and began to walk away. It seemed as if he were floating, just the way he had approached me.
I saw his olive-skinned face with its broad smile and white teeth as I sat in Ilyas’s bedroom. And I didn’t want to think about what had happened to that face; I couldn’t.
Other people arrived to say farewell to our friend, and we left the bedroom. We sat on the bench near the entrance; we just sat there silently, swinging our feet. We didn’t feel like talking.
“The funeral will be tomorrow,” Rustem informed us. We knew that the funeral would be the next day.
What if this funeral were with music, like Uncle Anatoly’s.
“Uncle Anatoly,” I said pensively. We hadn’t used his nickname Bogeyman since he died.
“Is there justice in this world?” Vova Oparin echoed. “There’s no justice.”
We wordlessly agreed with him.
Even though there were many people at the entrance on the day of the funeral, it was very quiet. People talked in whispers, no one lamented. Ilyas’s mother didn’t wail and cry. Her face remains etched in my memory. It was absolutely motionless, as if it weren’t alive. Her eyes were sunken with black circles around them. People supported her on both sides, but she could still hardly walk. A stretcher was brought out. Our poor friend, wrapped in a dark cloth, lay on it. And all that was in silence, without music, crying or lamenting. It seemed strange that, with so many people around, it was so quiet.
Just as at Uncle Anatoly’s funeral, the procession moved toward the main street, though there was no coffin, just a stretcher, and a strange silence hung in the air. It was still silent when it reached the place where a van awaited. There were no musicians with instruments waiting for Ilyas.
It was a nice autumn day, still, quiet and clear. There were no dust devils swirling through the streets as so often happened at this time of year. It seemed that even the weather knew that it needed to play its role in sending Ilyas off on his last journey, in accordance with Tatar customs.
Chapter 20. We Don’t Give a … Spit
A gob of spit sailed down smoothly from above, moving in an arc until it plopped onto the asphalt below my window. It was accompanied by a sound I knew all too well. A second one followed, then a third, and so on, without stopping.
The frequency of the spitting allowed me to determine exactly how many members there were in the spitting party up above.
I, along with my friends, was so often engaged in that fascinating occupation that I had studied all its stages in detail, the speed at which the gobs fell and the sounds they made.
Now, my friends, the Edem brothers and Rustem, were engaged in spitting on the third floor, and I sat at my window on the ground floor and watched them play, without annoyance or envy.
“Aaaa-khem” was heard from above.
I knew very well what would follow.
That aa-khem sound, for instance, had just come from Rustem. I knew that he stood, holding the window frame with both hands like a gymnast holding onto a bar. He leaned back, threw back his head and snorted like a horse. Why did he do that? To get more saliva in his mouth… He now bent down to the very edge of the window and spat with all his might.
We boys had a different name for a gob of spit, we called it a kharchok. Consequently, the game, which was a competition to see who could spit the farthest without leaning out of the window was called kharching. It wasn’t a pleasant-sounding name, but… that was what we liked to call it.
So, why wasn’t I taking part in that wonderful competition today but rather sitting on my veranda as a detached observer?
I hadn’t been invited. It had been two days since the boys stopped playing with me and talking to me: they were ignoring me completely. Even though we hadn’t quarreled, I could guess what the matter was, and, though suffering from loneliness, I couldn’t force myself to ask for a truce.
We hadn’t quarreled, but our fathers had.
Ball playing near our entrance had been the cause of the quarrel. A big group of boys including Edik, Rustem and Kolya had been playing. In general, ball playing near the entrance was forbidden, but the boys broke that rule every now and then. Most often they would break the rule near our veranda. Perhaps that was what made the game especially delightful.
My father was the most explosive and intolerant adult in our building. That meant that the players enjoyed every opportunity to drive him crazy and listen to his yelling.
Perhaps that was the reason why most of the time a ball tossed into the air wouldn’t hit the asphalt, the door of the building or Dora’s veranda but rather our window.
That was the reason I would watch the game from the veranda with a feeling of dread and not join them outside.
Our window had already been broken several times. I didn’t enjoy seeing Father fly into a rage, so I tried to stay away from the players.
When the ball smashed into our window, I had just enough time to jump aside so the broken glass wouldn’t fall on me.
Before the clinking and clanking could die out, I heard the stomping of feet – the frightened boys rushed away in all directions. It was safer to listen to Yuabov’s raging from a distance. I looked around. There was the black rubber ball I knew so well among the fragments of glass on the floor of the veranda. This time, the ball looked somewhat smug. It would be fun to draw eyes and a nose on it with chalk, and a mouth would appear all by itself, smiling broadly, as if to say, “There are no obstacles I cannot overcome.”
I held the ball in my hands, then laid it in the corner. There was no one to return it to since the boys were hiding. And, as I later understood, I didn’t want to do them such a favor – after all, they had broken our window.
All right, it can stay here for now, I decided. Let them come over to get it themselves. As a victim, I sort of sided with my father. I took malicious pleasure in the thought of the inevitable punishment the boys would be subjected to and didn’t think about the possible consequences of my choice.
In the evening, there was a knock at our door. Vasily Nikolayevich, Kolya and Sasha’s father, entered. In our part of the building he was considered an important person – Vasily worked in retail, and he would help some people obtain foodstuffs that were in short supply, like meat, for example.
That didn’t apply to our family. Hardly anyone ever wanted to help my father.
Vasily remained in the hallway, exchanged a few words with Mama and asked her whether Amnun was home. Father walked into the hallway, and they exchanged greetings.
“Please give me the children’s ball,” the neighbor requested.
“Yes, I have it,” Father said slowly. “But first let’s have new windowpane installed.”
At this point, Kolya’s father looked at me as I stood quietly at the door to my room.
“My kids stay in their room when the adults talk,” he informed me.
I had no choice, so I went into my room and closed the door. It goes without
