Chapter 9
The hurricane occurred these nights first in America, then Mexico, and Brazil, and Argentina with Costa Rica changed dramatically the huts of local fishermen. Some now looked like schooners turned over by Mr Megalodon, others transformed into a pile of abounded log houses, and the last ones metamorphosed into flocks of migrant birds—they were that light. Fortunately, there were some undamaged huts. Seemed, it was the chance from nature to the people to improve their deeds. The Lunight hut was not damaged at all, although the neighbouring houses were totally collapsed. It was a sign for Luisian that he was a mascot himself. Lunight confirmed that. Who else, as Noah, could stop the storm and save them from the inevitable distraction? And Luisian saved. Lunight asked him many times to stay with them, but he refused. Luisian headed for Paris, because someone whispered him that Dionysius was there. A surprise waited for our characters—a slightly scratched by Costa Rica sand yacht was brought by the sea water and furious winds outside the Lunight’s hut; Luisian suggested the hostess to paint and sell the yacht. That was done, and in a week Lunight and her little son moved to the town center, where she helped the baker and earned a half salary, yet which was enough to renovate the new flat and to live happily. Luisian saw Lunight in these high spirits on the day of their last meeting when the ticket to Paris was bought and there were just some hours before the flight. When he went upstairs, he noticed as all his impressions of life ruined and changed with fresher and more sincere ones; he did not fell in love, but grasped something what could become his meaning of life. He saw a beautiful light-green sofa entering a right-hand flat on the twenty fifth floor (the Lunight’s son was a fan of high buildings, and his mother wanted to delight him); the furniture matched the wallpapers in the flat that much, so Luisian was about to exclaim “ah”. He supposed abruptly, “Why can’t I be a wizard who helps people to build golden houses? And not all is gold that glitters, but almost all is gold that is loved. Luisian made his mind up about his future job for he needed to become someone beyond the best Italian Ded Moroz. Lunight brewed tasty Caribbean tea with popcorn and some sweet thing, perhaps, with real passion fruit. There was a harmony in the flat drowned in sunbeams of the setting sun, where the sum of money payed for the design was as much so that it could be said that there was no coin given simply so. Luisian was sitting on a white carved chair, in which there was nothing in particular and dreamed he was drinking the very time seemed rolled up and now leaking away, like the jelly, like the honey from a glass jar, out of the flat into the Mouth ocean. Yeah… There are moments in the life when your body seems to be born again, or perfectly suits the vital rhythm, or still seems to be born again, and you do not think more that life was ever unfair to you. You merely imagine how you drink this fresh milk of space without a stop and realize that you will not once more be sated with it and that it will not be excessive to take a nap after this speedy and too wonderful evening.
Luisian opened his eyes sitting in a plane. He could not remember a thing at first. Than he collected his thoughts, and the memory told he visited somebody; he started to elaborate, but then gathered his wits and the need for the further movement was remarked on. Something new and a bit incomprehensible was craved by Luisian’s heart. Something what is usually chosen by undetermined people—“yes”: between “yes” and “no” they agreed to opt for “yes” all the time.
***
Let’s make happiness, my friends! Earlyborn got up, brewed some Indian tea for her brother and her and went to wash the dishes in the mood as if she knew that the very moment she would go to the shop and win in a free lottery arranged by some entrepreneurs. The atmosphere behind the window was probably like the one which happens in Sochi mountains at the New Year midnight: it was cold, scaring, dreadfully dark, but incredibly lovely, given that you was aware of existence of a festive mountain hamlet behind a huge town spruce which was soon removed. Yet it was irresistibly cold at home. At that time real severe Russian Epiphany3 frosts came to Paris, but Earlyborn did not bother about it, since her under-floor heating managed to do his job for one hundred percent. Despite the brother (as it generally happens in a family formed from a sister and a brother) was an intelligent head in the house and was in charge of his reckless sibling, he was habitually sleeping: whenever the morning started, he got up ten-fifteen minutes later than Earlyborn. How can we solve this riddle? There is nothing to do – when Zhenka went to bed stoutly (for he regularly dozed off and woke up quickly. As the saying is: to love means to love with the very heart!), Earlyborn crept to his bed humming something, softly turned him on another side, so that his body did not look at the wall and a pillow, and then a bit bent and stretched herself to see an alarm clock. She timed the position of hands and went in the bathroom to have a shower, cleaned her teeth with a cutting age of medicine—an electric toothbrush—and set off the alarm clock at the time so that she would get up earlier to give her brother a cup of coffee with her half-cunning and half-sympathetic smile. So do we, my dear friends, when we want to achieve something, say, to learn drawing, we take this graceless, but right step. Firstly, we just come into a class, yet, maybe not in a class as a room, but as one of the groups of people in society and try to obtain the trust of other people. We meet a class teacher and look with respect at students who were taught there before and some of them—it appears—know a lot beyond the course of study. You may get it glancing at the teacher’s eyes: they emanate joy and exhilaration. We cheer ostentatiously when we succeed in something or, conversely, explicitly get upset; after that we pirouette as Earlyborn did: we dig up remember what an A student does to be first and go away showy. There is no need in school as a life giving thing and the most delicious part of life moisture. As there is no need in a water filter if a person discovered a spring or an artesian well. The truth is that you always can find this spring, since it does not hide. When we comprehended efforts put by the A student into learning, we find a nook at our house at night, in the early morning, or after lunch when everyone is asleep in hope to excel him in it, so that we can do twice (or even more) as much as he does, and enjoy the life. As if it was slalom, where you was somewhere in the middle of the piste, yet approaching to the first participants rather than to those who were behind him, and you craved to win and eventually found the way out. Left ski-track for an unknown reason becomes faster than the right one, but no one, except you, payed any attention to that, and you ski with high speed, deriving pleasure from the nature with your nose membranes during brakes between taking breaths. When you reach the finish, you will long for the forest which was taken aback, but soon realize that breaks you made between breaths saved the spirit of the forest, and it will forever with you. Earlyborn was staring with her shifty eyes at her brother’s awaken ones, jerking in tune with the alarm clock. Earlyborn was that type of women, who can live without make-up, since she was charming, yet sometimes she let herself put on some lipstick with two careless strokes, making long lips, like a swan, or put the eyelashes. When Zhenka finally got up, she ended drawing the last strokes in her creativity. It looked as the moon moved to its dressing room to compete in beauty with our heroine, and the stars were cast with clouds of fume or steam, which rose from the cups with fresh Indian tea brought at the balcony.
3
These are the frosts which appear after Epiphany in Russia (on the night of January 18) and believed to be the most harsh during the whole winter.