Even in the 1930s, there was no mass industry in the service of children. Girls and boys wore adult clothes that were the exact copy of the clothes of their parents, just smaller. And their toys weren’t bright and ugly hypertrophied images of the real things; they were copies of transport ware, household items, and weapons too…
I saw on the internet, a photo of the nursery of the children of your last emperor Nikolay, and in the photo you could see their toys. The dolls of the girls reminded you of real people. They were not ugly baby dolls with the exaggerated heads and protruding eyes of gigantocephalics. Their dresses, hats and boots looked like real clothes and footwear, only reduced, too. And the locomotive and cars were exact copies of real locomotives, not bright yellow monsters with a mouth and eyes, or a transparent tender and a big ‘Happy Train’ written on one side, like mine in childhood.
I know that for Alex the Russian prince, the only son of your emperor, the gun and saber, exact copies of real weapons, were just made small. And he had the same military uniform in this khaki-colored cloth or whatever it was made from at that time.
And now this would all be made from safe, nonflammable, certified by the World Health Organization hypoallergenic material, bright fluorescent orange in color so it’s obvious to all that it’s for children…
Do you understand what I’m getting at? If you make a child a moron or a clown, he’ll grow up that way. If he from birth he lives in a world of unclear, nonfunctional, senseless and incredibly safe things, he won’t want to move to the adult world where absolutely other laws and rules work.
And on the other hand, maybe, the adult world will finally turn into a kingdom of idiotic entertainments, foolish design and infantile acts. This process, actually, has already started.
I escaped from childhood when I was thirteen. I had a telescope – a big cylindrical thing on a tripod covered by various finders, counterbalances, eyepieces and other mechanical-optical trash. Pa gave it to me when I was nine, when I joined an astronomical club.
For a whole year, I regularly froze at an open window, examining the Galilean satellites of Jupiter, Archimedes crater on the Moon or some comet of Halley. Then I got bored and the telescope just stood a few years until suddenly it became much in demand.
I won’t beat about the bush. You, probably, guessed what happened. Yes, I found out that with this telescope I could to look into the windows of other houses! This discovery beguiled me to stand at the eyepiece for whole nights.
In America, it isn’t normal to use heavy blinds or curtains, just net, because neighbors have to know you have nothing to hide from them because you are an honest and respectable person! And if the sun bothers them in the afternoon, there are always rotary blinds. Well, and on the top floors you don’t need net at all.
Thus I opened for myself a kingdom of others’ passions…
At home, people don’t behave like in the street, in shops, at offices, medical institutions or other public places. At home, they become as they were created by God. Well, or Mother Nature. Real.
Behind closed doors, solid, adult businessmen turn into jumpy hysterics beating their children and shouting at aged parents.
Good girls, exemplary schoolgirls, hide (as they think!) on a garret balcony from the whole world, smoking the cigarettes stolen from mothers.
Comely grey-haired gentlemen take cover in the long cooled matrimonial bedrooms and masturbate over old numbers of Penthouse.
And last, the basis and support of American society – the housewives over thirty. In the absence of children and husbands, they do things that I don’t have the nerve to tell you. I will only say that I never thought that the ordinary vacuum cleaner, a hair dryer, or a cylinder of hairspray could be used with such sophisticated ingenuity.
During the days and in particular in the evenings I watched without a break the secret lives of my distant and nearer neighbors, gradually turning into a juvenile cynic who was undeceived in life.
The most terrible suspicions, the most awful hints I had read somewhere or heard on TV had suddenly became true and real.
My Pa, despite his rigid male character, was a man with strong principles, one of which said: ‘The soldier will not hurt a child’. But witnessing abuse for me became a nearly daily reality.
As soon as I went outside and met a person of any gender or age, my new experience began to cry out in me: ‘There goes one more pervert, house tyrant, or a voluptuous freak who is only pretending to be the normal person.’
But I couldn’t give up this forbidden, yet oh-so-fascinating occupation. Every evening, after saying I needed to do a school project or prepare for exams, I locked myself in my room and hurried to the cold eyepiece of the telescope.
Now I understand that at this time we in our family were going through a very intense, bad period – my parents were getting divorced, or more precisely, their relationship was going completely wrong, and to everyone, and first of all to them, it became clear that a crack had developed that couldn’t be stuck together, patched, covered or eliminated in any other way.
But I didn’t notice any of that, entirely absorbed by my secret, shameful, but devilishly fascinating hobby.
In time, simply looking became boring, and once I had the idea of writing down the names and addresses of those people who were performing illegal actions at home then reporting them to the police. I don’t remember precisely why I didn’t actually do it, but most likely it was the fear that I would be found and revenged.
However, there was nobody special to revenge Mr. Chandler, who beat his daughters at home but in the day was a quiet and modest accountant; and nymphomaniac Ms. Bryant wasn’t especially suited for the role of blood-thirsty avenger, and I could have beaten off the pervert Paul Harden even then in spite of the fact that he was about forty years old – because from birth he had suffered from cerebral palsy.
Anyway, the main object of my visual fascination was old man Coburn, or more precisely, his young wife Ellie. Actually her name was Espina, and I don’t remember her surname, even though Pa mentioned it several times. The fact is that Ellie-Espina was a Mexican of twenty something years and worked for old man Coburn as a housemaid.
Worked – worked – and married him. Coburn himself, a stately man of 70 with a white beard, was extremely happy about this and terribly proud of ‘my Ellie’ who ‘brightened up the declining years of a patriarch.’
And Espina herself was even more happy with her new status. This large girl with a shock of black hair and size five breasts had now become ‘an absolute American’.
But I knew that happiest of all was old man Coburn’s grandson Sam, a restless boy of my years working at the post in a suburb of Wilmington.
From time to time he visited his beloved grandfather. They sat in the garden, drank a glass or two, then old Coburn fell asleep, and Sam and Ellie went upstairs to the second floor guest bedroom, and indulged in what in books is called carnal joys.
The window of the guest bedroom was a quarter of a mile from my window in a line of direct visibility. Naturally, it was completely impossible to discern much from such a distance with the naked eye, and even ordinary tourist binoculars would hardly help, but the telescope is quite another matter!
In my big pipe I could see everything, up to the sugar skull tattooed on Ellie’s forearm along with the Spanish words: ‘Perpetuo socorro’. Well, and all the rest I saw fairly accurately too.
You must admit it’s one thing to hear about what is done by a man with a woman alone from peers or to see it in photos in magazines, but absolutely another to study it with your own eyes!
Now Sam was quite a puny creature, and maybe he blackmailed Ellie with something – otherwise why on earth she would need him? On the other hand, the old man Coburn could hardly be surprised at her – she was in her prime and wasn’t remotely like the chaste maiden Conchita in any way.