Le Minou au Béret Noir
(The Kitty in the Black Beret)
Ever since her days as a petit chaton raised in the Parisian suburb of Champigny-sur-Marne, Leia knew only what the locals would describe as “les difficultés de la vie” — the hardships of living. Her mother, a femme of ill repute who scavenged a meager living servicing rogue strays and cabaret stage cats, never bothered to nurse her. She abandoned her offspring on the outskirts of a squalid shantytown, muffling the youngling’s mews so as not to be heard. Mama assumed her struggling chaton would at least have sense enough to die.
Her father — or more precisely, the vineyard gatto who groomed her — did the best he could under less-than-ideal circumstances. He was never cut out to be a father, and even if he were, he was better suited to have a son.
“Here, wear this,” he groused, tossing her an old, black beret. “This was my father’s and his father’s before him and his father’s before him. Now it’s yours.”
“But Papa,” she asserted delicately, “that’s a boy’s chapeau. The other chatons will giggle and point at me.”
But her plea fell on deaf ears. Leia’s papa, himself unaccustomed to the creature comforts of modern French society, had worn that beret proudly as a young minou. If he could have afforded a new one, neither of them would have been dining on rancid poubelle for the past month-and-a-half.
And so it was that Leia donned that ill-fitting beret into adulthood, through travels that took her from city to city, job to job and lover to lover. In Paris, she frequented the bordellos and louche bars along Rue Saint-Denis, both to earn money and then to spend it. It was amidst the bonds of insecurity where she felt, ironically enough, secure.
As the years passed, the worn and tattered beret served as a symbol of Leia’s wretched existence — a looking glass into her weary, haggard soul. At an age where other felines would be entering their prime, she was nearing the end. Addiction to low grade strains of street-level catnip had not only consumed her every waking moment, but had also stolen her youth.
On a bleak Winter’s night, in a tiny, rented room in a ramshackle building on one of Paris’ long forgotten avenues, Leia exhaled for the final time. She expired on the cold, unfeeling hardwood, alone, tortured, and mourned by no one. She was still wearing the threadbare symbol of her worldly insignificance.
The black beret would be passed along no further.
In a corner of the dank room, a single rose wilted in the darkness as a lone dew droplet descended helplessly onto the unkempt floor below.
Silence owned the moment.
Then, without warning, Leia leapt up, broke the so-called fourth wall and addressed her audience directly.
“Well, what did you expect from a pretentious French art house flick?” she chortled. “A happy ending?”
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