Mutiny of the Little Sweeties
- Автор: Емец Дмитрий Александрович
- Серия: My Big Family #1
- Год: 2016
- Язык: английский
- Переводчик: Jane H. Buckingham
- Жанр: Детские и приключения
Электронная книга - «Mutiny of the Little Sweeties». Краткое содержание книги:
Then Kate remembered that she had left home in the morning on business and, having apologized, jumped down from the fence.
“Where are you going?” Nina asked.
“To the pet store.”
Kate had become good friends with the “mouse girl” and visited her almost every day, helping her clean the cages. Every time she came, the girl gave her a sign so that Kate would stop near the aquariums and Kate did. The girl, on the run, pushed with her thigh an iron shelf, on which were about twenty cages. The shelf moved a few centimetres with the push, and hundreds of mice, rats, jerboas, and parrots started to run, dig, or fly in a panic. Nevertheless, this did not disturb the girl.
“Now you can move! Now he can’t see, the skunk!” the girl said, shaking her fist at someone invisible, and Kate came out of her hiding place.
The “skunk” was the shop owner, who, having grown a paunch, sat at home, but watched the store through a camera installed on the ceiling. When the girl pushed the shelf, the camera was blocked and the most that the owner could see was two or three parrots. The camera had no microphone and you could say anything you wanted. For example, after selling another guinea pig, you wave at the camera, smile, and wish, “May you fall out of a chair!”
“Mouse girl” did this regularly. And Kate also repeated after her at times, but “mouse girl” put a heavy hand on her shoulder and said solemnly, “This isn’t your war, girlfriend!”
Today Kate had not yet gotten out of Vine Street when Andrew and Nina caught up with her. “Nothing to do anyway! Can we join you?”
Kate replied that she had no objection. They walked along the figure-eight street, and Andrew threw dirt at Lad and Tot, which tried to stick with them in order to pinch something in the city. Stool had disappeared somewhere recently, and it was strange. Sometimes its barking and squealing were heard in the evening, but no one could understand from where.
After being hit by clumps of dirt a few times, Lad and Tot lagged behind by the road. They turned and quietly trotted back. There was no resentment at all in their run. On the contrary, they seemed content to finally take the hint.
“Phew!” Kate said with relief. “I was afraid they’d run into the pet store. I’d really get it then.”
“You leave them on the street!” Andrew advised her.
“You’re simply a genius! Where do you think I’d leave them?! But if someone opens the door, they’ll rush in. Do you know what two stupid dogs would do in a pet store?”
They crossed the street and the yards, making their way along the short path to the pet store. Here Andrew scraped his big toe kicking the curb and became dejected. “Everything will be bad!” he repeated, sitting on the edge and swaying. “Animals will die of old age or distemper, I from blood poisoning, and a car will certainly run down Seraphim. Other people will also die. Some earlier, some later.”
Kate wanted to blurt out something with the request to shut the valve and stop turning on the waterworks, but Nina was Nina not without reason. She sat next to Andrew and put her hand on his shoulder. “Andrew, you’re wrong! They’ll discover immortality!” she said seriously.
“Immortality? That’s even worse!” Andrew declared with confidence.
“Why?”
“There won’t be enough food for all. And the old will go around whining that they’re bored.”
Kate wanted to blurt out that not only the old whines, but Nina imperceptibly nudged her with a finger.
“Fine! But if people will grow wiser?”
“No point in them growing wiser. Better let them be kinder. Though, all the same, the sun will go out and explode in seven billion years.”
“Five!” Nina said.
“No! In seven and two-tenths! I checked. And then eight minutes will pass and Earth will perish. I also checked!” Andrew declared tragically.
“But people will fly to another planet!”
“What can they do on another planet? There will be some methane instead of air. Better perish instantly!” Andrew, groaning, got up from the curb, and, often stopping to look at his toe, trudged after them. He quickly fell behind and Kate was able to talk with Nina, whom she liked more and more with every minute.
“Is he always like this?”
“Yes. He wants to find out everything, to the very foundation. He asked Father Alexander at Sunday school why they can’t invent a pill that would let people always be good. So, you swallow the pill and won’t overeat, won’t lie, won’t be jealous, and so on.”
“And?”
“Father Alexander said that there wouldn’t be any human effort then. No one’s own will. No struggle. Then he asked Andrew to help him colour eggs. Andrew liked it very much. He painted somewhere around four hundred eggs. Wooden eggs. You dip them in paint, they dry, and then you draw on them.”
“Ah-h! And your Seraphim believes in God?” Kate asked.
Nina shrugged. “Don’t know. I didn’t ask. But he sometimes lifts his head and becomes lost in thought for about fifteen minutes. Seems to me that he sees something in the air. They’re quite different and they always fight. Mama says that Andrew is rooted on the ground up to his neck, but Seraphim listens without understanding, and flies and doesn’t land at all.”
“And a dragon flies to our Alena! She fills a basin with water for it!” Kate bragged.
“Ah! Of course, where else would you put water?” Nina said without the slightest surprise, as if they were talking about a fly.
They talked more about something insignificant, and then Nina asked, “Are you friends with all your brothers and sisters?”
“Except Peter. He’s very disgusting. He walks around blowing his nose. Sleeps during the day, goes on the Internet at night,” Kate complained.
“He’s not disgusting. We met recently. He’s okay.” Nina said.
“At your place, everyone’s good! He’s a pain!”
“There aren’t harmful people! I’ve thought about it!” Nina replied seriously. “Every person wants to be loved. Wants attention. The more a person wants to be loved, the more disgustingly he behaves. The more disgustingly he behaves, the more he should be loved. But love properly, so that the habit of disgusting behaviour doesn’t consolidate its grip but rather is shaken off.”
If the habit was shaken off, then Kate was, on the contrary, quite confused. It was too complex for her.
“But if he behaves totally disgustingly? Simply like nausea?” she asked with annoyance.
“Then he should be loved even more, but this doesn’t always turn out. Andrew here recently also brought Seraphim to tears, declared to him that the neighbours’ kebabs were our cat. Seraphim howled and wailed, and we couldn’t calm him down at all. We told him that it wasn’t the cat, that it was a joke, and he still wouldn’t believe us. Everyone had to run to find the cat. It always disappears for three days.”
They reached the pet store. Andrew did not go inside, because he stated that he hated animals. Actually, as Nina explained, he was just shy. The “mouse girl,” who, incidentally, was called Liuba,[14] waved her hands, asking them to wait outside. Kate was sure that now she would again push the shelf and block the camera, but Liuba jumped out of the store, dashed to a van, opened the back door, and pulled out a big, very dirty cage, which could easily fit a child of Rita’s size. Four pigeons sat shivering, huddled up on a perch in the cage.
“Will you take them? Free, of course!” the “mouse girl” offered.
“Where did they come from?”
“Mamaevka. A grandpa is in the hospital. Stroke. We sold all the pigeons, but these are defective.”
“How are they ‘defective’?”
“Well, there’s something not quite right with them. The experts won’t buy them, but they’re still pigeons anyway. Good pigeons. If you take them, I’ll take you in the car, and then you won’t have to carry them.”
14
Liuba is a diminutive of the name Liubov, which, in Russian, means love.