Mutiny of the Little Sweeties

Mama was sitting at the table and, while listening to the conversation, loading the fretsaw with a new blade. She had just finished a wooden lampshade, but something did not join and needed a fretsaw. “Somehow you’ve been talking regularly about children! And you have become softer and lazier in general. We haven’t moved cabinet at night for a long time now. Even somewhat unusual, you know!” she said.

Aunt Sveta blushed. True, she had changed. Recently, Vicky, doing math till late at night, went downstairs and saw Aunt Sveta on her knees crying in a corner of the kitchen, and Mama stroking her arms and hair and talking, saying something. Vicky froze in surprise with her mouth open and forgot why she went down.

However, Meddling Aunt was not inclined to cry now. She was in a business state of mind. “Nonsense, Annie! By the way, you need to change the boiler! When it flares up, the flame reaches the middle of the kitchen in the first second! I burned my eyebrows!”

“So, don’t put your face there! Light it with a match in an outstretched hand,” Papa said.

“Stuff and nonsense! I’ll ask what kind of boiler it is that I can’t put my face to it!” Aunt snorted.

Rita’s puppy responded to her from under the chair. The puppy still did not know that he was Rita’s and, bugging everyone without exception, snapped at everyone’s socks or stockings with its teeth, sharp as nails.

Someone knocked on the glass with a stick pushed through the dog rose. It was Uncle Blahblah. Peter opened it. Uncle Blahblah was in flip-flops and a t-shirt, but, for some reason, with a bowtie on his neck.

“Where’s Svetlana? We agreed to go to the oriental café! They say that they make dumplings there the size of a thumbnail!” he asked Peter.

Peter could not believe his ears, because he considered Uncle Blahblah a skinflint, talented for going to a café only at the expense of others, disguising it as a business dinner with a client.

“Coming!” Aunt Svetlana shouted through the window.

“Yes-yes! I’ll wait!” Uncle Blahblah replied tenderly.

The poet in him awoke. The poet began to smell the flowers and was moved by the sky. Then he saw a seagull and melted. “Ah! A wonderful white bird! Beautiful wings! The seagull is a symbol of freedom, Chekhov, and the Art Theatre![28] By the way, what’s she doing there?”

“Going through garbage bags. Someone threw out rotten fish!” Peter said.

“Ah-h-h! How sweet!” Uncle Blahblah was carried away, waved his arms in delight, and the poet in him jumped up to the roof.

Someone honked from the street.

“Oh, the taxi!” Uncle Blahblah said.

“You came in a taxi?”

“Are you proposing that I transport a woman on the back of a bike? I’m forty years old! I’m a member of the Literary fund.[29] And an honourable lawyer. Why’s he honking? Let’s find out!”

The taxi driver got out of the car and squatted in front of it, examining something and occasionally half-rising to honk once again. On noticing Uncle Blahblah, he began to grumble that the paint was scratched when he forced his way through the bushes on this cursed street. Did they warn him about the bushes? No! He will have to charge extra for this.

The poet instantly fell asleep in Uncle Blahblah and the lawyer woke up. “Fine! Do you have a transport license? What do you mean it’s not with you? Did you turn your document over to another person?”

The taxi driver, having gone quiet, pulled his head into his shoulders, hid in the car, and began to play “Don’t touch me! I’m in the house!”

Aunt Sveta appeared only five minutes later and not alone. In her arms was happy Rita, holding in her hands the biggest of her Aunt’s phones, and behind her, Costa and Alex were walking like two soldiers, pulling Aunt’s tablet away from each other.

“They’re coming with us?” Uncle Blahblah was surprised.

“Of course!” Aunt Sveta confirmed. “The kids haven’t had their walk today and Annie wants to wash her hair!”

“Can’t she wash her hair with the kids around?” Uncle Blahblah said more precisely.

“Please, more details here. Tell me in the smallest details how you see this!” Aunt Sveta asked very politely.

Uncle Blahblah quickly ducked towards the taxi driver in the car, and they both began to play “Don’t touch me! I’m in the house!” Aunt Sveta and the children settled in the car. The taxi driver sullenly drove through the prickly bushes. A strong desire to grumble was written on his face. When this desire almost reached his vocal apparatus, Meddling Aunt exclaimed happily, “Oh! One more! Stop!”

“One more” turned out to be Alena. She was returning from the school grounds with a pair of twins and was laughing loudly. “Ha-ha! Runt! Ha-ha-ha! Squirt!” The boys were puffing angrily, not knowing how to retort.

“Get in with us! Who do you have here?” Aunt Sveta asked, when the taxi driver stopped.

“Shh! I told them that I’m nine years old!” Alena whispered, joining Costa on the seat.

“And are you?”

“Shh! Not in the least! They’re two to three months older than me! Let’s go!”

The taxi driver began winding through the narrow streets of the old Tatar city, on many of which two donkeys with loads could barely pass by each other.