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Read Russia 2nd pass:Layout 1 5/2/12 1:03 AM Page 15
O L G A
S L A V N I K O V A
Basileus
Translated by Andrew Bromfield
The pretext for the relationship between Elizaveta Nikolaevna Rakitina
and Pavel Ivanovich Ertel was a cat, a flop-eared pedigree Scottish
Fold tom, who in his declining feline years resembled most of all a
Russian peasant in a fur cap with earflaps and a thick sheepskin coat with its
seams burst in places. Despite his venerable age, however, the cat’s copperred
eyes blazed with dangerous fire and anyone who reached out an uninvited
hand to him was awarded a decoration of parallel bloody scratches. The
cat’s name was Basileus.
About once a week, after first phoning and receiving an invitation, Ertel
went to Elizaveta Nikolaevna’s place for tea. The tea at Elizaveta Nikolaevna’s
place was reddish-black, with a distinct flavor of tap water, and when she
handed a trembling cup to her guest, a puddle splashed out into the saucer.
The old apartment loathed the sunlight. Every window here was a stage with
a velvet curtain and its own depth; but when a shaft of light did surmount the
friction of the glass and reach into a faintly glimmering room, the dust that
started dancing in it was so dense and shaggy, it looked like the swaying of
seaweed in the beam of a bathyscaphe’s searchlight. In the drawing room,
which Ertel entered wearing an embarrassed smile and the large, rubberized
slippers of the apartment’s former master (as if this place might really be
flooded), a small chandelier of braided beads was always lit. By the glow of
its little yellowish bonfire it was possible to make out the volutes and
curlicues of the incredibly heavy, densely cluttered furniture, the broken
shelves and the porcelain figurines that looked like melted portions of ice
cream. Elizaveta Nikolaevna’s laptop looked strange in this outmoded inte-