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 neighborhood—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’sWanderer 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 forA 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 amaneki-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?”
