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By Kara Kvasnicka

Tuesday, November 29, -0001

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No matter how many times I revisit this four-page depiction of a pivotal moment in a marriage, I cannot decide.

Husband or wife? Which one do I sympathize with most?

As most other female readers undoubtedly do, it would be all too easy for me to see the wife as a victim of her husband - indifference. Yet, I just cannot bring myself to cast the, albeit somewhat obtuse, husband as the villain in this spare but eloquent piece in which Hemingway very strictly adheres to the show-but-do-not-tell rule of fiction writing.

Over and over I have carefully scrutinized every paragraph for a revelation that would permit me to characterize with confidence the husband as too selfish and self-absorbed to notice, much less care about, his wife - undisguised distress. Instead, I find it increasingly difficult to ignore my gut feeling he is simply better equipped than she to cope with disappointment.

They are vacationing in Italy, you see, surrounded by both natural and man-made beauty. But, on the particular day we encounter them, a persistent rain confines them to their hotel room.

The husband is content to wait out the weather with a book. "The American wife" is not so patient.

Restlessly looking out the window, she spots a cat unsuccessfully trying to keep dry beneath a table in an outdoor cafe across the street and makes up her mind to rescue it.

Only halfheartedly offering to fetch the cat for her, the husband makes no protest when she insists on going after it herself.

"Don't get wet," is all he says from his prone position on the bed as she heads downstairs.

Unfortunately, the cat is nowhere to be found by the time the wife reaches the cafe. And, forced to return her hotel room without the object she so dearly desires, she is inconsolable.

"I wanted it so much … I don't know why I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty. It isn't any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain," she tells her husband when he pauses from his reading, not to acknowledge her reappearance but "to rest his eyes."

Only naturally readers are meant to wonder why the wife has such a strong affinity for the cat in the rain. Could it be because she feels like one herself?

Consciously or not, is she trying to tell her husband she too is desperate to be brought in out of the rain? Is she intimating she is lonely even though she has his guarantee of lifelong companionship?

And, her husband having resumed reading before she has finished speaking and obviously not paying any attention to her, is she perfectly justified in feeling neglected by him?

I would like to think the wife has just cause for complaint. But, I grow skeptical of the true depth of her yearnings when, in what I hear very distinctly in my head as the petulant tones of an overindulged three-year-old, she starts naming the many items she wants in addition to a "kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her."

When she can go so quickly from wistful to whiny, I begin to suspect she is not so much fundamentally unhappy as she is irritable because of the rain.

The fact that all the things for which she wishes are the polar opposite of those she has only confirms that suspicion.

And, if I were the captive audience to her seemingly endless litany of longing, I might also be tempted to direct her, as her husband does, to "shut up and get something to read."

Oh, I probably would deliver my admonishment a bit more tactfully than he does, but I can see why he gets annoyed with her. He is definitely not as attuned as he should be to all her wants and needs. Nevertheless, he cannot stop the rain.

Then again, someone else has managed to perform the miracle of procuring the cat that has suddenly become so crucial to her continued existence. The story ends with the arrival at the door of the maid with "a big tortoise-shell cat … ‘for the Signora.'"

It has been sent by the hotel keeper whom the wife admired for, among other things, "the way he wanted to serve her." When she had gone outside to look for the cat, he had thoughtfully sent the maid after her to hold an umbrella over her head. And, as she passed by his desk on her way back to her room, the point he made of acknowledging her with a bow had given her "a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance."

But surely she does not expect her husband to "serve her" in the same manner as the hotel keeper, the latter having a vested interest in keeping all his guests happy, does she?

I do not know if I will ever be prepared to give a definite yes or no answer to that disquieting question.

But it is hardly going out on a limb to suggest the phrase conjugal bliss plainly connotes something altogether different for her than it does for her husband. And, as susceptible as I too might be to a noble gesture made on my behalf, I tend to think her husband - expectations of an enduring partnership between a man and a woman are a bit more realistic than hers.

Married or not, we are all responsible for our own happiness, for retrieving our own cat in the rain so we do not feel like a cat in the rain.

Having said all that, if my boyfriend were to read this story, I sincerely hope he would be as generous in his assessment of the wife - behavior as I have been of the husband - .

Kvasnicka, a former East Village Magazine news editor, has been the magazine - contributing editor and research consultant since 1989. She is the librarian at the Genesee District Library - Goodrich Branch.

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