Chapter One

The night air turned cooler, and summer turned towards autumn. Sugar disappeared from store shelves. Then soap, then cigarettes. Lines got longer, and people grumbled more and more. Sometimes they even kicked cats in anger.

Then one August day, Koshka's fur bristled, as if something had charged his whole body. He and the whole world trembled.

Misha and Grisha interrupted the nightly meeting of cats in the courtyard behind the Glasnost Hotel. "They're playing such lovely music on the radio!" Misha remarked.

"Yes!" added Grisha. "And they're playing the same music on television too, instead of that old boring 'Vremya' news program. It's such a nice change indeed!"

"A nice change?" roared Avvakuum, his red fur bristling. "A nice change, you say? Bah! Mark my words! Every time they play music on all the radio stations, and every time they play it on television, it means something bad, very bad indeed! The worst, in fact!"

"Well, why, what--what do you mean, the worst?" asked Masha the house cat.

"Oh, don't listen to a jaded old cat like me, Masha!" growled Avvakuum, stretching low to the ground. "Why, ask your bloody optimist friend Koshka there. He'll tell you."

Koshka's head hung low. "I think it means a change in government." he said softly.

"A what, Koshka?" asked Masha. "I didn't hear."

"A--a change in government. They play music on the radio when there's a change in government. That's all." He tried to make the words come out all soft and even, but his voice trembled along with his body. For he too had noticed the tight, white faces of humans as they bent low to their radios, and how humans didn't look at one-another, just like in the old days. "But change--it doesn't necessarily mean a change for the worse, you know," he offered, but the words came flat and lifeless.

"Bah! Bah! And double bah!" countered Avvakuum. "It's a coup and a junta and it's the end of everything, that's what it is! Mark by words! The end of everything!"

Masha shuddered.

"And I think we'd all better adjourn for the evening," said Avvakuum. "Tonight will likely be the night. I am a survivor. For you own sakes, listen to me. Find a quiet spot in the cellar, away from humans. Store some food there, if you can. I am not joking, my friends, this is the beginning of the end."

Koshka believed it. His head hung low, his tail hung even lower. He headed for the cellar. But then he heard music, and shouts, and radios blaring. "Ura! Ura!" went the humans, just like it was a victory-day parade. Ura! Ura! We've won! We've won!"

But not much changed at the Glasnost Hotel at 27 Popov Street, and Koshka forgot about the Zil's visit. It seemed so long ago. They changed the name of the city back to Saint Petersburg, which is what people always called it anyway, and there was even talk of changing the name of the street from Popov back to Saint Simon Stylite Way, because everyone always knew that Popov hadn't invented the radio anyway.

Except for the name changes, things remained the same. Then one day in October, a dump truck drove up the street, and grumbling workers hammered a new sign on the side of the building. "Glasnost Hotel," it said. And they hung a new sign at the entrance to the snack bar on the top floor. "Perestroika Snack Bar and Buffet," it said. Except for the signs, nothing changed, unless one counts the fact that poor Perezhitkov, the building manager, complained more and more that it was getting harder and harder every day to get anything.

#

"Lord, time flies!" Koshka thought to himself on an ordinary winter morning, when the temperature was thirty-two degrees below zero and thick frost lined the insides of walls and doors. He had found a warm spot finally--near the heat pipes in the cellar, and he had slept well. Here it was breakfast time already, and the hotel buffet was a full five stories up. He yawned, then arched and stretched his back.

Koshka was getting on in years, but he could still take the stairways in a flash, when necessary--as it was for a meal, for instance. He leapt up from his spot--so fast and unexpected, in fact, that Rodion the janitor, who was resting his head on his broom, jumped straight up into the air. "Sweet Lord in heaven, what was that?" Rodion exclaimed. A bottle fell off his lap and shattered on the concrete. "Damn! There goes my breakfast!" He rubbed his eyes. "Was that the devil himself shooting through here like a canon?"

It was not the devil, but simply a portly brownish-striped tabby cat, tardy for breakfast, darting through the dingy foyer.

It was a long climb up to the fifth floor, and Koshka went by way of the crooked "black entrance," the rear stairs that were hardly used by people, except for dumping their garbage, and except for old Rodion, who was supposed to pick up the garbage, but who sat in dark corners sipping from a bottle, only occasionally picking up the garbage, and dropping half of it in the process, all the while swearing black curses in Ukrainian and Byelorussian. Maybe that was why the stairway was called the "black entrance," or maybe it was because it was always black as midnight there. The light bulbs were always burnt out.

Koshka paused to catch his breath on the fourth landing, where poor Perezhitkov stood perched on a bent ladder, his hand twisting at a bulb. "I can't believe how fast these things burn out!" he exclaimed. "I just put this thing in two days ago! I bet German bulbs last longer than these cheap things!"

If only cats could talk to people! Koshka could have reported that when poor Perezhitkov wasn't looking, the tenants stole the light bulbs from the hallway for their own apartments, and then they screwed in their burnt-out bulbs back into the hall sockets. Koshka had proof. With his extraordinary night vision and his superior powers of observation, not much happened in the hotel that he didn't know about.

Koshka continued his journey upwards. On the top landing, he spotted a crack of light from a doorway, and he smiled with anticipation. Luck was with him, he decided. The light meant the service door to the newly-named Perestroika Buffet and Snack Bar was open, and beyond that door lay feast enough for any hungry cat. He purred.

"Don't go in there, you slimy alley cat!" It was a haughty hiss from the dark. Koshka looked around the darkness and spotted two slanted eyes peering back at him. "You lack the requisite sophistication!"

Koshka squinted, making out the blur of another cat, a Siamese perhaps. "Who are you?" he asked as politely as possible.

"The question is, who are you?" the voice demanded. "What's your name, and what are you doing here?"

"My name is Koshka," he offered. He squinted, and then a quiver went through his body, starting at his neck and snaking backwards towards his tail. It was indeed a Siamese. Memories washed across his brain, then receded. There had been another Siamese once.

"Koshka?" asked this particular Siamese, her mouth curving into a hiss. "You're just called Koshka? As in 'Cat'?"

Koshka stood firm, but his legs felt weak and tired. Maybe she did know. Maybe word had finally gotten out. "Yes," he said, trying to gather strength. "That's what they call me. Koshka."

"Oh, how common and vulgar!" she snapped. "That's not a proper name for a cat!"

Koshka breathed easy, and his muscles relaxed. This haughty Siamese merely objected to his name. She--she didn't know anything about--about it. "Well, what's your name?" he asked, newly brave. Fear had left, but it its place, the usual morning hunger gnawed at his stomach, like impatience gnawed at his brain. He reminded himself to remain polite.

The Siamese puffed up, and the tip of her tail coiled, then uncoiled, twirling like a snake. "My name is Hagia Sophia!" she huffed. "And what are you doing here?"

"I--I live here, in this building," Koshka offered. He was confused. Who was she? What was she doing there? Why was she threatening him? His head ached, and all the while, memories tugged.

"Well, speak up!" she commanded. "Where exactly do you live?"

"In the cellar."

"In the cellar?" Her fur stiffened and her tail beat against the floor. "You mean you're a--a stray, an alley cat? Get out of my sight immediately!"

"I live here, in this building," he said, holding his ground. "I have lived here all of my life."

"You lived here," she hissed. "Big changes are in store."

"What big changes?" he asked as calmly as possible, trying to mask his irritation. It would be bad enough having to share the building with a stuck-up Siamese. What other changes were in store? He shuddered again--this time for the future, not the past.

"Big, big changes--bigger than you can imagine!" came her reply. "My mistress, Liuba Smetanova--she's a high official. She'll turn this place upside down, and she'll get rid of the likes of you!"

"I've--we--all of us cats have lived here a long time," Koshka said, measuring his words. "All us cats have our place, and this is mine." Oh, how he wanted to knock that cocky cat off her feet with one swipe of his paw! But, he was a gentle cat, he reminded himself.

"This is a new world, and you won't be part of it!" Hagia Sophia sang. "Big changes are in store! Big, big changes!"

"What are you talking about?" asked Koshka. "What big changes?" Other memories crowded into his brain now--steaming puddles, long black Zil's.

Hagia Sophia turned, her rump and tail high in the air. "You'll see soon enough!" she said, prancing across the floor. "Soon enough!" She turned back her head as she pranced. "Ha! Ha! And Ha!"

Koshka shook his head, then crept back down the stairway, tail low to the ground. He found a warm spot by a door on the third floor, next to the hot water pipe. What big change was that snooty Siamese talking about? He'd think about it later, he decided. It was time for his after-breakfast nap, even though he hadn't had breakfast. He shut his eyes, remembering the good old days, or the bad old days, as the case may be. At least there hadn't been a snooty Hagia Sophia around then.

Sleep came in fits and starts.

#

Change. Change. There had always been change. Koshka was born in the fall of l978, or thereabouts, a period later called "The Time of Stagnation." His mother left soon after giving birth, and his brothers and sisters disappeared. He remembered nursing, but barely. Mostly, he remembered a big pile of portraits in the trash area in the cellar. It was warm, cozy, and safe there. He could bury himself in the middle of the pile and peer out at the world.

The months passed, then the years. Koshka grew, and the poster pile got higher and higher. First there were dusty pictures of Brezhnev, then they threw a heap of Andropov's on top, and before a new layer of grime had even formed on Andropov, they threw on some Chernenko's. Of course, the period was not called "The Time of Stagnation" then, and the powers that be took great pains to make it look like anything but stagnation. There were rallies on the street outside the Sputnik Hotel, as the hotel was called then, on socialist holidays like Revolution Day and Radio Ray. People waved red flags and cheered, "Ura!" Bands played, and Perezhitkov had to deck out the building with red banners and flags he dragged out of the attic. They talked about the victory of communism then, the world-wide spread of the socialist banner. "Down with the capitalistic war-mongers!" they chanted. "Long live Communism! Down with the enemies of the masses!" It was a noisy time.

And of course this particular building wasn't called the Glasnost Hotel then. It was just the Rossiya Hotel, then they re-named it the Sputnik Peace and Socialist Friendship International Hotel, and since there were no foreigners in Leningrad then--at least not many, the building was just a regular old Soviet apartment block, complete with grumbling tenants and crumbling plaster. Everyone called it "The Glasnost."

Everything crumbled in those days. There was concrete all over the place, and none of it held together very well. One day in l982, a balcony fell off the fifth floor and flattened a phone booth on the sidewalk. Nobody was in the booth at the time, of course, because the phone there hadn't worked since Khrushchev, and no one had ever come to fix it. But after the balcony crashed, Koshka saw officials drive up and down Popov Street every day. They came from the telephone company, from the construction union, from the buildings department, from the sidewalks department--they all came with pens and clipboards and stared at the balcony rubble piled on top of the phone booth rubble. And then two months after the crash, when the balcony still sat on the flattened phone booth, the telephone underneath the rubble started to ring.

"It's the devil himself calling!" old Rodion, the janitor, cried.

"It's a petty demon or two, to be sure!" yelled poor Perezhitkov. "Maybe it's a-" He shuddered, the thought too much for his body to bear without motion. "Maybe it's the--the worst kind of petty demon, a Kikimora!" He wiped his forehead with an oily rag. "I'm leaving this cursed city! I'm going back to my village!"

But he didn't leave. There was too much work to do, too many people complaining about too many things that couldn't be fixed because there weren't enough parts. A week later Dmitry, the kindly neighborhood militiaman, came, winced, and shot through the rubble until the phone stopped ringing. The next year, a truck hauled the rubble away, but a big sink-hole remained where the balcony had fallen. It gradually filled up with garbage, trash, and old broken furniture and leaky buckets--much to the delight of the neighborhood cats. Their enjoyment lasted until the time no Leningrad cat will soon forget, the time Koshka always tried to forget, the time now called the Great Island Cat Wars.

#

But after the cat wars, things settled back down and Koshka limped back to the crooked old building on Popov Street. It was a quiet time, a boring time, to be honest. Days ticked by, then seasons, like the blinking of the lights atop the television tower not far from the hotel. Nothing happened, nothing changed. Maybe that was why humans decided to call it the Period of Stagnation.

That period was aptly named for Koshka too. It was a delicate subject--one he preferred to avoid, although it was often called to his attention at the most inopportune of times. He was "fixed" during the last days of the Brezhnev era. He happened to be present at the very meeting where the vote was taken. He was eaves-dropping, his favorite past-time, outside the door of the meeting room, and he heard the whole thing.

The building committee had gathered in the Peace and Friendship Meeting Room for the third time that week. It was a Tuesday, and they were trying to decide what to do about the resolutions of the party congress in Moscow, what with problems in Angola, counter-revolutionaries in Afghanistan, and American sabre-rattling in Viet Nam.

Comrade Perezhitkov, the harried building committee chairman, looked at his watch and urged the committee onward. "I just got this directive, right from Moscow, by special delivery. It says we must vote a show of support for all the resolutions of the current party congress!" He moaned, his hand sifting through the thick sheaf of papers.

"And do you actually believe those Moscow big-shots give a damn what we think?" Vanya Binkov grumbled from the back of the room.

Perezhitkov shook his head, pretended he hadn't heard, and read from the directive. "It says here, 'We must support the leaders at the helm of the party!' We must endorse, by a show of hands, each of the three hundred and seventy-seven principles of the party platform!"

"We must get the hell out of here and eat our lousy, meatless, socialist dinners!" another resident grumbled.

Perezhitkov waved his papers. "Please, comrades, let's just do what we have to, then we can all go and eat!"

But the residents grabbed their hats and headed for the door.

"Wait!" yelled Varya Binkova, the wife of Vanya Binkov. "We have another issue to resolve! A local one."

"Not tonight, woman," someone mumbled. "I'm hungry."

"Yes, tonight!" she insisted. She took up position in the doorway, spreading her legs and crossing her arms in front of her thick torso. "We will resolve this issue tonight!" she repeated. "Before anybody leaves this room!"

"What the hell is so important?" someone asked. "My noodles are burning."

"It's the cats," she answered. "We have an overpopulation problem, comrades! Right here on Popov street. Right in this very building!"

"What in the devil's name are you talking about?"

"Cats!" she hissed. "Ugly, filthy, sneaky cats!"

Koshka cowered in the corner, wishing his stripes could blend in with the stained rose-pattern wall paper.

"We're over-run with sneaky cats!" Varya continued. "There are germ-infested damned cats all over the yard. You trip over them on the stairs--they crowd around the communal kitchen--they rub against your legs when you're sitting on the toilet!" she sputtered. "We just have too many damned cats around here!"

"Well, that's easy to fix. Let's eat them, and see what meat tastes like!" someone shouted.

Koshka trembled, pressing himself flat against the wall.

"Throw 'em all in a sack and drown 'em in the Neva River!" someone added.

Koshka shivered.

"That--that would be too cruel!" said Comrade Anna Flipova, the old Bolshevik in thick glasses.

Koshka nodded in agreement.

"And you're just a sentimental old Social Democrat--that's what you are!" Varya hissed back. "Just what the hell do you suggest we do? Rent a spa for them in the Crimea?"

"I suggest we do the humane thing--utilizing the modern, scientific method for controlling problems of over-population," Anna said. "We simply sterilize the males."

Koshka shuddered, and his hind legs wanted to cross. He didn't know what the word meant, but instinct told him it was not a pleasant thing.

"Why pick on the males?" Vanya Binkov protested. "Fix the damn females instead!"

"Oh, shut up!" Varya hrumphed.

"It's three times harder and more expensive to fix a female than a male!" Anna offered, adjusting the glasses on her nose.

"Okay! Okay!" Comrade Perezhitkov said, looking at his watch. "Let's fix the cats--if we have to--then let's go eat supper! My wife's cabbage soup is probably boiling over by now!"

"Let's go! Let's conclude this useless, god-forsaken meeting!" yelled the crowd.

"All in favor, say 'aye'!" yelled Perezhitkov.

"In favor of going to supper?" someone yelled.

"Aye! Aye! Aye!" The aye's filled the room.

Koshka trembled. He didn't know exactly what he was in for, but he knew it was not good.

A thick woman with a bulging black bag came the next week. She had round red cheeks and wore a white paper hat that was too big for her. Koshka hid in the cellar, but Varya Binkova found him out. "There's one of the filthy little beasts!" she called out. The thick woman grabbed Koshka in her big fist, and his paws stretched out in four directions. She pricked him with a needle, and soon his whole body went limp. He fell into a deep, dreamless sleep, and when he woke up, the period of stagnation had taken on a very special, personal meaning for him.

He had changed. He grew thicker, as if putting on armor. The pains and longings in his memory diminished, as if by elixir. A strange numbness took its place.

Humans had done it. Humans. Those same, strange creatures who were sometimes so kind, sometimes so cruel. No cat could ever predict what they were likely to do next.

#

It was evening, and floating lines of motionless, blinking cat eyes extended around the court yard, coming from windows and porches and trash piles. It was a peaceful, rhythmic kind of blinking, a form of Morse Code. It meant the world was alright, for another day at least. Things were in order. The cats were there, after their dinners and after their grooming and naps, waiting for night to conceal their prowls.

As if on signal, the cats gathered in the center of the court yard at eight o'clock. There was the afore-mentioned Avvakuum, a spindly old red cat with long hair. During the cat wars, he had been commanding general. Now he lived in retirement across the court yard, and his domain included the trash heap on the south side of the building. He spent his day hiding in the trash pile and blinking out at the passing scene, scowling at everything he saw.

Misha and Grisha, the young short-hair twins, ruled the east end, including the alley leading out under the building to the street. They stood like cocky Kremlin sentries at the court yard entrance, one at each side. Masha the house cat controlled the west side of the block. No one dared enter her territory without permission.

"It seems we have a new neighbor," said Avvakuum to the assembled cats. "A Siamese, in the hotel. She came with the family from Moscow, the Smetanov's. I think we should invite her join our society. Koshka, I appoint you to be our official delegate and welcoming committee."

"I don't think that's a very good idea," Koshka answered. "She won't have anything to do with me."

"Of course not!" Terem and Terek, the Caucasian cats, piped in. "You're fixed. You're fat. You're ugly, and you're old!" They repeated it all, making it into a chant as they marched around the court yard. "You're fixed. You're fat. You're ugly, and you're old!"

Koshka winced at their remarks. He wanted to fight back--show them a thing or two. But he knew deep down that what they said was not true. Yes, he may have been fixed, but he had feelings--he knew love and desire. And he was still fast on his feet, swift on the draw, even if a trifle overweight. He was, in fact, deep down, a Wonder Cat. He knew it, even if they didn't. And it was alright to hide the fact, until the time was ripe.

"All is not well, fellow cats!" said Avvakuum abruptly. "Change is in the air. I smell it! Why, they've changed the name of the Crumbling Sputnik again. It's now the Glasnost Hotel, and that spells trouble in my book. Does any cat here know what is going to happen?"

Heads shook.

Koshka remembered the steamy afternoon. "Well, I don't know if it's important now, or not," he began.

"We'll make that decision," said Avvakuum. "Tell us."

"Well, last summer, a Zil limousine pulled up to the hotel."

"Ai, a Zil!" gasped the cats.

"Did it have blackened windows by any chance?" asked Misha.

"They're the worse kind, you know," Grisha added.

"It had blackened windows," Koshka said softly.

The cats blinked and shuddered and Koshka told the story of the long Zil appearing out of the steam cloud, and Dmitry and Comrade Byelkin. He repeated every word he remembered.

The cats stood hushed.

"And that's all you remember?" Avvakuum asked afterwards.

"Yes."

"Every word is exactly as was spoken?"

"Yes, I believe so."

Avvakuum shook his head. "Then things are very, very bad indeed," he said finally.

"Aren't you always a touch--how shall we say--pessimistic?" Koshka asked politely. "I mean, not all change is necessarily bad, is it?"

"Well, this time it is, you naive optimist! Look, you have a Zil limousine. Officials. And as if that wasn't omen enough, you have mention of foreigners. Mark my words, this is the beginning of the end!"

Koshka wanted to disagree with the cynical old cat, but something deep inside him squeezed out all his optimism.

"But, but what's a 'Kalifornian'?" asked Masha, breaking the silence.

Avvakuum shook his head slowly and pawed lightly at the dirt. "A Kalifornian is like an Amerikan, only worse!"

"I'm--I'm afraid," confessed Masha.

Koshka tried to comfort her. "Oh, it doesn't necessarily mean things will turn out badly! After all, these Kalifornians aren't monsters, probably. People are people, and they're the same all over, right?"

"Bah!" interjected Avvakuum. "People are indeed the same all over! They're stupid, cruel, and evil--that's what they are!"

"I'm really, really afraid!" said Masha, settling her weight over her paws.

"Don't worry, poor Masha," said Koshka. "That Avvakuum--he makes everything sound so gloomy!"

But inside, Koshka shuddered, and the moon went behind a cloud.

To Chapter Two

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