The woman who'd opened the door to the apartment was a curious creature, painted and wigged, too, but less than four feet high, her voice squawking harshly, like someone mimicking a parrot. There were smells too. Some were foreign kitchen smells, Italian ones of garlic, oregano and basil. Some Klara recognized from her own house: there was vinegar used for cleaning and a musky odor of felines, who might sometimes make use of the low bins into which the ashes were swept. The furniture was heavy, gilded in a style that was now old-fashioned, with stuffing poking out through frays at the corners and bottoms in a way that confirmed the presence of cats. This desire to scratch was a perennial household war Klara also fought. Although Max insisted that cats properly belonged to barns, kitchens and roof tops, not in parlors with the good furniture, Klara allowed her Satz everywhere, with similar annoying results. In fact, as she came further into the room, her eye was attracted by a long-haired black cat gliding away under a couch.
