Vicky took a thick notebook and carefully made columns in it, as in a school dictionary: word – transcription – translation.
“What will ‘cat’ be?” asked Vicky.
“Pshygl!” said Kate.
“Why ‘pshygl’?”
“Why not?”
Everything – animate and inanimate that dwelt or just happened to be in the Gavrilov house – was named roughly this way. The difficulty was that these new words were certainly immediately forgotten and it was necessary to constantly look in the notebook in order to talk and then pass it on to the person with whom you were just having a conversation. The person took the notebook and you started to point with your finger to the words you had just said.
Now the main concern was to hide the notebook from the other four children, who were interested in stealing it. At first, Kate, Vicky, and Alena hid the notebook by turns, but later it was only Vicky, who had the gift of hiding an object in the most obvious place so that it was unlikely to be discovered. For example, between two pans, one nested within the other, or right in her drawer, wrapping it in the cover of the school diary, which was immediately discarded, of course, because everyone saw that it was a diary.
Peter was the most zealous of all in the search. He literally rummaged the whole house, suspecting that the poster appearing on his door – “ENNEI – URLINKLE!” – meant “Peter – idiot.”
Finally, Kate was tired of this. “No,” said Kate. “‘Urlinkle’ is something else. You won’t snatch it out of my hands? Honestly? No, I don’t believe your word of honour! You’ll say you gave your word not to snatch it from my hands but you’ll snatch it out of one hand! Or from the fingers! You really wanted to say that, right?”
Peter puffed, because Kate, it goes without saying, had guessed right. “What will happen now?” he asked.
“We’ll tie you up!”
Peter willingly agreed, and the three girls thoroughly tied him up with ropes to a chair. Peter grinned in secret, because he tensed up his right arm so that it would be easy to pull it out.
“Ready! Then look!” Kate carefully covered the page with her fingers, leaving one line. “Here! Idiot is ‘shmurk’!”
“And ‘urlinkle’ is donkey? Show me ‘urlinkle’!” Peter said and grabbed the notebook with his freed hand.
“Ah! You promised not to! Get it from him!”
The three girls grabbed one part of the notebook and Peter’s hand the other. The girls, huffing, pulled it to themselves, and Alena even tried to scare Peter with the clicking of teeth near his hand, but Peter would still have won, and then Mama’s phone played a military march.
Mama did not react because she did not realize that it was her phone. Peter was forever changing her ring tone, considering it witty. Sometimes Mama’s phone began to rumble like a tractor, then scream, then fire a single shot with the sound of a recoil.
“The phone! Didn’t you hear it?” Peter shouted and, having let go of the notebook, jumped together with the chair to hand Mama the phone.
“Hello! Good evening!” Mama said carefully. She always answered the phone very affectionately, especially when the call was from an unknown number.
“When you answer like this, they’ll think that you’re very kind!” Peter said.
“What, and I’m not?”
“I’m not arguing! I said, they’ll think that you’re very kind!”
Today, however, Mama’s affectionate voice remained much longer than the first two phrases. It remained even when Mama’s face fell and her cheeks paled.
The children were bouncing beside her, trying to find out whom Mama could be talking to with such a face, but Mama, in order that they would not interfere, climbed up onto a chair. Then the children dragged other chairs over and climbed onto them in order to be taller, and again moved their ears to the phone.
“Who was it?” Peter asked when Mama finally hung up.
“Aunt Sveta bought a new SIM card!” Mama said, a guilty smile remaining on her face.
“Aunt Sveta? Where is she?” Papa tensed up.
“She said it’s cheaper to call with local SIM cards. But it’s true, it’s cheaper,” Mama continued, evading a direct answer.
“WHERE IS SHE????”
“Well… uh… Aunt Sveta flew in, then changed to the bus, and is now coming to us from the bus depot!”
“Meddling Aunt!” Papa and Peter exhaled at once.
“Who, who?” Alex asked.
“Have you forgotten? The same aunt who turns chocolate foil wrapper in as scrap metal, and tortures the nerves of those who don’t do so!” Peter reminded him, and Papa, making a sound, tugged at his sleeve.
Twenty minutes later, someone called on the intercom. The gates rattled. A small and delicate woman in a baseball cap turned backward appeared on the porch. In her hands was a transparent package with yellow tubes.
“Hello, kids! Hello, Annie! Hello, everyone! By the way, Nick, you owe me four hundred roubles, and better immediately, because later we’ll forget!” she said to Papa.
“For what?” Papa tensed up.
“I bought sunscreen for you on the way out!”
“At the end of September?”
“Yes! But I bought four for the price of two. There’s a sale! And the cream will be useful for next year!”
The little woman went into the kitchen and looked around in a business-like manner. “Not bad!” she approved. “Simple but spacious! It’s a background for action. What’s this you have?”
“The fridge!” Peter said.
“Good boy! You know everything!” Aunt Sveta praised. “But why is it here? The sun from the window hits it. The sun shouldn’t hit the fridge! We’ll move it from here right away!”
Aunt Sveta leaned a shoulder on the fridge and, straining, began to rock it. Papa and Mama exchanged glances. They had no intention of disturbing someone else’s fridge, having stood here clearly for a hundred years, but what can you do when before your very eyes a frail woman is just about to acquire a hernia and clearly with the best of intentions.
Papa and Peter leaned their weight together on the fridge and moved it about a metre to the side. At the same time, they accidentally forgot to unplug it and the cord flew from the wall. Besides, it turned out there were no tiles but simply the painted wall behind the fridge.
“This is minor! Tiles or no tiles! We’ll remodel everything here!” Aunt Sveta consoled Papa. “And for such a large family, this fridge is too small and too noisy altogether! Here’s what I propose… We’ll sell, discard, or put it in the basement! And I’ll give you my black one cheaply for a purely symbolic amount. I’ll send it from Moscow in a container.”
“In a dark-dark house was a dark-dark fridge…” Papa said quietly.
“You don’t understand! Mine is a high-end fridge!” Meddling Aunt was offended. “Not a fridge but a huge freezer! You can shove half a cow carcass in it! Don’t you agree?”
Papa carefully remarked that they do not buy cow carcasses.
“But that’s wrong! Carcasses are much cheaper, and you have a big family. Besides, you can freeze a lot of vegetables and fruits and eat them in the winter!” Aunt Sveta said.
Mama, of course, was immediately excited that the children would have vitamins, and began to tug at Papa’s arm, while he had already realized that he would not be able to deliver the manuscript, because he would have to pursue the aunt’s freezer across the country.
Aunt Sveta’s phone, which she was holding in her hand and not letting go of because messages, emails, and notifications from every possible social network were always arriving, started vibrating. Aunt Sveta looked sternly at Papa, imprinting in him the bright dream of a freezer, and brought the phone to her ear.
“Face me!” she said sternly. All the Gavrilovs faced Meddling Aunt fearfully, because it was unclear to whom she was talking: the phone or them.
“What do you mean ‘what for’?” Aunt Sveta continued, looking at everyone at once. “Where a
re you? Well done! Remember at all times, where you’re facing, you go in that direction! Frr! A minute! Which way are you facing? What trees? Promptly go in the other direction! Why was I wrong? On what street are you? Let’s take off from there!”
Aunt Sveta heard some answer. She rushed to the window. “That’s it! Stand still! I can see you! Wave at me! Yes, it’s exactly you! Stand still and don’t go away!” And Aunt Sveta rushed toward the exit.
“Who’s this?” Papa asked, helping her open the gates because the lock opened with some trick produced by its antiquity.
“The porter! Well, not quite an official porter, but still…” Aunt Sveta said.
“Where did you find him?”
“I didn’t find him anywhere! A young man at the bus station asked me for money for cigarettes, but I don’t encourage idlers just as I don’t encourage taxi drivers! I said he’d get a huge sum if he carries my luggage! I gave him your address and I myself came light!”
“What if he…”
“Out of the question! I took his passport! And no one has ever cheated me at all!” Aunt Sveta said this so threateningly that all the Gavrilovs felt that it would take a lot of courage to cheat her.
Along the figure-eight street, clinging to the bushes, a lanky young man was making his way in their direction. His arms were weighed down by the incredible quantity of luggage. Every three metres he stopped and squatted down. Aunt Sveta gave him money for cigarettes, returned his passport, and the porter left.
“Yes-yes-yes!” Aunt Sveta said. “I know what you want to ask! How did I carry all this? I have four pieces! Each 15 kg, and only 20 without additional payment on the plane! But I stuffed them in your old stroller, in a couple of packs, and in the notebook bag, and carried everything as carry-on!”
“Did you take any airplane food?” Alena eagerly asked.
“Of course!” Aunt said and, like a magician conjuring in the fifth dimension, took from a bag two whole containers of airplane food.
“This is mine and this is my neighbour’s! He refused to eat, because I forbad him from pulling out the little table!”
“Why did you forbid him?”
“Because my feet were on the baggage, and he hit me right on the knee with the little table!” Aunt snapped. “And the neighbour on the right, a very nice woman, by the way, refused the jam! And here are the spoons and napkins!”
“And what’s this?”
“Headphones!” Aunt Sveta said. “Gift from the airline! They were lying there in the pocket!”
“The headphones aren’t a gift! They’re for watching in-flight movies!” Peter said, admiring Meddling Aunt for pinching the airplane headphones.
“Really?” Aunt Sveta asked coldly. “Since they’re lying around and not attached, that means they are a gift! Well, I’ll find out on the Internet and if you’re right, I’ll return them on the way back!”
“And when’s the way back?” Papa wanted to hint, but Mama looked at him so severely that he kept quiet.
Aunt Sveta settled where Uncle Blahblah once lived, namely in Papa’s office. On Papa’s desk was her tablet, player, ebook reader, netbook, phone, and camera, while Papa’s laptop was ousted to another room. In passing, Aunt Sveta tried to demonstrate that Papa’s laptop was old and should be replaced promptly or at least some programs on it updated, because modern, truly talented, and original writers work “not with pitiful obsolete Word but…” Papa, however, not letting her finish, grabbed his laptop and was left alone.
The children treated Aunt Sveta differently. Alena and Kate stuck to her like two magnets and wanted to transform, overhaul, and break everything together with her. Vicky slipped away skilfully, because Aunt Sveta interfered with her dying. Well, think for yourself! You slip down onto the floor exhausted, to show that it is unrealistic for you to wash five cups, but at this time, they are dragging over you a two-metre ladder from the room or a huge oak tabletop eaten through by beetles, which Aunt Sveta was going to stain.
Rita laughed and ate constantly because Aunt Sveta cooked well. True, she demanded that they ate only at the table, and washed the kids’ hands not with soap but some hand sanitizer, then wiped them clean with cotton disks. Alex and Costa hunted for Aunt Sveta with pistols, and stole all sorts of buns from her and ate them under the table so as not to wash their hands, but Aunt Sveta banged on the table with a fork and threatened that they would never grow up to be decent members of society.
Papa and Peter ran around the house from Meddling Aunt, because as soon as she saw them, she instantly beckoned them to her and said sternly, “The boys should promptly dig a foundation on the street and make a gazebo!”
“Why? We have no land. Just some extension!” Papa hastily objected. “And you know very well that all this here isn’t ours. They can evict us from here right away!”
“Calm down, Nick! Don’t program yourself to failure! If the foundation is properly dug, land isn’t necessary. The gazebo will be on top. We’ll sit in it and drink tea!”
“We can drink tea in the kitchen.”
“I really don’t know where the air is fresher, your stuffy kitchen where a smelly turtle swims in the aquarium, or in a gazebo where a wonderful view of clay roofs opens up!”
Papa imagined to himself a very long pole, on which a gazebo stood, and Meddling Aunt sitting in the gazebo with a two-litre thermos, admiring the roofs, and sending pictures every minute to Instagram and Facebook.
Chapter Sixteen
Rita Reconciles the Old Women
Don’t want to sleep at night? Look at your children’s statuses on Facebook.
©Papa
Aunt Sveta had lived at the Gavrilovs’ for all of two weeks and the house already resembled a construction site. Papa could only work intermittently, hiding with his laptop in the attic, where the pigeons went around his head and shoulders.
One day, he was typing and heard Peter on the stairs persuading Mama, “Don’t tell her that we need a wardrobe!”
“Why?”
“Well, she will meddle! I’m already studying in the bathroom because of repairs everywhere!”
Aunt, by some miracle, caught the word “wardrobe” through three walls, and a complex chain of many links started in her consciousness. “Yes-yes-yes! A wardrobe!” she exclaimed, appearing out of nowhere. “You have things lying on the floor already! We’ll give the Pautkins your shoe rack, take possession of their plastic boxes for the Fedosovs, and they in exchange will give you Arkady Petrovich’s wardrobe, which is kept at their cottage!”
“Not the one lounging around in the cottage?” Mama asked guardedly.
“Yes. To tell the truth, it also didn’t fit in Arkady Petrovich’s. But then everything absolutely goes into it!”
“But it also won’t get in here! It’s tight everywhere here!”
“That’s another question, how to make it such that the wardrobe that fits absolutely everything will get into your house!” Aunt snapped back.
“So, maybe we’ll just put our house inside the wardrobe and won’t go through the hassle? And, incidentally, it’s one thousand and four hundred kilometres from here to the wardrobe! What, it’ll fly across the sky?” Papa shouted from the attic, forgetting that he was hiding.
“That’s already the third question! We’ll cross the bridge when we come to it!” Meddling Aunt cut him off. “That’s it, Nick, come out! Now I know where you’re hiding from me! I need your minivan to ship the trough!”
“What kind of trough?”
“The construction kind. I’ve come to an agreement with a guy. We ship him your trough for mixing mortar, and he in return gives us an almost new balcony door!”
“We have a balcony door!”
“This one has a little glass area! More glass, more light! Besides, there’s a draft under this one!” Meddling Aunt began to descend the stairs triumphantly.
“I’ll tell! I can’t! I’ll tell!” came from the nursery. A flushed Alex jumped out of there and, bouncing, excla
imed excitedly, “You’re not Aunt Sveta! You’re… you’re… you’re… Aunt Mraka!”[27]
Meddling Aunt stopped and scanned Alex from head to big toes. “Why no sneakers? I’ll ask you to return for sneakers, and while searching for them, work out a clear argument why I am Aunt Mraka and who fills you with such thoughts!”
* * *
By the middle of October, even Mama had grown tired of Meddling Aunt. Mama’s favourite mattress, which occupied half the room and, besides Mama, had room for three or four more kids, was exchanged for a sofa, which had many disadvantages and only two merits: it was collapsible and the children could inconspicuously shove candy wrappers and other junk into its wooden interior.
“Now your house looks nice! Now you can have any philosopher as a visitor without shame!” Aunt said.
“I don’t know any philosophers! And if there were any, philosophers don’t care about mattresses. They’re above it,” Papa retorted dejectedly.
“One can be above a mattress, but not a sofa!” Aunt said, with one sentence including herself in the ranks of the classicists.
“It’s possible to be above a sofa too!” Papa objected.
“I’m a weak woman! You don’t understand me!” Aunt Sveta said.
“I can’t take it anymore! Let’s tell her that nothing needs to be undertaken anymore!” Papa said in the evening, when he and Mama were bathing Rita and Costa.
“Never offend a person if he does something with the best intentions!” Mama sighed, trying to guess the children by contours, because Costa gurgled so much foam that it rose half a metre above the bath.
The next morning, Uncle Blahblah came to visit the Gavrilovs. He came on a bike, in a striped vest and straw hat, and with sandals on his feet. “Sorry that I’ve stayed away for so long! I was writing a poem about love. The plot of the poem is: a playwright doesn’t want to pay his wife alimony on the grounds that she is seeing an artist specializing in battle scenes. More precisely, he wants to pay it at the minimum rate, as a creative person and without a regular income. The wife, of course, is against it, which enhances the dramatic conflict!”
Mutiny of the Little Sweeties Page 13