The proscenium arched stage at the old performing arts building in Kyiv’s Podil District is empty save for a stark lonesome figure traversing its bare floor boards – The Ferret.
His captive, the half-sized wife of expatriate playwright Jim Hidshit, has been released into the custody of her less than loving husband. Nearly everyone else has gone home.
“I swing from the rafters of a packed theater with the greatest of ease, and what do I get for it? Nil, nothing, nada,” the devious daredevil muses aloud.
“I escape from a courtroom filled with no less people and under threat of a murder charge, and what am I labeled? A weasel, a rodent, a beady-eyed varmint,” he grumbles under the spotlight.
“I dress in zoot suits, a peaked Tyrolean hat and other assorted outlandish outfits, but what gets noticed? My tadpole legs and turtle-shell back,” he shouts with arms outstretched and fists clenched.
Unbeknownst to The Ferret, the evening’s would-be hero, Publowsky, has been detained by indelicate gastrointestinal issues in an offstage toilet stall, but well in earshot of the otherwise unheard soliloquy.
“To flee or not to flee. That is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous writers or take arms against a sea of editors, and by opposing them get written out of the plot, to lie no more, and by facing the truth can I end the humiliation of a thousand natural jokes that my appearance is heir to?”
Publowsky lowers the latest issue of the Kyiv Poster that he’d been scanning for fresh job announcements and perks up his pig-shaped ears to the somber thoughts being voiced beyond the confines of the playhouse lavatory.
“‘Tis a consummation Devoutly to be wished. To be deleted, redacted from the text, perchance to taste the fresh air of honesty: Aye, there’s the rub, for in that deletion by the stroke of a careless key, to exist no more in fiction, perhaps only in the fantasy of a sober mind, what ideas may come, when we have shuffled off the banalities of modern literature?”
Publowsky, having finally emptied his troubled bowels, rises up and out of the plastic seating that had confined his hefty rump and again reaches for a fresh page of the Poster. The rustling of A3 leaves against exposed anal tissue does nothing to muffle the ponderous truths resounding throughout the halls of drama.
“For who would bear the Whips and Scorns of time, The Publisher’s wrong, the Ukrainian Diaspora’s Contumely, the pangs of despised consulting services, the Salary’s delay, The insolence of London-based broadsheets, and the Spurns that patient merit of others’ unworthy articles,” the empty auditorium is asked rhetorically, as its lone actor lowers his oversized head in reconciliation to cruel destiny.
The wails of a desperately weeping woman break the dramatic silence. Daisy petals fill the air beneath the balcony. Publowsky pulls up his pants.
“What cries from yonder balcony break? Is it the cleaning woman,” asks The Ferret.
“Romchuk, Romchuk, wherefore art thou, oh inconstant impetuous imp,” responds Lemurov from his theatrical perch, still dressed as a woman of mourning from this evening’s performance.
“Heh, heh. Stop the name-calling. It’s really immature.”
“What’s in a name, That which we call a Ferret by any other word would smell no less foul. Light or Aqua Fresh, you are one and the same, a person devoid of humanity, a beast from the pages of a still unpublished Commix.”
“Dude, quit spreading rumors.”
“Rumors? ‘Tis no rumor, sir, that you’ve lost your name and self and way in this work, but an incontrovertible fact,” continues Lemurov, still peeling off petals from the daisy bouquet and tossing them lightly into the theater air.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, heh, heh.”
“Thou art thyself, though not an editorial consultant. What’s a consultant? It is nor hand nor foot, nor cloven hoof, nor any other part belong to a man, much less a Ferret.”
“I’m a Ukrainian nationalist, but I could have become a professional hockey player or a doctor. I ran away from home when I was 25 to become a journalist. I also got saved, that is, born again, along the way, even though my family’s from western Ukraine, via New Jersey and therefore I should be Greek Catholic, heh, heh.”
The curtain drops with a thud, leaving The Ferret alone on what is no longer a stage but seems more like a cage, a bird cage with a cover pulled over it.
“Sounds to me like you’re confused son,” comes the voice of Josh Davies over the theater’s PA system.
“Son? heh, heh, dude, that’s weird,” says The Ferret, now completely enveloped in the darkness that is the stage, save for a bright overhead light.
“Well, now, not as weird as it may seem. You see, although I never had the pleasure of knowing your mother, I did catch the backside of your father before, er, escorting you from that park many moons ago and making you into what you are today.”
“Dude!”
The stage goes dark.
Meanwhile, at a Kyiv-based sperm bank…
“Now see here, my good man, I’ve left upwards of a dozen samples at your establishment over the last year and a half, and you mean to tell me that no one has called to obtain one?”
“No, sir, Mr. Losser.”
“Argh, Urpitty, Doop. Well that just can’t be, see. Did you mention my career as a Kyiv-based PR executive in the catalog?
“In the first paragraph – just as you requested.”
“How about my public speaking career, stint as an adjunct professor, travels in pursuit of various interests… hmm?”
“Of course. We even included a link to your latest YouTube video, where all those people had to think of nice things to say about you.”
Back at the theater, Publowsky makes his way out the back entrance, clutching a kicking and biting Ferret under his arm.
To be continued
Filed by Dirk Dickerson, August 16, 2013