'I am very hot, kittie,' the man said wiping his brow.
'Me too,' the boy responded.
'Let's go to the river then?'
'Of course!'
One can blaze a trail to the river in a million variations here — like any other way in this multidimensional space. The travellers chose a narrow path which soon led them to the river bank — not very high in that place but abrupt. The path wound between the brink of the bluff and a continuous wall of wooden fences behind houses and was intersected here and there by exposed on the ground powerful knotted roots of old spreading poplars. In some places the fences bent to the river side and hung over the path making it rather difficult to follow the way.
'Daddy, I am afraid!' the boy whined when they reached the point where the path entirely broke off for about three yards — there was only a section of a thick poplar root instead of it.
Under this peculiar bridge, at a depth of nearly seven feet, sharp stones were scattered.
'Don't, kiddy,' his father answered. Seizing the boy in his arms and leaning on the trunk of the poplar with his shoulders he carried the boy over the pit. Twisting his neck the boy looked down like spellbound not taking his eyes off the uneven wall of the bluff and seething waters of the river.
After a while the path broadened into a narrow but steadily widening flat sandy slip of the bank. The river here was not so swift as upstreams where they had come from, and looked pleasantly cool.
'May I undress, Daddy?' the boy asked.
'Of course,' the man answered. 'Take off your shorts and shirt and have a swim.'
'And you?'
'It's too shallow for me here. Go without me, boy, and don't be afraid. It's knee-deep here, so you won't drown even if you want.'
The boy, remaining in his pants only, ran into cool water of the river, dabbled there at will and then popped out into his father's embraces. It was repeated many times — the boy splattering in the water and then darting to his father to warm and dry in his hands so as in five minutes to enter the river again. It was wonderful — like baptism in the waters of the holy Jordan. And his wet cool body was holy too.
Then, getting tired of heat, they returned home, but at the end of the day went to the river again. That time they decided not to undertake an anchorage in their fancied pines-confined harbour but go the shortest possible way to the water, and chose another path which appeared to be wide and straight at the beginning but in some fifty feet away from the river turned suddenly aside and reduced into a sinuous and narrow trail winding among jungles of willows and nettle. The man picked up a stick to draw nettle blades and stems apart, but nonetheless, after they had got onto an open space, the boy felt his bare legs and arms stung. He was about to whine already, when his father took him in his arms for a second and said: 'That's all right, kiddy, don't you cry,' — and the boy smiled at him and promised: 'I shan't, Daddy'.
Having bypassed an abrupt meander of the river where it changed its direction from east to south at right angles they stopped before a huge black boulder towering some, seven feet above the stream and jutting out into it like a small peninsula. To be more exact, it consisted of the two adjacent stones — the farther from the land being larger and higher, and both together resembling two humps on a camel's back. Naturally, the boy expressed the desire to climb the boulder as soon as he had seen it.
'I want to get on top, Daddy!' he shouted and made a stir to dash at the stone.
'A moment, kiddy,' the man said grabbing the boy by his hand. 'Don't hurry up if you are not willing to fall into the river and get drowned.'
He jumped onto the smaller hump of the boulder and, taking the boy with his stretched hands, carried him over and got him by his side. 'Now stay here,' he said to him and in the same way repeated their two-stage ascension upon the bigger part of the rocky peninsula; having reached the very top of it he sat on its stone seat and got his son on his lap. The boy held his breath with delight. It was wonderful indeed — they were sitting now right above the dark whirling water, the side of the boulder adjacent to the rapids of the river being so abrupt that the two felt as if they were suspended somewhere in the air with no support beneath them at all.
'Daddy, why is this stone so big?' the boy asked.
'It's the part of a great rock. It broke off it a long time ago and fell into the river.'
'Is it heavy?'
'Yeah, it's very heavy.'
'But you can move it away from here, can't you, Daddy?'
'No, of course!' the man laughed and dishevelled the boy's hair. 'You need a big tractor at least to move this boulder even a single inch. And in any case…'
'What case, Dad?'
'I mean, where will you find a rope to drag this rock with? There's no rope which can bear such a terrible weight.'
'And crane?'
'A crane needs a rope too. Where will you get it?'
'It's a pity that there is no such a rope,' the boy said after a short pause, 'or I would have a look at what is under it. Do you know what is under?'
'No.'
'And have you seen this big stone before, Daddy?'
'Certainly, kiddy. We played a good deal of time here when we were boys.'
'How did you play?'
'Oh, in many different ways. Indians. Soldiers. Mountaineers. Did yea see those vertical stone rocks over there?' the man beckoned with his head somewhere backwards. 'There was time I was climbing them.'
'With your mother and father?'
'No, of course.'
'Why no?'
'Cause they would've never allowed me this.'
'Why?'
'Cause it's dangerous.'
'Why dangerous?'
'Cause I could have fallen and crashed.'
'Were you afraid to?'
'For the first time, yes. And then it had become just interesting.'
'You were like me then?'
'No, sonny. I was slightly older than you then. Eight, I believe. And you are five.'
'And your mummy and daddy didn't know about it?'
'No, they didn't.'
'And your mummy still doesn't know about it?'
'No, she doesn't.'
'And if I tell her about it now, she won't rate you?'
'I think, no. It was a great deal of time ago.'
There was a long silence. The boy got tired of sitting in one position and stirred suddenly in his father's hands.
'Oh, devil!' the man exclaimed, instantly having rolled in his mind the terrible picture of his little one falling into the river, and made a snatch at his shoulders. 'Do you want to fall down, you, silly guy?'
'Daddy, but I wouldn't fall down,' the boy said. 'I am holding on to you tight — see,' and he squeezed his father's hands with his for all he was worth.
There was another long silence. The dimmed disk of the setting sun loomed through light clouds and powerful crowns of old poplars which stood bending above the stream and softly rustled with their thick foliage. Everything around was tinged with fresh golden and crimson paints; only the old church standing too high above the bank seemed black against the background of bright evening mother-of-pearl — black, yet not a trifle gloomy.
'It's getting late, kiddy,' the man said. 'Let's go.'
'No,' the boy frowned. 'I don't want to go from here.'
'Neither do I, but I've got tired to sit here. Let's go.'
'Good,' the boy said reluctantly after a while.
In the same step-wise manner they descended the rock and stayed for some time by the river, on the very border of land and water. The boy picked up a stick and threw it in the rapids. Snatched up by the flow, it floated downstreams swiftly.