“I am a Cat”
(published on Thistle Magazine, Obsession issue, 2013)
He was Tiffauges, named after a terrifying, terrible thing. Then there is Abel: a hundred, a thousand times bigger than a cat; a seemingly rough but gentle character. Their story is set in Paris (“the city of let’s pretend” as the cat would call it), spun out of Yves Navarre’s inspirations and published in 1986 then later translated to English in 1992. It is written in a somewhat broken, monotonous tone to which we cannot exactly attribute to Navarre’s original writing or to poor translation but nevertheless sets the perfect voice for this narration.
Tiffauges begins with telling us that he is a cat and proceeds to reveal that at the end of this story is his death, as all great love stories end. The book is filled with many observations. He goes from an idea to the next as if running about the stairs in hurried motions. Every now and then, he recalls a little of his mother, Catleen, and the quick amounts of warmth he receives from her before she goes off again for another romantic tryst. He talks of the ogre; of the oppressive, nameless housekeeper whom he calls Clip-Clop; of Abel’s women, Citronella, Tiffany, and Barbara; of his own lover, the unsinkable Tityre. Mostly, it is about the soft, deep affections which he and Abel share, “If this was his home, it would be mine! If he wanted the last word, I’d have the first one! I was the stronger of the two: he loved me.” It was strong because one loved the other greater; dependent, for their need was mutual. It was a relationship that became each other’s undoing. Tiffauges called it the possibility of an impossible love and says, “It will be as much about me as about him - as if either one of us could speak of himself without the other.” In a passage, he describes of the feeling of terror and delight whenever Abel outstretches his arm and places him in the palm of his left hand. This impossible love which he speaks of must have felt the same.
In many literary examples, such obsessive love is continuously depicted. There is Gatsby’s fruitless attempt to recover the lost attraction which Daisy previously had for him. There is Nabokov’s Lolita, many of Shakespeare’s plays, the boys and their curiosity towards the Lisbon sisters, Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester, or Catherine and Heathcliff. There is Anna Karenina’s oscillating love for Vronsky which Kundera, in “The Curtain”, describes most richly: “[…] she fears for that love; she is exhausted with it, overexcited, unwholesomely (and unjustly) jealous; she feels trapped.” We all know it but end in her death. Even Kundera’s own characters reflect such delusions: Tereza with Tomas, with the duality of the body and the soul; Sabina, with betrayal. There are the many obsessions by the people of Trachimbrod, a shtetl in Safran-Foer’s “Everything is Illuminated” and there are those of the Greek gods with their love affairs and their honor. The artistic (words and other mediums) realm is filled with such elements, translated into so many forms that we sometimes confuse the obsessions with love and then love with obsession.
Perhaps, what sets Navarre’s depiction apart is that he has Tiffauges for his medium. As he would put it, “Cats can write because they are quiet, observe, listen and give the best of themselves.” Then again, one can contend that Tiffauges is only a mere cat. However, I believe it is in that that Navarre marvels. This biography, which is of Tiffauges and partly his, eventually becomes a portion of the reader’s. His exhilarations and disbelief becomes ours. He persists that it was Abel who adored him most but we see that it is he in fact who desperately loves the other stronger. For some of us, this goes for many of our present relationships. As the story progresses, it becomes obvious that you cannot read of what Tiffauges saw and believed without recognizing a distinct resonance to your own circumstances.
In January of 1994, Navarre took his life at his apartment in Paris. From an obituary in The Independent, the author mentioned of Navarre’s struggles with his own relationships. There is so little articles about him that is translated in English that I can only make assumptions to many aspects of who he is; I can only hope he died as great characters do in great love stories. There are those who has read his numerous works extensively but I had only touched this particular one of Tiffauges. It will be the only thing which I surely know of him. In this last paragraph, I bid farewell to the man who knows a lot of what I am not eloquent of.