Can Xue - Vertical Motion

The black man was savage and cruel. I’d already experienced his strong grip, and I didn’t know why he had eventually left me with my life. My owner was good to me, but as soon as this black man arrived, he simply didn’t give me another thought. He was indifferent to the black man’s brutal treatment of me. I felt vaguely hurt. My owner thought constantly about the one rogue whom he’d encountered while dreaming, even to the point of making him the center of his life. This made me quite angry. Wasn’t I the one who kept him company day and night? Wasn’t I his only companion during his lonely days? When he was in the depths of despair, when all the fun had gone out of his life, who jumped on his lap and comforted him? But then, thinking about it more dispassionately, perhaps my affection had always been unrequited. My owner was an extraordinary man — unfathomable and mulling everything over at length. Even a particularly sensitive cat like me couldn’t catch anything but the surface of his ideas. Now, since he was looking forward to the black man coming, he must have had his own reasons. I’d better not impose my views on him. In a few minutes that night, my sleepwalking owner must have communicated at the speed of lightning with the black man. This kind of communication was far beyond my comprehension.

With a charcoal pencil, my owner drew a pair of eyes and hung them on the living room wall. At a glance, I knew whose eyes they were. That man’s penetrating stare had left a deep impression on me. When my owner finished his work in the middle of the night and emerged from his inner sanctum, he looked exhausted and he would sometimes stand beneath that drawing and mumble something for a while. I thought, my owner was waiting for his idol: all he could do was console himself with false hopes and meet with him that way. The black man’s mysterious comings and goings were hard on him. Judging from his behavior that night, the black man also felt unbearable agony. It made him sort of unearthly. What I mean is: his suffering had gone beyond this world. This was different from my owner’s suffering. I felt that, although my owner was unconventional, his anguish stemmed from everything he did. Although I was a cat, able to observe dispassionately, I really didn’t know whether this black man had anything to do with this world. When he gripped my throat with both hands, he did so unconsciously. That’s to say, he didn’t know that it was my throat he had gripped. Why did my owner feel so attracted to this sort of fellow?

After the first rush passed, my owner was no longer so overstimulated: he entered into a period of calm. Every day, he hid out in his inner sanctum and worked for two hours. Then he frittered away the rest of the time. Aside from making purchases and occasionally going to the newspaper office, he didn’t go out. During this period, a clerk from the office came by once. He was an old man with a thin, sallow face, who had come to bring drafts. He left a bad impression on me, probably because of the thumbtack in the sole of his shoe. After he came in, he scuffed the gleaming floor, leaving a lot of metallic marks on it. This man wasn’t clean, either; he smelled sour, and he spat wherever he pleased. My ever-starchy owner, however, didn’t seem to mind any of this: he led the clerk warmly over to the sofa, seated him, and poured a beer for him. They evidently had a special relationship.

“Has he been to the newspaper office?” My owner seemed fearful as he asked this.

“I asked the receptionist. I was told that he just stood in the lobby for three minutes and then left.” The old man sipped his beer calmly, his eyes flashing maliciously: he was obviously taking pleasure in my owner’s misfortune.

“Are you sure he said three minutes?”

“That’s exactly right.”

My owner slumped onto the sofa: a load had been lifted from his shoulders.

The old clerk had left some time ago, but my owner was still agitated by the news he had brought. I couldn’t figure out whether my owner was happy that the black man had gone to his workplace or whether he was fearful. My owner was so jumpy that he couldn’t sit still, couldn’t eat much, and couldn’t sleep. I noticed that he was dazed as he sat on the sofa. He sat there for two hours, often simpering, as if he’d picked up something valuable. While he was in this trance, disaster befell me: he completely overlooked my existence. Sometimes I was hungry and thirsty and jumped onto his lap and kept meowing, but my entreaties didn’t move him at all! In desperation, I tried to open the refrigerator myself, but I couldn’t. Finally, thank God, he thought of food. My stomach was grumbling, and my paws kept quivering. I snagged a sausage from his hand and ate it, but I wanted another and there weren’t any more. He was preoccupied with eating, and didn’t even hear my cries. My owner’s behavior infuriated me: after all, I was a living thing, not an ornament. I had to eat, drink, shit, and piss every day, just as he did. In his care, I had long since become aware of my equal rights. I had to make him notice this! I decided to start championing my rights. When my owner opened the refrigerator, I scurried in: I wanted to eat to my heart’s content!

He didn’t see me, and he closed the refrigerator door on me. I found the fried ocean fish that he’d been saving and wolfed it down right away. While I was eating, I felt more and more that something was wrong. The frightening chill not only coursed through my hair, but also pierced my guts. It quickly became difficult for me to take even a tiny step. Crouching on the refrigerator shelf, I soon lost consciousness. I had a long, troubling dream, in which the sky was filled with frost-shaped butterflies. Two of them fluttered and landed on the tip of my nose. After moistening my hot breath, they melted into two streams that ran down my face: I couldn’t stop sneezing.

This nap came close to killing me. When I woke up, I was lying on the rug in my owner’s bedroom. It was the first time I’d been to his bedroom, for I had always considered it his inner sanctum. The furnishings were so simple that they lent the room an air of poverty: a hard wooden bed, wooden chairs, a rough desk, and a bookshelf heaped with documents. This room used to have windows, but my owner had hammered them shut with plywood: not a thread of light could get in. On the right-hand wall was a weak fluorescent light — the only source of light in the room. I wanted to cry out, but my frozen mouth and throat hadn’t recovered yet. I couldn’t move, either.

“Why do you have to learn my ways? A few days ago, I hanged myself at home: this was psychologically necessary. It’s only because I’m a person that I have these peculiar needs. You’re a cat: even if you understood me better, you couldn’t become a human. So you can’t possibly have the kind of psychological needs that I have. Isn’t that right? Now look at the state you’re in. I feel terribly guilty. You shouldn’t have gone into the refrigerator. You don’t belong there. If you’re so hungry, you can always take a bite out of my leg. Why didn’t you do that? You’re too soft, and that isn’t good for either of us. It will just make me even more treacherous. Even more cold-blooded. Can you hear me? If you can, move your eyeballs, please!”

I had never thought of my owner as an ugly person, but after he finished talking to himself, I thought he was extremely ugly. Yet, he talked so reasonably! He’d been at his desk, with his back to me, when he said these things. He wouldn’t see me move my eyeballs, even if I did. I made an effort to open my eyes, but he had slumped into deep thought. I heard someone going up and down the stairs. Was it he?!

=

After the refrigerator incident, I had a bum leg and now I limped inelegantly. Overcome by remorse, my owner raised my standard of living. I had fresh fish and milk at almost every meal. And because I ate too much and exercised too little, I frequently had diarrhea. My injury left a big impression on my owner. He was worrying about me more and more, so he had to change his ways. Every morning, he had to go to the market and buy food — and not just for himself. His main concern now was giving me three meals a day. Now and then, he also added some delicacies to my diet — things like seaweed and dried fish. He was gradually beginning to live like an ordinary person. Inwardly, I had conflicting reactions to this. Although I was secretly happy, I also felt guilty and a little uneasy. I felt that my owner was making sacrifices for me, and that this could lead to unfortunate consequences. For sure, he wasn’t an ordinary person, but one with special requirements. Now, he was reining in his very nature: Could this lead to an outbreak of its dark side? You have to know that, before I came into his life, he had lived for decades without caring about anything, and he had never compromised himself for anything, either.