My Big Family. A Day of Tots

In blessed memory of my father, Alexander Ivanovich

In a small seaside town there lives a large family, the Gavrilovs, who moved here from a tight Moscow apartment. The family has seven children and a lot of all kinds of animals: pigeons, the turtle Mafia, fish, Japanese mice, rats led by the chief rat Schwartz, parrots, a guinea pig, cats and dogs! And, needless to say, different funny stories always come with this family!

Chapter One

The Silver Sun

Children, for some reason, do not choose their life program by what we teach them and what we say aloud, but by the unspoken, often carefully concealed, which is the essence of our nature and what we ourselves, perhaps, are not proud of at all.

Papa Gavrilov walked along the seashore and dragged behind him a stroller, in which sat Alex, Rita, and Costa. Exactly behind, not in front. It would not roll in front at all. Papa already regretted about ten times that they had even brought the stroller. It would have been more convenient to carry the toddlers on his shoulders. The wheels got bogged down deeply in the sand, and in addition, the sand was covered with a layer of dried algae thick as a hand. Sometimes on the beach they came across people with large bags collecting dry seaweed to insulate walls and ceilings and loading them onto bicycles.

Costa was whining in the stroller. He had a strong attachment to old clothes and suffered any changes acutely. Here Mama had put a new lined knit cap on him, because the cap with earflaps was too cold for the sea. And then all the way Costa repeated, «My caaaap!» and further on in circles.

Behind Papa, stretched along the shore like a chain, trudged Mama, Peter, Vicky, Alena, and Kate – all freezing and with raised collars. Their neighbours Andrew and Seraphim, tagging along for company, dragged on last.

Andrew, having scratched his little finger when they climbed over the fence, was suffering and kept repeating, «I told you! I did! And now that's it! That's it!» In this case, what exactly he was saying and what exactly this «that's it» consisted of remained off screen. But Seraphim, both of whose legs were wet above the knees because he had gone into the sea, did not complain and appeared quite satisfied with life.

In general, Seraphim was very funny. Besides being constantly lost, he still said «hello,» «thank you,» and «goodbye» all the time. Even if he was just leaving for the next room, he inevitably said «goodbye.» And when he returned, he said «hello!» And this was awfully amusing: you go to the house and everywhere you meet Seraphim greeting you, looking out from anywhere, all but the closets.

There was nowhere to escape from the beach. From the paved alley stretching along the sea, they were separated by a high sand rampart that was swept to the fence by a tractor so that winter storms would not carry sand away from the beach to the sea. To the nearest gate there still remained about three hundred metres – a huge distance for an overloaded stroller. Papa Gavrilov pulled it, imagining himself a horse and the stroller a plough.

Suddenly the stroller became really heavy. Papa turned around and discovered that Peter had quietly pulled Alex, Rita, and Costa out of it and sat in the stroller himself.

«Scram! The wheels will break! You're too heavy!» Papa was outraged.

«They're sturdy.»

«The old one broke!»

«I didn't break the old one. Mama did!» Peter stated.

Mama was embarrassed. Peter was partly right. The last stroller broke because when Peter sat in it like so, Mama sat him down on his knees to show that this should not be done and he was not little. The stroller did not know that Mama's objective was pedagogic and grunted.

Alex, Costa, and Rita, unloaded onto the sand, were busy in their own business. Rita began to sit her dolls, of which she had three, down on the wet sand. They were called General's Wife, Italian, and Lorelei. Rita could not pronounce the word «Lorelei» and also regularly mixed up the rest of the names. The dolls looked in bad shape. Lorelei had lost its hair, and Alex had filled Italian's head with kefir through a hole and left it in the freezer overnight to check what would happen, but the doll did not look any prettier.

At that moment, Alex was roaming along the beach and finding discarded lighters. He came across some of them with gas and they burst when hit with a stone. Incidentally, a question excited Alex: when he is old like a grandfather, will he be able to buy as many matches as he wants?

«Certainly!» Mama said and, leaning over, deftly took out of Alex's pocket a box, which he had already stolen from somewhere, probably hoarding for old age.

Rita began to whine that she wanted to drink, «Driiink! Driiink!»

Mama took out a bottle of water.

«Not that water!» Rita quickly said. She already saw in the distance the red roof of the store and weighed all options.

«Ha-ha! You're our dehydrated one!» Peter said in a deep voice from the stroller. «You mustn't want to drink in December!»

Rita stared at him suspiciously and began to slowly open her mouth while closing her eyes.

«Why mustn't you want to drink in December?» Alex became interested. «And that guy over there?»

Peter looked around. «That guy there wanted to drink even in summer,» he whispered.

Leaving the stroller in the sand, Papa went to the sea and began to throw flat stones, forcing them to jump like pancakes. Suddenly, something caught him painfully on the ear. Papa looked around and realized that this was Costa also learning to throw stones, and he even, one might say, had already learned.

Peter, convinced that no one would tow the stroller with him, folded his hands on his stomach and argued with Alena, Alex, and Kate that they could not move him from the spot. Kate did not yield to the provocation and only snorted, but then Alena and Alex developed a storm of activities. Seraphim and Andrew helped them. After digging out the wheels of the stroller, they began to shake it and moved it about a metre and a half. Then Seraphim hung onto the handle, and Peter tumbled onto the sand.

«Come on, you! Can't do anything!» Peter said, and grabbing the empty stroller by the handle, ran off ahead with it to tease the young ones.

Alex, Rita, and Costa went on foot.

Alex was as fresh as a cucumber after resting in the stroller. «Imagine, what arrogance! Yesterday ten people called me back because I accidentally dialled their number!» he told Andrew and Seraphim, running ahead to see their faces.

Rita, having forgotten that she was just dying of thirst, climbed onto the sand hill and ran from it into Mama's arms.

Kate was about to go and catch Rita, but then someone beside her said, «Going for a stroll? And I have a day off!»

Kate turned around. Next to her was the «mouse girl» Liuba, who worked in the pet store. She was dressed in a ginger jacket and a cap with a rooster's comb, which made her deceptively amicable. Kate, accustomed to seeing Liuba in her work robe, an apron, and a metre-long snake in her hand, did not immediately recognize her. As if a formidable military colonel went out to the soldiers in slippers and a Santa hat.

Rita once again rolled down the sand hill and, having decided that she was tired, sagged in Mama's arms.

«Well, let's go further! Rita's freezing!» Mama shouted, although in reality Rita was flushed from running, but Mama was freezing.

They went along the beach, and together with them went «mouse girl», who stated that it made no difference to her in which direction they strolled, because a stroll was killing time all the same.

Alena, who, when meeting a new person, adored loving him to pieces, was glued to «mouse girl». Besides, it was important to Alena to clarify some details of human relationships. «Here if, for example, there are two girls somewhere: one pretty and the other a good person, who'll get married sooner?» she asked.

Liuba frowned and looked suspiciously at Alena, whose face expressed only genuine interest. «What kind of question is that? How do I know? What am I, your fiancé?» «Mouse girl» was indignant.

Alena addressed Papa with the same question.

«The good person!» Papa answered cheerfully.

Peter, also hearing this conversation, looked at him without much trust. «Then the queue would be for the terrible ones!» he declared.

«What, terrible girls are all good by default? The pretty ones can also be good people,» said Papa Gavrilov.

«You mean, we consider beauty only among good people?» Liuba asked with a challenge.

«No,» Papa said. «But beauty is a vague concept. Every person is inevitably beautiful to someone.»

«Even a complete Quasimodo?» «Mouse girl» asked with doubt.

«I think so, yes. But only on condition of kindness.»

Alena did not like to wander in the thickets of theory. «Papa! When you married Mama, was she a beautiful or a good person?»

«Both beautiful and good!» Papa said.

«Right! Was! And then toddlers hung onto me!» Mama said, pulling out of Costa's hand a stick, with which he wanted to whack Alex for throwing a clump of algae at him.

Alex yanked Papa's hand. «Look!» he shouted, pointing to an overhang approaching the water.

Along the sea, a tall guy with a metal detector was walking on the beach and searching with wide movements along the sand, as if mowing invisible grass. Occasionally the guy froze, and his movements became cautious, groping. When the place was accurately found, he began to shovel sand carefully with an entrenching tool, and, having taken something out, sometimes discarded it and sometimes casually dropped it into a bag.

«And this one is here! Wherever you go, he sticks out everywhere!» Liuba grumbled, moving her hat on her forehead.

«Who?» Kate asked.

«This one here!» «mouse girl» repeated, and by the way she said it, everything became clear to Kate.

«This one» was Pokrovskii, Liuba's classmate, who raced around the city on a bike and tied shoelaces in the middle of the road.

«What's he doing here?» Alex asked.

«Searching! Vacationers in the summer lose earrings, rings, chains of all kinds, they drop them in the sand, and he walks and searches!» Liuba said.

«Really?» Peter became interested. «What, does he find anything?»

«A bunch of rusty nails! Would be better begging!» «mouse girl» deliberately said loudly.

The lanky guy heard her voice, shuddered, and turned around. «Hi! It's you?» he asked.

«Imagine, me!»

«Taking a walk?»

Liuba snorted loudly: «Did you guess or did someone suggest it?»

Pokrovskii shrugged coldly and continued searching. Costa and Alex could not leave him alone anymore and followed him like a tail. Pokrovskii was generous and allowed Alex to hold the metal detector. It was a great carelessness, because Costa, of course, also immediately wanted it and grabbed the metal detector with his right hand. Pulling the metal detector from each other, Costa and Alex starting running off somewhere and fell into a pile of sand.

Pokrovskii rushed after them. He was obviously worried about his new metal detector. «Hey! Don't swing it! Don't scrape the stones! It isn't a club!» he cried out in fright.

Watching the anguish of her former classmate, «mouse girl» grinned mischievously.

Finally, Pokrovskii managed to take his metal detector away. Without letting go of it, he sat down on a rock and stretched out his scrawny legs. Alex stood beside him and, admiring the metal detector with respect, greedily asked if Pokrovskii had found a bomb. It turned out that Pokrovskii had not yet found a bomb. Mostly he found beer caps and small things that poured out of pockets.

«Of course!» Alex said unhappily and, without any change, added, «Is it true that one person put chicory in coffee and became drunk?»

«Mouse girl» laughed triumphantly. Pokrovskii squinted at her suspiciously, checking whether she had taught Alex such a crazy question. «I don't know. Don't ask me this. I don't drink coffee. I don't drink at all,» he said.

Not getting a clear answer, Alex shook his head reproachfully. He could not believe that such a knowledgeable person might not be aware of such nonsense. «Is it true that you can blow up a gas station with a cell phone?» he continued.

«How's that?»

«What do you mean by 'how'?» Alex was surprised. «There they paint a crossed-out phone! So, it's possible! And what word should one say on the phone so that it would blow up gasoline for sure?»

Seeking to hide his global ignorance, Pokrovskii began treating the children to a baguette, a third of which he had already gnawed off. Vicky refused the baguette, saying that she did not like it.

«And what do you like?» Pokrovskii asked.

«She loves horses!» Alena willingly informed him. Vicky blushed, because her love of horses was her biggest secret.

«Really?» Pokrovskii shoved his hand into the bag slung over his shoulder. «Well, if you love them, then I'll give you this! Just found it today! Wanted to hang it over my door!» He handed Vicky an iron semicircle. Vicky hesitantly took it. It was a heavy horseshoe, rusty on one side, but polished to a shine on the other.

After giving away the horseshoe, Pokrovskii again took the metal detector and, getting rid of the seaweed with his wet sneakers, continued his search. Papa Gavrilov walked beside Pokrovskii and asked him about metal detectors.

Pokrovskii explained authoritatively. This one, according to him, was middle of the road, though not quite. «Here's such a thing! Military equipment is good, reliable, but clumsy, and its design is usually such that enemies fear it. Civilian equipment has a bunch of cute figurines and convenient lights, but this isn't technology. And this one is exactly in between!» he said and gently stroked his metal detector.

«So?» Papa asked. «Have you discovered any treasures?»

Pokrovskii took the metal detector off the sand and quickly turned around, checking to see if anyone was near. His face became very secretive. «Not yet, but…» he paused and again went back to the sand. Then he quickly turned to Papa and held him by a button. «We have a lot of treasures in the Crimea!» he said in a ringing whisper. «Simply scattered around with treasures literally!»

«Where's this even from?» Papa doubted.

«What? Crimea was settled a very long time ago! Here all the cities are contemporaries of Rome! And this is only the story that we know! The Scythians, Greeks, Genoese, Turks, Tatars, Armenians. And how many merchants were here! They sold slaves, fabrics, bread, and wine! Huge turnaround! And every self-respecting merchant inevitably had his own treasure buried in a pot in the basement of his home!»

«Why buried?» Papa Gavrilov did not understand.

Spots flared up on Pokrovskii's gaunt face. «How else?» he was amazed. «Houses burn. Thieves tunnel under walls. No banks yet. How would a merchant store his gold? Why in a pot? Because pots aren't afraid of soil. A wooden chest will rot in three years. I won't talk about iron at all. No one had yet eliminated rust.»

«And why exactly in the basement?»

«Where else? The most convenient place for a hoard is the basement,» Pokrovskii explained importantly. «We're not talking about pirate stashes on uninhabited islands. A self-respecting merchant's hoard had to be hidden so that it would be convenient for him to use. He took a handful of coins, placed a handful of coins, sort of like a safe. Besides, while you dig in your cellar, no one will see you. If you go with the money to the forest, then the whole street will shout, 'Honourable Joseph, where are you going with a jug of coins and a shovel? Do you need any help?'»

Papa Gavrilov listened with interest, wiggling his frozen toes in his boots. «What? The merchants later didn't pull out their treasures?» he asked doubtfully.

«Some, of course, did and spent it or left it as an inheritance. But some were lonely misers. Or another option. The city was attacked; the merchant died and didn't have time to tell anyone. The house was burnt and turned into rubbles. The city is overgrown with forest and grass. And somewhere there, under the roots, even now lies a dark two-handled amphora for wheat, full of gold and silver coins,» Pokrovskii said with such conviction, as if he had found dozens of such amphorae. He even ran his finger through the air, precisely feeling the long crack in this very amphora.

«Well, have you found any?» Papa Gavrilov asked.

«Not yet!» Pokrovskii uttered bitterly and stared at his metal detector with deep resentment. «It's rather weak for me to search for something serious. I have to limit myself to sand… But there're a lot of coins here. Over the years, ships smashed in storms, o-ho-ho, the bay is shallow, and gradually the coins wash ashore from the sand. And there are only fragments of grain amphorae, just rake it. The sea in general throws out everything superfluous, everything not its own.»

«Costa's frozen! Let's go, huh?» Mama hollered piteously, her nose was already quite blue from the cold.

Papa harnessed himself to the stroller, and the Gavrilovs continued their journey along the sea. Vicky held the horseshoe in her hands, looking at it with undecided joy. They walked for about a hundred metres along the beach when they heard someone catching up to them. It was Pokrovskii, carrying in his hand something extracted from his bag.

«Wait a minute! This is for you!» he shouted to Liuba and put something in her hand. It was a small silver sun, darkened by the water. «I found it yesterday. It came off someone's chain! Needs to be cleaned and it'll be fine!»

«Mouse girl» looked at the sun lying on her palm, «So, clean it!»

Pokrovskii began to rub the sun with a cloth, and rubbed it until the ornament shone.

«Ready?» Liuba asked. «It's mine now? I can do whatever I want?»

Pokrovskii nodded.

«Excellent!» Liuba stroked the sun with her finger, stepped toward the water, and launched it like a pancake. The silver sun flashed, jumped from the water twice, and disappeared.

«You yourself let me! No one pulled you by the tongue! Mine means mine!» Liuba said.

«Why?» Pokrovskii asked plaintively.

«So simple!» She shrugged and walked on, and Pokrovskii stood with his mouth open and watched her go.

Alena ran in front of her, looking into her face with curiosity. «Is it true that Pokrovskii was once in love with you and then fell in love with someone else?» she asked.

«How do you know?»

«Kate told me!»

«Nonsense!» Liuba grunted, turning away. «No gossip to pass on. He only danced with her all evening, but I don't forgive anyone for betrayal!»

«And I thought only our Peter is a jerk!» Alena said with delight.

Chapter Two

The Orderly Grandma

«They have a mama critic. It's very difficult to be a critic.»

«Why?»

«Because you need to write all the time on the Internet that you don't agree with anything. Here you sleep at night, and mama writes them, although she, by the way, also wants to sleep!»

The Gavrilovs returned home. Here was already the «figure eight» street. The gate ahead showed black. The dogs Stool, Lad, and Tot ran to meet them. Lad, as usual, barked hoarsely – this was a solitary, terrible, almost lion-like roar – and rushed on the attack, but always recognized them about twenty paces away, stopped and, looking embarrassed, turned away into the bushes, where it settled on the ground. Stool and Lad could not calm down for a long time. They were all running around, spinning, barking. Then Lad quieted down, and only Stool alone was barking. It was barking in a quarrelsome way, shrilly, exactly like an old female venndor quarrelling with a buyer. The buyer was already long gone, but she still could not calm down.

True, today Stool did not manage to bark. «Hands up!» Kate said, and the yelping Stool immediately fell on its back, exposing its dirty belly to her.

Opening the gates, the Gavrilovs discovered that a striped rug was hanging on the railing with a carpet beater next to it, and all the animals were thrown out onto the street and sitting like beggars in front of the door, waiting for the moment when it would be possible to scurry back in.

«Someone broke into our house! What crooks!» Peter said, contemplating the stack of cages in which the rats were frisking and the hamsters were burrowing in the sawdust.

«We must blow them up!» Alex proposed. «We'll put a lot of baking soda in their pockets, and then pour in vinegar! They'll run, and we'll dig a hole in their path!»

«And if they run the other way?» Costa asked.

«Then we'll dig a hole on the other side too!» Alex said, and this argument seemed so sound to Costa that he immediately started digging.

Papa and Mama exchanged glances.

«What date is it today?» Papa Gavrilov asked.

«Thursday,» Mama said.

«Thursday isn't a date. Today's December eighth. That means, we didn't meet your mama!»

«My mama comes on Friday!»

«No. Mama comes on the eighth. And the eighth is today!»

Pushing through between the cages, Papa opened the door. The cat immediately slipped into the house. The chief rat papa Schwartz, who was able to open the cage with its paw, was chasing after the cat. All the children were already running after Schwartz.

«Grandma!» the children shouted. «Food! Gifts!»

For some reason three of these concepts – «grandma,» «food,» and «gifts» – were stuck together in their minds into one, so that there was a mysterious single «grandmafoodgift.» From this the conclusion somehow very naturally followed that if the grandmas disappear from life, then both food and gifts would disappear together with them.

Papa and Mama discovered Grandma Masha and Great-Grandma Zina in the kitchen. Grandma was tall, determined, and wore square glasses. Great-Grandma, on the contrary, was small, round, and had a cane. Grandma never left Great-Grandma, and they also always travelled together.

Vicky, Alena, Kate, Alex, and Costa were all over the grandmas on all sides. There was not a single granny to hug Rita, so she just climbed on all fours between the legs and hugged a grandma's foot and sneaker. Peter alone did not join in but only stood on the side and moved his hands in the air. He considered himself above hugs but not above gifts.

«How did you get into the house?» Peter asked when all the hugs, shouts, and kisses were over.

«Very simple. We came from the airport by taxi and climbed over the balcony. I mean, I climbed and opened the door! We weren't standing for two hours at the gate waiting to be met!» Grandma Masha said, giving Papa a combative look.

«Over the balcony?» Papa was surprised. «Did you climb over the balcony?

«It's high!»

«What's wrong with that?» Grandma Masha said. Then she thought for a bit and added, «Of course, it wasn't easy for me! I had to put the four crates one on top of the other and lift a leg up high… And the neighbours looked at us strangely!»

«And where were the crates from?»

«The neighbours. I asked. Where else?» Grandma was surprised.

Five minutes later she was already standing at the sink and washing dishes, scrubbing them with a sponge with such force it was as if germs could get inside.