The Persian cat arrived at the Margulises’ exactly twenty years after the last cut-glass goblet had been shattered. ‘It was the only cat in the Valley that wouldn’t drink milk with a skin on it.’ Riva was sure that it too was a gift from her parents and called it Bulgakov in honour of a young Russian cat lover she had once met at the writers’ club in Kiev.
‘I don’t care if you smear me with a hiveful of honey,’ she told her husband. ‘This cat is mine, not the village’s. It’s not going to plough or pull carts or be milked by anyone.’
She tied wine-red ribbons around Bulgakov’s neck and put out a wooden box of fine white sand for him. At lunchtime the handsome beast ate his first meal with the family.
The next day Riva Margulis took him to the village shop with her.
‘You’re making a big mistake, Riva,’ said Fanya Liberson, who noticed the cat’s crestfallen look at the sight of the poorly stocked shelves. ‘That’s no cat for a village like this. Either he’ll suffer or we will.’
In answer Riva simply petted Bulgakov. His soft fur restored the smoothness to her blistered hands and turned her husband’s dusty hayloft into a Ukrainian manor house festooned with golden ivy.
Margulis had nothing against it. ‘Just make sure he keeps away from the hives,’ he said. ‘And he’d better not touch my Italian bees.’
Riva was a fiend for cleanliness, and Bulgakov was the only member of the Margulis household who was allowed to enter every room and sit on the antimacassars. As soon as the cat snuggled up on the sofa cover, every particle of dust disappeared and the air was filled with the subtle smell of berries in sour cream and the swish of serving girls’ legs. Bulgakov shunned the hives, never climbed trees or hunted mice in the hayloft, and stood his ground when attacked by Rilov’s dogs, studiously raising a large paw at the offender while baring his sharp claws one by one like a series of lightning bolts.
Three years passed in this fashion until, strolling through the fields one night with a lordly expression of boredom on his face, Bulgakov found himself in the thicket by the spring and soon met the wildcat, the eagle owl, and the mongoose. Although no one knew exactly what transpired there, his lifestyle underwent a drastic change. First he altered his meow to a hoarse, raucous screech; next he lost his good manners and became brusque, short-tempered, and violent. But though everyone noticed it, no one guessed what it would lead to. As always in our village, the warning signs were ignored. Had not the villagers already seen dogs run off to howl with the jackals, farmers’ sons abscond for the city, calves elope with water buffalo? ‘To say nothing,’ added Uri, ‘of the time one of Rilov’s carrier pigeons flew away to nest in the cliffs with the wild rock doves and gave away all his military secrets.’ No one suspected for a moment, however, that such would be the fate of Bulgakov, not even when he cropped his magnificent fur to an evil crewcut, grew tufts of savage black lynx hair on his ears, and finally ran away from home, leaving an amazed Margulis and a shocked Riva behind.
Riva went to look for him, scattering fried livers, beloved cream dishes, and piles of pure kitty sand in the fields – all in vain. Sometimes she saw him flit like a shadow among the fruit trees. Once she ran after him, begging him to come home. But Bulgakov merely bared his fangs at her and hissed. An overwhelming smell of rotten meat and digestive acids seeped from his gullet. Riva went home in tears and spent the night scrubbing door handles with lemon juice and brass polish.
His lust for murder caused Bulgakov to strew the chicken coops with hundreds of slit-necked, blood-spangled birds. Like all born-again evangelicals, he observed the commandments of his new life with uncompromising zealotry. So ferocious was he that the chickens, who generally made an insane racket at the slightest danger, were struck dumb when his handsome face appeared outside the wire fences of their homes. Ravaging whole coops of young Anconas, he wreaked the greatest havoc on his ex-masters. Try as they might to trap and ambush him, the farmers met with no success. They even brought a Druze hunter from the mountain, but when the devilish beast leaped on his neck and ripped his shirt and cap, the man turned pale and went home muttering prayers.
Desperately Margulis turned to Rilov, who summoned two old Watchmen from the Galilee. And yet their riding boots, old Arab cloaks, Mauser pistols, and secret passwords did not impress the cat at all. Slippery and clever, he knew the ways of men too well to be fooled by traps and poisoned meat. And he was as noiseless as a cloud.
‘I’m sure he has the chickens so scared that they actually open the gate for him,’ said Margulis to Grandfather and Efrayim.