do you know what that is? Run by KGB? Yes? A dreadful place. And from there, Siberia."
Willow said, "Prison?" in a whisper. "You've been in prison?"
"Prison would be nice. Concentration camp, this was. Oh, I've heard your people laugh about this place Siberia. To them it is a joke: the salt mines in Siberia. I have heard this. But to be there. With no one. Year after year. To be forgotten because one's lover was the important voice, the voice that counted, while until he died one was merely a helpmate, never taken seriously by anyone till the authorities took one seriously. It was a terrible time."
"You were... ?" What did they call it? Willow tried to remember. "A dissident?"
"A voice they didn't like. Who would not be still. Who taught and wrote until they came to fetch her. And then it was Lubyanka. And then it was Siberia. And there in that cell, the little ones came. I was afraid at first. The filth. The disease. I drove them off. But still they came. They came and they watched me. And then I saw. They wanted very little and they were afraid too. So I offered them bits. Some bread. A sliver of meat when I had it. And so they stayed and I wasn't alone."
"The rats..." Willow tried to keep the aversion from her voice. "They were your friends."
"To this day," she replied.
"But, Miss Telyegin," Willow said, "you're an educated woman. You've read. You've studied. You must know rats carry diseases."
"They were good to me."
"Yes. I see you believe that. But that was then, when you were in prison and desperate. You don't need rats now. Let people take their place."
Anfisa Telyegin lowered her head. "Invasion and killing," she said. "Some things cannot be forgotten."
"But they can be forgiven. And no one wants you to leave. We know... I know you had to leave your home once before. In Port Terryton. I know about what happened there. The police, the lawsuits, the courts... Miss Telyegin, you've got to see that if you move away and start over again and if you encourage rats to live on your property again... Don't you see that you'll just be back where you started? No one's going to let you choose rats over people."
"I will not do that again," Anfisa said. "But I cannot stay here. Not after what has happened."
"Just as well, darlin'," Ava Downey said over her gin and tonic. Eight months had passed since the Night of the Rats, and Anfisa Telyegin was gone from their midst. The neighborhood had returned to normal and the new occupants of 1420 - a family called Houston with an attorney husband, a pediatrician wife, a Danish au pair, and two well-scrubbed children of eight and ten who wore uniforms to their private school and carried their books to and from the car in neat satchels - were finally doing what the local inhabitants had long desired. For weeks on end, painters wielded their brushes, wallpaperers carried rolls into the house, wood finishers sanded and stained, drapers created mas-terworks for the windows... The chicken coop was carted off and burnt, the ivy was removed, the picket fence was replaced, and a lawn and flowerbeds were planted in front of the house while an English garden was designed for the back. And six months after that, Napier Lane was finally designated A Perfect Place to Live by the Wingate Courier, with 1420 the house that was chosen to symbolize the beauties of the neighborhood.
And there was no jealousy over that fact, although the Downeys were rather cool when the rest of the neighbors offered the Houstons their congratulations on having 1420 selected by the newspaper as the model of domiciliary perfection. After all, the Downeys had restored their own house first and Ava had from the beginning been so kind as to offer her expertise in inte rior design to Madeline Houston ... No matter that Madeline had chosen to ignore virtually all of those suggestions, common courtesy demanded that the Houstons decline the pictorial honor presented to them, passing it along to the Downeys who were - if nothing else - mentors to everyone when it came to restoration and interior decoration. But the Houstons apparently didn't see it that way, so they posed happily at the gate of 1420 when the newspaper photographers came to call and they framed the subsequent front page of the Wingate Courier and placed it in their