Kitabı oku: «Everything Begins In Childhood», sayfa 16

Yazı tipi:

Chapter 35. The Cousins

“Hey, Akhun! Wake up, Akhun! Tell me what time it is!”

My cousin Yasha, also known as Akhun, yawned and stretched on his cot.

“Six thirty-five,” he answered sleepily, “maybe six forty.”

Yasha had an ability that amazed me – he could tell time without looking at a clock. I was sure that Yasha was a cheater, that he knew some trick. No matter how many times I tried to catch him, how many tests I conducted – Yasha might be wrong, but only by a few minutes – I failed to catch him cheating.

Now, I tested Yasha every day for I was spending the rest of my vacation at Aunt Tamara’s and sleeping in the living room, the same room as Yasha. The conditions for my experiment were very favorable – I slept on the couch, from which I could see the wall clock, with Yasha across from me on a cot, with his back to the clock.

Today, I was the first to wake up, and I woke Yasha up with my question. But again, I didn’t catch him. Maybe he had seen a clock with a big face in his dream? Maybe he determined time by the light outside? Light came into the living room through the two big windows of the adjacent kitchen on the terrace. Besides, sun rays hit the wall mirror, were reflected and lit the room differently at different times of day. “No,” I thought, with a sigh, “he could outfox me on this assumption as well.”

I didn’t know then that some people actually have a secret gift of feeling time precisely, and I became enraged for I didn’t know how to figure out Yasha’s secret.

“How much longer are you going to lounge around?”

That was Raya, Yasha’s sister. She planted her hand firmly against the doorjamb. Even her little upturned nose expressed indignation, not to mention her voice. “It’s seven already.”

Vacation wasn’t over. Did Raya really have a right to demand that we get up early in the morning? After all, Ilya, the elder brother, was snoring in his room, and no one tried to wake him up. Unfortunately, Raya had a right to wake up her younger brother. That spring, he had failed his math exam, so he had to take another exam at the end of vacation to advance from fifth to sixth grade. Raya had taken it upon herself to coach her brother, under one strict condition – they had to do it every morning, even on Sundays.

Raya was sixteen. She attended a piano class at the school of music and planned to become a music teacher. She was a serious, industrious girl. She studied well and was the first to help with things at home.

That’s why Raya decided to be Yasha’s tutor. And after I came to stay with them, she took me on at the same time. I had advanced to the fourth grade without any serious problems, but Raya thought that I shouldn’t loaf while Yasha studied. That’s why, after kicking us out of bed – which was possible with Yasha only through an invitation to breakfast – Raya, while we were eating our favorite three-minute eggs, arranged notebooks and math textbooks on the other end of the table, Yasha’s for the fifth grade and mine for the fourth.

“What kind of vacation is this?” Yasha grumbled, with his mouth full. “This is a prison camp. All the guys laugh at me because of you.”

“They’ll laugh even more when you have to repeat the year at school,” his sister answered sternly.

In later years, I came to understand that Raya really had pedagogical abilities and great patience. First, she explained clearly the material from the textbooks to each of us. Then we solved problems. Yasha always forgot the order of operations right away, and everything had to be repeated all over again.

But everything comes to an end in this world. Our lesson was also coming to an end. The day ahead of us promised to be full of the most fascinating activities. It couldn’t be anything else here on Kafanov Street in Yasha’s company.

The Shaakovs, Aunt Tamara’s family, lived half an hour walk away from Grandpa’s house on one of the lanes running from Kafanov Street. There were a few of these lanes, and they all had the same name as the street, but with added numbers. The Shaakovs lived on Kafanov Lane 5.

By the way, that street was once named Gospitalnaya (Hospital) for it ran to the military hospital. Gospitalnaya Street played an important role in the history of Tashkent. During the uprising that occurred in the time of the Revolution, barricades were built there. From the barricades, participants in the uprising went to storm the military fortress, the one whose ruins stand on the banks of the Anhor.

The street was renamed in honor of the famous Uzbek revolutionary Kafanov during the early years of Soviet power. This street, one of the central streets of the city, was gradually becoming modern. Attractive buildings were erected there after the earthquake – the Pharmacological Institute, the Central Department Store, and many others.

But the lane where the Shaakovs lived preserved its old-fashioned look. It was a very cozy place, with tall trees, their tops reaching toward the sky, and an arik that babbled in the shade of the trees. It was a short lane with just fifteen houses. The Shaakovs rented one of them, a one-story house with four rooms. Naturally, it had a yard attached to it.

I visited that house and yard quite often. Yasha was my friend, but out of all the members of that family, I liked Uncle Mikhail, his father, the most. Even the way he looked was appealing. He was strong with wide shoulders, and his handshake was like Grandpa Yoskhaim’s. He had a kind, calm, smiling face. He liked to joke and laugh. Mikhail’s dark hair turned gray prematurely, but it was becoming with his round, dark-complexioned face.

I didn’t know why Uncle Mikhail went away now and then. He sometimes didn’t live at home. It seemed to me – maybe because I liked him so much – that Aunt Tamara’s personality was the reason. The summer I remember was when Mikhail was away, and I was sorry about it. The house without him was somewhat empty. I remembered how he and I would have tea together, particularly that one time not so long ago.

I had come over to play with Yasha, but there was no one at home but Mikhail. He was having tea in the kitchen. As soon as I opened the door, he waved his hand, inviting me to join him. I sat down. Mikhail poured tea into a bowl for me, and motioned his hand toward a bag of rusks, the kind that were sold at Tashkent bakeries by weight. He didn’t have to motion twice. I loved those crispy, brown, well-toasted rusks. I could eat them nonstop. So, we sat across from each other, enjoying our tea with rusks. Perhaps we were also enjoying being together in peace and quiet, not in the noisy company of Yasha and Ilya, and loudmouthed Aunt Tamara. We were silent, and the sounds that filled the kitchen didn’t interfere with the stillness. Here, the paper bag rustled – Uncle Mikhail took out a rusk. Tap-tap-tap – he banged the rusk on the table to remove crumbs. Uncle Mikhail was very neat, he would never put a rusk in his mouth without removing the crumbs. On top of that, the salesgirls at the bakery, who knew him, would never put broken rusks into his bag. Tap-tap-tap… That was me tapping my rusk on the table like Uncle Mikhail. Khrr-oop! Uncle took a bite of a rusk. I didn’t lag far behind him. Oop-ss – bending over the bowl, Uncle Mikhail gulped down some of the tea. I did the same. We looked at each other with pleasure. Rusks tapped, the crispy rusks’ khr-r-oop, and oop-ss alternated. Merged together, they sounded like music. A short pause followed as Uncle Mikhail dipped a rusk into his tea. I, of course, did the same because that was what is called eating with relish – dipping a rusk into tea, then sucking sweetish syrup out of it.

When I sat down at the table, the bag was full of rusks. Now, I thrust my hand into the bag and took out the last one.

Uncle Mikhail nodded, “Kosh” which meant, “Good, that’s my boy.” “Are you full?”

I nodded, and we both smiled, very pleased with each other. Yes, it was a pity that Uncle Mikhail was away. If he had been at home, Yasha and I would have hung out near Uncle Mikhail’s old Pobeda (Victory) car after we were done with Raya’s lesson. It was usually parked in the yard. Yasha and Ilya were allowed to wash it, and they really enjoyed it. That was the beginning of the brothers’ initiation into their father’s profession. He was a chauffeur, liked his occupation and had a perfect understanding of technical equipment.

So many different incidents, quarrels, and sometimes fights took place between the brothers because of the car washing. I remember the time when Yura and I were on the way to the Shaakovs’, and after we turned into their lane, we saw the Pobeda at the arik. It was sparkling in the sun, all covered with water. We also saw the washers. Drawing water from the arik with a bucket, Ilya would douse the car, and Yasha, who stood on the other side of it, wiped the doors with a terry cloth towel. As we approached them, Ilya splashed water over the roof of the car, and the water hit Yasha, who then yelled obscenities at his brother. Twelve-year-old Yasha knew the four-letter words he had learned from his brother to perfection.

But the elder brother was indignant. “Wha-a-at? How dare you? In front of other people… Just you wait, Baldy, I’ll get you!”

He grabbed another wet cloth from the hood of the car, twisted it into a braid and rushed toward Yasha. A high-speed chase around the car ensued, during which the brothers exchanged swear words the whole time. Yura and I looked at each other, knowing perfectly well how this incident would end. The younger brother was quite agile, but the older one still managed to catch him. After kicking Yasha in the butt and hitting him on the back of his head, Ilya proceeded to the primary punishment – the arm twisting.

“Does it hurt? Say ‘Kind man, forgive this shithead!’” he repeated.

Bending over lower and lower from pain, almost on his knees, Yasha tolerated it for a long time. He groaned, tried to wriggle away, but then, when he couldn’t take it any longer, he yelled and squealed, and tears appeared in his eyes. It was agony to watch, but it was absolutely useless to interfere. Could we, ten-year-old boys, handle the huge Ilya?

Naturally, Yasha gave up. First, he mumbled something, but Ilya demanded, “Louder, Baldy! Repeat after me: ‘kind man’…” And poor Yasha repeated the humiliating apology loudly word for word.

Of course, we were sorry for Yasha, but he, when he could, tried to spite his brother. They both misbehaved now and then, but the result was that Ilya always played the part of the executioner, and Yasha the part of the executed. But he didn’t yield. It even seemed to me that both torturer and tortured enjoyed it.

I sometimes wondered whether Yasha and Ilya loved each other. Was their friendship true? I didn’t have a brother, and I regretted it. I often imagined that I had a brother who was almost my age and we were always together. We would tell each other everything, share secrets, play pranks, and when one of us happened to fight with someone, of course we would always stand up for each other.

Even though I was very attached to my cousin Yura, he couldn’t replace the brother I yearned for. Firstly, since my family had moved to Chirchik, we saw each other only in summer. Secondly, our relations weren’t that serene. Sometimes, we behaved no better than Yasha and Ilya. We fought and swore at each other, though we managed to do it without hurting each other, execution style. Sometimes, I suffered because of Yura’s pranks.

Once in summer, we walked down Shedovaya Street on the way home. We were walking slowly. Suddenly, two guys ran up to us. Before I realized what was happening, Yura dashed away. One of the guys grabbed me by the shoulder, as the other, older one asked: “What is he to you?”

“My little brother,” I answered. At that moment I heard Yura’s piercing cry, “Redhead, run away!”

But it was too late. I felt a blow to my belly that was so hard that my vision blurred, and I gasped for breath.

“That’s for your brother,” I heard as I squatted, almost falling over.

The guys left right after that since Yura was too far away for them to catch. He ran up to me and began to raise me, mumbling, “I told you to run away.”

He told me? He didn’t tell me, he yelled after he had run away leaving me alone. How could I guess what would happen when the guys I didn’t know ran up to me? It turned out that they were brothers, the younger of which Yura had either offended or tricked. The younger one naturally complained to his older brother, and… But what did that have to do with me?

In a word, sometimes it seemed to me that Yura acted in a not-quite-brotherly way.

When we told Ilya about it, he dealt with the guy who had hit me.

* * *

However, today I was in Yasha’s company. Our lesson was over, and the morning air was cool, which meant that we shouldn’t expect intense heat throughout the day. That was great because we planned to spend the whole day outside. We always had lots of interesting things to do, and some of them had already been planned.

Yasha was the first to go out to the yard. When I showed up, he was carefully tying the end of a long piece of twine around a big potato, repeating, “It’ll go off all right.”

Well-armed, we ran to Kafanov Street. We didn’t know a thing about the revolutionary combat glory of that street. However, we were about to make our own contribution to it. We chose a secluded place behind a big tree at the edge of the sidewalk. After waiting till there were neither pedestrians nor cars in sight, Yasha handed me the end of the cord, ran to the middle of the street, put the potato on a spot where traces of tires cold be seen and came back. Almost immediately after that, the noise of a vehicle was heard, and a truck appeared. Yasha had placed the potato very well. A loud shmya-k-k could be heard.

“The test was successful,” Yasha said, giggling. He pulled the cord with the remains of the crushed potato to the sidewalk, took a piece of metal with the end folded over out of his pocket and replaced the shell, so to speak.

The next project was to hunt a bigger beast than a truck – a trolley bus. Yasha ran to the roadway and placed the metal “shell” under the trolley wires.

I considered Yasha a great expert on the subject of trolley buses. He recognized their arrival at a stop by the slightest stirring of the wires. I had noticed it two years before when we were standing at a trolley stop. No trolley was yet in sight when Yasha said, “It’s coming.” I was surprised. He raised his hand and pointed at the wires. I didn’t see right away that they were stirring. And indeed, a trolley arrived shortly.

At that time of day, there wasn’t much traffic on Kafanov Street. Vehicles passed by at long intervals, and it was possible to guess by the sound of their tires what vehicle was coming. Cars emitted a light sound – vsh-shik, and the car was gone. A big clumsy trolley bus was a different story. When it was still far away, a crescendo of sound similar to wailing could already be heard. As it drew nearer, a sound made by the electrical contacts could be heard from the driver’s cabin, and sometimes sparks flew from the wires.

A big, heavy trolley bus that looked like a beast, ready to carry along everything in its path, was coming our way. Here it was, almost upon us. The front wheel missed the metal “shell.” Yasha managed to pull the twine quickly to move the “shell,” and… Crack… the shell flew off the rear wheel, hit the bottom of the trolley, ricocheted against the asphalt, and crashed into the side of the trolley. Yasha immediately pulled the cord back.

We were both ecstatic. Even Yasha hadn’t expected such success. But our ecstasy was immediately replaced by fear – the brakes went on, and the trolley slowed down and stopped. Fortunately, we were behind the bushes. The door opened, the driver got out of the trolley, walked around it, and shrugged his shoulders…

It worked out. He was gone. But we decided not to continue that dangerous kind of hunt today. Another type of hunt, no less fascinating, awaited us.

* * *

One of the advantages of Yasha’s lane was the street water spigot. The small metal column to which the spigot was attached rested on a cement stand. Water from the spigot dripped onto the stand, overflowing it. Not far from it, there was a perfect puddle in a depression at the edge of the sidewalk. The shade of the adjoining trees kept it from drying out. Besides, it was constantly being filled with water. So that puddle and the spigot were the principal delight of that lane. There, we turned into water gunners and hunted insects.

What insects? Can you imagine a big Asian city, a southern city, with its fruit gardens, bazaars where they sell fruits, meat, fish from outdoor counters, where there is no trace of refrigerators, with its garbage pails at the gates, its toilets lacking proper conveniences? Imagine all that and you’ll understand why the life of any boy in Asia takes place from early spring to late autumn amid crawling and flying insects, mostly flies of different types and sizes: houseflies, meat flies, tiny fruit flies. There were plenty of wasps, which didn’t shrink from any food. We could also play with Maybugs, rhinoceros beetles, long green mantises, grasshoppers, goggle-eyed dragonflies –all of which could be caught and tortured.

Certainly, many insects annoyed us, but we got used to them as an inevitable evil, like flies, for instance. But I and many boys I knew harbored special hatred toward wasps. It was clear why – their bites were very painful; I knew from experience. Once, Grandma Lisa was cooking dinner, and she asked me to bring potatoes from the cellar. On my way back, I noticed an almost rotten squashed apricot on the path and kicked it with my foot, but there was a wasp on the apricot. The wasp replied in kind. I heard vzh-zhik, something flashed before my eyes, and I felt a sharp burning sting on the top of my head. The pain was so sharp that I wailed, dropped the potatoes and rushed to Grandma, yelling, “A wasp stung me!” Grandma grabbed me by the arm, took me to the fridge and applied a cut tomato to the top of my head.

“Hold it, rub it in,” she said calmly. Obviously, this was not the first time she had had to deal with a wasp sting. “Where are the potatoes? Go bring them.”

My hatred of wasps was boundless after that. Just the sight of a little yellow body with black stripes called forth a shudder of disgust. I craved revenge. And the best place for revenge was the puddle at the water spigot at Kafanov Lane 5. Insects and birds flew to the puddle, as to a watering hole, starting early in the morning. Stray dogs and alley cats came running to drink the fresh water. Water spiders ran across the water, and small circles formed on the surface from their tiny feet. In a word, it was a wonderful puddle.

It was interesting that visitors to this watering hole didn’t use it all at once. It seemed that they observed a certain order. Wasps came flying in during the morning hours.

After flying in circles above the water, a wasp would find a little stone or twig, alight on it and begin to drink. Its mouth couldn’t be seen but it moved its antennae above the water and its little bottom trembled with pleasure.

“Drown, you scoundrel!” I pressed the water gun and a strong spurt knocked the wasp into the center of the puddle. At first, it moved its wings and thrashed around helplessly. After watching its agony with pleasure, I would shoot another spurt from my water gun, and the movement subsided.

“Served it right!” Yasha said. He also hated wasps, but he hated bumblebees even more. It was bumblebees he wanted to settle scores with. Yasha had a swollen eye for a long time after a bumblebee sting.

After we emptied our water guns, we ran to the spigot and filled them again. Today, we water gunners – that’s what we called ourselves – had a wonderful day. It was hard to count how many wasps we had destroyed, along with some other creatures.

Our water guns were empty one-liter shampoo bottles. We made holes in their lids, wider ones than on the sprinklers we used in our usual games when we fought with each other, so a spurt from the water gun was much stronger. Yasha and I became quite proficient at the use of this weapon. We were no worse than the heroes of the sea stories by Jack London who, I assume, could do nothing but shoot accurately. We also shot without missing.

* * *

“Greetings to the fighting men! Another children’s game?” Kirill, Yasha’s neighbor, who was the same age as Yasha, said, grinning. “I’ve been at the construction site. Guess what they’ve delivered there. Huge rolls of fiberglass. It’s so soft, jumping on them is like jumping on a trampoline. Up, and you feel like you’re flying… It’s really great.”

And after holding up his thumb to illustrate his words, Kirill walked away, limping slightly.

We exchanged glances.

“Shall we go there?” I said.

“Let’s go. But why’s he limping?” suspicious Yasha asked.

“He must have jumped too much.”

We ran to the construction site. We couldn’t possibly miss seeing those amazing rolls. It was Sunday, and there were no workers or security there.

“Wow! Look at them… And there’re so many of them!” Yasha exclaimed, as we approached the site.

Indeed, pinkish-brown rolls of a material called fiberglass – we didn’t give a thought to why it was called that – were stacked by the wall and used for insulation. They looked soft and plump. Wasting no time, we climbed on top of them. Kirill hadn’t lied. The fiberglass was so springy that we were tossed up as if on trampoline every time we jumped. Yasha was having a great time. He jumped onto the stack from the window above it. Sometimes he managed to jump smoothly and stay on his feet, sometimes he was tossed so high that he landed on all fours with his hands buried in the fiberglass. That’s why he was probably the first to feel the trouble. Yasha began to scratch his hand after he jumped down off the stack, then he bent down to his legs. My legs also began to itch strangely, and my whole body was burning.

“Yasha, what’s wrong with us?”

“What? What?” Yasha answered, whining as he took off his sandals, “Kirill is such a swine. He lured us to the fiberglass deliberately. Remember he was limping? I’ll pay this skunk back,” and Yasha began brushing the invisible splinters of glass off his feet and legs.

I was gripped by panic. We had been jumping on wool with bits of real glass. “What if it’s penetrated our bodies?” I thought. The stinging sensation, especially on our legs, intensified. “We need to wash ourselves!” I yelled, and we rushed home.