Summary
Act 1, Scene 1. A police interrogation room, with a man named Katurian sitting blindfolded at a table. Detective Ariel and Detective Tupolski question him. First they ask him why he still has a blindfold on, as "it just looks stupid." Katurian tells the detectives that he has respect for them and wants to help in whatever way he can.
He says he is not the type of person who does not respect the police, and they tell him he is in trouble, which he does not seem to realize. "We're not friends, no," Katurian says, "But by the same token, I hope we're not enemies." Ariel threatens to hit him in the head, and Katurian promises to answer all of their questions.
Tupolski asks Katurian why he thinks he's been called in, but Ariel wants to get right to torturing him. Tupolski tells Ariel to be quiet, as he's the Number One on the case. Katurian cannot imagine why he has been called in, as he has never had any anti-state or anti-police sentiment. Tupolski asks him if he has seen the newspapers on the table in front of him, and Katurian says he has only caught some of the titles.
Katurian goes on a rant about the fact that people should keep political opinions to themselves and instead tell good stories. "A great man once said, 'The first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story,' and I believe in that wholeheartedly, 'The first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story.'"
Tupolski tells Katurian he has to fill out a form in the event something bad happens to him while he is in custody. Katurian confirms that his full name is Katurian Katurian Katurian; "My parents were funny people," he says as a justification. He tells them he lives with his brother, Michal, who is a bit slow, and works at the Kamenice abattoir (slaughterhouse). He clarifies that he does not cut up animals, just clears up work areas.
Suddenly, Tupolski tears up the form and tells Katurian that it was not a form in case anything bad happens to him. Tupolski pulls out a story called "The Little Apple Men," and Katurian says it's one of his best stories. Tupolski says that it begins with a girl with an abusive, bad father. Tupolski wants to know how many of Katurian's stories have to do with little girls or boys getting treated badly.
"What, are you trying to say that I'm trying to say that the children represent something?...That the children represent The People, or something?" Tupolski goes over the plot of the story, that one day, the little girl takes some apple and carves men out of the apples, telling her father that they are not to be eaten, but serve as mementos of her childhood. When he disobeys and eats them, they contain razor blades, and he dies. Katurian suggests that while that seems like it should be the end of the story, the story continues.
In the story, the girl wakes up in the middle of the night with the rest of the applemen standing on her chest, accusing her of killing their brothers, and climbing down her throat to kill her. Ariel asks him if he goes to the "Jew quarter" and he tells them he does not know any Jews. Katurian protests that he does not know why he is there, insisting that he just writes stories, as Ariel says he is going to find Katurian's brother.
Katurian protests that his brother is at school, but Tupolski insists that Katurian's brother is just one door down. Frightened, Katurian insists that he does not want them to take their anger out on his brother, but on him. "Your brother will be fine, I give you my word," Tupolski says, pulling out another of Katurian's stories, "The Tale of the Three Gibbet Crossroads." He notes that this is different from Katurian's other stories in that it does not involve a child getting "fucked up."
"I don't have themes. I've written, what, four hundred stories, and maybe ten or twenty have children in?" Katurian protests, to which Tupolski replies, "Have murdered children in." Tupolski scolds Katurian for interrupting him and Katurian apologizes profusely. The detective then asks him what he is trying to say with "The Three Gibbet Crossroads."
Katurian tells him that the story is "a puzzle without a solution." Tupolski tells the story. In it, a man wakes up in an iron gibbet where he has been left to starve to death, guilty of a crime that he cannot remember. The gibbets across the hall from him are labeled 'Rapist' and 'Murderer.' The rapist has died and the murderer is dying. When the main criminal asks the murderer to read the label on his own cell, the murderer is disgusted. A highwayman visits and sets the murderer free, before reading the placard on the criminal's gibbet and shooting him in the heart.
Katurian says that that one is one of his best stories, but that his best is "The Tale of the Town on the River," the only one that was published. Tupolski notes the publication, The Libertad, where the story was published. Tupolski then tells Katurian to read the whole story to him, and alludes to the fact that they are going to execute him eventually.
Katurian reads the story, which concerns a town on the banks of a river, where there is a bullied peasant boy whose parents are drunkards. The boy is happy and dreamy in spite of his abuse and believes he will be treated kindly one day. One night as he is sitting near a bridge, he sees a hooded driver coming by on a cart, and offers him his dinner, a sandwich. He notices that there are a bunch of empty animal cages in the back of the cart as the driver rewards him for his kindness. Suddenly, the driver pulls out a meat cleaver and cuts off the boy's toes on his right foot.
As the story ends, Katurian explains that the boy is the crippled boy from the Pied Piper story. He suggests that his take on the Pied Piper is that the piper brought the rats with him and was after the children all along.
Analysis
Playwright Martin McDonagh drops the audience right into the middle of the action of the play. Katurian is being held in custody by two detectives, Tupolski and Ariel, for reasons that are not immediately clear. The world of the play seems to operate under a strange logic, one in which the detectives belittle their witness for not taking off his own blindfold and for looking stupid, and in which the suspect who has been called in by the police does not even know he is in trouble.
Katurian tries to remain neutral in the eyes of his questioners by insisting that he has never had any inflammatory political opinions and that he is simply a storyteller. He tells them, "I say if you've got a political axe to grind, if you've hot a political what-do-ya-call-it, go write a fucking essay, I will know where I stand. I say keep your left-wing this, keep your right-wing that and tell me a fucking story!" In Katurian's eyes, the best mode of being is to think of life as a narrative rather than as a political discussion. While it is not exactly clear why he is saying this, it tells us something about his character, and begins to set a narrative framework for the play, creating the premise that this witness or criminal (who knows which), Katurian, has a gripping story for his questioners.
Tupolski and Ariel begin to question Katurian about his stories, which they characterize as disturbing and all of which, they suggest, have to do with children. The first story of his that they look at has to do with the vengeful daughter of an abusive father and the swallowing of razor blades. The story is deeply unsettling, almost gratuitous in how grisly it is, and does not seem to have any kind of moral center, especially when the abuse victim herself dies. Slowly, we begin to see that the stories that Katurian so values are amoral and unsettling, macabre fairy tales that seem intended to cause discomfort.
While Katurian's stories are undoubtedly disturbing, Tupolski and Ariel are also unpleasant in their methods of questioning. Ariel is completely abusive, threatening to harm Katurian and his brother even before Katurian understands why he is being held in custody. Likewise, while Tupolski characterizes himself as the "good cop" to Ariel's bad one, he is just as manipulative and abusive in his methods. At one point, alone with Katurian, he scolds Katurian for interrupting him in a particularly malicious way. Both of these detectives are hellbent on maintaining their power at all costs, even if their power comes from manipulation.
The play does not feature very much action at all, and very little happens in this first section. We learn, little by little, that Katurian has been brought in for questioning and that he is likely going to be executed at the end of it, but we do not know the crime he is being punished for and it is unclear what kind of world he exists within. Everything takes place within the confines of the questioning room, and the only ways that the story leaves this stark and bleak environment is when the characters tell one of Katurian's gruesome stories.
