Papa called and confirmed that yes, he spoke with the cashier and it was all true. The fourth ticket is free and children under six are free if they go with someone with a ticket; as there would be three tickets, it turned out that everything was in order.
“Well, then, it means the circus is lousy, since it’s so easy to get in! I’m not going!” Peter declared.
The performance started at six. Until five o’clock, the children were deciding who was going to the circus and who was not. All the young ones wanted to go, but the other ones were changing their minds every half an hour, and then, seeing that they were not persuaded, again caught fire. It bothered Vicky and Peter most of all that they would have to go with the youngsters and everyone would start to say that here – ha-ha! – is some demonstration, and old women would rush to Costa and pull up his pants.
“Is it too much for him to pull up his own pants?”
“They’ll still fall down. He chooses the biggest, to be like Alex!” Kate was exasperated.
“They won’t fall down today! We’ll put suspenders on Costa!” Mama promised.
Papa drove the children to the circus, not forgetting to seat them in a checkerboard pattern so that everyone was peaceful and managed without quarrels on the road. For some reason, it is always this way: the ones adjacent in age quarrel, but the next nearest are friends. The children went to the performance as seriously as if to war. Kate collected all the phones and left them in the car.
“Did you read what’s written on the flyer? No taking videos! If someone takes one, his phone will be taken away! Everyone indeed will do so there!” she said and looked sternly at Alena, the main target of her tutelage.
“I will not!” Alena was indignant.
“Then you’ll lose your phone. You already did!”
“You wrecked two!” Alena squeaked.
“Wrecking is not losing!” Kate cut her off, with a voice showing that any comparison here was off-base. Then she turned her attention to Alex and began to teach him to say that he was five.
“I was seven on my last birthday!” Alex turned obstinate.
“Only blunder that you’re seven! Do you want Papa to pay for a ticket? Do you? Do we have extra money?” Kate attacked him.
“We have money! Here! Here!” Rita started to yell, pointing to Papa’s bag.
“Informer!” Papa said.
The circus tent was pitched in the city park next to a low stone fence. Beside the tent were a few circus vans, two cars with megaphones on top, and a trailer converted to a ticket booth.
A crowd had gathered by the tent, and two muscular gymnasts, temporarily standing in as ticket collectors, let people inside by turns. Papa bought three tickets and, after arming his family with them, moved the children forward. He remained outside, near the tight rope, because if he had gone beyond it, he would not be able to push his way back. He saw how one of the gymnasts, after taking the tickets, looked at them for a long time and then started counting the children, pointing at each with a finger.
Finally, the man squatted down in front of Alex and asked sternly, “Boy! How old are you?”
“Eight!” Alex blurted out in fright.
“How old, how old?”
“Five!” Kate hissed, pulling his hand.
“Ten!” Alex repeated.
“Indeed!” the gymnast said and, totally starting to suspect everyone indiscriminately, turned his gaze to Costa. “And you?”
“Ten, ten, ten!” Costa yelled, not wanting to resign himself that Alex was older.
“He’s four! Can’t you see that he’s just a toddler?” Kate shouted. “Maybe you’ll even say that she’s forty?” she said and pointed to Rita who was eating an apple melancholically.
The gymnast looked attentively at Rita and reckoned that she was not forty, but possibly only thirty-five and a half. “Where are your parents, little girl?” he asked Rita.
Rita quite accurately pointed a finger at Papa, but Peter was also in the same direction, and it turned out that she pointed to Peter. The gymnast looked perplexedly at the young father of six children, who, without taking off his sunglasses, was moving a match around his mouth like a Mafioso, and, desperate to understand something, waved his hand and said, “That’s it! Go, papa! Hold the young ones on your knees! And if there are empty seats, sit them down!”
The children went into the circus. It was rather dark inside the tent, especially for Peter, who stubbornly did not want to take off his glasses.
“Did you see how he was scared of me? Isn’t it cool?” Peter smugly asked.
“Ah-ha. He was shaking the whole time! Only you, for some reason, didn’t even open your mouth,” Kate said.
Soon the orchestra was thundering and clowns were running out into the arena. One was redheaded, but another pretended that he was a random person from the audience. They doused the second one with water about five times, and kicked him as many times, again when he attempted to be indignant.
“I wonder, do they get paid the same?” Peter asked. “They hit and pour water on one all the time, but the other stands there, uninvolved, and only giggles stupidly!”
At that moment, they dumped a cake on the head of the redheaded clown and justice had more or less been served. Then Peter’s thought flowed in another direction. “I bet the cake has expired! It isn’t profitable to buy fresh cake. If only we could see the date on the box!” declared Peter, who found it irrational to dump an un-expired cake on the heads of clowns.
It goes without saying, none of the older children would argue with Peter, and he argued with Alex, Costa, and Rita.
After the clowns, the jugglers came out; after the jugglers, a trainer with five poodles and a Persian cat; and again the clowns. The clowns were busy all the time while something was being prepared or installed backstage or in the arena. The random person from the audience had managed to change his clothes by that time, and they again hit and sprinkled him a little so that he did not feel too happy.
Costa, Alex, and Rita did not stop laughing. Vicky, Alena, and Kate pitied the poor man who was kicked all the time, but Peter was hemming and hawing with distrust, calculating what salary a clown could get and, consequently, whether it would be profitable to be a clown.
Finally, the clowns left and a woman appeared with two little monkeys. The monkeys’ names were Gabriella and Marina. Gabriella was in a black tuxedo and hat, and Marina in a pink dress with a short skirt.
The monkeys jumped on drums, somersaulted, rode on a bike, hid candy in pockets, talked on the phone, and behaved exactly like people, except that they were not rude and did not betray each other. But they could be forgiven for this little thing. Rita and Costa liked the monkeys so much that they almost ran after them backstage, but Kate told them that a hippo would eat them backstage. Rita believed in the hippo, but Costa repeated several times that there was no hippo, though he did not go backstage all the same, because it was rather scary to go alone and Vicky was holding Rita firmly on her knees.
During intermission, the children spent all their pocket money on party blowouts and juice with straws. Kate carried out a complicated scheme so that those who already got blowouts would not get juice. Still, it turned out that someone got both blowouts and juice while someone got nothing at all.
In the beginning of the second part, the master of ceremonies announced in a frightful voice that there would now be tigers in the arena. They must not move, breathe loudly, or do anything at all, because the tigers could behave unpredictably. Immediately after this announcement, the lights went out, the master of ceremonies cried out in fear, and following this, a terrible, awe-inspiring growl resounded backstage. The women began to scream, someone rushed to the exit, a spotlight suddenly flared up, and everyone saw two guinea pigs in the arena.
“I already said that they have no tigers! Some clowns with expired cakes!” Peter declared loudly.
All the spectators laughed with relief, except for Rita, who was so frightened by the tiger gro
wling in the darkness that she started howling and did not want to stay in the circus a minute more. Kate tried to calm her, but nothing doing! Rita howled like a siren and indicated with a hand that she needed to be rescued from this horrible place. Peter had to throw her over his shoulder and carry her out. Vicky, Kate, Alena, Costa, and Alex hurried after Peter. Dangling on the shoulder, Rita did not stop howling, at the same time managing to control Peter’s movement and point with a hand the direction for him to carry out her salvation.
People looked askance at them, annoyed. The aisles in the circus were narrow, and to let one spectator out, the whole row had to get up. And here were a whole six, and even a dangling screaming seventh on the shoulder of one.
Finally, they emerged from the tent, and Peter unloaded Rita onto the sandy area. “Phew! As if I again… with this pipsqueak! She should be put in a cage! How we all disgraced ourselves!” Peter said, panting. Rita kicked him in the leg. “Stop it! I’m not an animal!" Peter said.
“Yeah! You were perfect, of course! Who poured soup from a squirt gun over himself?” Vicky was only two years younger than Peter and remembered his small sins very well.
“Soup is something else. And here’s simply a crazy pint-sized klutz!” Peter said firmly. Rita somehow determined that they were talking about her and threw sand at Peter. “Wow!” Peter was puzzled. “How could she be offended? She doesn’t know what a ‘crazy klutz’ is!”
“She understands from your voice! Don’t talk to her in a harsh voice!” Vicky appealed to him. “Watch! Rita, little one! Come here! Hug me!” Rita immediately ran to her and hugged her with plump arms around her neck. Skinny Vicky immediately started to fall from such an anchor, but Rita laughed and hugged her even harder. “Let me go, you monster! You’re choking me!” Vicky croaked.
They stood there for a little while longer and then tried to return to the circus, but Rita remembered the tigers and went on strike. Costa, dressed in a shirt with short sleeves, sneezed loudly.
“Already a first candidate for a cold!” Kate said sullenly. “Papa won’t be coming in a hurry, and all our phones are in the car.”
“Then we’ll walk!” Peter decided. “We can cut through the park here!”
“No, we have to wait! Papa said to wait!” Vicky said.
“And I say we go! Still have to wait an hour, but we’ll get there faster! Well? Are you coming or do I go alone?!” Peter threatened.
And they went. The first few minutes Rita flew like lightning, and it was good because she set the pace for the entire company.
“Run! Even faster!” Kate shouted to her.
However, here it came into the lightning’s head that it was possible to fly not only in the direction of home but in any direction at all that her head turned. Her head was turning completely unpredictably. Several times Vicky, Peter, and Kate had to rush after Rita deep into the park, scaring her with robbers, and once Peter yelled, “Look out! There are maniacs here!” as he pulled her out from under a bench on which sat an unassuming couple in love, holding hands.
Fifteen minutes later, it occurred to Rita that she was dead tired. She lay down on the ground and began to whimper. Kate sat down beside her. “What, you don’t know how to walk? Quietly this way! March!” she asked. Rita shook her head.
“You’re asking wrong!” Peter declared. “A question with a hidden negation is needed here. Ask, ‘You haven’t forgotten how to walk, huh?’” Rita shook her head again, and somehow it turned out again that this option of the answer was right.
Yet Peter did not give up. “Your legs don’t hurt anymore?” he asked cunningly, reckoning that it was not exactly possible to answer “yes” or “no” to this question. However, Peter only did harm to himself, because Rita now knew precisely why she was lying on the ground. It turned out that her legs hurt! What horror! She pointed a finger at them and repeated with a sly face, “Oh, oh, oh!”
“She’s not tired, for sure! She ran circles around us for 50 kilometres!” Vicky said.
Peter picked Rita up and sat her on his shoulders. Rita grinned knowledgeably and, grasping Peter’s ears for control over the situation, started to look around at the surroundings. And they started walking again, only not for long, because Costa suddenly noticed that, for some reason, he was walking but Rita was riding Peter, and he lay down on the asphalt.
They admonished Costa for about five minutes, frightened him with everything in a row, and stood him up vertically, but Costa flopped down like a cotton doll. Peter refused to carry Costa too because, he said, Rita was as heavy as a sack. Papa could immediately drag along two or three, but he, Peter, would get a hernia and would get hit in the leg.
After an emergency meeting, it was decided that Peter would carry Costa, and Alena, Vicky, and Kate would drag Rita along. So they did. A satisfied Costa moved onto Peter’s shoulders, and the girls took Rita’s arms and legs and hauled her. Rita giggled and kicked her legs, causing Alena and Kate to sway from side to side. They stopped every few metres, unloaded Rita onto the pavement, and rested. While they were resting, Alex caught up with them. He had managed to find a paper bag, put it on a stick, set it on fire, and was now dropping pieces of burning paper bag on everything in succession.
“Where did you get matches?” Kate asked him gloomily.
Alex, with an honest look, stated that he did not take any matches, but here his shirt escaped from under his belt and about five transparent lighters, which he had collected as they walked through the park, fell out of it. He kept some and smashed the others on the pavement, making loud bangs.
An aggravated Kate took the lighters from Alex and pushed them into the tight grille of the drain. “There! Now fetch!”
“Wh-y-yy?” Alex shouted.
“So that you’ll set the house on fire? Right?”
“Gim-ee!” Alex tried to snatch the last lighter from Kate, but she pulled his baseball cap over his eyes and, shaking her fist, said sternly, “Mister! Control yourself!”
The mister refused to control himself and started jumping on the spot, throwing sand and leaves at Kate. Then Kate, Alena, and Vicky again picked Rita up and dragged her further.
The city park was designed in a very complicated manner, with a lot of structures, a summer cinema, a children’s railway, a zoo, and even a Ferris wheel. Each had its own little fence and it was necessary to go around them. All the paths seemed to go in the right direction, but soon they began to twist and turn and it became clear that you were going in a completely wrong direction. Another attribute of the park was the specially arranged dead ends. You would be going and going among boxwood shrubs and suddenly bump into a cheerful yellow sign: Lost? Go back! And it was necessary to go back against your will, as there were fences or thorny bushes all around.
After the third such joke, Vicky, who was dragging Rita’s legs, her heaviest part, began to die. “I can’t anymore!”
“Come on, drag! Don’t whine! Once born, they have to be carried!” Kate said through clenched teeth and immediately added in a cowardly way, “It would have been better to wait at the circus. Papa definitely won’t find us here.”
“He’ll come in the car,” Alex said.
“How? Move it through the fence? Drag, I say!”
“I can’t! I’m dying!” Vicky groaned.
“You’re dying? Really?” Alex asked eagerly.
“Really, Alex love, really!” Vicky moaned, glad that at least someone was sorry for her.
“After you’re dead, I’ll take your flashlight, okay?”
“And I your phone, tablet, and the red skirt!” Alena said.
“And I your backpack and desk! And your Japanese mice!” Kate added.
Peter realized that he needed something to stake a claim in memory of his sister. He considered for some time what among her belongings was of value, then declared that he would take for himself the charger from an old Nokia and the revolving chair!
Vicky looked warily at the four pairs of eyes directed at her, g
rabbed Rita under the armpits, and quickly carried her.
Dusk was falling fast. Somewhere in the depths of the park, dogs were barking, but they walked and walked. Dragging Rita by the arms and legs was uncomfortable. They gradually developed a new carrying technique, which did not tire the arms so. Kate carried Rita on her back, and Vicky and Alena supported Rita on both sides. They changed from time to time and then Vicky carried, while Kate and Alena supported.
Peter, whom nobody substituted, got tired and increasingly unloaded Costa onto the ground. Then he even stopped unloading because pulling his brother off the ground was even harder, and he just leaned against a tree somewhere. What was the most incredible was that Costa had managed to fall asleep, placing his cheek on top of Peter’s head.
Finally, almost exhausted, they came to the boom barrier of the adult clinic, circled around it, and turned up on the next street not far from home.
Here Rita, sitting on Vicky’s back, raised her head and said cheerfully, “Papa!”
“I bet you a billion it’s not Papa!” Peter grumbled, not even trying to turn his head. Rita was forever imagining Papa even where he was not.
“Papa!” Rita stubbornly repeated.
Peter reluctantly squinted and saw a silver minivan turning off the main road to the gate. The van was puffing wearily with the exhaust buzzing. Obviously, it had had to travel here and there around the park for a long time.
“Papa,” Peter uttered dully.
So, he acknowledged that he had lost a billion to Rita.
Chapter Fifteen
The Arrival of the Meddling Aunt
“Three months ago a pregnant young grey kitty with fleas was found in the basement of the service building of Maple Park. Homes have been found for the kittens; the kitty has healed, been sterilized, vaccinated, microchipped, and has received a pet passport.[26] Now I am going to the cottage and have no time to spend on it anymore! Any owner, take it, please!”
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On Wednesday after school, Kate, Vicky, and Alena decided to invent their own secret language, which no one else would understand. It seemed to them very convenient to have such a language: you talk about what you want and no one will find out.
Mutiny of the Little Sweeties Page 12