Quote of the day
Albert Likhanov, Clean Stones
Mikhaska loved looking at the clouds.
He climbed onto the flat roof up the rattling iron stairs. His favorite spot was behind the far pipe near the dormer window. If he was to lie down on his back, Mikhaska was not visible from the roof, and even more so from the ground. He discovered this spot during the war, when he was in second grade. Back then, they were appointed for duty on the roof in case of bombings.
However, soon the watch was cancelled because the Nazi planes were not able to reach their town. Air-raid alarms sounded only a couple of times, and even then probably for no reason, just in case. Mikhaska remembered that night well. Shortly before that, him and his mother, just like all their neighbors, crisscrossed white strips of paper over their windows. A cross on the upper glass and a cross each on the sides. Everyone said that it helps a lot. If a bomb would fall, the glass with these stripes would not break. Mikhaska, to tell the truth, did not really believe that, because even a simple small stone for a glass would be a disaster, and what would a bomb do then!
A few days later, in the evening, a siren wailed, and Mikhaska's mum screamed at him because he was dawdling – the buttons on his coat would not close.
When they left the house, the rays of searchlights rummaged in the black sky, and from time to time they lit up a plane.
But the plane was not an enemy one, a four-wing small plane; not the kind the Germans had.
Mum was hurrying Mikhaska, but he was telling her not to worry, because the plane was theirs. The bomb shelter was far away and they did not reach it, as the alarm was cancelled. They walked back home and Mikhaska said to his mother: “Well, you see…I told you so…” Mum said nothing and only sighed.
The roof was well equipped then. In different corners there were boxes with sand, near the dormer window – a barrel of water and, nailed directly to it, two nails. They were bent and buckets were hung on the hooks.
Mikhaska liked that. It looked like a ship. They have buckets also, but white ones with red stripes.
But the barrel never came in handy. The sand was scattered all over the roof by boys, and the buckets were taken back to the house administration.
All that remained left of the entire alarm was Mikhaska's quiet place behind the pipe.
Sometimes he would come here, lay on his back, feeling the warmth of the heated iron, and look out into the sky, at the clouds.
Translated by Maria Aprelenko, RT
