Tanya clutched the double bass with all her strength and did not let go, although Uncle Herman was considerably stronger and jerked her together with the instrument from side to side, hitting her back against the cabinet and the frame of the balcony.
Accidentally the girl’s hand found itself on one of the pins regulating the tension of the strings. At this instant, Durnev abruptly pulled the double bass to himself, and Tanya turned the pin. The stretched string began to drone softly and in a bass. For a moment, it seemed to Tanya that she went deaf. The glass in the frames began to tremble in a threatening way. Losing her balance, Tanya and the instrument fell together on her back.
Suddenly Uncle Herman, who was hanging over her, froze. The features of his face somehow softened, became kinder, and acquired an idiotic expression. His pupils for a while confusedly turned in their eye-sockets, and then purposefully settled down crosswise on the bridge of the nose. The upper lip curled upward, baring the sufficiently long front teeth.
Finally, being bored of roaming wildly along the sides, Uncle Herman’s eyes stared fixedly on Tanya – first the right and then the left. Uncle Herman bounced on the spot with wonder and giggled foolishly.
“Hee-hee! What a thmooth day!” he said in a thin squeaky voice.
Tanya went “oh” in fright. She said “oh” again in a second, because Uncle Herman suddenly leaned over and sniffed the double bass, and even, it seemed, tried it lightly with his teeth.
“Girlie, what are you doing here? Gathewing flowerth? Let’th get acquainted: I’m Lithper the Wabbit!” he squeaked.
Tanya muttered something, but Uncle Herman did not listen to her. He was already jumping around the room, his hand drawn in, exactly like the paws of a rabbit. Deftly jumping directly from the carpet onto Pipa’s desk, Uncle Herman brought it down. From the desk he somersaulted onto the bed, overturned bookshelves, tore off the door of the dresser, and then, getting down on all fours, started to gnaw the legs of the chairs. After swallowing several pieces of polishing, Uncle Herman capriciously grimaced. The dachshund One-And-A-Half Kilometres, bursting into seething senile barking, hung onto his pant leg. At another time Durnev would shed tears of tender emotion that the dog was playing with him, now he kicked the dachshund with his foot so that One-And-A-Half Kilometres rolled with a howl into the corridor.
“We, wabbitth, have terwibly thtwong hind pawth! We can kick marvellouthly with them!” he bragged to Tanya, gnawing the broken off leg of a chair. “Phew, thith unthavouwy thtump! I can’t thtand thith plathtic bark! My teeth will ache from it! Don’t you have carwotth or cabbage?”
Not answering, Tanya continued to stare at him in amazement. The rabbit obviously did not like it. His whitish eyebrows gathered on his narrow forehead.
“What, can’t you hear, girlie? Don’t underthtand wabbit thpeech? Carwotth, I thay, no?” he lisped.
“Yes… In the kitchen… In the vegetable box…” Tanya muttered.
“Thankth, girlie! You think I’m thtupid, think I didn’t know you? I know much!” Uncle Herman said with a conspiratorial look and skipped off, shaking the floor with his very strong size forty-seven soles. “Hey, deviouth! Don’t detheive me! You’re Little Wed Widing Hood!” he shouted, threatening her with a finger as he left.
Not a minute had passed as the characteristic sound came from the kitchen: Durnev, the very same self-styled Lisper the Rabbit, likely discovered “carrotth” and now hurried to gobble them together with the bag. In any case, to the crunch of chewing carrot was added periodically the rustling of packaging.
Tanya carefully got out from under the double bass, examining it with a mixture of horror and admiration. She never doubted for a minute that precisely it was mixed up in the sudden temporary insanity of Uncle Herman. Indeed, at that moment when she turned the pin for tuning the strings, Durnev also imagined himself as Lisper the Rabbit.
Recalling the warning on the birch bark, Tanya in a hurry weakened the tension of the string and checked whether cracks appeared in the neck. No, the double bass, fortunately, did not suffer, if one doesn’t count the small scratch left by Uncle Herman’s nails.
A key began to grind in the doors. Considering that this could be either Pipa or Aunt Ninel, Tanya quickly hid the double bass in the case and started to move it into the cabinet. Booming leaps already rolled along the apartment – it was Lisper the Rabbit jumping to meet his relatives.
And when, a minute later, the terrible dual howl of Aunt Ninel and Pipa was heard in the corridor, Tanya surmised that he met them.
“You’re not Little Wed Widing Hood! You’re the Fat Bwoad, and you’re her daughter! Don’t touth me! I’ll kick! I have thtwong hind pawth!” Uncle Herman squealed deafeningly, fleeing from them around the entire apartment…
Chapter 4
Forgeli Botchli?
“Twang!” Tanya pressed the third string from the edge closer against the middle of the neck and it hummed. The sound hardly dissipated as a round thick-necked head in a copper helmet appeared on the balcony. It was the size of a considerable cauldron and it rotated its pupils menacingly. The look on the head was openly predatory. The bent nose was once dented by someone’s fist, and a long scar stood out on the cheek…
“Forgeli botchli?” it growled, when its pupils, having stopped revolving, settled on the girl.
“Not forgeli not botchli… A mistake…” Tanya muttered, attempting to hide behind the double bass.
The head smirked, baring ground-off yellow teeth, each of which was the size of a good fist. Furthermore, it became noticeable that something terribly similar to the sole of boots got stuck between the two front teeth.
“What is ‘not forgeli,’ specifically?” the head asked hoarsely. “Where’s the magic response? What, did they not warn you that I could tear apart whoever uses magic objects illegally? Beatings in alleyways, and all such.”
“No, they didn’t,” Tanya quickly blurted out, considering that this was her only justification.
“And I’ll not believe it for life! And if they didn’t warn you, it means you’re not a witch but one of the moronoids!”
“Yes, I’m a witch… That is, I… Please wait, I’ll explain everything…”
Tanya moved back in fright and, hoping that the head would disappear, in a hurry passed the bow along the adjacent string.
“T-wang!” the string hummed intensely. No, the head did not disappear, instead beside it immediately appeared another, even more murderous than the first, decorated with a downy sergeant-major moustaches.
“Where are the evil spirits? Blabbli gabbli intertwineli?” it asked with a voice that grated on the hearing like sandpaper.
Tanya went “Oh,” experiencing a burning desire to show up a hundred kilometres away from here or, at the worst, to simply fall under the floor.
“Blabbli gabbli intertwineli?” the head repeated impatiently.
“Hello, Usynya!” the head that appeared on the balcony earlier barked. “I think the time has come to gobble up someone. Someone who summons us without knowing the simplest magic response…”
“Exactly, Dubynya… Time to punish these little green witches! They’ll know when to get mixed up with spells!”
“And most likely she’s not even a little witch but one of the moronoids… I hate it when these nothings imagine themselves magicians. I would rip off the hands that give them magic tools…”
Tanya in fear gripped the bow. She wanted to wave it at them, knowing that now and then they disappear with this, but by chance brushed against yet another string. “Gad, again! What now!” she thought, experiencing bad presentiment. And the presentiment did not deceive her.
“T-w-angg!”