Free I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki Page A

and a duck-cloth hakama . He looks like a student and, at that, an extremely serious one. Lying on the corner of my master’s small hand-warming brazier, right beside the lacquer cigarette-box, there’s a visiting card on which is written, “To introduce Mr. Beauchamp Blowlamp: from Coldmoon.”
    Which tells me both the name of this guest and the fact that he’s a friend of Coldmoon. The conversation going on between host and guest sounds enigmatic because I missed the start of it. But I gather that it has something to do with Waverhouse, the aesthete whom I have had previous occasion to mention.
    “And he urged me to come along with him because it would involve an ingenious idea, he said.” The guest is talking calmly.
    “Do you mean there was some ingenious idea involved in lunching at aWestern style restaurant?” My master pours more tea for the guest and pushes the cup toward him.
    “Well, at the time I did not understand what this ingenious idea could be, but, since it was his idea, I thought it bound to be something interesting and. . .”
    “So you accompanied him. I see.”
    “Yes, but I got a surprise.”
    The master, looking as if to say, “I told you so,” gives me a whack on the head. Which hurts a little. “I expect it proved somewhat farcical. He’s rather that way inclined.” Clearly, he has suddenly remembered that business with Andrea del Sarto.
    “Ah yes? Well, as he suggested we would be eating something special. . .”
    “What did you have?”
    “First of all, while studying the menu, he gave me all sorts of information about food.”
    “Before ordering any?”
    “Yes.”
    “And then?”
    “And then, turning to a waiter, he said, ‘There doesn’t seem to be anything special on the card.’ The waiter, not to be outdone, suggested roast duck or veal chops. Whereupon Waverhouse remarked quite sharply that we hadn’t come a very considerable distance just for common or garden fare. The waiter, who didn’t understand the significance of common or garden, looked puzzled and said nothing.”
    “So I would imagine.”
    “Then, turning to me, Waverhouse observed that in France or in England one can obtain any amount of dishes cooked à la Tenmei or à la Manyō but that in Japan, wherever you go, the food is all so stereotyped that one doesn’t even feel tempted to enter a restaurant of the so-called Western style. And so on and so on. He was in tremendous form. But has he ever been abroad?”
    “Waverhouse abroad? Of course not. He’s got the money and the time. If he wanted to, he could go off anytime. He probably just converted his future intention to travel into the past tense of widely traveled experience as a sort of joke.” The master flatters himself that he has said something witty and laughs invitingly. His guest looks largely unimpressed.
    “I see. I wondered when he’d been abroad. I took everything he said quite seriously. Besides, he described such things as snail soup and stewed frogs as though he’d really seen them with his own two eyes.”
    “He must have heard about them from someone. He’s adept at such terminological inexactitudes.”
    “So it would seem,” and Beauchamp stares down at the narcissus in a vase. He seems a little disappointed.
    “So, that then was his ingenious idea, I take it?” asks the master still in quest of certainties.
    “No, that was only the beginning. The main part’s still to come.”
    “Ah!”The master utters an interjection mingled with curiosity.
    “Having finished his dissertation on matters gastronomical and European, he proposed ‘since it’s quite impossible to obtain snails or frogs, however much we may desire them, let’s at least have moat-bells.
    What do you say?’ And without really giving the matter any thought at all, I answered, ‘Yes, that would be fine.’”
    “Moat-bells sound a little odd.”
    “Yes, very odd, but because Waverhouse was speaking so seriously, I didn’t then notice the oddity.”