REFLECTION. Michael Blekhman

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.)