The Days and Adventures of a Marvellous Tomcat

„Because we are made like this.
We need to believe in better.”

Grigoriy Sluzhitel, „Savely’s Days”

Having been wholeheartedly prefaced by Eugene Vodolazkin and awarded prestigious literary prizes in Russia, „Savely’s Days” (2018) is a novel about loss and separations, but also about the power of love and about one’s capacity to stand fast and to behold the beauty of life and of the world at all times. Having made an unexpected debut on the literary scene, Grigoriy Sluzhitel (b. 1983), the young author of this wonderful book, graduated from the Moscow International Film School in 1999 and as a teenager he worked for a short while in the „Novaya Gazeta” newsroom. He also graduated from the Russian Institute of Theatre Arts and he is currently a full-time actor of the Studio of Theatre Arts in Moscow. His debut novel, „Dni Saveliia”/ „Savely’s Days”, was an instant success with the reading public and literary critics, bringing him to the foreground of the Russian cultural scene as a writer masterfully wielding the great (and ever more rarely encountered) art of understanding the inarticulate friends of human beings and of telling their stories.

Because, in spite of its title, „Savely’s Days” is not a contemporary Post-modern replica of Bulgakov’s „The Days of the Turbins” but, surprising as it may seem, the story of a cat’s life. More precisely, the story of a tomcat, Savely, who got his sobriquet, Savva, from his mummy… Gripping and surprising from the very first page to the last, the book wins over its readers not only by its refined language and fluid style but also (and mainly!) by the ease with which the author devised the narrative structure and by the thematic complexity of the text, which imperceptibly becomes, all at once, a pseudo-biography written with a wry smile, a fresco of olden and present-day Moscow and, last but not least, a metaphor of human existence. „There is hardly a savvier flâneur than a wandering tomcat, and Sluzhitel is remarkably innovative in availing himself of Savely’s point of view in order to peregrinate around our world and to reveal it to us with a look brimming with renewed ingenuity”, „Corriere della Sera” reported when the Italian version of the book was published. And the novel does precisely that. Because Savva’s perspective is indeed outstanding, as is Grigoriy Sluzhitel’s narrative enterprise, hence the success that „Savely’s Days” enjoyed and the value of this book, which transcends its momentary fame.

Certainly, there have been critical voices that have unhesitatingly asserted that this text has not brought anything fundamentally new in fiction, as long as what the readers encounter in it is yet another version of a plethora of more or less fictional memoirs or diaries that have already been published in various cultural spaces – as the plot is always dotted with moments obviously meant to touch the readers’ hearts, as well as with a series of inter-human, inner and outer conflicts rendered in their manifold forms of expression and everything is narrated from the perspective of animals, most often cats or dogs, while the discourse is interspersed with (serious!) musings on one’s attempt to live in this hasty world of ours. Indeed, nothing new so far, so to say. And yet, in spite of all these, Grigoriy Sluzhitel’s novel advances a significant distinction, in that Savva is no longer alive and what the readers are offered is a kind of posthumous (pseudo) biography of the narrator-tomcat.

In all likelihood, when we come to think of it, neither did this ploy, which definitely increased the readership of the young Russian writer’s first published novel, namely the recourse to the narrative perspective of an animal, bring anything new in literature. And Sluzhitel was clearly aware of this, but on the other hand he was also well versed in singling out his unusual teller-protagonist from a host of famous predecessors, be they cats or dogs. Because world literature abounds in examples of intelligent dogs – from Argos, the dog in Homer’s „Odyssey”, the most outstanding instance of a faithful quadruped in the Antiquity, to Buck, the protagonist of Jack London’s „The Call of the Wild”, Kastanka in Chekhov’s homonymous text, O’Connor in Samuel Beckett’s „Watt” or the nameless dog in Franz Kafka’s short-stories. Cats are at least as numerous in books everywhere (but more eclectic from the point of view of their psychology and ways of manifestation, therefore more difficult to ascribe to a pre-established pattern of faithfulness or kindness!), from Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat to the cats in T.S. Eliot’s work, to say nothing of the one-off Behemoth in Mikhail Bulgakov’s masterpiece, „The Master and Margarita”. And the Japanese have always been fascinated with the little felines, as the Archipelago harbours temples dedicated to them. Moreover, the vivid „maneki-neko”, the colourful auspicious images of cats with lifted paws, are to be found everywhere in Japan. To say nothing of the overall depiction of cats in Japanese fiction, since the earliest times to contemporaneity – and to Hiro Arikawa’s novel „The Travelling Cat Chronicles”, the protagonist of which is the marvellous tomcat named Nana.

On the other hand, neither is Grigoriy Sluzhitel’s strategy, apparently original at first indeed, of enabling a cat to have a narrative voice something innovative, much less the concoction of the Russian writer. Because Savely does have – again!… – a host of famous animal predecessors and likewise, we must admit, its creator did call to mind some models to which he implicitly related from the very beginning. Thus, Rudyard Kipling’s enchanting Boots in „Thy Servant a Dog” had also been elevated to the status of narrator, as had Mr. Bones in Paul Auster’s „Timbuktu”, not to mention the fact that Bulgakov’s Sharik in „A Dog’s Heart” even managed, just like Behemoth the Cat, to take on human shape. All things considered, what would the novelty of Savely’s situation be and what could possibly explain the success of this book? First and foremost, the fact that, by choosing to tell the story of his life and of those alongside whom he lives, Savely never falls prey to cheap sentimentalism, although more often than not the situations he is in are distressing and it is along the lines of such moments in the history of his life, as well as in the history of Moscow, the city he and his adoptive family live in, that the novel itself gains structure.

Savely’s first memories of the olden kitten days, which he spent in the house garden of the Morozovs, in Taganka, the old tradesmen’s neighbourhood in Moscow, are about the Chiquita banana box in which they all – he, his sibling kittens and their mummy – used to take shelter, about the Allegro Movement in Antonio Vivaldi’s Concerto „L’amoroso” and about the scent of dropwort. A beautiful, calm world. And one filled with warmth, from all points of view. Savva, as his close ones endearingly call him, is a cute kitten who never misses out on any of life’s copious challenges or opportunities. And then, on the day when Vitya decides to take him home, everything changes for the kitten and adventures never come to a stop. Because, as of this day, Savva will live in a flat, cohabiting with a mad parrot; he will become an official employee of the Tretyakov Gallery as a mouse-catcher and he will even take part in a small-scale feline revolution in the courtyard of the Yelokhovo Cathedral. And much else besides… And then, out of the blue, when he least expects it, he meets Greta, a sweet, charming kitty, soft as moss and sable-coloured, but who, unlike him, who is so well-versed, cannot even count!… Their happiness transforms Moscow into the best, most beautiful place on earth – simply because love is in the air. Getting acquainted with humans and animals, encountering both good ones and bad ones, experiencing both the good and the evil, living alongside beauty and ugliness, Savely eventually achieves self-knowledge and makes us, his readers, look into our souls ever more earnestly. The adventuresome, perpetually restless tomcat will learn what it means, for humans and felines alike, to experience nostalgia, love, friendship, gratitude, loss and regret. Because, once Greta is no longer with him, his life seems to have forsaken all meaning, while the city and the world alike seem to have been suddenly deprived of their lodestar…

Certainly, one might cavil about the first part of the book in particular for what may look like shortcomings, namely the over-elaborate style, the characters’ somewhat predictable deeds or the sotto voce interventions of the tomcat – which do seem too erudite and elaborate for a feline, irrespective of how sentient and intelligent it may be. But in fact, by choosing to start everything with the ease and playfulness of a cartoon, the author imperceptibly transports his readers onto the realm of the most ardent feelings, of the most intense emotions and of the most complex meanings. And the novel comes through. Perhaps not by the philosophical profundity of Savva’s reflections, because they are oftentimes too tortuous; and yet, they never fall into grotesque. Perhaps neither by the coherence of the narrative perspective, because Savely himself oscillates between a kind of new, quasi-realistic omniscience and the boundaries of his feline comprehension. Nevertheless, apart from the fact that it is an easy read from beginning to end – without ever becoming shallow though, the book is compelling by its unexpected comical twists, let alone by the tomcat’s deep passion for travelling and adventures, for music and for all that pertains to knowledge. And in writing his novel, Sluzhitel has been able to stay shy of pathetic accents, even when Savva ruminates on the human condition.

Never attempting to zoom in on depths more profound than the story situation commands or than the narrative voice can manage, „Savely’s Days” wins us over and makes us ponder once again on the unconditional affection that animals bestow on us, on their ever-touching faithfulness and on their unsuppressed joy, so simple and sincere each and every time. And it also makes us smile, with gladness or with nostalgia, when we remember the felines that we encountered at certain times in our lives or in literature.

Grigoriy Sluzhitel, „Savely’s Days”/ „Zilele lui Savelie”, translation into Romanian by Justina Bandol, Humanitas Fiction Publishing House, Bucharest, 2020

Translated into English by Mirela Petraşcu