I wasn’t completely sure what Lyosha had done with the pistol I’d handed him, but I was certain I didn’t want the details. And for me, who ALWAYS wants the details of EVERYTHING, even something as banal as a trip to the dry cleaners, my lack of interest in the events of the night before was a signal that some reptilian part of my brain – the part responsible for survival – had switched on and taken over. I never once consciously thought about what the previous night suggested; about who I was really living with and what he was capable of, about the high likelihood that whoever Lyosha was tangling with would one evening sometime very soon kick down our door and spray us both with gunfire. I didn’t consciously think about these things as I held halting, confusing conversations with leasing agents, as I counted the savings I had left and calculated what my $400 per month salary would afford me. I didn’t consciously think about what Lyosha would do on the morning he woke to find me gone, or on the day that he caught sight of me on the street. I didn’t consciously think about anything at all, as a matter of fact.
I would spend the final week that I lived with Lyosha feeling like the protagonist of a Lifetime made-for-TV movie. Keeping as low a profile as possible, being cheerful but not too cheerful lest he become suspicious, cringing every time the phone rang because I was sure Lyosha would answer it to find a realtor returning my call. I was playing a game with Lyosha, one where he would believe everything was absolutely normal while I smiled and cooked and plotted. If I won this game the prize would be an apartment I could barely afford in a section of town I did not know. I’d be nervous, and lonely, and disoriented, and alive. That was as good as it would get.
Fortunately, I had other consolations. That Monday at our weekly staff meeting, Brad, the layout guy, told a story that piqued everyone’s curiosity. Brad and his girlfriend Caroline had foolishly assumed that the movie theater near Brad’s apartment – which advertised its schedule on posters outside of the metro – was actually showing movies. When they arrived at the theater to watch the movie that the theater had said would be running, they were surprised to find the place locked up tight. Undaunted, they banged on the doors and after a while an old woman poked her head out. “What do you want?” she snapped.
“Uh, we want to see a movie?” replied Brad, who had a flair for the obvious.
“Impossible!” barked the old lady, “The kittens are all sleeping now! Would you like to buy a ticket for next week?”
“Next week?” said Brad, “No! We want to see the movie now, not next week.”
The woman frowned. “What movie?”
“The movie playing in this movie theater.” Brad pointed at a sign near the door that said “Movie Theater” to bolster his case.
“This is not a movie theater,” said the old lady.
“Well then, what is it?”
“It’s the cat circus,” said the woman.
Oh, well, cat circus, movie theater…the confusion is understandable. It’s an easy mistake to make. Brad related this story to the rest of the staff at the Guardian and suggested that the cat circus might make for an interesting entry in the “Around Moscow” section of the magazine.
“Do you want to do it?” asked Jason.
“No,” said Brad through clenched teeth, “I do not want to go to the cat circus. I want to see a movie.”
“Oh oh, pick me! Pick me!” I bounced in my seat and waved my arms, excited. What could be better than going to a cat circus? The whole idea was so strange, and so wrong for so many reasons. Who would even come up with an idea like this? When a person goes to see a circus, she goes to see something different. Something unique. She doesn’t pay good money to watch the creature she sees every damn day whether she wants to or not. Elephants? Tigers? Bears on balls? OK! Hell, even a couple of raccoons in a trash can would be exotic enough to justify leaving your house a on weeknight and dropping 50 rubles. But cats? And then, what would these cats, animals notorious for their ability to sleep for days at a time and for their lack of concern about whether you’re having any fun or not; what would these cats do at the circus? Hairball hacking, butt licking, ankle twining, playing with the occasional string – these were the most interesting activities I’d seen cats engage in. If these Russian folks could dress this up into a spectacle worth seeing…well, it’d be interesting enough just to see them try.
On the other hand, growing up in Florida I had spent many hours at various “theme parks” staring at alligators sleeping in murky enclosures or looking at dusty dioramas portraying Ponce De Leon’s first meeting with the natives. And far from being bad, boring memories, they were the threads that made the fabric of life in Florida special. They were the things that were strange and interesting, and that I loved, about my home state. Maybe this cat circus would turn out to be the quaint Russian version of Weeki-Wachee. At the very least, the cat circus would get me out of the house for an evening and away from the mafia hit I was certain was immanent.
Sadly, five minutes into the show, I realized that my first assessment of the cat circus had been the correct one. Bored, mildly annoyed cats sat on boxes while unsavory-looking adult “clowns” capered around them to the tinny music issuing from a boom box on the edge of the stage. A cat sat on a skateboard and rolled halfway across the stage, and then sat on the skateboard some more. They stepped daintly through hoops held up by the clapping, snapping master of ceremonies, then sat down and washed their ears. As the cats wandered listlessly around the stage, sniffing at the moth-eaten curtain, the human members of the show tried to salvage the evening by involving the audience in the spectacle. They dragged mortified adults out of their seats and lobbed rings at them, or drew unflattering caricatures of them that the other audience members laughed at derisively. In a more litigious society, this theater would have closed down long before, crushed by lawsuits filed by audience members who were forced into the act and thus had their characters defamed and their credibility ruined. The program the old woman had given me at the door proclaimed that the cat circus was “World Famous in Japan.” But as talented as this may have meant the clowns were, the cats were obviously the smartest members of the troupe.
Dismayed, I decided to try my luck with the Theater of Mice. I’m not making this up; when Brad announced the existence of the cat circus, our Russian translator, Julia, had spoken up and said, “You mean the Theater of Mice?”
This of course meant that in addition to a cat circus, there was also in Moscow a mouse theater. And since I was already covering the cats, Jason decided I should round out the week with a visit to the mice.
So, a day after the cat debacle, I called the telephone number Julia had provided me with.
“Hello?”
“Hello. Is this the Theater of Mice?”
“What?”
“The mouse theater. Is this the mouse theater?”
“No!” Click.
The next day, I tried again. I dialed the same number, and after a few rings someone who sounded very similar to the person I’d spoken with the day before answered.
“Hello. Is this the Theater of Mice?”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“Where are you located?”
“On Ilidorovno Street.”
“OK. Can I get tickets there?”
“No. You must call 947-30-42.”
Obediently, I hung up and called the number. “Hello. Do you have tickets for the Theater of Mice?”
“The what?”
“THE THEATER OF MICE. The mouse theater! Do you have tickets?”
“No.” Click.
Wise to the way these things worked by now, I called right back. The very same woman answered. “Tickets to the mouse theater?” the woman sounded smooth and professional, “Da, we have them.”
“Great! Where are you located?”
“We are located on Bluhskivnayaostenkostrovnaskiblah Street.”
“What?” I yelled into the phone, “Where?”
“On Verablahdniskosternoblednaya Street.”
Still not understanding the woman, I gave up and said, “Oh-kay…what metro stop are you near?”
“TAGANSKAYA!” shouted the woman, slamming down the phone.
The next day, I got on the metro and went to the Taganskaya stop. Outside the station, on the pedestrian plaza, was a metal tubular structure with a sign on the outside that said “KACCA” (tickets). Could this be the very kacca that sold mouse theater tickets? I decided to ask.
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman behind the glass, “Do you sell mouse theater tickets here?”
“No!” said the woman crossly. I sighed and rode the metro all the way back home. When I got there, I decided to try one last time. I called the number that Julia had given me. Soon, a woman answered. “Theater of Mice,” she said.
“Hello,” I said, momentarily stunned, “Can I buy tickets for today’s performance?”
“Of course!” said the woman. She gave me directions to the theater, and off I went to catch the 5:00 matinee.
When I arrived at the theater, a huge building painted bright blue and sporting a sculpture of a dancing elephant on its roof, I stood in line with approximately 6 million five-year-olds and their two harried mothers. I began to feel strange as the people in front of me asked for their tickets. “Five, please.” “Twelve, please.” “Four thousand, please.”
At last, it was my turn. “One please,” I whispered to the woman in the booth.
“ONE?” yelled the ticket lady as the mothers around me pulled their charges closer to them, eyeing me suspiciously. “You’re ALONE?”
Ashamed, wishing fervently that I had rented a kid or two before coming here, I took my ticket and slunk into the theater lobby. I stood in line for cotton candy, noting that it cost twice as much as the ticket to the show did. I made my purchase and went into the auditorium to take my seat. As I was getting settled, a little girl in the row in front of me turned around and stared at me. “Mama!” she yelled at the top of her lungs, “Look! The lonely girl has cotton candy!”
Finally, the show began. Unlike the cat circus, the people running this show had the sense to let the animals stand on their own instead of trying and failing to get them to do tricks. And also unlike the cat circus, these animals were unique and interesting to watch. A baby elephant, several colorful tropical birds, snakes and ferrets – this was less a show and more like a visit to an exotic pet store. And although there was not one mouse in evidence the entire time, I didn’t mind. I sat in the warm theater and ate my cotton candy and looked around me at the kids and their parents having fun, and forgot about everything for a while.
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