"Oh, yes, let's!" said Vetka joyfully.
"But what if he spots us?" I asked.
"There you go again!" said Vitalka in annoyance. "If we're always
scared to do things, we'll spend our life sitting in a dark corner."
I shrugged my shoulders. After all, I was only asking. Let him see
us, for all I cared. There was no point hiding from a nice person, was
there?
We scribbled the following message on half a sheet of paper:
WE WANT TO GET
TO KNOW YOU,
WHAT'S YOUR NAME?
WRITE IT ON THE KITE.
THE FLYING TRAMPS
Then we made a bow out of the note with a length of string knotted in
the middle rather like the kind you dangle in front of a kitten. We left
Vetka to keep an eye on the roof through the telescope, climbed through
the window, lay flat on the carpet and soared up into the sunny sky
towards the kite.
We had completely forgotten that our flying carpet was also meant to
resemble a kite. If anyone had spotted us, they would have been terribly
surprised, for kites never fly at such a terrific speed. But we were in a
hurry and the only thing that worried us then was that the boy should not
come up and see us.
From so high up we could not spot his roof and so had no idea whether
he was on it or not. And there wasn't time to examine the ground below.
We flew up to the kite. Large, red and yellow, glowing in the sun, it was
hanging almost motionlessly in the air with only its tail fluttering
gently.
Vitalka seized hold of its wispy end, which was weighted down by some
pebbles, and fixed the note to it with a wire hook. The kite angrily
jerked its tail away and then hung motionlessly again in the currents of
air. We rushed back home.
"Everything's fine!" Vetka called out from behind the telescope. "He
hasn't come up yet!"
We waited and about twenty minutes later the boy in the green shirt
climbed out onto the roof and sat down beside the aerial to which the
string of his kite was attached. We were even angry - was not he going to
spot the note? After all the paper bow was blazing like a white spark on
the end of the kite's tail.
"That's it!" cried Vitalka in delight, for he happened to be looking
through the telescope at the time. I shoved him aside and took a look
myself.
The boy was hurriedly winding up the thread.
"The kite's coming down!" Vetka cried excitedly and pushed me away
from the lense. "Oh, it's down now... Oh, how huge it is... Oh, he's
untying the note..."
"Stop gasping and give us the facts," ordered Vitalka.
"He's reading it... Gosh, he looks surprised! He's glancing round as
if looking for us... Oh, he's reading it again... He's looking round
again... And now he's climbing down from the roof with his kite..."
"What if he got scared?" asked Vitalka anxiously.
"Oh, whatever next!" replied Vetka in a slightly offended tone.
And I agreed with her. Although I had only seen the boy for a couple
of seconds, I was sure that he was not at all the timid type. And now I
wanted to get to know him even more.
He was just like us...
"We'll see," said Vitalka.
We kept our eyes out and waited.
Half an hour later the kite rose up again and flew up quickly and
smoothly as if it had an engine. We banged our heads together in front of
the lense again.
On the kite's red and yellow patterns we spotted some large black
letters spelling.
SASHA VETRYAKOV
"Now what?" Vetka asked impatiently. "Are you going to tie another
note to the tail?"
After a moment's thought Vitalka replied, "No, we mustn't do the same
thing twice... Let's leave him a letter tonight."
"Oh, that's such a long way off," I objected, and Vetka gave me a
grateful look.
But Vitalka said, "Well, tomorrow's not so long to wait for. But then
it'll be fun.
Then we composed the following message:
IF YOU WANT TO GET
TO KNOW US COME AT 12 NOON
TO THE CORNER OF ANCHOR
AND MAY THE FIRST STREET.
THE FLYING TRAMPS
That night Vitalka and I flew off and found the house belonging to
the kite's owner. Then we tied our note to an old ski stick and sent it
swishing downwards. It stood upright in the wooden roof next to the
aerial.
We were sure the boy would come and when he didn't, we were terribly
disappointed, and Vetka especially so. We made our way home in gloomy
silence.
Then Vetka cheered up and said, "Why, we're so stupid! Suppose he
didn't even go up onto the roof today and hasn't seen the stick? He can't
be flying his kite every day!"
Of course! Why hadn't we thought of that before?
We all looked up at the sky to check there was no kite in it.
But there was, only this time it was white with black spots.
We tore off home to our telescope.
The following words stood out on the kite which was almost
transparent in the sunlight:
I WANT TO BUT I CAN'T
We exchanged glances, and Vitalka said, "Well, if he can't, we'll go
ourselves."
The house was in Timber-Rafters' Street. It was ordinary and old with
shutters and lopsided gates bearing the oval tin emblem of an old
insurance company. A green flag was fluttering over the house: it was the
kite's young owner on roof duty. He did not see us because he was
standing with his back to us and looking at the kite.
We stood in a line along the edge of the road with Vetka in between
Vitalka and myself and glanced enquiringly at one another, wondering what
to do next. For some reason Vetka turned aside and giggled. Then Vitalka
said loudly, "Sasha Vetryakov!"
The boy turned round at once and his shirt flaps flew up behind him
like green wings.
He smiled slightly at first and then more and more happily and you
could tell at once that he was a good fellow.
"Is that you?" he asked and walked right to the edge of the roof and
let go of the thread. The kite began somersaulting down.
"Yes, it's us," Vitalka said seriously. "But why did you let go of
your kite?"
"Oh, never mind that," he replied. "Now that you're here, nothing
else matters... So you're the Flying Tramps?"
We climbed up a rickety ladder standing by the porch, and scrambled
onto the roof because Sasha had said he could not come down to the
ground.
"Why ever not, Sanya?" asked Vetka as soon as she was on the roof.
She at once started acting as if she knew him well and called him
Sanya instead of Sasha. She probably thought it suited him better.
He wrinkled his nose in embarrassment and explained light-heartedly,
"It so happened... I cut up a polythene sheet of Granny's, thinking she
didn't need it but it then turned out she did need it to cover up
vegetable beds on cold nights. Granny didn't even scold me but Mum said I
was to stay indoors for three days and go no further than the porch. So
that's why I'm living up on the roof. How could I possibly stick it out
on the porch?"
Vetka glanced cautiously down and moved away from the edge of the
roof.
"But won't we catch it hot from your Mum and Granny? They'll ask us
what we think we're going, climbing up onto someone else's roof?"
"Well, first of all, they wouldn't say that and, anyway, they're not
at home. They've gone off to my other granny in the country for a couple
of days."
"And left you all on your own?" asked Vetka.
"What of it? I'm used to it. In Leningrad I often lived alone."
"But why are you staying indoors if you're alone? After all, they
don't know what you're doing," Vitalka asked.
Sanya glanced hesitantly at us as if afraid we might find it funny.
"Well, you see... You see, I sort of gave my word..."
"I see," said Vitalka hurriedly. "I was only asking... And, anyway,
it isn't bad up here on the roof."
No, it wasn't bad up on the roof. A warm breeze was blowing over us
and the sun was nice and hot. There was a small bench by the chimney-pot
on the steep slope. The roof smelt of heated wood and the brick chimney
of lime and soot, but strongest of all were the smells of damp sand and
warm wormwood carried by the wind from the riverbank.
Sanya sat between me and Vetka and glanced at us in turn. He was
probably wondering what to say next.
"Why haven't we seen you around before?" I asked. "We know everyone
in the streets round here. Are you from Leningrad?"
Sanya nodded.
He had lived with his parents in Leningrad while they were studying
at college. After graduating earlier in the year, they had come to work
in our shipyard. But shortly after starting work, Sanya's father had
left town again to take part in some races. He was an ace racing driver.
"He spent more time racing than studying in Leningrad, too," said
Sanya cheerfully. "Mum says he wrote his diploma work on the saddle of
his motorbike..."
As we sat and chatted with him like this, the three of us grew more
and more surprised. Vitalka finally leaned forward and gave me a puzzled
and impatient look. I got the message and said, "I say, Breezy, why don't
you ask how we attached the note to your kite?"
I don't know how this name escaped me. I had secretly called him this
the very first time I set eyes on him firstly because his name,
Vetryakov, suggested it(*), and, secondly, because he was so light and
airy, and an ordinary name like Sasha or Sanya did not suit him at all.
And now this name had just slipped out somehow.
(*) Vetryakov is a derivative from
the Russian word "veter" - wind. -Tr.
Breezy's eyebrows were slightly arched as if he was constantly
wondering if we were poking fun at him. And now his eyes opened wide in
complete astonishment.
"Why... why did you call me that?" he asked.
I became embarrassed like a silly little girl and started mumbling
some sort of nonsense. Then Sanya smiled and said, "My nickname used to
be Windmill at school."
"Well, you certainly don't look like one!" said Vitalka. "Windmills
look like this!" He stood up and started waving his arms. "Oleg's name's
better."
And so from then on Vitalka and I always called him Breezy.
"And I guessed about your note straightaway," said Breezy. "You must
have a model plane with remote control, is that so?"
The three of us exchanged glances and bit our lips so as not to
laugh, and Vitalka hurriedly said, "Yes, that's right. With remote
controls"
"We'll show it to you soon," Vetka promised.
"I've made models, too," said Breezy and sighed. "Only it's no good
flying them from the roof because they don't come back. But kites do...
You know, people sometimes fly on big kites - I've seen them in films.
Have you?"
"We've seen stranger things..." I began saying proudly but catching
Vitalka's disapproving stare, stopped in mid-sentence. He thought I was
boasting.
Breezy picked a flat chip off the roof, tossed it up in the air and
watched the wind twirling it. "I think..." he said gingerly, "if you
built a large model... I mean, a really large one, about five metres
long, you could probably fly it just like a plane, couldn't you?"
"Then it would be a plane and not a model," I said.
"Planes are hard to build but you can make models - even large ones -
quite easily... And then you can build on a seat and a control lever..."
He screwed up his eyes slightly and staring ahead, drew up his legs,
put his feet up on the bench and placed his clenched fists on his
tucked-up knees as if clutching onto the steering-wheel of a plane...
We understood him very well because each of us dreamed of becoming
someone when he grew up: Vetka wanted to be a ballet dancer, Vitalka an
artist and I a sailor or better still, a sea captain. And Breezy wanted
to fly planes.
Then it occurred to me that each of my friends was trying to see his
dream come true! Vetka was taking dancing lessons, Vitalka was drawing
pictures and Breezy was making models. Only I was loafing about and did
not even know how to be a sailor. I kept putting things off but not any
more! That very next day I would start doing exercises and learn all
about knots.
I was distracted from these unhappy thoughts by Breezy who started
telling us how last year he had joined the young pilot's group at the
regional Young Pioneers' club.
"I'd heard that everything there was real... Well, they certainly do
have proper suits for high-altitude flights. And they've built a cockpit,
just like in a real plane. But all the work's done on the ground and they
don't let anybody fly, not even the older boys."
"Children aren't allowed to fly planes," said Vitalka.
"Why not?" demanded Breezy. "A boy can pilot a plane! Remember the
film 'The Last Inch'?"
Of course we did! We'd seen it three times. I was about a young lad
like us, a pilot's son who flew a plane when his Dad got wounded fighting
sharks in the sea. But it was only a film...
"I've seen it three times, too," said Breezy. "And I could see it
another hundred times..."
"Well then, let's," suggested Vetka. "It's on at the outdoor cinema
this evening. It just so happens Mum's working in the second shift today
so I'm free."
"We won't be let in to the evening showing," I said.
Vetka gave me an angry glance and tapped her forehead with her
finger.
"It's not indoors, you know. And there're birches all around.
Nobody'll spot us among the branches."
"I still can't go," said Breezy sadly.
"Yes, you can," said Vetka determinedly. "What were you told not to
do? Not to set foot on the ground outside the porch. Well, don't worry,
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