REFLECTION. Michael Blekhman

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СКАЧАТЬ House where Maria worked and that looked like it was trying to soar over the square as a still sleepy morning sun. They walked by the solemn Gosprom sky-scraper, by the Pioneers' Palace and by Shevchenko's monument.

      Vladimir Fedorovich held on to Klara's hand really hard because if you don't hold on to her you'll have a hard time catching up with her. He was wearing a white linen suit and a canotier hat. They walked slowly while Klara was telling him about the shocking discovery she had made before going out: the last Russian tsar Nicholas (the one Vladimir Fedorovich contemptuously referred to as Nikolashka) and a King of Great Britain (Edward or George) looked like two peas in a pod. Actually, they looked like a single pea. The only difference between them was that the king could be found on a stamp while the tsar was on a coin. Vladimir Fedorovich smiled while trying to steer the conversation towards Papanin's expedition. Klara, however, was as impossible to distract from her line of reasoning as Maria.

      Vladimir Fedorovich, just hear this out," she prattled on. "They even have the same beard! I mean, beards. And moustaches. Everything is completely the same! How can that be?"

      "Why are you so interested in their beards?" Vladimir Fedorovich smiled, looking joyfully at passers-by, proud of his erudite and sharp-eyed daughter.

      "Hallo, Volodia! Hallo, Klarochka!" were they greeted by Zinovi. "What are you discussing that's so much fun?"

      "Dad, get this, our tsars – ours and the British one – are probably the same person!" announced Klara her greatest, earth-shattering piece of news.

      Zinovi kissed both of her dimpled cheeks and shook Vladimir Fedorovich's hand.

      "What a child, this one!" smiled Vladimir Fedorovich smiled while lighting a cigarette he took out of an unusually-looking beautiful wooden box. "Since when are they ours, these guys? Tsar Nikolashka, may the devil take him, was overthrown, so to say, a long time ago."

      "They don't have a tsar in Great Britain, they have a king," Zinovi added, partaking from Vladimir Fedorovich's beautiful box. "How are you getting on, Volodia? What's new?"

      "We are on our way to the zoo, Zinovi," Vladimir Fedorovich said. "Maria is at work, so I took a day off. We were planning to go yesterday but the weather was bad."

      "As for me, I like any kind of weather," Zinovi said. "I don't care what weather it is, as long as it is."

      "I couldn't agree more, Zinovi," nodded Vladimir Fedorovich. "Still, it's better to walk to the zoo when it's dry than to trudge through the mud."

      "That's true," Zinovi either sighed or inhaled the smoke, Klara couldn't tell. "But you and I both know that one day there will be no weather at all…"

      He laughed and added, "So let it be any kind of weather!"

      Vladimir Fedorovich nodded again. Zonovi shook his hand and kissed Klara.

      "Dad, listen," Klara kept trying to convince him either to understand or to stay. "How can he be a king if he looks just like the tsar?"

      Zinovi hugged her, winked at Vladimir Fedorovich, and offered a Solomonic decision,

      "Honey, deep down inside every king wants to be a tsar while every tsar considers himself a king. You, however, are better than any princess or tsarevna. Isn't that so, Volodia?"

      "Of course!" Vladimir Fedorovich confirmed. "Sometimes she misbehaves a little but princesses and tsarevnas should be allowed a little leeway there."

      Zinovi smiled, waved good-bye and went in the direction that was opposite from theirs. Probably, he was going back to his place on Mayakovskaya Street.

      IX

      Klara and Vladimir Fedorovich were approaching the gates of the zoo when they saw a tiny little dog whom Klara took for a wind-up mouse looking like a tiny little dog. The mouse was dragging behind a corpulent lady who looked as proud and grandiose as the Salamander House on Sumskaya Street or even as Gosprom itself. The mouse was sniffing around on the sidewalk and in the grass next to it. Klara forgot all about the unexplained likeness between the two kings, or, rather, a king and a tsar, and began considering whether the mouse would succeed in dragging the lady to the bushes when something unexpected happened.

      Another couple caught up with the lady and the mouse, consisting of a huge black dog wearing no muzzle ("It's a German shepherd," Vladimir Fedorovich explained while bending to Klara) and leading on a leather leash a lady with an intellectual look and an indistinct coloring similar to that of the German church on Pushkinskaya Street. This lady's figure reminded Klara of a yoke placed in an upright position. The three of them – the huge dog, the leather leash and the yoke – looked like an integral whole.

      "A big black bug bit a big black dog on his big… " Klara quoted.

      The more dogs Klara met, the clearer it became to her that dogs cannot be separated from their owners, even though people who said that dogs and their owners looked alike were wrong according to her observations. The king, as she suddenly remembered, truly looked like the tsar, while the mouse and the huge dog had nothing in common with their human companions. That was something to make one wonder.

      At that point, the mouse noticed the huge German dog, opened her microscopic maw that hardly deserved the name it was so tiny, yelped and started squealing with such an abandon that Klara's hand that was being held by Vladimir Fedorovich got sweaty with fear. The mouse was jumping up, propelling itself into the air, trying to reach the huge dog and only getting as high as the ankle of the big lady holding her on a leash. "If only the mouse were wearing a white linen shirt," Klara mused, "it would have bravely torn it open on its chest." Although, there was as little chest on that dog as there were maw.

      The huge dog paid no attention to the mouse's squealing and continued on her way without even straining the leash. The mouse, however, squealed with such desperation that the German dog decided to bring her out of her fit of hysteria. She turned around, uttered a thoughtful bark, and continued leading her owner on her way.

      In response, the lions and the coyotes of the neighboring zoo recognized a familiar sound and howled in response. The crows let out their trademark nevermores. The trolleys on Sumskaya Street froze in their tracks.

      "… black nose," Klara finished the quote.

      Seeing all the trouble she caused, the big dog sighed and led her lady friend away, still without even straining her leash ("to avoid stumbling over it," suggested Vladimir Fedorovich, who didn't look in the least scared.)

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