in the next room, “has he ever caught anything?”

“Far from catching so much as a single mouse, he eats rice-cakes and then dances.” The lady of the house unexpectedly probes my old wound, which embarrassed me. Especially when Waverhouse still held me in midair like a circus-performer.

“Indeed, with such a face, it’s not surprising that he dances. Do you know, this cat possesses a truly insidious physionomy. He looks like one of those goblin-cats illustrated in the old storybooks.” Waverhouse, babbling whatever comes into his head, tries to make conversation with the mistress. She reluctantly interrupts her sewing and comes into the room.

“I do apologize. You must be bored. He won’t be long now.” And she poured fresh tea for him.

“I wonder where he’s gone.”

“Heaven only knows. He never explains where he’s going. Probably to see his doctor.”

“You mean Dr. Amaki? What a misfortune for Amaki to be involved with such a patient.”

Perhaps finding this comment difficult to answer, she answers briefly:

“Well, yes.”

Waverhouse takes not the slightest notice, but goes on to ask, “How is he lately? Is his weak stomach any better?”

“It’s impossible to say whether it’s better or worse. However carefully Dr. Amaki may look after him, I don’t see how his health can ever improve if he continues to consume such vast quantities of jam.” She thus works off on Waverhouse her earlier grumblings to my master.

“Does he eat all that much jam? It sounds like a child.”

“And not just jam. He’s recently taken to guzzling grated radish on the grounds that it’s a sovereign cure for dyspepsia.”

“You surprise me,” marvels Waverhouse.

“It all began when he read in some rag that grated radish contains diastase.”

“I see. I suppose he reckons that grated radish will repair the ravages of jam. It’s certainly an ingenious equation.” Waverhouse seems vastly diverted by her recital of complaint.

“Then only the other day he forced some on the baby.”

“He made the baby eat jam?”

“No, grated radish! Would you believe it? He said, ‘Come here, my little babykin, father’ll give you something good. . .’Whenever, once in a rare while, he shows affection for the children, he always does remarkably silly things. A few days ago he put our second daughter on top of a chest of drawers.”

“What ingenious scheme was that?” Waverhouse looks to discover ingenuities in everything.

“There was no question of any ingenious scheme. He just wanted the child to make the jump when it’s quite obvious that a little girl of three or four is incapable of such tomboy feats.”

“I see. Yes, that proposal does indeed seem somewhat lacking in ingenuity. Still, he’s a good man without an ill wish in his heart.”

“Do you think that I could bear it if, on top of everything else, he were ill-natured?” She seems in uncommonly high spirits.

“Surely you don’t have cause for such vehement complaint? To be as comfortably off as you are is, after all, the best way to be. Your husband neither leads the fast life nor squanders money on dandified clothing. He’s a born family man of quiet taste.”Waverhouse fairly lets himself go in unaccustomed laud of an unknown way of life.

“On the contrary, he’s not at all like that. . .”

“Indeed? So he has secret vices? Well, one cannot be too careful in this world.” Waverhouse offers a nonchalantly fluffy comment.

“He has no secret vices, but he is totally abandoned in the way he buys book after book, never to read a single one. I wouldn’t mind if he used his head and bought in moderation, but no. Whenever the mood takes him, he ambles off to the biggest bookshop in the city and brings back home as many books as chance to catch his fancy. Then, at the end of the month, he adopts an attitude of complete detachment. At the end of last year, for instance, I had a terrible time coping with the bill that had been accumulating month after month.”

“It doesn’t matter that he should bring home however many books he may like. If, when the bill collector comes, you just say that you’ll pay some other time, he’ll go away.”

“But one cannot put things off indefinitely.” She looks cast down.

“Then you should explain the matter to your husband and ask him to cut down expenditure on books.”

“And do you really believe he would listen to me? Why, only the other day, he said,‘You are so unlike a scholar’s wife: you lack the least understanding of the value of books. Listen carefully to this story from ancient Rome. It will give you beneficial guidance for your future conduct.’”

“That sounds interesting. What sort of story was it?” Waverhouse becomes enthusiastic, though he appears less sympathetic to her predicament than prompted by sheer curiosity.

“It seems there was in ancient Rome a king named Tarukin.”

“Tarukin? That sounds odd in Japanese.”

“I can never remember the names of foreigners. It’s all too difficult. Maybe he was a barrel of gold. He was, at any rate, the seventh king of Rome.”

“Really? The seventh barrel of gold certainly sounds queer. But, tell me, what then happened to this seventh Tarukin.”

“You mustn’t tease me like that. You quite embarrass me. If you know this king’s true name, you should teach me it. Your attitude,” she snaps at him, “is really most unkind.”

“I tease you? I wouldn’t dream of doing such an unkind thing. It was simply that the seventh barrel of gold sounded so wonderful. Let’s see. . . a Roman, the seventh king. . . I can’t be absolutely certain but I rather think it must have been Tarquinius Superbus, Tarquin the Proud. Well, it doesn’t really matter who it was. What did this monarch do?”

“I understand that some woman, Sibyl by name, went to this king with nine books and invited him to buy them.”

“I see.”

“When the king asked her how much she wanted, she stated a very high price, so high that the king asked for a modest reduction. Whereupon the woman threw three of the nine books into the fire where they were quickly burnt to ashes.”

“What a pity!”

“The books were said to contain prophecies, predictions, things like that of which there was no other record anywhere.”

“Really?”

“The king, believing that six books were bound to be cheaper than nine, asked the price of the remaining volumes. The price proved to be exactly the same; not one penny less. When the king complained of this outrageous development, the women threw another three books into the fire. The king apparently still hankered for the books and he accordingly asked the price of the last three left. The woman again demanded the same price as she had asked for the original nine. Nine books had shrunk to six, and then to three, but the price remained unaltered even by a farthing. Suspecting that any attempt to bargain would merely lead the woman to pitch the last three volumes into the flames, the king bought them at the original staggering price. My husband appeared confident that, having heard this story, I would begin to appreciate the value of books, but I don’t at all see what it is that I’m supposed to have learnt to appreciate.”

Having thus stated her own position, she as good as challenges Waverhouse to contravert her. Even the resourceful Waverhouse seems to be at a loss. He draws a handkerchief from the sleeve of his kimono and tempts me to play with it. Then, in a loud voice as if an idea had suddenly struck him, he remarked, “But you know, Mrs. Sneaze, it is precisely because your husband buys so many books and fills his head with wild notions that he is occasionally mentioned as a scholar, or something of that sort. Only the other day a comment on your husband appeared in a literary magazine.”

“Really?” She turns around. After all, it’s only natural that his wife should feel anxiety about comments on my master.

“What did it say?”

“Oh, only a few lines. It said that Mr. Sneaze’s prose was like a cloud that passes in the sky, like water flowing in a stream.”

“Is that,” she asks smiling, “all that it said?”

“Well, it also said ‘it vanishes as soon as it appears and, when it vanishes, it is forever forgetful to return.’”

The lady of the house looks puzzled and asks anxiously “Was that praise?”

“Well, yes, praise of a sort,” says Waverhouse coolly as he jiggles his handkerchief in front of me.

“Since books are essential to his work, I suppose one shouldn’t complain, but his eccentricity is so pronounced that. . .”

Waverhouse assumes that she’s adopting a new line of attack. “True,” he interrupts, “he is a little eccentric, but any man who pursues learning tends to get like that.” His answer, excellently noncommittal, contrives to combine ingratiation and special pleading.

“The other day, when he had to go somewhere soon after he got home from school, he found it too troublesome to change his clothes.

So do you know, he sat down on his low desk without even taking off his overcoat and ate his dinner just as he was. He had his tray put on the footwarmer while I sat on the floor holding the rice container. It was really very funny. . .”

“It sounds like the old-time custom when generals sat down to identify the severed heads of enemies killed in battle. But that would be quite typical of Mr. Sneaze. At any rate he’s never boringly conventional.”

Waverhouse offers a somewhat strained compliment.

“A woman cannot say what’s conventional or unconventional, but I do think his conduct is often unduly odd.”

“Still, that’s better than being conventional.” As Waverhouse moves firmly to the support of my master, her dissatisfaction deepens.

“People are always saying this or that is conventional, but would you please tell what makes a thing conventional?” Adopting a defiant attitude, she demands a definition of conventionality.

“Conventional? When one says something is conventional. . . It’s a bit difficult to explain. . .”

“If it’s so vague a thing, surely there’s nothing wrong with being conventional.” She begins to corner Waverhouse with typically feminine logic.

“No, it isn’t vague, it’s perfectly clear-cut. But it’s hard to explain.”

“I expect you call everything you don’t like conventional.” Though totally uncalculated, her words land smack on target. Waverhouse is now indeed cornered and can no longer dodge defining the conventional.

“I’ll give you an example. A conventional man is one who would yearn after a girl of sixteen or eighteen but, sunk in silence, never do anything about it; a man who, whenever the weather’s fine, would do no more than stroll along the banks of the Sumida taking, of course, a flask of saké with him.”

“Are there really such people?” Since she cannot make heads or tails of the twaddle vouchsafed by Waverhouse, she begins to abandon her position, which she finally surrenders by saying, “It’s all so complicated that it’s really quite beyond me.”

“You think that complicated? Imagine fitting the head of Major Pendennis onto Bakin’s torso, wrapping it up and leaving it all for one or two years exposed to European air.”

“Would that produce a conventional man?” Waverhouse offers no reply but merely laughs.

“In fact it could be produced without going to quite so much trouble. If you added a shop assistant from a leading store to any middle school student and divided that sum by two, then indeed you’d have a fine example of a conventional man.”

“Do you really think so?” She looks puzzled but certainly unconvinced.

“Are you still here?” My master sits himself down on the floor beside Waverhouse. We had not noticed his return.

“ ‘Still here’ is a bit hard. You said you wouldn’t be long and you yourself invited me to wait for you.”

“You see, he’s always like that,” remarks the lady of the house leaning toward Waverhouse.

“While you were away I heard all sorts of tales about you.”

“The trouble with women is that they talk too much. It would be good if human beings would keep as silent as this cat.” And the master strokes my head.

“I hear you’ve been cramming grated radish into the baby.”

“Hum,” says my master and laughs. He then added “Talking of the baby, modern babies are quite intelligent. Since that time when I gave our baby grated radish, if you ask him ‘where is the hot place?’ he invariably sticks out his tongue. Isn’t it strange?”

“You sound as if you were teaching tricks to a dog. It’s positively cruel. By the way, Coldmoon ought to have arrived by now.”

“Is Coldmoon coming?” asks my master in a puzzled voice.

“Yes. I sent him a postcard telling him to be here not later than one o’clock.”

“How very like you! Without even asking us if it happened to be convenient. What’s the idea of asking Coldmoon here?”

“It’s not really my idea, but Coldmoon’s own request. It seems he is going to give a lecture to the Society of Physical Science. He said he needed to rehearse his speech and asked me to listen to it. Well, I thought it would be obliging to let you hear it, too. Accordingly, I suggested he should come to your house. Which should be quite convenient since you are a man of leisure. I know you never have any engagements. You’d do well to listen.” Waverhouse thinks he knows how to handle the situation.

“I wouldn’t understand a lecture on physical science,” says my master in a voice betraying his vexation at his friend’s high-handed action.

“On the contrary, his subject is no such dry-as-dust matter as, for example, the magnetized nozzle. The transcendentally extraordinary subject of his discourse is ‘The Mechanics of Hanging.’Which should be worth listening to.”

“Inasmuch as you once only just failed to hang yourself, I can understand your interest in the subject, but I’m. . .”

“. . . The man who got cold shivers over going to the theatre, so you cannot expect not to listen to it.” Waverhouse interjects one of his usual flippant remarks and Mrs. Sneaze laughs. Glancing back at her husband, she goes off into the next room. My master, keeping silent, strokes my head. This time, for once, he stroked me with delicious gentleness.

Some seven minutes later in comes the anticipated Coldmoon. Since he’s due to give his lecture this same evening, he is not wearing his usual get-up. In a fine frock-coat and with a high and exceedingly white clean collar, he looks twenty per cent more handsome than himself. “Sorry to be late.” He greets his two seated friends with perfect composure.

“It’s ages that we’ve now been waiting for you. So we’d like you to start right away. Wouldn’t we?” says Waverhouse, turning to look at my master. The latter, thus forced to respond, somewhat reluctantly says, “Hmm.” But Coldmoon’s in no hurry. He remarks, “I think I’ll have a glass of water, please.”

“I see you are going to do it in real style. You’ll be calling next for a round of applause.” Waverhouse, but he alone, seems to be enjoying himself.

Coldmoon produced his text from an inside pocket and observed, “Since it is the established practice, may I say I would welcome criticism.”That invitation made, he at last begins to deliver his lecture.

“Hanging as a death penalty appears to have originated among the Anglo-Saxons. Previously, in ancient times, hanging was mainly a method of committing suicide. I understand that among the Hebrews it was customary to execute criminals by stoning them to death. Study of the Old Testament reveals that the word ‘hanging’ is there used to mean ‘suspending a criminal’s body after death for wild beasts and birds of prey to devour it.’According to Herodotus, it would seem that the Jews, even before they departed from Egypt, abominated the mere thought that their dead bodies might be left exposed at night. The Egyptians used to behead a criminal, nail the torso to a cross and leave it exposed during the night. The Persians. . .”

“Steady on, Coldmoon,” Waverhouse interrupts. “You seem to be drifting farther and farther away from the subject of hanging. Do you think that wise?”

“Please be patient. I am just coming to the main subject. Now, with respect to the Persians. They, too, seemed to have used crucifixion as a method of criminal execution. However, whether the nailing took place while the criminal was alive or simply after his death is not incontrovertibly established.”

“Who cares? Such details are really of little importance,” yawned my master as from boredom.

“There are still many matters of which I’d like to inform you but, as it will perhaps prove tedious for you . . .”

“ ‘As it might prove’ would sound better than ‘as it will perhaps prove.’ What d’you think, Sneaze?” Waverhouse starts carping again but my master answers coldly, “What difference could it make?”

“I have now come to the main subject, and will accordingly recite my piece.”

“A storyteller ‘recites a piece.’An orator should use more elegant diction.”Waverhouse again interrupts.

“If to ‘recite my piece’ sounds vulgar, what words should I use?” asks Coldmoon in a voice that showed he was somewhat nettled.

“It is never clear, when one is dealing with Waverhouse, whether he’s listening or interrupting. Pay no attention to his heckling, Coldmoon, just keep going.” My master seeks to find a way through the difficulty as quickly as possible.

“So, having made your indignant recitation, now I suppose you’ve found the willow tree?” With a pun on a little known haiku, Waverhouse, as usual, comes up with something odd. Coldmoon, in spite of himself, broke into laughter.

“My researches reveal that the first account of the employment of hanging as a deliberate means of execution occurs in the Odyssey, volume twenty-two. The relevant passage records how Telemachus arranged the execution by hanging of Penelope’s twelve ladies-in-waiting. I could read the passage aloud in its original Greek, but, since such an act might be regarded as an affectation, I will refrain from doing so. You will, however, find the passage between lines 465 and 473.”

“You’d better cut out all that Hellenic stuff. It sounds as if you are just showing off your knowledge of Greek. What do you think, Sneaze?”

“On that point, I agree with you. It would be more modest, altogether an improvement, to avoid such ostentation.” Quite unusually my master immediately sides with Waverhouse. The reason is, of course, that neither can read a word of Greek.

“Very well, I will this evening omit those references. And now I will recite. . . that is to say, I will now continue. Let us consider, then, how a hanging is actually carried out. One can envisage two methods. The first method is that adopted by Telemachus who, with the help of Eumaeus and Philoetios, tied one end of a rope to the top of a pillar: next, having made several loose loops in the rope, he forced a woman’s head through each such loop, and finally hauled up hard on the other end of the rope.”

“In short, he had the women dangling in a row like shirts hung out at a laundry. Right?”

“Exactly. Now the second method is, as in the first case, to tie one end of a rope to the top of a pillar and similarly to secure the other end of the rope somewhere high up on the ceiling. Thereafter, several other short ropes are attached to the main rope, and in each of these subsidiary ropes a slip-knot is then tied. The women’s heads are then inserted in the slipknots. The idea is that at the crucial moment you remove the stools on which the women have been stood.”

“They would then look something like those ball-shaped paper-lanterns one sometimes sees suspended from the end-tips of rope curtains, wouldn’t they?” hazarded Waverhouse.

“That I cannot say,” answered Coldmoon cautiously. “I have never seen any such ball as a paper-lantern-ball, but if such balls exist, the resemblance may be just. Now, the first method as described in the Odyssey is, in fact, mechanically impossible; and I shall proceed, for your benefit, to substantiate that statement.”

“How interesting,” says Waverhouse.

“Indeed, most interesting,” adds my master.

“Let us suppose that the women are to be hanged at intervals of an equal distance, and that the rope between the two women nearest the ground stretches out horizontally, right? Now α1, α2 up to α6 become the angles between the rope and the horizon. T₁, T₂, and so on up to T6 represent the force exerted on each section of the rope, so that T₇ = X is the force exerted on the lowest part of the rope. W is, of course, the weight of the women. So far so good. Are you with me?”

My master and Waverhouse exchange glances and say, “Yes, more or less.” I need hardly point out that the value of this “more or less” is singular to Waverhouse and my master. It could possibly have a different value for other people.

“Well, in accordance with the theory of averages as applied to the polygon, a theory with which you must of course be well acquainted, the following twelve equations can, in this particular case, be established:

T₁ cos αl=T₂ cos α2......(1)

T₂ cos α2=T₃ cos α3......(2)”

“I think that’s enough of the equations,” my master irresponsibly remarks.

“But these equations are the very essence of my lecture.” Coldmoon really seems reluctant to be parted from them.

“In that case, let’s hear those particular parts of its very essence at some other time.” Waverhouse, too, seems out of his depth.

“But if I omit the full detail of the equations, it becomes impossible to substantiate the mechanical studies to which I have devoted so much effort. . .”

“Oh, never mind that. Cut them all out,” came the cold-blooded comment of my master.

“That’s most unreasonable. However, since you insist, I will omit them.”

“That’s good,” says Waverhouse, unexpectedly clapping his hands.

“Now we come to England where, in Beowulf, we find the word ‘gallows’: that is to say ‘galga.’ It follows that hanging as a penalty must have been in use as early as the period with which the book is concerned. According to Blackstone, a convicted person who is not killed at his first hanging by reason of some fault in the rope should simply be hanged again. But, oddly enough, one finds it stated in The Vision of Piers Plowman that even a murderer should not be strung up twice. I do not know which statement is correct, but there are many melancholy instances of victims failing to be killed outright. In 1786 the authorities attempted to hang a notorious villain named Fitzgerald, but when the stool was removed, by some strange chance the rope broke. At the next attempt the rope proved so long that his legs touched ground and he again survived. In the end, at the third attempt, he was enabled to die with the help of the spectators.”

“Well, well,” says Waverhouse becoming, as was only to be expected, re-enlivened.

“A true thanatophile.” Even my master shows signs of jollity.

“There is one other interesting fact. A hanged person grows taller by about an inch. This is perfectly true. Doctors have measured it.”

“That’s a novel notion. How about it, Sneaze?” says Waverhouse turning to my master. “Try getting hanged. If you were an inch taller, you might acquire the appearance of an ordinary human being.” The reply, however, was delivered with an unexpected gravity.

“Tell me, Coldmoon, is there any chance of surviving that process of extension by one inch?”

“Absolutely none. The point is that it is the spinal cord which gets stretched in hanging. It’s more a matter of breaking than of growing taller.”

“In that case, I won’t try.” My master abandons hope.

There was still a good deal of the lecture left to deliver and Coldmoon had clearly been anxious to deal with the question of the physiological function of hanging. But Waverhouse made so many and such capriciously-phrased interjections and my master yawned so rudely and so frequently that Coldmoon finally broke off his rehearsal in mid-flow and took his leave. I cannot tell you what oratorical triumphs he achieved, still less what gestures he employed that evening, because the lecture took place miles away from me.

A few days passed uneventfully by. Then, one day about two in the afternoon, Waverhouse dropped in with his usual casual manners and looking as totally uninhibited as his own concept of the “Accidental Child.” The minute he sat down he asked abruptly, “Have you heard about Beauchamp Blowlamp and the Takanawa Incident?” He spoke excitedly, in a tone of voice appropriate to an announcement of the fall of Port Arthur.

“No, I haven’t seen him lately.” My master is his usual cheerless self.

“I’ve come today, although I’m busy, especially to inform you of the frightful blunder which Beauchamp has committed.”

“You’re exaggerating again. Indeed you’re quite impossible.”

“Impossible, never: improbable, perhaps. I must ask you to make a distinction on this point, for it affects my honor.”

“It’s the same thing,” replied my master assuming an air of provoking indifference. He is the very image of a Mr. the-late-and-sainted Natural Man.

“Last Sunday, Beauchamp went to the Sengaku Temple at Takanawa, which was silly in this cold weather, especially when to make such a visit nowadays stamps one as a country bumpkin out to see the sights.”

“But Beauchamp’s his own master. You’ve no right to stop him going.”

“True, I haven’t got the right, so let’s not bother about that. The point is that the temple yard contains a showroom displaying relics of the forty-seven ronin. Do you know it?”

“N-no.”

“You don’t? But surely you’ve been to the Temple?”

“No.”

“Well, I am surprised. No wonder you so ardently defended Beauchamp. But it’s positively shameful that a citizen of Tokyo should never have visited the Sengaku Temple.”

“One can contrive to teach without trailing out to the ends of the city.” My master grows more and more like his blessed Natural Man.

“All right. Anyway, Beauchamp was examining the relics when a married couple, Germans as it happened, entered the showroom. They began by asking him questions in Japanese, but, as you know, Beauchamp is always aching to practice his German so he naturally responded by rattling off a few words in that language. Apparently he did it rather well. Indeed, when one thinks back over the whole deplorable incident, his very fluency was the root cause of the trouble.”

“Well, what happened?” My master finally succumbs.

“The Germans pointed out a gold-lacquered pill-box which had belonged to Otaka Gengo and, saying they wished to buy it, asked Beauchamp if the object were for sale. Beauchamp’s reply was not uninteresting. He said such a purchase would be quite impossible because all Japanese people were true gentlemen of the sternest integrity. Up to that point he was doing fine. However, the Germans, thinking that they’d found a useful interpreter, thereupon deluged him with questions.”

“About what?”

“That’s just it. If he had understood their questions, there would have been no trouble. But you see he was subjected to floods of such questions, all delivered in rapid German, and he simply couldn’t make head or tail of what was being asked. When at last he chanced to understand part of their outpourings, it was something about a fireman’s axe or a mallet—some word he couldn’t translate—so again, naturally, he was completely at a loss how to reply.”

“That I can well imagine,” sympathizes my master, thinking of his own difficulties as a teacher.

“Idle onlookers soon began to gather around and eventually Beauchamp and the Germans were totally surrounded by staring eyes. In his confusion Beauchamp fell to blushing. In contrast to his earlier self-confidence he was now at his wit’s end.”

“How did it all turn out?”

“In the end Beauchamp could stand it no longer, shouted sainara in Japanese and came rushing home. I pointed out to him that sainara was an odd phrase to use and inquired whether, in his home-district, people used sainara rather than sayonara. He replied they would say sayonara but, since he was talking to Europeans, he had used sainara in order to maintain harmony. I must say I was much impressed to find him a man mindful of harmony even when in difficulties.”

“So that’s the bit about sainara. What did the Europeans do?”

“I hear that the Europeans looked utterly flabbergasted.” And Waverhouse gave vent to laughter. “Interesting, eh?”

“Frankly, no. I really can’t find anything particularly interesting in your story. But that you should have come here specially to tell me the tale, that I do find much more interesting.” My master taps his cigarette’s ash into the brazier. Just at that moment the bell on the lattice door at the entrance rang with an alarming loudness, and a piercing woman’s voice declared, “Excuse me.” Waverhouse and my master look at each other in silence.

Even while I am thinking that it is unusual for my master’s house to have a female visitor, the owner of that piercing voice enters the room. She is wearing two layers of silk crepe kimono, and looks to be a little over forty. Her forelock towers up above the bald expanse of her brow like the wall of a dyke and sticks out toward heaven for easily one half the length of her face. Her eyes, set at an angle like a road cut through a mountain, slant up symmetrically in straight lines. I speak, of course, metaphorically. Her eyes, in fact, are even narrower than those of a whale. But her nose is exceedingly large. It gives the impression that it has been stolen from someone else and thereafter fastened in the center of her face. It is as if a large, stone lantern from some major shrine had been moved to a tiny ten-square-meter garden.

It certainly asserts its own importance, but yet looks out of place. It could almost be termed hooked: it begins by jutting sharply out, but then, halfway along its length, it suddenly turns shy so that its tip, bereft of the original vigour, hangs limply down to peer into the mouth below. Her nose is such that, when she speaks, it is the nose rather than the mouth which seems to be in action. Indeed, in homage to the enormity of that organ, I shall refer hence forward to its owner as Madam Conk. When the ceremonials of her self-introduction had been completed, she glared around the room and remarked, “What a nice house.”

“What a liar,” says my master to himself, and concentrates upon his smoking. Waverhouse studies the ceiling. “Tell me,” he says, “is that odd pattern the result of a rain leak or is it inherent in the grain of the wood?”

“Rain leak, naturally” replies my master. To which Waverhouse coolly answers, “Wonderful.”

Madam Conk clearly regards them as unsociable persons and boils quietly with suppressed annoyance. For a time the three of them just sit there in a triangle without saying a word.

“I’ve come to ask you about a certain matter.” Madam Conk starts up again.

“Ah.” My master’s response lacks warmth.

Madam Conk, dissatisfied with this development, bestirs herself again. “I live nearby. In fact, at the residence on the corner of the block across the road.”

“That large house in the European style, the one with a godown? Ah, yes. Of course. Have I not seen ‘Goldfield’ on the nameplate of that dwelling?” My master, at last, seems ready to take cognizance of Goldfield’s European house and his incorporated godown, but his attitude toward Madam Conk displays no deepening of respect.

“Of course my husband should call upon you and seek your valued advice, but he is always so busy with his company affairs.” She puts on a “that ought to shift them” face, but my master remains entirely unimpressed. He is, in fact, displeased by her manner of speaking, finding it too direct in a woman met for the first time. “And not of just one company either. He is connected with two or three of them and is a director of them all, as I expect you already know.” She looks as if saying to herself, “Now surely he should feel small.” In point of fact, the master of this house behaves most humbly toward anyone who happens to be a doctor or a professor, but, oddly enough, he offers scant respect toward businessmen. He considers a middle school teacher to be a more elevated person than any businessman. Even if he doesn’t really believe this, he is quite resigned, being of an unadaptable nature, to the fact that he can never hope to be smiled upon by businessmen or millionaires. For he feels nothing but indifference toward any person, no matter how rich or influential, from whom he has ceased to hope for benefits. He consequently pays not the faintest attention to anything extraneous to the society of scholars, and is almost actively disinterested in the goings-on of the business world. Had he even the vaguest knowledge of the activities of businessmen, he still could never muster the slightest feeling of awe or respect for such abysmal persons. While, for her part, Madam Conk could never stretch her imagination to the point of considering that any being so eccentric as my master could actually exist, that any corner of the world might harbor such an oddity. Her experience has included meetings with many people and invariably, as soon as she declares that she is wife to Goldfield, their attitude towards her never fails immediately to alter. At any party whatsoever and no matter how lofty the social standing of any man before whom she happens to find herself, she has always found that Mrs. Goldfield is eminently acceptable. How then could she fail to impress such an obscure old teacher? She had expected that the mere mention of the fact that her house was the corner residence of the opposite block would startle my master even before she added information about Mr. Goldfield’s notable activities in the world of business.

“Do you know anyone called Goldfield?” my master inquires of Waverhouse with the utmost nonchalance.

“Of course I know him. He’s a friend of my uncle. Only the other day he was present at our garden party.” Waverhouse answers in a serious manner.

“Really?” said my master. “And who, may I ask, is your uncle?”

“Baron Makiyama,” replied Waverhouse in even graver tones. My master is obviously about to say something, but before he can bring himself to words, Madam Conk turns abruptly toward Waverhouse and subjects him to a piercing stare. Waverhouse, secure in a kimono of the finest silk, remains entirely unperturbed.

“Oh, you are Baron Makiyama’s. . . That I didn’t know. I hope you’ll excuse me. . . I’ve heard so much about Baron Makiyama from my husband. He tells me that the Baron has always been so helpful. . .” Madam Conk’s manner of speech has suddenly become polite. She even bows.

“Ah yes,” observes Waverhouse who is inwardly laughing. My master, quite astonished, watches the two in silence.

“I understand he has even troubled the Baron about our daughter’s marriage. . .”

“Has he indeed?” exclaims Waverhouse as if surprised. Even Waverhouse seems somewhat taken aback by this unexpected development.

“We are, in fact, receiving proposal after proposal in respect of marriage to our daughter. They flood in from all over the place. You will appreciate that, having to think seriously of our social position, we cannot rashly marry off our daughter to just anyone. . .”

“Quite so.” Waverhouse feels relieved.

“I have, in point of fact, made this visit precisely to raise with you a question about this marriage matter.” Madam Conk turns back to my master and reverts to her earlier vulgar style of speech. “I hear that a certain Avalon Coldmoon pays you frequent visits. What sort of a man is he?”

“Why do you want to know about Coldmoon?” replies my master in a manner revealing his displeasure.

“Perhaps it is in connection with your daughter’s marriage that you wish to know something about the character of Coldmoon,” puts in Waverhouse tactfully.

“If you could tell me about his character, it would indeed be helpful.”

“Then is it that you want to give your daughter in marriage to Coldmoon?”

“It’s not a question of my wanting to give her.” Madam Conk immediately squashes my master. “Since there will be innumerable proposals, we couldn’t care less if he doesn’t marry her.”

“In that case, you don’t need any information about Coldmoon,” my master replies with matching heat.

“But you’ve no reason to withhold information.” Madam Conk adopts an almost defiant attitude.

Waverhouse, sitting between the two and holding his silver pipe as if it were an umpire’s instrument of office, is secretly beside himself with glee. His gloating heart urges them on to yet more extravagant exchanges.

“Tell me, did Coldmoon actually say he wanted to marry her?” My master fires a broadside pointblank.

“He didn’t actually say he wanted to, but. . .”

“You just think it likely that he might want to?” My master seems to have realized that broadsides are best in dealing with this woman.

“The matter is not yet so far advanced, but. . . well, I don’t think Mr. Coldmoon is wholly averse to the idea.” Madam Conk rallies well in her extremity.

“Is there any concrete evidence whatsoever that Coldmoon is enamored of this daughter of yours?” My master, as if to say, “now answer me if you can,” sticks out his chest belligerently.

“Well, more or less, yes.” This time my master’s militance has failed in its effect. Waverhouse has hitherto been so delighted with his self-appointed role of umpire that he has simply sat and watched the scrap, but now his curiosity seems suddenly to have been aroused. He puts down the pipe and leans forward. “Has Coldmoon sent your daughter a love letter? What fun! One more new event since the New Year and, at that, a splendid subject for debate.” Waverhouse alone is pleased.

“Not a love letter. Something much more ardent than that. Are you two really so much in the dark?” Madam Conk adopts a disbelieving attitude.

“Are you aware of anything?” My master, looking nonplussed, addresses himself to Waverhouse.

Waverhouse takes refuge in banter. “I know nothing. If anyone should know, it would be you.” His reaction is disappointingly modest.

“But the two of you know all about it,” Madam Conk triumphs over both of them.

“Oh!”The sound expressed their simultaneous astonishment.

“In case you’ve forgotten, let me remind you of what happened. At the end of last year Mr. Coldmoon went to a concert at the Abe residence in Mukōjima, right? That evening, on his way home, something happened at Azuma Bridge. You remember? l won’t repeat the details since that might compromise the person in question, but what I’ve said is surely proof enough. What do you think?” She sits bolt-upright with her diamond-ringed fingers in her lap. Her magnificent nose looks more resplendent than ever, so much so that Waverhouse and my master seem practically obliterated.

My master, naturally, but Waverhouse also, appear dumbfounded by this surprise attack. For a while they just sit there in bewilderment, like patients whose fits of ague have suddenly ceased. But as the first shock of their astonishment subsides and they come slowly back to normality, their sense of humor irrepressibly asserts itself and they burst into gales of laughter. Madam Conk, baulked in her expectations and, ill-prepared for this reaction of rude laughing, glares at both of them.

“Was that your daughter? Isn’t it wonderful! You’re quite right. Indeed Coldmoon must be mad about her. I say, Sneaze, there’s no point now in trying to keep it secret. Let’s make a clean breast of everything.” My master just says “Hum.”

“There’s certainly no point in your trying to keep it secret. The cat’s already out of the bag.” Madam Conk is once more cock-a-hoop.

“Yes, indeed, we’re cornered. We’ll have to make a true statement on everything concerning Coldmoon for this lady’s information. Sneaze! you’re the host here. Pull yourself together, man. Stop grinning like that or we’ll never get this business sorted out. It’s extraordinary. Secretiveness is a most mysterious matter. However well one guards a secret, sooner or later it’s bound to come out. Indeed, when you come to think of it, it really is most extraordinary. Tell us, Mrs. Goldfield, how did you ever discover this secret? I am truly amazed.” Waverhouse rattles on.

“I’ve a nose for these things.” Madam Conk declares with some self-satisfaction.

“You must indeed be very well informed. Who on earth has told you about this matter?”

“The wife of the rickshawman who lives just there at the back.”

“Do you mean that man who owns that vile black cat?” My master is wide-eyed.

“Yes, your Mr. Coldmoon has cost me a pretty penny. Every time he comes here I want to know what he talks about, so I’ve arranged for the wife of the rickshawman to learn what happens and to report it all to me.”

“But that’s terrible!” My master raises his voice.

“Don’t worry, I don’t give a damn what you do or say. I’m not in the least concerned with you, only with Mr. Coldmoon.”

“Whether with Coldmoon or with anyone else. . . Really, that rickshaw woman is a quite disgusting creature.” My master begins to get angry.

“But surely she is free to stand outside your hedge. If you don’t want your conversations overheard, you should either talk less loudly or live in a larger house.” Madam Conk is clearly not the least ashamed of herself. “And that’s not my only source. I’ve also heard a deal of stuff from the Mistress of the two-stringed harp.”

“You mean about Coldmoon?”

“Not solely about Coldmoon.” This sounds menacing but, far from retreating in embarrassment, my master retorts. “That woman gives herself such airs. Acting as though she and she alone were the only person of any standing in this neighborhood. A vain, an idiotic fellow. . .”

“Pardon me! It’s a woman you’re describing. A fellow, did you say? Believe me, you’re talking out of the back of your neck.” Her language more and more betrays her vulgar origin. Indeed, it now appears as if she has only come in order to pick a quarrel. But Waverhouse, typically, just sits listening to the quarrel as if it were being conducted for his amusement. Indeed, he looks like a Chinese sage at a cockfight: cool and above it all.

My master at last realizes that he can never match Madam Conk in the exchange of scurrilities, and he lapses into a forced silence. But eventually a bright idea occurs to him.

“You’ve been speaking as though it were Coldmoon who was besotted with your daughter, but from what I’ve heard, the situation is quite different. Isn’t that so, Waverhouse?”

“Certainly. As we heard it, your daughter fell ill and then, we understand, began babbling in delirium.”

“No. You’ve got it all wrong.” Madam Conk gives the lie direct.

“But Coldmoon undoubtedly said that that was what he had been told by Dr. O’s wife.”

“That was our trap. We’d asked the Doctor’s wife to play that trick on Coldmoon precisely in order to see how he’d react.”

“Did the doctor’s wife agree to this deception in full knowledge that it was a trick?”

“Yes. Of course we couldn’t expect her to help us purely for affection’s sake. As I’ve said, we’ve had to lay out a very pretty penny on one thing and another.”

“You are quite determined to impose yourself upon us and quiz us in detail about Coldmoon, eh?” Even Waverhouse seems to be getting annoyed for he uses some sharpish turns of phrase quite unlike his usual manner.

“Ah well, Sneaze,” he continues, “what do we lose if we talk? Let’s tell her everything. Now, Mrs. Goldfield, both Sneaze and I will tell you anything within reason about Coldmoon. But it would be more convenient for us if you’d present your questions one at a time.”

Madam Conk was thus at last brought to see reason. And when she began to pose her questions, her style of speech, only recently so coarsely violent, acquired a certain civil polish, at least when she spoke to Waverhouse. “I understand,” she opens, “that Mr. Coldmoon is a bachelor of science. Now please tell me in what sort of subject has he specialized?”

“In his post-graduate course, he’s studying terrestrial magnetism,” answers my master seriously.

Unfortunately, Madam Conk does not understand this answer. Therefore, though she says, “Ah,” she looks dubious and asks: “If one studies that, could one obtain a doctor’s degree?”

“Are you seriously suggesting that you wouldn’t allow your daughter to marry him unless he held a doctorate?” The tone of my master’s inquiry discloses his deep displeasure.

“That’s right. After all, if it’s just a bachelor’s degree, there are so many of them!” Madam Conk replies with complete unconcern.

My master’s glance at Waverhouse reveals a deepening disgust.

“Since we cannot be sure whether or not he’ll gain a doctorate, you’ll have to ask us something else.”Waverhouse seems equally displeased.

“Is he still just studying that terrestrial something?”

“A few days ago,” my master quite innocently offers, “he made a speech on the results of his investigation of the mechanics of hanging.”

“Hanging? How dreadful! He must be peculiar. I don’t suppose he could ever become a doctor by devoting himself to hanging.”

“It would of course be difficult for him to gain a doctorate if he actually hanged himself, but it is not impossible to become a doctor through study of the mechanics of hanging.”

“Is that so?” she answers, trying to read my master’s expression. It’s a sad, sad thing but, since she does not know what mechanics are, she cannot help feeling uneasy. She probably thinks that to ask the meaning of such a trifling matter might involve her in loss of face. Like a fortuneteller, she tries to guess the truth from facial expressions. My master’s face is glum. “Is he studying anything else, something more easy to understand?”

“He once wrote a treatise entitled ‘A Discussion of the Stability of Acorns in Relation to the Movements of Heavenly Bodies.’”

“Does one really study such things as acorns at a university?”

“Not being a member of any university, I cannot answer your question with complete certainty, but since Coldmoon is engaged in such studies, the subject must undoubtedly be worth studying.” With a dead-pan face, Waverhouse makes fun of her.

Madam Conk seems to have realized that her questions about matters of scholarship have carried her out of her depth, for she changes the subject. “By the way,” she says, “I hear that he broke two of his front teeth when eating mushrooms during the New Year season.”

“True, and a rice-cake became fixed on the broken part.” Waverhouse, feeling that this question is indeed up his street, suddenly becomes light-hearted.

“How unromantic! I wonder why he doesn’t use a toothpick!”

“Next time I see him, I’ll pass on your sage advice,” says my master with a chuckle.

“If his teeth can be snapped on mushrooms, they must be in very poor condition. What do you think?”

“One could hardly say such teeth were good. Could one, Waverhouse?”

“Of course they can’t be good, but they do provide a certain humor.

It’s odd that he hasn’t had them filled. It really is an extraordinary sight when a man just leaves his teeth to become mere hooks for snagging rice-cakes.”

“Is it because he lacks the money to get them filled or because he’s just so odd that he leaves them unattended to?”

“Ah, you needn’t worry. I don’t suppose he will continue as Mr. Broken Front Tooth for any long time.” Waverhouse is evidently regaining his usual buoyancy.

Madam Conk again changes the subject. “If you should have some letter or anything which he’s written, I’d like to see it.”

“I have masses of postcards from him. Please have a look at them,” and my master produces some thirty or forty postcards from his study.

“Oh, I don’t have to look at so many of them. . . perhaps two or three would do. . .”

“Let me choose some for you,” offers Waverhouse, adding as he selects a picture postcard, “Here’s an interesting one.”

“Gracious! So he paints pictures as well? Rather clever that,” she exclaims. But after examining the picture she remarks “How very silly! It’s a badger! Why on earth does he have to paint a badger of all things! Strange. But it does indeed look like a badger.” She is, albeit reluctantly, mildly impressed.

“Read what he’s written beside it,” suggests my master with a laugh.

Madam Conk begins to read aloud like a servant-girl deciphering a newspaper.

“On New Year’s Eve, as calculated under the ancient calendar, the mountain badgers hold a garden party at which they dance excessively. Their song says, ‘This evening, being New Year’s Eve, no mountain hikers will come this way.’ And bom-bom-bom they thump upon their bellies. What is he writing about? Is he not being a trifle frivolous?” Madam Conk seems seriously dissatisfied.

“Doesn’t this heavenly maiden please you?” Waverhouse picks out another card on which a kind of angel in celestial raiment is depicted as playing upon a lute.

“The nose of this heavenly maiden seems rather too small.”

“Oh no, that’s about the average size for an angel. But forget the nose for the moment and read what it says,” urges Waverhouse.

“It says ‘Once upon a time there was an astronomer. One night he went as was his wont high up into his observatory, and, as he was intently watching the stars, a beautiful heavenly maiden appeared in the sky and began to play some music; music too delicate ever to be heard on earth. The astronomer was so entranced by the music that he quite forgot the dark night’s bitter cold. Next morning the dead body of the astronomer was found covered with pure white frost. An old man, a liar, told me that this story was all true.’ What the hell is this? It makes no sense, no nothing. Can Coldmoon really be a bachelor of science? Perhaps he should read a few literary magazines.”Thus mercilessly does Madam Conk lambaste the defenseless Coldmoon.

Waverhouse for fun selects a third postcard and says, “Well then, what about this one?” The card has a sailing boat printed on it and, as usual, there is something scribbled underneath the picture.

Last night a tiny whore of sixteen summers

Declared she had no parents.

Like a plover on a reefy coast,

She wept on waking in the early morning.

Her parents, sailors both, lie at the bottom of the sea.

“Oh, that’s good. How very clever! He’s got real feeling,” erupted Madam Conk.

“Feeling?” says Waverhouse.

“Oh yes,” says Madam Conk. “That would go well on a samisen.

“If it could be played on the samisen, then it’s the real McCoy. Well, how about these?” asks Waverhouse picking out postcard after postcard.

“Thank you, but I’ve seen enough. For now, at least I know that Coldmoon’s not a straight-laced prude.” She thinks she has achieved some real understanding and appears to have no more queries about Coldmoon, for she remarks, “I’m sorry to have troubled you. Please do not report my visit to Mr. Coldmoon.” Her request reflects her selfish nature in that she seems to feel entitled to make a thorough investigation of Coldmoon whilst expecting that none of her activities should be revealed to him. Both Waverhouse and my master concede a half-hearted “Y-es,” but as Madam Conk gets up to leave, she consolidates their assent by saying, “I shall, of course, at some later date repay you for your services.”

The two men showed her out and, as they resumed their seats, Waverhouse exclaimed, “What on earth is that?” At the very same moment my master also ejaculated, “Whatever’s that?” I suppose my master’s wife could not restrain her laughter any longer, for we heard her gurgling in the inner-room.

Waverhouse thereupon addressed her in a loud voice through the sliding door. “That, Mrs. Sneaze, was a remarkable specimen of all that is conventional, of all that is ‘common or garden.’ But when such characteristics become developed to that incredible degree the result is positively staggering. Such quintessence of the common approximates to the unique. Don’t seek to restrain yourself. Laugh to your heart’s content.”

With evident disgust my master speaks in tones of the deepest revulsion. “To begin with,” he says, “her face is unattractive.”

Waverhouse immediately takes the cue. “And that nose, squatting, as it were, in the middle of that phiz, seems affectedly unreal.”

“Not only that, it’s crooked.”

“Hunchbacked, one might say. A hunchbacked nose! Quite extraordinary.” And Waverhouse laughs in genuine delight.

“It is the face of a woman who keeps her husband under her bottom.”

My master still looks resentful.

“It is a sort of physiognomy that, left unsold in the nineteenth century, becomes in the twentieth shop-soiled.”Waverhouse produces another of his invariably bizarre remarks. At which juncture my master’s wife emerges from the inner-room and, being a woman and thus aware of the ways of women, quietly warns them, “If you talk such scandal, the rickshaw-owner’s wife will snitch on you again.”

“But, Mrs. Sneaze, to hear such tattle will do that Goldfield woman no end of good.”

“But it’s self-demeaning to calumniate a person’s face. No one sports that sort of nose as a matter of choice. Besides, she is a woman. You’re going a little too far.” Her defense of the nose of Madam Conk is simultaneously an indirect defense of her own indifferent looks.

“We’re not unkind at all. That creature isn’t a woman. She’s just an oaf. Waverhouse, am I not right?”

“Maybe an oaf, but a formidable character nonetheless. She gave you quite a tousling, didn’t she just?”

“What does she take a teacher for, anyway?”

“She ranks a teacher on roughly the same level as a rickshaw-owner. To earn the respect of such viragoes one needs to have at least a doctor’s degree. You were ill-advised not to have taken your doctorate. Don’t you agree, Mrs. Sneaze?”Waverhouse looks at her with a smile.

“A doctorate? Quite impossible.” Even his wife despairs of my master.

“You never know. I might become one, one of these days. You mustn’t always doubt my worth. You may well be ignorant of the fact, but in ancient times a certain Greek, lsocrates, produced major literary works at the age of ninety-four. Similarly, Sophocles was almost a centenarian when he shook the world with his masterpiece. Simonides was writing wonderful poetry in his eighties. I, too. . .”

“Don’t be silly. How can you possibly expect, you with your stomach troubles, to live that long.” Mrs. Sneaze has already determined my master’s span of life.

“How dare you! Just go and talk to Dr. Amaki. Anyway, it’s all your fault. It’s because you make me wear this crumpled black cotton surcoat and this patched-up kimono that I am despised by women like Mrs. Goldfield. Very well then. From tomorrow I shall rig myself out in such fineries as Waverhouse is wearing. So get them ready.”

“You may well say ‘get them ready,’ but we don’t possess any such elegant clothes. Anyway, Mrs. Goldfield only grew civil to Waverhouse after he’d mentioned his uncle’s name. Her attitude was in no way conditioned by the ill-condition of your kimono.” Mrs. Sneaze has neatly dodged the charge against her.

The mention of that uncle appears to trigger my master’s memory, for he turns to Waverhouse and says, “That was the first I ever heard of your uncle. You never spoke of him before. Does he, in fact, exist?”

Waverhouse has obviously been expecting this question, and he jumps to answer it. “Yes, that uncle of mine, a remarkably stubborn man. He, too, is a survival from the nineteenth century.” He looks at husband and wife.

“You do say the quaintest things. Where does this uncle live?” asks Mr. Sneaze with a titter.

“In Shizuoka. But he doesn’t just live. He lives with a top-knot still on his head. Can you beat it? When we suggest he should wear a hat, he proudly answers that he has never found the weather cold enough to don such gear. And when we hint that he might be wise to stay abed when the weather’s freezing, he replies that four hour’s sleep is sufficient for any man. He is convinced that to sleep more than four hours is sheer extravagance, so he gets up while it’s still pitch-dark. It is his boast that it took many long years of training so to minimize his sleeping hours. ‘When I was young,’ he says,‘it was indeed hard because I felt sleepy, but recently I have at last achieved that wonderful condition where I can sleep or wake, anywhere, anytime, just as I happen to wish.’ It is of course natural that a man of sixty-seven should need less sleep. It has nothing to do with early training, but my uncle is happy in the belief that he has succeeded in attaining his present condition entirely as a result of rigorous self-discipline. And when he goes out, he always carries an iron fan.”

“Whatever for?” asks my master.

“l haven’t the faintest idea. He just carries it. Perhaps he prefers a fan to a walking stick. As a matter of fact an odd thing happened only the other day.”Waverhouse speaks to Mrs. Sneaze.

“Ah yes?” she noncommittally responds.

“In the spring this year he wrote to me out of the blue with a request that I should send him a bowler hat and a frock-coat. I was somewhat surprised and wrote back asking for further clarification. I received an answer stating that the old man himself intended to wear both items on the occasion of the Shizuoka celebration of the war victory, and that I should therefore send them quickly. It was an order. But the quaintness of his letter was that it enjoined me ‘to choose a hat of suitable size and, as for the suit, to go and order one from Daimaru of whatever size you think appropriate.’”

“Can one get suits made at Daimaru?”

“No. I think he’d got confused and meant to say at Shirokiya’s.”

“Isn’t it a little unhelpful to say ‘of whatever size you think appropriate’?”

“That’s just my uncle all over.”

“What did you do?”

“What could I do? I ordered a suit which I thought appropriate and sent it to him.”

“How very irresponsible! And did it fit?”

“More or less, I think. For I later noticed in my home-town newspaper that the venerable Mr. Makiyama had created something of a sensation by appearing at the said celebration in a frock coat carrying, as usual, his famous iron fan.”

“It seems difficult to part him from that object.”

“When he’s buried, I shall ensure that the fan is placed within the coffin.”

“Still it was fortunate that the coat and bowler fitted him.”

“But they didn’t. Just when I was congratulating myself that everything had gone off smoothly, a parcel came from Shizuoka. I opened it expecting some token of his gratitude, but it proved only to contain the bowler. An accompanying letter stated, ‘Though you have taken the trouble of making this purchase for me, I find the hat too large. Please be so kind as to take it back to the hatter’s and have it shrunk. I will of course defray your consequent expenses by postal order.’”

“Peculiar, one must admit.” My master seems greatly pleased to discover that there is someone even more peculiar than himself. “So what did you do?” he asks.

“What did I do? I could do nothing. I’m wearing the hat myself.”

“And is that the very hat?” says my master with a smirk.

“And he’s a Baron?” asks my master’s wife from her mystification.

“Is who?”

“Your uncle with the iron fan.”

“Oh, no. He’s a scholar of the Chinese classics. When he was young he studied at that shrine dedicated to Confucius in Yushima and became so absorbed in the teachings of Chu-Tzu that, most reverentially, he continues to wear a top-knot in these days of the electric light. There’s nothing one can do about it.” Waverhouse rubs his chin.

“But I have the impression that in speaking just now to that awful woman you mentioned a Baron Makiyama.”

“Indeed you did. I heard you quite distinctly, even in the other room.”

Mrs. Sneaze for once supports her husband.

“Oh, did I?” Waverhouse permits himself a snigger. “Fancy that. Well, it wasn’t true. Had I a Baron for an uncle I would by now be a senior civil servant.”Waverhouse is not in the least embarrassed.

“I thought it was somehow queer,” says my master with an expression half-pleased, half-worried.

“It’s astonishing how calmly you can lie. I must say you’re a past master at the game.” Mrs. Sneaze is deeply impressed.

“You flatter me. That woman quite outclasses me.”

“I don’t think she could match you.”

“But, Mrs. Sneaze, my lies are merely tarrydiddles. That woman’s lies, every one of them, have hooks inside them. They’re tricky lies. Lies loaded with malice aforethought. They are the spawn of craftiness. Please never confuse such calculated monkey-minded wickedness with my heaven-sent taste for the comicality of things. Should such confusion prevail, the God of Comedy would have no choice but to weep for mankind’s lack of perspicacity.”

“I wonder,” says my master, lowering his eyes, while Mrs. Sneaze, still laughing, remarks that it all comes down to the same thing in the end.

Up until now I have never so much as crossed the road to investigate the block opposite. I have never clapped eyes on the Goldfield’s corner residence so I naturally have no idea what it looks like. Indeed today is the first time that I’ve even heard of its existence. No one in this house has ever previously talked about a businessman and consequently I, who am my master’s cat, have shared his total disinterest in the world of business and his equally total indifference to businessmen. However, having just been present during the colloquy with Madam Conk, having overheard her talk, having imagined her daughter’s beauty and charm, and also having given some thought to that family’s wealth and power, I have come to realize that, though no more than a cat, I should not idle all my days away lying on the veranda. Not only that, I cannot help but feel deep sympathy with Coldmoon. His opponent has already bribed a doctor’s wife, bribed the wife of the rickshaw-owner, bribed even that high-falutin mistress of the two-stringed harp. She has so spied upon poor Coldmoon that even his broken teeth have been disclosed, while he has done no more than fiddle with the fastenings of his surcoat and, on occasion, grin. He is guileless even for a bachelor of science just out of the university. And it’s not just anyone who can cope with a woman equipped with such a jut of nose. My master not only lacks the heart for dealing with matters of this sort, but he lacks the money, too. Waverhouse has sufficient money, but is such an inconsequential being that he’d never go out of his way merely to help Coldmoon. How isolated, then, is that unfortunate person who lectures on the mechanics of hanging. It would be less than fair if I failed at least to try and insinuate myself into the enemy fortress and, for Coldmoon’s sake, pick up news of their activities. Though but a cat, I am not quite as other cats. I differ from the general run of idiot cats and stupid cats. I am a cat that lodges in the house of a scholar who, having read it, can bang down any book by Epictetus on his desk. Concentrated in the tip of my tail there is sufficient of the spirit of chivalry for me to take it upon myself to venture upon knight-errantry. It is not that I am in any way beholden to poor Coldmoon, nor am I engaging in foolhardy action for the sake of any single individual. If I may be allowed to blow my own trumpet, I am proposing to take magnificent unself-interested action simply in order to realize the will of Heaven that smiles upon impartiality and blesses the happy medium. Since Madam Conk makes impermissible use of such things as the happenings at Azuma Bridge; since she hires underlings to spy and eavesdrop on us; since she triumphantly retails to all and sundry the products of her espionage; since by the employment of rickshaw-folk, mere grooms, plain rogues, student riff-raff, crone daily-help, midwives, witches, masseurs, and other trouble-makers she seeks to trouble a man of talent; for all these reasons even a cat must do what can be done to prevent her getting away with it.

The weather, fortunately, is fine. The thaw is something of nuisance, but one must be prepared to sacrifice one’s life in the cause of justice. If my feet get muddy and stamp plum blossom patterns on the veranda, OSan may be narked but that won’t worry me. For I have come to the superlatively courageous, firm decision that I will not put off until tomorrow what needs to be done today. Accordingly, I whisk off around to the kitchen, but, having arrived there, pause for further thought. “Softly, softly,” I say to myself. It’s not simply that I’ve attained the highest degree of evolution that can occur in cats, but I make bold to believe my brain is as well-developed as that of any boy in his third year at a middle school. Nevertheless, alas, the construction of my throat is still only that of a cat, and I cannot therefore speak the babbles of mankind. Thus, even if I succeed in sneaking into the Goldfield’s citadel and there discovering matters of moment, I shall remain unable to communicate my discoveries to that Coldmoon who so needs them. Neither shall I be able to communicate my gleanings to my master or to Waverhouse. Such incommunicable knowledge would, like a buried diamond, be denied its brilliance and my hard-won wisdom would all be won for nothing. Which would be stupid. Perhaps I should scrap my plan. So thinking, I hesitated on the very doorstep.

But to abandon a project halfway through breeds a kind of regret, that sense of unfulfillment which one feels when the slower one had so confidently expected drifts away under inky clouds into some other part of the countryside. Of course, to persist when one is in the wrong is an altogether different matter, but to press on for the sake of so-called justice and humanity, even at the risk of death uncrowned by success, that, for a man who knows his duty, can be a source of the deepest satisfaction. Accordingly, to engage in fruitless effort and to muddy one’s paws on a fool’s errand would seem about right for a cat. Since it is my misfortune to have been born a cat, I cannot by turns of the tip of my tail convey, as I can to cats, my thinking to such scholars as Coldmoon, Sneaze, and Waverhouse. However, by virtue of felinity, I can, better than all such bookmen, make myself invisible. To do what no one else can do is, of itself, delightful. That I alone should know the inner workings of the Goldfield household is better than if nobody should know. Though I cannot pass my knowledge on, it is still cause for delight that I may make the Goldfields conscious that someone knows their secrets. In the light of this succession of delights, I boldly make believe my brain is as delightful as well. All right then. I will go.

Coming to the side street in the opposite block, there, sure enough, I find a Western-style house dominating the crossroads as if it owned the whole area. Thinking that the master of such a house must be no less stuck up than his building, I slide past the gate and examine the edifice. Its construction has no merit. Its two stories rear up into the air for no purpose whatever but to impress, even to coerce, the passersby. This, I suppose, is what Waverhouse means when he calls things common or garden. I slink through some bushes, take note of the main entrance to my right, and so find my way round to the kitchen. As might be expected, the kitchen is large—at least ten times as large as that in my master’s dwelling. Everything is in such apple pie order, all so clean and shining, that it cannot be less splendid than that fabulous kitchen of Count Okuma so fulsomely described in a recent product of the national press. I tell myself, as I slip inside on silent muddy paws, that this must be “a model kitchen.” On the plastered part of its floor the wife of the rickshaw-owner is standing in earnest discussion with a kitchen-maid and a rickshaw-runner. Realizing the dangers of this situation, I hide behind a water-tub.

“That teacher, doesn’t he really even know our master’s name?” the kitchen-maid demands.

“Of course he knows it. Anyone in this district who doesn’t know the Goldfield residence must be a deaf cripple without eyes,” snaps the man who pulls the Goldfield’s private rickshaw.

“Well, you never know. That teacher’s one of those cranks who know nothing at all except what it says in books. If he knew even the least little thing about Mr. Goldfield he might be scared out of his wits. But he hasn’t the wits to be scared out of. Why,” snorts Blacky’s bloody-minded mistress, “he doesn’t even know the ages of his own mis-managed children.”

“So he’s not afraid of our Mr. Goldfield! What a cussed clot he is! There’s no call to show him the least consideration. Let’s go around and give him something to be scared about.”

“Good idea! He says such dreadful things. He was telling his crackpot cronies that, since Madam’s nose is far too big for her face, he finds her unattractive. No doubt he thinks himself a proper picture, but his mug’s the spitting image of a terra-cotta badger. What can be done, I ask you, with such an animal?”

“And it isn’t only his face. The way he saunters down to the public bathhouse carrying a hand towel is far too high and mighty. He thinks he’s the cat’s whiskers.” My master Sneaze seems notably unpopular, even with this kitchen-maid.

“Let’s all go and call him names as loud as we can from just outside his hedge.”

“That’ll bring him down a peg.”

“But we mustn’t let ourselves be seen. We must spoil his studying just with shouting, getting him riled as much as we can. Those are Madam’s latest orders.”

“I know all that,” says the rickshaw wife in a voice that makes it clear that she’s only too ready to undertake one-third of their scurrilous assignment. Thinking to myself, “So that’s the gang who’re going to ridicule my master,” I drift quietly past the noisesome trio and penetrate yet further into the enemy fortress.

Cat’s paws are as if they do not exist. Wheresoever they may go, they never make clumsy noises. Cats walk as if on air, as if they trod the clouds, as quietly as a stone going light-tapped under water, as an ancient Chinese harp touched in a sunken cave. The walking of a cat is the instinctive realization of all that is most delicate. For such as I am concerned, this vulgar Western house simply is not there. Nor do I take cognizance of the rickshaw-woman, manservant, kitchen-maids, the daughter of the house, Madam Conk, her parlor-maids or even her ghastly husband. For me they do not exist. I go where I like and I listen to whatever talk it interests me to hear. Thereafter, sticking out my tongue and frisking my tail, I walk home self-composedly with my whiskers proudly stiff. In this particular field of endeavor there’s not a cat in all Japan so gifted as am I. Indeed, I sometimes think I really must be blood-kin to that monster cat one sees in ancient picture books. They say that every toad carries in its forehead a gem that in the darkness utters light, but packed within my tail I carry not only the power of God, Buddha, Confucius, Love, and even Death, but also an infallible panacea for all ills that could bewitch the entire human race. I can as easily move unnoticed through the corridors of Goldfield’s awful mansion as a giant god of stone could squash a milk-blancmange.

At this point, I become so impressed by my own powers and so conscious of the reverence I consequently owe to my own most precious tail that I feel unable to withhold immediate recognition of its divinity. I desire to pray for success in war by worshiping my honored Great Tail Gracious Deity, so I lower my head a little, only to find I am not facing in the right direction. When I make the three appropriate obeisances I should, of course, as far as it is possible, be facing toward my tail. But as I turn my body to fulfill that requirement, my tail moves away from me. In an effort to catch up with myself, I twist my neck. But still my tail eludes me. Being a thing so sacred, containing as it does the entire universe in its three-inch length, my tail is inevitably beyond my power to control. I spun round in pursuit of it seven and a half times but, feeling quite exhausted, I finally gave up. I feel a trifle giddy. For a moment I lose all sense of where I am and, deciding that my whereabouts are totally unimportant, I start to walk about at random. Then I hear the voice of Madam Conk. It comes from the far side of a paper-window. My ears prick up in sharp diagonals and, once more fully alert, I hold my breath. This is the place which I set out to find.

“He’s far too cocky for a penny-pinching usher,” she’s screaming in that parrot’s voice.

“Sure, he’s a cocky fellow. I’ll have a bit of the bounce taken out of him, just to teach him a lesson. There are one or two fellows I know, fellows from my own province, teaching at his school.”

“What fellows are those?”

“Well, there’s Tsuki Pinsuke and Fukuchi Kishago for a start. I’ll arrange with them for him to be ragged in class.”

I don’t know from what province old man Goldfield comes, but I’m rather surprised to find it stiff with such outlandish names.

“Is he a teacher of English?” her husband asks.

“Yes. According to the wife of the rickshaw-owner, his teaching specializes in an English Reader or something like that.”

“In any case, he’s gotta be a rotten teacher.”

I’m also struck by the vulgarity of that “gotta be” phraseology.

“When I saw Pinsuke the other day he mentioned that there was some crackpot at his school. When asked the English word for bancha, this fathead answered that the English called it, not ‘coarse tea’ as they actually do, but ‘savage tea.’ He’s now the laughing stock of all his teaching colleagues. Pinsuke added that all the other teachers suffer for this one’s follies. Very likely it’s the self-same loon.”

“It’s bound to be. He’s got the face you’d expect on a fool who thinks that tea can be savage. And to think he has the nerve to sport such a dashing mustache!”

“Saucy bastard.”

If whiskers establish sauciness, every cat is impudent.

“As for that man Waverhouse—Staggering Drunk I’d call him—he’s an obstreperous freak if ever I saw one. Baron Makiyama, his uncle indeed! I was sure that no one with a face like his could have a baron for an uncle.”

“You, too, are at fault for believing anything which a man of such dubious origins might say.”

“Maybe I was at fault. But really there’s a limit and he’s gone much too far.” Madam Conk sounds singularly vexed. The odd thing is that neither mentions Coldmoon. I wonder if they concluded their discussion about him before I sneaked up on them or whether perhaps they had earlier decided to block his marriage suit and had therefore already forgotten all about him. I remain disturbed about this question, but there’s nothing I can do about it. For a little while I lay crouched down in silence but then I heard a bell ring at the far end of the corridor. What’s up down there? Determined this time not to be late on the scene, I set out smartly in the direction of the sound.

I arrived to find some female yattering away by herself in a loud unpleasant voice. Since her tones resemble those of Madam Conk, I deduce that this must be that darling daughter, that delicious charmer for whose sake Coldmoon has already risked death by drowning. Unfortunately, the paper-windows between us make it impossible for me to observe her beauty and I cannot therefore be sure whether she, too, has a massive nose plonked down in the center of her face. But I infer from her mannerisms, such as the way she sounds to be turning up her nose when she talks, that that organ is unlikely to be an inconspicuous pug-nose. Though she talks continuously, nobody seems to be answering, and I deduce that she must be using one of those modern telephones.

“Is that the Yamato? I want to reserve, for tomorrow, the third box in the lower gallery. All right? Got it? What’s that? You can’t? But you must. Why should I be joking? Don’t be such a fool. Who the devil are you? Chōkichi? Well, Chōkichi, you’re not doing very well. Ask the proprietress to come to the phone. What’s that? Did you say you were able to cope with any possible inquiries? How dare you speak to me like that? D’you know who I am? This is Miss Goldfield speaking. Oh, you’re well aware of that, are you? You really are a fathead. Don’t you understand, this is the Goldfield. Again? You thank us for being regular patrons? I don’t want your stupid thanks. I want the third box in the lower gallery. Don’t laugh, you idiot. You must be terribly stupid. You are, you say? If you don’t stop being insolent, I shall just ring off. You understand? I can promise you you’ll be sorry. Hello. Are you still there? Hello, hello. Speak up. Answer me. Hello, hello, hello.” Chōkichi seems to have hung up, for no answer is forthcoming. The girl is now in something of a tizzy and she grinds away at the telephone handle as though she’s gone off her head. A lapdog somewhere around her feet suddenly starts to yap, and, realizing I’d better keep my wits about me, I quickly hop off the veranda and creep in under the house.

Just then I hear approaching footsteps and the sound of a paper-door being slid aside. I tilt my head to listen.

“Your father and mother are asking for you, Miss.” It sounds like a parlor-maid.

“So who cares?” was the vulgar answer.

“They sent me to fetch you because they’ve something they want to tell you.”

“You’re being a nuisance. I said I just don’t care.” She snubs the maid once more.

“They said it’s something to do with Mr. Coldmoon.” The maid tries tactfully to put this young vixen into a better humor.

“I couldn’t care less if they want to talk about Coldmoon or Piddlemoon. I abominate that man with his daft face looking like a bewildered gourd.” Her third sour outburst is directed at the absent Coldmoon. “Hello,” she suddenly goes on, “when did you start dressing your hair in the Western style?”

The parlor-maid gulps and then replies as briefly as she can “Today.”

“What sauce. A mere parlor-maid, what’s more.” Her fourth attack comes in from a different direction. “And isn’t that a brand new collar you’ve got on?”

“Yes, it’s the one you gave me recently. I’ve been keeping it in my box because it seemed too good for the likes of me, but my other collar became so grubby I thought I’d make the change.”

“When did I give it you?”