“What have you got in the bag, Billy?”
“The Ferret.”
“Please take him out.”
Publowsky, still sweating from his hurried escape from the halls of drama, inserts a fleshy fist into the brown paper bag and removes The Ferret by the scruff of the neck.
Stiff from fear, the once wily rodent can only manage to sniff the air, blindly, in search of something familiar to restore calm.
“Put him in the cage, won’t you Billy?”
Publowsky obliges, and The Ferret springs to his feet, immediately taking up position between the exercise wheel and water trough. Within seconds, slim gray droppings appear beneath an erect tail followed by a flurry of tiny woodchips kicked up by frantic back-pedaling paws.
The swarthy South Asian then lowers his visage behind the cage’s mirror, which projects a single, large coffee-brown eye into The Ferret’s immediate environs, covering his every flinch.
“Such a messy one, isn’t he?”
Publowsky remains silent, occasionally picking his nose and wiping its contents furtively under the tabletop.
“What can you tell me, Ferret? I seek news of expatriate Kyiv. And surely you’re the best source in town. Can you dig something up from the floor of this cage? Can you fashion a headline from shit? How about an editorial spun from this wheel, which is ready to turn beneath your sharp, nimble claws if only you’ll step up to the task.”
The Ferret, back raised and whiskers twitching, suddenly drops his eyes. “It is you who call me a journalist.”
“And so what are you – a writer of hackneyed hyperbole inserted into an upside-down pyramid for the purpose of highlighting public events? Or do you see yourself as the gadfly of society, asking questions that nobody can really answer in an attempt to stimulate discussion – whatever that means? Please do avail yourself of the looking glass that adorns your new quarters. Don’t mind me, for heaven’s sake. Take a good look and tell me what you see.”
“I’m a rat.”
Publowsky winces, then fixes his eyes more closely on his captive, begins licking his lips, and finally belches.
“So you are,” continues Harry Christian, completely unperturbed by his henchman’s stomach stench.
“First there were rats, then monkeys, apes and now we humans. That’s evolution for you, isn’t it? Orwell’s fear of these inquisitive creatures was completely unfounded. They’re relatives after all. Maybe that’s the problem. So we continue to trap and poison them, even as they grow in such numbers as to out-populate people a thousand times over. Some in my home country worship your kind – did you know this?”
“It may be as you say.”
“Indeed, or there could be a hundred different versions and interpretations of a single, seemingly harmless fact. It helps not an iota that we – that is, you, Westerners – have cameras on every corner to film life in motion, sometimes with color and sound, too. And what do you see? Everyday events that have always and likely will always happen among people, to include rape, robbery, murder and mayhem. But still you reel back in horror and indignation. Punish the guilty and protect us innocents! But please stop the endless editorializing, self-important monologues, angry rants or sentimental simpering before millions of entertainment-starved viewers!”
“In the beginning there was the word.”
“Don’t quote Gospel to me, Ferret. You’ll suffer the same fate as the rest of us… quite possibly one more severe, for your crimes of the mouth.”
Publowsky cuts off what had promised to be a deep yawn, straightens up his stance and then looks down at his feet.
“That’s right – the mouth. How many lies can a woodchuck tell if a woodchuck could tell lies… Huh?”
“I told it as it was… as you see… told to by others who told it to me.”
“I see,” says Harry Christian, receding from the mirror while massaging his much-grayed goatee. “So you claim to have some insight into life? You’ve gained a glimpse into other men’s hearts, learning their motives and goals? Is that it?”
“I’ve two eyes of no avail, so I sniff into the truth wherever it is and point it out with my tail.”
“And what is it that you smell, standing in your own dung? My nose detects the stench of fear, which surely you cannot deny. For you have much to fear my furry friend. You’ve come to the end of your rope. You’re no longer a journalist, that’s for sure. Not even human as you’ve noted yourself…”
Publowsky, never boasting much of an attention span, has been lulled into a reverie that recalls his painful youth.
“Take out the trash, or do I have to do everything myself!”
“But there’s a rat in the trash, and I don’t think it’s dead.”
“So take it outside and stomp in its head into the pavement, or do I have to do everything myself!”
Publowsky, dressed in tight-fitting shorts and a t-shirt too short for his gut, picks up the dark plastic trash bag with two fingers and lets the wooden back door slam behind him. Out in the alley it’s dark, and he can see his mother’s silhouette by the kitchen light. Looking down, he notices a hole being clawed out of the bottom of the bag, from which a rat’s head appears…
“Please don’t kill me. I’m an innocent little animal,” Harry Christian can now be heard saying in a mock child’s voice.
He’s holding The Ferret by the tail, dangling him over an old copy of the Kyiv Poster that has been placed on the counter to catch splashes of blood. The Ferret, mouth agape and hind legs kicking wildly in the air, is exerting all other energy to roll his eyes back and thus follow the trajectory of a large butcher knife being wielded deftly by the sinister Hindu.
“Boner banned from journalism for life!” reads a headline from the page of Kyiv’s leading English-language weekly.
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, for The Hannover Prospector, Swing-shift Edition, November 11, 2013