To be honest, I lacked the nerve to go on another expedition upstairs. So this time I decided to go down to the cellar, as cellars are well known as the traditional terrain of these varmints.
When I got to the cellar door by way of the hall, I discovered to my chagrin that it was locked. Its upper half, however, had two long glass windows. One of the panes, being shattered, had a hole right in the middle through which I could catapult myself with a carefully calculated leap without injuring myself on the protruding splinters. But what awaited me on the other side? With absolute certainty a rotting, very steep wooden stairway, meaning that after slipping through the hole I would fall for about nine feet. I also assumed that I would find no real support below, would slip, and fly down the entire stairway thump by thump.
I didn't care. I was really thirsty for the hunt. So, taking my time, I aimed and jumped.
I had hardly passed through the hole in one piece when my worst fears promptly came true. The wooden stairs dropped down even more steeply than I had imagined. How I would have liked to turn back; but it was too late, too late. …
I fell three or four yards, then smacked down hard on a lower step. Hellish pains shot up from my front paws to my whiskers, which vibrated in response like tuning forks. Of course I had tried to absorb the landing shock, but the narrow step severely limited such ballistic adjustments. I got up carefully and stretched my body until the pain started to go away. Then I began to listen intently.
If my ears didn't deceive me, my friends down here were celebrating Mardi Gras or something like it. A scratching, slurping, and squeaking came from every corner of the cellar, and warmed the cockles of my heart. Might I have the good fortune of making the acquaintance of a really fat, self-satisfied, impudently smiling rat? Such good fortune was unimaginable.
I switched over to my "soundless mode." That meant that my movements were so soft and slow that they resembled those of a ballet dancer in slow motion. Since my eyes had now grown used to the changed light conditions, I perceived every detail of my surroundings. The stairs led to a narrow, stuffy room that was jammed full of the odds and ends of medical equipment and instruments. It was déjà vu all over again. But since that first dream I had become so used to the traces of Dr. Frankenstein that at first I didn't even pay attention to the stuff. The door of this room was open a crack, revealing a labyrinth of a cellar, and I approached this opening with the same caution and care I would have exercised if I had been instructed to defuse a bomb. Only after I moved into position beside the doorjamb did I risk a look inside.
Paradise! A biblical paradise! In one glance I detected at least four rats, among whom one was a particularly well-nourished specimen. A pasha of a rat, he was playing the role of an archangel enthroned on a high seat, casting down pleased, if somewhat bored, looks at his inferiors.
Unlike the others, the huge, gloomy room was jammed full with paper. Mountains of files, computer printouts, books, forms, and bundled piles of correspondence created an impressive Grand Canyon landscape with regular gulleys, craters, rocky terraces, and valleys of paper. Above, below, and in between were our friends. Always industrious, always sociable, always out for laughs, waiting patiently for day X, when they would seize power.
Despite these fine prospects, a wave of sadness and depression overcame me. For a moment, my thoughts drifted away and returned to my nightmare, to Felicity and to all the others who had been snatched away so cruelly. I lived in a bloody madhouse, and I engaged in the wildest shenanigans just to distract myself from the horror surrounding me; I was acting according to the motto: if insanity laughs at you, laugh back! Caught by this reflection, I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
But all of a sudden cold fury gripped me. I wasn't going to drag myself down with negative thoughts. Every new day should have a positive beginning! That was a good motto, too. The hunt was on, and I felt how a primeval instinct was taking hold of my entire being, how I was getting angrier and angrier at these rats, sitting there like remote-controlled automatons with their dull brains thinking only of procreation and of finding something to gnaw on. I wanted to wipe them off the map and teach them what hell was. Now!
Like an arrow of steel, I shot up on the highest paper pile and rammed my fangs into the neck of pasha. The guy was so surprised and shocked that he immediately took a shit on the pile. But I had only wounded him; my good old neck bite had had no chance to sink in. Now he wriggled and howled between my teeth while his pals ran around below squeaking excitedly and looking for a hiding
