Cats in the Fridge

After the hospital closed, Mishka Sparrowlegs’ wife Nadyukha – no spring chicken but not eligible for a pension either – was out of work and therefore out of money. And her husband had been in the same boat for a while, ever since the collective farm fell apart. Mishka’s a welder, but what’s he going to weld when there’s no iron to be had? So he just lies around thinking, wondering where the money’s going to come from. Sure, a village doesn’t have everything a town has, but the kitchen garden keeps on birthing potatoes and there’s a piglet grunting away in what passes for a barn. Still, there’s no doing without money. You figure it out. You need flour, right? Matches? Soap too, and who knows what-all else? And then there’s the most important thing in a village, especially in wintertime – firewood. Without firewood, the stove won’t give you the time of day, and in a Russian village, it’s the stove that keeps everything hopping. It gives heat and cooks soup and warms water and dries socks on top of that,  it offers the cats somewhere to dream about mice. And if the snow starts flying, what could be better than clambering onto the sleeping ledge, covering up with an old fur coat, and getting some shut-eye?..

Our village doesn’t have a store of its own, but a mobile store, a trailer on wheels, does come by. It carries the mail too, because what if someone writes a letter to someone else? Although that seldom happens these days: really, what’s there to write about? But we do buy newspapers, and why wouldn’t we? It’s all spelled out in the paper – what the weather’s going to be like, how many rubles there are to the dollar, when the district center’s going to have chickens for sale. No, how can you do without the printed word? And then after you’ve read it, there’s always something to wrap in it, or you can make a hat out of it… And so Nadyukha decided to buy herself a paper too. Why? Who knows – she’s a woman, and a woman’s a riddle. But the newspaper was passed on to me – you’re cultured and all that, they said, you read. So I did, but meanwhile, Nadyukha’s coming unglued next door, yelling that someone’s stolen her newspaper.

I went over to her place. Finding my way with difficulty through the kitchen garden, which was overgrown with mugwort, stepping on old basins and buckets, I finally made it to Nadyukha’s hut. A good ten years ago, the door had been padded with a quilt, cover and all, to keep the drafts out in winter. By now, though, the quilt’s all in tatters, from the dogs or the cats or maybe just because…

Even in the entry, it smelled of gasoline, sour porridge, rotten rags, and stale hay. Kicking the door open with my foot, I went inside. Nadyukha was sitting in the kitchen, her cheek resting on her fist, puzzling out a crossword and stumbling over every letter. “Leader?” she asked herself and wrote in uneven letters LENIN… “Hey, Nad,” I called to her. “What ‘Lenin’? Get with the program.”

Nadyukha yawned. “I don’t know anyone else with five letters,” she said.

The hut was so cold, I made for the stove… The old refrigerator – pre-Freon, from back when fridges used ammonia – was juddering like mad.

“What’s that for?” I asked, leaning on the stove and nodding toward the fridge.

“Don’t get smudges on you,” Nadyukha warned. “It’s just been whitewashed. And the cats are put up in the fridge. All four of them”

“But they’ll freeze.”

“Nah. It’s warmer there than in the house.”

“And who put them in there?”

“They’re not telling,” Nadyukha said, laying the pen aside. “So hand over the newspaper. Else there’s nothing to fire up the stove with.”

We went into the “parlor.” The television was flickering in the corner; there was sound but no picture. Mishka Sparrowlegs was dozing on the sofa, under what had once been a tulle curtain. The heels of his bare feet, after a lifetime spent in blissful ignorance of socks, were black.

“He’s sleeping?” I asked quietly.

“He’s been reading,” Nadyukha said proudly. “You gave me a book the other year.”

“The Solzhenitsyn you mean?” I was dumbfounded.

“D’you think he knows ’em apart? He can’t make out the letters…”

“I sense the meaning with my heart.” This came from beneath the tattered lacework. “A good writer, that. A classic. I’ll be reading a long while before I understand all the depth of it. I won’t even smoke it.”

Cigarettes cost good money these days, and there is no money, so Nadyukha’s growing tobacco in the vegetable patch, and Sparrowlegs dries it by the stove, cuts it up fine with a special knife, and then rolls it in paper. Everything comes in handy for that – The Komsomol’s Truth and Arguments and Facts, and even AIDS-Info,a newspaper that, Nadyukha contends, is all about smutty sex.

“Hey, Dash.” Sparrowlegs scratches a heel. “Think there’ll be any more newspapers?”

“To read?”

“Right. About love and about… you know, nookie.”

“But you’ll smoke it too?”

“No!” Mishka hauled a frayed copy of AIDS-Info out from under the pillow. “I read it!”

“But it’s… hang on. This copy’s from 2000!”

“Right.” Sparrowlegs hoisted up his big toe. “That’s the whole point. I’ve got the theory down pat over the past sacksteen years.”

“Uh-huh,” Nadyukha chimed in from the kitchen. “He’s just got weaker on the practice, is all.”

I looked through the window. Snow was falling, in huge, white flakes. I was freezing and wanted to go home, for a nice glass of tea with raspberry jam.

“Well, I’m off,” I said to Nadyukha.

“Off with you, then, if that’s all you’ve got.”

“And who’s going to light the stove?” I asked from the doorway.

“Whoever freezes first,” Nadyukha replied. She dragged the coverlet off Mishka, threw it around her shoulders, and went to puzzle some more over her crossword. I opened the fridge, let the crazed cats out, and headed home. RL