一 2

I met a person named ○○ for the first time at today’s gathering. They say he was quite a libertine, and indeed he has the air of a man of the world. Such men are the ones women favor, so rather than saying ○○ was a libertine, it would be more fitting to say he was compelled against his will to be one. His wife, I hear, is a geisha—how enviable. Generally, most of those who speak ill of rakes are those who lack the qualifications to be rakes themselves. And among those who pride themselves on being rakes, too, many lack the qualifications. These are the ones who, though not compelled, force themselves into it. It is much like my own watercolor painting—there is no hope of my ever graduating from it. Yet, regardless, they go on thinking themselves men of the world. If the argument holds that one becomes a man of the world by drinking sake at a restaurant or stepping into a assignation house, then by the same logic I too could become a passable watercolor painter. Just as it would be better not to paint at all than to paint like me, a country bumpkin fresh from the hills is far superior to a foolish pseudo-man of the world.

The theory of the man of the world is hardly one I can readily assent to. And to call a geisha wife enviable is, for a teacher, a foolish thought that ought not be spoken; yet my critical eye regarding my own watercolors is sound. Though my master thus possesses self-knowledge, his conceit is not easily shed. Two days later, in his diary for December 4, he writes as follows:

Last night I dreamt that someone took a watercolor I had painted, thought it hopeless, and tossed aside, and framed it beautifully and hung it in the transom. Once in the frame, even to my own eyes it had suddenly become good. I was overjoyed. While I stood alone admiring it, thinking this will do nicely, dawn broke and I awoke, and with the morning sun it became clear that it was just as poor as before.

It seems my master carries his attachment to watercolors even into his dreams. With this, he is the sort who can never become a watercolor painter, nor indeed the man of the world he speaks of. The day after my master dreamt of watercolors, the gold-rimmed-glasses aesthetician visited him for the first time in a while. As soon as he sat down, he opened with, “How go the paintings?” The master, with an unfazed face, said, “Following your advice I’ve been working at sketching from life, and indeed, by sketching from life one comes to understand the forms of things and the fine changes of color that went unnoticed before. In the West, it was precisely the long advocacy of sketching from life that led to the development we see today. Andrea del Sarto, indeed,”—never mentioning the dream—and again expressed admiration for Andrea del Sarto. The aesthetician scratched his head, laughing. “Actually, my friend, that was all made up.” “What was?” the master still hadn’t realized he’d been had. “What was? Why, the Andrea del Sarto you’re so taken with. That was a little fabrication of mine. I never thought you’d believe it so seriously, ha ha ha ha,” thoroughly delighted. Hearing this dialogue from the veranda, I could not help but anticipate what would be written in his diary today. This aesthetician’s sole pleasure is blowing about such careless falsehoods to fool people. As if wholly unconcerned with what echo the Andrea del Sarto affair sent through the master’s sensibilities, he smugly went on:

“It’s amusing—when I joke, people take it seriously, and it stirs a comical aesthetic sense. The other day I told a student that Nicholas Nickleby advised Gibbon to abandon his great life’s work, the History of the French Revolution, in French, and publish it in English instead; the fellow, having a ridiculously good memory, repeated my story verbatim at the Japanese Literature Society’s oration meeting—quite comical. There were about a hundred in the audience, all listening intently. And there’s another good one. The other day, at a gathering of men of letters, the talk turned to Harrison’s historical novel Theophano, so I said it was the cream of historical novels, and especially the death of the heroine struck one with a ghostly chill. Then a gentleman opposite me, who’d never admitted to not knowing anything, said, ‘Quite so, that passage is truly fine prose.’ Thus I knew he, like me, had not read the novel.” The neurasthenic, weak-stomached master rounded his eyes and asked, “Even if you spout such lies, what if the other party had read it?”—as if feeling, deceiving others is one thing, but it’s troublesome when the disguise is exposed. The aesthetician was unruffled. “Oh, I’d just say I’d mistaken it for another book,” and giggled. Though he wears gold-rimmed glasses, this aesthetician resembles in nature the drayman’s black cat. The master, silent, blew smoke rings at the sunrise, his face as if to say he lacked such nerve. The aesthetician, with a look that said painting won’t do for you, went on, “But joking aside, painting is truly difficult. Leonardo da Vinci, they say, taught his pupils to copy the stains on a temple wall. Indeed, if you go into the privy and gaze intently at the rain-leaking wall, a fine pattern-picture forms naturally. Try sketching it attentively, and you’ll surely make something interesting.” “You’re fooling me again.” “No, this one’s true. Isn’t it a sharp saying—something even Da Vinci might say?” “It is certainly sharp,” the master half-conceded. But he still does not sketch in the privy.

The drayman’s black cat later went lame. His glossy fur gradually faded and fell out. His eyes, which I praised as more beautiful than amber, were crusted with sleep. What especially caught my attention was his loss of spirit and declining physique. On the last day I met him in the tea garden, I asked how he was; he said, “I’m sick and tired of the weasel’s last fart and the greengrocer’s carrying pole.”

The red maple leaves, strung red in two or three tiers among the red pines, scattered like a dream of old; the red and white camellias that one after another dropped their petals near the turf were all fallen. As the winter sun quickly slanted on the three-and-a-half-mat south-facing veranda and days without the dry wind grew rare, my nap time, too, seemed narrowed.

The master goes to school every day. Returning, he shuts himself in his study. When visitors come, he says he hates being a teacher. He rarely paints watercolors. He quit the Takadiastase, saying it did no good. The children, commendably, do not rest, and go to kindergarten. Returning, they sing songs, bounce balls, and sometimes dangle me by the tail.

I eat no fine food, so I haven’t fattened particularly, but I am reasonably healthy, not gone lame, and pass day after day. I never catch mice. I still dislike the maid. They’ve yet to name me, but greed has no limit, so I intend to end my life as a nameless cat in this teacher’s house.

“Stories of the world, in your language.”