The Old Genie Hottabych

A NO LESS TROUBLED MORNING

Morning dawned bright and beautiful.

At 6:30 a.m. Grandma opened the door softly, tiptoed to the window and opened it wide. Cool, invigorating air rushed into the room. This was the beginning of a cheerful, noisy, busy Moscow morning. But Volka would not have awakened had not his blanket slipped off the bed.

The first thing he did was to feel the bristles on his chin. He realized there was no way out. The situation was hopeless. There could be no question of his going out to greet his parents looking as he did. He snuggled under the blanket again and began to think of what to do.

“Volka! Come on, Volka! Get up!” he heard his father calling from the dining room. He pretended to be asleep and did not answer. “I don’t see how anyone can sleep on a morning like this!”

Then he heard his grandmother say:

“Someone should make you take examinations, Alyosha, and then wake you up at the crack of dawn!”

“Well, let him sleep then,” his father grumbled. “But don’t you worry, he’ll get up as soon as he’s hungry.”

Was it Volka who was supposed not to be hungry?! Why, he kept catching himself thinking about an omlette and a chunk of bread more than about the reddish bristle on his cheeks. But common sense triumphed over hunger, and Volka remained in bed until his father had left for work and his mother had gone shopping.

“Here goes,” he decided, hearing the outside door click shut. “I’ll tell Grandma everything. We’ll think of something together.”

Volka stretched, yawned and headed toward the door. As he was passing the aquarium, he glanced at it absently . … and stopped dead in his tracks. During the night, something had happened in this small, four-cornered glass reservoir, a mysterious event which could in no way be explained from a scientific point of view: yesterday, there were three fishes swimming around inside, but this morning there were four. There was a new fish, a large, fat goldfish which was waving its bright red fins solemnly. When a startled Volka looked at it through the thick glass wall he was nearly certain the fish winked at him slyly.

“Gosh!” he mumbled, forgetting his beard for the moment.

He stuck his hand into the water to catch the mysterious fish, and it seemed that this was just what it was waiting for. The fish slapped its tail against the water, jumped out of the aquarium and turned into Hottabych.

“Whew!” the old man said, shaking off the water and wiping his beard with a magnificent towel embroidered with gold and silver roosters which had appeared from thin air. “I’ve been waiting to offer my respects all morning, but you wouldn’t wake up and I didn’t have the heart to waken you. So I had to spend the night with these pretty fishes, O most happy Volka ibn Alyosha!”

“Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for making fun of me!” Volka said angrily. “It’s really a poor joke to call a boy with a beard happy!”