The young Gavrilovs regarded the approach of school differently. Timid Vicky was nervous, as she had been accepted to a new grade, gnawed her nails, and downloaded from the net all sorts of tutorials of the type Leadership Primer or How to be oneself in any team. Kate knew beforehand that she would figure it out without tutorials, did not worry about anything, and only demanded a new backpack.
“Your one from last year is still good!” Mama objected.
“It’s old. And Peter used it.”
“It may be old but it wasn’t made in China. It’s unbreakable. See: triple seam and parachute thread. And all these pendants will rub to a shine in two weeks.”
“I still want a new one! Let Alena have the not-made-in-China!”
Alena was indifferent to what backpack she used, provided that there was a pocket for her phone. She twirled in front of the mirror and was determining the whole time, which was better – two braids or one? One or two? Then she hid in the bathroom with scissors, cut off her bangs and howled for a long time, because they turned out uneven. Vicky began to clip her second bit of bangs and they turned out even more crooked. They had to resort to Mama’s help. Mama did a good job, however, alas, nothing remained of the bangs.
Peter was also preparing for school. He passed by the mirror, lifting his chin, and tried to decide the whole time if he was cool or not. Then he decided that he was and bought himself a pair of sunglasses like those of a special agent. It was his fifth pair.
It thundered on August 31st. The phone rang. Mama answered. It was the owner of the house calling from Yekaterinburg, informing her that he had quarrelled with his granddaughter and would likely return.
“And us?” Mama asked.
The old man on the other end of the line sighed. “She doesn’t like that I file my nails with a pumice stone. And I mustn’t put my clothes in with their wash! And she forbids smoking!” he complained about his granddaughter.
Everything came tumbling down in Mama’s mind. With such a bunch of kids and things, they would fit nowhere else. Prices had gone up for the summer. The Moscow apartment was leased for a year. Where would they go now? Who would lease what to them? They would have to return to Moscow and ask to live with Granny.
“So we have to move?” Mama asked.
The grandpa sighed again. “I don’t know yet. I haven’t quite decided if I’ll return. Maybe my granddaughter and I will adjust to each other and then you’ll be able to stay,” he said.
“So what are we to do?” Mama asked.
“I’ll call you,” the grandpa replied and said goodbye.
Mama stood for a long time with the phone still in her hand and then ran to Papa. Papa was sitting in front of the computer and stroking the keys. The brilliant novel was hiding somewhere among the keys, and all that was needed was to press the keys in the correct sequence. But who knows what the correct sequence is!
“It’s August 31st!” Mama yelled. “We’ve just enrolled in school! And now, it turns out, there’s also a caving-in with school and you can’t understand anything at all! It’s as if we’re on a volcano!”
Papa looked at the wooden floor. There clearly was no volcano under them, but then a mouse was living under the floor. At night, it could be heard running and rustling, and sometimes in the morning, there would be a small pile of sawdust on the floor that the mouse had thrown out.
Papa put Mama on his lap and stroked her hair. “Everything will resolve itself somehow!” he promised. “Remember how many times everything was difficult and bad, and then everything resolved itself?”
“So we’re still going to school?” Mama asked.
“Where else will we go?”
Mama ran to iron uniforms, wipe with a damp cloth the backpacks dusty from the move, and do other important things that without which September 1st would never come.
The most trouble was with school uniforms. They were not required in the previous school, which only asked to come dressed in something “normal”. In this school, they had to wear something responsibly dark, in a decorous style, and under no circumstances a sweater and jeans. Peter, though, was a supporter of jeans in particular. He had roughly the same number of jeans as sunglasses.
“Give him your pants! You’ve almost never worn them and they look very respectable!” Mama said to Papa.
Papa doubted that Peter would agree to go to school in the pants, especially those that someone had worn before him. Peter got accustomed to things for a very long time, could go around in one thing for weeks, and cursed a lot if something else appeared.
“Don’t you mention these pants to him at all! He’ll say that they’re filth and lousy. You wash all his old jeans and secretly put these there. He’ll then put them on in order not to go around naked. Only don’t get into any argument with him!” Papa advised her.
“But what about pedagogy? What about Makarenko?”[21] Mama asked plaintively.
“Students of Makarenko wore athletic shorts,” Papa parried.
The night of August 31st to September 1st turned out to be difficult. Rita was whining non-stop. She was cutting another tooth and clear snot was flowing from her nose like a long, sticky river. In view of that, Rita did not sleep for a large part of the night, and Mama and Papa watched her in turn.
At some point, on Mama’s watch, Papa heard shouts of “Hello! Hello!” in his dream. He sensed a dirty trick and woke up. It turned out that Mama was trying to weave grapevines into a rocking chair, using the wooden frame of an old chair which she had found in the basement. Rita was walking around with Papa’s phone, calling anybody, and shouting, “Hello! It’s me! Hello! It’s me!” The unhappy voices of people who had been woken up could be heard responding. This was all fun for Rita and she broke into laughter.
Papa ran to catch Rita. On seeing that someone was trying to catch her, Rita rushed off with laughter in the opposite direction. She ran to the bathroom and froze, looking around merrily and jumping on the spot. Papa started to sneak up carefully to her. Detecting Papa sneaking up, Rita was amused and began to run away from Papa around the baby bath, which was about a third full of water and with rubber boots standing in it, on the floor.
“Why did you give her my phone? She’s calling people!” Papa shouted at Mama.
“Sorry! I didn’t see it!”
“I don’t believe you! Oh-h! Catch her! She’s dropping it!”
Papa rushed forward. The phone slipped from Rita’s hand, flew up, bounced off the edge of the sink, and fell into the baby bath. Papa uttered a plaintive cry, rushed to the bath, and saw that the phone had fallen right into a boot and was lying in it safe and sound.
Papa quickly took it together with the boot, but told Rita that the phone had dissolved. No more. Rita looked all around in the tub, spread her arms, and repeated wonderingly, “No more! No more!”
* * *
On the morning of September 1st, while Papa fed the other children breakfast, Mama stood by Peter’s door and listened. Now Peter pushed the stool with his knee, now he was searching for his jeans. Now, he sniffed decisively and set off to the door. Mama had managed to disappear into her room and dived under the covers.
“I’m sleeping! Don’t bother me! ” she yelled before Peter had time to knock.
Peter stopped thoughtfully, looked at his watch, put on the pants, made sure they were sitting all right on him, and resigned himself. Downstairs, the children were given pocket money for all kinds of snacks in the school cafeteria. Even Rita, seeing that the others were doing this, demanded money, although she only had a vague idea of what to do with it. Papa tried to give her a coin, but Rita wanted paper money, because she saw that Papa had given paper money to all the others.
However, Papa had only a large bill left and giving it to Rita was not in his plans. Rita did not understand this and had already started to pout dangerously. Fortunately, Alena had the sense to take a magic marker and draw for Rita money with so many zeros that you could buy the whole town, if only it was accepted for
payment. She even depicted quite acceptably a portrait of Mama on the banknote. So, the money turned out to be tolerably official.
“100 roubles to the 100th degree! That’s powerful!” Peter stated the value and went to school.
Papa stood at the window and watched as Peter went to school together with his toughness. Peter caught up with Alena, who was still scared to go to a new class, where it was unknown how she would be taken. She walked along for some time and then, as if by chance, stretched her hand out to her brother. Peter conferred with his toughness, looked back at the window, checking to see if the parents were watching, and took Alena’s hand. Alena went with a huge bouquet of gladiolus thrown over her shoulder like the club of a folk warrior. Vicky and Kate followed at some distance behind Alena. Kate went without gladioli, folded her arms on her chest, and looked like Napoleon heading to a council of marshals. Vicky was moving in short dashes, clutching flowers to her chest. Mama and Alex brought up the rear. Also with gladioli. Mama held Alex’s hand firmly, knowing that he would climb on fences and trees otherwise and immediately get dirty.
Mama returned home at nine in the morning. “It seems that everything’s fine. I looked at the line. Alena and Kate immediately joined the team, but Vicky is staying on the sidelines and pining for the time being. It’s always like this with her. She’ll get accustomed in a day or two,” she communicated.
“And Peter?”
“I didn’t see him. There were many classes, everyone was running around, the orchestra was roaring… By the way, Alex has to be picked up in an hour!” Mama said.
“Yes. Nice to study in the first grade!” Papa said.
Mama was standing, looking out the window, and thinking about something. “It’s strange that all our children are so different! Different personalities, habits, desires… All different! But growing up together!” she said.
“Nothing strange about it. They sometimes mix up in maternity wards!” Papa responded. He had already started weaving a story. “Perhaps my perfect child is now with the Turkish Sultan? Yes, exactly!”
“How?”
“Simple! The Sultan could have come to Moscow with all his wives to see the Red Square. And then – oh! – one of his wives clutches her stomach. The Sultan grinds his teeth because he hasn’t seen the Place of Skulls.[22] But there’s nothing to be done. He jumps in the limo and takes the poor wretch to the hospital in Kapotnya, where you gave birth to Peter and where they’re ready to accept a non-resident woman without registration… The guards wave their pistols, the Sultan plucks his beard, and the hospital staff is nervous and attaches the name-plates incorrectly! My perfect child turns out to be in Turkey, while we only have the heir to their throne!”
“Uh-huh. Seven of your perfect kids are with kings and queens who did not manage to see the Place of Skulls! And we have seven heirs of the ruling dynasties of Europe,” Mama agreed and went for Alex.
Alex and a fat boy, Vova, were squatting by the radiator and trying to pull from it the jammed pencil case of a girl, Madina, who was sobbing nearby.
“Did you shove it in?” Mama asked sternly.
“No!” Alex and Vova shouted together.
“Really not you?”
“No! She herself is guilty! She said, ‘I bet you don’t have enough strength!’”
“I’ll tell Papa! He’ll break all your bones!” Madina promised.
“You yourself helped us shove it in! You pushed with your knee!” Alex was outraged.
“I’ll tell Papa!” Madina stubbornly repeated, having decided to hold onto this winning line to the end.
Having fetched his pencil case, Mama took Alex to the school exit. Vova ran ahead. Mama, dragging Alex’s bag, found that Vova was not so much fat as broad and strong. It seemed that he would even be able to force a pencil case through a keyhole. Vova the strongman led them up to the school doors and turned to the stairs, with his shoulders pushing like an icebreaker past third-graders.
“I’ll go get a bite, haven’t eaten anything since morning!” he said, though it was, in fact, still morning.
“Alone? Do you know the school so well?”
“A little,” Vova declared. Then he thought for a bit and said, “My mama works in the cafeteria here!”
All the way back home Alex was knocking down flower heads with a stick and chatting, “Do you know how a person grows?” A wave with the stick. “A person has a thyroid! The thyroid sends antibodies.” A wave with the stick. “Antibodies reproduce, and hands and feet grow!”
“Is this what the teacher told you?”
“No. I remembered this myself,” Alex bragged.
“Of course. But don’t you feel sorry for the flowers? They’re actually alive!” Mama said.
“I leave the roots alone.”
“What if someone pulled off your arm but left your legs? Or smashed you and threw you away?”
“Ha-ha-ha!” Alex said uncertainly but already waved the stick above the flowers. Then he quickly looked back at Mama to check if she noticed that he had resolved to pity the flowers. Mama looked to the side and did not intervene in Alex’s decision.
Kate, Alena, and Vicky returned from school at about one.
To Mama’s question about school and the new class, Kate replied briefly, “Okay! Normal.” Textbooks were distributed, workbooks signed, then they arranged a good lesson and yelled at some boy for it, nonsense in general, not even anything to present at home.
“And the kids?”
“What kids are in sixth grade? Absolute cuckoo, normal. As everywhere,” Kate said, shrugging her shoulders.
Alena liked the new school. She imparted that two boys had fallen in love with her, well, she believed so, because they were constantly pursuing her, but she was beating them with the wet rag for wiping the board.
“How about you?” Mama asked Vicky.
It goes without saying that everything turned out awful for Vicky. The whole class ran terribly and was horribly noisy, but she was reading quietly on the phone.
After lunch, Kate went to the attic to her pigeons. Over the summer, the pigeons of four became three, because the children forgot to untie the flight feathers of one of the pigeons launching from the balcony. The pigeon hit the ground. When they ran to it, it was completely intact, only a red ball was quivering on its beak. The ball was very bright, rich, perfectly round, and did not change shape, and it was especially scary. Kate took it in her hands, and it died there a minute later, its head hanging down.
Papa buried it where they buried all dead animals – a little away from the mailbox at the fence. Kate then cried for two days and Alena also for some time. But Kate was always crying quietly for a long time, hiding on her wardrobe and covering her head with a blanket. It was like a long drizzling autumn rain. Alena would cry like a summer rain-shower: with claps of thunder and lots of tears. When she cried, she had the capability to wet even a woollen blanket.
After a good cry, Alena began to wander around Kate repeating, “I told you! I told you!” As to what exactly she had said and for what reason nobody remembered, because Alena generally expressed herself a lot. Kate got upset and said that she would pour out her dragon’s water, and on Alena’s head at that, if she would not be quiet. Alena was offended and left.
The remaining three pigeons, their flight feathers having long been untied, flew quite freely, and considered the attic their home. At times some neighbour’s pigeon would join them, and the neighbour would sometimes come for it and sometimes not. In general, a pigeon hangout quickly formed in the attic. Three little eggs appeared in the nest-box; two of them hatched. The chicks had little resemblance to birds and were more like unpeeled pink potatoes.
Kate spent a rather short time in the attic and came tearing along with a shout that someone had attacked the pigeons. The neighbour’s stray had vanished, as did the one that was not part of a pair. Apparently, they had just flown away. The two that remained were scratched. Of the chicks, only one survived.
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sp; Mama and Papa went up to the attic and looked at the pigeons. Rita trudged behind them. It turned out that she had learned to climb up the steep ladder to the hatch, which she pushed with her forehead at a starting run.
“Looks like the attack of a predator!” Papa said, examining the pigeons. “They defended themselves from something, but it still dragged away a chick. But what predator was able to climb to our attic? It’s unlikely!”
“Certainly unlikely! The cats haven’t yet managed!” Mama said.
“Impossible. There’s only one window here, that’s it. But a bare wall underneath. A cat can’t climb along the plaster.”
“Jump from the walnut tree?”
Papa leaned out and estimated the distance.
“From the foliage at four metres? What should such a cat be? Moreover, the jump would have to be aslant along the house.”
Someone sneezed behind Papa. He turned around. Rita was standing quietly and unassumingly near the far wall. She was the most noiseless kid in the world, a model for books written about obedient children. An off-white scarf was hanging from Rita’s shoulder. Papa looked at the scarf once, twice, three times. For some reason the scarf bothered him, but Papa was distracted and thinking about something else. Then the scarf began to bother him again and he squinted at it again.
After looking at the scarf for the fourth time, Papa discovered that the scarf was moving. Besides, it was moving somehow in parts. Rushing over to Rita, Papa discovered that the neighbour’s skinny cat was hanging from her shoulder, sagging as if it had no spine. The cat did not even look at the pigeons but the pigeons were behaving as if they had been acquainted with it for a long time. Soaring, they rushed about confusedly around the attic, trying to protect their flightless chick.
“Rita! Have you come here with the cat before?” Papa asked sternly.
Rita shook her head.
“Well, I can read it in your eyes! Did you or didn’t you?”
Rita quickly covered her eyes with her hands.
Mutiny of the Little Sweeties Page 10