A crowd is gathered on the street outside Writer’s House in the center of Kyiv.
The marquee, illuminated with large black lettering on a glittering gold background, reads: “Bilious Bill Bublowsky presents:The Ferret as a Metaphor for 21st Century Deception”.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE: You’ll have to find them yourself
Sexy Old Bag: (primping her hair, to daughter) How do I look, how do I look?
Hound Dog Face: Like a sexy old bag, mother.
Sexy Old Bag: Oh, you silly bitch. When are you going to get a real job? But let’s hurry. I don’t want to miss a word of El Maestro.
Vasily: (speaking into headset) Ten-four, all clear. No visual confirmation of targets One or One-and-a-Half…
Voice on other end of radio: Roger. We had a sighting of Ferret Light Aqua Fresh over some cloud cover earlier today, but lost him.
Inside the voluminous but narrow venue, it’s standing room only, with smokers pushed into or outside the toilet areas.
A spotlight takes center stage. Audience members lock elbows under chins from their balcony seats. A rotund but solemn figure in a bright red hooded cape and curly-toed shoes of the same hue steps out of the shadows, twisting between his thick fingers a devilishly thin dark mustache, which seems all but out of place on the rough-hewn features that peer from beneath.
Bublowsky: What is evil if not a lie that conceals, distorts or prostitutes the truth to the self-centered purposes of its creator?
Barely audible voice from the back of the auditorium: Sweaty!
Bublowsky: And what is a lie if not the outward expression of an ego unleashed from the timeless conventions of human fellowship? An ego that outstrips, overgrows, indeed, eventually consumes the person in which it is housed.
Vasily: (still on the street) I’m telling you, I don’t see a damn thing out here…
Bublowsky: Once there was a young boy – actually, not much of a boy, as most of you imagine – but a stubby-bodied and strangely green-tinted little turd who likely walked about in long striped socks and one of those spinner caps so well suited to his mischievous nature. No, he wasn’t a good kid. In fact, even at an early age he was prone to fibs, exaggeration and outright whoppers: “Of course, I changed my underwear, heh, heh;” “My father is a race car driver,” and “It wasn’t me that got you kicked out of gym class, honest, heh, heh,” were stock phrases in his vocabulary.
Kate Mustard: (on the street in front of a TV camera): It’s still early hours, citizens of Kyiv and visitors to the capital, but security is tight here at Writer’s House, with rumors rife of an imminent attack by Animal Boy, or Ferret sightings.
Bublowsky: But then something happened in the basement of a New Jersey residence that would change the life of that lad, and, as a consequence, the future of expatriate Kyiv forever. ‘What? What happened, Maestro?’ – some of you are thinking to yourselves. Well the easy answer is that The Ferret was born, or hatched, or concocted, as part of a USAID-funded experiment headed up by a largely unknown saggy-assed hillbilly.
Auditorium: Noo! Oooh!
Bublowsky: Yees! Ahh! And he’s with us to this day, now in various forms, most well-known to regular readers of Kyiv Unedited: The Ferret, Ferret Light, Ferret Light Aqua Fresh, and others that have yet to be included in the plot. And he – this person, this creature, this character – has no intention of graciously opting out of the public consciousness, much less the endless horizons of the Internet. You will see him here and there, flying, walking, crawling or climbing from one scene to the next, oblivious to long-established canons of literature and its red-headed stepson – the comic strip.
Boss Lard: (applauding contemptuously from a box seat also now in a spotlight) Whew, doggy! Bublowsky, you spin enough yarn to hang a tabby kitten by its tail from a kite over Kansas. Now, I’m also no stranger to all the hogwash that’s been splashed on this town about fabulous and phenomenal Ferrets imposing themselves on incredible situations that often involve otherwise respectable members of the expatriate community. As many of you may know, I even offered a cash reward to anyone who might apprehend this villain in weasel’s skin. But the results have been nil and dill – a pickle jar filled with nothing but brine.
Voice from the back again: Sweaty!
Bublowsky: (throwing off his hood to reveal a frizzled head and an almost painted-on face, but the same wire-thin black mustache that those fat fingers just won’t stop twisting, in an aside to anyone but Boss Lard) Fat man in fool’s garb, you cannot catch a weasel any more than you can catch a lie – once it’s been released. It scurries for cover, retreats when confronted, and takes to disguise like a toad to a stump. You can recognize either immediately if you’re honest with yourself, but most of us prefer to abet and connive, to make light at another’s expense, while secretly delighting in what seems like a boon for ourselves. But, lo, beware, people of the abroad, Westerners in an Eastern land, expatriates seated in your basement bars, or editorializing from the ivory soap towers of cheap English-language rags!
Lard: (glum and to himself) Damn, that boy’s got a tongue on him.
Kate Mustard: (still on the street, her bitch-boy hairdo rippling in a strong spring gale under dark stormy skies) Something seems to be happening here at Writer’s House, so please stay tuned to watch me while I find out myself and then tell you about it…
Vasily: Over, over. You’re breaking up Alpha 1, alpha dog, alphabet soup…
An industrial-sized zeppelin appears on the dark horizon, lightning bolts lashing at its alloy girders. The storm clouds appear to part in its path. A digital image begins to flash across a screen on its portside. That familiar ice cream vendor face with the pedophile smile takes shape emitting a speech bubble that reads: “‘The Ten-Minute Truth Capsule’ – at a bookstore near you”.
To be continued
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, April 14, 2013