The American wife
One of two Americans stopping at an Italian seaside hotel in the rain. She goes downstairs to rescue a cat, and comes back without it.
A cat, standing in for everything else she is not getting. "I want a cat. I want a cat now." And then, reducing the whole list herself: "If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat."
The book
At a glance
- "Cat in the Rain" only
- The American wife, the American girl, his wife, and Signora — never by name
- George, who spends the story propped on two pillows at the foot of the bed with a book
- An Italian seaside hotel where they are the only two Americans stopping
- Clipped close like a boy's; she wants to grow it out and make a knot at the back she can feel
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeThe American wife is the central figure of "Cat in the Rain," a story of about four pages set in an Italian hotel on a wet afternoon. She is never named. The story calls her the American wife, then the American girl, then simply his wife; her husband is called George. Their room is on the second floor, facing the sea, the public garden and the bronze war monument.
She sees a cat crouched under a dripping table below the window, trying to make itself small enough not to be rained on, and goes down to fetch it in. That is the entire plot. What the story is actually about is everything she says on the way back up.
How the book draws them
- The decision"I'm going down and get that kitty," the American wife said. Her husband offers from the bed to do it instead. She refuses, explains that the poor kitty is out trying to keep dry under a table, and goes. "Don't get wet," he says, and goes on reading, propped on two pillows at the foot of the bed.
- The padroneShe likes the hotel keeper, an old and very tall man who stands and bows as she passes the office, and the story spends six consecutive sentences on why: the deadly serious way he receives complaints, his dignity, the way he wants to serve her, the way he feels about being a hotel keeper, his old heavy face and big hands.
- The maid and the umbrellaReaching the door she finds an umbrella opening behind her — the maid, sent by the padrone, holding it over her along the gravel path. The table is there, washed bright green in the rain. The cat is gone. Told there was a cat, the maid laughs at the idea of one being out in it, and walks her back inside.
- What the hotel does to herPassing the office again with the padrone bowing from his desk, "Something felt very small and tight inside the girl." He makes her feel very small and at the same time really important, and for a moment she feels of supreme importance. Then she goes up the stairs and opens the door of the room.
- The mirrorShe sits in front of the dressing table with a hand glass, studies her profile from one side and then the other, then the back of her head and neck, and asks: "Don't you think it would be a good idea if I let my hair grow out?" Her husband looks up, sees the back of her neck clipped close like a boy's, and says he likes it the way it is. She says she gets so tired of looking like a boy.
- How he answersHe tells her she looks pretty darn nice, then goes back to the book. When the list of things she wants keeps going, he says, "Oh, shut up and get something to read," and she goes on anyway. "George was not listening. He was reading his book."
- The one thing she can haveStanding at the window she runs through the rest of it — her own silver and candles at the table, spring, hair long enough to brush out in front of a mirror, new clothes, a kitty to sit on her lap and purr — and then cuts it down to the one item. "I want a cat. I want a cat now." The rain is still going in the palm trees and the light has come on in the square.
Whether it is the same animal is not stated, and readers have gone both ways for a century. The story's argument, either way, is that the one person in the building who listened to her was the man at the desk downstairs.