“The shared apartment block at 2397 Baskov, in District 19 of the City of Leningrad, had been progressively plagued by ever increasing numbers of rats for the three exceptionally harsh winters leading up to 1956. The sewers had frozen in places, and the stench of effluent and the screech of rodents filled the Arctic blasts of icy air that whirled endlessly around, never moving for months.
Paulo had money, and at first had bought special rat catching dogs, which soon ran away after seeing how many rats there were and the size of them. Then, when his Spanish mother"s condition worsened, he made friends with chemists and some less qualified and legitimate bribing them for extra medicine or the like, and getting from them the poison that I used to pretend that I was going blind. That"s how we
