Noble Rogues
Goodbye to Kaunas
When I was still a kitten, I spent a lot of time in the nursery. I liked the way the children laughed when I tried to catch a piece of paper tied to a thread, and I also liked the Japanese folk tales Setsuko told them. Only when I was a bit older, no longer a ball of fluff but a gracious beast, I began to distrust her, Setsuko, or rather her tales.
Once, when she was angry with the maid, she told us about Akaname, the Japanese spirit who comes at night to lick the bathtub if it wasn’t properly scrubbed in the evening. Once, when she was angry with the maid, she told us about Akaname, the Japanese spirit who comes at night to lick the bathtub if it wasn’t properly scrubbed in the evening. Illustration 0801 Akaname in bathroom Crawling on the wall. Long tongue. Slime around feet and hands. I spent all night by the bathroom door, lurking to see this Akaname, her long dribbling tongue licking the uncleaned edges of the bathtub, but didn’t get to see a shadow of a mouse.
And when I heard a tale about a tricolor cat with two tails - it was dancing and singing for an old lady every night, asking not to tell anyone, and when she told her husband, the cat slaughtered her, - I felt deeply offended and left the room without even listening to the end of the story.
We cats really don’t slaughter chatty old ladies - we much prefer sparrows. The bad thing is that in August sparrows leave the city, because the harvest is being cleaned in the fields and those nitwits hope to find some leftover grain. Sugiharas also seem to be moving away: I’ve heard that more than one telegram arrived from the Japanese Foreign Ministry - with an order to immediately close the consulate and leave the country, because the Soviets have finally taken full power, the borders will be closed soon and they won’t be able to leave.
There is still a queue of people by the house, I’ve already got used to Chiune never leaving his office for lunch or dinner, writing and writing visas, his tired gaunt face turning more and more sad. Setsuko folds the children’s clothes and puts them in a suitcase, Yukiko walks around the house deciding which larger items could be shipped earlier. More and more often I find her thoughtfully sliding the door to the living room: when you push it into the wall, it hides, when you pull it out, it emerges again, I have to be careful so it won’t pinch my tail.
And then they all go to the Metropolis Hotel, leaving me in the care of the maid. Several times I follow the smell of my masters through the city and actually reach the hotel, but they never let me inside. From the outside it looks just like the former consulate: a queue of people applying for visas - does it mean that Chiune continues to work as a consul in this hotel, while waiting for the train?
When I get back to our house, which is no longer a consulate, I look around for the maid so that I could complain to her about my feet sore from running around Kaunas - but I find her in tears! She no longer has a job. I am a poor cat left behind by the masters, she is a poor maid left behind by the masters. The new Soviet government says that there is no God, and therefore no St. Zita’s Order, only normal worker unions. Also, the new Russian government says there are and cannot be any masters, so there can be no maids, too.
As soon as it gets dark, Gudze sneaks into the empty consulate, looking around carefully. He jokes with the maid, scratches my chin, then looks for something in the former Decoding Room. Soon the door of the consulate is shaken by blows: someone is knocking, I hear a dog barking, so I just hiss and hide behind the rolled up carpets.
“Open up, militsiya!” someone screams,
“We are looking for Wolfgang Gudze, a dangerous German Gestapo agent, open up!”
