In Which Things Start Happening Fast(er)

"Cat in the Rain," Part Four

Hope your holidays were, or are, going great. I’m writing this entry a little early, so I don’t know how bad this Omicron thing has gotten.  But I hope you are all safe and healthy and that this immersion in (aka “long slog through”) “Cat in the Rain” is providing some diversion from whatever is going on in the world. 

What I found while writing A Swim in a Pond in the Rain was that concentrating on a story like this for a few hours a day helped me get through the rest of the day in a better spirit. It gave me confidence that my mind was still working and that, at least in that small domain, the world still made some sense.

I’m finding it really nice to be doing this exercise with this extended community that is so full of people with good intentions, working together energetically and positively.

Hope you feel the same way.

We closed last time by reading the following:

The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office. His desk was at the far end of the office. He was an old man and very tall.

“Il piove,” the wife said. She liked the hotel-keeper.

“Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It is very bad weather.”

He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room. The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands.

Liking him she opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. A man in a rubber cape was crossing the empty square to the cafe. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along under the eaves. As she stood in the doorway an umbrella opened behind her. It was the maid who looked after their room.

“You must not get wet,” she smiled, speaking Italian. Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her.

There are lots of things to say about this, and you’ve said many of them wonderfully already in the comments, so let me just mention a few things that caught my attention as a writer.

Hemingway is a master of continual escalation.  His stories never sit still; they feel like they are always expanding, practically in every line.  So, we should be alert to the ways in which he gives us this feeling.  And some of these ways are quite slight. 

For example, look at the way the cast of characters expands in the story:

Woman at window (grafs 1-3)…then husband in bed joins the story in graf 4…then hotel owner appears in graf 8 (and briefly becomes the subject of her thoughts (grafs 9-11)…and a maid comes into the story in graf 12.

Suddenly there are four people in the story – the whole cast of characters, as it turns out.

The lesson here is not, “Always be adding characters,” but, rather, something like: “Be wary of stasis and do anything you can think of to disrupt it, even small things, because your reader is very alert and will, at some level, notice this, and be glad.”

Another example of a mini-escalation, that we might not notice but that, I’d argue, we notice (i.e., with some deep part of our mind): with the first line of this pulse of the story, the “American wife” suddenly becomes “the wife.”  What does this mean?  Well, we notice that it happens when she moves out of the room and into the lobby (i.e., is in the presence of the hotel owner).  So…we note that. More importantly, this change tells us: “As you move ahead, keep an eye on this aspect of the story.”  Hemingway has signaled, by this variation in the way he refers to her, that this is going to be a story-element.  That is, a variation of her identifier is now “in play;” it is going to be one of the ways in which the story will make its meaning.  So, we’ll want to keep an eye on this.

I first start to have strong feelings about the wife in the graf that begins, “He stood behind the desk,” and especially at the lines, “She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints” and “She liked the way he wanted to serve her.”  Before this, (with the exception of her use of the word “kitty”) I’ve been feeling neutrally about her, understanding her as a sort of Everywoman – a human figure with minimal attributes.  Now she starts to feel like an individuated person.  Before, I felt a slight sympathy for her (just because she’s the main character and because of her husband’s neglect/dismissal of her) and now that positive feeling is clashing nicely with this newly arising sense of her as being slightly entitled.

That is: she’s become a character, who “represents” or “embodies” something that I now suspect the story is going to interrogate/put to the test.  And part of the arising pleasure is trying to figure out exactly what she is meant to represent. (We might also note that a character is made through excess; by differentiating that character from an everyman or – woman.  If you want to make a character, make that person do something excessive (or opinionated, or passionate.)

The detail about the man in the rubber cape is interesting to me.  On one level, it’s just realism – it’s raining, so he’s wearing a raincoat.  But – well, let’s pause here and ask a question.

We’ve made the case that, in a good story, every detail is poetic; it can be somehow profitably read against the whole.  Is that true here?        

Just sort of hold that detail (man in the rain in a rubber cape) against the rest of the story and see if and how they cross-talk.

I find myself thinking of the way that first long graf introduced the idea of rain – the way the rain changes things for the worst, and what people do in response (the artist doesn’t show up; the usual motor cars are gone, the waiter looks forlornly out at the square because he’s got no customers).  The rain is what, per the wife, has necessitated her rescue of that cat.  The rain is sort of…trouble, misfortune, challenge.  This guy, out there in the rain, protected by that rubber cape, might be said to represent one response to trouble, i.e., going on defense.  He is “rising up against trouble.”  He is “not cowed by trouble.”  He is like the woman (he is, you know, working against the weather) but he’s also unlike her (he’s taken the trouble to gird himself against the rain; she hasn’t, so is relying on the maid’s umbrella).

All of this is felt very lightly.  None of this is “the point” of the story.  But the way that this one detail cross-reads against the evolving whole is one of the ways the story is building out its meaning.  From the point-of-view of the writer, this involves a simple skill: being alert to what one has already put in motion.  “I’ve said it’s raining.  Now we’re out on the street.  What might she see?” 

So, it’s a simple discipline: remember where you’ve put the reader and go back there in your mind as you revise and take the time to look around.

The woman goes to help a (to her, anyway) powerless and endangered) cat.  On the way, she sees the hotel owner, and tells us, as we get a look into her mind, that she subtly places him beneath her (while also looking up to him, in a sense).  He owns the hotel, but, per her view of things, he “works for” her.  We also note that he responds to her in Italian, then moves into English, presumably for her benefit; so, in this sense, he has the power.  Bravely going out into the rain, she is instantly given protection by a woman that she, and we, understands to be beneath her in the hierarchy.

Just like that, the story becomes “about” power.  (Or rank, or privilege.)  And Hemingway hasn’t said a word about power, or rank, or privilege – he just has put some people with specific traits and social ranks into action, in a certain physical space.  It’s their juxtaposition that is causing the story to feel, now, slightly “political.”

Below is the next pulse of the story.  Read it, see where you are, comment, and I’ll offer my thoughts next post. (And thanks for your dedication here – I know this exercise can be annoying.)

With the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path until she was under their window. The table was there, washed bright green in the rain, but the cat was gone. She was suddenly disappointed. The maid looked up at her.

“Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signora?”

“There was a cat,” said the American girl.

“A cat?”

“Si, il gatto.”

“A cat?” the maid laughed. “A cat in the rain?”

“Yes,” she said, “under the table.” Then, “Oh, I wanted it so much. I wanted a kitty.”

When she talked English the maid’s face tightened.

“Come, Signora,” she said. “We must get back inside. You will be wet.”

“I suppose so,” said the American girl.

They went back along the gravel path and passed in the door. The maid stayed outside to close the umbrella. As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance. She went on up the stairs. She opened the door of the room. George was on the bed, reading.