Now and then, especially when her son began to be angry or was agitated by something, Zozo – if she happened to be beside him – felt a strange vertigo and weakness. It seemed to her that she was in an elevator descending infinitely into a tight dark mine. She almost saw in reality this elevator with the dim light, the flat iron buttons, and the boldfaced inscription of a marker: “Welcome to Gloom!” She saw and in no way could shake off the hallucination.
She experienced the worst shock when Methodius was still a child. Then a dog violently frightened him. This was a foolish sheepdog that adored rushing silently, even without a growl, at people and, without biting, knocking them down with its paws. Then for some time the sheepdog would stand over the victim, sowing horror and delighting in the produced effect, and would run away afterwards. However, three-year-old Methodius did not know this. In his belief, the dog was attacking in earnest. A bewildered Zozo did not even hear how Methodius yelled. She only understood that her son shouted and fixed his eyes on the dog. The sheepdog ran up to Methodius, knocked him down, and then suddenly, by itself with a kind of absurd comicality, fell down sideways and remained lying so, with a thread of saliva gleaming on its canine teeth. Later in court, they said the sheepdog had unexpectedly had a heart attack.
For long afterwards, Zozo could not come to her senses. She was unable to forget the dark flame flaring up for a moment in her son’s eyes. This was something impossible to describe, commonplace words like “glow,” “tongues of flame,” “fiery jets,” and so on, would not even come close. Something simply appeared in his pupils, something, which, even she, his mother, could not recall without a shudder.
But in the end Zozo discarded everything from her head. Fortunately for her, she was particularly frivolous. She constantly attempted to arrange her personal life, and this took away all her time and energy. Methodius only knew that at first there was papa Igor. Then life rolled papa Igor up in a rug and dragged him off somewhere. Now he appeared once every two or three years, grew bald, threadbare and worn-out by destiny, brought a nosegay of three carnations for the ex-wife and Chinese pistols for the son, and bragged that everything was fine with him. He had a new wife and a firm engaged in repairing washing machines. However, Eddy Khavron, knowing everything, asserted that papa Igor’s business was only so-so and it was not his firm but he himself that repaired washing machines. Sometimes Eddy Khavron branded Mr. Buslaev Sr. with the insulting term “an inferior one-man operation.”
After papa Igor in the life of Zozo and Methodius there were Uncle Lyosha, Uncle Tolya, and Uncle Innokentii Markovich. Uncle Innokentii Markovich hung around for a long time, almost two years, and earned Methodius’ objection. He forced Methodius to hang up pants, wash his own socks, and call him by name and patronymic. Then Uncle Markovich vanished into thin air somewhere, and Methodius no longer memorized the names of the remaining uncles in order not to overload his young memory heavily. “Choke up the cells of your brain with any nonsense, and then there won’t be enough space for lessons!” he reasoned.
Zozo Buslaeva scratched her forehead. She vaguely felt that what happened should not be abandoned so simply. That Methodius got into Eddy’s wallet was extremely serious. She, as a mother and a woman, must now stir up something pedagogical in the spirit of what the wise Makarenko devised. To punish perhaps, or in any case, to be strict. Here the only problem was that Zozo completely could not conceive how to be strict. She herself was even a slob in life. “Ahem… Son, I want to have a talk with you! You’ll not take more of Eddy’s money?” she asked.
“Do you know how much I took from him? Ten roubles and fifty kopecks! It wasn’t enough for me to get to school on the shuttle. I didn’t manage the bus because I overslept,” Methodius said unwillingly.
“But why did you not ask me?”
“You weren’t here. You met that German, who turned out to be a Turk, and set up a date at eight in the morning at the subway,” Methodius said.
Zozo blushed slightly, “You can’t talk like that to your mother! I wanted it so myself! But couldn’t you ask Eddy in words? Really, he wouldn’t give it?”
Methodius hesitated, “Our Eddy? In words? Have to ask him with a brick instead of words. He would give a thousand lectures. Like: ‘I’ve worked hard and sweated since seven years old, and no one gave me nothing. And you’re already almost thirteen, yet you’re a bum, a retard and a fool. You smoke on the sly and always go stuffing your face.’”
Zozo Buslaeva sighed and gave up. Actually, her brother began to manifest business wit early. Maybe not seven, but at seventeen he was already selling nested dolls and army hats on Vorobev Mountains subway stop, for which he was repeatedly beaten up by bad competitors. True, soon Eddy tired of standing under the open sky, catching the wind and head colds. After spending three weeks for checkups in the crazy house, he was discharged from the army and settled down in a restaurant. His wide shoulders and the passionate gaze of a conventional schizophrenic, crowned with the appropriate certificate, brought forth in the visitors of Ladyfingers an unhealthy appetite and a desire to repeat a double coffee with liqueur. “Met!” Zozo summed it up. “It’s possible you’re right and Eddy is a pain in the neck, but promise me never again…”
“Never, so never! I’ll go to school on the exhaust pipe of a shuttle!” Methodius promised.
Zozo sighed and was about to go into the kitchen, but suddenly some late thought overtook her and lightly nudged her in the back. Zozo stopped. “Kiddo, this evening I’ll have a… eh-eh… guest… Wouldn’t you like to go somewhere? For example, to Ira’s,” she proposed with the look of a cat digging with its paw in a tray of sand.
“And not be under foot?” Methodius specified with understanding.
Zozo thought for a bit. When you are fighting for your destiny and trying to arrange your life, a twelve-year-old son is already compromising material clearer than a passport. “Something like that. Don’t stick your head into the kitchen, don’t gurgle in the bathroom, don’t go for all kinds of nonsense every minute, and don’t be under foot. Exactly!” Zozo decisively repeated.
Methodius gave it some thought, estimating whether it was possible to bargain in this matter. “And how about my enormous desire to do homework? Soon the quarter will end. I officially warn you that I’ll grab a railroad carload of threes for the year,” he stated. In general, he had already grabbed it, but now appeared an excellent occasion to find some other guilty person. To miss it would be a sin.
“This is insolent blackmail! Maybe you’ll do homework now? Still lots of time till the evening,” Zozo said helplessly.
It seemed to Methodius that he saw a weak lilac glow, which Zozo threw out into space. Turning pale, the glow began to extend to the boundary of the room like a drop of paint on wet paper. Methodius, as usual not having any idea how he did it, absorbed the glow like a sponge and understood: mother had yielded. “No. I don’t have the inspiration now. My hour of triumph begins precisely in the evening. In the daytime I don’t get into the theme,” Methodius said. The most ridiculous thing was that this was the truth. The nearer to night time, the clearer his brain began to work. His sight became sharper, and the desire to sleep, so strong in the first morning classes and in the daytime, disappeared completely. Now and then, he felt sorry that school did not start with sunset and last until dawn. Instead, in the morning he was usually sluggish, thought badly, and generally moved on autopilot.
At ten to eight, Zozo decisively escorted Methodius from the apartment. “Go to Irka and sit at her place! I’ll call you when the uncle leaves!” she said, kissing him on the cheek.
“Aha. Well, see you later!” Methodius said. He had already left mentally.
“I love you!” Zozo shouted and, after slamming the door shut, rushed to freshen herself up. She concentrated, like a general before the main battle in life. In the next ten minutes, she had to make herself ten years younger.
For