Chronicled by Paul Oliver
oliverp@wolfgangbooks.com

Chapter Two

Discourse Upon The Nature and Character of Wolfgang Katt
Part II

The preceding discussion upon the metaphysical nature of Wolfgang’s character was mostly fruitless. We did learn of things like fairy cats and personages such as Captain Brown, though I would highly recommend that the reader limit the company with which they discuss those topics as not everyone is willing to accept such theories and characters. Fortunately for this narrative and therefore its reader, I have remembered some details about Wolfgang that might be effective in actually furthering such a discussion. With these recent recollections in mind, I have decided to write a brief continuation of the previous subject, this time from firsthand experiences. The unfortunate reader will still have to endure many insanities akin to that odd transcript found in the previous chapter, as the story of Wolfgang S. Katt is riddled with such fare. So, I will remain as brief as possible when dealing with sequels to such chapters.

   It is because of the mild weather in spring that I encountered this memory-jogging occurrence. The small garden is beginning to bud out back, and the temperatures have allowed my father to fire up the grill. One warm night, I traveled to my parents’ house to eat dinner and to ask Wolfgang about some small details concerning this chronicle. When I arrived, Wolfgang was nowhere to be found, and so I decided to hang out with my dad while he was getting dinner ready.

   My dad and I were in the kitchen having a beer before dinner, while my mom had gone out back to cut some chives for the potatoes. He was seasoning the pork chops while I talked of the weather and the prospects of a real team taking the field in Miami next fall. My mom came into the kitchen carrying a handful of chives and wearing a wry smile. She towed in her wake a blustering Wolfgang.

   “I was not eating grass, Nancy. And that’s final.” Wolfgang paused, overcome with indignation. “Really. I don’t know where you get these notions.” 

   “Wolf,” my mom began, turning to speak to him. “I don’t see why it’s a big deal. I saw you eating grass. It is a normal thing.”

   Wolfgang stopped after seeing us in the kitchen. He looked embarrassed and very angry.

   “I caught him eating grass again,” my mom explained. “I walked right out the back door towards the herbs and there he was…crouched low, surprised I was there, and eating grass.”

   We all looked at Wolf. I could picture it, had even seen it before. He would sneak out back when he thought no one was around and nibble on this particularly fine-bladed patch of grass near the herb garden. He hated it for some reason and would violently deny doing such a thing.

   “I was not eating grass! And I will not stand for such slander… I will have my dinner in my room.” And off he went.

   That night, after dinner and a couple more beers, I climbed into my car and drove home to my apartment. On the way home, I thought about Wolf and the incident with the grass. This short outburst reminded me of other instance where Wolfgang seemed to be two things at once. That’s what I’m really driving at here. That the characteristics of Wolfgang Katt can contain a duality so polarized that it is hard to fathom. He is in a way more human than us and also more inhuman. He is more than us in the sense that he contains a larger amount of the most potent trait of mankind: memory. I codify mankind in this way because that is how he does so and I find it to be correct. “Anything,” he once told me, “that is worth or even possible to say is either born of intellect or its storehouse and origin, memory. All that is otherwise is not real or not worth any weight, as it cannot be understood or remembered. Love and hate are memory. Language itself is a nexus point of origins and catalogues; the core moment where what we are engaged in has the potential to be understood as what we have done. Thus, if something is not contained within the possibilities of language, it is not worth anything. If a man can wonder what something is, even if he has forgotten some previous memory about it - even the objects name or purpose, he yet still has ironically already gained knowledge of the fundamental answer to his query. He remembers something, for if he could not remember anything, then he would no longer exist. Even if his body lived.”

   There are such pontifications from Wolfgang, typically produced when drunk and about to fall asleep (the usual time he opens up and spills out a little wisdom), and then there are the moments when he is caught in the back yard, in the shade, nibbling grass. One time when I was sixteen, he had given me something to read. While I read it, I noticed him nudging the books on the shelf nearby with his nose and mouth. I looked up and asked him what he was doing, to which of course he fumbled out a reply of “Nothing” and told me to keep reading. I have seen him do similarly with the corners of chairs, tables and even walls.

   One night, while telling us of his first experiences in land ownership (surprisingly as late as 1880 and in a ghetto in Prague), he was suddenly overcome with the desire to chase a large mosquito that had been buzzing around for half the night. There he was, in a good mood, regaling us with one of his long-ago stories when suddenly his eyes drifted away from us and then landed on the winged denizen. Suddenly, they focused like two gleaming green searchlights upon a convict, and he was off. Two bounds and a succession of swats and swipes left us with a humorous spectacle, a certainly vanquished mosquito and a surprised look on Wolfgang’s face. It was the look someone has when they suddenly realize their embarrassment. He had not been engaged in a state of “memory.” At the time, he supplied some excuse about how he really hated mosquitoes and that he was glad there was one less. My mom said something about how brave he was to attack such a creature. My dad grinned, and I laughed. Wolf, lucky for us, was too happily intoxicated and full from dinner to storm off. He laughed a little too and climbed back into his seat, restarting his story, which, I think, will be the next one I shall place within this chronicle. 

   Another time, I swear I saw him eye my bootlace while I was tying my boots. I estimated from the look in his eye that he was about to pounce on it, too. When he realized that I was looking at him and what he was about to do, he got defensive:

   “What are you doing today, Paul? Anything?” After which he walked away in a huff.

   Recently, just a few days back from when I am writing this, I went up to his room for a book. I remembered that time when he was nudging the books and looked at the top edges of the books on his low, two-shelf bookcases. All of them had smudges along the head of their spines: evidence of years of nuzzling.

   These are all great examples of his odd character and may, in fact, be more useful than the discussion formed by the paranoid minds of urfascist Masons in the dark time of the late 1930s. This, I think, will also be enough discussion of his character for now. More anecdotal information will be found in the stories that shall follow. The one I will lead with, fresh in my—and now your—memory, will be the story of Wolfgang’s first piece of property, a curious and somewhat occult antique store in the ghettos of Prague.