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:
“There are a hundred specks of dust here! And piles of mud! No need to ride through puddles!”
“Examine, please! A clear differentiation of dirt and dust! And also the original condition of the yard!” Uncle Blahblah demanded, scowling. When Uncle Blahblah was angry, he never shouted, but stooped a little somehow, pressed his chin to his chest, and began his “Blahblah”.
Meddling Aunt swung the hammer in her hand. Mama was afraid that she would now attack Uncle Blahblah with it. However, Aunt Sveta waved her free hand instead and said, “We’ll return to this conversation!”
Uncle Blahblah realized that he had won. “Valentin!” he said with the voice of a victor.
“Svetlana!” Meddling Aunt muttered.
Mama had washed the kitchen floor and it was not possible to enter the house, so Aunt Sveta and Uncle Blahblah set off to the playground of the nearest school. Rita, Costa, Alex, and Alena tagged along behind them. Alena went on rollerblades because the playground had good asphalt.
Going for a walk with Aunt Sveta and Uncle Blahblah was not easy, as they worried very much because of their inability to adjust. They demanded that the children held their hands, did not pick up cones, did not climb over a fence, and generally behaved like little lords. Uncle Blahblah confiscated Alex’s store of chemicals: crushed calcium gluconate tablets, detergent powder stained by a marker dissolved in cologne, matches, glass, syringes without needles, and a vitamin bottle filled with dead bugs. The only thing he did not take was a large magnifier, and he was utterly amazed when Alex, using this magnifier and the sun, soon caused a lighter found in the bushes to go bang.
Rollerblading, Alena turned around and saw Aunt Sveta arguing about something with Uncle Blahblah. From her direction, their dialogue – Alena could not hear the words – went as follows:
Uncle Blahblah twisted a button on Meddling Aunt’s jacket and quietly rattled, “Blahblah-blahblah-blahblahblah!”
“Bratatat-ratatat!” Aunt Sveta exploded with the sound of fireworks on New Year’s Eve.
“Blahblahblahblahblah-blah-blah-blah-blah!”
“Pew-pow!”
“Blahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblah!”
“Pew!”
“Blahblahblahbblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahblahbblahblah!”
“Whaam!”
As each “blahblah” became longer, the responding explosion got shorter, and Alena concluded that Uncle Blahblah was gaining the upper hand. Costa, Alex, and Rita were standing beside them and, with mouths open, watching whether the lion or the rhino would win.
Having gone around another circle, Alena stopped and sat down on the curb to adjust the insole bunched up inside the boot. She, by chance, turned out to be beside Uncle Blahblah, who was saying severely to Meddling Aunt, “Women are evil. They throw everything about! I got married the first time because of an extension cord!”
“How because of an extension cord?” Aunt could not believe it.
“Simple. One girl studying Roman law asked me for an extension cord. I gave it to her like an honest and noble person. Then I needed it. I reminded her three times. She still forgot. Then I went to her place to pick it up. She was a terrible mess. I began to clean up. While I was cleaning up, she managed to break her pinkie. I took her to emergency, someone sneezed on her on the bus, and she got sick with the flu. And so on endlessly! I only managed to escape eight years later.”
“And the extension cord?”
Uncle Blahblah waved his hand, indicating that he never got back his extension cord. He was very angry with women.
After the walk with the children, Aunt Sveta and Uncle Blahblah returned home with them.
“Somehow they’re suspiciously clean. Did you sit in a café perhaps?” Papa wondered.
“No! We walked in circles, hands behind our backs!” Alex said.
Papa looked interrogatively at Uncle Blahblah, who awkwardly cleared his throat. Meddling Aunt went to answer her mail, because while she was gone for a walk, eight letters came to her, four of which were important.
“Interesting woman! Formulated her thoughts very clearly. And she has a lot of different ideas,” Uncle Blahblah praised.
“An off-the-scale number of ideas,” Papa agreed, but it seemed Uncle Blahblah did not catch the irony because he nodded very seriously.
However, Meddling Aunt did not like Uncle Blahblah. She said that this Valentin was a smug character and she hated smug characters.
In the evening, the older children did their homework, but the younger ones interfered with them, so Papa took Rita, Costa, and Alex for a stroll to the sea. All the way, Costa and Alex were teasing Rita, telling her that she had ugly sandals. Rita did not have on any sandals but light boots; however, Costa and Alex found that when they told Rita she had ugly sandals, she got angry and chased them. Most of all they were amused that Rita was teased the same way countless times and could not figure out that they teased her precisely because she could be teased.
In the end, Papa gave Costa and Alex a stern dressing down and sat Rita on his shoulders so that she would not listen to “all sorts of nonsense.” Walking, they turned up at the house where Uncle Blahblah was living. Rita recognized the house and began to point a finger at it, shouting and informing Papa at great pains that see, it is that same house! Hearing her voice, Uncle Blahblah appeared in a second-floor window and invited Rita in, promising that he would keep an eye on her.
Rita, of course, immediately agreed, because Uncle Blahblah had a small loaf in his hands and Rita had not eaten for an hour now and had lost a lot of energy during the teasing. Papa lowered Rita from his shoulders and she ran to the staircase and began to climb the stairs.
On the first floor, the old woman of the lower floor was standing by her apartment. On seeing a little girl climbing the high steps alone, the old woman held out her index finger and began to help Rita. She and Rita climbed to the second floor together. The door there was open, and Uncle Blahblah and the old woman of the top floor were standing at the threshold.
The old woman from below did not expect that the little girl, so plump and seemly in looks, would turn out to be from the enemy camp. She became uncomfortable, blushed, and tried to escape, but Rita did not let go of her finger and pulled her into the apartment. The old woman from below froze, but Rita, digging both her heels in, pulled like a tractor. The old woman from below hesitated to pull out her finger, and the old woman from above did not dare to chase the old woman from below but invited her to tea.
The old woman from below was thinking that now she would be having someone else’s tea, and later they would say that she was a freeloader and did not have her own tea. She ran to her home and brought a wicker basket of pastries. The woman from above in the meantime set out a lot of pâtés, smoked chicken legs, and other goodies.
Initially, both old women were unsociable and looked at each other like Mafiosi from warring clans, but between them sat Rita and Uncle Valentin, not stopping his “blahblahblahblah” for one second.
Little by little, the old women calmed down and, having stopped exchanging caustic remarks, took it upon themselves to feed Rita. Rita took a cheese Danish in one hand and a sandwich with pâté in the other and nibbled on them in turn, but never drank any tea, because what is the point of drinking tea while eating pâté and a cheese Danish?
At the end of the meal, the old women had made up so well that Uncle Blahblah persuaded them to withdraw their claims. The old women agreed. After all, they had been acquainted for more than forty years and living in the same building all this time.
“And the ceiling?” the old woman from below remembered.