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When Papa was a little boy… Actually, in this story Papa is not a little boy anymore. In fact, he was now old enough to go out by himself, to walk to the store to buy milk, or catch a movie with a friend, or take the streetcar to the beach. That Saturday, not-so-little Papa and his friend Marik were walking along the street, all by themselves. They were going to buy some ice-cream, and then maybe go to the park, or to play at Marik’s house. In his pocket, Papa had a whole rouble (that’s what money is called in Russia) that his mom had given him that morning. And a rouble was a lot of money back then. Why, you could buy not just one but five or six ice-creams for a rouble. Or a dozen doughnuts oozing with jam. Not to mention tons of sunflower seeds or tiny dried shrimp sold by grandmas on street corners, measured out in glasses and poured into newspaper cones – or straight into your pocket if you planned to smuggle them into the classroom and munch them on the sly when the teacher wasn’t watching.
As Papa and Marik walked, they talked about girls. There was one girl in Papa’s class, Irina, that Papa was secretly in love with. Marik was the only one Papa had told about this, and now he thought that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea.
“Well, are you gonna tell her?” asked Marik eagerly.
“No way!” said Papa.
“Why not?”
“Because…” He kicked at an empty can out of the way.
“Because what? Are you scared?”
“Scared? I’m not scared! It’s just…”
“Oh come on, don’t be such a coward. Just tell her!”
Papa walked on without replying, his blushing face lowered to the sidewalk.
“Or how about if I tell her?” said Marik excitedly. “Hah? You want me to tell
her?”
Papa stopped in his tracks and shot Marik a furious look. “Oh yeah? And how about if I rearrange your face?”
Marik smirked at that, and they continued walking. Just then, at the other end of the empty block, they saw three boys coming towards them. From the way they looked and walked, Papa could tell right away that these were “hooligans”, “tough boys”, the kind that usually sauntered around in packs, swore a lot, smoked, and bullied other kids for money. There were some in Papa’s school, but Papa kept his distance from them and they usually left him alone. These, however, were strangers, and they were heading straight for Papa and Marik.
Papa’s heart was beating fast now. Even from a distance, he could sense the wave of menace coming from the boys. He and Marik kept on walking, trying to look unconcerned, hoping they would let them pass. No such luck. They found their way blocked by the three. These boys were older, taller, and definitely stronger. The one in the middle, probably the leader, smiled a slow smile like a cat about to pounce on a mouse.
“Hey, kids,” he said on a hoarse voice. “Got twenty kopecks we could borrow?” (A kopeck is like one cent in Russia).
“No, sorry,” said Marik quickly.
“No? And what about you?” The boy scowled at Papa.
Papa looked down on the ground in miserable silence. He could say no, of course, but he knew very well that it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. They would rummage through his pockets and find the rouble anyway.
Suddenly Marik tore away from the group and sprinted across the road to the opposite side of the street. For a chubby boy who skipped Phys Ed whenever he could, he turned out to be a pretty fast runner. As soon as he was at a safe distance, he started waving his hands and shouting, “Come on! What are you waiting for? Run for it!”
Papa didn’t run. He couldn’t. Only cowards run. Those who are brave stand up and fight. Although in this case fighting was not really an option. These boys were bigger and tougher and three against one. Besides, Papa wasn’t really much of a fighter. He was a gentle and well-brought up kid who preferred to solve conflicts by peaceful means. In all the years of school, he only fought once. The other boy started it, there were girls watching, and so he simply had no choice. Anyway, it didn’t last long, their heart wasn’t in it, the others pulled them apart, and somehow Papa still ended up with a bloody nose.
So now Papa just stayed where he was, surrounded by the three hooligans, waiting for what would come next.
“Well now,” said the leader to Papa. “Are you gonna give us the money, or do we have to search you?”
Papa squared his shoulders, looked the boy straight in the face, and said in a loud and clear voice: “No!”
“What did you say?” growled the boy.
“I said no! I am not gonna give you the money! It’s mine! You want it? Come and get it!”
“Oh yeah? We’ll see about that!” The three hooligans raised their fists and closed in on Papa.
Now all these karate classes Papa had been taking finally paid off. When it was all over, two of the bad boys were sprawled on the sidewalk, and the third one was running away full speed. Papa calmly dusted off his hands, jumped back on his horse and…
“Well now,” said the leader. “Are you gonna give us the money, or do we have to search you?”
“All right”, said Papa in resignation. “But all I have is a whole rouble.”
“That’s OK,” said the boy, winking at his buddies. “We’ll give you change, don’t worry.”
With a sigh, Papa reached into his pocket and handed over his precious rouble. The boy pocketed the money, slapped Papa on the shoulder and turned to go.
“But what about the change?” Papa blurted out.
“Oh, right, I almost forgot.” The boy smirked as he handed Papa a dirty five-kopeck coin.
“But… that’s only five kopecks,” Papa muttered. “You owe me eighty.”
The leader frowned and brought his face close to Papa’s. Papa stared back, feeling his eyes grow hot with hurt and indignation.
“What the hell are you looking at?” growled the boy. “You got your change. Now scram!”
The three boys swaggered away, laughing and bumping against each other. Papa stood staring at their retreating backs, biting his lips and blinking away the tears. When the three hooligans were out of sight, Marik jogged back to Papa’s side. “Well, that was dumb,” he said, puffing. “Why didn’t you run?”
Papa shrugged and didn’t answer. What was there to say? That Marik was a coward for running away, and that he was brave for staying? He didn’t feel brave. In fact, he only felt stupid. Running away would have been the smart thing to do, and he would still have his rouble. But… at least he wasn’t a coward, right?
Well, many years have gone by, and Papa still can’t figure it out. Was he brave back then? But he gave the hooligans the money, didn’t he? Yes, but he didn’t run away. True, but the reason he didn’t run was because he was afraid to look like a coward. And that in itself is a kind of cowardice, isn’t it? I really don’t know. What do you think?
Oh, and by the way, Papa did tell Irina that he was in love with her. Not face to face, of course. He wrote her a note saying “Irina, I love you.” He had carried that note in his pocket for days before he finally plucked up the courage and put it on Irina’s desk during recess, when the classroom was empty. And later that day he got a note back: “I love you too.” He was very happy. They didn’t go on a date or kiss or anything like that, they were too young. It was just nice to know.
That summer, as usual, little Papa and his parents were staying at their summer-cottage by the Black Sea. Well, actually little Papa and his mom and grandparents were living there all summer long. His dad had to stay in the city for his work, but he came down every weekend. Little papa and his mom Yana would go to meet him at the train station.
One day, little Papa’s dad brought him a beach ball. Little Papa had never had a beach ball before. He loved it. It was perfect, white and yellow and blue, and just the right size. He couldn’t wait for the next morning, when he could take it down to the beach and try it out.
In the morning, they walked down to the beach, little Papa proudly carrying his new ball. Now little Papa understood why it was called a beach ball. It was blue like the water, white like the sand, yellow like the sun. It belonged.
For a while, little Papa and his parents and some of their friends tossed the ball around. Then the grown-ups got tired and went back to their beach-towels.
Little Papa took the ball down to the water. He waded in waste-deep, as far as he was allowed to go by himself. (This was before little Papa had learned to really swim and snorkel and catch crabs with his bare hands.) He stayed there in the warm shallow waters, happily throwing the ball up and trying to catch it, or hugging it with both arms and kicking his legs.
Then the ball slipped out of little Papa’s hands. He tried to grab it, but it was now too far to reach. “My ball, my ball!” cried Little Papa. The grown-ups back on the beach lifted their faces from their card game. His dad came into the water and patted little Papa on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll get it back,” he said, and dove in.
At first it looked easy. The ball was still just a short swim away. Strangely, though, just as little Papa’s dad came within reach, the ball floated a little further away, as if teasing hom, playing a game with him. Still, he was a good strong swimmer, and it would be just a matter of time, just a few more strokes, before he caught up with it. Besides, he knew how disappointed little Papa would be if he came back empty-handed.
This went on for quite some time. Little Papa’s dad kept swimming after the ball, and the ball kept floating away, and no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t catch up with it. By now he was getting really tired. When he finally stopped to take a breath, he turned to look back at the beach. The beach was a thin line, unbelievably far, and the people on it were tiny specks. He realized he was too exhausted to swim. What’s more, his legs were getting cramps. And cramps are the worst thing that can happen to you when you are in the middle of the sea.
Little Papa’s dad started to panic. He suddenly knew with perfect clarity that there was a very good chance he might not make it. Wildly, he began to thrash in the water, looking in all directions for any sign of help. He was lucky. Not too far off, out in the sea, he spotted a fishing boat. “Help! Help!” he shouted. The next thing he knew, two pairs of strong hands were lifting him out of the water and into the boat. He was saved.
When little Papa’s dad got back to the beach, everyone was very relieved. He had to lie on the warm sand for a long time before he felt himself again. Little Papa had missed all that. He was too deep in his misery over the lost ball. “But where is my ball!” he kept asking his dad. “I want my ball!”
“I’ll get you another ball,” said his dad weakly.
“But I don’t want another ball! I want this one!” cried little Papa.
Then his mom got very angry with little Papa for some reason, and they all went home.
Years went by. Little Papa became big Papa. He now had a family of his own, and every summer they returned to their little cottage by the Black Sea. One day, as he stood on the beach watching the sunset, he saw something colorful and round bobbing up and down in the water. You will never guess what it was! Believe it or not, it was the beach ball! The same one he had lost years and years before! Papa fished it out of the water, and everything that had happened that long-ago summer day came back to him. Back at the cottage, he gave the ball to his kids and told them this story.
Yep, this would have made a great ending. Unfortunately, this is not what really happened. For one thing, little Papa and his parents moved far, far away, and they never went back to the summer cottage again. And the ball – the ball disappeared for good, wherever it is that things disappear. Of course little Papa had other beach balls after that, but none of them ever came close to the one he had lost.
Here is an interesting thing, though. To this day, little Papa’s dad is very careful of the sea. It is another sea now - an ocean, actually – but he doesn’t trust it anyway. He still likes to swim, but he doesn’t go further out where the water is deep. And when Papa, who is a grown up man now, goes in for a swim, his dad paces the shore, shielding his face against the sun and shouting: “Don’t go too far! That’s quite enough! Come back!”
Papa doesn’t listen though. He waves to his dad and just keeps on swimming, further and further away.
“When daddy was a little boy/ All little boys were good/ And did just what their nurses/ And their parents said they should.// And sometimes when I’m naughty/ He takes me on his knee./ And tells me when he was little,/ how good he used to be.”
From a 1900 child’s handkerchief
When Papa was a little boy, he had no pets. Not really. He lived with his dad, Ark, and his mom, Yana in a city in Russia, in a large apartment they shared with three other families. When little Papa asked his parents if he could have a dog or a cat, they said, “Of course not, you know we are living in an apartment we have to share with three other families, we have no room for a dog or a cat” – and that was that.
And so little Papa had no pets. Unless you count the ants that lived in the windowsill. Sometimes he played with the ants. He would lay out little piles of sugar or breadcrumbs, and watch the ants grab the food and drag it into their hole in the windowsill. Or he would pretend the ants were an enemy army, and bomb them from the air with little balls of plasticine. But ants don’t count as pets.
So, little Papa had no pets. Not really. Well, once his mom brought home a cage with a family of guinea-pigs – a father, a mother, and a baby guinea-pig. Little Papa was very happy. It wasn’t his fault that in Russia, guinea-pigs are called sea-pigs. He felt sorry for the poor sea-pigs, having to live in a cage so far away from their home in the sea. He decided at least to let them swim in the bathtub for a while – starting with the father sea-pig. That didn’t go very well – and the two sea-pigs that survived were eventually given away to someone else.
Other than that, little Papa had no pets. Not really. The closest he ever came to a pet was a chicken. And this is how it happened.
That summer, like every other summer, little Papa and his parents went to live in the little summer-house they had next to the Black Sea. One morning, on the way home from the beach, little Papa and his dad took a different road. They passed a big yard with a fence, and inside they saw hundreds and hundreds of baby chickens. Little Papa came closer and saw one tiny baby chicken, fluffy and yellow, who had somehow managed to get out through the fence, and was running around outside. “Oh Papa,” said little Papa to his dad, “can’t we take it home? Please?” His dad looked at the chicken, looked at little Papa, sighed and said, “Well, I guess if we take just this one little chicken, no one will miss him, I guess.” And that is how Tzipka came to live with little Papa.
Little Papa was very happy. It was almost as good as having a dog. Tzipka followed little Papa everywhere. He would come running when little Papa whistled or called his name. He would let little Papa pick him up, and even sat on his shoulder and pecked him lightly on the ear. Others thought it was very funny. They told little Papa, “This chicken thinks you are his mother.” That made little Papa very proud.
As the summer went on, Tzipka lost his fluff and turned white. Every day he grew bigger and bigger. Little Papa’s parents would sometimes say, “Look how big and fat your chicken is. What do you think, should we have some chicken soup tomorrow?” They would laugh, which meant this was a joke, but little Papa didn’t think it was that funny.
With time, though, little Papa began to get tired of Tzipka following him everywhere. Tzipka was no longer fluffy and cute, and he was too big to be picked up. I am sorry to say that sometimes, when little Papa wanted to be alone, he even kicked Tzipka and shouted, “Go away, leave me alone, stop following me!” Tzipka soon learned to keep out of little Papa’s way.
Then, one night, Tzipka was gone. They found a hole dug in the earth under the box where Tzipka slept, and there were some white feathers scattered on the ground. “It must have been a fox,” little Papa was told. “See, the fox made a hole under the box and dragged your chicken away. Don’t cry. He was too big anyway. It was either this or the soup.”
Little Papa didn’t cry – because he knew better. He knew it wasn’t a fox. He knew that Tzipka had been hurt by his shouting and kicking, he had probably heard them talking about chicken soup, he had realized little Papa wasn’t his mother, and so he had escaped to the forest, where he would live with other wild chickens and be free.
Still, little Papa was sorry and sad for a while after that. And he made a promise to himself that when he grew up and had a kid of his own, he would make sure that he would have real pets, instead of just ants, sea-pigs and chickens.
And that is exactly what happened. Little Papa did grow up, and had not just one but two kids. They live in a big house with a back yard they don’t have to share with anyone. They have a cat, and a dog, and four hens as well. The dog follows big Papa everywhere, but big Papa never kicks him. And he never jokes about making soup out of the hens – at least not where they can hear him.
When Papa was a little boy, he wanted to be a spy. What he liked to do was look for secret messages, and catch enemy spies wherever he could find them.
Well, it just so happened that things were pretty quiet at that time; the enemy spies were either all gone or hiding really well. So, just to keep in shape, little Papa decided to write a secret spy note to himself. He hid the note under a stone in the courtyard of his apartment building. Then, when his best friend Sasha came down to play, little Papa very cleverly led him to the hiding place, and with a shout of surprise picked up the stone and found the note. Together they read it. “Be very careful,” said the note. “Police are everywhere. They are watching our every step. Do not come out until it is safe.”
Sasha and little Papa were very excited. This certainly explained why enemy spies were so hard to find these days. Of course, little Papa knew - and come to think of it, so did Sasha - that it was really little Papa who had written the note. But that didn’t bother them too much. They were sure that if the note was there, enemy spies would not be very far. There was not a moment to lose. Any time now, their mothers would be calling them upstairs for supper. If they were to find anything, they better start right now. And they knew exactly where to look.
In the courtyard of little Papa’s apartment, there was another tall building with a large and dark cellar. They had never gone there before, only peeked in once and twice. Carefully, they went down the stairs to the cellar. When they got to the bottom, it was so dark they could barely see. They remembered that they had no flashlights. But hey, they did have a box of matches, and little Papa found some old newspapers on the floor. He rolled up a newspaper, and Sasha lit it and held it up like a torch. Now they could see that the cellar was full of old furniture and what looked like dry straw all over the floor. There were also some dark mysterious shapes that Sasha thought were worth investigating. “Here,” he said, passing the burning newspaper to little Papa, “hold this, I’ll go see what’s in there.”
As soon as little Papa took the newspaper, it burned his fingers, and he let it drop to the floor. Right on top of the dry straw. Then little Papa and Sasha watched in horror as the flames spread across the floor and started licking the legs of old chairs. They tried to put out the fire by stomping on it with their shoes, but it was too late. (If you want to start a fire quickly, dry straw and old furniture are probably the best.)
Little Papa and Sasha ran back up the stairs and into the courtyard, shouting, “Help! Help! Fire!” Soon there were grownups running around with shovels and buckets of water. Little Papa and Sasha also grabbed a couple of buckets and started running from the water-tap to the cellar and back for more water. Thick smoke was everywhere. Then not one but two fire-trucks rolled into the courtyard, and little Papa went home.
His parents were away on a vacation, and only Grandma Fenya was at home, cooking in the kitchen. When little Papa came in, coughing from all the smoke he had swallowed, his face black and sweaty, his grandma took one look at him and dropped her stirring spoon. “What??!?? What happened to you!!?!!” she exclaimed.
“I was putting out the fire,” mumbled little Papa between coughing.
“The fire??!!” sputtered his grandma. “The fire!!?? You are not a fireman! You are a little boy! You have no business putting out fires!”
“Well,” said little Papa quietly, “I started it.”
The next day, after little Papa’s parents came back from their trip, they took little Papa to the police station. As they walked through the courtyard, they had to go around large puddles left behind by the fire-trucks. Little Papa felt strange and even a little proud knowing it was he who had made the puddles appear.
At the police station, the policeman behind the desk looked at little Papa and said, “I can see that you are a good boy. I am sure that you do not usually go around setting fires to buildings. So we will not put you in jail this time. But you have to promise to be careful and not to play with matches anymore, because next time we will not be so easy on you.”
Little Papa promised, his parents paid a fine, and they all went home. Little Papa was surprised that his parents didn’t sound very angry with him, and even smiled and patted him on the head. They must have had a good vacation. Or they were probably relieved that little Papa did not have to go to jail this time.
After that, little Papa no longer wanted to be a spy. When he grew up, he would be a firefighter.
Well, little Papa did grow up, but he never became a firefighter. Nor did he become a spy. And even if he did, he would never tell, now would he?
From the movie White Desert Sun - words by B. Okudzhava, music by Isaac Schwartz
Your most gracious majesty, Lady Separation,
Your embrace is cold as ice, that’s the situation.
Send my letter flying like a wounded dove.
Unlucky in dying, better luck in love.
Your most gracious majesty, Lady of Blue Yonder,
You will never take me home, only make me wander.
I’m a helpless fly in your soft velvet glove.
Unlucky in dying, better luck in love.
Your most gracious majesty, Lady Luck, my precious,
Some are kindled by your flames, other turn to ashes.
Now the chips are down, I am calling your bluff.
Unlucky in dying, better luck in love.
Your most gracious majesty, Lady of Salvation,
So the game’s not over yet, and that’s the situation.
The Hounds of Hell are crying - hold on, call them off!
Unlucky in dying, better luck in love.