Everything Begins In Childhood

Chapter 20. We Don’t Give a … Spit

A gob of spit sailed down smoothly from above, moving in an arc until it plopped onto the asphalt below my window. It was accompanied by a sound I knew all too well. A second one followed, then a third, and so on, without stopping.

The frequency of the spitting allowed me to determine exactly how many members there were in the spitting party up above.

I, along with my friends, was so often engaged in that fascinating occupation that I had studied all its stages in detail, the speed at which the gobs fell and the sounds they made.

Now, my friends, the Edem brothers and Rustem, were engaged in spitting on the third floor, and I sat at my window on the ground floor and watched them play, without annoyance or envy.

“Aaaa-khem” was heard from above.

I knew very well what would follow.

That aa-khem sound, for instance, had just come from Rustem. I knew that he stood, holding the window frame with both hands like a gymnast holding onto a bar. He leaned back, threw back his head and snorted like a horse. Why did he do that? To get more saliva in his mouth… He now bent down to the very edge of the window and spat with all his might.

We boys had a different name for a gob of spit, we called it a kharchok. Consequently, the game, which was a competition to see who could spit the farthest without leaning out of the window was called kharching. It wasn’t a pleasant-sounding name, but… that was what we liked to call it.

So, why wasn’t I taking part in that wonderful competition today but rather sitting on my veranda as a detached observer?

I hadn’t been invited. It had been two days since the boys stopped playing with me and talking to me: they were ignoring me completely. Even though we hadn’t quarreled, I could guess what the matter was, and, though suffering from loneliness, I couldn’t force myself to ask for a truce.

We hadn’t quarreled, but our fathers had.

Ball playing near our entrance had been the cause of the quarrel. A big group of boys including Edik, Rustem and Kolya had been playing. In general, ball playing near the entrance was forbidden, but the boys broke that rule every now and then. Most often they would break the rule near our veranda. Perhaps that was what made the game especially delightful.

My father was the most explosive and intolerant adult in our building. That meant that the players enjoyed every opportunity to drive him crazy and listen to his yelling.

Perhaps that was the reason why most of the time a ball tossed into the air wouldn’t hit the asphalt, the door of the building or Dora’s veranda but rather our window.

That was the reason I would watch the game from the veranda with a feeling of dread and not join them outside.

Our window had already been broken several times. I didn’t enjoy seeing Father fly into a rage, so I tried to stay away from the players.

When the ball smashed into our window, I had just enough time to jump aside so the broken glass wouldn’t fall on me.

Before the clinking and clanking could die out, I heard the stomping of feet – the frightened boys rushed away in all directions. It was safer to listen to Yuabov’s raging from a distance. I looked around. There was the black rubber ball I knew so well among the fragments of glass on the floor of the veranda. This time, the ball looked somewhat smug. It would be fun to draw eyes and a nose on it with chalk, and a mouth would appear all by itself, smiling broadly, as if to say, “There are no obstacles I cannot overcome.”

I held the ball in my hands, then laid it in the corner. There was no one to return it to since the boys were hiding. And, as I later understood, I didn’t want to do them such a favor – after all, they had broken our window.

All right, it can stay here for now, I decided. Let them come over to get it themselves. As a victim, I sort of sided with my father. I took malicious pleasure in the thought of the inevitable punishment the boys would be subjected to and didn’t think about the possible consequences of my choice.

In the evening, there was a knock at our door. Vasily Nikolayevich, Kolya and Sasha’s father, entered. In our part of the building he was considered an important person – Vasily worked in retail, and he would help some people obtain foodstuffs that were in short supply, like meat, for example.

That didn’t apply to our family. Hardly anyone ever wanted to help my father.

Vasily remained in the hallway, exchanged a few words with Mama and asked her whether Amnun was home. Father walked into the hallway, and they exchanged greetings.

“Please give me the children’s ball,” the neighbor requested.

“Yes, I have it,” Father said slowly. “But first let’s have new windowpane installed.”

At this point, Kolya’s father looked at me as I stood quietly at the door to my room.

“My kids stay in their room when the adults talk,” he informed me.

I had no choice, so I went into my room and closed the door. It goes without saying that I pressed my ear against it.

At first, the voices sounded quite calm.

“It’s our ball, it’s Kolya’s… My kids didn’t break your window. They say Server from the next entrance did it,” Vasily said in his deep voice.

“I don’t care whether it was Server or not … They were playing together, right? So, they are all responsible. I’ll return the ball after the glass is replaced,” Father answered in a monotone.

“Listen, Amnun…” Vasily said with irritation. “I’ve already explained that Kolya had nothing to do with it.”

Explaining anything to Father was a lost cause. He was stubborn and never made concessions for the sake of maintaining good relations with people, even when it was an issue regarding children. He just didn’t know the meaning of concession, magnanimity, or negotiations.

Father was an athlete and a coach, and he most likely viewed any conflict as a contest where he was facing an opponent. And an opponent had to be defeated. No compromises!

“I’m not going to give it back. Get it?”

“Don’t you understand…”

The voices were getting louder. Shouts and stomping of feet were heard. I craned my neck and stuck my head out into the hallway. The fathers were grappling at the door. Mama ran out of the kitchen shouting, “Papesh, stop it! Vasily Nikolayevich, how can you?” And, naturally, she got it too. Infuriated, Father pushed her so hard she almost hit the wall. That was probably what brought Vasily to his senses. He mumbled, “What a nut! Ester, I’m sorry…” and he left, slamming the door behind him.

After that, Kolya and Sasha, whose ball it was, stopped hanging around with me; Edem and Rustem too.

Seated close to the open windows of the veranda, listening enviously to the kharks, without realizing it I began thinking about our relationship.

It wasn’t the first time the boys had quarreled with me. Sometimes they stopped hanging out with me even without quarreling. Quarrels and fights among boys are a normal thing. They might fight or quarrel, and an hour later they’ve forgotten all about it.

But this time it was different; it was something else.

And then I realized – it was because of him just about every time we quarreled, because of my father. Of course… why I hadn’t I realized it before? As soon as he would quarrel with one of the neighbors, one who had kids, my friends would begin to shun me. And he quarreled so often! Perhaps the boys heard their parents discuss it at home, talk about my father… I couldn’t imagine what they might say about him. I always understood that Father’s character was known to everybody in our building, that people were afraid of him and tried to avoid him. I knew better than anyone else how he treated Mama and us kids, and I had also seen many times how he treated other people.

I would call Father’s character unpredictable. He could help a person and he could be generous, but then he would stop talking to that person for some unknown reason, without explaining anything. And he always had to have his own way, never listening to reason, demonstrating utter stubbornness.

Yes, they didn’t like my father in our building. But what did that have to do with me?

Standing on the veranda and listening to the spitting, I bitterly pondered all of that.

I knew that we would make up soon, that the boys would come up to me and begin to talk to me, ask me to play with them. But that didn’t make what I felt now any less bitter. We would make up, but then would they refuse to hang out with me again later? When would it happen? And how many times would I have to put up with insults? Didn’t the boys understand that I myself suffered much more because of my father than any of them did?

Aa-khem, aa-khem could still be heard from the third floor, as if my friends who were standing up there were saying, “And we don’t give a … spit.”