Free Cat Country by Lao She

pants on a great rock. Naked in this great, grey universe, I would feel totally carefree, the freest man in all creation. As the sun grew gradually hotter, fog would slowly rise from the river and I would feel a bit stifled; Scorpion was right, even if he hadn’t said anything, I would still have sensed the poisonous miasma contained in the atmosphere. At this point it would probably be time to go back and eat that piece of reverie leaf.
    But it was not possible for me to long preserve even this pleasure. Again it was Scorpion who spoiled things. On about the seventh day after I had begun taking my baths, as soon as I arrived on the beach I saw some black shadows moving back and forth in the distance. I didn’t pay any particular attention to them, but merely waited, as usual, for the pleasure of watching the beauty of the sunrise.
    A slate-red colour gradually rose in the east. After a while, a number of thick clouds broke apart and transformed themselves into large, deep-purple flowers. Suddenly the sky lightened so that the stars were no longer visible. Then the deep purple cloud-flowers joined together to form a horizontal layer, and the purple colour changed to a deep orange touched with a very light streak of dapple-grey and aqua. They were bordered with a bright silver-argent. The horizontal layer began to split apart again and some large, black spots began to appear in the orange.
    Golden rays began shining down so intensely that they were even able to show through from behind the black spots. And then from out of the clouds emerged a sphere of blood-red. It was not quite round and seemed to shudder a bit before settling down in the morning sky. While this was going on, the broken clouds had shattered into tiny fragments, scattering golden fish scales across the sky. The river grew bright and began to give off a golden glow. The remnants of the morning clouds became thinner and more broken until gradually they disappeared, and there were only left in the sky a few threads of pale, peach-coloured silk. The sun climbed higher. The entire sky changed to a silver-grey, but in some places little touches of blue still showed through.
    I had been so wrapped up in gazing at the sky that I had been oblivious to everything else, and when I turned around, I was quite surprised to discover a column of cat-men standing fifty yards or so back from the bank of the river. I didn’t have the foggiest notion as to what they were up to. At first I assumed it was some business that concerned only them, and I didn’t pay any attention to it. I decided to simply go on with the business of taking my bath; however, as I walked along the bank towards a deeper part of the river, I noticed that the column of cat-men shifted its position too. As I dove into the water, I heard a cry of alarm. I bobbed up and down a few times and then swam to a shallow place where I could stand up to look. Another cry went up and the column retreated several paces. I realised what was going on: they had come to take in the spectacle of my bath!
    If they had never seen anyone bathe before, I suppose there was no harm in their watching. I knew that they hadn’t come for the joy to be had from seeing me in the nude, for the nude body is nothing new to the Cat People as they don’t wear clothes themselves. Undoubtedly, they had come to see how I swam. Well then, should I continue with my swimming exhibition in order to broaden their horizons, or should I break off my morning dip? I couldn’t make up my mind. At this juncture, I spotted Scorpion. He was closest to the bank, perhaps five or ten yards closer than any of the others. I realised he was showing off that he was not afraid of me. Jumping forward a few feet more, he waved to signal me to jump farther out into the river. On the basis of my three or four months’ experience on Mars, I could tell that if I obeyed his signal, the end result would be to greatly bolster Scorpion’s prestige. That was more