Читать книгу Nine Rabbits - Virginia Zaharieva - Страница 19

Money

Rufi and I liked roaming the beaches most of all. We would lounge on the dunes, spy on the nudists, and swim in the sea despite the bans. Once the season started, we would use a flour sieve to sift the sand around the changing rooms, since money and all sorts of valuables would fall out of the pockets of those changing. The other way of gathering funds was collecting empty bottles. We would return them to the store and they’d give us some money. We would split up the day’s haul. Rufi, who was older and in first grade, knew a thing or two about money. Gathering all the coins in his palm, he’d say, “Take your pick.” I, of course, would take the little gold coins while he, to my amazement, picked the silver ones. Afterward when we went to the store, he would buy himself a whole box of chocolate bars and maybe even a soda to boot, while all I’d get were a few candies. This was surely because the clerk was some aunt of his and that’s why she gave him more stuff. Once, we dug up a man’s watch and decided that Rufi should wear it, since he was in first grade, knew what time it was, and was a man. We didn’t tell anyone about our treasures; we squirreled them away in our secret hiding place in the fort we had built in the crown of a huge tree in the forest that began in front of our houses.

Once, at dusk, we found two silver fifty-cent pieces in the sand by the changing rooms and we split them up, each taking one. It was too late to go to the hideaway. At home, as I was getting undressed for my bath, the coin fell out of the Indian leather pouch around my neck. Grandma grabbed it and asked me where I’d gotten it from.

“I found it.”

“You’re lying! You stole it. Who’d you take it from?” Nikula insisted.

“I didn’t take it from anybody! I found it.”

“Where?”

“On the street in front of Rufi’s house.” We had agreed not to tell anyone about the trick with the sieve.

“You didn’t say anything? You didn’t ask whose it was?”

“There was nobody around!”

“Oh, so you waited for the guy to leave.”

“What guy?”

“What were you going to do with it?”

“I don’t know. Buy candy or soda.”

“Good God, I’m raising a little thief.” Nikula hurled herself onto the couch, like she had fainted. She was staring at the ceiling, where the instructions for what to do with terrible children were written. “Now I’ll teach you a lesson!” She disappeared into the room where the sewing machine was. Soon she returned, held a needle in front of my face and asked, “Which do you prefer to be jabbed with: a hot needle or a cold one?”

Picturing the white-hot iron, I pulled away and started squealing: “Cooooold!”

“Fine,” Nikula said. Sitting on a chair, she pressed me between her knees, stuck my left hand under her armpit so I couldn’t defend myself and began quickly jabbing my right one, shouting: “This’ll teach you not to take other people’s money and things that don’t belong to you, you miserable little thief!”

“I wooooon’t,” I screamed from the pain, trying to break away and hoping somebody would appear. But the house was empty. My grandmother wasn’t fooling; she laid into me with the needle like nobody’s business, egging herself on in the name of honesty all the while: “My children don’t steal! Where did this filthy little Sofian fiend pop out of?”

When I was sufficiently perforated, she let me go and told me, as calm as could be, “Stop crying. I’ll disinfect it with iodine.”

At the thought of the burning iodine, I bolted out of the house and slipped into the woods across the way. I ran until I reached the tree with the fort. My hand was bleeding and stinging. It was starting to get cold. Good thing we had brought an old blanket to the fort. I spread out some newspapers and curled up under the blanket. I heard Nikula calling me until late into the night, but I didn’t dare go home.

My grandmother had a very fluid concept of honesty. In late autumn, she would organize the kids on hand and we would glean. Whatever the pickers had overlooked in the orchards and vineyards was ours. Our bags filled up with all sorts of earthly goods, some of which did not seem “overlooked” at all—unless, of course, the pickers had decided to pass over whole fields. There was some sort of joyful thrill in our quick and quiet roving through the fields by the sea at dusk. The best was when grapes were the target of our picking. If they were fit to eat, we would set some aside and dump the rest in a large wooden trough. My grandma would wash my feet with soap and then let me stomp the grapes until every last one was squashed. This made a thick, sweet nectar, which we strained and drank to our heart’s content, then poured the rest into large glass bottles for wine.

At dawn I awoke in the fort, cold and in pain. My hand had swelled enormously, covered in scabs. I set off toward the sea through the almond trees. I wanted to wash my wounds with salt water. When I reached the monastery, the sun was already rising.

“Manda, where are you headed so early?”

Mother Superior’s voice startled me. She was sitting down, leaning against a dried tree.

“To swim in the sea.”

“Isn’t it cold still? Come here, come here for a minute.”

I hid my hand behind my back and wondered whether to approach her.

“Come here,” Efrosinia said, and spread open the skirts of her wide habit. “First come here and get warmed up.” I went over, sat down by Mother Superior and let her embrace me. Tears burst from my eyes. I hadn’t known I wanted to cry. My whole body started shaking. Mother Superior pressed me close and stroked my hair. Her habit and hands always smelled like incense and thyme. I gradually calmed down and fell asleep. I was awakened by the sun, which was now blazing.

“Let me see.”

“See what?”

“Your hand.”

As she pulled it out from under her habit, two deep vertical wrinkles furrowed her forehead.

“Who did this to you?”

Silence.

“Come with me.”

I pulled away. “Please, no iodiiiine.”

“I’m not going to put iodine on it.”

“Will it hurt?”

“It won’t hurt—now come on!”

Mother Superior poured a mixture into a pan and washed the wounds with gauze dipped in the mix. It only stung slightly. Then she picked some stonecrop from the garden, peeled off the thin membrane, put it on my hand, wrapped it up in cheesecloth, and said, “Don’t get it wet today. You can tell me when you’re ready.”

“Grandma. Because she thought I had stolen fifty cents. But I found it and picked it up. But she didn’t believe me and punished me. She asked me whether I wanted cold or hot. I chose cold. Then I ran away. I slept in the tree.”

Mother Superior kept silent, her face taut, and pressed me to her.

“Next time you find something, show it to her. Now go home, they’ll surely be out looking for you. Come back tomorrow and I’ll put some more stonecrop on it. And don’t get your hand wet today.”

When I got home, Grandma wasn’t there. Grandpa was just going out. “Where have you been? We’ve driven ourselves crazy looking for you! What’s wrong with your hand?”

“Grandma jabbed it yesterday because she thought I had stolen some money. I slept in the woods. Mother Superior wrapped it up with herbs.”

He sighed. “I called your mother. She’ll be here soon. I’m going to the monastery.”