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Kreska and The President - fragment 1
2009/01/26
Coffee for the spring
All trouble starts the same way, thought The President, and even if it does start differently, it inevitably leads to the same thing. So he started wondering what a problem is, and why not even cats are free of them. Meanwhile Kreska was pushing a coffee pot to the very edge of the gas cooker. There was coffee splashing around inside it.
“Hey!” miaowed The President. “How are things up there? Are you all right?”
Kreska didn’t answer, she just went on pushing, until part of the base of the coffee pot was over the edge of the cooker. Just one little nudge or a bit of a draught and the pot would fall to the floor. Kreska came to a stop,
“What’s that going to be?” asked The President.
“I’m making a trap for the spring,” revealed Kreska. “When it turns up, I’ll throw the pot at its head.”
“How come you’re so sure the spring will show up in the kitchen, of all places? It might come in via the balcony, for instance, or through the air vent.”
“Not via the balcony, because there’s a net to catch the spring there,” replied Kreska thoughtfully. “Tell me, what do you know about the spring? Because I don’t know much, except that it’s warm. What do you think?”
“The spring is green, warm and smells nice,” declared The President, and was going to add that no coffee pots should be thrown at its head at all, but Kreska interrupted him.
“Warm! You see?” she miaowed, thrilled at her own sharpness. “The spring comes to us from the oven, because that’s where it’s hottest.”
The President sent her a truly feline smile. Cats often smile, but they only do it when there aren’t any people around.
“But why do you want to hunt down the spring? It’s never done anyone any harm.” Just one look at Kreska’s terror-filled eyes was enough to tell him the whole story.
“We can open the oven, and then you’ll see there’s no spring in there. You’ve nothing to fear,” he said, and without waiting for an answer, hung on the handle, and as he couldn’t manage on his own, Kreska came to help. The cats tugged jointly, adroitly even, until the oven stood open.
“Didn’t I say?!” said Kreska in such triumph that her tail went tense. The President pricked up his ears. He couldn’t believe his eyes, because there in the oven, already cooled down, was something big and meaty and delicious – under a glass cover that could be knocked off, and wrapped in foil that could be ripped up and dragged about the kitchen.
The President looked at Kreska admiringly. He nodded. Without a word – for what more was there to say? – the cats got inside the oven and ate and ate until they had eaten up the whole of spring.
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
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