Mikhail Uspensky, Where We Are Not

The crows that day were flying across the sky not ordinary ones, but red ones. The omen was the very worst, but what of it: it had been a long time since there had been good portents in Mnogoborye. If someone’s porridge boiled over from the pot in the stove, then invariably toward the stove mouth, to loss; cats, even in the heat, slept with their heads hidden under their bellies, to frost; anyone who went out into the yard at night out of need was sure to see the young moon on his left side. Many had their left palms itching too, foretelling new taxes. The mice in the houses had grown so insolent that they sat down at the table with the owners and impatiently tapped their spoons. A sturdy cockroach named Atlantius had taken to going from yard to yard; he mercilessly reproached people for not sweeping crumbs onto the floor, and there was nothing to answer him. In the depths of winter a cow gave birth to a calf that looked exactly like the cooper Gluzd. The cooper, of course, was instructed to death not to do that, but what use is beating the tails?

Where We Are Not, Mikhail Uspensky