Babayaga

deceived by an ass like Maroc. He wondered if she would be worried and if Alberto would comfort and console her. Vidot did not like where such thoughts went. And so, like many men who have troubled lives at home, Vidot energetically hopped off toward his office.
    Luckily, it was a pleasant day and his journey was proceeding nicely. Things were not so bad, and the farther he got away from Alberto and Mimi Perruci’s apartment, the more content and confident he felt. He understood that some other souls might be panicked or even overwhelmed with grief at the thought of being trapped in a small insect’s body, but, he thought, these were generally the same people who felt cursed when there were only plain croissants at the market, or complained when the lunch waiter was slow. Whereas he believed life, any life, was a curious adventure, and if you merely kept your wits about you and stayed alert and in motion, you could find your way to a satisfactory conclusion. Instead of feeling cursed, he amused himself by thinking of how his hops resembled the arcing phrase marks on music sheets and, in fact, how he was not so unlike that American actor Bobby Van who had hopped so memorably through an entire small town in the film Le Joyeux Prisonnier .
    Of course, this was no musical comedy. He remembered his fallen friend Bemm. While he had not known the young man well enough to be able to guess what Bemm felt about their peculiar metamorphosis, he did know how Bemm had responded to the crisis, standing right beside him, wholeheartedly jumping and following him through the streets, seizing hold of every house pet and rodent’s belly with panache and gusto, both of them swinging like magnificent twin Tarzans through this immensely unpredictable and oversized wilderness. Too bad what had happened, it was tragic really, but Vidot had long ago learned one must not grieve too hard for the loss of comrades in action. The battle of life rages constantly on, and while Bemm was gone, Vidot had been fortunate enough to survive. Ah yes, he thought, and now I am once again in control of my own destiny. All I really have to worry about now is time, and time simply happens whether we worry about it or not.
    At that moment his journey took a very sudden and dramatic turn. Momentarily lost in his philosophical reflections, Vidot was caught unaware when the plump and delicious little mutt upon which he rode was suddenly plucked up and shoved against the dog walker’s chest, trapping him by pressing him snugly against the fabric of the owner’s wool coat. Vidot squirmed, but the pressure was tight and he could not get loose. He heard a door slam and felt them ascending a staircase. He counted five flights until he heard the keys rattle as they entered an apartment. Vidot was not particularly worried, he was sure that this was only a temporary detour, and when the dog needed to go out again, as small dogs often do, he would once again be free. It was a setback, to be sure, but he did not believe it would impact his race against the clock. What happened next, though, was as vexing and disturbing as it was utterly astounding.
    Released from the owner’s tight grasp, Vidot had every intent of immediately leaping free, hoping to find a high perch from which to survey the situation. Instead he found that, bizarrely enough, the dog was being held down beneath a white hood made of what appeared to be old parachute fabric. Stranger still, leaning over the mutt was a fat-faced man with a pair of spectacles made of magnifying lenses, who possessed the largest, greenest eyes Vidot had ever seen. The man’s pupils looked enormous and distorted behind the lenses; Vidot felt as though two immense tropical planets were descending down upon him. The man’s fat fingers busily worked through the fur, in a deft and practiced manner. The sight was so bizarre that Vidot found himself frozen with fear, cowering behind a follicle of dog hair like a frightened soldier crouched behind a cannon-blasted tree. But the all-seeing big-eyed man quickly found him, pouncing upon him with the tweezers and almost crushing him as he lifted Vidot off the prone beagle, dropped him into a test tube, and firmly corked the top. The man handed the test tube to his accomplice, a woman many years past young who, as she stared into the vial to make sure he was alive, appeared vaguely familiar to Vidot. As he tried to place her in his memory, she placed him on a rack on a high shelf