Now the mother-daughter gained courage. What intuition she’d had, it turned out! She’d made this first step in her defense and immediately uncovered a plot! It was a battle of wills, clearly-and it had been joined!

She spent the night on the couch in the living room, then lay in wait for a day, plotting.

Her patience was rewarded: There came a noise from the bedroom, now covered in dust, the records fanned out across it, the echoes from yesterday still hanging in the air. In she went. A plot was clearly underfoot. Her ancient sofa bed stood there, unfolded. In the mornings she used to remove the bedding and place it under the sofa, then fold the whole thing, but at some point she’d stopped-after all, what was the point? Now the m-d (mother-daughter) grabs a hammer and lifts the mattress, sliding the records all to one side. Then she starts pulling out every screw from the frame. She is bent over under the dusty mattress, working frantically in the darkness. And once again it turns out she was right! The screws come out so easily; clearly they were on their way out already. Another day or two and the whole thing would have collapsed on its own. Once again she’s anticipated a terrorist attack. Once again she’s outwitted It.

Now the fold-out sofa won’t fold at all-so be it. Covered with debris, with dust, with a pile of records and her crumpled-up sheets, that’s just how it will remain forever, like a sacred funeral ground that you must give a kilometer’s berth to. Like the memorial to a terrible earthquake.

And now she must stay ahead, refuse whatever comes easily, seek new avenues, find what is still whole and unbroken.

With one blow of the hammer she smashes the television set. The noise is moderate. It was an old television, but it still showed all the programs, though now only in black and white.

She couldn’t have thought of a better plan. If It had wanted to strike a truly terrible blow, It would have blown up the television first. She could well imagine the results: her face cut by glass shards (she always placed herself right in front of the screen when she watched) and her apartment on fire. Everything burned. Including of course you-know-who, carried from the apartment in a body bag. It was the sort of thing they regularly showed on that very television.

And it is the most painful blow because television was everything to the m-d. It was her support, her joy, the center of her little household. It was to the television that she hurried when she returned home from grocery shopping. It was for the sake of the television that she’d pick up the free advertising supplements containing the TV guide. Nor would she throw them away afterward, but would pore over them sometimes, remembering.

Still the roof over her head is more valuable than television.

So as not to dwell on this painful dilemma (i.e., to be or not to be), the m-d takes all her clothes out of the wardrobe and shoves them into a big potato sack she finds under the pile of old rags in the cupboard. She’s been meaning to throw away that pile forever, but now it’ll have to wait-it is filled with worn-out jackets and skirts and rubber boots, all in case she decides to take a trip to the countryside, or, alternatively, if a war (or famine) breaks out and she has to evacuate. She also keeps her old curtains and blankets in there, including children’s blankets, in case the heat is shut off during the winter the way it was during the Siege. The cupboard is a monument to generations of poverty, whereas the wardrobe contains her current life. And so it is the clothes from the wardrobe that go straight into the potato sack.

It is dark already, on this second day of her counteroffensive, and she drags her sack of clothing-potatoes to the open window and pushes it out into the empty space beyond. In the sack are her blouses, dresses, a jacket, her winter coat. Her underwear, scarves, gloves, hats, berets, belts, kerchiefs. A good pair of winter hose. Pants. Three sweaters. Two full skirts and one midi-length skirt. And then her sheets-clean sheets, smelling of freshness and soap. All her towels. Her pillowcases and sheets, and duvets, one with embroidery. Oh, God. But at least they hadn’t been lost in the fire.

In the wake of her potato sack she launches a painting in a gold frame and three chairs, one after the other.

From down below she hears someone yelling, some curses, a hollow male cry.

She quickly closes the window. Phew.

There is nothing to wear now, just her bathrobe over her nightshirt and her last pair of underwear.

She lies down on the cot, on top of the old TV guides. The blanket and pillows remain in the bedroom, victims of the earthquake. She covers herself up with a fresh advertising supplement and goes to sleep.

In the morning, after a good night’s sleep, the m-d looks around and thinks that now she really fears nothing, absolutely nothing, and that now in fact she isn’t even afraid to abandon her current life, her household, the roof above her head.

She begins a gradual retreat from the apartment. Carefully the m-d steps through the doorway, leaving her keys in a purse on the table. But first she has to let her cat out.

She thinks about this for a while. Theoretically she could leave the cat inside the apartment, but the cat isn’t a strategically valuable object (supposedly) and isn’t worth sending into the Creature’s maw. That is, the sacrifice of a living thing was never part of her battle plan. The m-d wishes to be harder on herself than on her cat. The question is, whom will it be worse for, her or her cat, when m-d begins her new life, without anything, but still somehow hearing the fading sounds of the meowing, straining, locked-in Lulu. The m-d begins debating herself-it would still be worse for the cat, she decides. Who was Lulka that someone should take the trouble to starve her to death? Just an accidental animal, taken down, once, from a tree.

Trying not to think about it too hard, the m-d decides to kick the cat out of the apartment. But here an interesting thing happens. The m-d is prepared for life on the outside-but the cat is not. When the m-d picks her up and drapes her over her elbow, determined to carry her out with her, the cat begins to shake with tiny tremors, like a boiling kettle. Like the suburban train right before it sets off. Like a very sick child in the grip of fever. The cat is shaking-fearing, it seems, for its life.

“What is it?” the m-d asks soothingly. “What are we afraid of? Come on, kitty. You were always trying to run out. So run. Run for your life!”

It’s true-the cat was always rushing out to the stairs, or guarding the door, driving everyone crazy with her hoarse moans. She cried at night. But it was dangerous to let her out-what if she never returned? After all, the m-d loved animals. Even if, just now, she doesn’t.

Joyful, alive, she drops the cat to the floor on the landing outside the apartment and then slams the door behind them both-there!

In a robe and slippers, she stands at the precipice of her new fate. She is her own master: she’s defeated the Creature. It can romp and slither around all it wants, if it intends to follow her, in these huge wide-open spaces of the great outdoors.

The cat sits on its tail as if it’s been kicked. It huddles down pitifully and looks somehow… pensive. The woman descends half a flight of stairs and turns around: The cat sits frozen still and staring straight ahead, its eyes filmed over as if with cataracts, its pupils like little black seeds drowning in the green lakes that are its eyes. Its little face looks bony. Its skull suddenly emerges, it seems, and you can see its outline under the cat’s black fur. Death itself is on that stairwell, dressed up in a thin fur coat.