began to descend cautiously, the older ones holding the younger ones just in case. There were certainly no strangled wives there, that was nonsense, but still it would be better if Papa went first. It would be safer, more secure. And better if Mama would hold onto Papa and the rest of the children clung to Mama.
The lower they went, the darker it became, like the open mouth of a passage from where light could no longer filter through. Papa fumbled on the wall. He found the light switch, turned on the light. A light bulb hanging from a wire flashed and everyone saw the cosiest basement in the world. An unfinished small sailboat was on a workbench and wooden shelves with hundreds of dusty jars stretched along the walls. Mama and Vicky immediately rushed to wipe the jars, making small windows with fingers in the dust. Preserve turned out to be in some of the jars, compote and jam in others.
“We can’t take them! They belong to someone else!” Papa said sternly.
“We won’t steal! But we can ask the old man politely, ‘Can we take your preserves?’ Most likely he’ll say, ‘Certainly!’ It's not like he’ll go on the train for two days to eat three tablespoons and return!” Kate declared.
Papa then turned off the light in the basement; everyone went upstairs and ran around the house. Papa showed Mama how to light the gas boiler and how it made the loudest “PUFF” in the world. Alex, of course, was already standing nearby, pricking up his ears, and Papa had to plug up Alex’s ears with his fingers and cover Alex’s eyes at the same time so that Alex would not nose out how to make the biggest “puff”!
While they were examining the boiler, a terrible noise surged on the second floor. The floor shook, the house jumped up and down, and Mama was glad that they no longer had neighbours who would now come running to knock on the door.
“Do you hear? What are they doing there?” she asked Papa when Alex, attracted by the general noise, ran upstairs too.
“I think they’re dividing up the rooms!” Papa suggested. “They’ve never had their own rooms. Although there aren’t enough rooms for everyone here.”
“What do you mean not enough? There’re six rooms! You said there’re three small and one medium on the second floor. One large and one small on the first!” Mama exclaimed.
“That’s right, six rooms. Seven kids and nine of us in total… Plus the big room on the ground floor is obviously the common room. No one will be able to sleep there. So, minus one. Even minus two, because the small one will be my office!”
“Wait, I need one room for the little ones… The quietest and farthest so they won’t be disturbed in the afternoon! What if you get the basement for your office? Imagine, how cool! Sitting in an outstanding, cozy, dry basement, writing novels, and eating jam!” Mama proposed carefully.
“No way! Better pack the kids in the basement! A nice, cozy, dry basement full of preserves!” Papa said gloomily, having decided to defend his office to the last.
Some time later, when the noise quieted down, Mama and Papa went upstairs. The second floor was a demarcation zone.
The boundaries of each sector were marked out with the children’s backpacks and a line of things laid out in a row stretched across the room, even taking into account the interests of Rita and Costa. The older kids assigned the far left room to them and blocked them up in that room so that they did not run and grab everything. They generously gave the next room to Mama and Papa as their bedroom. Vicky, Alena, Alex, and Kate divided the centre room among themselves, where, in principle, there would be enough space for everyone if bunk beds were put in. Kate had already managed to put the guinea pig and rat cages on the centre room windows – and there were two of them!
Vicky did not like it. “No rats! They throw sawdust out of the cage all the time! Dirt from just one of them! Choose: me, your sister, or the rats!” she yelled.
“I didn’t ask you to choose!” Kate warned ominously.
Peter won for himself the far right room. He had already managed to close the door and hung up a “DO NOT DISTURB!” sign, which he had foresightedly printed on the printer back in Moscow, glued onto cardboard, and brought with him.
Mama wandered anxiously around the house and counted the beds. This turned out to be simple; there was only one bed. There was also a huge decrepit sofa. If you tapped on it even just slightly, a cloud of dust would rise to the ceiling. Costa discovered this first when he hit the sofa with his sword. On noticing this, Alex approached it, and Rita after Alex, then all three began to bang on it with passion.
Peter watched the childish fun for some time from the height of his wisdom, and then also wanted to move onto the sofa. Better yet, to run, jump, and flop on it from the maximum possible height. “Well, break it up, pip-squeaks!” he ordered offhandedly.
However, before Peter could pound on the sofa and break all its legs, Mama ran into the room. Coughing from the dust, she began to pull the kids out of the room and demanded that Papa drag the sofa onto the street. “Okay! We’ll buy beds tomorrow. Good that we took the kids’ mattresses with us! They can sleep right on the floor!” she said, and everyone went for the mattresses.
Later, everyone still ran around a little and lay down to sleep. Papa fell asleep first, having been up for more than 24 hours. He did not even unload the things from the car. Rita, Costa, and Alex slept with him on the same mattress. Papa had to lie on the edge and pull up his knees, because they would not fit otherwise. They did not fit because the mattress was so small and Rita wanted to be right in the center, but she began to twist and turn and kick all those who accidentally touched her. Costa and Alex fenced Rita off with pillows as shields.
This was their first day at the new place.
Chapter Four
The Flying Shoe
The legendary creator of gunpowder, the monk Berthold Schwarz,[4] died in the explosion of his invention.
The morning began with a scream. It was Vicky. Everybody woke up at once and ran to her. There was no saying what and why. A new home, a new place.
“A cockroach was climbing under my mattress!” Vicky informed them.
“That’s all? At least a large one?” Kate asked, yawning.
“Huge! Never saw anything like it!”
“Put down soggy bread for it, cockroaches love that!” Kate advised her and lifted up the mattress to look at the cockroach.
“Careful! Wrinkles!” yelled Vicky, the only one who managed to put sheets down for the night.
The cockroach turned out to be a giant purple ground beetle, which was hiding in a crack in the wooden floor. Peter immediately got on the Internet and found out that a ground beetle never attacks first, but, escaping from enemies, can secrete yellowish drops of acid. If the poison gets on the hand, for example, and the person wipes his eyes with this hand, then the retina cannot be restored.
Alena and Vicky immediately began to run away from the ground beetle, but the others, on the contrary, ran for it. Alex tried to place the ground beetle on a sheet of paper so that it would secret poison. Kate yelled, “Leave it alone! It’s in the Red List!”[5] Costa, brandishing his sword, tried to get to the ground beetle and hit it. Rita
It is unclear whether Schwarz is a historical or purely legendary figure. It has been suggested that he was a historical alchemist of the late 14th century who developed gunpowder in Germany.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species.
