The Maybug gave a start, its green shield opened, its wings began to flap: the prisoner made an attempt to escape. In vain! The natural glue was very strong.
“Hurry!” Yura yelled, his eyes sparkling. “Hurry! Bring twine. No, wait, I’ll get it myself. Watch the Maybug!”
He ran away, and I covered the Maybug with my palm, just in case. Yura was right. Maybugs gave us a lot of fun.
My cousin came running back with a spool of black thread and a small knife. Holding it by the back, we tied the thread tightly around one of its hind legs. God forbid the thread should come untied, so we tied a double knot. That wasn’t easy to do. The Maybug sensed that something bad was going on, that it was being tinkered with, and not exactly for a noble purpose, so it resisted, pulling on its hairy legs as much as the sap allowed.
“All right… Now scoop it out,” Yura gave me the knife. At that moment, I realized that I would never be a surgeon. As I tried to dig its front legs out, it ended up getting its antenna-like whiskers stuck in the sap. The Maybug was so tired that it couldn’t resist any longer.
“It’ll suffocate!” Yura suddenly panicked. He snatched the knife from my hand and performed the surgery himself. The Maybug was liberated, losing only one leg.
“Hurry!” Yura shouted as he ran to the apricot tree. The space there was more open, more appropriate to form the runaway of our airport, so to speak. The Maybug was to become an airplane, and airplanes, as everyone knows, take off from airports.
We set the Maybug carefully on the asphalt that covered the ground. At first, it stood still, and we couldn’t do anything about it for it would not move an inch until it was sure it was safe.
Yura and I stood nearby, completely still. I was holding the spool, after winding off enough thread so that the Maybug wouldn’t feel the tension as it flew or crawled. At last, it began to crawl somewhat slowly and hesitantly. Perhaps, it felt that one leg was missing.
We were terribly impatient.
“C’mon, bug! Stop that nonsense!” I repeated, shaking the thread slightly to remind the Maybug that, after all, it had to work. At last, it understood what it was expected to do, opened its shield, spread its wings and took off… slowly, with great effort, but it took off.
“Wind off! Wind off!” Yura yelled, concerned and agitated.
Our airplane gained speed, trying to fly as far as possible, but we couldn’t let it fly to the part of the yard where the thread would become tangled in branches. That meant that unwinding too much thread from the spool would be dangerous. We needed to guide the Maybug like a kite. The thread was long enough, but it was strained, and now the Maybug was flying in circles, a bit higher with each one. Mesmerized, we stared at it. We were blissfully happy as, looking up, we turned around in the center of the yard, the spool in our hands. Perhaps, guiding the flight of the Maybug wasn’t such a great feat, but we felt like mighty, all-powerful rulers.
The end came unexpectedly. The poor Maybug, tired of fighting the strained thread that burdened it, came tumbling down. That was it… We thought that our airplane had crashed as we ran up to it, but the Maybug was alive. It simply needed a break.
Certainly, we could have kept it for future flights, but we were magnanimous and felt sorry for the invalid. That was enough. It had worked and fulfilled its duty. We would let it fly away… if it could.
“Shall we let it go? Let’s toss it up into the apricot tree.” Yura cut off the thread at the Maybug’s leg, jumped and tossed it up into the thick branches. After making an arc, the Maybug came tumbling down. We cried “ah,” but just before it reached the ground, it suddenly spread its wings and flew upward, buzzing. Another moment and the Maybug had disappeared in the sunlight that was breaking through the rich greenery of the tree.
Yura and I stood there looking up. We weren’t sorry that we had set the Maybug free; we were a bit sad for a different reason. We didn’t say anything to each other, but it was clear that we both felt the same. Our feet stood on the asphalt of the yard, but our souls soared up high over the roof of the house, over the cherry trees laden with ripe cherries, glowing among the leaves, the sweet cherry tree near the trestle-bed, with its juicy yellow cherries, over the pigeon house with its hungry baby pigeons, their mouths wide open, over the apricot tree, over the whole yard, over the entire neighborhood.
Ah, how great it would be to fly like our Maybug, with no thread attached, and without the adults even noticing. Height in itself is beautiful, but we could also have so many nice adventures up there.
“Well, let’s go,” Yura sighed. “Let’s go. I’ll show you something.”
What a pity we couldn’t fly, but the two of us did enjoy ourselves in the yard.
Chapter 27. The Best Place in the City of Tashkent
“Valery, get up, bachim.”
Oh, my. I had been dozing so nicely. It was still very early, but I had been waking up, then dozing off again since dawn.
I was sleeping on the convertible couch in the living room. When it was unfolded, the couch almost reached the TV set that was across from it. That’s why the room was crammed. Only a narrow passage was left. Grandpa, who got up at the crack of dawn, would make his trip from the bedroom to the kitchen along that passage. He would bump against the couch during each of his trips, and every collision was accompanied by a short yet loud exclamation, “Ekh!” Judging by the intonation, it meant, “He’s lying right in the middle of the path! People here are late for work, by the way…”
However, despite that insignificant inconvenience, I preferred sleeping alone in the living room rather than in the company of my snoring Grandpa.
“Get up, bachim! Pour water on my head,” Grandpa woke me up, shaking me by the shoulder.
The aroma of choyi kaimoki wafted out of the kitchen. Grandma, who was busy at the stove, gave me a kettle of warm water.
Grandpa undressed down to his waist, baring his torso, which always amazed me. His chest, shoulders, stomach, arms and even his back were covered in very thick, dark hair. Grandpa’s head, with its beard, was bare, shiny and hairless – a striking contrast to his torso.
Grandpa wasn’t bald. He had only a small bald spot, about ten centimeters across, on the top of his head. You would only notice it if you looked very closely. I think he managed to avoid going bald by shaving his head all the time. Grandpa deprived his hair of enjoying the light of day but at the same time rescued it from falling out.
As soon as Grandpa bent over the sink, the kitchen became lighter. At least, that was how it appeared to me. The shining, almost polished surface of Grandpa’s head reflected any light clearly. The shape of his head was either a good reflector of light or the barber shaved it too thoroughly, or perhaps it shined thanks to his daily washing. Every day! Just think! There wasn’t a speck of dust on it!
I actually had suspected that his special soap did the trick. Grandpa ordered special soap with varnish added to it. That was why his head was shiny. But I used that soap too. So where was the result? No matter how much I soaped my hands, they never became shiny. No, it wasn’t the soap but some special quality of his head.
In any event, I was proud of Grandpa’s head. Sometimes, when I was asked whose grandson I was, if when I answered they couldn’t figure out who Yoskhaim Yuabov was, I had to resist the temptation to say “The one with the shiny head.” They would definitely have remembered that. Tap-tap-tap – it was Grandpa patting the back of his head, as if to say, “Pour it here.”