George told him he would be glad to, and got his coat and started downstairs with him. Katamoto padded swiftly on ahead, his little feet shod in felt slippers that made no sound. Half-way down the stairs, as if the noise of George’s heavy tread had touched his funny-bone again, Katamoto stopped quickly, turned and pointed at George’s feet, and giggled coyly: “Trampling! You are trampling!” Then he turned and fairly fled away down the stairs and down the hall, shrieking like a gleeful child. He waited at the door to usher his guest in, introduced him to the slender, agile little Japanese girl who seemed to stay there all the time, and finally brought George back into his studio and served him tea.
It was an amazing place. Katamoto bad redecorated the fine old rooms and fitted them up according to the whims of his curious taste. The big back room was very crowded, intricate, and partitioned off into several small compartments with beautiful Japanese screens. He had also constructed a flight of stairs and a balcony that extended around three sides of the room, and on this balcony George could see a couch. The room was crowded with tiny chairs and tables, and there was an opulent-looking sofa and cushions. There were a great many small carved objects and bric-?-brac, and a strong smell of incense.
The centre of the room, however, had been left entirely bare save for a big strip of spattered canvas and an enormous plaster figure. George gathered that he did a thriving business turning out sculptures for expensive speak-easies, or immense fifteen-foot statues of native politicians which were to decorate public squares in little towns, or in the state capitals of Arkansas, Nebraska, Iowa, and Wyoming. Where and how he had learned this curious profession George never found out, but he had mastered it with true Japanese fidelity, and so well that his products were apparently in greater demand than those of American sculptors. In spite of his small size and fragile build, the man was a dynamo of energy and could perform the labours of a Titan. God knows how he did it—where he found the strength.
George asked a question about the big plaster cast in the centre of the room, and Katamoto took him over and showed it to him, remarking as he pointed to the creature’s huge feet:
“He is—like you!...He is trampling!...Yis!...He is trampling!”
Then he took George up the stairs on to the balcony, which George dutifully admired.
“Yis?—You like?” He smiled at George eagerly, a little doubtfully, then pointed at his couch and said: “I sleep here!” Then he pointed to the ceiling, which was so low that George had to stoop. “You sleep there?” said Katamoto eagerly.
George nodded.
Katamoto went on again with a quick smile, but with embarrassed hesitancy and a painful difficulty in his tone that had not been there before:
“I here,” he said, pointing, “you there—yis?”
He looked at George almost pleadingly, a little desperately—and suddenly George began to catch on.
“Oh! You mean I am right above you—” Katamoto nodded with instant relief—“and sometimes when I stay up late you hear me?”
“Yis! Yis!” He kept nodding his head vigorously. “Sometimes—” he smiled a little painfully—“sometimes—you will be trampling!” He shook his finger at George with coy reproof and giggled.
“I’m awfully sorry,” George said. “Of course, I didn’t know you slept so near—so near the ceiling. When I work late I pace the floor. It’s a bad habit. I’ll do what I can to stop it.”
“Oh, no-o!” he cried, genuinely distressed. “I not want—how you say it?—change your life!...If you ple-e-ese, sir! Just little thing—not wear shoes at night!” He pointed at his own small felt-shod feet and smiled up at George hopefully. “You like slippers yis?” And he smiled persuasively again.
After that, of course, George wore slippers. But sometimes he would forget, and the next morning Katamoto would be rapping at his door again. He was never angry, he was always patient and good-humoured, he was always beautifully courteous—but he would always call George to account. “You were trampling!” he would cry. “Last night—again—trampling!” And George would tell him he was sorry and would try not to do it again, and Katamoto would go away giggling, pausing to turn and wag his finger roguishly and call out once more, “Trampling!”—after which he would flee downstairs, shrieking with laughter.
They were good friends.
In the months that followed, again and again George would come in the house to find the hall below full of sweating, panting movers, over whom Katamoto, covered from head to foot with clots and lumps of plaster, would hover prayerfully and with a fearful, pleading grin lest they mar his work, twisting his small hands together convulsively, aiding the work along by slight shudders, quick darts of breathless terror, writhing and shrinking movements of the body, and saying all the while with an elaborate, strained, and beseeching courtesy:
“Now, if—_you_—gentleman—a little!...You...yis—yis—yis-s!” with a convulsive grin. “Oh-h-h! Yis—yis-s! If you ple-e-ese, sir!...If you would down—a little—yis-s!—yis-s!—yis-s!” he hissed softly with that prayerful and pleading grin.