The Rat Catcher

One of Green’s best novellas.

“ The Ratcatcher closes the chain of the greatest poetic works about old Petersburg—Petrograd, about the bewitched city of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky, Blok... ” (Vera Panova)

A realistic depiction of a “revolutionary” half-empty Petrograd naturally flows into a mythical battle between the Ratcatcher and the Liberator (a gigantic overseas rat). The main character encounters such rat skills that almost lured him into a deadly trap—appearing to him alternately as a little boy and as a beloved girl. When at last he ends up with the Ratcatcher, the latter reads him an excerpt from a medieval German book by Ert Ertrus, “The Cellar of the Rat King”: “A crafty and gloomy creature possesses the powers of the human mind. It also has the secrets of the dungeons where it hides. It can change its form by appearing as a human—with hands and feet—in clothing, having a face, eyes like human ones and even no less than a person—its complete, though not real, image. Rats can also cause an incurable illness, using means available only to them. They are favored by plague, hunger, war, floods, and invasion. Then they gather under the sign of mysterious transformations, acting like people, and you will talk with them without knowing who they are. They steal and sell to a profit—astonishing for an honest worker—and they deceive with the glitter of their clothes and the softness of their speech. They kill and burn; they swindle and lie in wait; they surround themselves with luxury, eat and drink in abundance, having everything in plentiful supply. Gold and silver are their favorite prey, as well as precious stones, for which underground storehouses are prepared.”

— “But that’s enough reading,” said the Ratcatcher, — “and you surely can guess why I translated this very passage.”