Mutiny of the Little Sweeties

The Museum of Medieval Castles was in three large rooms, where all sorts of cages and racks were set up and loudspeakers croaked in the corners. An obvious lunatic in an executioner’s apron was roaming around the museum selling magnets. Alex began to beg him for a free magnet. The lunatic felt sorry for the magnets and hid behind a rack.

Papa feared that Rita would be scared of all these axes and cages but she was not; however, Alena refused even to cross the threshold. Papa went out with her, taking Rita along. A minute later, Kate, Vicky, and Costa ran out to them, pursued by the executioner shouting, “They broke my nose!”

It turned out, however, that the nose was not the executioner’s, but Alex had ripped it off a plaster head in a basket under the guillotine. Alex maintained that the nose had broken off by itself. To calm the executioner, Papa bought a magnet from him.

Peter was the last to come out of the museum with his hands in his pockets.

“What do you think?” Vicky asked.

“Okay! We looked for four minutes and thirty seconds. Saved 200 roubles + 100 roubles x 4. Not a bad result!” Peter stated and led everyone to the Wax Museum.

Here they stayed for almost half an hour, although the Museum occupied all of one hall. Along the way, it turned out that Peter the Great was tall, Catherine II was a very plump and short lady, and Nestor Makhno[17] was generally a dwarf, slightly larger than his Mauser.[18] While Alex tried to find out whether he could touch the pistol in Georges d’Anthès’[19] hand and if it was loaded, Peter studied the moustache of Taras Shevchenko.[20] This moustache had produced a great, simply indelible impression on him. It was so long in all places that, hanging from the upper lip, it covered the poet’s whole mouth and half of his chin. Papa and Peter argued for a long time about how the great Ukrainian poet ate and concluded that Shevchenko either did not eat at all or drank milk from a straw passing through his moustache.

The girls liked most of all the curator, Lena, who was sleeping on a chair on the second floor, her head resting on the back, and who also turned out to be a wax figure. Rita for a long time did not believe that the curator was inanimate. She touched her leg and bounced back with a slight, excited squeal. Then, after making sure that she really was inanimate, Rita promptly grabbed the stocking of the real curator and sat down on the floor, when the curator asked, displeased, “What do you want, girl? Whose child are you?”

The Regional Museum occupied an entire building. In front of it, part of an excavation with large clay amphorae and millstones was enclosed in a glass triangle. Scythian women and warriors from burial monuments were standing along the sides of the triangle. Costa immediately got onto an old naval cannon, where, besides him, three kids of varying degrees of smallness were also hanging around and throwing coins into the barrel of the cannon. It was supposed to bring happiness. Costa had no coins and he began to ask Papa.

“It’s superstition! It won’t bring happiness!” Papa said. “Look over there, the guy is standing with a cut bottle on a stick, and when people look at him, he turns away. What do you think he’s doing here?”

However, Costa still wanted to throw coins. He agreed to hang onto the cannon for this, helping himself with his left hand. Papa found only five iron roubles.

“Let me handle this!” Kate volunteered. She unnoticeably dropped the five roubles into her pocket and gave Costa one rouble. While Costa did not understand the difference, he noticed that the coin was less than what Papa had given her and began to stand up for his rights.

“Money should be saved, not tossed into a cannon! That’s it, move!” Kate said sternly, and Costa had to content himself with one rouble.

The museum turned out to be bigger inside than expected from the outside. There was even a café selling wrapped cheese sandwiches. Rita immediately wanted these sandwiches, although she had already eaten three times at home.

“I’ll make them for you in the evening! Here they’re the price of a helicopter!” Kate declared and covered Rita’s eyes.

There were many rooms on the perimeter. Each had two cameras. Alex was running around. He did not want to fall onto any one camera and show up anywhere. For this, he squatted, ran squatting, pressed against the wall, and when the curator came into the hall, made such a stony face that Vicky almost cried from laughing.