The Rat Remover
Seymur Baycan
Coming home before 22:00 is bad luck for me. Each time I come home before 22:00, things go wrong and something stupid happens that upsets and saddens me. That’s why I prefer walking on the Boulevard in the fresh air, sitting at tea houses with my friends, drinking some tea and talking about literature, about history, sharing what I know, learning what I don’t; which is pleasant, rather than going home earlier.
I have not slept properly for three days. I suffer from insomnia. Only the fatigue made me go home before 22:00. All I wanted was to eat a little bit, drink a cup of tea before going to bed and having a proper rest. But this time too I had to pay a high price for coming back home earlier.
There was no disruption in the tradition. My mother opened the door as soon as I knocked on it and without greeting me or asking how I was, she said in a panic:
- A rat got into the house. It chewed the edge of the curtain, the carpet and the TV. Our home is in ruins.
To prove how dramatic the situation was she added:
- It ate your father’s photo too. The rat is ruining our home. I can’t get it out. It’s good that you came. Change your clothes and get the rat out.
I was in no mood to get the rat out in such a sleepless state. Moreover, I am scared of rats. I first saw a rat when I came to Baku. I heard of rats before I saw them. ‘Hear the name of the brave, do not see his face,’ as a Turkish proverb goes.
The first time I came to Baku, “Anar is a rat,” was written on a wall on Lenin Avenue. In the town where I was born and grew up, there were no rats. The rats lived only in the big cities, and the settlements with railway stations. The rats got on the passenger or freight trains and traveled all around the country. In the town where I grew up, there was no railway station, so they couldn’t make their way to our site. I heard a lot about them, I knew that rats can climb up whatever they want, they can enter wherever they want, they gnaw and destroy whatever they want, and I knew that they breed fast.
The first time I saw a rat in front of the children’s hospital on Liberty -formerly Lenin- Avenue I was scared to death. Although I was terrified, I was stuck and stared at that big mouse. I had never seen such a creature with a long tail before. It was at least ten times bigger than the mice I had seen in my hometown. Afterwards, I came across rats more often.
Just like in the meatpacking industry, when the bakeries, department stores, gristmills that were built during the Soviet times were demolished, the rats settled down in those premises and quickly multiplied around the country. Every now and then you stumbled upon them.
The rats lived together with the people. In the metro station named after Republic Day “28 May”, the rats would walk between the railways. Those waiting for a train would throw them seeds. The rats would run away when the approaching train’s lights reflected on the railways. As soon as the train left the station, they would get out of the ratholes again and start to walk in between the railways.
My mother was talking nonstop, she urged me to get the rat away from home. She repeated that the rat had eaten my late father’s photo to make me angry. Each time the rat hissed, she said:
- D’you hear? It is eating something. It has ruined our home.
- Where is it?
- It was behind the carpet a minute ago.
I looked behind the rolled-up carpet in the corner. My mother bought it before I was born. She liked that red carpet very much. The rat crawled from the carpet to under the bed. I grabbed a long stick and chased the rat from here to there under the bed, although I couldn’t see it properly. The rat left the bed and this time hid among a bunch of stuffed toys my mother brought from Iran recently. My mother screamed, afraid and worried about the toys she might have to bear the expenses of. The rat had already made a hole in some of the soft toys and ate the ears of some rabbits, teddy bears and lions. Now, the angry rat might damage even more toys. Nobody would purchase the toys with half-eaten ears from my mother and we'd lose money.
I couldn’t get rid of the rat no matter how hard I tried. Our home was stuffy. My mother arrived from Tehran only a week ago. The flat was full of toys. The rat was able to hide easily. I got very angry. I did not pay attention to my mother’s complaining, I put on my blazer and went outside to smoke.
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I was sitting on a bench in the courtyard and smoking. A teenager who lived in the same building was also outside, he sat next to me. We talked about this and that. I didn’t pay much attention to what he was saying. I was looking for an answer to the question, “How to get rid of the rat.”
To sound polite, I was occasionally saying, “Yes, these things happen,” as if I were listening attentively. But the teenager figured out that I was not.
- Brother, you seem upset, what’s wrong? – he said.
I needed to pour out my worries. So, I said a rat got into our flat. It destroys everything. I can’t get it out. The teenager said:
- There is a woman down in the neighborhood. She can get a rat out of a house for two Shirvans*.
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Vusal and I went to the woman’s house. he told me a lot about her on our way there. I knew her too, but I had no idea that she had such a gift, a talent of getting rats away from houses.
She lived in our building before she moved to the down neighborhood. Her husband was a handsome man much younger than her. Everybody was concerned with the question of how such a man married her. There were lots of children in their house. The children born from her first marriage were blended with the children born from her second marriage. Feeding and clothing them was hard. My mother donated our old clothes to her, and I used to buy chewing gum, cookies, and candies for the children when my mood was good.
It was a miracle that she, with the children from her first marriage, was able to get married a second time to a very handsome man. Her second husband was so attractive that he could marry any of the beautiful city girls if he wanted to. Everybody was concerned with the question of how such a handsome man married such an ugly woman with so many children. If she was rich, they could assume that the man married an older woman for her wealth. But the woman was very poor. The most interesting thing is that the handsome man loved this ugly, poor woman, with so many children, very much. They lived in our building for almost two years, then they sold their apartment and bought a house in the down neighborhood.
We knocked on the door of their yard. She opened the door and recognized me.
“I can get a rat out for two Shirvans. But I can reduce the price for you. I can get a rat out of your home for one Shirvan. Only for you,” she said.
I agreed. The woman went back home. In two minutes she came out dressed and ready. We – the teenager, the woman, and I–, went to my mother’s house.
My mother couldn’t understand anything when she saw us. I briefly explained the woman’s job to her. My mother and the woman greeted each other and asked each other many questions. Like all mothers, they could talk about many topics at the same time. In a very short time, they gave each other a lot of information: who got married, who got divorced, who gave birth, and whose delivery due date was approaching... My mother complained a lot about the rat. She didn’t forget to curse the rat with all her heart. I heard those curses a lot in my childhood. The woman took off her blazer and hung it on a chair. It was her husband’s old blazer. As soon as she was ready to get the rat out, she said:
- Neighbor, please, if it is possible, could you give the money beforehand. There were some cases, I got a rat out of some houses, but people didn’t pay. That’s why I get the payment beforehand. For you, I can do it for free, but unfortunately, then I will have headaches. My head explodes for a week when I get a rat out for free.
I got one Shirvan from my pocket and gave it to her. My mother was curiously looking at this trade. The woman took and folded the money in one hand, and pushed her other hand into the pile of toys. The rat got out of the toys and ran under the bed. On bended knees, the woman looked under the bed. She whispered something. Although I could hear her voice, I could not understand the words. As if she was talking in a strange language. Then she stood up.
Done, she announced.
- But the rat is still there. It didn’t come out, I said.
- Don’t worry. It will get out right now. Leave the door open. Keep the way clear.
We stepped aside from the bed and heard soft footsteps. The rat got out from under the bed and coughed a few times. He was coughing loudly. He was coughing so hard that his whole body was trembling. He was suffocating as his cough got harder. I thought his breast would burst out. It seemed he had caught a cold. The rat took a crumpled handkerchief from his yellow vest’s pocket and put it over his mouth. There were bloodstains on the handkerchief. The new bloodstains were added to the old ones. There were dark circles around the rat’s eyes, and his moustache turned yellow. He seemed to be a heavy smoker. He had a folder under his right arm. One lens of his glasses was broken. The rat coughed a lot. He was rattling and wheezing. He was wiping away blood each time he coughed. He wiped his sweaty forehead. We were all standing around and watching him. He crumpled the handkerchief into a ball and wrapped it into a piece of newspaper he took out of the folder he was holding.
- Why do you wrap it?
- So that nobody sees it, said the rat as he trudged towards the door.
He went out of the door and got lost in the corridor.
*
Seymur Baycan was born in 1976 in Azerbaijan. He is the author of 5 novels, Qurak is the best known of them, many short story and essay collections. His some novels and short stories originally written in Azerbaijani have been translated and published in many post-Soviet languages: Russian, Belarusian, Polish, Georgian and Armenian. He participated in many international peace conferences dedicated to ethnic conflicts. He lives and writes in Tbilisi, Georgia.
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