Yubilayny settlement,” I answered, scared now.
Father had told me, “The doctor is expecting you,” but this one didn’t expect me at all. What if he was the wrong doctor and wouldn’t fill the pillow?
“It must have been your father who called an hour ago,” the doctor figured out at last. “Yes, he said ‘My son will come over.’ But I thought his son was an adult… How old are you, kid?”
“Six,” I answered, with no inkling that we were practically reenacting the dialogue from a famous poem by Nekrasov.
The doctor was silent. Then he cleared his throat.
“Your mama must be at work now, right? And your papa… You see I don’t have a car at the moment… Nurse!” he suddenly shouted, “Fill it quickly, but not quite all the way.”
Oxygen began hissing into the tube. The doctor squatted and gave me the pillow.
“Here it is… You don’t smoke, right?” he stroked my hair. “Carry it carefully. Remember – it’s a gulp of life for your papa.”
I grabbed the pillow and rushed home as fast as I could.
Chapter 18. With a Forelock
Our class was discussing the terrible news. Renat Khabiyev had injured his hand. Three fingers had been blown off. The two remaining ones had been disfigured.
Yesterday, after classes, Renat and a few high school students had made their way to the training ground. There was no need to explain that they had gone there to collect cartridge cases. Renat was lucky – he had found an unexploded military cartridge. It was a very valuable find because you could remove the capsule from a cartridge, and a capsule was… Well, you know what I mean. When he returned to the yard, he got down to business. Of course, he couldn’t do it at home.
“He was separating the capsule from the cartridge,” Zhenya Zhiltsov was telling his agitated listeners, “when it exploded… right in his hand!”
Tall Zhenya always hung out near the fifth graders, and he always knew all the news.
The boys were silent. Obviously, almost every one of them tried to imagine what horrible pain Renat had felt. Expressions of suffering appeared on many faces. Timur Timirshayev stared at his palm and pressed three fingers to it, wincing.
“At least it’s his left hand,” Sergey Bulgakov broke the silence.
He belonged to the same group as Zhiltsov. They were not known for outstanding academic achievement. They were useful when it came to either beating someone up or “giving a warning.” As for Renat, he wasn’t a mischief-maker, and he had gotten into that group accidentally. Renat belonged to a poor Uzbek family with many children. They didn’t live in one of the new buildings but rather in a clay house in the settlement. He sat quietly at the last desk in class. He wasn’t among those who always raised their hands, eager to demonstrate their superior knowledge at the blackboard.
Yekaterina Ivanovna entered the classroom. We rushed to our seats.
After laying her briefcase on her desk, she paced the room for a long time. She was silent and didn’t look at us. She didn’t have the usual smile on her round, good-natured face. She had such a sad expression that all of us grew even more ill at ease.
“Well, first graders of Class B,” she said as she stopped walking. “Have you at last excelled? Who was with Renat at the training ground yesterday?”
Naturally, the class was silent. Even if someone had been at the training ground, was he foolish enough to inform her about it? And if anyone knew with whom Renat had gone to the training ground, they would never betray their friends. That was for sure.
Yekaterina Ivanovna directed her stern looks at Zhiltsov, Bulgakov and Gaag. They were silent like everyone else.
“How can they allow such naughty children to join the ranks of Young Octobrists?” Yekaterina Ivanovna reproached us.
It was true that we had been wearing the pins for two weeks, the little stars of the Octobrists, and we were very proud of it. But was it against the Octobrists’ rules to play war games and stock cartridges for combat operations? Of course, Renat’s misfortune scared everybody, but at the same time, he was considered a war hero, injured in combat.
No, Yekaterina Ivanovna’s reproaches didn’t arouse our remorse. The class was silent…
After scolding us a bit more, Yekaterina Ivanovna at last told us something worthwhile.
“Tomorrow after classes, we’ll go to the hospital to visit Renat. Who can come?”
So many hands were raised that they formed a dense forest. The class began to buzz, completely forgetting its recent inability to speak.
As always, a few of us walked home together. Khobeyev’s name was on everyone’s lips, and, yes, we felt sorry for him. But we cast glances in the direction of the training ground without a sense of fear. The training ground became even more desirable.
Here we were near building #14, in other words, near the former construction site. Oh, how we missed that construction site! We felt as if something had been taken from us, a thing that had been the principal delight of our lives. How many adventures we had had there! As for the new building… Well, what about it? It looked like a big freshly painted poster – meticulously cleaned glass sparkled in white window frames, the freshly painted dark red entrance door shined. The stairways smelled nicely of whitewash. Joyful new tenants stomped up the steps carrying their baggage.
If there was anything that attracted us to the new building, it was the chance to make new friends. Also, a new barbershop had opened at the end of the building.
And we stopped in there today. Kolya remembered that the director of studies had reprimanded him, “Your hair is too long. You look sloppy.” Edem and I decided to keep him company.
The spacious, well-lit barber shop, which occupied one of the corners of the building, was furnished modestly: just two barber chairs and three seats for waiting customers. The fan, with its rubber blades, was buzzing, and soft music could be heard on the radio. Both barber chairs were occupied by customers. We sat down on the seats and became spectators to this most interesting show. The actors, that is the barbers, wore white gowns, like doctors. The older one, who undoubtedly played the leading role, manipulated first clippers, then scissors, skillfully. His hands flashed up and down, to the left and to the right. He spun around the barber chair like a figure skater in a rink. His fat belly didn’t allow him to get close enough to the barber chair, so he stretched out his arms in a comical way as he worked. Maybe that was why it seemed that he cut hair by touch, without looking at his customer’s head. “What if he cuts off the customer’s ear?” I thought. He could cut it off and not even notice. Then he could cut off the other ear. Then he could let the customer go, and the customer would stand up without noticing anything. After all, everything would still be symmetrical. He wouldn’t even realize that he was deaf. I thought that was what would happen if one’s ears were cut off. And he would just nod, “Thank you, it’s a very nice haircut. Nothing is sticking out.” And he would leave.
The second actor was young and not as agile. He must have been a novice. He wasn’t in a hurry and, after clicking his scissors a few times, he’d take a few steps back to examine his customer’s head.
The master was the first
