Free The Way of Muri by Ilya Boyashov Page A

wash them down with melted snow and feed that cat on your own shit. It’ll be interesting to see how long you last!’
    Petko Patić had every right to react the way he did. Seizing the technician by the front of his shirt and shaking him from side to side, the astronomer roared, ‘Do you really know how important those steps are to me? Then you also know that no deprivation or threat of violence will ever make me leave this place!’
    After this impassioned statement Patić released the limp technician, who began rushing frantically about the cold hut like a cowardly spirit who’d been left behind. The technician loudly informed the mountains and the stars that he was leaving immediately, because he couldn’t possibly stay there a minute longer with a lunatic who had almost killed him.
    ‘Only because I feel sorry for you,’ he yelled, ‘I urge you to come to your senses and leave with me – tomorrow will be too late!’
    Patić burst out laughing and said, ‘I can’t – remember Robinson’s boat!’
    Muri pressed himself demonstratively against the astronomer’s legs. Sensing the cat’s contempt, the technician gave full vent to his indignation. His entire impotent rage was now directed at this sly, arrogant creature.
    ‘You ungrateful little beast! I know what you’re up to. You’re going to wait until that soft-hearted old fool collapses out of weakness or freezes up there in his tower, next to that useless great magnifying glass of his, and then you’ll set to work… Talk about biting the hand that feeds you! But you don’t fool me. Oh no, I can see what you’re up to, and I’m not going to fall for it!’
    When the door slammed behind the impetuous traitor, Patić mixed the last handful of barley drink with the hot water in the kettle, poured it into his vacuum flask and picked up a rusk. He turned to the cat.
    ‘Well, even in that state it still slams! I wonder what those fools at the Council would have to say about all of this.’
    Petko Patić ran his fingers through his unkempt hair and stood up, quietly dignified. He was no stranger to emotional outbursts.
    ‘Fool!’ he thought. ‘He keeps on running but he never gets anywhere. I stay in one place, but I’m already somewhere else. Somewhere far, far away!’
    The astronomer wrapped himself up more tightly in his sheepskin coat and picked up his flask of tinted hot water.
    ‘Doesn’t look like you’ve got anywhere else to go,’ he said, winking at the cat. ‘So you might as well stay here with me!’
    Muri shrugged off this compassion. As he left the hut Patić opened the door for no more than a few seconds, but it was long enough for Muri to fill his lungs with the icy air and to feel within it the coming thaw.
    ‘Like hell I will,’ he muttered.
    He set off as soon as the thaw began, leaving a trail of footprints in the snow as he passed through Piešte, Matina, Khorvar and Rižicy.

    Elsewhere Timosha the goose set a new record, successfully multiplying one hundred and forty-four by a thousand (it took ten and a half hours to verify the answer), and on the other side of the world Tong Rampa, a young Tibetan from Lhasa, left the modest shack he called home in order to embark upon his own personal odyssey.
    It was a day like any other in the capital of Tibet. A few solo travellers gazed wearily at the Potala Palace, while the Chinese drivers who had obligingly delivered them to Heaven on Earth sat in their Russian jeeps counting their American dollars. They regarded the local poverty with scornful indifference. The short mountain-dweller went virtually unnoticed – only a Chinese policeman, exiled to this godforsaken land for some political indiscretion, glanced briefly in his direction. Tong Rampacrossed the city, past the palace and all the modest stone houses, and then he was alone on the gigantic Tibetan Plateau. His shoulder bag contained the provisions he would need for his journey – yak fat and pieces of dried lamb. He put