The Beckoning Cat
We were nearing the end of the academic year, so I wasn’t expecting to find anything in the letter box apart from flyers from the university summoning me to staff meetings or announcing summer seminar programs.
However, instead of academic junk mail, there was a postcard waiting for me. I held it up to the light so I could see it better: there was a picture of a porcelain cat with its left front paw raised.
When I turned it over, I expected to find the address of some new Chinese bazaar in the neighbor-hood—the sort of place where you see these items—but, to my surprise it had a Japanese postmark.
Besides my address, handwritten with a very fine nib, there was an extremely short message, just one hyphenated word: Wabi-sabi.
Very puzzled, I stood there next to my letter box, flipping the card over time and time again, now looking at the photo, now at the mysterious word.
I had no idea who could have sent me this from so far away, or why, but something told me that this innocent little kitty—well, that’s if it really was innocent—was going to cause an upheaval.
The last cat that came to my door, Mishima, had been a harbinger of havoc, so I wasn’t going to take this lightly.
To begin with, the postcard cat changed my plans for that morning: instead of going out I went back upstairs to the attic flat and rang the bell at Titus’s door.
It opened with a buzz—a sign that he was busy with one of the books he’s commissioned to write.
Indeed, as soon as I pushed the door open, I heard his fingers skittering over the keyboard against a background of jazz.
Delicate ribbons of smoke snaked through the air.
Yes, he was hard at work. Titus only burnt his incense sticks when he was writing.
Before emerging from the passageway into his living room-cum-study, I stopped for a moment before the reproduction of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. I’d seen it dozens of times, but that young romantic atop his high crag still impressed me.
“Are you going to stay out there?” The welcome was gruff.
I went into the living room, in the middle of which stood Titus’s desk. He stopped typing and stared at me enquiringly.
“You’re working . . .”
“Looks like it, wouldn’t you say?” His tone was mocking. “I have exactly four days before the deadline for A Cent a Laugh, and I still have a quarter of the book to write, plus a prologue on laughter therapy.
“What a ridiculous title. What’s it about?”
“It’s a local version of an American book. An anthology of a thousand jokes selling for ten euros, or one cent for every dose of mirth.”
“Very ingenious.”
“It’s not my idea, and I can’t guarantee people will laugh at these jokes. I’m not at all amused by the ones I’ve found.”
He gestured toward the end of the table at a pile of books bristling with Post-It tabs.
“I’ll let you get on with your work, then.”
“Hang on a moment. What did you want to tell me?” I weighed up the risk that Titus would order me to start looking for jokes for his book, but my curiosity about the postcard got the better of me, so I dropped it on the table. Then I sat on his couch waiting to hear what he had to say.
“That’s interesting.” He smiled. “Who sent you this?”
“I don’t know. There’s no sender there. Just that hyphenated word. Do you know what it means?”
“Wabi-sabi . . .”
Titus pronounced the word as if it were a magic spell. Just then, a softly whistling train started whirring round the tracks and through the tunnels of a miniature railway set he’d laid out on a table next to the wall.
“That almost scared me,” I said. “How many buttons and switches have you got on your desk?”
“Only two. One to open the door and the other for the train set. As you know, it helps me concentrate. Anyway, I can’t give you an answer right now, though I’ve seen this word before. Ask Gabriela. Didn’t she once live in Japan?”
“She’s in Paris and won’t be back till next week. The porcelain cat might also be some kind of clue.”
Titus traced its outline with his finger. “That’s no mystery. It’s a maneki-neko. There are millions of them in Japan.”
“What’s a maneki-neko?”
“Look it up in the third book on that shelf.” Titus pointed at a bookcase on the far side of the room. “It’s strange you don’t remember, because you helped me write it.”
“Valdemar wrote it in the end. Don’t you remember?”
I took A Short Course in Everyday Magic from the shelf.
He was right. In the chapter that was called “Feline Philosophy,” there was a section about the maneki-neko.
MANeKI-NeKO: THe LUCKY CAT
Although this figure is very popular with Japanese shopkeepers, its origins must be sought in ninth-century China, where it was believed that a cat cleaning its ear with its paw was a sign that a visitor was coming.
The animal was edgy before the arrival of a stranger and showed it with this gesture of washing its face and ears.
Some sources claim that the cat’s story goes back to a real-life story in the Edo period (1603–1868).
A cat named Tama was always on the porch of a temple built next to a large tree in the western area of Tokyo.
One rainy day, a nobleman took refuge under the tree, and Tama kept trying to attract his attention by beckoning with a paw.
Curious about the cat’s behavior, the man left his refuge and went to see why the cat was doing this.
Just then, the tree was struck by a bolt of lightning, which also destroyed everything around it.
Moved by the cat’s solicitousness, the nobleman became a benefactor of the temple.
Another tale concerns a very poor woman called Imado.
She could barely keep herself alive, so had to sell her cat.
One night the cat appeared to her in a dream, telling her to make clay models in its likeness as a lucky charm.
She obeyed the cat, and a passerby saw the figure and wanted to buy it.
From then on, she made so many cats, which she sold to so many people, that she became rich.
“Most enlightening.” I was mildly sarcastic. “But that doesn’t tell me anything. Why would someone send me a lucky cat? I don’t know anyone in Japan.”
“It might be a sign that a stranger is arriving. Or maybe you need good luck for some adventure you’re going to embark on soon.”
These two possibilities sounded like prophecies by a sinister oracle. I knew from experience that the coming of a stranger always left a string of bothersome complications in its wake. As for adventures that require good luck, I’d call them calamities.
I still had to discover what wabi-sabi meant. Something told me I’d soon find out.