Dmitrii Emets
My Big Family. A Day of Tots

In blessed memory of my father, Alexander Ivanovich

In a small seaside town there lives a large family, the Gavrilovs, who moved here from a tight Moscow apartment. The family has seven children and a lot of all kinds of animals: pigeons, the turtle Mafia, fish, Japanese mice, rats led by the chief rat Schwartz, parrots, a guinea pig, cats and dogs! And, needless to say, different funny stories always come with this family!

Chapter One
The Silver Sun

Children, for some reason, do not choose their life program by what we teach them and what we say aloud, but by the unspoken, often carefully concealed, which is the essence of our nature and what we ourselves, perhaps, are not proud of at all.

Just a thought

Papa Gavrilov walked along the seashore and dragged behind him a stroller, in which sat Alex, Rita, and Costa. Exactly behind, not in front. It would not roll in front at all. Papa already regretted about ten times that they had even brought the stroller. It would have been more convenient to carry the toddlers on his shoulders. The wheels got bogged down deeply in the sand, and in addition, the sand was covered with a layer of dried algae thick as a hand. Sometimes on the beach they came across people with large bags collecting dry seaweed to insulate walls and ceilings and loading them onto bicycles.

Costa was whining in the stroller. He had a strong attachment to old clothes and suffered any changes acutely. Here Mama had put a new lined knit cap on him, because the cap with earflaps was too cold for the sea. And then all the way Costa repeated, «My caaaap!» and further on in circles.

Behind Papa, stretched along the shore like a chain, trudged Mama, Peter, Vicky, Alena, and Kate – all freezing and with raised collars. Their neighbours Andrew and Seraphim, tagging along for company, dragged on last.

Andrew, having scratched his little finger when they climbed over the fence, was suffering and kept repeating, «I told you! I did! And now that's it! That's it!» In this case, what exactly he was saying and what exactly this «that's it» consisted of remained off screen. But Seraphim, both of whose legs were wet above the knees because he had gone into the sea, did not complain and appeared quite satisfied with life.

In general, Seraphim was very funny. Besides being constantly lost, he still said «hello,» «thank you,» and «goodbye» all the time. Even if he was just leaving for the next room, he inevitably said «goodbye.» And when he returned, he said «hello!» And this was awfully amusing: you go to the house and everywhere you meet Seraphim greeting you, looking out from anywhere, all but the closets.

There was nowhere to escape from the beach. From the paved alley stretching along the sea, they were separated by a high sand rampart that was swept to the fence by a tractor so that winter storms would not carry sand away from the beach to the sea. To the nearest gate there still remained about three hundred metres – a huge distance for an overloaded stroller. Papa Gavrilov pulled it, imagining himself a horse and the stroller a plough.

Suddenly the stroller became really heavy. Papa turned around and discovered that Peter had quietly pulled Alex, Rita, and Costa out of it and sat in the stroller himself.

«Scram! The wheels will break! You're too heavy!» Papa was outraged.

«They're sturdy.»

«The old one broke!»

«I didn't break the old one. Mama did!» Peter stated.

Mama was embarrassed. Peter was partly right. The last stroller broke because when Peter sat in it like so, Mama sat him down on his knees to show that this should not be done and he was not little. The stroller did not know that Mama's objective was pedagogic and grunted.

Alex, Costa, and Rita, unloaded onto the sand, were busy in their own business. Rita began to sit her dolls, of which she had three, down on the wet sand. They were called General's Wife, Italian, and Lorelei. Rita could not pronounce the word «Lorelei» and also regularly mixed up the rest of the names. The dolls looked in bad shape. Lorelei had lost its hair, and Alex had filled Italian's head with kefir through a hole and left it in the freezer overnight to check what would happen, but the doll did not look any prettier.

At that moment, Alex was roaming along the beach and finding discarded lighters. He came across some of them with gas and they burst when hit with a stone. Incidentally, a question excited Alex: when he is old like a grandfather, will he be able to buy as many matches as he wants?

«Certainly!» Mama said and, leaning over, deftly took out of Alex's pocket a box, which he had already stolen from somewhere, probably hoarding for old age.

Rita began to whine that she wanted to drink, «Driiink! Driiink!»

Mama took out a bottle of water.

«Not that water!» Rita quickly said. She already saw in the distance the red roof of the store and weighed all options.

«Ha-ha! You're our dehydrated one!» Peter said in a deep voice from the stroller. «You mustn't want to drink in December!»

Rita stared at him suspiciously and began to slowly open her mouth while closing her eyes.

«Why mustn't you want to drink in December?» Alex became interested. «And that guy over there?»

Peter looked around. «That guy there wanted to drink even in summer,» he whispered.

Leaving the stroller in the sand, Papa went to the sea and began to throw flat stones, forcing them to jump like pancakes. Suddenly, something caught him painfully on the ear. Papa looked around and realized that this was Costa also learning to throw stones, and he even, one might say, had already learned.

Peter, convinced that no one would tow the stroller with him, folded his hands on his stomach and argued with Alena, Alex, and Kate that they could not move him from the spot. Kate did not yield to the provocation and only snorted, but then Alena and Alex developed a storm of activities. Seraphim and Andrew helped them. After digging out the wheels of the stroller, they began to shake it and moved it about a metre and a half. Then Seraphim hung onto the handle, and Peter tumbled onto the sand.

«Come on, you! Can't do anything!» Peter said, and grabbing the empty stroller by the handle, ran off ahead with it to tease the young ones.

Alex, Rita, and Costa went on foot.

Alex was as fresh as a cucumber after resting in the stroller. «Imagine, what arrogance! Yesterday ten people called me back because I accidentally dialled their number!» he told Andrew and Seraphim, running ahead to see their faces.

Rita, having forgotten that she was just dying of thirst, climbed onto the sand hill and ran from it into Mama's arms.

Kate was about to go and catch Rita, but then someone beside her said, «Going for a stroll? And I have a day off!»

Kate turned around. Next to her was the «mouse girl» Liuba, who worked in the pet store. She was dressed in a ginger jacket and a cap with a rooster's comb, which made her deceptively amicable. Kate, accustomed to seeing Liuba in her work robe, an apron, and a metre-long snake in her hand, did not immediately recognize her. As if a formidable military colonel went out to the soldiers in slippers and a Santa hat.

Rita once again rolled down the sand hill and, having decided that she was tired, sagged in Mama's arms.

«Well, let's go further! Rita's freezing!» Mama shouted, although in reality Rita was flushed from running, but Mama was freezing.

They went along the beach, and together with them went «mouse girl», who stated that it made no difference to her in which direction they strolled, because a stroll was killing time all the same.

Alena, who, when meeting a new person, adored loving him to pieces, was glued to «mouse girl». Besides, it was important to Alena to clarify some details of human relationships. «Here if, for example, there are two girls somewhere: one pretty and the other a good person, who'll get married sooner?» she asked.

Liuba frowned and looked suspiciously at Alena, whose face expressed only genuine interest. «What kind of question is that? How do I know? What am I, your fiancé?» «Mouse girl» was indignant.

Alena addressed Papa with the same question.

«The good person!» Papa answered cheerfully.

Peter, also hearing this conversation, looked at him without much trust. «Then the queue would be for the terrible ones!» he declared.

«What, terrible girls are all good by default? The pretty ones can also be good people,» said Papa Gavrilov.

«You mean, we consider beauty only among good people?» Liuba asked with a challenge.

«No,» Papa said. «But beauty is a vague concept. Every person is inevitably beautiful to someone.»

«Even a complete Quasimodo?» «Mouse girl» asked with doubt.

«I think so, yes. But only on condition of kindness.»

Alena did not like to wander in the thickets of theory. «Papa! When you married Mama, was she a beautiful or a good person?»

«Both beautiful and good!» Papa said.

«Right! Was! And then toddlers hung onto me!» Mama said, pulling out of Costa's hand a stick, with which he wanted to whack Alex for throwing a clump of algae at him.

Alex yanked Papa's hand. «Look!» he shouted, pointing to an overhang approaching the water.

Along the sea, a tall guy with a metal detector was walking on the beach and searching with wide movements along the sand, as if mowing invisible grass. Occasionally the guy froze, and his movements became cautious, groping. When the place was accurately found, he began to shovel sand carefully with an entrenching tool, and, having taken something out, sometimes discarded it and sometimes casually dropped it into a bag.

«And this one is here! Wherever you go, he sticks out everywhere!» Liuba grumbled, moving her hat on her forehead.

«Who?» Kate asked.

«This one here!» «mouse girl» repeated, and by the way she said it, everything became clear to Kate.

«This one» was Pokrovskii, Liuba's classmate, who raced around the city on a bike and tied shoelaces in the middle of the road.

«What's he doing here?» Alex asked.

«Searching! Vacationers in the summer lose earrings, rings, chains of all kinds, they drop them in the sand, and he walks and searches!» Liuba said.

«Really?» Peter became interested. «What, does he find anything?»

«A bunch of rusty nails! Would be better begging!» «mouse girl» deliberately said loudly.

The lanky guy heard her voice, shuddered, and turned around. «Hi! It's you?» he asked.

«Imagine, me!»

«Taking a walk?»

Liuba snorted loudly: «Did you guess or did someone suggest it?»

Pokrovskii shrugged coldly and continued searching. Costa and Alex could not leave him alone anymore and followed him like a tail. Pokrovskii was generous and allowed Alex to hold the metal detector. It was a great carelessness, because Costa, of course, also immediately wanted it and grabbed the metal detector with his right hand. Pulling the metal detector from each other, Costa and Alex starting running off somewhere and fell into a pile of sand.

Pokrovskii rushed after them. He was obviously worried about his new metal detector. «Hey! Don't swing it! Don't scrape the stones! It isn't a club!» he cried out in fright.

Watching the anguish of her former classmate, «mouse girl» grinned mischievously.

Finally, Pokrovskii managed to take his metal detector away. Without letting go of it, he sat down on a rock and stretched out his scrawny legs. Alex stood beside him and, admiring the metal detector with respect, greedily asked if Pokrovskii had found a bomb. It turned out that Pokrovskii had not yet found a bomb. Mostly he found beer caps and small things that poured out of pockets.

«Of course!» Alex said unhappily and, without any change, added, «Is it true that one person put chicory in coffee and became drunk?»

«Mouse girl» laughed triumphantly. Pokrovskii squinted at her suspiciously, checking whether she had taught Alex such a crazy question. «I don't know. Don't ask me this. I don't drink coffee. I don't drink at all,» he said.

Not getting a clear answer, Alex shook his head reproachfully. He could not believe that such a knowledgeable person might not be aware of such nonsense. «Is it true that you can blow up a gas station with a cell phone?» he continued.

«How's that?»

«What do you mean by 'how'?» Alex was surprised. «There they paint a crossed-out phone! So, it's possible! And what word should one say on the phone so that it would blow up gasoline for sure?»

Seeking to hide his global ignorance, Pokrovskii began treating the children to a baguette, a third of which he had already gnawed off. Vicky refused the baguette, saying that she did not like it.

«And what do you like?» Pokrovskii asked.

«She loves horses!» Alena willingly informed him. Vicky blushed, because her love of horses was her biggest secret.

«Really?» Pokrovskii shoved his hand into the bag slung over his shoulder. «Well, if you love them, then I'll give you this! Just found it today! Wanted to hang it over my door!» He handed Vicky an iron semicircle. Vicky hesitantly took it. It was a heavy horseshoe, rusty on one side, but polished to a shine on the other.

After giving away the horseshoe, Pokrovskii again took the metal detector and, getting rid of the seaweed with his wet sneakers, continued his search. Papa Gavrilov walked beside Pokrovskii and asked him about metal detectors.

Pokrovskii explained authoritatively. This one, according to him, was middle of the road, though not quite. «Here's such a thing! Military equipment is good, reliable, but clumsy, and its design is usually such that enemies fear it. Civilian equipment has a bunch of cute figurines and convenient lights, but this isn't technology. And this one is exactly in between!» he said and gently stroked his metal detector.

«So?» Papa asked. «Have you discovered any treasures?»

Pokrovskii took the metal detector off the sand and quickly turned around, checking to see if anyone was near. His face became very secretive. «Not yet, but…» he paused and again went back to the sand. Then he quickly turned to Papa and held him by a button. «We have a lot of treasures in the Crimea!» he said in a ringing whisper. «Simply scattered around with treasures literally!»

«Where's this even from?» Papa doubted.

«What? Crimea was settled a very long time ago! Here all the cities are contemporaries of Rome! And this is only the story that we know! The Scythians, Greeks, Genoese, Turks, Tatars, Armenians. And how many merchants were here! They sold slaves, fabrics, bread, and wine! Huge turnaround! And every self-respecting merchant inevitably had his own treasure buried in a pot in the basement of his home!»

«Why buried?» Papa Gavrilov did not understand.

Spots flared up on Pokrovskii's gaunt face. «How else?» he was amazed. «Houses burn. Thieves tunnel under walls. No banks yet. How would a merchant store his gold? Why in a pot? Because pots aren't afraid of soil. A wooden chest will rot in three years. I won't talk about iron at all. No one had yet eliminated rust.»

«And why exactly in the basement?»

«Where else? The most convenient place for a hoard is the basement,» Pokrovskii explained importantly. «We're not talking about pirate stashes on uninhabited islands. A self-respecting merchant's hoard had to be hidden so that it would be convenient for him to use. He took a handful of coins, placed a handful of coins, sort of like a safe. Besides, while you dig in your cellar, no one will see you. If you go with the money to the forest, then the whole street will shout, 'Honourable Joseph, where are you going with a jug of coins and a shovel? Do you need any help?'»

Papa Gavrilov listened with interest, wiggling his frozen toes in his boots. «What? The merchants later didn't pull out their treasures?» he asked doubtfully.

«Some, of course, did and spent it or left it as an inheritance. But some were lonely misers. Or another option. The city was attacked; the merchant died and didn't have time to tell anyone. The house was burnt and turned into rubbles. The city is overgrown with forest and grass. And somewhere there, under the roots, even now lies a dark two-handled amphora for wheat, full of gold and silver coins,» Pokrovskii said with such conviction, as if he had found dozens of such amphorae. He even ran his finger through the air, precisely feeling the long crack in this very amphora.

«Well, have you found any?» Papa Gavrilov asked.

«Not yet!» Pokrovskii uttered bitterly and stared at his metal detector with deep resentment. «It's rather weak for me to search for something serious. I have to limit myself to sand… But there're a lot of coins here. Over the years, ships smashed in storms, o-ho-ho, the bay is shallow, and gradually the coins wash ashore from the sand. And there are only fragments of grain amphorae, just rake it. The sea in general throws out everything superfluous, everything not its own.»

«Costa's frozen! Let's go, huh?» Mama hollered piteously, her nose was already quite blue from the cold.

Papa harnessed himself to the stroller, and the Gavrilovs continued their journey along the sea. Vicky held the horseshoe in her hands, looking at it with undecided joy. They walked for about a hundred metres along the beach when they heard someone catching up to them. It was Pokrovskii, carrying in his hand something extracted from his bag.

«Wait a minute! This is for you!» he shouted to Liuba and put something in her hand. It was a small silver sun, darkened by the water. «I found it yesterday. It came off someone's chain! Needs to be cleaned and it'll be fine!»

«Mouse girl» looked at the sun lying on her palm, «So, clean it!»

Pokrovskii began to rub the sun with a cloth, and rubbed it until the ornament shone.

«Ready?» Liuba asked. «It's mine now? I can do whatever I want?»

Pokrovskii nodded.

«Excellent!» Liuba stroked the sun with her finger, stepped toward the water, and launched it like a pancake. The silver sun flashed, jumped from the water twice, and disappeared.

«You yourself let me! No one pulled you by the tongue! Mine means mine!» Liuba said.

«Why?» Pokrovskii asked plaintively.

«So simple!» She shrugged and walked on, and Pokrovskii stood with his mouth open and watched her go.

Alena ran in front of her, looking into her face with curiosity. «Is it true that Pokrovskii was once in love with you and then fell in love with someone else?» she asked.

«How do you know?»

«Kate told me!»

«Nonsense!» Liuba grunted, turning away. «No gossip to pass on. He only danced with her all evening, but I don't forgive anyone for betrayal!»

«And I thought only our Peter is a jerk!» Alena said with delight.

Chapter Two
The Orderly Grandma

«They have a mama critic. It's very difficult to be a critic.»

«Why?»

«Because you need to write all the time on the Internet that you don't agree with anything. Here you sleep at night, and mama writes them, although she, by the way, also wants to sleep!»

Alex

The Gavrilovs returned home. Here was already the «figure eight» street. The gate ahead showed black. The dogs Stool, Lad, and Tot ran to meet them. Lad, as usual, barked hoarsely – this was a solitary, terrible, almost lion-like roar – and rushed on the attack, but always recognized them about twenty paces away, stopped and, looking embarrassed, turned away into the bushes, where it settled on the ground. Stool and Lad could not calm down for a long time. They were all running around, spinning, barking. Then Lad quieted down, and only Stool alone was barking. It was barking in a quarrelsome way, shrilly, exactly like an old female venndor quarrelling with a buyer. The buyer was already long gone, but she still could not calm down.

True, today Stool did not manage to bark. «Hands up!» Kate said, and the yelping Stool immediately fell on its back, exposing its dirty belly to her.

Opening the gates, the Gavrilovs discovered that a striped rug was hanging on the railing with a carpet beater next to it, and all the animals were thrown out onto the street and sitting like beggars in front of the door, waiting for the moment when it would be possible to scurry back in.

«Someone broke into our house! What crooks!» Peter said, contemplating the stack of cages in which the rats were frisking and the hamsters were burrowing in the sawdust.

«We must blow them up!» Alex proposed. «We'll put a lot of baking soda in their pockets, and then pour in vinegar! They'll run, and we'll dig a hole in their path!»

«And if they run the other way?» Costa asked.

«Then we'll dig a hole on the other side too!» Alex said, and this argument seemed so sound to Costa that he immediately started digging.

Papa and Mama exchanged glances.

«What date is it today?» Papa Gavrilov asked.

«Thursday,» Mama said.

«Thursday isn't a date. Today's December eighth. That means, we didn't meet your mama!»

«My mama comes on Friday!»

«No. Mama comes on the eighth. And the eighth is today!»

Pushing through between the cages, Papa opened the door. The cat immediately slipped into the house. The chief rat papa Schwartz, who was able to open the cage with its paw, was chasing after the cat. All the children were already running after Schwartz.

«Grandma!» the children shouted. «Food! Gifts!»

For some reason three of these concepts – «grandma,» «food,» and «gifts» – were stuck together in their minds into one, so that there was a mysterious single «grandmafoodgift.» From this the conclusion somehow very naturally followed that if the grandmas disappear from life, then both food and gifts would disappear together with them.

Papa and Mama discovered Grandma Masha and Great-Grandma Zina in the kitchen. Grandma was tall, determined, and wore square glasses. Great-Grandma, on the contrary, was small, round, and had a cane. Grandma never left Great-Grandma, and they also always travelled together.

Vicky, Alena, Kate, Alex, and Costa were all over the grandmas on all sides. There was not a single granny to hug Rita, so she just climbed on all fours between the legs and hugged a grandma's foot and sneaker. Peter alone did not join in but only stood on the side and moved his hands in the air. He considered himself above hugs but not above gifts.

«How did you get into the house?» Peter asked when all the hugs, shouts, and kisses were over.

«Very simple. We came from the airport by taxi and climbed over the balcony. I mean, I climbed and opened the door! We weren't standing for two hours at the gate waiting to be met!» Grandma Masha said, giving Papa a combative look.

«Over the balcony?» Papa was surprised. «Did you climb over the balcony?

«It's high!»

«What's wrong with that?» Grandma Masha said. Then she thought for a bit and added, «Of course, it wasn't easy for me! I had to put the four crates one on top of the other and lift a leg up high… And the neighbours looked at us strangely!»

«And where were the crates from?»

«The neighbours. I asked. Where else?» Grandma was surprised.

Five minutes later she was already standing at the sink and washing dishes, scrubbing them with a sponge with such force it was as if germs could get inside.

«Well, you have grime, Gavrilovs! Dishes shouldn't lie in the sink at all! Every hour of dishes standing in the sink increases the number of pathogens twofold!» she said.

«Think! There was one germ, and it became two!» Peter said.

«Yeah. It was ten to the twenty-third degree, but became ten to the forty-sixth! No difference! That's all! Period!» Grandma formulated. She counted perfectly. Not for nothing was she once the chief economist.

Great-Grandma Zina shrugged her shoulders. With a serene expression, she sat on a chair and fed Alex eggplant spread with a spoon. Alex obediently opened his mouth and was clearly enjoying the situation.

«He's big already!» Kate was indignant.

«He's a skeleton!» Grandma Masha disputed. «A child should eat such that he can't eat anymore! I always eat that way, and look how strong I am!»

She picked up a heavy stool by the leg and lifted it over her head. The stool began to lean over dangerously to the side, and Vicky and Alena hastily ran off. Grandma put the stool back in place.

«Is it true that when our mama was little, she was so fat that not a single pair of her pants could be fastened together?» Alena asked. She still did not understand that you do not need to blurt out everything you know – some things you should keep to yourself.

«From whom did you hear this?» Grandma asked suspiciously, turning so as to see Papa's reflection in the glass of the kitchen cabinet.

«From Mama,» Kate came to Alena's aid.

Grandma Masha relaxed. «Ah! Well, we ate on schedule. Cottage cheese, kefir, sour cream. When she was a teenager, she got out of hand and slimmed down! Then the kids began to appear, and she lost even more weight! In fact, I wanted her to have only two kids! A boy and a girl! With an interval of four years. That's all. Period.»

Soon the whole kitchen table was crammed with plates and bowls. And in each lay some mushrooms, sausage, and salads. It was unclear where they came from. Perhaps they appeared by magic, because earlier, before the grandmas' arrival, they were clearly not in the Gavrilovs' home.

Grandma Masha was moving decisively around the kitchen, delivering short orders, «Alena, don't touch your brother! Peter, don't get distracted! Rita, you're already grown-up to put your hands into the soup! Annie, don't hunch! Nick, don't eat fish with sandwiches! I see everything!»

Costa and Alex opened their eyes wide. «Annie» and «Nick» were Mama and Papa, whom Grandma very dashingly included in the general rank of kids. Papa and Mama secretly exchanged glances, suffering the collapse of their authority, but, knowing Grandma, did not protest.

«Chew worms!» Papa said in a whisper. Mama kicked him under the table. It was their shared secret.

When Mama and Papa had just gotten married and were living at Grandma Masha's, they hid from her a starling chick, which they had found on the street. It was very difficult to hide the little chick because it also cheeped. One time, Papa hid it in an old teapot suspended on a rope among the old skis on the balcony. The nestling was very weak. It could not eat whole worms and it was necessary to grind them up, turning them into mush. It was from that time that the joke «Chew worms!» remained in the family. Grandma guessed that there was a chick at home and searched for it everywhere to throw it out, because when she was young she read in Health magazine that tuberculosis comes from birds.

Exactly at nine in the evening Grandma's alarm went off and a new life began for the children.

«That's it!» Grandma Masha said. «Get ready for bed! Bedtime! That's all! Period!»

«We already slept during the day! You made us!» Alex groaned in horror.

«During the day it wasn't bedtime, but admiral's hour!»[1] Grandma said.

«What time is it now? Field marshal's?» Peter quipped.

«Now is night rest!» Grandma cut him off and went upstairs. Costa, Rita, and Alex trudged after her obediently, like sheep.

«Wow! They are obeying!» Alena whispered.

«But you aren't! She has an inner strength and a willingness to go all the way!» Peter assessed.

«By the way, this also applies to the older kids! Lights out at twenty-one thirty,» reached them from the stairs.

Exactly at 21.30, after finishing what Grandma called «wash-up routines,» the older children were driven off to bed. Only Peter alone escaped. He huddled in his room and sat there quiet as a mouse, covering the crack under the door with a blanket so that light would not show through.

Around midnight, reckoning that everyone was asleep, Peter got out of his room and snuck into the kitchen to eat raw eggs. He was standing in an island of light pouring from an open fridge and holding an egg in his hands. He cracked it slightly and brought it to his mouth, but then someone stirred next to him in the dark. Peter gave a start in fright. An apparition in a long nightgown was sitting on the bench and rocking quietly.

It was Great-Grandma Zina. She could not get up to the second floor and had settled on the couch in Papa's office. Except that she could not sleep and was sitting in the dark: she was conserving electricity. «One guy came from the army. He bought an egg at the market, did not wash it and ate it. The egg had salmonella. He died. That's all,» Great-Grandma said.

Dropping the egg on his foot, Peter leaped back into his room.

Chapter Three
Great-Grandma's Deception

«You need to have twenty pairs of socks of the same colour! And ten pairs of pants of the same colour!»

«Well, socks – it's understandable. That's so they do not get mixed up in the wash. But why pants?»

Grandma pondered.

«I don't know why! But once you're advised, then there must be logic!»

Household Scene

The next morning was Saturday. Costa and Rita were sitting on Grandma Masha and swinging their legs. Kate stood at the sink and looked at the mountain of dishes from the evening.

«I have a proposal!» she said. «Papa's forty-one years old. He'll wash forty-one plates. Peter's sixteen. He'll wash sixteen plates. Vicky's fourteen. She'll wash fourteen. Alena's ten – well, you understand…»

«And you?» Mama shouted from the room, the sewing machine chirping.

She liked this plan. She had already figured out that, though they had a lot of dishes, it was clearly not more than forty-one. Hence, Papa would be washing all the dishes.

«And I'll carry out general coordination and check if there is grease on the plates!» Kate said and, waving her hands, brushed something standing on the edge of the sink. «Oh! Dang!»

«What was that sound?» Mama was startled.

«I smashed the blue plate,» Kate explained.

«My favourite?»

«Yes.»

There was a poignant pause in the room.

«But was it clean or dirty?»

«Dirty.»

«Well, that's alright then!» Mama said.

Distressed by the loss of the favourite plate, the girls huddled around the sink and washed all the dishes in ten minutes. In the meantime, Mama and Grandma Masha compiled a list of foods that Papa should buy at the market. This list was so long that its tail passed to the second side of the sheet. Papa was not too enthusiastic about this.

«Write me a 'lost list' as the last item. Then I'll start quickly from the end,» he said and set off to start the minivan. The minivan started pretty well, but the battery was poor. Therefore it was necessary that it must start on the first try.

While Papa was gone, Grandma Masha and Great-Grandma Zina conjured up breakfast. Grandma Masha complained that there was nothing to prepare, but all the same, the whole table was soon covered with plates. The children were running around impatiently, trying to steal something.

«Rita, did you wash your hands? Well, at least sometime in your life?» Grandma asked, looking closely at Rita's hand, blue from a marker, clutching a piece of halva. The kid's hands were quickly hidden behind her back. This did not go unnoticed. «With soap, sponge, and brush! March!»

Rita, whining plaintively, went to wash her hands, closed the bathroom door behind herself, and almost instantly everyone heard a racket and a splash.

Grandma was startled. «What was that?»

«Oh, nothing special! I think she climbed onto a chair to get the soap from the windowsill and flopped into the tub. Blankets are soaking there, right?» Kate guessed instantly, and a second later Rita appeared howling from the bathroom, water flowing like streams from her, and everyone was convinced that Kate, as always, was right.

«I will ne-e-e-ver wash a-a-g-gain!» Rita wailed while she was undressed and dried.

«And why is the soap on the windowsill?» Great-Grandma asked thoughtfully.

«Because Alex tried to set it on fire,» Kate explained.

«And it burns?»

«No! But it stinks!» Alex cheerfully explained. «Just need to set it on fire with a tennis ball! Let me show you!» Alex rushed to demonstrate, but he was forced into his seat and limited his research impulse with a piece of cheese.

Meanwhile, Rita was changed into dry clothes, her hair braided, and she became like the grandmas' idea of a decent person.

«Hot kasha! Anyone? And no more eating at the computer!» Grandma said, putting the pot on the table.

«Why is breakfast called breakfast? Because it's eaten the next day?»[2] Alena asked, digging a pit in the kasha to drip butter into.

Papa, having already returned by that time, thought about it. «Good question! Well, maybe breakfast is what people leave for the next day? Let's assume, part of the food was stored in the evening?» he suggested.

«Never leave anything for the morning! Germs multiply in food! That's all! Period!» Grandma Masha cut him off.

«That's understandable,» Papa agreed. «But ancient people didn't know this. Then again, they had glaciers, and that's an excellent natural fridge.»

After breakfast Alex accidentally found an apricot stone under the bench, and he wanted to break it with a hammer and eat the kernel. In order that Grandma Masha would not stop him, he ran off with the stone and the hammer to the back room. He set the stone on firm ground, swung the hammer and… heard a voice, «One guy came from the army! He began to crack apricot stones and died. His bowel got clogged. That's all.»

Alex jerked up his head and saw Great-Grandma Zina, who lay down to rest, up on her elbows watching him from the sofa. Recapturing his right to clog his bowel, Alex ran to the kitchen and got there just at the moment of gathering. Grandma was dressing Rita and attentively watching Costa putting on his boots.

«Children go for a walk! They must have fresh air! Period!» Grandma said sternly.

«Children» were understood to be absolutely everyone, even Peter, who was already showing peach fuzz. The stubbly Peter and the other smooth-faced youngsters did not dare to protest and went for a walk. Only Papa and Mama escaped, remaining at home, but the others could not escape. It was a very proper walk under the leadership of the orderly Grandma. Everyone walked to the playground holding hands, frightened by any car appearing in the distance.

«Car!» Grandma Masha screamed in a voice that usually screams «Air raid!» and all the children rushed to the lawns, while Grandma and Great-Grandma covered them with their chests. The driver was also usually frightened, stopped, and a confusing situation emerged: Grandma suspected the driver would move right there and the driver waved his hands and pressed the horn, begging Grandma to cross the road anyway, because he could not stand around for half an hour!

The children only looked wistfully askance in the direction of the stores, not allowing themselves to whine «Buy-y-y-y!» which Rita and Costa usually started. No one whined today because they knew that Grandma would not buy anything on the street. They must eat at home. At the table. Hands washed. That is all. Period.

Great-Grandma Zina, whom Grandma also took with her to get some air, was very slow. She stopped after every few metres, leaning on a fence or a tree for support. «I'll only rest for a minute!» she said. «Earlier I was like running! Oh, I was!» And she smiled, as if she did not believe that she was telling the truth.

Finally, everyone reached the playground.

«We're building up a reserve of health!» Grandma gave the order and suddenly, remembering something, stared sternly at Great-Grandma: «Mama, did you take medicine this morning?»

«Yes!» Great-Grandma hastily said.

«Not true! Why was the sink pink? Did you throw the pill into it?»

Great-Grandma sighed. «It's so bitter! Can I at least take it with chocolate?»

«What chocolate! You can't have sugar! Only fat-free yogurt!» Grandma Masha answered curtly.

Kate and Vicky exchanged glances. They realized that Grandma and Great-Grandma had changed roles long ago. Grandma had become a mother to her own mama, and Great-Grandma her daughter.

«Let's breathe! Don't get distracted! Nothing for us to hear!» Grandma ordered.

And all the children began to walk and breathe. True, minus Peter, who took off somewhere on another path after all. Alex whined, not having the opportunity to climb or fall anywhere, but Costa and Rita walked with pleasure. Except that they regretted that while one was swinging on the swing, the other must stand ten steps from the swing, observing safety precautions.

A suitable example was even found for offenders. «One paratrooper returned from the army. He took something and went to the playground. A swing hit him on the back of his head and put him down on the spot!» Great-Grandma said, and all the children fearfully fell silent, imagining to themselves this poor paratrooper and wondering why he had stood under the swing.

Great-Grandma Zina was sitting on a painted tire sunk into the ground and was holding Rita in her lap. Rita was very fond of Great-Grandma. She had already said «I love you!» to her about ten times, but had yet to say it to Grandma, and Grandma was secretly jealous.

At noon, Grandma Masha's alarm went off. It beeped once, so very distinctly without violating established traditions. «Now lunch and admiral's hour!» Grandma said sternly and the children went home.

After lunch, Grandma doggedly packed all the children, except the three older ones, to bed.

«We close our eyes! One hour of nap during the day is five hours of sleep at night!» she said.

«So we don't have to sleep at night?» Alena asked, suffering because she, a ten-year-old, was ranked among the little ones and trapped in bed.

«Need to sleep at night, too! That's all! We rest!» Grandma said and went to put Rita down in the small room.

Rita was heard throwing a tantrum, jumping on the bed, and repeating that she would not sleep. Then everything suddenly quieted down. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. There was not a single sound from the room. Surprised that Grandma did not come out, Alena sneaked up to the door and opened it slightly, leaving a crack. When she returned, her eyes were round.

«She's sleeping!» she whispered.

«Who? Rita?»

«Grandma! She announced the admiral's hour and fell asleep herself! Ha-ha-ha!»

«And Rita?»

«And Rita's also sleeping! Let's go!»

Alex and Costa also leaped out of bed, and all the children rushed downstairs. Downstairs, they saw Great-Grandma Zina, who was reading an old magazine through a magnifier, at times starting to doze off. Great-Grandma read a lot, and indiscriminately, everything that fell into her hands. She could attentively read the flyers used to wrap purchases from the market, five minutes later it was Preparation of History for EGE,[3] forgotten by Peter on the bench, and then suddenly Remarque[4] or Chekhov[5] appeared in her hands. Soon enough they also disappeared somewhere, but a newspaper was discovered, and Great-Grandma was again reading it.

When the children appeared downstairs, Great-Grandma raised her head and looked at them with alarm. For the first second she thought that perhaps it was Grandma Masha. Realizing that this was not Grandma, Great-Grandma smiled with relief and stopped hiding the fruit pastille, which she, breaking into pieces, was stuffing in her mouth.

Alena, Alex, and Costa surrounded Great-Grandma and began to talk with her. Very soon Peter, Vicky, and Kate joined them.

«Great-Grandma, Great-Grandma! Let's buy ice cream while Grandma is sleeping!» suggested Alena.

«Is she really sleeping?» Great-Grandma did not believe her.

«You bet! We saw it ourselves!»

Great-Grandma Zina pondered. She loved ice cream. But still she was in doubt. «One guy came from the army, ate a lot of ice cream…» she began in a squeaky voice.

«…he came down with acute tonsillitis and died?» Peter guessed.

«How do you know? I already told you that?» Great-grandma was surprised.

«No,» said Peter. «It happened in our school. It's a well-known case in science.»

Kate kicked Peter. «Stop! So, are we going for ice cream? Huh, Gram?»

Great-Grandma put aside the magnifier and leaned her hands on the table. «Let's!» she said, chewing her lips. «Give me my cane and my purse!»

Great-Grandma Zina's handbag was old, of imitation leather, with a thick plastic handle and a metal clasp that snapped like a pistol with pistons.

«Maybe you can give us money and we'll run and get it?» Peter suggested, afraid that while they walked, Grandma Masha would have time to wake up.

«Certainly not! I want it myself! I'll even look at many things. What kind of store is there? A candy store?»

Great-Grandma got dressed pretty quickly. All the children also got dressed quickly, because they understood that the matter was secret and important. Then they all went out onto the street and, grasping Great-Grandma's elbows, began to drag her to the candy store.

«Oh, not so fast! Oh, not so fast! Let me stand for a minute!» Great-Grandma wailed.

The older children stood patiently, letting her rest, but the younger ones could not stand and were bouncing around.

«Do you have money? You didn't forget?» Costa suddenly asked with concern.

Great-Grandma looked anxiously into her purse. «A bit,» she said. «Oh, how nice that you took me! I haven't been in a store for some five years!»

«Doesn't Grandma buy you sweets?»

«Rarely. The neighbours bring a little. But she says I'm not allowed, I have blood sugar.»

«So you're not allowed someone else's sugar, because you have your own? What luck!» Alex exclaimed.

«I can have everything,» Great-Grandma objected philosophically, pursing her lips. «Though, maybe, also not. But a little, I probably can.»

Finally, they reached the bakery, where there was a large candy department. Grandma went up the three steps and leaned against the wall. «Ugh! Exactly like being dragged to the tenth floor!» she complained and, after catching her breath, began to look with interest at the shelves. «Oh! How many new things have appeared! Now, five years ago I didn't see these round candies here with fruit jelly in the middle! And these very long new ones! There were lemon wedges! And drops! And these chocolates here were issued in wrappings!»

«Is your grandma from an uninhabited island?» the salesgirl asked Peter in a whisper.

«No, from Moscow,» said Alex.

«Ahh!» the salesgirl said slowly in amazement.

Great-Grandma was already standing at the shelves and gleefully going through bags of cookies and all sorts of sweets. «Do you have chocolate? With jam? And shortbread? But not very sweet?» she asked worriedly.

«No such thing,» said the salesgirl.

«Well, then give us three hundred grams in total! In fact, all that you have!» Great-Grandma said.

«And chocolate!» Peter whispered.

«And chocolate!» Great-Grandma repeated.

Costa asked again if she had enough money.

«There's enough,» Great-Grandma said bravely. «And if we're off by a lot, we'll set aside the extra. Get what you want!» Alena, Alex, and Costa were standing next to Great-Grandma and shouting, each pointing at his favourite. Everyone was pulling her by the hand in his direction.

Suddenly, a phone rang in Great-Grandma's bag. She found it and punched a big button blindly.

«Hello, Masha! Yes, the children are with me! What are we doing? Taking a walk! I'll call you back soon!» Great-Grandma said into the phone and, looking imploringly at her great-grandchildren, put the phone in her bag. «I didn't lie. Just kept quiet about something!» she said guiltily.

«Who was that?» Costa asked.

«Her daughter, our grandma!» Kate whispered.

They bought so much candy and ice-cream that they had two large packages. The children and Great-Grandma argued about where to hide everything so that they would not catch Grandma Masha's eye.

Soon they were already at home. While Vicky rang the bell, Peter hid behind a car with two bags in order to sneak in all the sweets unnoticed. The door opened and they went in. A towel was lying on the table. A huge apple pie was cooling on the towel.

Grandma Masha stood at the table and looked at them with a slight squint. «Returned, schemers? Oh, well! Sit down for tea!» she invited them.

Vicky looked at the steaming hot pie and felt uncomfortable. «Oh! And we discussed how to outwit you!» she said innocently.

Grandma Masha waved her hand. «All right! Everyone wash hands! Do you know how many germs are on a square centimetre of skin?» she said sternly, but everyone was already rushing to hug her because they suddenly felt that she was nice.

«Good when you have a grandma!» Vicky said at night, when the children were already in bed and Grandma had gone downstairs to take Great-Grandma Zina's blood pressure.

«Yeah, not bad. Only she does not last for long!» Peter said in a knowing voice. The wall in his room was thin, made of plasterboard, and one could easily talk right through it.

«Why?»

«Well, I already noticed this long ago. Grandma Masha's orderliness lasts for three weeks a year. Then she's exhausted and saves up energy the whole year for these three weeks. Well, like a race car. The more powerful the engine, the higher fuel consumption,» Peter explained.

Kate chuckled. «And our parents aren't orderly and that's precisely why they last the whole year?» She specified.

«Well, practically… Still, it's great to have an orderly grandma!»

Chapter Four
Five Kitties

The entire person to the last cell reveals himself in his reaction to the word «cannot.»

Mama

On Monday morning, the children were getting ready for school. Kate was already standing at the door with a backpack behind her shoulders and her arms crossed, waiting for her brothers and sisters. Costa and Rita, who, although not going to school yet, promptly roamed around, crowding together with everyone.

Costa looked with suspicion at the shorts that they were just about to put on him. Then he began to grimace slowly. Lately he had become very suspicious. «They're girls'! I won't wear them!» he whined.

«Easy, fighter! Not a girl in shorts! It's a disguised hero in shorts!» Kate said quickly.

Costa pondered and allowed them to put the shorts on him, the disguised hero hiding under them.

First-grader Alex circled around the kitchen and, pestering everyone, asked them to find his notebooks.

«Notebooks for lazy Alex! Where are you? Hello!» Kate summoned, arms still crossed on her chest. Alex apprehensively looked sideways at her and fell silent.

Alena hopped along the hallway and, hastily tossing books into her backpack, moaned, «Oh! We have work today! Give me a hundred roubles for modeling clay!»

«Your were given some yesterday!» Kate said.

«Oh! I spent it! First, forty on a chocolate bar, and then there wasn't much left and I decided to spend…»

Peter's head popped out of the bathroom. It turned out he heard everything perfectly. «Give me one and a half million for modeling clay! And three more for an eraser! But then it's not enough for the new iPhone!» he said in a squeaky voice.

They threw a towel at Peter and his head hid. In the bathroom, something laughed terribly, a chair dropped, and the water was turned on. Peter usually went to school a minute before the bell and took with him a maximum of one notebook, which he tucked under his belt.

The morning was overcast. Costa, confusing words, called such a morning «overpass.» The sky was clearly preparing for something spectacular, but what exactly was still unclear. Clouds were moving like small flocks, gradually gathering into one very large cloud.

«I also want to annoy like everyone else!» Kate grumbled, waving the bag with her indoor shoes. «Give me a T-shirt! Not that one! Pour me some tea! Not that tea!»

«Then you can't grumble at all and be always right!» said Vicky.

Kate pondered. «In fact, yes!» she acknowledged. «Okay, then I agree to stay the way I am.»

Kate returned from school at about two, right after Alex and Alena. She stood by the window. Outside the window, snow was falling in large flakes and settled on an evergreen shrub and equally on the green grass. Stool, Lad, and Tot sat in front of the bushes and, with their heads up, looked with bewilderment at the snowflakes on their noses. Stool whined in fright. Tot growled. Lad demonstrated philosophical calm.

«What went on in school!» said Kate. «Everyone ran from class!»

«And the teachers?»

«The teachers also ran. Everyone stood in the schoolyard and threw snow! Quite wild, as if they had never seen snow! And behind the fence there, incidentally, were the power guys!»

«What, did they break the windows with snowballs?» Mama was surprised, cutting out three-dimensional snowflakes for home decorations. She had already cut out about twenty snowflakes and each had its own shape. For the time being, it was all cut like ordinary paper, but then poof! – a momentary movement of the fingers and a snowflake opened in the air, becoming three-dimensional.

«No,» Kate acknowledged reluctantly. «But these power guys also dropped their work and built a snowman with a light bulb instead of a nose… They found a large light bulb somewhere, massive like a soccer ball! But by evening, all the same, everything melts!»

After standing a little longer at the window, Kate made her way to the closet to put away clean laundry. Not so long ago she discovered that the children's clothes got mixed up in the laundry and nothing could be found when needed. Therefore, it was much simpler not to sort the things according to their owners but label the drawers with a marker, and each would easily find their own there. Now on the drawers were large labels PANTS, SOCKS, SHIRTS, TIGHTS, SKIRTS.

This principle of sorting revealed more and more advantages each day, but at first this idea had many opponents. Alex especially resented strongly. «What, I'll be wearing girl tights?»

«You do have eyes, where yours are and where the girls' are,» Kate retorted.

«What, I'm supposed to think?»

«Really! Think! Your head won't fall off! Come on, show me, what tights do you have on now?»

But Alex did not show any tights and hastily fled, because he had on Alena's tights for the reason that he was too lazy to look for his own in the pile of clothing. Kate hurriedly scattered the dried clothes according to pants, shirts, skirts and, waving away Costa, who was hindering her with a T-shirt, returned to Mama.

Suddenly, the intercom started to screech. Once, twice, then a third time.

«Who was so mad there?» Kate asked with displeasure.

It turned out that it was Vicky, who came in breathless and red. «Kittens were dropped off there at the school! Five of them! In a box!» she informed them.

Papa Gavrilov tore himself away from the computer, where he was trying to unravel an entangled plot. «So, fine!» he showed appreciation. «A school is the most suitable place. Children finish classes, the grandmas come for them. If you try very hard, a grandma can be persuaded to take a kitten.»

Vicky was mysteriously silent, averting her eyes. Papa looked at her. «Just don't say that…» he began slowly.

Kate, rushing from the spot, ran to the gate in her slippers and returned with a box. «Here they are! All five are here!» she shouted.

«Take them back!» Papa demanded.

«No, no! They'll freeze!» Vicky and Kate shook their heads.

«They won't. They are nearly a month old!»

«If you were about a month old and they threw you into a box out in the snow?» Kate asked with such reproach that Papa Gavrilov understood: he was not getting away from the kittens.

«Fine!» he conceded. «Then feed them, and later go, walk along the street, and repeat pitifully, 'Please take a kitten!'»

«I'll make an online ad!» Kate proposed.

Papa shook his head. «No way! The kittens don't get adopted online. It's a lost cause. There they'll only repost, ooh and ah. But no one will take them.»

«How do they get adopted?» Kate asked.

«Kittens are adopted exclusively by way of a chance nudge!» Papa stated. «A person sees a kitten and he's caught before his logical thinking kicks in. That's all. There are no other ways.»

«I won't grovel!» Kate claimed.

«And I'm afraid of meeting any of my acquaintances!» Vicky added.

«Well then, you also have no love for the kittens. Also no desire to help them. Take them away in the box to the school and put them where you found them,» Papa shrugged.

«What if you take compassionate photos and put them on social media, huh?» Vicky asked hopelessly.

«Yeah! You hold a kitten by the scruff of the neck over a pot of boiling soup with the caption: You have twenty-four hours to save this wretch!» advised Peter, having come down the stairs from his room. Peter had The Brothers Karamazov [6] under his arm. He read a hundred pages of this book a day; in doing so, having read exactly a hundred pages, even if there were, say, ten lines to the end of the chapter, he would stop. Peter went to the fridge on his way. He looked into it and snorted loudly.

«Is the soul wandering about in pots?» Vicky asked.

«What's to wander here? No food! The grannies are strolling by the sea!» Peter said.

«There's plenty of food!» Kate contested. «There's simply no pleasing you!»

«Very funny!» Peter cut off a third of the loaf of bread on a slant, smeared it with ketchup, generously sprinkled chicken seasoning on top of the ketchup, looked at the composition of the seasoning, and licked his lips. «E260![7] E283![8] Natamycin![9] Diethyl bicarbonate![10] I love it! Does anyone else want bicarbonate? Well, I offered!» he said and bit off a huge chunk.

«How can you eat this trash? I'd be sick!» Vicky asked, rolling her eyes.

«Really? Bet you wouldn't?» Peter suggested and again buried himself in the seasoning composition. «Ah, how sad! No E240! Without it, food isn't food!»

«What's E240?» Vicky asked.

«Cuc-koo, dark! E240 is formaldehyde!»[11] Peter explained, and chewing the sandwich, went to his room. Three latches were heard snapping in turn.

An iron sheet rumbled on the opposite side of the fence. Andrew and Seraphim climbed over. Seraphim was gnawing with effort on ice cream found in the freezer. The ice cream was so hard that it was possible to knock a stone with it and the stone would respond with a bang.

«Look at this one!» Andrew said with reproach. «He didn't go to school because his throat hurts!»

«But it really hurts! Ask Mama!» Seraphim said and both brothers glared at each other.

«Oh, adoptable kittens have arrived!» Papa Gavrilov said gladly, especially placing his hopes on Seraphim, who, in his fantastic poetic absentmindedness, would even be able to adopt ten pregnant cats smeared with green dye and plastered with modelling clay.

Seraphim and Andrew together with Alena and Kate repacked the kittens from the box to an old hat, went along the main street, and began to repeat plaintively, «Ple-e-ease take a kit-ten! Ple-e-ease take a kit-ten!»

The kittens got out of the hat, scrambled up their sleeves, and did not stop meowing. Each of the children had to take a kitten. Seraphim carried two simultaneously, and the kittens managed to cling to passers-by. Seraphim's whine «Ple-ease take a po-oor little kit-ten!» turned out to be the most pitiful. Therefore, people often approached him.

Alex followed Seraphim, but without a kitten, because he was constantly losing it and the rest got sick of that. The snow was beginning to melt. It seemed as though it would not stay till evening. Alex scooped the snow from the fence, shaped it into snowballs, and threw them high above his head to see what they would fall on. The third snowball plopped on a taxi. The driver pretended to chase after Alex, who hastily hid behind Andrew.

«You're acting erratically! You don't know what your hands will do in the next minute!» said Andrew.

«Not true! I know!»

«Yes? And what are they doing right now? Well, tell me! Don't look with your eyes!»

Not heeding, Alex stared incredulously at his hands and discovered in surprise that they had picked up a rusty bolt from the asphalt and were trying to twist the nut from it.

«Please take a kitten!» Alena shouted and burst out laughing, because snow had fallen from a tree into her mouth. Alex, noticing that snow was falling from the trees, began to run forward and hit the branches with a stick.

Despite all efforts, the adoption of kittens went poorly. Most passers-by were either not interested in the kittens at all or said something like, «Should offer in the summer!» All the same, every five minutes some compassionate auntie would pop out from somewhere, press a kitten to her chest, and start to aah, «Children! Ah! Kittens for adoption! How charming! This is a boy! If it were a girl, I would take it!»

«We have a girl!» Kate declared and beckoned Alena with the next kitten.

The compassionate auntie tensed up a little and took the kitten no longer with such enthusiasm, «Oh! If the girl was lighter, this one has a dark stripe!» she said hurriedly.

«We also have a lighter one! Seraphim, bring yours!» Andrew said in a dull voice, he liked to bring every situation to a logical conclusion.

The compassionate auntie felt cornered. «What if they're sick?» she said, hastily looking for an argument to refuse.

«Then you show the vet!» Andrew suggested.

«No, no! They're too young! They'll die! If they were older, then yes!» the auntie said and ran away cowardly.

The children wandered along the sea for about two hours and began to lose faith in their lucky star. But here they gradually began to get lucky. The first kitten was taken by an old lady selling seashells. Moreover, she took it as if instantly, when they had already walked past and did not even whine «please take a kitten!»

«Look at you! Yelling! A boy? Come here, boy!» she said and, after glancing under the kitten's tail, slipped it into a bag and gave Seraphim a covered seashell. «You'll make an ashtray!» she said.

Seraphim stood in confusion with the shell in his hand. «But I don't smoke…» he began.

«He does, he does!» Kate hastily said, dragging him by the sleeve. «You have to think! If you don't need the shell, give it to me!»

The second kitten was taken by a gloomy saleslady from a store. Kate thought for the first second that she was approaching to kick them out. The third kitten was taken by a police trainee to give to his girlfriend. The trainee said that it was all the same to him whether it was a boy or a girl, because he could not stand cats himself.

«So it's a sacrifice in the name of love? How nice!» Kate said.

The trainee looked at her rather sourly. «Just tie a bow on it for me!» he demanded.

«Where do I get ribbon? Ah, here!» Kate instantly pulled an elastic band with a butterfly off Alena, and the kitten was decorated with colourful wings. It was no worse than ribbon.

Children on the playground wanted to take the fourth and fifth kittens, but Kate did not let them until they called their parents. As a result, one was allowed, but the other was not. The one who was allowed already had two cats at home, but the other, not allowed, did not even have a cockroach in a jar. So the fifth kitten was given near the sea to three cheerful uncles returning from a cafe after a birthday. The uncles said that they were from Krasnodar and that there were «actually no» cats there.

These Krasnodar uncles triggered great suspicion in Kate, and she made them swear ten times that they would not throw out the kitten. «Now someone is cheerful, but tomorrow he'll be very unhappy! And you'll chuck the kitty somewhere!» she said reproachfully, to which the uncles resentfully replied that they were not animals, that they were in fact artists and would not chuck the kitty anywhere.

The artists took the kitten at the area by the large fountain. The fountain had not worked since the end of September, but it still had unfrozen water at the bottom. In summer a large pond turtle swam in the fountain and a special platform was built so that it could get out and bask in the sun. And now Alex, for some unknown reason having climbed into the fountain, discovered that no one would get the turtle from the fountain to take it to warmth, and it was hiding between the upper layer of the boards of the platform and its base. Because, probably, it had been forgotten, and it never occurred to anyone to put a hand between the boards and check if there was anything there. But Alex came, because he generally put his hands everywhere.

«Get out of the fountain, genius! You got your legs wet! Grandma will kill me at home!» Kate yelled.

«She'll kill me,» said Alena.

«No, she won't. She'll kill me, because she knows that I'm the oldest,» Kate said modestly.

Alex got out of the fountain with the turtle in his hands. The turtle did not show signs of life. Its paws and head were hidden inside the shell.

«It's dead! Frozen!» said Andrew.

«No, it's in hibernation,» Kate argued.

«Let's poke it with a nail so it'll wake up!» Alex suggested.

«I'll poke you!» Kate said, and taking the turtle away him, put it inside her jacket. The turtle was about the size of a salad bowl and quite heavy.

Chilled but pleased, they returned home with a pond turtle and a whining Alex, who, besides getting his legs wet, managed to lose his hat somewhere. It was good that Grandma and Great-Grandma had not yet returned and only Papa and Mama were home.

«They let me get chilled! My hat was lost, and now they won't let me touch the turtle, which I found!» Alex was indignant.

«Did you try zipping up your jacket? By the way, you had a hood!» Mama said.

«Oh! I didn't think of it!» Alex suddenly realized.

«What didn't you think of? Zipping up the jacket? Or the hood?» Judging by Alex's confused look, he had thought of neither.

«Well, where are the kittens?» Papa asked. «Adopted?»

Kate nodded her head. «Done!» she said. «Now I know everything! Kittens can only be adopted by those who already have cats! And a kind or unkind person in appearance means absolutely nothing!»

Chapter Five
Chicha the Monkey

Mama, I will not give you to anyone! Not even to you!

Costa

In the middle of December, Mama was walking along the street with the stroller. Kate was walking beside her. Rita sat in the stroller and Costa hung onto the handle, but Alex could not stretch out in the basket below, because there lay fishing floats ejected by the sea that Mama had taken from the beach for crafts.

So Alex dragged himself along and dreamed, «Here I have some things in my room and cameras installed everywhere there, and if someone took something in my room, I'd see who took it.»

«Where's your room?» Kate asked. Alex drooped despondently. He did not have a room. And, it turned out, it was possible to get by very well without a camera.

They made a big detour along the waterfront and then came out onto a small square. Here, near the two competing arcades, motley guys with megaphones were running around and enticing people to their establishments. One of these guys was Pokrovskii, whom the «mouse girl» Liuba said worked in five or six places.

«Children, don't crowd!» he shouted into the megaphone. «We have lots of souvenirs, so nobody will go empty-handed! Kid, please return my iPhone to the table! It's not a souvenir! I accidentally put it here!»

The competitor from the neighbouring arcade had no gifts. He took offense and yelled at the top of his lungs into his megaphone, «Neighbouring colleagues! Hello to you! You literally made my day! And you even have wonderful music, guys! Of course, I can't be heard at all, and now my boss will come!»

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Примечания

1

Admiral's hour is Russian naval jargon for an after-lunch nap.

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2

In Russian, the word for breakfast is zavtrak while the word for the next day is zavtra. The English word breakfast means to break the fasting through the night.

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3

EGE is a series of graduation exams every Russian student must pass to enter university or professional college.

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4

Erich Maria Remarque (1898–1970) was a German novelist who wrote about the horrors of war. His best known work is All Quiet on the Western Front (1928) about German soldiers in WWI.

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5

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904) was a renowned Russian playwright and short story writer. He was also a practising medical doctor throughout most of his literary career.

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6

The Brothers Karamazov (1880) is the last novel of Russian writer Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky (1821-81), whose works explore human psychology in the troubled atmosphere of 19th-century Russia.

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7

E260, acetic acid, regulates acidity when used as a food additive.

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8

E283, potassium propionate, is used as a food preservative.

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9

Natamycin, E235, is a naturally occurring antifungal agent used as a food additive.

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10

There is no diethyl bicarbonate used in food, most bicarbonates are used as acidity regulators or anti-caking agents. There is also dimethyl dicarbonate used as a beverage preservative. Although there is diethyl carbonate, which is a solvent and has been proposed as a fuel additive.

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11

Formaldehyde is classified as a probable human carcinogen.

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