七 2

I climbed up. Then, just as that wind suddenly blew against my face, I started and, before I knew it, missed my step and went tumbling down. Thinking I had made a blunder, I looked up from beneath the hedge, and there all three were perched in their original spots, looking down at my face from above with their beaks aligned. Brazen rascals. I glared at them, but it had no effect whatsoever. I hunched my back and growled a little, but that only made it worse. Just as vulgar people cannot comprehend a subtle symbolic poem, the signs of anger I displayed toward them elicited no reaction at all. On reflection, it is hardly unreasonable. Until now I had treated them as cats. That was my mistake. Had they been cats, such behavior would surely have drawn a response, but as luck would have it, my opponents were crows. Being crows of the Kan-kō breed, there was nothing to be done. It is much like a practical man fretting to overwhelm my master, Mr. Kushami; or like presenting a silver statue of me to Saigyō; or like Kan-kō relieving himself on the bronze statue of Saigō Takamori. Quick to read the situation, I saw that it was hopeless, and so withdrew cleanly back onto the veranda. It is about time for supper. Exercise is well and good, but too much of it leaves one unfit, and my whole body feels somehow slack, with a limp sensation. Moreover, though it is only the beginning of autumn, the fur coat the sun beat down upon during my exercise seems to have absorbed the full measure of the western light, and it is unbearably hot. Sweat oozing from my pores ought to run, yet it sticks viscous as ointment to the roots of my hair. My back itches. There is a clear distinction between an itch from sweat and an itch from a flea crawling. Where my mouth can reach I can bite; within the domain my paws can touch I know well enough to scratch; but when it comes to the very center running lengthwise along the spine, it lies beyond my own reach. At such times, a human will rub against you indiscriminately, or else perform a thorough friction technique on pine bark—one must choose between these two, and the discomfort leaves one unable to sleep in peace. Humans are foolish creatures; they will use a coaxing voice toward a cat—the coaxing voice is the voice humans use toward me. Judged by my own standard, it is not a coaxing voice but a coaxed voice—very well, at any rate humans are foolish, and when you go to them with that coaxed voice beside their knee, they mostly mistake it for love of him or her, and not only leave me to do as I please but now and then even stroke my head. Of late, however, a kind of parasite called

“Stories of the world, in your language.”