in the fourth form would again be Maria Vasilievna, who had us in charge
from the very first form, and I thought she was the kindest teacher in
the whole wide world. But Vitalka, in the fifth form, would have
different teachers now, the most important of them the home teacher, who
was young and jolly like a summer-camp leader, and taught history and
drawing. Vitalka had fallen in love with her on the very first morning
and this was what caused all the trouble. But more of that later.
Suffice it to say that the first days of September were happy ones.
Our lessons ended early, we were not given much homework, and it was
still summer. True, the light evenings were over and it was already dark
by nine, but the dusk was warm and pleasant, and a full moon rose over
the roof tops.
We would fly in currents of air which looked green in the moonlight,
and the flying seeds would tickle our faces like fluffy insects.
Mum now knew about the flying carpet. I don't know how she found out
about our adventures but one day she asked, "What is it you fly on?"
I had to own up and show her the carpet, and she sighed and shook her
head. I tried to reassure her by saying that it was not a bit dangerous,
but she said, "It's not that that's worrying me, it's that you've become
so... secretive. Couldn't you tell me? You didn't want to, did you?"
"Well... I thought Auntie Valya had told you," I replied evasively.
"Auntie Valya..." said Mum, smiling ironically. "What a shame I have
to find out all about my own son from other people."
"I won't do it again, Mum," I said sincerely.
"All right... Only don't break your necks, you high fliers."
Uncle Seva came up and remarked that a lot of people flew in their
childhood but none of them ever broke his neck, so there was no need for
mother to worry...
From then on we did not go to too much trouble to hide our carpet for
a lot of people already knew about it or, at least, a lot of boys did.
Even boys we did not know used to come up, glance round and ask in a
whisper if they could have a ride. And simply as a formality, we used to
warn them that it was a secret and they would promise never to say a word
about it and, indeed, nobody ever did.
Sometimes in the evenings we organised rides down the steep
riverbank.
About seven people would pile onto it and sweep down the bank. The
carpet would swish downhill, brushing the tops of the bushes, the
currents of air sparkling in the moonlight. Our friends would squeal in
fright and delight as the river studded with green spots of light rushed
towards us...
Then we would skim over the water, turn round and land on the narrow
sandy bank.
The carpet could not carry so many passengers upwards so they had to
scramble up the overgrown paths to the top again but nobody minded. It
was rather like downhill tobogganning except that, unlike in winter, the
evenings were caressingly warm, and abounding in green verdure, moonlit
clouds and our friends' merry laughter.
But a few days later something dreadful happened: Vitalka broke his
leg. It happened in a quite ridiculous manner and had nothing to do with
the carpet: his foot slipped down a wide crack in a wooden pavement.
He had to keep his leg in plaster for three weeks and although it did
not prevent him from flying, it meant he could not go to school. He was
fairly cheerful about it for two days until he realised he would miss his
drawing class on Saturday and then he became really miserable. You see,
he remembered he had promised to show his pictures to his teacher.
He grumbled and whined so much that I lost my temper and yelled,
"You're just like a little baby! You can wait, can't you?"
"No, I can't! I really miss her!" Vitalka snapped back.
Out of respect for his feelings, I went to see my ninth-form
neighbour Klim, a cyclist who practically lived on his bicycle, and
explained that Vetka's bicycle was being mended after yet another flying
test but that Vitalka had to be taken to school and brought back after
lessons were over. Klim turned me down by saying his bicycle had weak
tyres and would not take an overload. I then reminded him that he gave
rides to his class-mate Galya and she was certainly no featherweight.
Without batting an eyelid, Klim then explained that he carried her on the
wings of love and not on his bike. He talked down to me as if I was a
small child and I lost my temper and remarked that no wings could
possibly support someone Galya's size. This put a slight strain on our
relationship and I had to beat a hasty retreat to Vitalka's.
After a great deal of thought, we decided to risk it.
Early in the morning I took Vitalka off to school and dropped him
right outside the first-floor window of his class-room, and then
collected him after school and raced home with him. Nobody spotted us in
the morning, but in the afternoon we flew off, accompanied by the
delighted whoops and envious whistles of many onlookers.
And at the first lesson on Monday Maria Vasilievna said, "Oleg, all
sorts of stories have been circulating about you for a long time. Are
they true? Do you really fly about on something? And if so, how?"
"It's just an ordinary flying carpet," I said. "Nothing special. At
first Gorodetsky and I marvelled at it, too, but then we got used to it."
"Well I never!" said Maria Vasilievna.
She was surprised but not too much. Over the past three years we had
given her so many different surprises that nothing could really shake her
any more.
"Will you show me your flying carpet?" she asked.
"Why of course! We can even give you a little ride on it."
The class sprang to life.
"Quiet now, children," said Maria Vasilievna because discipline had
to be maintained wonders or no wonders.
After this conversation I began think that we had got off easily, but
I was wrong.
It was late afternoon and I was waiting in my yard for Breezy and
Vetka to turn up so that we could all go over to Vitalka's. And while I
was waiting I was slashing the nettles and pretending they were Cardinal
Richelieu's guards. It was an honest match: I had a new sword and my
"opponents" had poisonous stings and prickly leaves. My arms and legs
were covered with painful red blotches and my blade was green from the
enemies' "blood".
I fenced my way through a dense formation of men to the Cardinal's
captain - the highest bush with a venerable grey top.
"Hey, soldier boy! Come over here!" someone called.
Klim and Galya were standing by the gate.
"What do you want?"
"We don't want anything," said Klim spitefully. "But the head-teacher
certainly does. She's ordered me to deliver you to her dead or alive
without delay."
I could tell he was not lying.
These summons gave me a shock although I did not show it. Jabbing my
sword in the ground, I strode boldly towards the gate and even remarked
in passing that lessons were over and the head-teacher could have had the
decency not to bother a person when he was otherwise occupied.
Galya gave me a sympathetic look, but Klim said with a smirk, "Never
mind, your harvesting can wait."
He sat Galya on the frame, told me to get on his luggage-carrier, and
we set off for school.
And the nearer we got, the more nervous I became.
"Stop fidgeting," said Klim. "She's not going to eat you, is she?"
But that was beside the point: I knew no good could await me either,
but could not very well run away, could I?
Klim and Galya dropped me by the school entrance and Klim said,
"Well, off you go. I presume you know where her office is."
Yes I did! I had been there before but never of my own free will.
I started feeling ill at ease on the staircase, and it was not simply
that I expected trouble, but that I always came to school decked out from
head to toe in my grey cloth uniform, whereas now I had been "snatched",
so to speak, straight off the street and transferred here from the
holidays in a time-machine. Tousled, and scratched, with blots on my skin
where my suntan was peeling off, I looked quite out of keeping with the
school and its austere walls, posters and paintings of famous writers and
a large sheet of school rules in a frame just like a picture. I now
yearned for my hateful rough school shirt and prickly ankle-length
trousers as for reliable armour against Vera Severyanovna's piercing
eyes, her wrath and, in general, against all kinds of mishaps.
Unfortunately, the only piece of uniform I now had on was my dark
shiny brass-buckled belt with a wooden dagger frivolously sticking out of
it. A dagger like that wasn't going to get me out of trouble. I felt just
as if I had been stood in an unheated corridor in winter in my light
summer clothes.
With butterflies in my stomach I knocked on the study door and Vera
Severyanovna called out, "Come in!" and, well, so I went in - what else
could I do!
"Good afternoon," I muttered.
Vera Severyanovna was sitting at her huge desk and her reflection in
the desk glass looked like an iceberg in a square patch of water. A
bearded man in spectacles was sitting by her desk and looking at me in
normal, kind sort of way while Vera Severyanovna stared at me accusingly.
"Come over here," she ordered.
I walked into the middle of the room but for some reason or other
could venture no further.
"Well, here he is," Vera Severyanovna said to the man and then turned
to look at me again as if she had really meant, "Just look what a sight
he is!"
I felt completely defenceless, and I moved my dagger's handle round
to the front to cover a hole in my tee shirt and folded my arms to hide
my grubby hands but there was nowhere to hide my grass-stained elbows. I
also wished I could pull up my dusty stung legs like aircraft wheels but
as this was not possible either, I simply shifted restlessly from one
plimsoll to the other.
"Stand up straight. Stop prancing about and put your arms down," Vera
Severyanovna ordered.
Sighing, I did as I was told.
"Now listen here, Lapnikov," she said. "We'll discuss your conduct on
another occasion, but right now I should like you to tell me how you do
it and about all these flights of yours."
I shrugged my shoulders and wondered what I could tell her.
"We just fly..."
Whereupon she angrily snapped, "Stop twitching your shoulders and
reply when you're asked a question. This gentleman has come here
specially from an institute to find out all about your tricks. And you
can rest assured, he will. Vasily Matveyevich is a Doctor of Physics."
"Oh is he, is he?" I thought. "Now he's going to start quizzing me
about how we overcome the force of gravity and that sort of thing..."
"Are you going to keep silent for long?" she asked sternly.
The scientist looked at me and then at her and suddenly said,
"Perhaps we could have a confidential talk?"
The head-teacher looked offended. I could tell so by the way she
blushed and began tugging at the shawl on her shoulders. However, she did
not snap at her visitor because he was not a pupil, you see. In fact she
even smiled as she said, "You want to have a man-to-man talk, do you?
Very well then..."
And out she went.
"Come over here, lad," Vasily Matveyevich said quietly, and I
suddenly noticed he looked very like Uncle Seva. He stood me between his
knees, touched my dagger handle with his fingertips, spotted the hole in
my tee shirt, grinned ever so faintly and looked up.
"Now start from the very beginning and tell me how it all happened.
And don't be afraid of anything."
So I told him about how we found the carpet and how we went flying on
it. However, I did not tell him the part about the belfry because it was
of no importance to science.
He sat and listened and when I finished, said, "So you don't give it
any orders? You don't say anything to it? You just have to will it and
off you fly?"
I nodded and he smiled for some reason and then said in a strange
voice,
"And is the carpet new?"
"No, it looks very old... but it's still in good shape."
He suddenly burst out laughing, squeezed my elbows tightly and
rumpled my hair, but I was in no laughing mood.
"Are you going to take the carpet away now?" I whispered and realised
I might burst into tears at any moment.
Still laughing, he shook his head.
"No, don't worry!"
I believed him and stopped worrying.
In came Vera Severyanovna.
"Well, gentlemen? May I come in now?"
The physicist politely said she could because we had already cleared
everything up.
"Have you now!" she exclaimed in surprise. "So soon?"
"Yes. You see, physics does not deal with problems of this kind."
"Really? That's odd... Which science does, then?"
The physicist smiled and shrugged.
"No science does, I'm afraid. Well, perhaps, poetry, but it's not a
science in my opinion. Science does not attempt to explain phenomena of
this nature, and there is nothing really to explain here. A lot of people
fly when they're children - on magic carpets or without any apparatus at
all..."
"And... what's going to happen now?" Vera Severyanovna asked in a
nervous tone, and gave me such a look that I stepped back into the middle
of the room again.
The physicist followed me with his eyes.
"Nothing. Unfortunately, childhood passes quickly."
"Yes but... before it does, can you imagine the things they'll get up
to? Besides, I don't understand the most important thing here, namely,
how they do it?"
"Well... Evidently, by using their imagination."
"What does that mean?" Vera Severyanovna asked in vexation.
"Everyone's got imagination but they're not leaping up into the sky, are
they now? I'm absolutely sure that no matter how much imagination I had,
I still wouldn't be able to fly."
"Yes, I can easily believe," said the physicist politely.
Vera Severyanovna stared for a long time at him and then at me, and
then through the window, tapped her fingers on her desk and then looked
at me again in the same accusing way as always and said, "You may go now,
Lapnikov. Come back with your mother tomorrow."
Well, blow me down!
"But what have I done?" I asked by dint of habit.
"No questions, please!" she rapped irritably, "I told you to bring
your mother and that will do. We'll go into exactly what you've done with
her."
And then I got really angry but did so in a quiet way, inside me, and
realised I was no longer afraid of her because she had no right to shout
at me for no reason. Had I broken some glass, or written graffiti on the
walls, or smoked in the breaks, or got lots of low marks? No, nothing of
the kind! All right, I had flown with Vitalka on a magic carpet but so
what! It was our carpet, not hers.
I was sick to death of this whole business and wanted to get it over
as quickly as possible, so I stared unflinchingly at her, scratched my
right ankle with my left plimsoll and said nonchalantly, "Mother's busy
tomorrow. If you like, I'll bring her today."
The physicist smiled at me.
"Bring her today then!" Vera Severyanovna snapped back.
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