Дэн Рэй

Страна: Канада

Фантастические рассказы и повести, а также произведения для детства и юношества.

Country: Canada

Перевод фантастических рассказов “Приключения Энтони, Макса и Милы. Часть первая. Путешествие из Понедельника в Воскресенье.

 

A little boy named Anthony was very inquisitive: every day, waking up at dawn, he got up from his bed, wandered importantly and sleepily into the bathroom, where he brushed his teeth, and then, feeling cheerful and ready to learn the world, with a joyful hum of an unpretentious melody ran into the bedroom on the second floor. He felt good there: mom and dad were still basking in the last moments of sleep, not suspecting that their little happiness was already looking at them with its curious and childishly sly smile. He approached the door of the parent’s room and asked the question: “Why do mom and dad sleep together, but I can’t be with them? What is it, is this «not allowed»? It’s a strange word, I don’t like it, Anthony thought to himself. “And why are parents waking up later than me? I got up, brushed my teeth, well done — in one word! And they are still sleeping, crushing the pillows with their huge heads. Will I have the same hefty head when I grow up? The same big nose, long nails tipped with nails that need to be trimmed all the time? I do not want to! I will not! «

He deftly opened the door, on tiptoe and, as it seemed to him, noiselessly, got to bed, and here the most difficult thing began: to wake up mom and dad. But this had to be done so that the parents would not be angry with him at breakfast, writhing dissatisfied and supposedly sleepy faces, not so that dad would say his catchphrase “Give me two more minutes, and I will be cheerful and fresh, like autumn dew «. “What is dew?” Anthony asked his dad, and he said that this is one of the tricks of Her Majesty Nature, which leaves unexpected gifts for such chicks as Anthony.

They lived in a large two-story house. It was, in fact, large: two huge bedrooms on the second floor — one for the boy’s parents, and the other for a guest room, since grandparents often visited their children and, of course, their grandson; a large hall on the ground floor, which flowed smoothly into the kitchen, and Anthony’s room. It seemed to him that there was someone else in this room besides him: it was a clock. They hung on the wall for as long as he could remember: dark brown in color, so ancient that even a child felt that they needed to be respected, protected and in no case played with them, because such an insult as being broken by a little man, they obviously can’t stand. These hours «went», as mom, dad, grandmothers, and grandfathers repeated all the time. “But why haven’t they left yet, why are they still in my room?” Anthony asked the adults, and they just laughed in response. “Dad, daddy: when will the clock go away?”, the son asked in a sweet, angelic voice, and dad just laughed, telling his friends about this question, who, like him and his wife, lit up the room with an adult cackle, who already didn’t sound like laughter.

One winter day, Anthony came home from school with a very pensive face. , he was only silent, meaningfully — just like an adult! — endowed her with a connoisseur’s glance, and continued to look at one point on the wall, where he tried to find the answer to the most important question that he had asked from the first lesson. And the question was simple: who are these days of the week? Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday. Thursday. Friday. Saturday. Sunday. Why are they called that way, and not differently? Who came up with these names? What for? Why?

— Anthony, — the father turned to his son, — you are so serious today. I never thought that the first day at school after an illness could leave such a clear imprint.

Anthony was silent. He ate food from his plate, but his thoughts hovered somewhere high — where adults had no way.

— Sonny, you should at least talk to us, — Mom attempted to strike up a conversation with a smile. — Tell me, honey, what are you thinking so seriously?

And then — the apotheosis: Anthony, putting his hand under chin and taking a seriously serious pose, was already ready to answer, but then, as if realizing the insignificance of his words, he cut off the sound halfway, removed his hand from under his chin, took it in his hand again spoon and continued to eat.

— Son, tell me: what worries you so much? Don’t you like school? Classmates? Teacher? What? — seriously worried, my mother asked in warm blood. And Anthony was silent and thoughtful. Silent. Thoughtful. And so, it went on for a whole week.

Parents, being adults, smart, omniscient people, tried to find out the reason for such a silent behavior of their son at school: they talked with teachers, with the parents of other children, but everything seemed to be within the normal range.

— Mike, what do you think: what’s the matter? — Elise asked her husband when they had finished preparing for bed and were already in bed, each buried in his book and wearing a pair of glasses.

— Most likely the case, as such, and there is no, — in the bass, with an admixture of a whisper, answered the boy’s dad. — And even more so, this is certainly not worth your excitement: it’s wonderful that our son, being at such a still childhood, began to think, well, or, at least, simulate the thought process. I generally think …

— Sometimes you’re such a bore, — Eliza interrupted her husband without a drop of reproach in her voices.

— Then I will answer you this way: the time will come, and he himself will tell us everything, — concluded the dad.

Anthony, spending time in his room free from lessons and the tennis section, tirelessly looked at his watch: he was fascinated by the movement of the arrows, which caused very contradictory feelings inside him. It seemed to him that the second hand seemed to be in a hurry, the second — the minute hand, slowly walking as it should, and the third — probably the thickest of the three, was moving imperceptibly at all, so much so that Anthony could not catch that moment. when the next hour passed, or even two.

Finally, a moment came when the boy could not keep in himself a bunch of questions that made his mind limit everything, he was thinking to one simple question: «How did the days of the week appear?»

— Well, son, this is a very old story …

The father said something, seriously, without losing the thread of the narrative, and even, probably, Anthony was ready to believe him, but that’s why he is a child, that after a completely intelligible and instructive story from his father, questions fell on daddy’s head like hail.

— When you grow up, you will find out, — said the father in a calm tone, with slight notes of fatigue.

Anthony did not show his displeasure. Grimacing an all-knowing face — he quickly learned to parody it from his school teacher in arithmetic, the boy nodded in response to the words of his dad and, asking permission to go to his room, walked smoothly, as he told his parents, to do his homework. In fact, he was lying on the bed and silently crying: all he wanted was for someone to tell him what Time is! Why is there a week? Why does it start on Monday and not on Tuesday, for example? Ends on Sunday, not Wednesday? Who said it should be this way? Who is this person, and where can I find him?

The boy wanted not only to understand what would be enough for an adult but also to see, imagine how and where Time dwells. He could not believe that this immortal titan, as his dad called it, could be unreal and only outwardly represent a not-so-tricky apparatus — a watch that only knew how to beat its rhythm, behind which was hidden some mysterious, bewitching, but at the same time, the simple meaning — a life. Anthony wanted to see, talk to Time, hoping that this majestic patron of everything and everyone will be patient and will not leave an attempt to explain his essence to the boy, because he knows that it is in children there is one and, probably, the most important component of tomorrow lives — the future.

Stopped crying, and getting out of bed with a decisive face, he looked at his watch, as if anticipating that they were about to speak to him. He didn’t want to wait until he grows up — he didn’t want that at all! The care he was surrounded by his parents, grandparents, aunts, and their uncles was all he needed. The whole family, in which Anthony was lucky enough to be born — like the universe, revolved around him alone. And there was no thought in his boyish head that they could all care and love someone as reverently as him.

Of course, he asked himself, but more often than his parents: “Mom, Dad, tell me: if you had a child — someone else, not me, you would be able to remember that once there was no one more important to you than me? «. “Of course not,” his dad replied. «If we had another child, we would not know about you, because you would not have been born.» “Why exactly was I born? Why am I — this is me, and not, for example, one of my classmates? How did this happen?” Anthony asked with eyes full of sincere childish bewilderment. “You are the most beloved and the one whose arrival in this world we have been waiting for more than anything else,” mother said, tenderly hugging her boy. And this answer — the child himself did not know why it gave such a necessary sincerity of the mother’s heart that it did not raise any additional questions.

 

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