If Cats Disappeared From the World Read online

  IF

  CATS

  DISAPPEARED

  FROM

  THE

  WORLD

  GENKI KAWAMURA

  Translated from the Japanese by

  Eric Selland

  PICADOR

  CONTENTS

  A SHORT INTRODUCTION

  MONDAY: THE DEVIL MAKES HIS APPEARANCE

  TUESDAY: IF PHONES DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

  WEDNESDAY: IF MOVIES DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

  THURSDAY: IF CLOCKS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

  FRIDAY: IF CATS DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

  SATURDAY: IF I DISAPPEARED FROM THE WORLD

  SUNDAY: GOODBYE WORLD

  A SHORT INTRODUCTION

  If cats disappeared from the world, how would the world change? And how would my life change?

  And if I disappeared from the world? Well, I suppose nothing would change at all. Things would probably just go on, day after day . . . same as usual.

  OK, so you’re probably thinking this is all a bit silly, but please, believe me.

  What I’m about to tell you happened over the past seven days.

  Now that’s what you call a weird week.

  Oh, and by the way—I’m going to die soon.

  So how did all this happen?

  My letter will explain everything.

  So it will probably be a long letter.

  But I’d like you to bear with me till the end.

  Because this will be my first and my last letter to you.

  It’s also my will and testament.

  MONDAY: THE DEVIL MAKES HIS APPEARANCE

  I didn’t even have ten things I wanted to do before I die.

  In a movie I saw once the heroine is about to die so makes a list of ten things she wants to do before she goes.

  What a lot of crap.

  OK. So maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh. But really, what even goes on a list like that? A load of rubbish probably.

  “But how can you say that?” you might ask.

  OK, look, I don’t know, but anyway I tried it and it was just embarrassing.

  It all started seven days ago.

  I had this cold I just couldn’t shake, but I kept going to work every day anyway, delivering the mail. I had a slight fever which wouldn’t shift, and the right side of my head ached. I was barely keeping it together with the help of some over-the-counter drugs (I hate going to the doctor). But after two weeks of this I caved and went—I just wasn’t getting better.

  Then I found out it wasn’t a cold.

  It was, in fact, a brain tumor. Grade 4.

  Anyway, that’s what the doctor told me. He also told me I had only six months to live, tops. I’d be lucky if I made it another week. Then he explained my options—chemotherapy, anticancer drugs, palliative care . . . but I wasn’t listening.

  When I was little, I used to go to swimming. I’d jump into the cold blue water with a splash, and then sink, slowly.

  “Do a proper warm-up before you jump in!” It was my mother’s voice. But underwater it was muffled and hard to hear. For some reason this just popped into my head—this strange, noisy memory. Something I’d completely forgotten about until now.

  Finally the appointment ended.

  The doctor’s words were still hanging in the air as I dropped my bag on the floor and staggered out of the examining room. I ignored the doctor’s shouts, calling for me to stop, and ran out of the hospital screaming. I ran and ran, slamming into the people I passed, falling over, rolling on the ground and getting up again, throwing my limbs about wildly until I reached the foot of a bridge where I found I could no longer move, and groveling on my hands and knees, let out a sob.

  . . . Well, no, that’s a lie. That’s not quite how it happened.

  The fact is, people tend to be surprisingly calm when they hear news like this.

  When I found out, the first thing that occurred to me was that I was only one stamp away from getting a free massage on my loyalty card, and I shouldn’t have bothered buying so much toilet paper and detergent. It was the little things which came to mind.

  But finally, it hit me: a kind of bottomless sadness. I was only thirty. OK, so that would mean I’d have lived longer than Hendrix or Basquiat, but somehow it felt like I had a lot of unfinished business. There must be something, I don’t know what, but something on this planet that only I could do.

  But I didn’t really dwell on any of this. Instead I wandered in a daze until I reached the station. A couple of young men were playing acoustic guitar and singing.

  “This life will someday have to end, so until that final day arrives,

  Do what you want to do, do it, do all you can,

  That’s how you face tomorrow.”

  Idiots. Now that’s what you call a complete lack of imagination. Go ahead—just go on and sing your lives away in front of this godawful station.

  I was so mad I couldn’t take it. It was too much and I had no idea what to do. I took my time getting back to the flat. I clattered up the stairs and opened the flimsy door to the cramped little space which I called home. It was then that the complete hopelessness of it all caught up with me. The outlook was bad. I mean literally, I couldn’t see a thing—I collapsed right there on the doorstep.

  When I woke up I was still lying by the door. God knows how long I’d been there for. I could make out a black and white ball with grey patches in front of me. Then the ball made a sound—“miaow”. Finally I realized it was the cat.

  It has been me and him for four years now. He came closer and let out another “miaow”. I took this as a sign he was worried about me. But hey, I wasn’t dead yet, so I sat up. I still had a fever and my head was killing me: I really was sick.

  Then suddenly someone’s chirping from across the room.

  “So great to meet you!”

  And there I was. I mean, it was me, standing there, looking at me. Or someone who looked just like me. The word “doppelgänger” sprang to mind . . . I read something about this sort of thing in a book ages ago. It’s another you who appears when you’re about to die. Had I finally gone crazy, or was my time already up? My head was starting to spin, but I managed to keep it together. I decided to tackle head on whatever it was standing before me.

  “Er, so, who are you?”

  “Who do you think?”

  “Uhh, is it . . . the Angel of Death?”

  “Close!”

  “Close?”

  “I’m the Devil.”

  “The Devil?”

  “Yes, the Devil!”

  So that’s how, in a slightly surprising way, the Devil appeared in my life.

  Have you ever seen the Devil? Well, I have, and the real Devil doesn’t have a scary red face or a pointy tail. And there’s definitely no pitchfork! The Devil looks just like you. So the real doppelgänger was the Devil!

  It was a lot to take in, but what choice did I have? Plus he seemed like a nice guy. So I decided that I’d just have to go along with it.

  Upon closer inspection I realized that although the Devil looked a lot like me, we couldn’t be more different when it came to our sense of style. I tend to dress in basic black and white. For instance, I’ll wear black slacks with a white shirt and black jumper. Boring yes, but that’s just who I am—the monotone guy. I remember ages ago my mother getting fed up—“There you go again buying the same kind of clothes as always . . .”, but I’d still find myself choosing the same thing whenever I went shopping.

  The Devil, though, dressed, um, shall we say, unconventionally? Brightly colored Hawaiian shirts with palm trees or pictures of classic American cars, and he was always in shorts—like someone permane
ntly on holiday. And of course, you mustn’t forget the sunglasses (probably Ray-Bans). He was dressed as if it were still summer despite the fact it was freezing out. Just as I was about to reach boiling point, the Devil spoke.

  “So what are you going to do now?”

  “Huh?”

  “I mean, you haven’t got a lot of time left . . . you know, this life-expectancy thing and all that.”

  “Oh that, right . . .”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “Oh, well, for the time being maybe I’ll think about that list of ten things . . .”

  “You don’t mean like that old movie, do you?”

  “Mmm, yeah sort of, I guess . . .”

  “You mean you’d really do something as silly and corny as that?”

  “So you think it’s a bad move?”

  “Well, I mean, sure a lot of people do it, firmly declaring they’ll do every last one . . . you know those kind of people, right? It’s a kind of phase everyone goes through at least once—though it’s not as if you get a second chance!”

  Holding on to his sides, the Devil let out a huge guffaw.

  “Sorry, I just can’t see the funny side . . .”

  “Right, right . . . Well, I guess you never know until you try, right? Let’s draw up a quick list right now.”

  So I pulled out a sheet of blank paper and wrote the title at the top of the page—“10 Things I Want to Do Before I Die.”

  I was feeling more depressed already—I’m going to die soon and I’m wasting my time writing lists? You’ve got to be kidding. As I wrote I lost the plot even more. But somehow I managed to come up with a list, all the time avoiding the Devil, who was trying to peek over my shoulder, and forcibly removing the cat, who like all cats thinks it’s a good idea to sit on whatever you’re trying to work on or read.

  OK, so here we go:

  Go skydiving.

  Climb Mt. Everest.

  Speed along on the autobahn in a Ferrari.

  Go along to a traditional three-day-long feast of gourmet Chinese food.

  Take a ride on a Transformer’s back.

  Find love in these final Days of Our Lives.

  Go on a date with Princess Leia.

  Turn a corner just in time to run into a beautiful woman carrying a cup of coffee, and watch our passionate love affair unfold from there.

  Run into the girl I had a crush on in school while sheltering from the rain.

  Did I mention I’d like to fall in love? Just once . . .

  “What is this?”

  “Uh, well, you know . . .”

  “C’mon, you’re not in school anymore! Frankly, I’m embarrassed for you.”

  “. . . Sorry.”

  Yeah I know, I’m pathetic. I racked my brains and this was the best I could come up with. Even the cat looked disgusted. He was keeping his distance.

  The Devil came over and patted me on the shoulder, trying to cheer me up.

  “There, there, now . . . OK, tell ya what, let’s see about that skydiving trip. A quick visit to the ATM and it’s off to the airport we go!”

  Two hours later I was on a jet plane at an altitude of 3,000 meters.

  “OK, ready? Geronimo!”

  Cheerful as ever, the Devil gave me a shove and the next thing I knew I was falling.

  Yep. That’s what I’d always dreamed of: to see the blue sky opening up, the towering clouds, and the earth’s horizon stretching on forever . . . I’d always thought things would never be the same again after seeing the earth from so high up. I’d forget all the small stuff and grab life by the horns.

  I’m sure some famous person said something like that, but that’s not how it went. I’d had enough of the whole thing before I even jumped. I mean, come on, it’s cold, you’re way up there, and it’s terrifying. Why would someone go and jump out of a plane of their own free will? Was this what I had wanted? I pondered these things as I fell to earth, before once again, things literally went literally black.

  When I came to I was lying on my bed back home in my tiny apartment. Again it was the cat’s “miaow” that woke me. Dragging myself up, I discovered my head was still killing me . . . I knew it. It was back down to earth with a bump.

  “Oh, come on, man, give me a break . . . !” I pleaded with Aloha (as I’d decided the Devil, with his Hawaiian shirts, would henceforth be known), who sat next to me on the bed.

  “My apologies for the inconvenience.”

  “Hey, I could’ve died out there . . . Well, OK, I realize I’m going to die anyway, but really . . .”

  Aloha was splitting his sides.

  I just kept quiet and held the cat in my arms. He felt warm and soft—a smooth, fluffy ball in my arms. Before, I would hold him and pet him without thinking about it much, but now, for the first time, it occurred to me that this is what life was all about.

  “The thing is . . . I mean, there’s just not many things I want to do before I die.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “At least, I don’t think I could think of ten. And the ones I can think of are probably really boring.”

  “Well, I guess that’s life, huh?”

  “Oh, by the way, could I ask you something?”

  “Who, me?”

  “Yeah, I was wondering . . . Why did you come? I mean . . . what are you doing here?”

  Aloha let out a laugh. It could only mean bad things.

  “You really want to know? Well, OK then, I’ll tell you.”

  “OK, now you’re scaring me.”

  I winced at the sudden change in Aloha’s tone. I had a bad feeling about this. I could tell there was trouble up ahead.

  “What’s wrong?” Aloha asked.

  I took a deep breath and steeled myself. It’s OK. I’ll be OK. I’m just asking a question. Nothing wrong with asking a question.

  “Oh, nothing. It’s fine. I’d just like to know. So go ahead. Shoot.”

  “So it turns out . . . you’re going to die tomorrow.”

  “What!?”

  “You’re going to die tomorrow. That’s what I came here to tell you.”

  I was speechless. Shock was followed swiftly by a feeling of deep despair. My whole body felt weak, and my knees trembled.

  Seeing me in this state Aloha resumed his usual cheerful chit-chat.

  “Hey, don’t be so down. Look at me, I’m here to help! This is your way out. I’ve come to make you an offer.”

  “. . . Way out? What do you mean?”

  “You don’t want to die now, do you? In your sorry state?”

  “No, I want to live . . . if I can.”

  Without missing a beat Aloha went on:

  “There is something we could do . . .”

  “Do? What do you mean?”

  “Well, you could call it a kind of magic. But it might increase your life span.”

  “Really?”

  “On one condition: you’ll have to accept this one fundamental law of the universe.”

  “And that is?”

  “In order to gain something you have to lose something.”

  “So what do I have to do exactly?”

  “It’s easy . . . I’ll just ask you to perform a simple exchange.”

  “Exchange?”

  “Sure . . . All you have to do is remove one thing from the world, and in return, you get one more day of life.”

  “You’re kidding. That’s all?”

  I may have been about to die, but I hadn’t completely lost it yet. First of all, what gave Aloha the right to make such an offer?

  “Now, you’re probably wondering what gives me the right to do that.”

  “Um, uh . . . no, what made you say that?”

  Was he for real? Did he have ESP?

  “Reading minds is the easy part. Hello, I’m the Devil, remember?”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “Anyway, we don’t have much time, so you’re going to have to get on board quickly. Are you with me? This is a real exchange we’re t
alking about here.”

  “So says you.”

  “OK then. Since you don’t believe me, let me tell you how this exchange came about.”

  Aloha made himself comfortable.

  “You’re familiar with the Book of Genesis?”

  “You mean the Bible? Yes, I’m familiar with it, but I’ve never read it.”

  “Oh, wow, OK . . . this would have gone a lot faster if you had.”

  “Sorry . . .”

  “Whatever . . . I’ll just give it to you in condensed form. First of all, God created the world in seven days.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that bit.”

  “On the first day the world was covered in darkness, then God said, ‘Let there be light!’ and then there was day and night. Then, on the second day, God created the heavens, and on the third day he created the earth. Now that’s what you call Creation! Then the oceans were made and plants took root.”

  “Pretty impressive.”

  “Right! And then, on the fourth day he created the sun and the moon and the stars in the sky—The. Universe. Is. Born! Then on the fifth day he created fish and birds, and on the sixth day he created animals, and made man in his own image, and finally that’s your cue!”

  “Oh, I remember now—creation of the heavens and the earth, the cosmos, and then humankind arrives on stage. And on the seventh day? What happens?”

  “On the seventh day he rested. Even God needs to take a break now and then.”

  “And that’s Sunday, right?”

  “Exactly. Now isn’t that incredible? He did it all in just seven days. God is just awesome! You know, I have so much respect for him.”

  Somehow when it came to what all this should inspire, respect didn’t seem to cut it . . . but in any case, I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

  “The first man’s name was Adam. Then God thought he might be lonely since he was the only human around, so he created a woman from Adam’s rib. But then the two of them were just hanging out there without much to do so I decided—to liven things up for them—to suggest to God that I get them to eat the apple.”