Good Boys and Where to Find Them. Anton Prus

very upset. Still, this was a happy day, fishing with mom. A very happy day. Pity I ever got to go with her this once…

      And then summer was suddenly over. Of course, before it has ended, I got to go mushroom hunting and raspberry picking with grandpa, we even went fishing, and he caught many ablets and small roaches*, and dad took me fishing for crayfish, and many other grownup things. And then one day we picked a bunch of flowers in the garden and went home, to Leningrad. This time grandma was the one crying, and I was telling her that she shouldn’t cry because we would come back, it’s just that I had kindergarten, but that I would come back in the winter to build a snow slide.

      And of course we came back in the winter. Uncle Serezha, mom’s younger brother built us a snow slide together with dad, and we busted it up that same day with my brothers, Misha and Valera, because we were fighting about who would get to try it first. Then he built a whole snow house, first clearing out a footpath near the fence, throwing the snow into the ditch that was already covered, and then making a long tunnel right through the ditch! We played house inside, but when grandma saw us, she made us all come out because she got scared the snow roof would collapse on us and we would suffocate. Then uncle Serezha jumped on top of the snow house and fell inside, but he didn’t suffocate, he just laughed, while we all yelled at him for breaking such a good house. We laughed with him, too.

      The next morning I left our house and went across the street towards auntie Raya’s izba. Her yard was full of strangers, they told me that Raya had died, and that Muchtar had ran away. I asked about the rooster, but they didn’t answer. Outside in the snow I saw a black radio and some stray things. There was no sign of the goat or the goatling. The snow was dirty, not like the white snow in our yard, where we only dust the pathways with sand to make them less slippery. The wooden bench near Raya’s wicket gate was completely covered in snow, the path where I used to pick mushrooms was invisible. The strangers in the yard were arguing loudly. I went home.

      Everyone was watching someone sing on tv. I laid down on the sofa by grandma’s side and put my head on her stomach. I liked to make grandma laugh so that her stomach would jiggle making my head jump. I would say grandma had a big frog in her stomach, and that would make her laugh harder, in turn making my head jump even higher. But this time I didn’t feel like laughing. I was thinking about Raya, about Zoya the goat and Antosha the goatling, and about their father and about where could they be, I wonder… I asked grandma when she would die, but she said I’m talking nonsense, and I went to bed.

      I was laying awake, in the small bedroom next to the kitchen. Above my bed was a small lamp in the shape of a pretty rose, my dad had bought it for me so that I would not be scared of the dark. I thought about how it would have been better if Raya had warned me that she would die, instead of just disappearing like mom did. Grandma should warn and explain when she was going to die also, and then no one would cry because everyone would be ready and prepared. Maybe we die just like those rat pups, one minute we have a home, the next minute we don’t, and it’s all so sudden. I imagined someone big standing over our house with a giant shovel, looking at us without any love or compassion, maybe even searching for the weakest among us, then letting the shovel down, and us disappearing without ever learning what happens next, without knowing that someone remembers us, like I remembered Raya, and the goats, and the rat babies, and then there will be a new barn where our house stood, and the past will no longer exist. Already drifting off to sleep I whispered that I would never forget you, Raya, you’re not an evil witch, maybe you’re even a little beautiful, but I still wouldn’t marry you, I would just visit you a lot, if only you didn’t die!