I always return to Odessa...

My father died in March 1955.
March in Bryansk is not the beginning of spring yet. However, winter is gone...
On my five-year-old feet big felt boots with galoshes: squish, squish, squish...
I also squishing with my nose and blow it in the hem of my mother's skirt.
My mother's sister, who came to the funeral, is unhappy with my behavior.
Well, I'm not comfortable with her behavior either...
She's talking to my mom about me.
I've eavesdropping, spying on them, like our cat Vaska, but not purring, only quietly crying.
I have to go with my aunt to Odessa where already vengeance "squirts" spring where there is a sea – The Black sea is called.
I am very sad, ask cat Vaska, he is very observant.
I ask him: "Vasya, o Vasya, what should I do, how to live?
To go or not to go to Odessa?»
I think he wants to go where the spring is.
Oh, mew... Oh, Odessa... Oh, spring!
- Where are you, Anya - I hear my aunt's voice
- What a stubborn girl, like her mother!
I hid behind the stove, embracing a poker and try not to squish with my nose.
My favorite game is the hide-and-seek, but I'm not playing now...
I won't go, and that's it! Let them persuade me: my mom, sisters, cat Vaska...
Tickets have already been bought for the Moscow-Odessa train.
Suitcases are packed, they're light, even I can lift them.
My mother's sister brought from Odessa all sorts of things in fully packed suitcases, so we will go to Odessa light.
Aunt's husband takes me in his arms, kissing my cheek lightly.
Don't do it, I screaming.
I want my dad to give me a kiss on my cheek and crawl around the house with me...
But he won't do it anymore, he's dead.
In the house of a stir, everyone is looking for my felt boots.
Yes, I hid them in the ash pit, even looking now!
My aunt doesn't believe me when I say I haven't seen my felt boots.
- Liar, little liar, whisper, so mom won't hear reproaches me, aunt.
- Nothing terrible, - at last the aunt's husband speaks, - I will carry Anya to train and in Odessa, we will buy her shoes.
***
Shoes were dark brown.
Small holes hardly let in flat brown shoelaces.
Walking around the room in which lived aunt and her husband, I felt as if my five-year-old legs stuck in cans so uncomfortable were my first shoes.
- Do not try to hide or throw away the shoes, warned aunt.
I see discontent on her closed lips and on her serious face...
I'm scared!
Mom's sister hears what I'm thinking?!
- I want my felt boots, I want!
- So, my girl, in Odessa in felt boots in the spring nobody goes, soon you will wear sandals, and for the winter, if you behave, I will buy you felt boots with galoshes,- the aunt explains to me.
I walk out.
Corridor very long leads to the kitchen, where there are three tables.
- Here is our table and a kerosene stove, do not touch anything on the table from the neighbors, or you will be punished, said the aunt.
Of course, I touch the neighbor's primus and even pull it to myself...
"You will be punished, you will sit on the stove," - so teased and frightened me home sisters and brother.
But in the Odessa communal apartment, there is no stove like in Bransk.
Stove - "rough" - glued to the wall to the ceiling...
I wasn't too upset when my aunt put me face-to-stove until I stopped crying and resisting wearing "tin cans"-shoes.
I touch the white tiles with my cheek, caress them and lick them with my tongue...
I dream that the tiles are made of cubes of refined sugar, which was so delicious in my mother's house...
****
Sandals were bought for me for the great holiday – the First of May.
Why is it great, I can't understand, but I really, really like the color red.
Red bow-it's so beautiful!
Red balloons, red flags, red Lollipop on a stick!!!
*
Red posters are uncle and aunt!
I look under my feet so no one steps on my new, almost red sandals.
On the sandals the little hole and clasp the iron that crushes me and rubbing his leg.
But I'm not complaining, I'm big, I'm almost five!
At the parade, I need to hold on tight to my aunt's hand so I don't get lost.
But someone stepped on my foot, and I roared like a little girl.
Suddenly, an uncle picks me up and puts me on his neck, at which point a sandal falls from his right foot and disappears under the feet of the demonstrators.
I drum on the head of the guy who carries me on his shoulders and shows the leg without a sandal.
He shoots me, throws my aunt and, pushing the crowd, finds my sandal.
I come home happy and cheerful, with red balloons, candies, I run to my aunt's husband...
The aunt's husband scolds her ugly words, then launched into her boots.
I was just telling you how a good uncle saved my sandal and bought me candy and red balloons...
Maybe he's jealous his aunt didn't take him to the parade.
Aunt yells to her husband that I was a liar, and no uncle was not with us...
Aunt launched heavy foot ago in a husband... and hit him in the head.
From my aunt's husband from his forehead started to bleed.
I was scared, hid behind the sofa, but then changed my mind, ran for cotton wool and green paint.
When I fall and break my knees to the blood, I smear green wounds and blow like this: fu, fu, fu...

I'm five years old and I understand a lot of things.
I just can't figure out how the Park can have a sea.
And why is the blue-green sea called Black?
Don't understand why a pub at the corner of the cable car and Greek, uncle
crawling on their knees?
I don't understand why my aunt won't let me go to the Park alone.
Why does she scare me with Gypsies who take all the naughty girls and teach them to beg?
When my aunt quarrels with her husband and calls him a drunk, I want to run away to the enchanted Park, and let the Gypsies take me and teach me to beg.
My aunt said I shouldn't ask her for anything.
But I often forget about it and beg her pennies.
If you cross the road and turn left, and then right, and then again cross the road, you can get to the Park, called "Shevchenko Park".
No one in the yard believes me that this Park is enchanted.
Yard kids were born here, in this Odessa yard, and I came here with my aunt after the death of my father.
Near the gates of the Park sit grandmother with bags.
In bags seeds white and black, and cups small and large.
If you give grandma a penny, she pours the seeds in a bag of old newspaper.
I have never bought seeds from a large glass, and from a small quickly come to an end.
When the Gypsies steal me, I'll learn to beg and buy seeds from a big glass!

While the aunt lays out on a laying food which her husband pouring down then dragged in huge string bags, I run to the sea...
The black sea, as naughty as I am!
The same affectionate as a cat Vaska, who left in Bryansk...
In it many, many, many moving, dense foam of salt water, not the that in the basin!
The sea splashes out on the sand, and the foaming wave destroys the Palace with underground passages, which aunt's husband's nephew built.
My aunt's husband's nephew, not my brother.Fimka seven years, and I was five.
He's bragging about me being his little sister.
He will go to the first grade, and to read and write, he has not yet learned!
One eye he runs here and there, and here-here will fly in the nose, I'm afraid he will remain there.
I feel sorry for the Fimka cross-eyed, even though he was the bouncer.
As I walked along the shore and collected seashells, I wanted to use the bathroom to pee and ran to the aunt.
My aunt took me waist-deep into the sea, and ...
Ordered: - Pee!
On feet flowing warm some water.
In the sea, near the shore, many, many waist-bathing children.
Now I know why the sea is so warm!

My name is a sweet tooth, but it's not right!
I love salted fish very much!
I especially love a tiny fish that I had dad in Bryansk, when not yet died...
Live dad, put us in a row and opened a bottle of fish oil.
Sisters and brother pinched their noses because of the smell.
After a spoonful of fish oil, my father gave everybody a small salty fish.
I was dad's favorite, and he gave me two fishes!
I don't drink fish oil in Odessa.
In Odessa, a lot of fresh, smoked and salted fish!
When my aunt wasn't home, her husband took me to the pub.
It smelled like fish oil, but nobody pinched their noses.
I was allowed to blow off the foam from the beer.
Beer foam is a little bit bitter but tasty!
The aunt's husband gave me dry fish taranka and showed how to beat taranka on the table.
I felt sorry for taranka , when uncle began to tear it apart.
I cried and screamed:
- Daddy, daddy!
The aunt's husband grabbed me in his arms, and kissed him, as once did my dad.
"My daughter," he whispered in my ear, " and also cried for some reason...

B our communal grandfather, a neighbor who scolds me, and complains my aunt to me.
I fell and broke two plates.
Sit and crying in the corridor, aunt will be angry and to call me a clubfooted
Next time put a plate on the floor and then fall, teaches me, neighbor.
Granddaddy had a funny mustache, which he tickles my nose,
In his little room, I can touch anything I want!
Grandpa was a cook on the ship.
He feeds me pasta in the Navy when my aunt's not home.
And while I'm eating, he tells me stories.
I especially love the story of a little five-year-old girl, whose father died, and my mother was left with five hungry children...
And as my mother's sister took her to Sunny Odessa...
And there she met an old sailor who told her about the sea, about the different countries he had visited.
He taught her to read, and write, and cook delicious pasta in the Navy...
And when he died, she didn't cry because the sailors don't cry!
And then she grew up and visited many, many countries, but always returned to Odessa...

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