Mutiny of the Little Sweeties

Kate began to sneak up to grab Alex’s ear. But an iron plate clanked under Kate’s foot. Seraphim, Andrew, and Alex suddenly looked up and hurriedly flew up onto the fence.

“No need to build bombs here! Build them at your own place!” Kate yelled and returned home, after deciding to go on the Internet. But it also did not work out. She discovered Vicky in front of the computer, on a social network, and putting dozens of horses on as wallpaper. Then she liked and admired herself.

“Like me, huh? From your account! Please!” she asked Kate.

“I can’t,” Kate muttered.

“Why?”

“Have you forgotten? You’re on my black list! I unfriended and blocked you!” Kate reminded her.

Vicky remembered and was distressed. “But you can add me again, huh? Please!”

“I’ll think about it!” Kate promised and looked into Papa’s study.

There Mama was working on Costa’s left hand, which had already been warmed with ozokerite.[30] Ozokerite is a mineral wax. When simmering, it gurgles and reeks, and then it hardens and is so similar to chocolate that it tempts one to eat it.

Now Mama was forcing Costa to take small objects and drop them in a box. It was not working out. Costa tried to grab the object with his right hand, but Mama firmly held his right hand in her own. Costa got angry and bit the fingers of his left hand. He wanted to finish everything somewhat more quickly. He hated working his left hand. Why the left when it is possible to do everything with the right? Even picking up a heavy chair and dragging it to “cartoons”.

Once, Mama even put a plaster cast on Costa’s right arm up to the elbow, so that he would work with the left. But he managed to work the tips of the right hand even through the plaster. Besides, he quickly figured out that the plaster could hurt in a fight and walked around the house like a king, dispersing his brothers and sisters on the way.

Kate stood and watched as Mama and Costa waged war with small figurines.

“Work! No one will marry you!” someone said instructively behind Kate.

Kate turned around. This was Alena sneaking up and pushing her head into the room. Kate also could not stand Alena yet and, forgetting that she had just chased away Andrew and Seraphim, climbed over the fence to the Mokhovs.

All the Mokhovs were at home. Even Papa Marat Mokhov, something that actually rarely happened. He was usually rushing around the city from morning to night and photographing weddings, school kids, kindergartens, parties, and other such things. Nevertheless, sometimes Papa Mokhov wanted to put his heart into his work, because he was a good photographer after all, not a hack wandering along the beach with a dead monkey. Then he would give up a whole workday, take his camera, and go to the mountains to shoot landscapes.

Now it was one such spell of Papa Mokhov. After returning from work, he kicked the bag with his work Nikon under the sofa with a jaunty, but actually very careful, foot movement and took from the closet a box with an old Japanese lens.

Mama Mokhov, with sixth sense, guessed from the room where her husband was now and what he was doing. She tore herself away from the Internet and asked, “Marat! Are you going to the mountains?”

“Yes!” Papa Mokhov replied, admiring the lens. The lens was the size of a small saucer and mounted on a digital camera via an adapter. Papa Mokhov was very proud of it and claimed that it contained either mercury or caesium or something equally dangerous, and that if it were dropped, it would be very jolly for all. As a minimum, the whole house would have to be decontaminated.

Kate and Alex were standing beside Papa Mokhov and staring as he lovingly wiped the lens. He noticed this and said merrily, “The Japanese, you know, are people of high goals! Now they make everything on a production line. But about forty years ago, if they needed a lens, they would put a dead cat there, for example, or pour potassium cyanide, provided that there would be a good lens! Still, this is very whimsical! That’s what I love about it!”

“Whimsical?” Alex repeated.

“Yes! It doesn’t agree with the electronic brains of modern cameras. And that’s not all! It bluntly rejects nine photographs out of ten, but the tenth one is absolutely brilliant! Simply scoops up life like a washbowl! Any auto-focus, any blurring, it’s not for it at all!”

Uncle Marat stood, gazing thoughtfully at the lens. A thought was slowly ripening in him. “I want to go to the mountains, but no sense in going today. By the time you’ve wait for the bus and gotten there, the lighting will be nothing at all. Right?”

”Yes,” Kate said obediently, understanding that precisely this response was expected of her.

“But I want to shoot something NOW!” Uncle Marat continued to develop his thought. “And here’s what I’ve come up with: I’ll photograph your family with this lens! It’s not a portrait, but it’s also interesting… Do you have at least one general family photo?”