quite calm.
“It’s our ball, it’s Kolya’s… My kids didn’t break your window. They say Server from the next entrance did it,” Vasily said in his deep voice.
“I don’t care whether it was Server or not … They were playing together, right? So, they are all responsible. I’ll return the ball after the glass is replaced,” Father answered in a monotone.
“Listen, Amnun…” Vasily said with irritation. “I’ve already explained that Kolya had nothing to do with it.”
Explaining anything to Father was a lost cause. He was stubborn and never made concessions for the sake of maintaining good relations with people, even when it was an issue regarding children. He just didn’t know the meaning of concession, magnanimity, or negotiations.
Father was an athlete and a coach, and he most likely viewed any conflict as a contest where he was facing an opponent. And an opponent had to be defeated. No compromises!
“I’m not going to give it back. Get it?”
“Don’t you understand…”
The voices were getting louder. Shouts and stomping of feet were heard. I craned my neck and stuck my head out into the hallway. The fathers were grappling at the door. Mama ran out of the kitchen shouting, “Papesh, stop it! Vasily Nikolayevich, how can you?” And, naturally, she got it too. Infuriated, Father pushed her so hard she almost hit the wall. That was probably what brought Vasily to his senses. He mumbled, “What a nut! Ester, I’m sorry…” and he left, slamming the door behind him.
After that, Kolya and Sasha, whose ball it was, stopped hanging around with me; Edem and Rustem too.
Seated close to the open windows of the veranda, listening enviously to the kharks, without realizing it I began thinking about our relationship.
It wasn’t the first time the boys had quarreled with me. Sometimes they stopped hanging out with me even without quarreling. Quarrels and fights among boys are a normal thing. They might fight or quarrel, and an hour later they’ve forgotten all about it.
But this time it was different; it was something else.
And then I realized – it was because of him just about every time we quarreled, because of my father. Of course… why I hadn’t I realized it before? As soon as he would quarrel with one of the neighbors, one who had kids, my friends would begin to shun me. And he quarreled so often! Perhaps the boys heard their parents discuss it at home, talk about my father… I couldn’t imagine what they might say about him. I always understood that Father’s character was known to everybody in our building, that people were afraid of him and tried to avoid him. I knew better than anyone else how he treated Mama and us kids, and I had also seen many times how he treated other people.
I would call Father’s character unpredictable. He could help a person and he could be generous, but then he would stop talking to that person for some unknown reason, without explaining anything. And he always had to have his own way, never listening to reason, demonstrating utter stubbornness.
Yes, they didn’t like my father in our building. But what did that have to do with me?
Standing on the veranda and listening to the spitting, I bitterly pondered all of that.
I knew that we would make up soon, that the boys would come up to me and begin to talk to me, ask me to play with them. But that didn’t make what I felt now any less bitter. We would make up, but then would they refuse to hang out with me again later? When would it happen? And how many times would I have to put up with insults? Didn’t the boys understand that I myself suffered much more because of my father than any of them did?
Aa-khem, aa-khem could still be heard from the third floor, as if my friends who were standing up there were saying, “And we don’t give a … spit.”
Chapter 21. Sunday Delights
“Mi-i-il-k! Sweet and sour mi-il-k!” A melodious voice was heard ringing outside the veranda window. It was the milkwoman Faruza, an old acquaintance. It was not even eight in the morning, but she showed up like clockwork on Sundays. Emma and I dashed after Mama, racing each other to open the door. Here she was on our doorstep, with her amiable face and dark weather-bitten cheeks. She effortlessly set down her very heavy milk cans – it must have been really hard to carry then all over our neighborhood on foot – and greeted Mama, “Yakhshi mi siz, opajon?” I loved to watch Faruza pour milk neatly into the one-liter jar provided by Mama. She did it so adroitly that a steady stream spurted into the jar, and not a single drop was spilled. The milk can seemed so light in her hands, but I knew that I would not only be unable to lift that rock but wouldn’t even manage to move it. Faruza-opa reminded me of the Bagdad oil sellers whom I had read about in a book about the Medieval Middle East. They poured oil into vessels so skillfully that a ring placed on the narrow neck of a clay jar would remain clean…
After pouring the milk, Faruza smiled tenderly at Emma and me. She loved children; she herself had many.
“Do you like my milk?”
We nodded hurriedly. We liked the milk and we liked Faruza. Her jet-black hair was plaited into many braids that hung down her dark-green velvet jacket, her bright wide silk pants were tied at the ankles, revealing slippers she wore without socks. As to her milk, Mama thought that Faruza’s cow gave the most wonderful milk. We agreed with her. Mama would boil the milk, put a pot in the fridge, and in the morning, it would be covered with a thick ivory-colored skin – cream. Nothing in the world was tastier. And how beautiful the skin was, how rhythmically it swayed on the surface of the milk. It was a pity to touch it, but acute desire surpassed pity. The cream skin was mercilessly broken and put into bowls. Ah, how fast it disappeared into our mouths along with pieces of bread.
“Shall I pour more milk? Do you want more?” the temptress asked, filling a jar. She could read perfectly well what was written on our faces. Faruza was tactful and understood everything – after all, Mama was not made of iron.
Then, the milkwoman was gone, and her milk can could be heard rattling on the next floor. “Sweet, sour mi-il-k!” echoed through the stairwell.
The door had just been closed when another knock was heard. This time it was the plumber, Uncle Tolik. Mama had asked him to fill the crack between the edge of the bathtub and the wall. Emma and I, naturally, forgot about that traitorous crack while taking a bath, and we usually stepped out of the bathtub, not onto the floor but into a big warm puddle, in the middle of which the colorful wet mat, looking like a little island in a bog, made squishing sounds.
Potbellied Uncle Tolik bent over the bathtub, groaning. Even though he was not yet forty, he was rather clumsy because of his corpulence, and he often couldn’t reach the right spot because the bathrooms were not exactly spacious. Light-haired Uncle Tolik had a very kind, round face. If Mama had asked him to get under the bathtub and fix the pipe, I thought, looking at him, he would have done it, but he would certainly have got stuck there… Uncle Tolik’s legs would stick out from beneath the bathtub, and he, lifting the bathtub on his fat belly, would unscrew the drainpipe as the puddle near the tub grew bigger and deeper. The ship of the bathtub would float, rocking on its waters. Uncle Tolik would no longer be Uncle Tolik but a whale on whose back, or whose belly, it made no difference, that ship would be sailing. Emma and I would be on that ship, asking, as we squealed with delight, “Uncle Tolik, let’s go to Africa! Please, to Africa to visit Doctor Doolittle and the hippopotamuses!”
This time it was much more
