I Am A Cat. Natsume Soseki
as the extraordinary experience of Mr. Waverhouse.”
“That’s interesting,” says Waverhouse. And he, too, stuffs his mouth with bean-jam cake.
“On that day, there was a year-end party combined with a concert given at the house of a friend of mine at Mūkōjima. I went there taking my violin with me. It was a grand affair with fifteen or sixteen young or married ladies. Everything was so perfectly arranged that one felt it was the most brilliant event of recent times. When the dinner and the concert were over, we sat and talked late, and as I was about to take my leave, the wife of a certain doctor came up to me and asked in whisper if I knew that Miss O was unwell. A few days earlier, when last I saw Miss O, she had been looking well and normal. So I was surprised to hear this news, and my immediate questions elicited the information that she had become feverish on the very evening of the day when I’d last seen her, and that she was saying all sorts of curious things in her delirium. What was worse, every now and again in that delirium, she was calling my name.”
Not only my master but even Waverhouse refrain from making any such hackneyed remark as “you lucky fellow.”They just listen in silence.
“They fetched a doctor who examined her. According to the doctor’s diagnosis, though the name of the disease was unknown, the high fever affecting the brain made her condition dangerous unless the administration of soporifics worked as effectively as was to be hoped for. As soon as I heard this news, a feeling of something awful grew within me. It was a heavy feeling, as though one were having a nightmare, and all the surrounding air seemed suddenly to be solidifying like a clamp upon my body. On my way home, moreover, I found I could think of nothing else, and it hurt. That beautiful, that gay, that so healthy Miss O. . .”
“Just a minute, please. You’ve mentioned Miss O about two times. If you’ve no objection, we’d like to know her name wouldn’t we?” asks Waverhouse turning to look at my master. The latter evades the question and says, “Hmm.”
“No, I won’t tell you her name since it might compromise the person in question.”
“Do you then propose to recount your entire story in such vague, ambiguous, equivocal, and noncommittal terms?”
“You mustn’t sneer. This is a serious story. Anyway, the thought of that young lady suffering from so odd an ailment filled my heart with mournful emotion, and my mind with sad reflections on the ephemerality of life. I felt suddenly depressed beyond all saying, as if every last ounce of my vitality had, just like that, evaporated from my body. I staggered on, tottering and wobbling, until I came to the Azuma Bridge. As I looked down, leaning on the parapet, the black waters—at neap or ebb, I don’t know which—seemed to be coagulating, only just barely moving. A rickshaw coming from the direction of Hanakawado ran over the bridge. I watched its lamp grow smaller and smaller until it disappeared at the Sapporo Beer factory. Again, I looked down at the water. And at that moment I heard a voice from upstream calling my name. It is most improbable that anyone should be calling after me at this unlikely time of night, and, wondering whom it could possibly be, I peered down to the surface of the water, but I could see nothing in the darkness. Thinking it must have been my imagination, I had decided to go home, when I again heard the voice calling my name. I stood dead-still and listened. When I heard it calling me for the third time, though I was gripping the parapet firmly, my knees began to tremble uncontrollably. The voice seemed to be coming either from far away or from the bottom of the river, but it was unmistakably the voice of Miss O. In spite of myself I answered, ‘Yes.’ My answer was so loud that it echoed back from the still water, and, surprised by my own voice, I looked around me in a startled manner. There was no one to be seen. No dog. No moon. Nothing. At this very second I experienced a sudden urge to immerse myself in that total darkness from which the voice had summoned me. And, once again, the voice of Miss O pierced my ears painfully, appealingly, as if begging for help. This time I cried,‘I’m coming now,’ and, leaning well out over the parapet, I looked down into the somber depths. For, it seemed to me that the summoning voice was surging powerfully up from beneath the waves. Thinking that the source of the pleading must lie in the water directly below me, I at last managed to clamber onto the parapet. I was determined that, next time the voice called out to me, I would dive straight in; and, as I stood watching the stream, once again the thin thread of that pitiful voice came floating up to me. This, I thought, is it; jumping high with all my strength, I came dropping down without regret like a pebble, or something.”
“So, you actually did dive in?” asks my master, blinking his eyes.
“I never thought you’d go as far as that,” says Waverhouse pinching the tip of his nose.
“After my dive I became unconscious, and for a while I seemed to be living in a dream. But eventually I woke up, and, though I felt cold, I was not at all wet and did not feel as if I had swallowed any water. Yet I was sure that I had dived. How very strange! Realizing that something peculiar must have taken place, I looked around me and received a real shock. I’d meant to dive into the water but apparently I’d accidentally landed in the middle of the bridge itself. I felt abysmally regretful. Having, by sheer mistake, jumped backwards instead of forwards, I’d lost my chance to answer the summons of the voice.” Coldmoon smirks and fiddles with the strings of his surcoat as if they were in some way irksome.
“Ha-ha-ha, how very comical. It’s odd that your experience so much resembles mine. It, too, could be adduced in support of the theories of Professor James. If you were to write it up in an article entitled ‘The Human Response,’ it would astound the whole literary world. But what,” persisted Waverhouse, “became of the ailing Miss O?”
“When I called at her house a few days ago, I saw her just inside the gate playing battledore and shuttlecock with her maid. So I expect she has completely recovered from her illness.”
My master, who for some time has been deep in thought, finally opens his mouth, and, in a spirit of unnecessary rivalry, remarks, “I too have a strange experience to relate.”
“You’ve got what?” In Waverhouse’s view, my master counts for so little that he is scarcely entitled to have experiences.
“Mine also occurred at the end of last year.”
“It’s queer,” observed Coldmoon, “that all last year,” and he sniggers. A piece of bean-jam cake adheres to the corner of his chipped front tooth.
“And it took place, doubtless,” added Waverhouse, “at the very same time on the very same day.”
“No, I think the date is different: it was about the 20th. My wife had earlier asked me, as a year’s-end present to herself, to take her to hear Settsu Daijō. I’d replied that I wouldn’t say no, and asked her the nature of the program for that day. She consulted the newspapers and answered that it was one of Chikamatsu’s suicide dramas, Unagidani. ‘Let’s not go today, I don’t like Unagidani,’ said I. So we did not go that day. The next day my wife, bringing out the newspaper again, said, ‘Today he’s doing the Monkey Man at Horikawa, so, let’s go.’ I said let’s not, because Horikawa was so frivolous, just samisen-playing with no meat in it. My wife went away looking discontented. The following day, she stated almost as a demand, ‘Today’s program is The Temple With Thirty-Three Pillars. You may dislike the Temple quite as strongly as you disliked all the others, but since the treat is intended to be for me, surely you won’t object to taking me there.’ I responded,‘If you’ve set your heart on it so firmly, then we’ll go, but since the performance has been announced as Settsu’s farewell appearance on the stage, the house is bound to be packed full, and since we haven’t booked in advance, it will obviously be impossible to get in. To start with, in order to attend such performances there’s an established procedure to be observed. You have to go to the theatre-teahouse and there negotiate for seat reservations. It would be hopeless to try going about it in the wrong way. You just can’t dodge this proper procedure. So, sorry though I am, we simply cannot go today.’ My wife’s eyes glittered fiercely. ‘Since I am a mere woman, I do not understand your complicated procedures, but both Ohare’s mother and Kimiyo of the Suzuki family managed to get in without observance of any such formalities, and they heard everything very well. I realize that you