скачать книгу бесплатно
“Time for you to go!” the academician turned to Tanya. “Pass the word that tomorrow after dinner everyone must be in the Hall of Two Elements. Absolutely everybody! Yes, and take the trunk!”
Looking sideways with curiosity at Dentistikha, Tanya said goodbye and left. For a second the thought flickered in her to linger slightly at the doors, but the gold sphinx slipped from the office after her and set up guard. Academician Sardanapal knew how to guard his secrets. “And I don’t greatly want to know anyway!” Tanya muttered and went to her room. “Two months… Two months with Uncle Herman, Pipa, and Aunt Ninel, when the most interesting thing is happening here! I could howl! Indeed better Plague-del-Cake than Uncle Herman!” she grumbled, kicking before her the trunk with ghosts.
She was already approaching the Main Staircase when Slander Slanderych jumped out to meet her. Now the dean was without the little fish, but was smudged with slime up to his eyes. Likely his rendezvous was again unsuccessful. Noticing Tanya, the dean decisively barred her way. His small colorless eyes, bunched up above the bridge of his nose, were glued to the girl’s forehead. As it happened, it seemed to Tanya that everything froze inside her. His terrible imperious glance worked this way. “Where are you going?” Slander bellowed. “Ah well, go back! Can’t go along the Main Staircase!”
“Why not? It was always possible!” Tanya was surprised.
“Not your business why not! I’m closing off this Staircase from this minute! Forever!” Slander Slanderych shouted and, turning away, hurriedly began to cast shield spells. Red and green sparks flew alternately from his ring. When it was necessary to place a defence, the dean of Tibidox always came running willingly to black magic. And the cyclopes were already stomping along the corridor to them. An instant and they were already standing still along both sides to the entrance. “Stand here and let no one through!” Slander ordered them. “And you, Grotter, go! Can’t stand here!”
“For sure this also has to do with the Vanishing Floor… Well, is it really fair that they hide everything from us?” Tanya thought with sadness.
Chapter 2
The Cupid in the Cupboard
In all of Moscow, there was not a family drearier, more troublesome, and more insufferable than the Durnevs. It consisted of Uncle Herman, Aunt Ninel, and their daughter Pipa (short for Penelope). It was even hard to believe that the Durnevs were relatives of the Grotters. True, this relationship was distant: Uncle Herman was the second cousin once removed of the grandmother of Leopold Grotter, Tanya’s father. The Grotters had no other relatives among the moronoids. Specifically for this reason, when Tanya’s parents perished in the struggle with Plague-del-Cake, Sardanapal and Medusa stealthily brought the one-year-old girl to Uncle Herman, placing her in a double bass case on his threshold.
Tanya was now standing with this case made of dragon skin at the doors of the Durnevs’ apartment. Only this time she had the flying double bass in the case, and in her left hand, she was holding the bundle with Black Curtains tied up with a special restraining magic lace. While the lace was whole, Black Curtains would not be in the position to play any of their tricks.
Near Tanya’s foot was the trunk, in which the ghosts were quarrelling in an undertone. Lady was pestering Lieutenant with stories about her sores, of which she had more than were mentioned in the medical encyclopaedia. In any case, during those long hours that Tanya was flying over the ocean, gripping with her knees the varnished sides of the double bass, Lady had time to list only those of her ailments beginning with the letter A.
It somehow reminded Tanya of Uncle Herman with his outrageous hypochondria. Durnev only needed to sneeze casually and would immediately go to consult his doctor. If even a head cold was added to the sneeze, Uncle Herman would lie in bed, cross his arms on his chest, and start to say goodbye verbosely to Aunt Ninel and Pipa.
“Two months! I must live here for a whole two months!” Tanya repeated, looking at the door with melancholy and not deciding to ring the doorbell.
“Quiet! I’ll ring now!” she said to the disagreeing ghosts.
“Holy moly, how terrible! I’ve already fainted!” Lieutenant Rzhevskii, laughing aloud, began to yell.
“What did you say your relatives are called? Uncle Pullman and Aunt Flannel? I’ll show them my tonsils and describe the hepatic colic! I’m sure it’ll be instructive for them!” Unhealed Lady said with enthusiasm.
“Oh yes! Oh yes! Indeed most interesting!” Lieutenant mimicked. “My head simply slips off from interest! Ah, you hold it! Shmak!”
Unhealed Lady squealed loudly. “And you, army wit, put the head back on! Discovered how to waste your energy with your head! Brr, what abomination! It’s blinking at me so disgustingly on his knees!” she shouted angrily. Lieutenant again burst out with the idiotic laughter.
“I warned you! Either you sit quietly or… In short, you forced me!” Tanya adjusted the seal on the trunk and both ghosts in a flash became quiet.
Gathering her courage, Tanya rang the doorbell. “Interesting, how will the Durnevs react to my return? Most likely not very pleased!” she thought.
The sound of the doorbell had not yet died down but the dachshund already began to bark in the apartment. The dachshund was called One-And-A-Half Kilometres. Fat and troublesome, it was a worthy member of the Durnev family. Its favourite occupation was to nip at the heels of guests. If it was chased into the corridor, then from malice One-And-A-Half Kilometres would drool into the boots there.
In half a minute, a door was already thrown open in the depth of the apartment, and thick heels started to thump resonantly on the linoleum. Tanya shivered. Aunt Ninel! Her steps could be recognized out of a thousand. “Why are you barking, my young rat? Come to mommy!” Aunt Ninel started to lisp like a child. Her thick heels finally stopped thumping, and Tanya understood that she was being narrowly examined through the peephole. “Oh, no!” Aunt Ninel howled in an ugly voice. “Oh, no! Herman! Herman! It’s your niece! Not without reason some skeleton was choking me all night tonight!”
Someone else’s footsteps were heard. This time they were quiet and sounded approximately like this: “juk-juk-juk.” Uncle Herman was three times lighter than his spouse. Emaciated, with a green face, he strongly resembled a vampire. And even, it seems, he was related to Count Dracula. However, not along Tanya’s line but along some entirely different one. In any case, Yagge so asserted. Only, in contrast to his relative with big fangs, Uncle Herman was not a magician. And he did not believe in magic at all. Here he would be astonished if he were to find out that Tanya had not been living in the railway station these several months but studying in a real school for magicians. “Yes, it’s her! I said: frost hits, and she’ll drag herself along without a peep!” Tanya heard the venomous voice of Uncle Herman. “Pipa, Pipa, come here! You also take a look!”
Guessing that now a maliciously rejoicing Pipa would look into the peephole, Tanya as a preventive measure stuck out her tongue. It was well known that the Durnev’s daughter could not stand her. During her entire early childhood, Tanya was poisoned by contact with Pipa. How often she insulted Tanya, locked her on the balcony, told tales, and played dirty tricks! During the time that Tanya was in Tibidox, the school of magic, Pipa could hardly have changed for the better.
“Tanya Grotter! Oh no! It’s really too much that she’s here! I so hoped that something had happened to her! That a brick had fallen on her head or they had put her in prison!” Pipa began to yell, turning away from the eyehole.
“Pipa, what are you saying? Never say that. We must pity a poor orphan. She’s not guilty that she has good-for-nothing parents and she herself is useless just like them,” Aunt Ninel said in an affected voice.
“No-o! Mama, papa, don’t open! Let’s barricade it and not let her in! Let her roll back to where she came from!” Pipa began to squeal, hanging onto her mama’s leg.
“Calm down, Pipa! Not possible not to let her in. The journalists find out and they’ll spoil your papa’s career. Better we quietly get rid of her later to the boot camp for children with criminal inclinations,” Aunt Ninel whispered.
“Why later, why not right now?” Pipa yelled. “If you let her in, I’ll leave home! It’s because of her I’m bald! And she also scalded me with tea! Give her a rug and let her spend the night on the stairs! Is that clear?”
However, Aunt Ninel and Uncle Herman decided otherwise. The lock clicked, the door was thrown open, and Tanya found herself face to face with the Durnevs. Aunt Ninel towered in front of everybody like an unapproachable bastion, like a hippopotamus in a house robe and soft slippers. The dachshund was seething in her arms. Uncle Herman was standing slightly to the side, and Pipa was looking out from behind his back. The hair, which Pipa had lost, attempting to flood the magic book with glue, had time to grow slightly and now stuck out like a short prickly hedgehog. But Pipa had four times more pimples. And she was even in pyjamas. “So, it’s night time at the moronoids now! Oh, I saw that it’s night! Why did I not consider it immediately? I roused them!” Tanya recollected suddenly.
However, in this case the circumstance played into her hands. “Do you know what time it is? Almost three o’clock!” Aunt Ninel said grumpily. “Already late tonight, I’ll have a talk with you tomorrow!”
Thus far, Uncle Herman had kept silent; however, his small eyes maliciously drilled into the unknown leather trunk and the bundle with Black Curtains. Tanya surmised that now without fail Durnev would be interested in what these things were and where she took them from.
“Uncle Herman, and how are your rabbits getting on?” she asked, hoping to soften him up. “Already asleep?” Her question – the most innocent, it would seem – forced all the Durnevs to turn blue with rage. They could not stand to recall this episode in their life. About how Uncle Herman, trying to box Tanya’s ear, hit the magic double bass. And magical instruments do not like it when they are so treated. As a result Uncle Herman thought of himself as Lisper the Rabbit, brought into the apartment a whole one hundred big-eared fellows and even gave an interview on TV, stating that he was giving up a political career because he adored animals…
“I don’t want to hear about the rabbits anymore! We sent them away to the zoo! Understand? Predators must also be fed,” Aunt Ninel said gloatingly.
“By the way, papa was again elected deputy! Voters almost unanimously voted for him after that interview… Papa is now terribly popular! He even signs autographs!” Pipa added.
“But indeed Uncle Herman… You also truly loved them! You yourself were the very rabbit Lisp…” Tanya was surprised.
Uncle Herman began to stomp his feet. Since he was very emaciated, in order to stomp louder, it was necessary for him to jump up high. “NO! Keep quiet! I was not anyone! I’m Herman Durnev – deputy! Head of the best faction and chairman of the most humane committee! Is that clear?” he roared, sputtering. He turned so green that Tanya was afraid that he would hit her, and moved aside just in case. “Clear, clear. In fact, I’m going to bed…” she said, sadly thinking that Uncle Herman was much more likable as a rabbit.
Although Uncle Herman almost choked her, the recollection about the “carrot-cabbage” period of his life forced the best deputy to forget about the suspicious trunk. He pressed his temples with his hands and, swinging like a pendulum, left for the bedroom. Behind him, mincing with short legs, Pipa ran away. Only Aunt Ninel was left with Tanya. “It’s now winter, cold on the balcony, you’ll sleep in the big room! And only try to roam at night along the apartment – I’ll skin you! No switching on the lights! Don’t touch the TV!” she said, looking somewhere at the wall above Tanya’s head. Aunt Ninel locked all the locks of the entrance door, slid in the chain, and withdrew, following Uncle Herman.
“Welcome! Now I’m home!” Tanya thought sadly. Having climbed onto the sofa, she hugged her knees with her arms. She recalled the farewell with Bab-Yagun and Vanka Valyalkin. Parting, they exchanged addresses. Will they write? She left Tibidox only six hours ago, but now solitude was already gnawing her like a worm. She terribly needed someone close and loving, with whom she could talk about everything.
She moved the trunk with ghosts under the sofa, placed the bundle with Black Curtains on the armchair, and lay down, pressing the double bass against herself. “Only you are left with me! Don’t even know if we’ll be able to fly around here.” sobbing, she said to the double bass. The strings of the double bass began to hum sadly.
* * *
The dreariest days stretched on. As if the Durnevs had agreed to poison Tanya’s life, to make it as unbearable as possible. Pipa spied on her all day and rushed to tell tales at the slightest excuse. Aunt Ninel harassed her with endless faultfinding, but Uncle Herman did not generally notice her, as if there was an empty place instead of Tanya. He even hardly addressed her by name, and once when Tanya sat in his chair in the kitchen, Uncle Herman demanded with disgust, “Get it away from here! It doesn’t fit here!”
Then when the journalists came to them, Uncle Herman transformed unrecognizably. He forced Tanya to sit down next to him, embraced her around the shoulders, and said, “I’m awfully glad that she was found! She’s like my own! Although, you know, there are so many problems with this girl. My wife and I took her from a difficult family…”
“Practically from the dumpster!” Pipa immediately chimed in.
“Daughter! It’s impolite!” Aunt Ninel was falsely horrified, but immediately she began to whisper loudly, “Although, speaking in strict confidence, so it was… What work it was for us to clean her and teach her the basics of using a knife and a fork!”
Tanya patiently endured all this, although she was a hundred times cleaner than Pipa, and indeed used the fork better than Aunt Ninel herself, who cleaned her nails with it. The Durnevs simply adored telling filth about Leopold Grotter and his wife Sophia. Until she was ten, Tanya did not know that her parents had perished. She thought that her papa was in prison and mama begged in the station. In any case, the Durnevs lied to her this way. She only learned the truth in Tibidox that Leopold and Sophia Grotter were the greatest magicians and they perished protecting her, when Tanya was not even a year old.
In school – in her old moronoid school – everything was generally awful. Tanya did not assume that she had time to be so estranged from it. All the subjects seemed terribly confusing to her. There was neither flying journals nor smoking cauldrons nor instructors coming down from the ceiling like Professor Stinktopp in a hammock. No one treated griffins in class like Tararakh nor cast evil eye like Dentistikha so that it would be merrier to teach the spells. Everything was boring and ordinary. But the worst was that there was no magic piloting – Tanya’s favourite subject.
The classmates, incited by Pipa, looked at Tanya suspiciously and all the time tried to find out where the birthmark on the tip of her nose had disappeared to. Did she have plastic surgery? How could they know that what they assumed as an ugly birthmark was in reality the Talisman of Four Elements, lost during Tanya’s struggle with Plague-del-Cake? Then Genka Bulonov – a confused dolt who once by chance spied Tanya as she was flying on the double bass – was at her heels and badgered her with stupid questions. Soon this tired Tanya, and she in earnest began to consider putting a small curse on him so that he would leave her alone.
* * *
Returning from school on Friday, Tanya discovered that Aunt Ninel was standing by the armchair and holding in her hands the bundle with Black Curtains. “Here’s a forgetful person! And why didn’t I hide them?” the girl remembered suddenly. Shouting “Don’t open it! Mustn’t!” Tanya rushed to the bundle, but Aunt Ninel had already clicked the scissors. The severed magic lace slid to the floor and, after becoming a quick-moving snake, briskly crept away behind the radiator.
“What heavy tassels! But you know, it doesn’t matter! Old-fashioned, but stylish! Where did you take them from?” Durneva asked suspiciously, examining the curtains in the light.
“They were given to me…”
“Ah yes, I know… that most cranky old man!” Aunt Ninel exclaimed contemptuously. Knowing that the Durnevs would not believe her all the same, Tanya did not tell them anything about Tibidox. They for some reason decided that the girl lived an entire month with some old man and his wife, the address of whom she refused to tell, and this mobile old man allegedly gave Tanya the curtains and the trunk as gifts.
“Know what I’ve decided? I’ll hang them in my bedroom! It’ll be stylish!” Aunt Ninel stated. “Only they must go first to the dry-cleaner! Must be three kilograms of mud on them!”
“Never dry-clean them! Under no circumstances!” Tanya was frightened, noticing that the edge of the curtains began to quiver angrily. As any self-respecting magic object, the curtains were terribly proud that they had not been cleaned since the time of The Ancient One.
“Possible – never… Forgot to ask you! March to do your lessons!” Aunt Ninel snorted and left, after throwing Black Curtains over her shoulders. It was clear she could not have noticed what was perfectly evident to Tanya standing behind her. Namely, that Black Curtains vindictively depicted the skull and crossbones. The skull for some reason subtly resembled the face of Aunt Ninel.
Tanya sighed, understanding that it was not possible for her to change the mind of Aunt Ninel. She was thick-skinned like a hippopotamus and obstinate like an entire herd of donkeys. “Well, okay! I warned her. Then she’ll not complain of insomnia now!” Tanya mumbled and glanced under the sofa, checking if the trunk with ghosts was intact. The trunk was in place and Tanya calmed down. So, Pipa had not yet gotten here, although she was also always hanging around somewhere nearby.
* * *
That night Tanya could not fall asleep for a long time. She lay on the sofa, looked overhead at the off-white ceiling with the very large crystal chandelier similar to a wasps’ nest, and thought about Tibidox. A blizzard was howling beyond the window. It caught the dry biting snow, whirled it, and threw it at the window.
It constantly seemed to Tanya that someone was drumming on the glass, therefore, when there was knocking on the window for real, she did not immediately pay any attention. Only when the knock indeed became quite loud, Tanya turned and… almost yelled from rapture! Incredible! On the outside was a cupid in red suspenders and chilled to the bone. Cupids, or amours, were the postmen of the magic world. With a bag over their shoulder, they rushed around all day from one magician to another and handed out to them letters, messages, and telegrams.
Tanya threw open the window. The cupid flew into the room and, cheeping angrily, started to shake out the snow from the quiver with the arrows. Then he began to shake his mailbag in exactly the same manner, and two envelopes slightly soggy from the snow fell out of it. One letter was from Bab-Yagun and the other from Vanka Valyalkin. “Hurray! Mail!” Tanya was pleased, pressing the letters to her chest.
Not being able to decide which of the two to read first, she shuffled the envelopes with her eyes closed and opened the one that turned up on top. It was the message from Vanka Valyalkin.
“Hello!” Vanka wrote. “Everything is like normal with me. I did not go to my parents, you know how they are at home. They simply drink terribly. If I turned up, they would begin to take up the belt – no doubt about it.
“Now I’m living with grandmother, missing Tibidox… Remember how wonderful it was to treat firebirds and unicorns? But here it’s better not to deal with harpies: they stink terribly and their claws are sharp.
“Now recently in school one fellow, older than me, already thirteen, started to pick a fight, got into my knapsack, and drank the tincture for mermaids. The misfortune of fish scales terrifies him, indeed, he has them on his hands, his cheeks, and on his neck, and I do not know what to do to make them go away. I wrote Tararakh, but so far, he has not answered. I even do not know whether he will answer, because pithecanthropus is not the best with reading and writing. But indeed Tararakh can also ask someone if he wants to… Either Stinktopp, Yagge, or Dentistikha. On the other hand, this fellow had it coming, because he was simply making my life miserable. There are those sorts of things here! And you also write me, do not disappear.
“I frequently remember you. Indeed you know that I… (several more words were crossed out many, many times). In short, so long! Write!
“By the way, completely forgot to tell you. Recently I saw an enormous bird. Well, terribly similar to Lifeless Griffin! True, I just did not grasp whether that was it or not. If it was, it is impossible to understand what is it doing in the world of the moronoids? Well that is all, so long once again, be careful just in case.
“Your friend Vanka.”
Having attentively examined the deleted words in the light, Tanya smiled and opened the envelope from Bab-Yagun. If Vanka wrote his letter on a normal sheet crookedly torn out of a school notebook, then Bab-Yagun used a large piece of birch bark. On the reverse side of the birch bark, there was one of his granny Yagge’s prescriptions, in which she prescribed to someone crocodile tears and stonecrop seedpods.
The letter of Bab-Yagun was completely in his spirit, that is, without “hello,” without “good-bye,” and even without punctuation marks. A continuous flow of the consciousness: what I see, so I write. But at the same time it came not from anywhere but from Tibidox itself. Bab-Yagun was the only student, whom they allowed to remain in the school during repairs. Sardanapal simply could not send him off anywhere because Bab-Yagun had no relatives in the world of the moronoids. There was no one at all except Yagge.
“Here I recently disassembled the vacuum put a new nozzle on the pipe now it will not sneeze on me during takeoff True grandmother says whenever I repair the vacuum she then joins my bones because something slips out of position inside if my hands grow as they normally grow in others Interesting but you sometimes examined your double bass although there is surely nothing worth doing inside Tanya you play dragonball excellently well my granny and I always recall how you then marvellously threw the flame-extinguisher ball into the mouth of the dragon of the werewolves then we were all simply stunned that on the whole somebody almost tumbled down from the bench Pity only the match did not finish because the dragons fought and this pig Shurasik cut the Hair of The Ancient One into two and cooked up all this mess of course maybe we will still play Recently I was in the hangars of the dragons Goyaryn is now in hibernation and Mercury’s wound from the spear has already healed although each day Tararakh goes to it as before
“Here something strange is going on in Tibidox they tell me nothing but only Slander as you remember shut down the Main Staircase and they are all afraid of something cast a heap of spells everywhere Simply it became impossible to walk each second something snaps into action And yet now such a construction is going on here that wow from everywhere gathered house-spirits and wood-goblins and giants and all kinds of evil spirits well you really will not believe how many They build day and night Usynya and Gorynya barely manage to bring stones to them and Dubynya cannot work because the suspension bridge fell on his head He wanted to explain how the bridge works and poked with his crown Granny says another would be beaten down he got nothing except a brain concussion and since then is giggling all the time but will soon be fine
“How is it with you there Uncle Herman not very irritating if he is you tell me I will sort it out with him He is indeed as harmful as She-Who-Is-No-More And here yet one more piece of news When they investigated the blockages in the basement they did not find She-Who-Is-No-More Sardanapal says nothing dreadful but indeed at least a small speck should remain
“Recently I heard how Dentistikha talked about this with Tararakh only they immediately stopped talking when they saw me and ordered me to go where I was going but I was not going anywhere I was simply going for a walk because I am bored here alone Granny says study your lessons but I am sick of studying when there is no one to study with and there is nothing to do
“Maybe soon I will attempt to make my way to that Staircase which Slander blocked up because it is terribly inconvenient all the time to go on the far Staircase how can there be something terrible on the Staircase there
“Well that is all I am going because the cupid got tired of waiting while I finish the letter and here he searched for Granny’s candy and spilled all her tinctures well I am in a fix because he can then fly away but I have a strong-willed granny She will definitely let someone have it”
Tanya reread Bab-Yagun’s letter two or three times before she understood his scribbling. “Again disassembled his vacuum!” she thought merrily, deciding that Bab-Yagun had not changed a bit. He always so loved to tinker with magic technology. True, it would be better he stopped his restless hands, because a vacuum with vertical takeoff is a delicate piece and requires special handling.
At the same time, Tanya wanted to re-read the letter from Vanka, but here someone started to chirp indignantly and the cupid began to pull her by the nightshirt! She had completely forgotten about him! Tanya became conscientious that she did not concern herself with the postman.
“Are you frozen? Do you want to warm up by the radiator?” she asked. The cupid shook his head and pointed with a finger first to his mouth, and then to his stomach. He was clearly demanding that he should be fed. Chubby cupids had a terrible sweet tooth. Not without reason they were usually paid with pastries or candies for the delivery of mail. They recognized no other forms of payment. “Fine. Let’s go to the kitchen. Only be quiet… Otherwise we’ll even wake someone up,” Tanya whispered and slipped into the corridor first.
The apartment of the best deputy Herman Durnev, a relative of Count Dracula, was not small at all. Of washrooms alone there were three complete ones, and in the corridor even a place for washing hands. Only Tanya was uncomfortable here. She liked much more the intricate labyrinths of Tibidox – with drafts buzzing, with mysterious chests in the niches, with moth-eaten Turkish flying carpets, which the feet sank softly into.
The cupid, not falling behind, flew after Tanya, flicking his suspenders in anticipation of sweets. In the darkness, he did not make out the turn and hit his forehead against the door of Pipa’s room. Bang! “Who’s there? What do you want?” the daughter of Uncle Herman shouted with a sleepy voice from behind the door. The cupid, massaging the lump on his forehead, started to squeak indignantly, voicing everything he was thinking about this door. Tanya grabbed him and covered his mouth.
“I ask: who’s there?” Pipa repeated nervously from behind the door. Tanya understood that another second – and she would begin to squeal. It was necessary to think of something urgently. “Arf-arf!” Tanya growled quietly, scratching the door with her nails. Indeed if anything, she simply knew how to mimic the dachshund excellently. Hearing the familiar bark, Pipa was calmed in a flash. “Get away from here, One-And-A-Half Kilometres! I’m not letting you in! You’ll slobber over my slippers!” she yawned, dropping her nose into the pillow.
In the kitchen, Tanya disconcertedly stopped by the cabinet, in which Aunt Ninel stored sweets. She was certain that in the evening Pipa even glued secret threads and hairs around the cabinet. If one of them was torn, tomorrow a terrible screech would rise. But how was Pipa to know about the existence of the outstanding spell Fogus sneakus, which Tanya learnt from Coffinia? For one who used this black magic spell, it was possible not to fear locks and bolts. True, it was necessary to enter all closed doors only backwards.
After whispering “Fogus sneakus!” Tanya turned and, pushing a hand through the door of the cabinet, started to fumble inside. Numerous packets rustled. Although Aunt Ninel was eternally on a diet, it did not prevent her from regularly replenishing the stock. “Aha, here… What do you want: cookies, wafers, candy, cakes, chocolate, or fruit drops?” Tanya asked, by feel determining which was what. The cupid began to bounce excitedly and pat himself on the stomach, showing that he wanted absolutely everything. “And you’ll not burst?” Tanya was amazed. “Well okay, you wanted it!”
When in half an hour she laid out the last cake on the table, the cupid could not even push it into his mouth, although he tried to do this with both hands. His stomach was extended like a rubber pear, and the suspenders, it seemed, were ready to break. Gratefully squeaking, the cupid flapped his wings and attempted to take off. However, the best he could manage was to fly half a metre. Here strength finally left the overfed postman. He blinked drowsily, smiled blissfully, folded up his wings and collapsed with a dreadful crash onto the table.
Tanya rushed to him. She was convinced that the cupid had broken his neck, but someone with a wrung neck would not be breathing heavily and so sweetly in dreams or put under the cheek a wafer wrapper. Tanya belatedly recalled that Medusa in homework on evil spirits studies advised them on no account to overfeed cupids, because they do not have a sense of proportion. But he asked so sweetly that she could not refuse.
“What am I to do with him now?” Tanya thought. Scolding herself, she began to sweep up crumbs from the table, but here someone’s hasty footsteps were heard in the depth of the apartment. There was already no time to ponder. Grabbing the cupid by the hands, Tanya managed to shove him into the dish cupboard. She had hardly slammed the door shut when someone broke into the kitchen.
Light flared up. A blinded Tanya closed her eyes. When she again assumed the ability to see, she discovered that before her emerged an infuriated Uncle Herman. By his feet, the traitor-dachshund burst into barking. “What are you doing here? Who permits you to come at night into the kitchen? You know how sensitively I sleep!” Uncle Herman roared. “Rice porridge for supper was too little for you?”
“No, not too little. I adore it when porridge sticks to the plate,” said Tanya, attempting to push unnoticeably with a foot a chocolate foil under the table. Of course, this was not hidden from the penetrating eyes of the best deputy. “You’re lying! You’re a spoilt insolent liar! Exactly like your own father!” he hissed. “Go lively to your room and don’t dare go anywhere! I’ll speak with you in the morning!” Tanya turned and, having shrugged her shoulders, left for her room. Uncle Herman, wheezing angrily, dragged himself behind her. The dachshund remained alone in the kitchen. It looked around suspiciously, sniffed, and started to growl at the dish cupboard.
After some time the door of the cupboard was thrown open. An angry cupid looked out from there, on his head was Aunt Ninel’s favourite dark-blue cup pulled down over the eyes. On seeing the cupid, One-And-A-Half Kilometres began to sneeze with malice. The cupid could not stand everyday rudeness. Not thinking for long, he brought down onto the dachshund a large saucepan, which covered its head. Yelping in fear, the saucepan began to crawl under the chair. Yawning, the cupid carefully shut the doors, placed the quiver under his head, and again fell asleep.
* * *
In the morning, Tanya waited for a dressing down and even severe punishment from the Durnevs, but Uncle Herman had left early for work, and Aunt Ninel was in a completely complacent mood. When Tanya came into the kitchen, she was sitting at the table and eating a lemon. Tanya only needed to glance at this and her jaws immediately closed. Aunt Ninel herself did not even pucker.
“Every self-respecting person should compulsorily eat a whole lemon in the morning!” she briskly informed the girl. “It’s extremely useful! It restores acidity and cleanses superfluous information from the brain! Please pass me a saucer! Nowhere to spit out the pits!” Tanya was about to move to the dish cupboard, but suddenly remembered that the overfed postman was sleeping there.
“Why are you dawdling? You want me to get up myself?” Aunt Ninel impatiently shouted. “No need, I’ll do it!” Trying to obstruct the door with her back, Tanya carefully opened the cupboard slightly and with relief took a deep breath. The cupid had disappeared. Likely, he woke up early in the morning and flew away. Tanya handed the Aunt the saucer and sat beside her.
“Ah yes! This morning they brought your curtains back from the dry cleaner…” said Durneva. “Already?” Tanya asked fearfully. She did not think that they would manage so quickly at the dry cleaner’s. Aunt Ninel raised her eyebrows. “It was unexpected for me too. By the way, earlier for some reason I didn’t notice that some stutterer works at our dry cleaner’s,” she said. “Soon some stutterers will also live here,” Tanya thought, but she did not begin to spread this. Why load superfluous information into Aunt Ninel’s brain purified by a lemon?
A yelp reached them from under the table. One-And-A-Half Kilometres, relaxed and absent-minded, was lying on the rug and tenderly looking at Uncle Herman’s old cap, which the best deputy usually pulled all the way down to his eyes in the warm season, protecting his crown from the impact of the sun. On the dachshund’s forehead was a lump, and the inverted saucepan lay beside the cap.
On Sunday, Aunt Ninel and Pipa left immediately after breakfast for the club to go bowling. They did not take Tanya, but she also did not long for it. After dragonball all other games seem uninteresting. And really can anything be compared to the wind whistling all around, and you, gripping the double bass with your knees, speeding away from the dragon overtaking you, and then, sharply swooping down, throw into its mouth a flame-extinguisher or pepper ball?
Seizing the opportunity that no one would interfere with her, Tanya wrote letters to Vanka Valyalkin and Bab-Yagun. “I’ll hide them under the carpet, and at night I’ll send them out!” she decided. It was dangerous to summon a cupid in the daytime. A chubby tot with wings, flaunting red suspenders, would for sure catch the eyes of moronoids.
Tanya pulled out from under the sofa the leather case, wiped the dust off it and clicked the ancient clasp. The lid was thrown open, and the girl saw the magic double bass of Master Theophilus Grotter – a great inventor and even greater grumbler, whose voice now lived in her ring.
In Tibidox Tanya trained every day, and now, she only needed to glance at the instrument and the irrepressible desire appeared in her to experience again the thrill of flight. “Certainly, Medusa and Sardanapal warned us. Moronoids, they say, will see you, and all such things… But indeed I must practice, otherwise how am I to play dragonball in the spring? And in order that the moronoids would not notice, I’ll simply get to a necessary height and that’s all. Will they begin to examine a tiny speck, on top of that even against the sun?” Tanya thought, easily finding justification for herself. She got dressed and, taking the double bass, slipped to the balcony.
