The City with the Name of Wind. Татьяна Зубкова

favourite flowers, in the toilet.

      Chapter 2

      The plane began to shook more and more, up and down, up and down: up and down, up and down, up and down. Outside the window, the giant Moon floated, and if it was not seventy degrees below zero outside one could touch it. I managed to doze off. And I had this weird dream, in which I was the Egyptian goddess Bastet, but with the face and tail of the Siamese cat, naked, with an outrageous manicure on extended, up to ten centimetres, nails, with the images of Oriental women on the bright, shiny, dark purple background.

      The plane began to shake somewhere over India, and I continued to indulge myself in the dream. That goddess-cat-lioness was very musical and sexy. At the celebration in her honour, women, wearing long white clothing over naked body, floated in the boat, turned their back to people standing on the shore, lifted up skirts, and showed their bottoms to the crowd under applause. At these celebrations, people drank more wine than in a year, and lust was a mandatory part – all this was considered a very positive aspect of the cat. When the sun’s rays are no longer visible to the human eye, they are reflected in the phosphorescent eyes of the cat, like the Moon reflects the light of the Sun.

      I dreamed of being Bastet in the Siamese version, naked, but with the animal grin, big eyes, in which elongated pupils in the form of grains of almond covered almost completely blue eyes, a fanged mouth, occupying most of the muzzle – face, and beside me, there is the sun god Ra, which is usually with the head of a falcon, but may be in the form of a great cat. In the dream, I, screaming, biting and moaning, dealt with Ra in the form of a large Siamese cat, with whom, according to the legends, I was in both sexual and kindred relationship – some sort of incest of father-daughter love type!

      Chapter 3

      Six years prior to this flight, we lived together: Me, my friend and the Siamese cat. The cat’s body was thin, very flexible, coloured like milk with coffee, upon which there was a triangular head with huge, slanting almond-shaped eyes that changed colour from greyish blue to almost transparent, bright blue. Big, locator-like triangular ears stuck out on the head. The fur was very short, tightly coated the body and was unrealistically warm and pleasant to touch. With a long tail in the form of a whip, she could even hurt while playing! She sat down opposite me at the table, at which I was working, looked me in the eye, and read my mind.

      I used to go for a walk with my Siamese. During one of our promenades, the Persian cat of my neighbour warmed himself on the bench outside the house. My Siamese made a winning cry! Only the Siamese know how to use their vocal ligaments, changing the tone and the pitch of the sound to express their demands and feelings. Her not a little but a big muzzle turned into a solid mouth, and she, as I clearly felt the by the remnants of my animal instinct, was going to tear up the Persian cat! I became the third cat in this war and, mostly due to my weight, managed to resist the killing of the Persian! But my Siamese warrior was unhappy with this interference and skinned my hand badly in the heat of the moment. The owner of the cat ran up and began swearing that I had not brought up the cat well. Oh dear, what a mess: no child, no husband, no dog! And, frankly, I have no faith in education and re-education! But the lady, wailing and cursing, stuck to a completely different opinion and shouted:

      – Like mommy, like the cat!

      I cannot stand it at all! Women give birth to boys and girls! Bitches – to puppies! Cats – to kittens! And, having hissed, I said:

      You are a bitch! – I confused a cat with a dog! My Siamese hissed too, and we proudly, with a triumphant expression on our faces-muzzles, marched back home! And the lady dragged her shivering, ragged and damaged pet, beloved by neighbours and the family. I did not hold my pretty cat in my hands. And she did not like it! And she, snorting and still being unable to calm down, as she had not been allowed to enjoy the victory, followed me to the elevator, and then to the apartment. I did not even wash her paws. I even wash her paws was gone. She rubbed against my legs, meowing gutturally but obviously not asking for forgiveness: I did not let her go hunting, you see! I was scared. My hand burned. I treated it with peroxide and bandaged. Then, I called the breeder who had sold me the cat. All over the world, the owners of the Siamese cats are servants of some cult, which has existed for many hundreds of years. I asked her at once:

      – Listen! My cat scratched me! Maybe, she has rabies. Do I have to get a rabies vaccination?

      The breeder, as always, sided with cats:

      – And how did you interrupt her? What did you do wrong?

      – I stopped her from tearing apart the Persian cat!

      – Oh dear! You got off easy: what was the need to disturb cats? They are not fighting dogs, aren’t they? They would sort everything out themselves! – She said with confidence.

      I did everything right! You are cut from the same cloth! I see this now! – I commented her words tactlessly and hang up. I slammed the bedroom door in front of the pink little nose and went to bed.

      I read a lot about the Siamese cats and I found out somewhere that, although the number of the Siamese cats was growing, they could not forget their ancestors. There were rumours that the owners of the Siamese cats knowingly created shortages of this breed. But I know: they do not do that. Cats themselves limit their number on the Earth in some mysterious way! From the very beginning, the Siamese cats are the masters of their owners. They have a unique character, and their appearance hypnotises their owners for more than several hundreds of years! Cats in Siam were always surrounded by legends. According to one of them, one day, when all the men of Siam went to defend their country, the male cat Tien and the female cat Chuda remained to protect the Buddha’s gold cup. And none of the enemies could touch it.

      I also read that in 1926, when the young king of Siam was crowned, during his march to the Throne Hall, chamberlains of the court carried a white Siamese cat. The temple cats of the country, especially with golden eyes and black fur, played their part in religious ceremonies. They were often closed in gold cages, in front of which people lit frankincense and gave them edible offerings. Two hundred years ago, the Siamese cats could only be found in that part of the royal city of Bangkok, where the monarch and his court lived. At the end of the nineteenth century, the wife of the British Consul bought two cats and took them to Europe. In England, the demand for them immediately arose.

      My cat, like a dog, stood close to the bed on the mat and waited: to jump on the bed when I wake up. Therefore, upon waking up, opening the eyes was a death like: either lie with your eyes closed or be free to comply with kitty’s rituals. The Siamese cat was a descendant of cats of Eastern princesses and treated the rituals seriously. And they, these rituals, were given together and conquested both by the war and by negotiations, and even sealed with the blood of two equally temperament beings: women and cats.

      One jump, and with a triumphant cry, she jumped on the bed, jumped several times on the blanket that covered me and climbed under my hand for affection. Then, she usually jumped down, and I had to follow her to the kitchen, take capelin out of the fridge and thaw it, since no Kitekat or some other newfangled thing did not help. The gentle kitty turned into some cougar. With a scary, even some vicious, intrauterine rumbling, my Siamese decapitated capelin, put heads in one pile and carcases in another. I could not understand the secret of this culinary cutting for a long time because heads were eaten, like carcases, sometimes alternately with them. Then, I guessed it: it was some ancient instinct of a fisherman, programmed into the gene. Having caught fish, it was necessary to immobilise it for not to sail back into the ice stream that might be still running over the stones of some foreign country, the home to the kitty’s ancestors.

      And I ground coffee that I often brought from overseas trips as coffee tasted differently in every country. I put cezve on the stove, then drank my favourite drink, and took a shower. The cat did not follow me. She knew that I would come home in the evening, tired and often almost sick, and she would comfort, lick and heal me long and carefully. In the end, she would lie on my heart. I would fall asleep, anxiously turning over in my sleep… Then, it would be very hard for the cat. But these were the rules of living together: one had to be useful to another.

      My Siamese was completely extraordinary. When I was writing something at the table (I did not type everything on the computer at that time) she usually