“That’s it, I’ll go torch the damn fleabag.” Valerie was hysterical. She was hysterical and was hysterically clutching a zippo lighter in one hand and a hairspray in the other. It was raining in through the open window. Someone dumped a tangled mass of spaghetti leftovers from a window on the upper floor. A sticky meatball brushed her nose and crash-landed on the window sill. She didn’t notice.
“You’ll do no such thing.” That came from the unoccupied corner of John’s mouth. The other corner was occupied. Lucky Strike. John was languidly chopping carrots. The carrots were orange. His nails were yellow. He was in the company of a dead salmon. It was staring at him from an oval white plate on the kitchen counter. It didn’t say much.
“It won’t stop mewing. I’m out of laundry pins and it hid under the table anyway. That mewing freaks me out. Plus, it’s wet. Wet cats stink like hell. I’ll go dry it out.” The door slammed shut behind her. The meatball on the window sill was sticky.
“Don’t get wet. These are my only good socks you’re wearing.” The chopped carrots were piled in the baking tin. They were still orange. John decapitated a fennel bulb. His cigarette resting in peace in the ashtray, he now started whistling a tune from “La Traviata”. The kitchen filled with the sound of sparrows being strangled. The salmon didn’t mind.
The landlord was allergic to peanuts. He was a retired cook for the US army. He had lost his left eye in a freak accident involving a cripple Venecian prostitute, a stiletto heel and considerable amounts of cheap grappa. He was replacing the light bulb in the lobby, strenuously stretching his scrawny arms to reach it while precariously balancing his asparagus of a body on a red plastic bucket. When Valerie rushed past him, creating a whirl strong enough to make him clumsily grasp for the lamp cord he squeaked under his bushy moustache: “Jeez, woman, where’s the fire!?”
“Oh, we’ll have one alright!”
“What’s with the hairspray? Having a bad hair day, are we?”
“I’ll go torch a cat.”
“Well, I’ll be damned! What for?”
“It won’t stop mewing. It wails like a friggin’ siren.”
“The guys from my platoon in Vietnam never complained of such nuisance. Cats tend to be very quiet when served with rice and soy sauce, if you know what I mean.”
“John silenced a fish for dinner. I have a cat to torch.”
Valerie turned her back on the peanut intolerant, cat-cooking, one-eyed asparagus perched on a red plastic bucket and darted off towards the mewing, wet, stinky, hairball-vomiting, rat-eating, soon-to-be-torched fleabag. The sky over Bologna was full of night and rain. On the splashy pavement there was a tangled mass of spaghetti leftovers. On the same splashy pavement there wasn’t a wet stinky cat. On the window sill above her there was a lone meatball. The lone meatball was sticky.
John’s only good socks were soaked. Valerie’s hair looked like a tangled mass of spaghetti leftovers. Her hairspray couldn’t do anything about her bad hair day and it couldn’t torch the cat that wasn’t there. What it could do was nest in the nearest trash bin. Valerie squelched in the lobby. The landlord attached to the bushy moustache was perched on a red plastic bucket.
“Dinner ready yet?”, mumbled the orifice under the moustache.
“The damn fleabag’s gone!”
“Oh, well, look on the bright side. Maybe it got run over by the milkman’s truck.”
“Yeah, yeah. I hope it’s cat pate by now. Or dog food.”
The apartment smelled of roasting silent fish. John was in the john. Valerie looked down through the window. She wished her hair was short. That way there was a chance she wouldn’t look like a mafia cuisine specialty. On the pavement below there was a cat who wasn’t there.
“Did you torch the damn fleabag? Are my only good socks ruined?” John’s voice carried from inside the john.
“There’s spaghetti on the pavement and on my head.”
“I told you we’re eating fish tonight.”
Two hours later on the kitchen counter there was a cooling speechless fish with a stupid expression, snuggly buried in multi-colored vegetables. On the window sill there was a contented pigeon with a sticky meatball in his belly. The doorbell rang. Valerie opened, wearing John’s not-so-good-but-dry socks. The landlord smiled sheepishly which caused his bushy moustache to part in the middle – a telltale sign he was allergic to peanuts. He held a baking tin in his hands. There, snuggly buried in rice and splashed with soy sauce, lay a roasted quiet cat.
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Review of Tsvetelina’s Night of the Wet Cat! by Alexander
ReplyDelete“Night of the Wet Cat!” is an entertaining story which goes a long way towards being a successful parody of Hemingway’s “Cat in the Rain”.
Ms Tenekejieva has managed to preserve enough of the original author’s curt style, his knack of stringing several simple sentences one after the other and his rather choppy dialogue – although if the goal was to overdo it (as a parody is supposed to, I guess), I’m afraid that wasn’t quite achieved. There were several sentences that truly made me chortle though, like “The sky over Bologna was full of night and rain” and all the cloudy-with-a-chance-of-meatballs snipes (“The meatball on the window sill was sticky”).
That said, I couldn’t help but notice a couple more hiccups in that department – several similes and the odd metaphor here and there. Especially in this story, Hemingway expressly stays true to his own aversion for such tropes which tend to go against his conviction that the writer should only tell the truth.
I’m not exactly sure where the cooking theme comes in the picture (is it just because the American stereotype of Italians has them eating all the time? I don’t know) but I suppose this is an attempt at achieving the seeming idiosyncrasy of Hemingway’s choice of objects, people and activities to describe. However, that may be undermined by the fact that the theme is conserved throughout the whole story and actually frames it rather nicely. Might have been funnier to have the husband play chess or juggle swords by the time she was back from her unsuccessful cat-killing mission. Or something :P
What regards character depiction, I loved some things and didn’t like some others. I love Valerie’s description as “hysterical” and its beautiful polysemy. I love the fact that John is in the john. I’m very ambiguous towards the landlord – I like his backstory (“He had lost his left eye in a freak accident involving a cripple Venecian prostitute, a stiletto heel and considerable amounts of cheap grappa.”) but not the way he talks (“Jeez, woman”? Somehow way out of context there and it really struck me as inappropriate for some reason) and not that he’s referred to as an asparagus (mainly because initially I had no idea what an asparagus looks like and so couldn’t possibly imagine him w/o googling the damn plant. And when I googled it I couldn’t possibly imagine how a man could look like it and how that was parodying Hemingway’s hotel-owner.)
The ending is beautiful and that’s all I have to say about it – and the story – for now. See you guys tomorrow.
P.S. Oh, I also love the exclamation mark in the title.
Review of “The Night of the Wet Cat” by Irina
ReplyDeleteTsvetelina’s text is a wonderful piece of parody. I loved every word. She has parodied “Cat in the Rain” very skillfully. Most of the formal features of the original are preserved, which makes it easy to recognize Hemingway’s story in it. At the same time, however, the points that have been changed to build the parodic effect, have been changed so abruptly, turned upside down, that the text goes to an exaggeration and produces a hilariously grotesque effect.
The main frame has been kept – a couple in a hotel apartment, the wife interacts with the hotel owner/ landlord, there is a cat outside in the rain that the wife wants to get, the husband is passive. A major contribution to the similarity between the two works is the fact that Tsvetelina has managed very well to imitate Hemingway’s repetitive and simple style. E.g. Valerie was hysterical. She was hysterical and was hysterically clutching a zippo lighter in one hand and a hairspray in the other.; John was languidly chopping carrots. The carrots were orange.; On the pavement below there was a cat who wasn’t there.
The burlesque humour arises from the drastic changes. Everything is upside down: while both women are frustrated in their own way, Velerie’s image is deprived of its femininity. The whining, capricious and vain American wife has turned into the militant, fierce, enraged Valerie, wearing her husband’s socks. (Mind you, it is the husband that does the cooking. He is just as passive and disinterested as the original but in the parody he’s also petty and even pathetic, calling out from the toilet.) The cat (already wet) drives Valerie mad, and she wants to reach it just as much as the American wife. Not to keep it dry and safe, though – but to burn it with hairspray. That is where the detail about the hair springs up. Both heroines want the opposite length of hair from what they have, but for the original that is vanity and for the parody – it’s just a self-sarcastic desire to not “look like a mafia cuisine specialty”. Valerie’s militant character ties very well with the landlord (another touch of the original) whose military background suits her fury, but he is a comically awkward figure.
The grotesque is provided by the gruelling aspect of killing animals in the story. The salmon and the cat are eaten, Valery wants to set the cat on fire, John’s voice sounds like “sparrows being strangled” and even the sticky meatball is eaten in the end.
“Night of the Wet Cat” takes the outer model of “Cat in the rain” and fills it with extremities that produce a comic effect. It is also in itself a very well-structured story in its own right with many symbols and motifs.