On the way back, Rita fell asleep in the stroller. Costa fell asleep as well, and then it turned out that Alex had also fallen asleep lying on the baggage rack below. Transporting sleeping children was significantly simpler, not counting Costa, who was now falling down, not finding room in the stroller with Rita. He had to be carried.
Vicky galloped all the way like a horse. She displayed the trot, gallop, canter, and pace. She was so fond of horses that even at school in gym class she ran like a horse, driving the teachers out of their wits. Kate grumbled and instructed Papa not to buy many small ice creams but one big one, because it was more cost-effective.
Peter was again using the navigator on the phone and trying to prove that the navigator calculated metres incorrectly, because it did not understand the difference between a lawn and the sidewalk. And it generally believed that there was a house where there was not.
Papa suddenly stopped. “Stop!” he said. “I’m just wondering! Do some of you at least remember what you saw in the museum? Well, besides the mines and guns? Well, at least when the city was founded? Or at least by what peoples?”
Peter fell silent perplexedly, and then growled that yes, he had seen the vase, in which he wanted to hide. And all sorts of machine-guns. And he actually looked at other things.
Later they came home and started to unload the children from the stroller, trying not to wake anyone up, since awakened children always brawl louder than those who did not sleep. It turned out that Mama was already awake, and while they were gone had managed to glue wallpaper on one entire wall and prepare dinner.
“How nice! Tomorrow you’ll also go to the museums for the whole day!” she said dreamily.
“Yeah! We’re already running!” Kate said. “Well, I mean, I wanted to say that we’ll consider your suggestion!”
Chapter Eleven
Rita Joins the Puppy Rank
The best way to check if a person is genuinely suffering is to leave the one suffering and go to another room. If the one suffering follows you and continues to shout there or lies down on the floor, bending his legs and stomping them, then it is reason to reflect.
Joseph Emets, Hungarian philosopher
In the morning Alena stood by the kitchen table, looking at the tattered prayer book, and muttered loudly, “Thou Kingdom come!”
Alex stopped running around on all fours and lifted his head with interest. “Thou kingdom?” he asked.
“Not ‘thou’ but ‘thy’. That means, your kingdom!” explained Vicky, who was nearby.
“But why did she say ‘thou’ just now? She’s quite stupid, right?” Alex asked.
Alena’s eyes watered. “Why are you badgering me, shorty? You can’t read at all!”
“Baa-baa-baa!”
Alena broke down and rushed at Alex with her fists. Alex pulled his head into his shoulders, closed his eyes, and began to fan her off.
“Come on, easy! Break it up!” Peter said, separating them.
Alena stomped her feet and ran upstairs. Compassionate Vicky wanted to run after her, but Peter saw the problem from a different angle.
“It pays for her to be offended, because it’s possible not to finish reading the prayers. She’ll return in two minutes, bet you anything.”
Peter adored betting and was always wagering for some reason, but no one ever wagered with him because no one had any money. Well, except for Alex and Costa, who had already lost many millions to Peter, but had yet to pay up. Peter was probably waiting until they grew up and got rich to remind them of their debt.
The gates slammed. It was Mama, arriving on a bike from the market. Everyone rushed to her at once to see what she had bought. Mama was jumping on one leg, trying to throw the other over the frame of the bike. Everybody clung to her packages, shoving a hand there, and some even a head.
Alena also rushed to check what Mama had brought.
“Wait a minute! You’re upset!” Peter reminded her, but Alena only fanned him off with a foot. She found a hot baguette and began to share it with Alex. The rest jumped on top of them, shouting, “Give me some!”
“Let me share honestly! You don’t even know how to break it off!” Peter volunteered, taking the loaf from them. “Well! Now it’s quite another matter! Is this good?”
“Better than ever! Now give me what you’ve shared honestly for yourself!” Kate said, taking the crust from him.
While the children were splitting the hot bread, Mama took the produce from the bag. “One might think that you haven’t been fed for a week. Later there will be nothing!” she said grumpily and immediately, remembering something, added happily, “Your Stool has puppies there! She was leading them for a walk.”
“Why is it our Stool? You didn’t allow us to keep it!” Kate was indignant, not managing to hear clearly. Then the meaning of the words reached her and she shouted, “WHAT? PUPPIES?” She bolted off, not even thinking of putting shoes on. Costa, Vicky, Alena, and Alex flew after Kate. Peter went last, hands in his pockets, pretending that he was not interested and was above this.
“Take Rita with you, since you’re forcing yourself to go anyway!” Mama said.
“Okay, kiddo, let’s go!” Peter generously agreed and put Rita on his shoulders.
Rita very much loved being on someone’s shoulders and she squealed happily, just in case grabbing Peter’s hair for insurance. Admittedly, Mama feared that Peter would put Rita down on top of the gates, but he squatted down. She heard Peter through the window instructing Rita indulgently, “Hold my ears! You can steer with my ears! Understand? Pull the right one, I go right! The left, then I go left… What are you doing? Don’t spit on my head, or else I’ll give it to you on the forehead!”
“Head! Head!” Rita shouted happily. She was forever doing this. When she felt good, she followed someone closely and, not knowing how to express her delight, repeated a word after him. Often the most ridiculous and random of those said. For example, “nose” or “curtains.”
Mama watched from the window as the children ran past the mailboxes. Seven people had on four pairs of shorts, one dress, one skirt, one diaper, one sword, four pairs of sneakers, a pair of rubber boots, one baseball cap, and some bare feet.
They ran to a narrow entrance, which Papa once could not find by car, and stopped. Here on the figure-eight street was a small apiary, enclosed by a three-metre fence of rusty iron. Behind the fence were a tractor, which had not gone anywhere for many years, and three or four hives. Looking through a crack, it was possible to see how the bees were buzzing near the hives.
“Grandma Mila and her husband live here! They sell honey to suckers!” Alex declared loudly.
“Sell to whom? I’ll wash your tongue with soap!” Kate was outraged. Even though she knew a bunch of bad words, she always demanded her brothers and sisters not to know any.
“Well, vacationers!”
“Here you can also say ‘visitors’! From where did you learn such a word?”
“‘Visitor’? You said it! Is it really bad? Really, really?” Alex asked eagerly, reckoning opportunities were opening.
“You’re driving me crazy! No, the other one!”
Realizing that the word “visitor” was normal, Alex sagged, losing interest in it. “Ah! I heard them and Aunt Klava swearing at each other. Aunt Klava said that their honey was made from sugar and that their bees sting, and they replied that them pigeons stained their wash in the yard.”
“Not ‘them’, but their!”
“I also say ‘their’. Them pigeons stained, the geese squawk and these get frostbitten!”
Vicky and Alena turned their heads, looking for the puppies. Someone was making noises nearby, and then the puppies, already fairly grown, about four weeks, climbed out from under a bent-back sheet of metal. It was strange that the bald, scary, infinitely long Stool had such beautiful, fat, and fluffy puppies, like cutlets on legs.
Stool was rushing around the cutlets barking with alarm and trying to make them listen to it. It e
ven knocked to the ground the “cutlet” butting Vicky’s legs and bit it lightly. At the same time, it also tried to growl at Vicky.
“What's this?!” Vicky said sternly, and Stool, recollecting, wagged its tail. A minute later, it was already eating cold buckwheat with meat gravy, which Alena had brought. One of the puppies fell into the buckwheat and the rest were licking it clean.
After the puppies had finished eating, Kate stated loudly that they certainly would not be living on the street anymore. The street was full of dangers. Germs, viruses, cars, other dogs. Bees, after all, could sting.
“And they haven’t before? Now they’re so huge!” Vicky said.
“You keep quiet! Tell me, are the puppies vaccinated? Do they have flea collars? Has a vet looked at them? Here, this one’s eye is running!” Kate yelled and Vicky retreated, because it is extremely difficult to argue with a person who is right in everything.
“Well, it has started!” Peter groaned and stomped home. Rita was bouncing up and down on his shoulders, tugging his ears in all directions and demanding that her horse return.
There were six puppies. Kate, Alena, and Vicky each took two and, accompanied by a worried Stool, set off home. Kate was planning complicated forms of treatment and the construction of a multi-storey kennel, but Papa unexpectedly opposed. “Either the puppies or me!” he declared.
Kate looked at Papa and at the puppies, making a difficult choice. “But where will you live?” she asked Papa.
However, Mama took Papa’s side and he had to be left alone, while the puppies had to return to the apiary. Kate and Alena were angry with Papa for about two hours, and then discovered eye drops in the medicine box and went to treat the puppy with the runny eye.
“Why are you dragging the dogs back to me? Well, take them away! You took them, so take them away! I’ll drown them all!” Grandma Mila shouted at them from behind the fence.
Then Grandma Mila went home and the girls decided that she was going for a bucket to drown them, but Grandma Mila evidently did not find a bucket and returned with macaroni. The macaroni was cold, but there was a lot of it. Only now did it become clear to the girls why Stool and the puppies were so fat.
It all ended up with Alena being stung on the hand and the puppies taking refuge under the hive and growling at Kate when she tried to drag them out with a fragment of a mop. The eye drops remained unused and Alex used them up that very day trying to figure out whether they would burn or not.
The puppies made the biggest impression on Rita. She was still not talking very well, but, trying to show how the puppies amazed her, she ran on all fours the whole day and even demanded soup in a bowl in order to eat like a dog, standing on all fours. Mama let her, but it turned out to be awkward and Rita was forced to sit at the table and take a spoon, because it was against her principles to stay hungry.
After lunch, Rita again went down on all fours and, barking abruptly, began to run on the stairs and scratch like a dog plagued by fleas, and kind Alena put Papa’s tie on her as a collar and led her behind her.
By means of much persuasion, Kate convinced Papa that they would take in the sickest puppy for the night to render it urgent medical care and return it to Stool in the morning, because she understood that the puppy still needed its mother’s milk. Stool did not notice the abduction of its baby because crafty Kate distracted its attention with a sausage and, after grabbing the puppy, ran away before it began to yelp.
Interested by this phenomenon, Alex and Peter recorded the yelps of the remaining puppies on the phone and began an experiment. It turned out that Stool did not know how to count. It was possible to steal all its children, not letting them squeal, and it was all the same to it, but if all the puppies were in place but the phone continued to yelp a little, then Stool would go crazy and search for the source of the sound. The experiments would have continued until the evening, but the bees came to help Stool. One of them flew into Peter’s mouth, and although he got rid of it before it stung him, he preferred to withdraw and leave the dogs alone.
Meanwhile, Kate was busy with the sick puppy. It was hideously fat and, perhaps from weakness, was continuously getting into a mess. Kate washed it with shampoo, then removed two bloated ticks from it and threw them onto a burner of the gas stove. This angered Costa very much. After shouting “Bad! Bad!” at Kate, he began hitting her on the leg with the sword.
“Easy! It still has a third tick! I’ll show it to you!” Kate proposed and started to chase a squealing Costa with the tick.
Pitying his brother, Peter took the tick from Kate and wanted to throw it into the toilet, but he changed his mind and, for the sake of interest, fed it to the rats.
“They’re going to die now!” Kate said.
“They won’t!” Peter said and proposed a bet. Kate refused and Peter wagered with Costa and Alex, increasing their already insolvent debt.
Costa and Alex sat by the cage for about fifteen minutes, but greedy Schwartz, having devoured the tick all by itself, simply did not die. Then Alex and Costa, distressed, went into the yard, hid behind the corner of the house, and began to scheme.
Mama immediately suspected that they were scheming because they had not been seen or heard for a long time. Typically, Alex and Costa were always heard. She went out of the house and sneaked up on them unnoticeably. Alex and Costa were sitting on their haunches with their heads almost touching. Sticks, cotton wool, and pieces of paper were piled between them on the ground, white smoke snaking up. Panting from the effort, the boys were heaping onto the pile everything that could burn.
“What are you doing here?” Mama asked.
Alex jumped up and hurriedly hid something in the dry leaves.
“We’re making fire!” Costa informed her happily.
“Wh-t?”
“Costa, I already told you! Campfire, a campfire!” Alex hissed.
“Ah, yes, a campfire!” Costa corrected himself, but it was already too late. Mama took the matches from Alex, put out the fire, and went with them to the house.
Alex, demanding the matches back, trudged behind her, but along the way shoved his hand in his pocket and groped for something there. “Oh, Mama! A tooth! Can you put my baby tooth in a jar?”
“Why?”
“I’ll clean it every day. It’ll be so clean.”
“And you couldn’t clean those teeth in your mouth?”
“No, that’s uninteresting,” Alex said and set off to the bathroom to brush his baby tooth. Costa, envying him, jumped beside him and rocked his own teeth in the hope that something would fall out of his mouth. Alas, his teeth were holding on firmly.
Alena led Rita on the leash till the evening. Until then, Rita was so impressed by the puppies that Mama could not put her down to sleep. She carried Rita around the room, rocked her, lowered her head onto her own shoulder, bounced her up and down, and sang “ah-ah-ah!” but Rita jerked up her head all the same, grabbed the curtains and, after pulling them open, looked at the lighted windows of the neighbouring homes and the floor of the hospital bathed in otherworldly light. “Not night! Not night!” she said, pointing at the light with her finger.
“Night,” Mama said. “Night. Sleep!”
“Not night! Not night!” Rita persisted and again stretched out a finger, trying agonizingly to explain that you really cannot see: there is light! There is life! There someone is walking!
Nevertheless, Mama stubbornly shut the curtains and continued to insist that it was night after all. Finally, Mama lay down on the couch next to Rita’s crib and, rocking her with a leg, gradually fell asleep. Rita quickly rolled out of bed and tiptoed down the corridor. Everyone was asleep. She went down the creaking stairs and turned on the light.
“Not night! Not night!” Rita repeated triumphantly.
Someone knocked against Rita’s leg. The puppy! All this time it was whining by the stairs and trying to climb the steps. Leaving the light below, Rita took the puppy in her arms, carried it upstairs, and put it down right
beside Mama. Mama, in her sleep, first pushed it away, and then feeling something warm, pressed it to herself. The tired puppy calmed down and fell asleep.
Rita was satisfied. Someone else for Mama to feed and put to bed. Now let her be the puppy’s mama! And tomorrow Rita will take the mother dog for herself and will not have to go to bed, because dogs do not tuck in their children. Dreaming about how she would go looking for her new mama tomorrow, Rita curled up on the rug, closed her eyes just for a second, and began to whimper softly. She whimpered more and more softly. Half an hour later, Mama got up and put the puppy and Rita in her crib. Rita, half-asleep, touched Mama with a hand, then a foot, sighed contentedly, and, after turning over onto her stomach, finally fell asleep.
Chapter Twelve
“Soon Summer Will End, Soon the End of Summer…”
Okay, people! I understand that my communication is worthless, but I went to school!
©Kate
It was the last week of summer. The city emptied; the resort visitors were leaving. The quiet little station was swollen and overcrowded with people. On the platform under the clock, taxi drivers honked angrily at each other. These were their golden days. Trains were moving one after another almost without a break. At night, they could hear the coupling rumbling and the person on duty at the station demanding the removal of a locomotive from the first track.
“Time to think about school!” Papa said, concerned. “How do we find out about school?”
“The mommy network is the best means of information of the system. Also the church. What mothers in church know today, intelligence only finds out in a year,” Mama replied, unruffled.
She had already gone around to a few schools in the city and stopped at the nearest, which had recently been an English school but now remained just a good school.
Mutiny of the Little Sweeties Page 9