"Cat" is a long story about Chinese intellectuals in their 30s, cerca 1937, when China was full of domestic unrest, especially student demonstrations and violent crackdowns on such demonstrations, and everyone feared that war with Japan was imminent -- at a tea party in the center of the story, the Japanese regularly fly planes over the capital city of Beiping.
This political content and what it seems to say about the place of China in the world don't on the surface seem to be central fixtures of the story; rather, the piece is a wordy satire on the social mores of a married couple, their friends and associates, with a distinctive adultery motif. My aim is to investigate this satire on the sentence level and show how its major themes of marriage on the one hand, and literature and arts on the other hand, add up to a sophisticated political and social view that is still very much relevant to Chinese readers today.
The first sequence of the book introduces a cat called Taoqi, or "Naughty," who has just destroyed a manuscript that a young man named Qi Yigu is responsible for. A second sequence introduces Chen Jiahou and Li Aimo, beginning with their fathers, and tells us how they came to be married. We learn that it is Mrs. Li who wears the pants in this marriage. But as the third sequence relates, Jiahou chafes at his own short leash, and is jealous of the attention his wife gets from more sophisticated men, so he has the idea to write a book -- a memoir of his travels in America and Europe. Unable to write the book himself, he contracts a young college student named Qi Yigu as a private secretary who will listen to Jianhou's ideas and write them all down. Yigu quickly learns to despise Jianhou. At this point, the third sequence intersects chronologically with the first; the cat "Naughty" has scratched up the manuscript that Yigu has prepared and Yigu, already frustrated that he is working on a text that will add nothing to the world, is furious. Aimo hears what happened, and wishes to apologize to Yigu by inviting him to a tea party she is having with some of her sophisticated male friends. Thus begins a fourth, and very long sequence, which first introduces seven friends, all caricatures of Chinese intellectuals of the times, and then relates a bit of tea party conversation on the topic of whether war is imminent. I managed to read through this sequence, placing me at 55 percent through the story.
Raw notes:
“你知道，我這次跨海征東，千里迢迢來受痛苦，無非為你，要討你喜歡。我的臉也就是你的面子。我蒙了眼，又痛又黑暗，你好意思一個人住在外面吃喝玩樂么？你愛我，你得听我的話。你不許跟人到處亂跑。還有，你最貪嘴，可是我進醫院后，你別上中國館子，大菜也別吃，只許頓頓吃日本料理。你答應我不？算你愛我，陪我受苦，我痛的時候心上也有些安慰。吃得坏些，你可以清心寡欲，不至于胡鬧，糟蹋了身子。你個儿不高，吃得太胖了，不好看。你背了我騙我，我會知道，從此不跟你好。”
Aimo's wonderful condescension to her husband before she undergoes surgery. Interestingly, 清心寡欲 is very old and does not seem to have Buddhist etymology; 不至于胡鬧，糟蹋了身子 is a nice way to say, "don't have an affair."
兩星期后，建侯到醫院算賬并迎接夫人，身体卻未消瘦，只是臉黃皮寬，無精打采，而李太太花五百元日金新買來的眼睛，好象美術照相的電光，把她原有的美貌都煥映烘托出來。
After the plastic surgery (oh did I not mention that above?), Aimo is more beautiful than ever, but Jianhou's own metamorphosis is in the other direction. This ends the second sequence, leaving Jianhou (and the reader) feeling that the marriage is unfair to him.
她眼睫跟眼睛合作的各种姿態，開，閉，明，暗，尖利，朦朧，使建侯看得出神，疑心她兩眼里躲著兩位專家在科學管理，要不然轉移不會那樣斬截，表情不會那樣准确，效果不會那樣的估計精密。
A writerly sentence about literary affect; the relationship between the two married folks after the surgery is bizarre.
事實上，天并沒配錯他們倆。做李太太這一類女人的丈夫，是第三百六十一行終身事業，專門職務，比做大夫還要忙，比做挑夫還要累，不容許有旁的興趣和人生目標。旁人雖然背后嘲笑建侯，說他“夫以妻貴”，沾了太太的光，算個小名人。
Proof that Jianhou is now on the short lease. Note how the friends function as an audience to this marriage; 夫以妻貴 is a quite common expression, sort of like "she wears the pants in that marriage" [?]
李太太深知缺少這個丈夫不得；仿佛亞刺伯數碼的零號，本身毫無价值，但是沒有它，十百千万都不能成立。因為任何數目背后加個零號便進了一位，所以零號也跟著那數目而意義重大了。
Hammering the point home with devastating multi-lingual wordplay. This is where the center of my argument must lie -- what does the multi-lingual wordplay signify? Beyond the obvious, that Qian enjoys wordplay very much.
So ends the second sequence. More notes in a new entry.
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