The Cat and the City Read online

  Naomi would talk during their sessions, asking him to describe the parts of the city he was working on. She would tell him the season she wanted for each location, and he would then colour the maple trees red for autumn, or the bright yellow of the gingko trees, or shade in the soft pinkish white of the sakura in Ueno Park in spring.

  ‘Where are you now?’ she’d ask.

  ‘Ginza. I’ve just done the Nakagin building.’

  ‘Good. It’s winter in Ginza.’

  ‘I see.’ And he would begin shading and colouring the fine white snow that had fallen overnight. The city was becoming like a patchwork quilt of the seasons.

  Often when Kentaro had been working on a part of Tokyo and talking to Naomi about that place, she would come back for her next session having visited that part of the city. She would bring a small present or souvenir for him – sweets from Harajuku, gyoza from Ikebukuro – and he would feel his face going red in embarrassment.

  They’d sometimes drink green tea together and she would tell him stories of things that had happened, or things she’d seen – how the building of the new Olympic stadium was progressing each time she walked past it – she told Kentaro stories of all the people she saw going about their lives in the city, and he would listen quietly without interrupting.

  One time, during a break in a session that had gone on for hours, as Kentaro was cleaning his instruments, Naomi had pointed at a large art book of Utagawa Kuniyoshi ukiyo-e prints and asked about it. Kentaro had got it down from the shelf and let her take it to an armchair and sit down with it. Utagawa had always been an artistic inspiration for Kentaro – his master had introduced his work to him and had made him practise for months copying Utagawa’s paintings before he was allowed to even touch a piece of skin. Naomi sat with the book on her lap, turning the pages slowly.

  ‘These are so great,’ said Naomi, examining each painting in detail, her finger on the page sometimes tracing the lines of numerous cats and skeleton demons.

  ‘He was a legend.’ Kentaro sighed.

  ‘I love this one.’ She tapped her finger on the page, and Kentaro looked across to see the courtly scene with a ghostly cat head floating in the background. Cats stood on their hindlegs and danced like humans with handkerchiefs on their heads and arms flung wide.

  ‘Yeah.’ Kentaro swallowed a chuckle at the thought of the trick he had played on Naomi by tattooing the cat on her back.

  ‘And look at these ones.’ She held up the book to him. ‘He’s turned these kabuki actors into cats!’

  ‘Now that’s an interesting story,’ said Kentaro, pausing while putting away his tools and coming over to look at the book over Naomi’s shoulder.

  ‘Go on.’ She looked up at him with her strange eyes.

  ‘Well, back then, kabuki had become a raucous and decadent affair – almost like an orgy.’

  ‘Fun,’ she said, grinning cheekily.

  ‘Well, the government didn’t think so. They outlawed any artistic depictions of kabuki actors.’

  ‘That’s crazy!’

  ‘It is. Anyway, Utagawa replaced the human actors with cats. That was his way of sidestepping the censorship.’

  ‘Clever guy.’ She glanced back down at the image of three cats dressed in kimono, sitting around a low table playing shamisen.

  ‘My old master was obsessed with him.’

  ‘Where is your master now?’

  ‘He passed on.’ Kentaro pointed at a photo on the wall. ‘That’s him.’

  Naomi looked at the photo of the gruff-looking man standing with a younger Kentaro in front of the same tattoo parlour they were both in now. ‘Looks kind of serious.’

  ‘He was. So strict. Had me waking up at 4 a.m. and sweeping and cleaning the parlour all day. Wouldn’t let me so much as touch a needle or a bit of skin until I’d done that for two years. Mad old bastard.’ He shook his head and smiled.

  Naomi gazed at Kentaro thoughtfully. ‘How come you don’t have a disciple?’

  He sighed, softly, without the usual condescension. ‘Where to begin . . .’

  ‘At the beginning?’ She shrugged.

  ‘Well, the government did another great job of giving irezumi a bad name – just like the old kabuki censorship. They’ve associated the practice with criminals, so fewer people want to get into the trade. You know, it was once an honourable thing to get a tattoo in the old days – it was the mark of a fireman. The public loved and respected firemen – not like these crude gangsters who show off their tattoos these days. Anyway, I’m getting off the point . . . what was I saying?’

  ‘You were saying why no one wants to be a horishi anymore.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Now, of course you’ve got your amateurs in Shibuya who use all this new-fangled technology to tattoo. No one wants to learn the old tebori method. No one wants to do hard work. Everyone wants to do things the easy way. But none of them are true artists.’

  ‘Like you.’ She smiled at him.

  Kentaro blushed and looked at the floor. ‘Come on, Naomi,’ he said, finishing his tea. ‘We’d best continue.’

  And that was the day it first happened.

  When Kentaro was halfway through colouring the tattoo, his eyes happened to pass over the Shibuya section of the city that he had already completed. He saw the statue of Hachiko the dog, his eyes carried on to the shopping streets of Harajuku, but then something clicked in his mind. He flicked his eyes back to the statue.

  The cat was gone.

  He blinked and shook his head. Maybe tiredness was finally getting to him. But he looked again: no, the cat was not there anymore.

  Perhaps he had imagined drawing the cat on her body? Yes, that was the simplest explanation for its absence. He had probably dreamt of drawing the little cat in, and it had seemed so vivid he had imagined it to be reality. Yes. Everything was surely fine. Dreams could sometimes invade reality, couldn’t they?

  But that very same day, when he was about to shade the area around Tokyo Tower, he caught sight of something that gave him a cold shiver. He was making his way with his eyes up the street from Hamamatsucho Station towards the area around Tokyo Tower. And just down a side street branching off the main road, he saw the cat.

  ‘What the . . .’

  ‘Is everything all right?’ Naomi stirred.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ he replied. The needle in his hand was shaking a bit, but he steadied himself. Perhaps he had misremembered the location he had originally put the cat in. Surely that was the explanation. He ignored the cat and began to work again, colouring the red and white pattern of Tokyo Tower.

  But the next session, before working, he searched for the cat in the side streets near Hamamatsucho Station again, and could not find it. And then when he was colouring in the trees of Inokashira Park in Kichijoji, he saw the cat lurking by the lake in the middle of the park.

  It was definitely moving.

  Kentaro began to dread his regular sessions with Naomi. He couldn’t begin work until he had first found the cat, and he would sometimes spend an hour scouring the city in search of it before he could get to work with his needles and ink. This, in turn, was delaying the overall progress of the tattoo, which had begun to take longer than he had planned. Naomi never commented on how much time he took, and gradually their sessions grew exhausting as he became haunted by the spectre of the cat. He would dream about it roaming the city, and he would spend most of the night in a waking nightmare, sweating in dread at the scramble to find the elusive cat. Can’t catch me, the cat taunted, blinking its steady green eyes at him. Stupid old man. Can’t can’t can’t. He wanted to grab it by the scruff of the neck and shake it, carve it out, pluck it clean away from his work – his art, his Tokyo and his Naomi most of all.

  Because she was his, wasn’t she? Sprawled out before him day after day.

  One session, he spent most of the afternoon looking for the cat, scanning the streets and alleyways, but it was nowhere to be found. The relief soaked over him like warm water – he must h
ave been imagining the cat’s existence from the beginning.

  But as his eyes flickered through Roppongi his heart fell: the cat was there, emerging from a subway exit. Its tail raised high, as though taunting him.

  He only managed thirty minutes of hurried work on the tattoo that day before Naomi had to leave.

  It was when Kentaro was nearing the end of his work on her that he understood what he must do. He had black rings under his eyes; he had lost his appetite, was finding it hard to swallow food and had grown skeletally thin. His dirty stubble had grown out into a shaggy beard, and his eyes, like black inked dots sunken deeply into his skull, stared vacantly at the walls of his parlour. Even before, he’d rarely gone out much or been hugely social. He’d usually spent most of his time on the Internet, looking at art books or drawing and painting designs on paper. But now he made his way along the old streets of Asakusa, muttering to himself as he went. He walked quickly, bumping into a homeless man wearing a purple bandana. Kentaro lost his temper and shouted uncontrollably at the stranger, who apologized profusely until he continued on his way. He bought a knife from the famous blade master of Asakusa he always visited. The blade master looked at him a little strangely, but didn’t comment on his haggard appearance or the fact that Kentaro usually bought only needles from him, never blades.

  Kentaro took the knife home and sharpened it. He tested the blade against his finger and it drew a burst of blood from his skin with only the slightest pressure. He taped the knife to the underside of the table, where Naomi wouldn’t see it. And he waited.

  Naomi came for what they both knew would be her final session, undressing quickly as usual. Kentaro did his best to act naturally as she talked to him about a summer fireworks festival she had been to, showing him photos of the yukata she had picked out. He nodded and smiled, pretending to listen.

  He worked well, in a kind of giddy contentment that this waking nightmare would soon be coming to an end. He finished a final section of shading Kita-Senju on her arm, then he cast his eyes around the Asakusa area, looking for that last blank space to fill – the roof of his very own tattoo parlour. He traced his way from the Kaminari gate at Sensoji Temple to his parlour. Here’s what he would do: he’d sign his name on the roof of the building declaring the tattoo as finished. And then he would reach for his knife and begin.

  But as soon as he went to sign his name, he saw the cat sitting outside his shop.

  He knew then, with a terrible certainty, that if he were to glance up from the tattoo on Naomi’s body and look outside the door, he would see the cat sitting there, its green eyes watching him.

  He gulped and closed his eyes.

  The city was still there though. Like he was seeing it from space. His mind’s eye was a camera looking down on it. Then the camera began to zoom in, down onto the globe, onto Japan, onto Tokyo, all the way down to street level. It flew through the red roof of his tattoo parlour, and there he saw himself working on Naomi’s perfect back, on the tattoo of the city. The camera didn’t stop. He’d lost control. It flew once again into the tattoo, and kept going down: through Japan, through Tokyo, into Asakusa, through the roof of his parlour and into the tattoo once more. And on and on endlessly.

  Unless he opened his eyes, he would be stuck like this. Looping round and round, zooming in on the city forever, trapped. But he kept them shut.

  For when he opened them, he would see that there was no longer space for him to sign his name in the roof of his parlour. It would be filled with a real red roof. He’d be faced with a city, with the millions and millions of people moving in and around, through subway stations and buildings, parks and highways, living their lives. The city pumped their shit around in pipes, it transported their bodies around in metal containers, and it held their secrets, their hopes, their dreams. And he’d no longer be sitting on the other side watching through a screen. He’d be part of it too. He’d be one of those people.

  With his eyes still shut, he reached under the table, hand scrambling desperately for the knife.

  He trembled as he opened his eyes.

  The muscles in Naomi’s back flexed and came to life.

  And so too, did the city.

  Fallen Words

  ‘There once was a shrewd antique dealer named Gozaemon.’

  Ohashi paused, and his eyes gleamed in the low light. He had tied back his grey hair under a purple bandana, and wore his beard long and shaggy on his wrinkled face. A thin man, for his age, but with just a tiny paunch belly forming, he knelt on a cushion with his hands held in front of him, in the customary stance of the rakugoka.

  ‘He was a sly and cunning man,’ he continued, his voice echoing softly around the silent room, ‘who thought nothing of disguising himself as a poor monk and visiting the houses of the elderly, on the hunt for treasures to sell in his antiques shop at hiked-up prices.’

  Ohashi had performed rakugo in crowded venues, to the rich and poor, and every time he treated each story as if it were his last – as though his words might be carried into the crowd on his dying breath. He had selected today’s story specifically for his current audience. He cleared his throat and continued.

  ‘One day, after swindling a woman of an expensive bookcase, this crooked man Gozaemon stopped by a sweet dumpling shop to eat. He sat on a stool outside the shop and waited for his food. As he was waiting, he spied a dirty old cat lapping milk from a bowl. But it was not the cat that interested him. The bowl, which the cat lapped greedily from, was an antique – one he was certain he could sell for 300 gold pieces. Gozaemon felt a cool sweat and the familiar sense of excitement at the prospect of a steal. He composed himself as the old woman who owned the shop came out with his food.’

  When Ohashi took on the words of his characters, his voice and mannerisms transformed completely, so one would think the character he was portraying had possessed him. When he played Gozaemon, he shifted to face the right, clasped his hands together and spoke glibly. When he played the old woman he shifted to the left, hunched over and contorted his features, appearing to have aged thirty years in a split second. He faced the audience in between these snippets of dialogue to perform the jovial voice of the narrator.

  ‘“What a lovely cat you have,” said Gozaemon.

  “What? That old mog?” replied the old woman in surprise.

  “Yes. It’s a darling cat.” Gozaemon knelt down to pet the cat. It hissed at him, back arching. “Reminds me of my own, who sadly . . . no, it’s too painful to even talk about . . . My children loved that old cat so . . .”

  Gozaemon pretended to stifle a sob, and the old woman tilted her head to one side.

  “Perhaps . . . Oh, it would be too much to ask.” He looked up.

  “What?” asked the old woman, jutting out her lower lip.

  “Well, would you be willing to sell this cat?”

  “That old flea bag?”

  “Yes, this charming cat.”

  “I’m not sure. It keeps mice away from my shop.”

  “I would be willing to pay . . .” said Gozaemon, his voice wavering slightly.

  “Oh yeah?” The woman raised an eyebrow.

  “Three . . . no, two gold pieces?”

  “You said three.”

  “All right, you drive a hard bargain, madam. Three it is.”

  “Done.”

  Gozaemon smiled. He handed the old woman three gold pieces, then knelt down to pick up the cat, who promptly bit him on the hand. But Gozaemon ignored the pain. He swooped down on his real target, the expensive bowl the cat had been drinking from.

  “Oi,” the woman said sharply. “What you doing?”

  “Oh, just taking the cat’s bowl.”

  “Why?”

  “The cat will need it.”

  “I’ll give you another one.” And she went inside her shop, coming out with a cheap old thing. She wiped it on her apron, leaving a brown smear.

  “But surely the cat will miss its own, ah, special bowl.”

  “That
cat will drink from anything. Besides, you can’t have that bowl. It’s worth 300 gold pieces.”

  Gozaemon was shocked, but did his best to hide it.

  “Three hundred gold pieces? That’s an awfully expensive bowl to let a cat drink from.”

  “Yes, but it helps me sell mangy cats for three gold pieces a pop.”

  The old woman gave a sly grin.’

  Ohashi let the end of his story fall perfectly. He bowed low to his audience and smiled. He wiped the perspiration from his brow. It had been a flawless rendition of ‘Neko no sara’ – ‘The Cat’s Dish’.

  His audience let out a meow.

  Ohashi got up from his filthy cushion and walked towards the calico cat. It had been sitting silently all the while. The only audience member today, watching upright with its paws down in front – the same stance as Ohashi’s, when he had performed his tale. He gave the cat a little scratch behind the ear.

  ‘Now, let’s get you something to eat.’

  They left the meeting room of the abandoned capsule hotel and walked through the decaying corridors to where Ohashi slept. It was dark in the old hotel, but Ohashi had been squatting here so long he could navigate through the place with his eyes closed. The cat, similarly, had no problems. The dark also helped hide some of the hotel’s more disagreeable elements: the fungi that grew on the walls, the rotten floorboards, the peeling wallpaper and the ghoulish faces on the old Kirin beer advertisement posters, smiling faces torn to shreds, curling away slowly over time.

  It had been the cat that first led Ohashi to the empty hotel ten months ago, when he’d been lost in the city, looking for somewhere to sleep. Ohashi had been shivering under a bridge on a freezing night when the little cat had licked him on the hand, looked him in the eye and then walked on a few paces before stopping to wait for the old man to follow. The hotel had closed many years ago, and no one had bothered with it since. Another victim of the burst bubble economy – too much supply and not enough demand. If he’d told the story to anyone, they wouldn’t have believed him, but the cat had saved his life.