How the Bunny Went for a Balloon Ride
A little girl who was called Vera was seriously ill. Her father, Fyodor Kuzmich, who was no longer a young man, was so upset that he could not sleep at night. She was a late child, who would be his last, and he loved the little girl to distraction. She was such a playful little thing, always playing with her father, never out of his arms when he was at home, always tousling his hair and wanting to balance her father's spectacles on her little button of a nose... And now she had fallen ill. When they saw how very sad he was, Fyodor Kuzmich's friends-he had influential friends-sent all kinds of doctors to his house... But even the district pediatrician could see what the matter was-pneumonia, and the only treatment was injections. And the little scrap of a girl was given injection after injection. When the nurse came, Fyodor Kuzmich would leave the flat and go out on to the landing, or even go two floors down the stairs and wait it out. He smoked. Then he would come back when the little girl had stopped crying and was lying there, weak and feverish... Looking at him. Fyodor felt a stone weight on his heart. He would have cried, if he could, if the tears would only come. But they wouldn't come, they were stuck somewhere in his throat. In his helplessness and grief he hurt the feelings of his wife, the little girl's mother, terribly: he reproached her for not taking proper care of her child.
"You were more interested in your fancy clothes than in the child," he said to her in the kitchen, as if he was dropping heavy boulders on to the table. "Everybody's in a hurry to stock up for themselves." His wife burst into tears... And now, even though they might not argue-this was no time for arguing-they did not seek help or comfort from each other, each of them suffered in solitude.
The doctor came every day. And then he said that the time had come, when... Well, in a word, all of the girl's small store of energy had been summoned up to fight the illness, and if there was just some way of helping her, of somehow raising her spirits and directing her will towards some bright hope ahead, she would recover more quickly. No, of course she would recover anyway, but it would be still better if she really, really wanted, even unconsciously, to get better.
Fyodor Kuzmich squatted down in front of his daughter's little bed.
"My little love, what would you like most of all?.. Just think, now. Whatever it is, I'll do it. And if I can't, I'll ask a magician, I know a magician who can do anything. Do you want me to decorate a New Year's tree for you? Do you remember the marvellous New Year's tree we had? With the little lights!.."
The girl's little hand shifted on the blanket, she turned her cupped little palm upwards-that was what she did when she wanted to make a logical objection to something.
"New Year's trees are for winter."
"Yes, of course they are," her father hastily nodded his head with its greying hair. "I forgot. Do you want to go to watch some cartoon films when you're better? Lots and lots of them!.."
"I mustn't watch too many," said clever little Verochka. "Daddy," she suddenly raised herself slightly from the pillow. "Uncle Igo' tells a faiwy stowy about a little bunny... Ooh, it's a lovewy stowy!.."
"Yes, tell me." Fyodor Kuzmich was agitated and overjoyed. "What was the story Uncle Yegor told you about the bunny?"
Little Vera nodded her head, and her eyes gleamed brightly.
" 'Bout a little bunny..."
"Would you like to hear it?"
" 'Bout how he wen' fow a bawoon ride..."
"A balloon ride? What kind of balloons were they?"
"Just bawoons!.. Will Uncle Igo'come?"
"Uncle Yegor? No, Uncle Yegor lives a long way away, in a different town... Let's see whether we can remember what kind of balloons the bunny went for a ride on. Did he fly, or just ride along?"
"No, no!" Tears sprang to little Vera's eyes. "Know what it was like?.. When the wind blows you fly way up high! I want Uncle Igo' to come."
"Uncle Yegor lives a long way away, my love. He has to come on the train... On the choo-choo train! Or fly in an aeroplane..."
"You tell the stowy."
"About the bunny? If you just give me a little clue, perhaps I'll remember about his balloon ride. Did he blow up the balloons and then fly away?"
The little girl knitted her brows in extreme annoyance, frowned and turned away to face the wall. Her father saw a large tear well up out of the corner of her eye, roll across the bridge of her nose like a clear dew-drop, and fall onto the pillow.
"My darling," her father implored her. "I'll find out, don't cry. Just a moment... Mummy probably remembers what kind of balloons he went for a ride on. Just a moment, my pet... Alright? I'll tell you the story in a moment."
Fyodor Kuzmich almost ran into the kitchen to his wife. She was startled to see him come running in like that.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, but... Do you remember the story about the bunny going for a balloon ride?"
"A balloon ride?" His wife was puzzled. "What bunny?"
Fyodor Kuzmich lost his temper again.
"A French bunny with horns on its head!.. A bunny! It's a fairy-story Yegor told her. Didn't you hear it?"
His wife was upset and burst into tears. Fyodor Kuzmich took a grip on himself, put his arms round his wife and wiped away her tears with his hand.
"There, there..."
"I sit here feeling like a criminal!..." said his wife. "I hear nothing but reproaches. Do you think you're the only one suffering?"
"I know, I know," said Fyodor. "Forgive me, I didn't mean it... I lost my head... I just don't know what to do."
"What's this story about?"
"About some bunny, and how he went for a balloon ride. Yegor told her it... Ah!" Fyodor suddenly had an idea. "I'll phone Yegor right away! I'll go and phone from the post office."
"Why from the post office? You can phone from here."
"From a private phone ... by the time they take the order from a private phone... I'll go straight down now."
And Fyodor Kuzmich went to the post office. And as he walked along a quite different idea came into his head-he would ask Yegor to come. He would come and tell her heaps of stories, he was a great hand at such things. He obviously must have made up this story with the hare. And he could make up as many more as you like... Today was Thursday, tomorrow was the last working-day of the week, he could get one day off, and he could fly back on Sunday evening. It was just over two hours by plane... And Fyodor also thought what a wonderful surprise it would be for his little girl when "Uncle Igo' " himself arrived-she loved him and his stories, she listened to them with rapt attention.
Fyodor Kuzmich didn't get through to his brother straightaway, but eventually he managed it. Fortunately, Yegor was there-he had come home for lunch. There was no need for long, wordy explanations to Yegor's wife about his daughter being ill ... and all the rest.
"Yegor!" Fyodor shouted into the receiver. "I'll put you on the plane on Sunday and you'll fly back. Everything will be fine! If you want I can write to your boss afterwards!.."
"No need!" Yegor shouted back down the line. "That's not the problem! We're all set to go off to the dacha..."
"Look, Yegor, for goodness' sake, put off the dacha! Please! This is the moment of crisis, don't you see? She burst into tears just now..."
"I'd be happy to, myself... Can you hear me?"
"Yes, yes."
"I'd be happy to, but..." Yegor stopped speaking, as though he were embarrassed about something.
"Yegor! Yegor!" shouted Fyodor.
"Wait," answered Yegor, "my wife and I are just discussing it..."
"A-ah!" thought Fyodor. "His wife's put her spoke in."
"Yegor! Yegor!" he called again. "Give the phone to your wife, I'll have a word with her."
"Hello, Fyodor Kuzmich!" The distant voice was polite. "Did I hear your daughter is ill?"
"She is, Valentina..." Fyodor had suddenly forgotten what her patronymic was. He knew it, but he had forgotten. And he changed his tone in mid-sentence.
"Valya, please let your husband come, just for two days! Only two days! I'd find some way to thank you, Valya, I..." In his agitation Fyodor could not immediately think what to promise. "I'll help you out some time too'"
"There's no need, I don't mind... We were just about to go to the dacha. You know, it was neglected all winter, and we wanted to..."
"Valya, love, please! It would take a long time to explain now, but it's really important. Really important. Valya!.."
"Yes, Fyodor. It's me," answered Yegor. "Alright. Do you hear me? Alright, I say, I'll fly out today."
"Oh, Yegor..." Fyodor said nothing for a minute. "Thank you. I'll be waiting."
When Yegor put down the receiver, he had the following conversation with his wife.
"My God!" said his wife Valya. "Just drop everything and go flying off to tell some little girl fairy-stories..."
"The child is ill..."
"Children are always ill' No child ever grew up without being ill."
Yegor himself found the idea a bit crazy-to fly almost fifteen hundred kilometres ... to tell fairy stories. But he remembered how pitiful his brother's voice had sounded, he could hear the tears in his voice-no, he obviously had to go. Perhaps more for Fyodor's sake than for the girl's.
"The first trip we were going to make," nagged his wife. "The Bolshakovs have already been out, and they say their roof has been leaking. And our roof is worse than theirs..."
"Then why didn't you tell him that?" fumed Yegor. "Why didn't you tell him7 After I've already promised him, you start getting uppity."
"Alright, no need to shout, don't be so soft' What about me, don't I have any right to voice my own opinion?"
"But why didn't you tell it to him? You should have told him. And all you did was express your sympathies:
'I hear your daughter is ill?' " Yegor was not a malicious man, but he could mimic anyone so well that they were hurt and offended by his skill. That was how Yegor defended himself in life. That was probably why he was such a brilliant story-teller-he mimicked all the animals, the good ones and the bad ones, and he did a particularly funny imitation of the witch Baba-Yaga.
"Go, then. Go'" His wife gestured impatiently. "Go and humour them, if you've nothing better to do. Run at their beck and call!.."
"They've helped you in their time!" Yegor looked at his wife reproachfully. "Have you forgotten that?"
His wife Valya went into the other room, slamming the door behind her. No, she hadn't forgotten! Fyodor Kuzmich had got her daughter a place in college. How could you forget that? But she was very upset, and she couldn't help showing it.
Yegor was upset too. Somehow, a long time ago, things between his wife and himself had been imperceptibly arranged so that his wife's interests were the most important in the house. Yegor had resigned himself to this, because he did not know how to get hold of things they wanted, or arrange the travel-warrants for a holiday, or talk things out with the teachers in school... he only knew how to work. But what of that? Horses know how to work. Work is not much use on its own, Yegor had also realised that a long time ago and so he had resigned himself to things. Sometimes, it is true, he would rebel, but only weakly and indecisively: he would suddenly seethe with anger and his eyes would flash, and he would swear roundly to himself, and that was all. It was really better not to rebel or protest at all; protests only inflame the lust for power in strong characters.
Yegor lingered angrily in the room for a little while longer, took forty roubles from the sideboard and went out. "At least I don't have to take a suitcase... Should I pick up some gifts? But then, since it's all such a big rush what's the point of any gifts. As long as I go myself," thought Yegor. He suddenly felt very sorry for little Vera. At first, in all the haste, he hadn't realised just how necessary this trip was, how important it was, but now that he had set off, he understood it all: it was stupid of him even to have hesitated. But what if... But Yegor drove the thought out of his mind before he even finished it. He rang the shop foreman from a public phone (Yegor was a first-class cabinet-maker, and he was highly thought of at work), and the foreman let him go without a moment's hesitation: he knew that Yegor would catch up on the two working days, and to spare.
At the airport ticket office they told Yegor that there were no tickets to N.
"Maybe you can give me one somehow..." he asked timidly.
"What does that mean, 'give you one somehow'? There are no tickets left," the stern voice at the little window repeated.
Yegor stood there for a while, then looked at the woman behind the glass... And he stooped down to talk to her again:
"I really need a ticket, miss... Come on, please. It's ... there's a child..."
"Citizen, I've already told you, there are no tickets left. Can't you understand simple Russian. Give him one somehow..."
"I understand, I understand..." Yegor felt the urge to mimic the woman at the window, he could easily have done it... "Ah'" he suddenly remembered. "That man I did the shelving for ... he said, if ever you need anything, come to me." Fortunately Yegor had written down the powerful comrade's telephone number. He looked in his note-book, and there it was!
He spent a long time going into tedious detail about his little niece, and his brother, and the fairy-stories...
"Where do you need a ticket for?" asked the powerful comrade, his patience exhausted.
"To N."
"You should have said so straightaway. Today? One ticket?"
"One. For today. I'm already here ... do you understand? I'm here at the airport, and they say there are no tickets. And I can't see how there can't be at least one ticket. I don't see how that could possibly..."
"Ring back in about ten minutes," the confident bass interrupted him once again.
Yegor realised that he would be on today's flight.
He walked around the airport for a while, until about fifteen minutes had passed, and then phoned.
"Go and pick up your ticket at desk number three," said the bass.
"Thank you very much!" Yegor blurted out gratefully. "I was beginning to get worried... My brother was almost in tears. This is his second marriage, you know, the child is his last one, that's why he's taking it so hard. I love the little girl too, she's such a clever thing, she always wants to be told stories..."
"Well, goodbye," said the voice at the other end of the line. "Safe journey."
"Goodbye," said Yegor.
Desk number three was not the one he had tried. If it had been that one, Yegor would have said to that woman at the window ... he would have said: "So you managed to find a ticket after all? Well done... Now how does that happen, my dear lady? You sit there looking so stern and just. 'I told you, there are no tickets left!' And it just takes one phone call to discover that there is a ticket left. That's the way you should tell people. 'There are no tickets- for you!' And the expression on your face, as if butter wouldn't melt in your mouth! When you're just a nobody with a peaked cap." Well, perhaps he wouldn't have been that sarcastic. Perhaps he wouldn't have said anything at all: she really was a nobody, so what was the point of saying anything?
...Yegor arrived in N before dawn, at about five o'clock. And at six he was already at his brother's house.
He rang the bell... The door was opened by his brother's wife, Nadezhda Semyonovna.
"O-oh!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "Why are you here so early?"
"I had a bit of luck with the ticket," Yegor said happily. "I got straight on to the flight... How's little Vera?"
"Better. She's still asleep. Please don't make any noise."
"Of course!" Yegor exclaimed in a soft voice. "Is Fyodor in?"
"Yes, he is."
"Well, let's sit in the kitchen for a while... He'll find us there."
Fyodor came into the kitchen in his dressing-gown and slippers. Yegor was amused, he looked so sleepy, large and clumsy in his dressing-gown.
"You look just like the priest in it," he greeted him.
His brother Fyodor twisted his lips into a wry smile.
"How was the flight?"
"Fine!"
"And what about your wife? Did she mind, then?"
"Well, we were going to go to the dacha... But never mind her'"
"What's this, does she wear the trousers in your house?"
"We-ell... There's no point in talking about that. How's Vera?"
"The crisis has passed. She'll recover. I was really afraid there for a minute..."
"I realised that."
"What will you have? Tea? Coffee? Or maybe something to warm you after the journey?" Fyodor began to poke about in the cupboards, still in his funny outfit. "We'll find something or other... There, cognac! Will you have some?"
"Okay." Yegor observed his elder brother with interest. Fyodor had been at Yegor's place a couple of times, not exactly visiting, just in passing: he had impressed everyone with his business-like attitude, the will-power and energy that burst out of him. "Yes," they had thought in the provinces, "here's a bird that could give you a nasty peck."
"Okay, brother, pour away. You look kind of funny." Yegor could not help saying it. "A normal human being ... no big wheel after all."
"What?" said Fyodor resentfully. "What's so funny? Have you never seen a dressing-gown before? It's pretty comfortable, you know."
"It's not the dressing-gown... Well, cheers, here's to our meeting. And to Vera's swift recovery."
The brothers drank from small, but somehow solid, heavy little glasses... They said nothing for a while.
"How's life?" Fyodor asked.
"Well..." Yegor reached over to the ash-tray and the sleeve of his jacket knocked over the tall, slim liqueur-glass. Its thin edge gave a sharp squeak as it struck the smooth table-top, and it shattered. "Oh, God!" Yegor exclaimed in fright. And he glanced at his brother, but his brother chuckled, carefully gathered up the glass and its broken rim with his fingers, and threw them into the rubbish basket.
"That fear must be born into people," said Fyodor. "You know, nobody ever scolded Vera for breaking crockery, but she dropped a saucer once and frightened herself to death!.. I dashed over to calm her down, and tell her it was nothing to be frightened about. If she drops her doll it means nothing to her, but a cup or a plate is a different matter... There must be some kind of law here, eh?"
"Probably. It was an expensive glass, damn it," Yegor said regretfully. "Cut glass."
"Forget it!" said Fyodor, bored with the matter. "Cut glass... It's still just a thing, and it's there to be used. Its time had come, that's all there is to it."
The brothers were perhaps vaguely aware that they really had nothing to talk about. The last trip had been different: Yegor's daughter, Nina, had been taking her college entrance exams, and she had immediately begun to do badly, so that Fyodor had to intervene... All their conversations had circled around examinations and the college. Yegor was living at Fyodor's house, and he was very worried about his daughter, but he had not interfered with many suggestions of his own, he had unloaded all his hopes on to his brother and simply waited fearfully for the end of these cursed entrance exams. It was then that he had made friends with little Vera and invented all sorts of stories for her in the evenings. Everything had somehow been simpler then.
"How's Nina?" asked Fyodor, also remembering Yegor's daughter; perhaps he was also thinking that when Nina was trying for a place in the college, they had been rushed off their feet, but then conversations had just happened of their own accord, there had been no need to think about what to say.
"She's working in a library. I tell her she should take a rest and go off swimming or something, there'll be plenty of time for work! But she won't have it, she'd much rather be working. Says it will be practical experience."
"Let her work then. it's good for her. There'll be plenty of time for swimming too. First of all she has to take the major target and graduate."
"But it's tiring to study all the time! It must be, surely!"
"Studying's nothing to be afraid of!" said Fyodor in a forceful, didactic tone. "What kind of nonsense is that, to be afraid of studying. As if our people weren't in bad enough need of study. I still remember what Granny Fyokla used to say: 'Fedya, don't read all of the book, you'll go balmy!' There's insight for you! And why is it like that? Where the devil do we get this panic and fear of books? Book learning is exactly what we're short of... And then they tell you: don't read it all, or you'll go crazy."
"Well, there have been cases..."
"What, from books?"
"From books! The Gilevs' lad, now, Vitka, he overdid his reading. Went quietly crazy."
"What makes you think the books caused it?"
"He read day and night..."
"What of it?"
"What do you mean? He overdid it."
Fyodor snorted in annoyance, but before he spoke he took out another liqueur-glass and splashed brandy into it. And he splashed some into his own glass too.
"Cheers. So you think reading drives you crazy... Have you read many books in your life?"
"You can't take me as an example."
"Then who should I take? Take me now: I've read a mountain of books, I'm still alive and well, and I feel I still haven't read enough, I should read three times as much."
"Why should you read any more?" Yegor was astonished. "What else do you need? You've got plenty of everything!.."
"I'm short of knowledge!" Fyodor said angrily. "That's what. The younger generation's putting us under pressure. And they really put it on! We can hold out for just so long, and then-move over, please, it's time to give someone else a turn. You can't argue with life, brother."
"I don't know..." said Yegor. "No one's putting me under any pressure."
"Of course not! Your job, don't be offended, please, but anyone could do your job. Well, not anyone, but every second person. There are more difficult things..."
"Then you should give someone else a turn," said Yegor, also growing angry for some reason, probably at the insult to his profession. "There's too many blockheads at the top who can do nothing but sit there and yell."
"Not so fast," Fyodor drawled in a trembling voice.
"You're too smart, the lot of you! There are other factors involved, like-experience. Intellectual seniority. They see the dachas! They see the cars! But they don't see the way we toss and turn at night from... You went swimming on
Saturday, and I have to sit in my office, waiting for a call: he might ring, or he might not. And if he rings, what will he say? It's the easiest thing in the world to count the money in someone else's pocket. It's not so easy to earn it..."
"I'm not counting your money. What do you mean?"
"I'm not talking about you. But there are some people who do. Never invented as much as a chamber-pot, but full of comments and complaints. When you're dry behind the ears, then I'll listen to your complaints. Whipper-snappers. Do they think someone handed me all this on a plate?" Fyodor shook his head vaguely, it was not clear whether he meant the large, richly-appointed flat, or was pointing further afield, to the dacha and the car in its garage, or whether he was just indicating the wardrobe in which hung his black suit with all his decorations. "I can look God himself straight in the face and say it was all earned by hard work. So there. I've never been afraid of work myself, and I won't let anyone else..." Fyodor Maximov closed his huge fist around the liqueur-glass, and it was completely hidden from sight. No, Fyodor Kuzmich was still strong, he was in no hurry to move over and let someone else take his place. "If you go stirring things up, you have to see them through to the end." Fyodor was probably just slightly drunk and was taking advantage of his brother's presence to speak his mind on a sore point-his brother should understand. "You get so wound up during the day, do so much yelling, as you call it, -unfortunately you can't get anything done without it-and at night you lie there thinking, 'Devil take the bloody lot of them! It's my country that I have to answer to: is my life what it should be or not?' "
"Who says your life's not what it should be?" Yegor sympathised. "Quite the opposite. I'm always glad for you, I always think, 'Well done, Fyodor, at least one of the family has really made something of himself.' "
"It's not a question of 'making something of yourself. I'm not so very important... I simply do my job, and I try to do it well. But no!.." Fyodor struck the table with the edge of his palm without even realising that he was making a noise. "There are always some people who won't leave anyone in peace... They'll hint that someone from a peasant background is not intellectually competent to grasp the broad vista of our country's development, that a peasant will always think in terms of his own allotment and his ploughland... That's the way they think, Yegor!" Fyodor looked at his brother, attempting to convey with his gaze all the bitter stupidity of such reasoning. "That's the sort of thing I have to defend myself against. And who built up the country to last throughout the ages, if not the peasant?"
"Are you in trouble, or something?" Yegor asked.
"Trouble..." Fyodor appeared to be listening closely to the word itself. He spoke it once again, in a thoughtful voice: "Trouble." And suddenly he asked himself, "Was there ever a time without trouble?" And he hastily answered his own question. "Of course there were good times. No, never mind. I'm just ... tired these last few days, my nerves are at breaking-point. Of course I'm in trouble, that's all part of being alive. But never mind! Everything's fine."
And Yegor felt sorry, very sorry for his brother! His face and his manner were like their father's. He had been a constant grafter, and he had tried to keep his spirits up in the same way when things were bad. Yegor remembered how in the hunger of 1933, their father had somehow managed to get hold of three handfuls of unthreshed wheat, and loudly announced to the family: "Now we're doing fine, lads!" Their mother had boiled up grain, but he refused to eat, in the same cheerful, jolly voice: "You eat, I already stuffed myself on the way with raw grain! My belly's swelling up." He wanted the young boys to get as much as possible. Just like Fyodor now ... swaggering and joking, but he was unhappy about something, it was clear. But what way was there to comfort him-he could see everything, for himself, a big man like him...
"Yes," said Yegor. "Alright then. Never mind, brother, never mind. Take a deep breath."
"What was this story that you told her?" Fyodor asked. "About the bunny who went for a balloon ride."
Yegor tried to think. It took him a long time to remember... You could see on the large features of his kindly face how hard he was trying to remember. And when he did remember, his face lit up.
"About the bunny! Yes, it's like this: once a bunny went to the bazaar with his father. And there he saw balloons-lots and lots of them. All different colours-red, blue, green..." Yegor glanced happily at his brother, and told the story as though he was telling it to little Vera herself, without reducing the mystery and the mischief, embellishing the story and postponing the conclusion in every possible fashion. "So. And the bunny started to pester his father: buy me some, buy me some. And his father bought some. He bought some and went on holding them himself. And then he saw that they were selling carrots! 'Here,' he said, 'hold the balloons, and I'll get in the queue." So the little bunny took them... And would you believe it- just at that moment there was a puff of wind, and our little bunny was lifted off the ground. And carried off, far away! He flew way up above the clouds..."
Fyodor listened intently to the story, even sniffing forgetfully a couple of times.
"What do we do now?" Yegor asked his brother. Fyodor did not understand.
"What do you mean, what do we do?"
"How shall we save the bunny?"
"Well, you save him somehow," chuckled Fyodor. "In a helicopter, maybe."
"We can't use a helicopter, the wind from the propellers would scatter the balloons all over the place..."
"How, then?"
"Well, so everyone is looking up and thinking how to do it. And the little bunny is shouting as he hangs up there, waving his legs about. His father is going crazy... And suddenly along comes a little girl, little Vera, let's say, and she shouts out, 'I know how!' When my Nina was small she would say that, 'I know how'. So little Vera shouts out 'I know how!' And off she runs into the forest and calls together all the birds-she knows a magic word for that, she only has to say it, and all the animals and the birds do what she tells them-so she calls together the birds and she tells them: 'Fly to the bunny and peck his balloons one by one. Not all at once, or else he'll fall. Prick one balloon at a time, and the bunny will start to come down.' So, that was how the little bunny was saved from disaster."
Fyodor shook his head, chuckled and reached for his cigarettes. And in order not to smash another expensive liqueur-glass, he gathered up the wide sleeve of his dressing- gown with his other hand.
"That's a fairly ... contemporary fairy-tale. I thought you'd have some magicians in there, and the old grey wolf..."
"No, I deliberately tell them stories like that, so they get used to life more quickly. Let them learn as much as they can. But all those wizards and queens... Life isn't really like that nowadays. The wizards we have nowadays..."
"Yes, real wizards, they are... Real wicked dragons!" laughed Fyodor.
"Not to mention the witch Baba-Yaga: there's one in every house. We won't wake yours up, will we? We're talking loud..."
"My witch?" Fyodor chuckled again. "Never mind that. I don't even have a witch, Yegor," he said, lowering his voice, "just an empty-headed tailor's dummy. But that's what I deserve, grey-haired old fool that I am! You know..."
Fyodor was about to let slip some secret of his own, but he gestured hopelessly and said nothing. "What's the point of talking about it?"
Yegor was struck once again by how different this Fyodor was from the forceful, pushy man he was in public and on his construction sites...
"There's something bothering you, though, brother," said Yegor. "Tell me about it ... maybe I'll be able to say something to help."
"It's nothing," said Fyodor, embarrassed. And to cover his embarrassment, he reached out again for the cigarettes. "I'm a bit off form today... I've loosened up a bit with you. Everything's okay, Yegor. Everything's fine."
He was silent for a moment, gazing at the table, then he shook his grey head, looked at his brother with a tired smile, and repeated: "Everything's fine. It's good that you came... Really. You know, I began to dream about our father a lot. Either we're mowing with him, or we're at the mill... I must be getting old. I'm certainly not getting any younger. I dream about horses a lot too... I used to love horses."
"We're both getting old," agreed Yegor.
"Let's drink ... to the bright memory of our parents." Fyodor filled two liqueur-glasses with cognac. "We're coming to the end of our own road now... Eh?" As though struck by the thought, so simple and so clear, Fyodor went on sitting there for some time with the liqueur-glass in his hand, at first looking at his brother, then back at the table, looking intently at the table, almost as though he was angry with it. He roused himself, swung his glass in invitation to his brother, and drank. "Yes," he said, "you've got me all stirred up... But I don't understand just how. Probably I'm just very tired after these last few days. I used to think no trouble would ever get me down and then... Well, never mind. I don't really care much about anything!" He shook himself and his eyes gleamed as they gazed out from under his beetling brows. "What I do care about is my little daughter. But ... we'll tighten our belts and carry on. Right?" he asked his brother, as though he was asking a lot of other people during the day, at work on his building sites, he asked him without expecting any answer, because everything was quite clear. "Right, Yegor, right. Lie down and get a couple of hours' sleep, and then our little Vera will wake up. And I'll stay here and do a bit of paper-work... Do a best of thinking. Oh yes," he suddenly remembered, "will you tell me what I should buy for your wife? Some little present..."
"Forget it!" Yegor exclaimed angrily.
"Why? I'll get a phone call soon from a ... from a wizard ..." Fyodor laughed sincerely, heartily. "A real wizard if ever there was one! A wizards' wizard, he has absolutely everything... What should I get, tell me."
"Forget it, I tell you!" Yegor repeated angrily. "What sort of nonsense is that, presents and such things! What for?"
Fyodor smiled as he looked at his brother, and nodded in agreement.
"Okay. Go and get some sleep. Your bed's all ready... Goon."
Yegor quietly stole into one of the other rooms, got undressed and sat on the edge of the divan bed that was spread with fresh sheets... He sat for a while. He glanced around... He looked at the window-the small frame was open. He took his cigarettes out of his pocket and lit one. He smoked, shaking the ash into the palm of his hand. He did not feel like sleeping.
Fyodor came into the room.
"Listen," he said, "I'm really worried I might have upset you there, with all that nonsense... God knows what you might think. Eh?" Fyodor smiled. He sat down beside Yegor on the divan, and he even gave his brother a jolly slap on the back. "I'm really fine. Everything's okay, I tell you! Why are you looking at me like that?"
"What? It's nothing... There's nothing on my mind. What do you mean?"
"You're looking at me ... almost as though you were sorry for me."
"Come on, lad!" exclaimed Yegor. "What are you talking about?"
"Alright, then. Sleep a little bit, you probably didn't sleep in the plane, did you? Sleep."
"Okay," said Yegor. "I'll get some sleep. I'll go to bed when I've had a smoke."
"Hmm." Fyodor left him.
Yegor gently shook the ash into his palm, propped his elbows back on his knees, and began thinking again. He did not feel like sleeping.
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