五 3

If one but has the will to catch even one or two, they could be taken in one's sleep without the least trouble. I have heard that once, when someone asked a famous Zen master of the time how one might attain enlightenment, the master answered with a jest: "Watch a cat eyeing a mouse." To say "like a cat catching a mouse" means that if you but do thus, you cannot go wrong. There is a proverb, "The woman is too clever," but surely there is as yet no maxim that says, "The cat is too clever and misses the mouse." If so, then even a clever one such as I should not fail to catch a mouse. Not only should I not fail—I should not even be able to miss. The reason I have not caught one until now is simply that I did not wish to. The spring day faded as yesterday's had, and now and then, drawn by the wind, a shower of blossoms would blow in through the torn paper of the kitchen's waist-high window, and the shadow floating in the wooden bucket would show white in the dim light of the kitchen lamp. That night I resolved to perform a great feat and astonish the whole household; but first I needed to scout the battlefield and fix the lay of the land in my mind. The line of battle, of course, could not be very wide. In tatami measure it might be some four mats; one half of a single mat is partitioned off, half as a sink, half as the earthen floor where the greengrocer's and liquor shop's errands are received. The stove was a fine thing ill-suited to a poor kitchen, its red copper kettle gleaming, and behind it, leaving two feet of board wall, lay my abalone-shell seat. The six-foot space nearest the living room was a cupboard holding trays, bowls, and small dishes, making the narrow kitchen all the narrower, and standing at a height level with the bare shelf jutting out to the side. Beneath it an earthen mortar sat upturned, and inside the mortar a small pail's bottom faced toward me. Beside the arranged daikon grater and grating stick, only the fire-extinguishing pot stood dejectedly aside. From the center of crossed blackened barrel staves a swivel hook descended, and at its end hung a flat, large basket. This basket would now and then sway in the wind, moving with a leisurely air. When I first came to this house I could not at all make out what this basket was for, but once I learned that food was deliberately placed here out of a cat's reach, I felt keenly how mean the human heart is.

Now for the plan of campaign. As to where to fight the mice, it must of course be where they emerge. However convenient the terrain on my side, to wait alone is no battle at all. Herein arises the need to study the mice's exits. Where might they come from? I stood in the middle of the kitchen and looked all about. I felt somehow like Admiral Togo. The maid had gone to the bath a while ago and not returned. The child was long since asleep. The master had eaten dumplings at Imo-zaka and come home, and as always was shut in his study. The mistress—what the mistress was doing I do not know. Probably dozing and dreaming of yams. Now and then a rickshaw passed the gate, but after it passed, all was the lonelier. My resolve, my spirit, the kitchen scene, the surrounding stillness—everything felt tragic. I could think of myself only as the Admiral Togo among cats. To enter such a state and feel a certain pleasure amid the dread is common to all, yet I discovered a great anxiety lying beneath my pleasure. To war with the mice I had resolved, and feared not however many came; but it was inconvenient that the quarter of their emergence was unclear. Synthesizing the materials gained from close observation, the rat-thieves had three lines of sortie. If they were sewer rats, they would surely follow the drainpipe from the sink around behind the stove. Then I would hide in the shadow of the fire-extinguishing pot and cut off their return. Or they might slip unexpectedly into the kitchen by way of the plaster hole where bathwater drains, circling the bathroom. Then I would take position on the kettle lid and, when they came beneath my eyes, drop down from above and seize them in one grab. Looking about again, the lower right corner of the cupboard door was gnawed into a half-moon, and there was suspicion it served their coming and going. I put my nose to it and sniffed; a slight mousy smell. If they came shouting out from here, I would let them pass behind the post, then hook my claws from the side with a cry. If from the ceiling—I looked up; black soot glittered in the lamp's light, hung upside-down like hell itself, and at such a height neither I nor my skill could climb up or down. Surely they would not drop from so high, so from this quarter alone I lifted the guard. Even so, there was fear of attack from three sides. One at a time I could dispose of even with one eye. Two I had confidence I might somehow manage. But three at once—however instinctively I am expected to catch mice, I would be at a loss. Yet to call in the carter's black cat as aid would concern my dignity. What to do? What to do? When thinking what to do yields no good wisdom, the shortest road to peace is to decide such a thing will not happen. The helpless come to think it cannot occur. Look about the world: the bride received yesterday may not live out today—yet the groom recites verses of "thousand generations, eight thousand generations" of camellias, and shows no worried face. He is unworried not because there is nothing to worry over, but because worry avails nothing. In my case too there is no sound argument that a three-front attack will not occur, yet it is convenient to peace to assume it will not. Peace is needful for all things. I too desire peace. Therefore I determine that a three-front attack will not occur.

Still unease remained, and thinking what it might be, I came at last to understand. It was vexation that, of the three stratagems, I could not clearly answer which to choose as most expedient. When they come from the cupboard I have a response; when they appear from the bath I have a plan; when they crawl up from the sink I have assurance to meet them—but when forced to fix on one alone, I am greatly perplexed. Admiral Togo, they say, much worried whether the Baltic Fleet would pass the Tsushima Strait, emerge at the Tsugaru, or circle far by the Soya Strait; now, imagining from my own circumstance, I truly sympathize with his perplexity. Not only in the whole situation do I resemble His Excellency Togo, but in this critical station too I share his pains.

While I was thus absorbed in weaving schemes, suddenly the torn waist window opened and O-San's face popped out. That I say only her face came out does not mean she lacked limbs. The rest was unclear in the night, but only the face, in strikingly strong color, fell distinct into my eyes. O-San, her cheeks redder than usual from the bath, perhaps warned by last night, closed the kitchen early. From the study came the master's voice: "Put my walking stick by the pillow." Why he would decorate his pillow with a stick I could not tell. Surely not in imitation of the warrior at Yi River, listening for a dragon's cry in drunken fancy. Yesterday yams, today a stick—tomorrow what?

The night was yet young; the mice would not soon appear. Before the great battle I needed rest.

The master's kitchen had no sliding window. Where a parlor would have a transom, a foot-wide slit was cut to serve as a draft window summer and winter. Roused by the wind that invited the unscrupulous falling of the equinox cherry and blew in with a rush, I saw the hazy moon had somehow risen, and the stove's shadow slanted across the boarded floor. Lest I had overslept, I shook my ears two or three times and listened to the house; all was still, and only the clock's ticking sounded as last night. It was time for mice. From where would they come?

From within the cupboard came a clink-clink. They seemed to press a small plate's rim with a foot and rummage inside. "From here," I crouched by the hole and waited. No sign of coming out. The plate sound ceased, then they seemed caught on a bowl or such; a heavy sound went clunk now and then. And it was just beyond the door, not three inches from my snout. Now and then patter-patter the footsteps neared the hole's mouth, then withdrew; not one showed its face. With the enemy raging just beyond a single door, that I must sit still at the hole's mouth is a patience sorely tried. The mice held a lively dance within the Port Arthur bowl. If only O-San had left this door open wide enough for me to enter—but she is a dull mountain hick.

Now from the stove's shadow came a click—my abalone shell. The enemy had come this way too; I crept softly near, and a tail flicked from between the buckets and hid beneath the sink. After a while in the bath, a rinsing cup clinked the metal basin. "From behind," I turned—and a big one near five inches dropped a tooth-blackening bag and dashed under the veranda. "Escape?" I leapt after, but already no trace. Catching mice is harder than thought. Am I without innate mouse-catching ability?

When I circled to the bath, the enemy ran from the cupboard; when I guarded the cupboard, they sprang from the sink; when I held the kitchen's center, all three sides stirred a little. Impudent, or cowardly—they are no gentlemen's foe. Fifteen or sixteen times I wearied my mind and strained in effort from side to side, yet not once succeeded. Regrettable, but against such petty ones no Admiral Togo could devise a plan. At first there was courage, hostility, even the lofty beauty of tragedy; but at last, from bother and absurdity and sleepiness and fatigue, I simply sat in the kitchen's middle and moved no more. Yet even unmoving, with an eight-way glare, the petty enemy could do little. When the foe you aimed at proves a wretched cur, the sense that war is honor fades, leaving only distaste. Past distaste, the tension goes and one grows blank. After blankness, "do as you will—anyway nothing clever is possible," and contempt turns to sleepiness. Through the above course I at last grew sleepy. I slept. Rest is needful even amid the enemy.

Through the side-facing draft window, another clump of blossom was flung in; as the fierce wind wrapped me, one who had flown from the cupboard's mouth like a bullet gave me no time to dodge before he bit my left ear, cutting the wind. The black shadow following thought to circle behind, but in an instant hung on my tail. It was the work of a blink. I sprang mechanically, no purpose in me, poured my whole strength into my pores to shake off the monster. The one on my ear, losing center, dangled limp on my cheek. The soft tail-tip like a rubber tube unexpectedly entered my mouth. Fine handle—I bit the tail with a crush and shook side to side; the tail alone stayed between my front teeth, the body struck the wall papered with old newspaper and bounced on the boards. As he rose, I pinned him without gap; like a kicked ball he grazed my snout and stood with legs drawn on the shelf's edge. He looked down from the shelf; I looked up from the boards. Distance five feet. Between, the moon's light streamed sideways like a wide sash stretched in the sky. I braced my front legs and sprang for the shelf with a "now!" Front paws caught the edge, but hind legs paddled the air. On my tail the earlier black thing clung as if to die unparted. I was in peril. I shifted front paws for deeper hold; each shift made it shallower with the tail's weight. Two or three minutes of slip and I must fall. Ever more peril. The claw-scrabble on the shelf board sounded garri-garri. "No good," as I shifted the left front paw, I missed the claw-hold clean, and hung by one right claw. My body spun with the weight of myself and the tail-biter. The monster atop the shelf, who had lain motionless aiming, now took his chance and dropped like a stone from the shelf at my brow. My claw lost its last thread. Three clumps became one and fell vertical through the moonlight. The mortar on the next step, the small pail within, and an empty jam can became one clump too, invited the fire-extinguishing pot below, and rolled half into the water jar, half onto the boards. All made an uncanny midnight noise that chilled even my desperate soul.

"Thief!" the master bellowed, bursting from the bedroom. He held a lamp in one hand, a walking stick in the other, and from sleepy eyes shone a light befitting his station. I crouched quietly by my abalone shell. The two monsters hid in the cupboard. The master, at a loss, cried angrily to no one: "What, who made that noise?" The moon having declined west, the white light's band had narrowed to half a strip.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”