Chapter Two

The beginning of the end. The beginning of the end. Avvakuum's words echoed in Koshka's dreams all night. Why, his whole life had centered around the Glasnost Hotel, that crazy building with its turrets and towers!

Koshka was an orphan cat, of sorts. His mother belonged to a family that transferred to Moscow when he was hardly weaned. They left without him. He was a very sad kitten, and a young girl found him crying on the crooked steps leading to the cellar at the Crumbling Sputnik. "I want a kitty," she told her mother.

"Get a goldfish. Cats are too expensive to feed!"

"I want a kitty--this one!" she said, stroking his head.

"Get that chunky, dirty little beast out of here!" the mother commanded.

Soon the tenants and neighbors heard about Koshka's homeless plight, and soon thereafter twelve families started leaving him scraps of food at their doorways--hence the weight problem to which Terem and Terek frequently referred, and hence the confrontation with Varya Binkova. Somehow she found out that he was getting more protein than she was, and that's when she flew into the rage at the meeting about too many cats.

Koshka almost had a master once, the widow Petrova. She was a teacher who lived on the fourth floor, as she had for almost forty years. Their first meeting was one of Koshka's first memories, from the days he first started exploring the building. It was a holiday, a warm spring day, in May. People were celebrating the great Soviet victory over Fascism. The building was empty for the parade. Koshka was listening to the band and taking in the spring sun on the window sill. He dozed off, and fell off the sill, a most un-catly thing to do, he realized. He brushed himself off and tried to make it look like falling off the window sill was exactly what he had intended to do all morning.

"Why, a kitty!" the widow Petrova exclaimed as she bent down and cradled him in her warm, wrinkled hand. "I have some meat scraps for you!" She carried him into a dark room with drawn yellow curtains. Her flat smelled of pickles and garlic, and she set down a tin can on the brown tile floor. "Here, this is your dish now, and when you are hungry, you come to Auntie Petrova, and there will be food here in this tin for you! And, do you have a name, little kitty?"

Koshka purred.

"No name?" exclaimed the smiling widow. "Well, then, let's see. I'll just call you 'Koshka.'"

And so, Koshka, who had been born without a name or a home, had acquired a name and a home, of sorts.

"And what a nice kitty you are, Koshka!" the widow said that night, stroking him as he cleaned up after his meal. She picked him up and held him--just like the little girl had. It was warm next to her body, and he could feel her chest rising and falling as she breathed, and he could hear her heart beating. "Such a nice kitty!" she said.

He purred, feeling as if he had found his home, or, had come home to the home he'd always had, after a long journey. He glowed with anticipation. There was human warmth, and a gently-stroking pair of hands. A cozy lap for a cold winter's evening. He curled up and purred in the fold of her arm.

But then her body stiffened and a cold tremble ran down her arm. Suddenly Koshka found himself back on the cold wooden floor.

"But, I don't want another cat!" the widow sighed, as if reading his thoughts.

His heart sank.

"It hurt so much, losing the last one," she said, turning to the wall. "A husband, a brother. My Tanya." He heard her footsteps across the floor, heard a sniff, then the footsteps got louder and he felt her stroking his back. "The war was a terrible time," she said, her bony fingers rubbing across his fur. "And when Mitya, my cat, went, I just felt there was no reason for living. Everything was gone by then. I was all alone, and the Fascists were shelling the city every day." She dabbed her eye with an apron, and then she opened the door.

Koshka wanted to tell her he would stand by her side, keep her company, warm her lap, share her bed, but he didn't. The parade was passing outside. A band passed along Popov Street. "Long live the Socialist victory!"

The widow put him out in the hallway. He slunk back towards the black entrance, rubbing against the cold, damp wall. "But you come back here when you're hungry!" he heard the widow call out sadly. "Come back when you're hungry you nice little creature!"

It happened nine or ten years ago, but Koshka remembered it clearly. And ever since, whenever any of the tenants wanted to get rid of cats, the widow Petrova was there to protect them. She was their voice. Someday, Koshka decided, he would repay her.

#

A dim winter sun gave off but a little light and less warmth. Koshka lay curled on the window sill. Down the hall, there were footsteps, then huffing and puffing, and voices. Koshka's ears pricked up.

"What a dump! This is worse--worse than the flat in Moscow." It was a male voice, someone very short of breath.

"Oh, stop your incessant complaining!" snapped a female. "They'll have this place fixed up in no time and soon, we'll be living with--with foreigners. From Kalifornia even! Imagine! How dignified and--and cosmopolitan! And right here in Saint Petersburg!"

"Foreigners, hmph!" grumbled the man. "They'll be the death of us yet. This country's been going right to the devil, ever since-"

"Oh, hush up and save your energy for carrying the television!" snapped the lady. "Be careful with it. It's a highly sensitive and technical device."

"This piece of junk!" he grumbled.

"That piece of junk, as you insist on calling it, just so happens to have been made in Germany. East Germany, at least."

"It's still a piece of junk, and there's nothing worth watching on it anyway."

Their arguing continued, echoing down the long narrow hallway. The man's short body arched under the weight of the giant box in his arms. The lady was taller than he by several inches, and thicker too. They stopped at the third door on the right.

"And tuck in your shirt tails!" snapped the lady. "The foreigners are coming, you know!"

"Don't remind me."

It was Hagia Sophia's apartment, Koshka realized. These strange people were the new tenants from Moscow.

Koshka scratched his head, considering the possibilities. Maybe this was the beginning of the big change that Hagia Sophia had talked about. Imagine, soon foreigners would be moving in to the building. "What were they like?" he wondered. He'd seen the movies on television--spy pictures, where mustached Amerikans in dark suits stole Soviet secrets and seduced Soviet virgins. A cold shiver went through Koshka's body.

It was all so hard to imagine! Foreigners, in the very same building. The Glasnost Hotel would never be the same. Koshka's world would never be the same.

#

The Glasnost Hotel. The Sputnik. The Glasnost Hotel. They were strange names for an odd, pock-marked building with its own load of tales to tell.

A stubby, untended devotional candle started it all late one evening in l903. A beggar tipped it over, they said, and soon cats dashed out of buildings all along the street. A yellow wall of fire swept up the whole north side of Popov Street, when the street was still called Simon Stylite Corners. By morning, the church on the corner, for which the avenue was named, had burnt to the ground.

Since there was no more Saint Simon Stylite Church, there was no need for a Simon Stylite Corners either. The street was renamed Popov, in honor of the man who either invented the radio (according to the Big Soviet Encyclopedia) or who stole Marconi's invention (according to the Italians and Americans).

The czar himself took time out from losing the Russo-Japanese War to hold a contest for the design of an ultra-modern hotel to rise over the ashes of Saint Simon Stylite's. Drawings and blueprints wrapped in thick packages came in from all over the world. But the head of the design selection committee, Eduard Robertovich, was a drunk who knew nothing about architecture. He simply grabbed a big pair of scissors, cut out whatever he liked from whatever proposal he happened to be looking at, and pasted the scraps together. The result was the Simon Stylite Arms Hotel.

The building sat squat on the corner. The twin shadows of its rounded towers loomed out over the pavement, like the ears of a squat, giant monster.

The hotel was never popular or profitable. Some said it was because no one wanted to stay in a hotel named after a religious madman who lived on top of a stick and flicked his stomach worms down at people. Neighbors called the building the Ugly Simon Stylite until a bishop and other defenders of the faith registered a formal protest with the czar.

After the revolution, the hotel, like most buildings and streets in the city, suffered a string of name changes. It was the Zinoviev Apartment Towers, then the Trotsky Arms Hotel, later the Kamenev Rest Home, then finally the Comrade Stalin Towers, until the great leader himself saw the building, grumbled about its ugliness, and insisted it be called simply the Elektrifikatsiya, which name nobody liked. Then in 1957, a 184-pound ball of Soviet metal circled the world and shocked its inhabitants, and the Elektrifikatsiya Hotel acquired a new name, the Sputnik.

Over the years, a motley band of residents came and went, along with the name changes. Only the Widow Petrova and the Baron remained. During the Khrushchev years, the building filled up with an assortment of intellectuals and workers. It was a noisy time, filled with hope, but then in 1964, Khrushchev visited a collective farm, and his face appeared in a newspaper photo between the faces of two pigs. "Comrade Khrushchev is the one in the middle," said the caption. And soon thereafter, the Kremlin underwent its own change in residents. But the Sputnik Hotel was still called the Sputnik. Nothing changed, only the concrete seemed to crumble faster. People got tired maybe of all the name changes, and the building came to be known simply as "the Glasnost."

And for the next twenty-five years, leaders came and went, but things remained the same.

But now, all of a sudden, people announced that the things had changed. Shelves emptied in the stores, and people grumbled more. The Crumbling Sputnik became the Glasnost Hotel, and Leningrad became Saint Petersburg. Now, to make matters worse, the Kalifornians were coming.

#

Koshka napped in the shadows of the double front doors, his ears, as usual, alert to unfamiliar or threatening noises.

The door opened and shut, and Koshka's sleepy brain commenced a complex calculation. No, it wasn't a familiar slam. It was not Rodion. Not Perezhitkov, or the widow or the Baron even or Osip the waiter. Not the new tenants with Hagia Sophia either. Koshka opened one eye.

A short man in muddy boots tramped up to the elevator, pushed the button, waited, then frowned.

Just then Liuba Smetanova came down the steps, the trail of her long gown swirling behind her. "You are from the committee?" she asked.

"Yes," said the man in an oily voice.

"The elevator doesn't work," Liuba offered with a sigh. "It's never worked, they say. But follow me. I'll show you where she lives."

They headed up the stairs, and Koshka followed. They walked up to the third floor. "It's the third door on the right," whispered Liuba.

Liuba walked up the stairs while the man continued down to the third door on the right. His stubby fingers pounded on the widow's door. "Nina Petrova!" he yelled.

Koshka stepped forward cautiously, keeping in the shadows. There was something sinister about the man. His moustache stretched thin when he moved his lips. It moved like a caterpillar.

"You have not answered the committee's letters!" he yelled into the doorway. "The committee of which I am chairman." His breath left a round spot of fog on the door. "I intend to inform you of this matter orally, then." He cleared his throat, and dug into his overcoat pocket. "You will let me into the flat, please," he commanded, waving a paper in his hand.

Koshka heard footsteps behind the door. Then a crack of light appeared. Koshka slid into the corner, to be as invisible as possible, as close as possible. He would not let this man harm the widow Petrova in any way, he decided. Koshka was ready to pounce on the man's leg or spray his boots, if necessary.

The widow stood at her door, her hands in her apron. "This is my flat, and I see no need to talk about it further," she said, with a strange hardness in her voice.

"It is not your flat, Comrade Petrova," the man said flatly, peering into his paper. "It belongs to the government, not to you."

"I have lived here since l938," she said softly. "Before, during, and after the war. I was told I could stay here, and I will stay here."

The man's moustache squirmed, and his neck disappeared into his shoulders. "As you know, as you have been informed, this building has been converted to a hotel and-"

"I was told that they wouldn't move out an elderly lady, a pensioner--a war widow--that I could stay in my flat as long as I want."

"Those were long-ago words," the short man said, folding his hands behind his back. "Things are different today. We can't have old hags living in the same building with important kapitalists."

Koshka winced at the word 'hag,' and he felt his mouth forming into a snarl. He really wanted to spray those ugly boots now. The widow was silent, except for a sniffle.

"They're going to renovate--change the whole building around," the man continued, motioning down the corridor. "It's all legal, and it's all approved, and you'll just have to go."

"This is my flat," she said softly. "And I intend to stay until I die."

The man's shoulders hunched forward. "We'll see about that! Disobey me, and you're asking for trouble. You leave me no choice. Why, I'm going to talk to Comrade Rassolnikov personally! He's the official governmental delegate, and then we'll see how long you last here!" With that, he turned on his heels and walked down the hall. "Damn stubborn, old bitch!" he muttered under his breath.

Koshka calculated things quickly, then stepped out of the shadows just at the right moment. A boot dug hard into his belly, but he took a deep breath and held fast. A short man in muddy boots went tumbling down the stairs. "God-damned fat old cat!" he yelled, shaking his fist from the bottom of the stairway.

Koshka smoothed down his fur and licked his flanks clean. "Just a small job for Wonder Cat," he said to himself.

He heard low sobbing back in the hallway, and it cut through his feeling of joy. He walked up to the widow Petrova, and she picked him up, patting his back. "I can't leave!" she sobbed. "My whole life is here."

Koshka purred, to let her know things would be alright, but deep down he was not so confident. He wished he knew that things would be alright. He wished he was a real Wonder Cat.

The room smelled of garlic and pickles and herring too. There were pictures and photographs on all the walls--round frames and square frames, in faded brown and sepia tints. A soldier in uniform. A proud, smiling young woman in a wool coat. There was the smell of camphor from an amoire that stood like a pot-bellied monster on skinny legs, ready to pounce. His nose caught the faint scents from dusty perfume bottles that stood on a glass tray on top of a thick old dresser.

If only there was something he could do for a lady who needed help, who once showed him kindness! He, the Wonder Cat, hidden in disguise, if necessary, would do whatever could be done, just as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

#

"Aaaa-vaaa-kuuum!" poor Babushka Shura wailed. "Please, oh please come to dinner!"

Avvakuum, although hungry, wasn't one to give in easily or to appear needy. He dug himself deeper into his trash pile, rolled his eyes, and shook his head with forbearance.

"Aaa-vaaa-kuum!" the poor lady wailed, now hoarse.

The old red cat yawned.

His nonchalance always astounded Koshka, the orphan cat.

"Why don't you go to her?" he asked. "She loves you, she cares for you, and she wants to feed you!"

Something like a smile passed over the old cat's face. "Oh, I will. I will. I just need to remind her who dominates whom."

Babushka Shura's shrieks turned to sobs. Then Avvakuum stepped out of the trash pile and smoothed down his fur. Slowly, erectly he walked across the court yard up the steps towards the widow. "I'll return soon," he told Koshka. "I'll get a bite to eat, then we can start the cat meeting."

An hour later, Avvakuum came back to his trash pile. The sky turned black, and all the cats gathered in a circle in the court yard. Terem and Terek, who lived up Kirovsky Prospekt, settled down on a pile of wood scraps. Next to them sat Misha and Grisha, the twins. They belonged to a family that had two children. Koshka took up his position on the trash pile at the north end of court yard. Misha and Grisha pranced around their side of the yard, and above it all, Miss Hagia Sophia paced along the gabled roof-top.

All was not well and not normal. That was evident even in grouchy old Avvakuum's blink. It was faster than usual, and he had buried himself deeper into the trash pile than usual. The crazy old red cat did that whenever there was trouble. And on this particular evening, Misha and Grisha were just a bit too gay and frisky, as if giddy to take on a world they knew would soon challenge them.

"So what is happening at the Crumbling Sputnik--I mean, the Glasnost Hotel?" Avvakuum asked Koshka from deep inside his pile. "You're not yourself today, naive little kitty!"

Koshka sighed. "It's the widow Petrova. They're trying to drive her out of her apartment."

"Who is trying to drive her out?" asked Avvakuum.

"A short man with thick boots. He has a moustache and stubby fingers with thick knuckles. And he says he knows somebody named Rassolnikov."

"Rassolnikov?" gasped Misha and Grisha. "That's Simion Simionovich Rassolnikov, the man who gets things done at all costs!"

Masha the house cat nodded. "He's right from headquarters in Moscow, and he's got the worst temper in the country!"

"Why's he coming here?" Koshka asked. He knew that whenever Moscow officials came for whatever reason, it was always time to run for cover. "What's going to happen?"

Misha and Grisha shrugged and pranced along a fence top. "Big changes are in store!"

"What big changes?" asked Koshka, remembering his run-in with Hagia Sophia.

"No one knows," said Misha, nodding towards the hotel rooftop. "Except for that gray, stuck-up Siamese, Hagia Sophia, and she won't tell."

"She won't talk to any of us!" said Misha.

"We're not good enough for her!" said Grisha.

The cats looked upwards, and there was Hagia Sophia prancing on the very top of the steep pitched roof. Misha and Grisha stuck up their tails and pranced along the crooked fence, imitating the Siamese.

"Don't antagonize her," warned Avvakuum. "Be friendly."

"Welcome, Hagia Sophia!" offered Masha in her friendliest voice. "Come down and join us. We have meetings and discussions and readings and-"

Hagia Sophia's back stiffened. "You're a bunch of stray alley cats, and I will have nothing to do with the likes of you!"

Masha curled low to the ground and let out a long hiss. Then she turned to her fellow cats. "Just who does she think she is?"

"Now, now, let's not start fighting," Koshka suggested. "We've all gotten along so well for so long."

"Not with the likes of that stuck-up witch!" said Masha.

"You can imagine how I feel," Koshka whispered. "I have to live in the same building with her."

"Hmph!" said Masha, not at all convinced.

Meanwhile, Hagia Sophia started grooming herself. "None of you will be around here much longer," she called out as nonchalantly as only a snooty Siamese can manage. "This is the start of big changes, and you strays will not be parties to any of it."

"What big changes!" demanded Misha.

"Tell us!" pleaded Grisha.

Hagia Sophia turned her rump towards the assembled cats. "I don't converse with strays!" she said. With that, she pranced down the sloping roof into the tower window.

Back on the ground, there was a rustling in the trash pile. "That's it! The very end! The whole country--the whole world is going topsy-turvy!" growled Avvakuum from deep inside his pile. "Soon, men will be biting dogs, and kapitalists will be running Russia!"

"The world is already coming apart at the seams!" said Masha the house cat. "It's glasnost and perestroika. Since humans started using those words, everything's been falling steadily apart!"

"It has already fallen apart," said Misha, and Grisha nodded. "Why, we were in Moscow not long ago, and there are kapitalists everywhere. They're even selling a thing called khamburgerz."

"Khamburgerz?" Koshka asked.

"Yes, khamburgerz," Misha continued, shaking his head. "It's a capitalist meat concoction. It's real meat, but imagine, there's only a little gristle and hardly any bone chunks in it! And, they serve all you could want! They never run out."

"All meat!" added Grisha.

"All meat?" asked Avvakuum.

"All meat!" Misha repeated. "And all you could ever want to order! They never run out of it, and they never close because of shortages!"

"And," Grisha piped in. "They sell these khamburgerz in a place where the clerks smile at you and race to help you as fast as they can!"

"Impossible!" said Avvakuum. "In Moscow?"

"Yes, in Moscow!"

"Then it is the end of the world!" There was a rustling of wood chips and old 'Pravda' newspapers. Avvakuum had buried himself at the very bottom of the trash pile. "This is the end of the world, as we, or anybody knows it!"

"And there's a pizza stand too!" said Misha, as if Avvakuum hadn't already borne more change than he could endure. "Pizza--it's an American or Italian food--I don't know--with meat and dough, and believe it or not--real vegetables!"

"And chickens without bones and American movie theaters with upholstered seats and foreign films with subtitles and Russians picketing and campaigning right on Gorky Street!" Grisha added.

"Yes, indeed the world is changing," Koshka said, trying to calm Avvakuum, who was surely dying of palpitations at that point. "It's an exciting place, this world is." He was trying to calm that gnawing sense of change for the worse in his own stomach as well. "And, and change doesn't have to mean things are going to get worse!"

"Where have you been the last thousand years?" came the muffled voice of Avvakuum.

"Well, not around here," Koshka responded. "I can only remember back to the Period of Stagnation."

"Stagnation-shmagnation!" growled Avvakuum. "Mark my words! We'll remember those times of stagnation as the best of years. This marks the end of history, the final chapter in our beloved Cat Chronicles!"

"Look, people and cats have always been predicting doom!" Koshka said, trying to cheer up the gloomy old red cat, trying to keep doubt from gnawing all the way through his own stomach. "Maybe we should just take things step-by-step. Maybe we need to find out just what is going to happen here, on this very block, in the Glasnost Hotel, for instance. Then we can decide."

"Yes!" said Misha and Grisha.

"What exactly is going to happen here, Koshka?" Masha asked nervously.

"Nobody knows, and nobody can find out," said Avvakuum. "But mark my words, it will be bad for us all!"

"Hmmm. Nobody knows," said Misha sadly. "And nobody can find out."

"What about the short man in the boots? Why did he come here? What's his mission?" asked Grisha.

"Nobody knows and nobody can find out," answered Misha.

"And nobody will even want to know--it will be that bad," added Avvakuum, burrowing down even further into the trash pile.

"And you stupid alley cats know nothing at all!" said Hagia Sophia from the tower window. "It's about time this stupid, backward country became more like the rest of the world. Oh, how I hate it here! How I hate all of you!"

"Why won't you tell us what's going to happen?" pleaded Masha. "After all, it's humans versus us cats, as usual, isn't it?"

"I will not speak with a bunch of uncultured, stray, Russian alley cats!" Hagia Sophia strutted along the roof top again, then crawled into the other tower window. "You'll find out soon enough--if any of you is smart enough, that is."

"Someone can find out," Koshka said to himself. His whiskers quivered with anticipation. This was a job for Wonder Cat!

#

The best place to go for information-gathering on Popov Street was the newly-named Perestroika Buffet and Snack Bar, on the top floor of the newly-named Glasnost Hotel. And that's where Koshka headed. Miss Hagia Sophia wasn't in sight, so he slipped through the front door and took up a position under a table lining the back wall.

Overhead, tea glasses tinkled, and bread crumbs fell to the floor. Two humans crouched low over their plates and tea glasses, talking in soft whispers. It was a sign that something extraordinary was going on. Koshka settled in under the table, careful not to rub against any legs.

"We have no choice. We must close the buffet," poor Perezhitkov whispered.

"You mean, at closing time, yes?" asked Osip the waiter.

"No! I mean close the buffet! Period!"

"Close? Period?" asked Osip in horror.

"Yes, close. There's--there's no choice."

"But why? I need the job--the position, the money."

"Your salary's not so great," Perezhitkov said. "I'm sure you could get another job!"

Osip's skinny legs trembled under the table and his hands sank into his trouser pockets. "But, but my network--all those years of organizing and planning! I'd have to start all over." He wiped his brow. "Why in the devil's name do we have to close?"

"We are doing too well!" Perezhitkov answered sadly.

"I don't understand."

"Look!" Perezhitkov's voice rose. The poor man became a tenor when he was frustrated, which was often. "The buffet and snack bar had a very good year! So good that it exceeded all projections and plans!"

"But, but that--that's good! Wonderful!" Osip boomed. "Isn't it?" he added meekly.

"Horrible!" came the answer, in a high-pitched voice. "Why, this building's falling apart as it is! I--I can't get parts when we need them. The plumbing, the electricity--it's all a mess!" He sniffled. "I can barely keep this place running, and now--now the higher-ups will expect us to exceed that restaurant quota every year, every month from now on!" His foot rapped at the floor as he talked. "We'll be working like a bunch of exploited kapitalists before long, just trying to meet our quotas, and every year they'll increase the quota! The only way to stop that is to close down for a month or two or three--to balance the books, as it were, to average out the very good months with months of no income at all."

"But, but can't it wait?" Osip asked. "I need time to--to reorganize things."

"You need time to set up other bribery and barter networks, that's what you need! But we can't wait. We need to do it now, because THE BIG CHANGE is coming."

Koshka's ears pricked up, and like miniature radar dishes, turned towards the source of the tenor voice.

"What big change?" asked Osip.

"The big, big change!"

"What kind of big, big change?"

"A very big change!" Perezhitkov answered gloomily.

"How big?" Osip asked.

"As big as you can imagine! Listen! Twelve officials are coming from Moscow."

"Oh, God! Not that big!" Osip's legs trembled so fast his socks dropped to his shoe tops.

And Koshka fell to shivering too. Every cat knew that one Moscow official was enough to mess up anything. The effect of five of them was unimaginable, twelve was unfathomable. Had Avvakuum found out a whole dozen officials were coming directly from Moscow, he would have headed straight for the Finnish border.

Osip groaned, as if reading Koshka's thoughts. "Twelve of them? Lord, it's the end of us all!"

Perezhitkov cleared his throat. "They are--they are-" His voice was a soprano now. He cleared his throat again, reaching a sort of baritone/tenor combination. "They are going to transform this place into 'a hallmark of socialist enterprise,' as they call it."

"It sounds--well, deadly," Osip said meekly.

"It's death itself!" Perezhitkov groaned.

"We--we must find a way to appease these Muscovites!"

"We start by closing down now!" Perezhitkov whispered. "We bring down our revenues as low as we can. And that way, next year will look that much better, and the Moscow devils will be appeased. Then they'll go away to bother someone else and leave us alone."

"Sitting down again, you schemers!" It was a familiar shrill voice, that of Mrs. Perezhitkova. "What are you two buzzards plotting now?"

"Nothing, my sweet!" sang out Perezhitkov. "We are discussing revenues."

"If you two would ever stop eating and drinking all the inventory, there just might be some revenues to discuss!" she snapped. "And you, my worthless husband! If you were worth anything, you wouldn't be managing a dump like this!"

"Now, my dearest, I don't think that's the proper way to address me, the manager of a governmental establishment-"

"Bonk!" It sounded like a skillet slamming down on a melon.

"Ouch!" said Perezhitkov. "And do you think that's the proper way to address Osip, a long-time employee of a -"

"Bink!" It sounded like a skillet slamming down on a cucumber.

"Ouch!" said Osip.

"Now, listen here!" said Mrs. Perezhitkova. "You two get into the scullery and get to work! You frittered away the salary for the pot-washers, so now you two get in there and do it yourselves! I expect that place to be spotless in one-half hour! Now, march to!"

"But, dearest-" said Perezhitkov.

"Bonk!" went the frying pan.

"Now, look here, you dumb peasant!" said Mrs. Perezhitkova. "Get to work, or I'll see that they send you back to the village you came from!"

Chair legs scraped, and the table emptied. Koshka curled up in the corner to collect his thoughts and analyze the data, as it were. It looked like there are big changes in store for the Perestroika Buffet and Snack Bar, he concluded, and it looked like that was why the short man in big boots ordered the poor widow Petrova to move out.

"What can stop Russian bureaucracy, once it rolls into motion?' Koshka asked himself. Was that gloomy old cat, Avvakuum right, when he sang out the sad tales from the Cat Chronicles? Could one cat stop a locomotive? This was a job for Wonder Cat, if there ever was one! But where to start?

"Get out of here, you alley cat!" hissed Hagia Sophia. She was scaling the counter top and had spotted him from across the room. "Go back outside, with your other low-life Russian friends!"

Koshka sighed to himself, and crept out of the buffet, his tail hanging low. "My whole world is falling apart. Everything I know--it's changing. And this new Siamese. Why is Sophia so mean to me?" he wondered. "Why does she despise me so?"

She was so unlike the only other Siamese Koshka had ever known. So unlike her.

#

Years and years before--it was the spring 1982--a young cat took to exploring, as young male cats are wont to do in springtime. Something drew this young, name-less cat to the other side of Kirovsky Prospect.

Each day that inexplicable something drew Koshka a little further from home until one day, he came to the very banks of the Nevka. The young cat stared out at the flat expanse of the river, not knowing why or what for. He came back to the Nevka every day.

Then "Crack!" went the ice on the river in March of 1982. Koshka watched, as if hypnotized, while the flat sheet of ice on the Nevka screamed and broke. Days later, Koshka still stood on the bank, and by then, the river showed its wound. A line of jagged, angular chunks plied through a long fissure filled with water. Then rain came, and Koshka went back home to his cellar. But a week later, he was drawn back to the river bank. It was magical. All the smells and scents were different, as if he'd emerged from the cellar into another world.

He looked out at the river, as if under a spell. The flat sheet of ice had broken now. Giant angles of dirty snow glided with crooked deliberation down the middle part of the river while off to each side, smaller ice chunks swirled and eddied. Every day the pieces grew smaller and smaller.

Then there was no ice. Birds sang in the trees. Brown bumps appeared on branches, and soon, the lindens along the embankment grew thick and green.

Warmth. Koshka loved it. Yes, winter had its warm heat pipes and cozy crevices and corners. But spring was warmth all over. A cat could set on a sill all morning, stroll across dry, unchilled pavement, nestle in bushes, and watch as shadows lengthened and the light turned golden brown.

And the world was never so busy. Noisy birds built nests high in budding branches, away from cats. Field mice dashed from buildings, and squirrels scrambled everywhere. Young humans kissed and held hands.

The embankment cats took to meeting outside, in the court yard, where sun and shadows painted long gold designs on flat stucco walls. But Koshka was always drawn back to the Nevka, as if he were pulled by an invisible leash.

It was Sunday. Humans strolled the embankment. There were old men and women walking arm-in-arm, and young couples, leaning into one-another. And there were children, still wrapped tight in jackets, holding on to hands stretched downward or dashing ahead, hopping and skipping all the while.

Even the statues along the embankment seemed to come alive. And Koshka too was alive, as he'd never been alive before. The world called out from across the Nevka, "Look at me! See me! Search me! Discover every part of me!"

So Koshka that Sunday afternoon in 1982 picked his way across the wide street, stepping carefully between shiny wheels of rumbling lorries and glinting hubcaps of Volga and Moskvitch sedans. The world called. And for now, the world was the square across the bridge, through the trees, then down the steep paths to the river embankment. Koshka had never been there, and his whole body longed to smell, feel, taste the mystery of those paths across the river.

He dashed across the bridge, staying low to the pavement. The smell of gasoline and oil diminished behind him, and already flowers and leaves and the sweet aroma of wet earth called. In short, it was time to slink through the warm blades of grass and take a hard roll in sand and gravel. He dived, rolled, and scratched with a vengeance, wiping off months of human dust, of plaster, paper, carpet, planks, and chrome--all the things the human world is made of.

It never felt so good, and the sun stared right down at him, smiling.

"Wh-who are you?" came a timid voice.

Koshka leapt upward faster than ever, and in one motion he was on his feet, smoothing down his fur.

"I don't have a name," he said, his tongue stretching back to his tail. He turned to face his questioner. "But they call me simply, Koshka, a cat." The words caught in his throat. Before him stood the most beautiful creature he had ever seen. She was all warm gray fur that he knew was softer than anything he had seen or touched or even thought of ever seeing or touching, and she had eyes that were big and sparkled warm and wet.

Damn, how he hated every piece of dirt, every scrap of dust and very stone that marred his fur. He bent to clean himself, but no, he could not, would not take his eyes off this creature. "I--I--I was just exploring--I mean, patrolling this square--this area here," he finally said. The words came out in ugly clumps.

"It looks to me like you were having a grand roll in the dirt," she said.

That voice! Oh, it was soft and smooth like no music. And Koshka wanted to sing.

"I--yes, I was rolling. I've never been here before, on this bank, I mean."

The words came out better now, and Koshka breathed easier. He had to look at her, couldn't look anywhere else or think of anything else or sense anything else, or want anything else. It was a spell. The world's spell of spring time, and this creature--she was all Koshka ever wanted, more than he ever knew he wanted.

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