The Rat

Later, when I was telling this story, I added a knife. But the truth is, there was no knife. I think I added the knife to seem braver than I actually was.

There were two of them. The first one was short: the top of his knitted beanie looked like a peeled orange. I thought his ears must be freezing. They were sticking out and pink. The rest of him was pale and plump. He was wearing a soft puffer jacket that looked too big for him.

The other one was tall and thin. And much older.

The short one did most of the talking, but for some reason, I don't remember any of it. The thin one only said four sentences—and I remember every one, verbatim.

This wasn't my first encounter with gopniks. Once, I got punched in the jaw by a gnome-like gypsy who lived on a lawn next to the Taras Shevchenko monument. "What are you laughing at? What are you laughing at? Ha?" he kept asking, jumping side-to-side in front of me like Muhammad Ali played by a circus dwarf.

But these two—they barely touched me.

As usual, I had procrastinated until three days before the exam and had now been grinding away in the library, until the oxygen atoms sticking out of benzene rings on their double bonds started to look like cigarette butts in an ashtray. When the library lady finally pushed me out, the heavy darkness outside bit me in the face. The feeble cone of light from the last working lamppost trembled from terror. Plump, moist snowflakes materialized in it before splattering against the gray wool of my coat. A shortcut toward my tram stop led through the snowfield beneath the huge dark bulk of the Veterinary Institute. The massive Doric columns were more guessable than visible; only one window on the first floor was lit. The snow was knee-high and crisscrossed with deep ravines. I was walking through one of them when the short one emerged on my path and raised two clenched fists in my direction. His fists were surprisingly large for his size.

He said something about stopping. I stopped. I didn't have much choice: the snow ravine was barely wide enough for one person. Its walls reached up to my waist and crumbled when stepped on. The short one lowered his fists and glanced over my right shoulder. A breath vapor entered my field of vision. I started turning my head, but something inside me froze, and I stopped halfway.

So yeah, I don't remember much about what the other one looked like, besides he was tall and thin. All the lamppost could muster from the dark was just a bunch of angles—brows, cheekbones, chin—covered with hoarfrost of stubble. I think he had a golden tooth—there was a brief flash of fire. It didn't occur to me to look down and check whether he was standing in the ravine or in the snow around it. He just was there—as if he had always been there, like a tree.

But one thing was immediately obvious: the thin one had done time. Probably more than once. People who have done time possess this special brand of calm that makes your marrow freeze. A reptilian kind of calm.

I once had a driving instructor who had done time. He never lost his temper, not even once. Not even when I confused the gas and brake pedals and almost crashed the driving school's Lada into a tree. He just put his left hand on the wheel and swayed a bit to the side, while gently applying his training brake. There was a tattoo of the rising sun and two eight-pointed stars on the back of his hand. When the car came to a stop, he calmly explained my mistake and suggested I try again. The best driving instructor I ever had.

And yet, when I was booking my next lesson, I chose a different guy. Those sun and stars just wouldn't leave my head.

"Don't worry," said the thin one. "Nothing is going to happen to you."

The short one cleared his throat—as if he was about to recite a poem, and said something about the money.

I said I had no money on me.

The short one said if he found any money, I would regret that I lied to him. Then he told me to jump.

I jumped—and the coins in the right pocket of my coat clinked.

The short one smiled and glanced over my shoulder. Somehow, I knew the thin one didn't smile back. He didn't do anything at all. Just stood there. Like a tree.

The short one dipped his oversized hands into the pockets of my coat, two at once—so the hole on top of his peeled-orange head pressed against my stomach. The hands returned with a couple of coins, a crumpled pack of Winston, and a lighter.

"The last cigarette is not for taking," said the calm voice over my right ear, minting each word the way our physical-colloidal chemistry professor would say, "Like dissolves like."

The short one glanced over my shoulder again, then at the pack in his hand, reluctantly took one cigarette and handed it to me. After a pause, he fished the lighter from the pocket of his oversized jacket and gave it back to me, too.

"See: everything that is yours is being returned back to you," said the thin one. His voice was like old paint peeling off a wall.

The short one asked if I had any more money. I said I didn't.

"Started? Finish," the voice over my ear stated, in the way, our organic chemistry professor would say, "Equal volumes? Equal numbers."

The short one looked at me, furrowing his brow, then his plump face brightened again, and he asked me to open my coat.

The fat fingers dove into the inner pockets, moved downward, patted over my jeans, slipped into the back pocket—and emerged with a crumpled fiver, the last remnant of my dismal monthly stipend.

The short one handed the fiver to the thin one. The thin one took it and vanished. No movement, not a single crack of snow. Just one moment the breath vapor was there—and the next, only darkness. The short one shuffled from foot to foot, trying to peek behind my back, then raised his knee as high as he could and stepped over the wall. The snow crumbled under his weight, and he fell on all fours. Panting, he stood up, took another step, fell again, stood up again, and finally trudged away, leaving deep round holes in the snow.

I didn't look back to see if he made it back to the ravine behind me. I immediately started walking into the freed-up space, buttoning my coat on the go. I walked, then trotted, then ran. The plump snowflakes splattered against my cheeks, my eyelids, my teeth. By the time I finished with the top button, the skin on my fingers felt about to crack. I put my hands in my pockets—and felt a soft touch of paper. Suddenly, there was nothing I wanted as much as a smoke. Keeping up my pace, I took the cigarette out and clenched it between my teeth. In my other pocket, I found the lighter, brought it to the end of the cigarette, and struck. It didn't work. I struck again, and again, and again, but the headwind kept blowing the flame away. My hands felt as if they were growing huge—just like those hands that took my last fiver! How easy it was for those hands to take it from me: no threat, no knife. Those fists didn't even have to punch me. I kept striking. Damn lighter! Useless, weak, pathetic piece of junk!

I halted and turned around with the full intent of running after the gopniks to get my fiver back. I imagined smashing the short one in the middle of his soft, round face, so his peeled-orange hat flew away into the snow. I would clutch the lighter in my fist to add weight to the punch.

Yet the snowfield was empty. The snowflakes waltzed silently in the trembling light on the other side of the ravine. I watched them for some time, then made a cradle out of my palms and struck the lighter again. The flame jumped out at once and stayed, gently wavering, until the end of my cigarette smoldered red.

I took a long sniff and felt everything inside me melting as if the tiny ember of the cigarette was warming it up. Even the snow was glowing. My long shadow, almost as dense as the darkness around, bent at the waist, tumbling over one of the ravine's walls. I turned and saw I was standing next to the shining window on the first floor of the Veterinary Institute. I took another puff and made a couple of steps toward the light.

It was some lab: wooden racks with test tubes in the middle of long tables, much like in our organic chemistry room. Perhaps the lab assistant forgot to turn the lights off. Or maybe he just went out for a smoke.

But there was something else, too. Next to the test-tube racks, one for each student, were square metal cages, the size of a shoebox. They were all empty except one—at the closest end of the table. Inside the cage was a large grey rat. Its earthworm-like tail lay lifelessly among the chunks of straw and rotten cabbage leaves, so at first I thought it might be dead. However, the next moment the tail wiggled, and the rat turned around. Two sunflower seeds of the eyes surrounded by grey fur looked right at me. It was dark outside, but somehow I was sure the rat knew I was there. Perhaps it saw the flicker of the cigarette. I could see the long whiskers around its nose moving. It looked down, picked something from the cage floor—a bitten cabbage leaf—and started munching on it, the black eyes on me again.

We stood like that for some time, looking at each other—the rat and I—until it finished its cabbage leaf and I finished my cigarette. Then it turned around and crawled back to the corner of its cage, and I threw the butt into the snow and went on to my tram stop.