The man bought a set of MUJI watercolor pens on our way to Malay. And he was pleased by this smart buy. 'Such great expressiveness!' He praised, and by saying this, trying to lecture me that crayon, in this aspect, is by no means competent. Since he knew I was always for the crayon and since he himself would always do with a little bit of my irritation.
This lecture was followed by a series of drawing competitions which were then followed by my absolute triumph, although, I lost at one point, which was in the end I did have to admit that watercolor pen IS superior than crayon in the sense of expressiveness.
I was told by Sergio in Kuala Lumpur that I should started English writing again lest I care not to befriend him and his girlfriend. Well, this is my interpretation, but at least it got the gist of what he really said, which as I remembered was exactly 'My girlfriend doesn't understand your blog anymore but she's still checking occasionally the pictures. Why didn't you blog in English?'
Was a very good question.
Honestly, I think that was because I had finished the novel for Francesco and no longer feel the affection, not for English as a language. Although, of course, I still feel great affection for Francesco as a man (what he really is, to be honest, is a baby) or precisely speaking, a megalomaniac egoist. I now think that whoever know it would think that there must be somthing wrong with me and I agree with that whoever...
As I'm now writing in a universal language, hence widest read, I decide to say something important: Dude came back to me the day before yesterday.
It was a bit abrupt, I understand, since I've never mentioned his missing before. The news was told through text message which I received as soon as the airbus landed in PVG and for which I went mad right away. It read: Dude jumped out of the window probably for some hot kitty. It's been two days, and there's no good news.
It was from my dad who always gives bad news and creeps, who is so strong that when he shakes your hand you feel dying. If he wants to, he can practically kill an elephant or a premier with proper equipment. And if there's one person in this (fucking) world that he fears, that is me, despite that I'm only 46 kilos, not even enough for his weight training. That's because I'm his daughter and he only got one daughter and I look like my mother and my grandmother and he happens to love them both. Sometimes kinship is just magic.
So I gave him a call and showered him with a storm of 'what the fuck were you doing when I was away?'
And he returned me a storm of 'where are you my girl? Do you have the cab fare? Do you need strawberry danish and diet coke?' and stuff. I used to think it's hard to be pleasing and irritating at the same time but I was wrong. My dad achieves the impossible.
The following days were miserable. I was home, bitter, sleepless, and lunatic. I murmured 'Dude' around the neighbourhood whenever I went out for daily input, hoping to bump into him just like that. This got everybody think I was a mentalcase. That was when I began to understand this woman who always wanders around the neighbourhood with a slow pace. She started the stroll since I moved here and she always looks a bit unfixed. I guess she lost her cat too. But if it's true, it would mean she's been looking for her cat for nine years. And the corollary of that is unnerving.
01 The response I got from Massive
'Firstly, you WILL find Dude. Secondly, when you find him, you should change his name.'
'Like how?' I asked.
'Like Friedrich Dude.'
'And why?'
'Because next time when he's missing and you go out looking for him, you would be murmuring Friedich Dude instead of simply Dude and that makes you twice as lunatic as you already are.'
'And just why the hell should I be more lunatic?'
'Because I like that idea.'
>___<
02 The return
Dude came back on Tuesday.
The day before, I printed 20 LOST CAT posters and posted them all. The next evening, up loomed the key figure in this incident: a cat butcher, the man who provides cats for a famous dish made with snake and cat, known as something like when Dragon meets Tiger (like when Harry meets Sally, just a lot less romantic and a lot more gory). A cat butcher knows how to drag stray cats out from their hidden places. And he probably also knows how to slaughter them...
I aroused his attention when talking to two cats, asking them Dude's whereabout. And he came up and asked whether I like cat. After I said yes he suggested: 'There are a lot of cats under your window.' pointing at a dark lane which was truly just under my window.
'How do you know where I live?' My whole body tightened up. And then I realized 'Ah, you must have seen the poster.'
'What poster?'
'The LOST CAT poster. I lost my cat.'
'That I didn't see. I know where you live because when you and your Italian boyfriend took your cat here the first day, we've talked. And you told me you live in Unit 3. Are you still with that guy?'
Jesus, I thought, it's a waste that he's not a CIA spy.
'Well, anyway, I lost my cat, and there's picture on the posters there.' I pointed vaguely at the direction where I might have done the posting. 'If you see him, keep him with you and give me a call.'
And surprisingly, approximately two hours after the commission, the cat butcher, toting a cage in his right hand, appeared right in front of my door.
And there, I saw my Dude.
Who was shit scared and crying at the top of his lungs.
'Hey... little buddy... It's ok. It's me...' I poked my finger in the cage and tickled under his neck.
'Is this your cat?' the man asked.
'Yes, yes, thanks.'
That means 'thank you so very much not to cut him into pieces and toast and eat him you omnivorous cannibal why don't you just eat your own mother.'
03 The haunting horror
I noticed that Dude was destroyed, becoming autistic and tremulous.
And the sympton is that he has stopped biting me.
I think he has probably related the misfortune he suffered in the wild world with his biting me too much. For him, the situation was: first he bit me for fun and then I disappeared. And still then he fell out of the window, waited, but I didn't come to his rescue.
'He's too quiet now, servile almost like a dog.' I told Massive: 'He must think I was angry.'
'No, he doesn't.'
'Then why is personality change?'
'Because he realize you're a testy prick. That's what he concluded from your disapperance and that's why he stopped biting you. Because you're no fun. And he thinks to himself, this woman treats me good, let's don't hurt her too much. This is mere sympathy. I'm sure.'
'___'|||
