Mutiny of the Little Sweeties

“Is it too much for him to pull up his own pants?”

“They’ll still fall down. He chooses the biggest, to be like Alex!” Kate was exasperated.

“They won’t fall down today! We’ll put suspenders on Costa!” Mama promised.

Papa drove the children to the circus, not forgetting to seat them in a checkerboard pattern so that everyone was peaceful and managed without quarrels on the road. For some reason, it is always this way: the ones adjacent in age quarrel, but the next nearest are friends. The children went to the performance as seriously as if to war. Kate collected all the phones and left them in the car.

“Did you read what’s written on the flyer? No taking videos! If someone takes one, his phone will be taken away! Everyone indeed will do so there!” she said and looked sternly at Alena, the main target of her tutelage.

“I will not!” Alena was indignant.

“Then you’ll lose your phone. You already did!”

“You wrecked two!” Alena squeaked.

“Wrecking is not losing!” Kate cut her off, with a voice showing that any comparison here was off-base. Then she turned her attention to Alex and began to teach him to say that he was five.

“I was seven on my last birthday!” Alex turned obstinate.

“Only blunder that you’re seven! Do you want Papa to pay for a ticket? Do you? Do we have extra money?” Kate attacked him.

“We have money! Here! Here!” Rita started to yell, pointing to Papa’s bag.

“Informer!” Papa said.

The circus tent was pitched in the city park next to a low stone fence. Beside the tent were a few circus vans, two cars with megaphones on top, and a trailer converted to a ticket booth.

A crowd had gathered by the tent, and two muscular gymnasts, temporarily standing in as ticket collectors, let people inside by turns. Papa bought three tickets and, after arming his family with them, moved the children forward. He remained outside, near the tight rope, because if he had gone beyond it, he would not be able to push his way back. He saw how one of the gymnasts, after taking the tickets, looked at them for a long time and then started counting the children, pointing at each with a finger.

Finally, the man squatted down in front of Alex and asked sternly, “Boy! How old are you?”

“Eight!” Alex blurted out in fright.

“How old, how old?”

“Five!” Kate hissed, pulling his hand.

“Ten!” Alex repeated.

“Indeed!” the gymnast said and, totally starting to suspect everyone indiscriminately, turned his gaze to Costa. “And you?”

“Ten, ten, ten!” Costa yelled, not wanting to resign himself that Alex was older.

“He’s four! Can’t you see that he’s just a toddler?” Kate shouted. “Maybe you’ll even say that she’s forty?” she said and pointed to Rita who was eating an apple melancholically.

The gymnast looked attentively at Rita and reckoned that she was not forty, but possibly only thirty-five and a half. “Where are your parents, little girl?” he asked Rita.

Rita quite accurately pointed a finger at Papa, but Peter was also in the same direction, and it turned out that she pointed to Peter. The gymnast looked perplexedly at the young father of six children, who, without taking off his sunglasses, was moving a match around his mouth like a Mafioso, and, desperate to understand something, waved his hand and said, “That’s it! Go, papa! Hold the young ones on your knees! And if there are empty seats, sit them down!”

The children went into the circus. It was rather dark inside the tent, especially for Peter, who stubbornly did not want to take off his glasses.

“Did you see how he was scared of me? Isn’t it cool?” Peter smugly asked.

“Ah-ha. He was shaking the whole time! Only you, for some reason, didn’t even open your mouth,” Kate said.

Soon the orchestra was thundering and clowns were running out into the arena. One was redheaded, but another pretended that he was a random person from the audience. They doused the second one with water about five times, and kicked him as many times, again when he attempted to be indignant.

“I wonder, do they get paid the same?” Peter asked. “They hit and pour water on one all the time, but the other stands there, uninvolved, and only giggles stupidly!”

At that moment, they dumped a cake on the head of the redheaded clown and justice had more or less been served. Then Peter’s thought flowed in another direction. “I bet the cake has expired! It isn’t profitable to buy fresh cake. If only we could see the date on the box!” declared Peter, who found it irrational to dump an un-expired cake on the heads of clowns.

It goes without saying, none of the older children would argue with Peter, and he argued with Alex, Costa, and Rita.

After the clowns, the jugglers came out; after the jugglers, a trainer with five poodles and a Persian cat; and again the clowns. The clowns were busy all the time while something was being prepared or installed backstage or in the arena. The random person from the audience had managed to change his clothes by that time, and they again hit and sprinkled him a little so that he did not feel too happy.