Maybe that quote doesn’t quite fit here. I’ve gone back through and counted eight quotations in this letter so far. Which probably means I’ve lost the ability to think independently. Or else I’m just overtired. I’m exhausted by the lingering insubstantiality of everything. Yes, criteria have vanished. Contexts have become confused. Sometimes I ask myself why I agreed to let the American make us a present of that cat in the first place. After all, I knew Goda wouldn’t look after it: I was always going to be the one to change the litter, bathe it, and get up in the middle of the night to feed it. Then again, it seems to me that animals (as long as they’re not clones) are the one real thing left in this world. Not simulacra. They don’t know how to change themselves to suit the times or the market; they don’t know how to put on an act. The media hasn’t yet managed to manipulate them. For one thing, the bed on which my cat falls asleep the fastest is … a newspaper.
So, yesterday, castration day, dawned clear and sunny. I had made an appointment with the veterinarian a week before. I told Goda where I was going and let her go skating at the Akropolis shopping mall. The entire time, the cat sat calmly on the shelf next to some scattered pennies. The kid left. I called Potter when I was already dressed and kneeling next to his carrier. He obediently jumped down. When he jumped, his foot caught the money and one penny fell straight into his water bowl. I was really touched, because I knew why that had happened … When Goda came back from Saint Petersburg, she talked about what she’d seen … About the Orthodox churches with their gold turbans and the clouds made of feathers stuck behind them. About the drawbridges (which remind me of dentures, but I didn’t say so). About a man going down an empty street in the morning, in the fog, with a real bear on a leash. My girl said, “Mama, I threw a kopeck in the fountain at Peterhof — will I really return to that place someday, like they say?” The cat heard this entire conversation. So that’s why the poor thing decided, before his operation, to throw a penny into his bowl. So he’d return.
The animal clinic in the Old Town is better than the local one out in the suburbs. The veterinarian said, you’ve even been crying, but it’s all going to be over within fifteen minutes, no more. There’s already another patient waiting: a Doberman lying on a leather couch. They were going to clip the dog’s ears, make them into ornaments. The gold chains on the dog and his master were identical. You know, if I had to live with a budding Mafioso like that dog’s owner, I’d square off his pointy shoes with an axe, but make him wash out all that hair gel himself. The nurse asked, “Would you like to watch the operation?” I politely but immediately declined.
I went next door and drank two cups of coffee. Then I went back to the vet’s office, dragging my feet, and saw the nurse standing in the door, waving to me — in other words, hurry up. That’s it, I thought, he’s dead. Couldn’t take the anesthetic. In my hometown, a surgeon I know injected this rich guy’s (also a Mafioso’s) wife with spinal anesthesia. The woman died immediately, and the husband barged into the hospital with a gun and started off trying to shoot the cloakroom attendant. One in a million can’t handle anesthesia, that’s all, and it’s impossible to test for it ahead of time. I approached the nurse; she led me to the operating table. The cat was lying there, dead center. Sleeping with his eyes wide open, his head turned in one direction, his tongue in the other. The doctor, all hot and sweaty, apologized:
“I won’t charge anything for the anesthesia … it’s my own fault. It didn’t occur to me to examine him first. In seventeen years of practice it’s the first time I’ve seen this pathology, even though it happens in people fairly often …”
“You mean his ears?” I asked (remembering the tactical question regularly posed to me by my Russian hairdresser at the Hal
market: “Same as before? Shall we leave the ears open?”)
“No, ma’am, I’ve seen dozens of Scottish Folds. Your cat has cryptorchidism. In layman’s terms — he has no balls. His testicles haven’t descended. Give me your hand … Do you feel it? Here, down deep. In his stomach. The other one, unfortunately, I can’t find at all.”
I groped the cat’s velvety groin (with both hands) and started getting woozy. Roundish shapes began wandering around in my head — like small zucchinis, or giant florescent beads. I went out into the waiting room and collapsed next to the nervous Doberman in his muzzle. The nurse gave me valerian drops.
When I recovered, I asked what they thought I should do. The vet said that if even the cat’s testicles aren’t developed, it doesn’t mean he won’t want a mate. His brain still works, after all. He advised simply waiting. He warned me that if Potter started marking his territory, he’d need an operation anyway. And the operation would be difficult, worse than neutering a female. But if we don’t operate, then he would be a prime candidate for testicular cancer. Because everyone’s testicles — or, rather, all testicles — are meant to hang in the air. That is — outdoors. I mean, outside.
When I got home, I immediately called that guy who didn’t go to the movies with me. I’m safe with him; I find him more comforting than anyone else. And I told him everything. He said: “You have to come to terms with it. Calm down. It makes sense, you know — if anyone was going to fall at your feet, it would have be a cryptorchid.” Potter recovered toward evening: he threw up, but not much. He’s fine now. But last night I had a horrible dream. About divorce. My dreams used to play many a variation on that subject. They’d stopped long ago. In this dream, I was going to the Third Circuit Court to file papers at my lawyer’s. The corridors were dark and full of cobwebs, and the walls wobbled when you leaned up against them — they gave way like hammocks. So I was walking straight through room after room, without using the doors. In one, my lawyer was sitting at a desk. She was some eighty years old, but with serious cleavage. Her breasts were plump, like a young woman’s. She wore a pleated brown wool skirt and Nike gym shoes. She pulled on rubber gloves, picked up a ballpoint pen and a blank piece of paper, and asked:
“Spouse?”
“Scottish Fold,” I say.
But she doesn’t care for that at alclass="underline" “Legally, neither your spouse’s nationality nor his looks are relevant. Unless he has ties to any nationalist terrorists in that region …”
“Not that I’ve noticed,” I say. “In the seven months of … our wedded life.”
“Last name?”
“Potter.”
Now the lawyer changed tacks and started trying to charm me, and in a low voice, completely inappropriate to the situation, said, “I bet I can guess his first name. Harry, right? ‘Potter’ has become a really popular name around here. And, strangely enough, all of the spouses who go by that name do indeed seem able to perform the most amazing miracles. So: on what grounds, exactly, ma’am, do you wish to divorce Mr. Potter?”
“Incompatibility, sex as part of nature, and … cryptorchidism.”
The lawyer picked up a dusty little book, perhaps a Bible, opened several already marked pages, saying regretfully, “According to the civilian code, that’s just not sufficient. There’s no basis for a divorce. Perhaps … he’s having an affair?”
At that moment (in the dream) I start losing what’s left of my grip on reality. “He does,” I say, “Hermione.”