The same people who had ignored Zoya’s desperate shout for help now paid no attention to Max’s, though his were far more terrible. He shrieked and clawed, whined and rasped through the whole messy, wet transformation; a high tearing wail screeched like a chorus of screeching kettle whistles as his vocal cords shriveled down and his throat constricted. Bones snapped as they were condensed and the room filled with the smell of the burning marrow and melting flesh as the heat of the boiling blood filled the room. His eyes changed last as he lay there, small weakened, and still pink from the raw, throbbing change. Then the black fur came out and a last shrill-pitched squeal emerged from him, but it was Saturday night in a mining town and everyone was deaf to the cries of a girl being raped and a rat being born.
Once changed, he had not run away but had lain still on the bare wood floor, looking up at her through terrified eyes. The sickness and dizziness from the spell overcame her and she vomited in the chamber pot. Then she curled up in a ball on the bed and fell asleep. When she awoke, the rat was still there, sitting up as if waiting for her. Perhaps he thought this was a temporary condition, that she would help him now that the lesson had been learned, or perhaps he was simply terrified of the new, unknown wilderness of hungry house cats, birds of prey, and dogs trained to slay vermin that lay beyond the door. She had thought of killing him then and there, she told the women, but that seemed too merciful an end. Still angry, she wanted him to live out his days as the pathetic little rodent he was. So she tucked him into her dress and staggered back to their campsite.
The rat ended up being useful. Through the unpredictable twist of spells, he had wound up capable of sniffing out any trail across every landscape and in all seasons, no matter how hard the frost or how flooded the roads. They had lost and found Max numerous times over the years, for at the first sign of real trouble he would always run off scared, disappearing for weeks, even months. But then he would pop up again, sniffing his way back to their side. His brother, too, the once innocent Andrei, who had found them at the campsite, proved to be bonded to Max by some tenuous but true sense of loyalty that made him, from time to time, a handy tool. Two bewitched brothers, she thought, each living a very different life from the one they had each intended, all because of a woman whose path they stumbled across, a woman they made the mistake of underestimating. Therein lies so much of history.
Elga pulled the car to a stop in front of the bank and looked down at the rat, who was now awake, sitting glumly in the girl’s lap. “It’s not so bad, Max. Think where you would have wound up if you’d never met us? A block of ice in some Siberian grave, tucked in with all those other bad Bolsheviks.” The rat did not answer.
Inside, Elga found the bank empty of customers. She walked up to the lone teller sitting at his window, a bright and ambitious young man named François Collet. Elga quickly went to work. It was merely a matter of transferring between accounts to cover some bills, she told Monsieur Collet—and cash, she needed some cash too. She had an account, but stupidly she could not remember the number. But she had already been there earlier that morning, did he not remember her? She was quite positive he had written the account number down for her. He smiled politely and said that he did not recall her but then again perhaps he did. He felt confused. The morning had been a busy one. He proceeded to look through the ledger. She hummed high and low notes, and clucked with her tongue. Anyone listening would have thought she sounded ridiculous. But François did not seem to hear her. He did, however, almost absentmindedly, hand over every franc note he had in his drawer, a considerable sum. He even waved as she waddled off, shouting after her,
