31


Naturally just as Eddie is about to fall asleep his mother comes in and wakes him up.

"You're home?" she says in amazement. "You made a mistake not going with me to Auntie Marusya's, you fool. We all danced; it was lots of fun. Uncle Vanya even tap-danced."

"Uh-huh," Eddie sleepily mumbles, "lots of fun."

"A lot more fun than with your hoodlums, anyway," his mother counters, and then takes the offensive. "Why don't you take off your awful shoes? I always have to clean up the couch after you. There are spots all over it. And what kind of person sleeps in his jacket?! You're not a son, you're a barbarian!"

Eddie-baby no longer feels like sleeping. And he also realizes that contrary to his expectations, his mother has come back from Auntie Marusya's in a brisk and energetic mood, so that he is assured of at least an hour of nagging. He therefore gets up, takes down the suitcase standing in the doorway recess behind the portiere, removes the sleeping bag given to him for his birthday by the Shepelskys, and goes out onto the balcony.

"What are you doing? Are you out of your mind!" his mother exclaims. "It's November outside! Do you want to catch pneumonia? You're tetched!" And his mother rotates her index finger next to her temple to indicate just how tetched Eddie-baby is.

It's Eddie-baby's view that his mother likes to brag about the purity of her Russian, as if it were unspoiled by the local Ukrainianized pronunciation and Ukrainian usage, but she still uses slang words like "tetched," and she still pronounces them the same way everybody else does.

The tetched Eddie snorts contemptuously and goes out onto the balcony, closing the door behind him.

At Eddie-baby's request, they finally decided to remodel the balcony into a separate room, following the example of their neighbors, who have successfully created additional living space for themselves that way. The lethargic Veniamin Ivanovich bestirred himself at last and even paid the builders to erect a wide partition between their part of the balcony and Major Shepotko's, and to put up a whole system of wooden window frames to separate the front part of the balcony from the outside world. That structure still doesn't have any panes, however, and the temperature on the balcony is therefore the same as it is outside.

Eddie-baby spreads out the sleeping bag on a folding canvas cot and crawls into it. He's no longer sleepy. The goddamn money problem is bothering him again. "Where can I get some money? Where?" Eddie thinks over and over as he tosses and turns in his sleeping bag.

Eddie believes that if his mother really were a decent human being, she wouldn't begrudge him the 250 rubles. It's hardly anything at all! But his mother has dug in her heels. Raisa Fyodorovna is just as stubborn as Eddie is.

The light has been turned out inside; Eddie's mother has gone to bed. And no sooner has it been turned out than Eddie-baby recalls the cafeteria.

"What a great idea!" Eddie decides. "They probably took in a pile of money that they haven't had a chance to turn over to the bank messenger for deposit. What kind of bank messenger would there be on a holiday evening anyway?"

Eddie-baby still has doubts, however, about the amount of money actually taken in today at the cafeteria on First Cross Street, and he therefore can't decide whether or not to burgle it. He lies in the darkness for a while and thinks. The cries of the late-night revelers gradually die out in the fall Saltovka air as the last groups finally begin to break up and go home.

"I'll go," Eddie decides. "I'll take a look. If there's an opportunity, I'll slip in. The only bad thing is that they leave the light on all night in the cafeteria, so you can see everything that's happening inside through the big new glass door and the huge windows." One of the windows, however, leads to the semibasement, and that's the one Eddie is thinking of using to break into the cafeteria. Nobody will see him when he knocks out the glass.

He has already decided to go, but after checking all his pockets, carefully turning over in the sleeping bag for that purpose, which makes the springs and tubes of the folding canvas cot squeak, Eddie-baby suddenly realizes that he has left his glasses in the other room. That circumstance immediately cools his ardor, and he lies still for a while, having decided not to break into the cafeteria after all.

"But where will I get the money to take Svetka to Sashka Plotnikov's?" Eddie asks himself in dismay. "If I don't get it, the fickle Svetka will start going with Shurik." She has already boasted that Shurik, who works as a clerk in a shoe store, makes a lot of money and never comes to see her without a box of chocolates and a bottle of champagne. "As far as I'm concerned, you're poor!" the insolent Svetka once told Eddie, puckering up her little doll's face. Eddie-baby pictures Svetka's little doll's face to himself and smiles. Svetka also has terrific long, long legs exactly like the ones belonging to the women in the foreign magazines that Kadik once showed him. Sashka Plotnikov has the same kind of magazines – French, German, even American ones. They belong to his father.

Svetka's mother, regardless of what they say in the district about her being a prostitute, still dresses Svetka according to the latest fashion. Svetka wears starched crinolines and dresses trimmed with lace, which makes her look even more like a doll.

Eddie-baby is proud of his Svetka and regards her as the best-looking girl in the district – among the minors, obviously… "Yes, and among the grown-ups too," Eddie decides after thinking about it…

Eddie-baby has finally made up his mind to go. And to go without his glasses, since getting them from the other room would mean waking his mother up; she's a very light sleeper and would certainly wake up as soon as he opened the door. "I've got to go, I've got to," Eddie says to himself by way of bolstering his courage. "There's no other way to get the money." The cafeteria really does seem to him to be his only chance. The idea first came to him that afternoon as he walked past it with Asya and Tomka, and it came to him precisely because of the crowds of customers he saw in there. "They've obviously taken in a lot of money over the holidays," Eddie continues to reassure himself, "since who worries about spending money when it's a holiday?"

Eddie carefully climbs out of the sleeping bag, and after checking the contents of his pockets one more time and buttoning up his jacket, he pushes his body through one of the openings in the paneless window frames. A minute later and Eddie is already sitting on the balcony's concrete cornice. He could jump down – after all, it's only the second floor – but he's afraid of waking his mother and Tolik Perevorachaev downstairs, since they might hear him land. So he grabs hold of the still open framework covering the balcony and hangs by his hands. Like Eddie's family, the Perevorachaevs long ago built themselves an additional room on their own first-floor balcony, and Eddie therefore has to take extra precautions in order not to break one of the Perevorachaevs' windows. He slides his body over the glass, seeking a foothold below, but unable to find it, he releases his hands: plop! He lands safely on the asphalt path that goes around the perimeter of their building.


Загрузка...