he repeated constantly, but the promised “soon” for some reason did not come.
They drove along the waterfront six times and crossed the tram tracks ten times, but did not find the figure 8 street. The next time along the waterfront, the children staged a mutiny. They wanted to swim, but Mama did not remember which box their swimsuits were in. And she doubted that the water had warmed up. The beaches were still quite empty.
Mama started to look at Papa with some doubt. “At least the right city?” she asked guardedly. “Do you remember the street name?”
“No. 6 Vine Street!” Papa blurted out.
“Well, so ask someone!”
Papa refused to ask out of principle. He already considered himself a local, and locals do not ask for directions. “I know how to walk from the station! But I walked through courtyards, you can’t drive through that way!”
“So, let’s leave the van and walk!” Mama, who was impatient to see the house, demanded.
“No, that’s stupid! We may lose the van and all the things! Now I remember, it’s here!” Papa became obstinate and, turning resolutely, drove into a dead end, which was complete with a wall of green shrubs. Papa started to make a U-turn, which was not easy, because boxes and his kin lying horizontally blocked up the whole rear window and the street was almost as wide as their car. Papa backed up, then drove forward and unexpectedly cut into a solid wall of green shrubs.
"Be careful! It’ll scratch!” Mama yelled, but the shrubs suddenly parted and the branches only slid along the glass.
A bewildered Papa, stepping on the gas, continued to drive to who knows where, and the van passed through the green wall without the slightest resistance. Bright tattered flowers, in which bees and beetles were crawling, drummed on the windows.
“We’re like Alice in Wonderland!” Alena shouted.
Then the shrubs finally parted and everyone saw a dusty path with undulating asphalt, cracked from the roots of the many acacias under it. A big shaggy dog ran along the path to meet them with a hoarse barking. Behind the shaggy dog, a medium-sized off-white dog also rushed over barking. Finally, a quite small short-legged dog with a bald back came hobbling last. This dog was no longer barking but coughing.
Kate rolled out of the stopped car and ran to meet the dogs. Mama yelled, afraid that the dogs would tear her to pieces, but the dogs suddenly turned and ran in the opposite direction, except the bald dog, which fell on the ground from terror and, giving up, turned over with legs up.
“See? Afraid that Kate will hug them to death! I’d be scared too!” Peter said and again started laughing so wildly that Vicky demanded pushing Peter out of the car because he had completely deafened her.
“I’ll go myself!” Peter said and crawled out of the car through the lowered rear window. Alena, Costa, Alex, and Rita got out after Peter.
They all crowded in front of the van, and Papa could no longer go anywhere and turned off the motor.
“Where is the house?” Mama asked.
“Here!” Papa said, pointing to that which Mama could not see from the van.
Mama got out and saw the house. It had peeling plaster, which was not conspicuous, because vines were embracing the second floor and the roof, and blooming dog rose, curling along the window bars, covered the first floor, where the grapevines were only thick bald trunks.
The house’s double gates were metal, twice the height of a person, and painted black. They had rusted for many years and the rust was carefully painted over. They rusted again and were painted again. As a result, the gates, oddly enough, turned out to have a very beautiful texture – so uneven, rough, really lively. At the bottom, where the gates had rusted heavily, small holes formed here and there.
Rita and Alex were already lying on their stomachs, trying to peep through the holes to see what was happening in the yard. “Mama, look! Look!” they yelled.
“Good heavens!” Mama said. She approached carefully and ran a hand along the gates. The black paint, warmed up by the sun, burned the palm of her hand. The wind swooped down. The gates stretched like a sail and buzzed. Mama wanted to stand here a bit and try to catch a response in her heart, which would suggest whether this was the house she dreamed of, but Papa was already hurrying to open the house. Alex had managed to climb up the gates and now, feet dangling, was sitting almost level with the second floor. Everyone was shouting for him to get down, but Alex liked to sit so high. He climbed the post of the gates and climbed over to the balcony from there. He was scrambling with ease, like a monkey.
Mama was afraid that Alex would fall and demanded that he come down, but Peter declared that he knew Alex. Alex would never come down himself, because he saw perfectly that no one could reach him. Peter himself had also been mischievous like that in childhood. Now he was wise.
“Wise, wise! Only don’t bray so loudly!” Vicky said and moved aside just in case.
“What if we threaten that we’ll punish him?” Kate suggested.
“Then he really won’t come down. What’s the sense of coming down if you’re going to get punished? Better to sit until everyone forgets that they’ve promised to punish you!” Peter continued authoritatively. “No! A better way to get Alex down is to throw something at him. For example, bricks.”
“Not on your life!” Mama objected.
“I wasn’t suggesting to start immediately with large bricks. Can start with small pebbles. Well, if you don’t want to, don’t! Then option number two! I’ll bet on a trick; that’ll work!”
Peter leaned down, picked up Alex’s backpack from the asphalt, and began to rummage in it. “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Soda! And what’s this in the bottle? Vinegar, perhaps?”
“Give it back! It’s mine!” was heard from the balcony. Alex deftly rolled down from there like a ball, and, clutching his backpack, started to pull it away from Peter.
“Learn from me while I live! Childish greed is the key to a child’s heart!” said Peter.
However, no one wished to learn from Peter. Everyone was already rushing into the house. Costa flew first with a sword in his right hand. Rita followed. After Rita, Vicky and Alena. Kate ran last, all three stray dogs – large, medium, and small with a bald back – sticking to her. Now these dogs did not consider themselves strays anymore, but had thought about it, talked it over, and decided to become pets. Mama waved her arms at them and stood at the door, and the dogs again became strays.
“You’re cruel!” Kate said. “By the way, I’ve given them our pâté! It would have gone bad anyway!”
“My pâté? It couldn’t go bad! It was wrapped up. I was planning it for dinner!”
“It’s already irrelevant, can’t get it out of the dogs anyway,” said Kate.
Then they all walked around the house for a long time, and Papa showed them everything that the grandpa had shown him last time. Here is the large room on the ground floor, here is the small room, which he, Papa, would take as his office, and here is the kitchen! There are still three small and one medium-sized room upstairs. And here is a door, but he, Papa, has no idea where it leads.
“To Bluebeard’s room! Two hundred strangled wives there!” Peter said and opened the door. Beyond
