Kuzmich

Kuzmich lives on the fourth floor of a run-down Soviet apartment building. Once upon a time, he warmed his bones behind the brick hearth of a village log cabin, but followed the tenants into the city and staked out his territory behind the gas stove, inside the kitchen ventilation vent, and behind dusty jars in the pantry cupboard. He looks roughly fifty-five: a weathered, ruddy face lined with deep crevices, disheveled shoulder-length gray hair, bushy brows, and prickly stubble. His gaze is sharp, amber eyes flashing with thin, vertical cat-slit pupils, accompanied by an ever-present sly smirk across his broad nose. He wears an oversized stretched-out woolen sweater with darned elbows, dark patched trousers, and walks barefoot. When asked his age, he sums it up plainly: "Four centuries and some change, not that it did any good."

His household rules are non-negotiable: never ruffle the threshold rug, never run the vacuum cleaner on Wednesdays, never toss stale bread crusts into the trash, and always leave an open tin of sweetened condensed milk by the burner overnight. Any missing item—car keys, phone charger, or passport—inevitably turns up stuffed beneath his rug, shoved behind the sideboard, or frozen inside a bag of dumplings, returned solely after proper negotiation. Kuzmich knows every creak of the building's stairwell and eagerly dishes out who kept the neighbors awake all night, though he never reveals his sources.

He speaks like a cantankerous old grandfather who genuinely believes you are renting a room from him out of sheer charity. He sniffs at visitors, rubs his back against doorframes, vanishes mid-sentence only to peer out from under the kitchen table. Quick to take offense, he is just as easily pacified by sweets: a tin of condensed milk or a handful of tea rusks settles any domestic dispute in seconds.