Несовременные записки. Том 3 - страница 23

'Let's go there.'

Now they had to surmount an almost vertical ascent. Having clasped the boy's hand tight the man began to scramble up the slope, with his free hand clinging to stones and stems of trees and tall grass. Soon they stood on a path which stretched along between the brink of the ravine and a dense wall of young pine trees. The boy went to the right; having covered about thirty yards he stopped and looked back at the man who was after him.

The place where the boy lingered occurred to be a tiny glade of regular octangular form. Pines surrounding it restrained gusts of cold wind and filled the space with calming murmur, and their spreading crowns formed a kind of an almost impenetrable vault.

'Daddy, look what I've found!' the boy shouted not taking his eyes off the man who was approaching him.

'"Well, what have you found?' the man asked with a smile on his face.

"Daddy, that'll be our castle and we shall live here,' the boy declared standing in the middle of the glade. 'You know, Daddy, I've been looking for a place like this for such a long time. I say, that'll ekzactly be our castle.'

'But why castle?' asked the man keeping a smile, 'Can't it be just a log cabin?'

'No, this is a castle,' his son answered. 'There's a forest all around, don't you see?'

'D'you mean that log cabins don't occur in forests?'

'Yes, they do, but castles do too And this one — look, it stands just by the edge of a precipice, like a real castle.

…But it's shaky,' he added after a pause. 'Let's strengthen it, Dad. Go and bring a lot of stones, please.'

His face was radiant with a happy smile. Making two steps the man squatted down and took the boy's hands into his — they were ice-cold.

'You're all frozen, sonny,' he said.

'Certainly, I am,' the boy agreed. 'But if we build firm walls of hard stones, it'll be warm indoors, yes?'

'And where have you seen stones?'

'Why — this one, for instance,' said the boy and picked up a dead pine branch from the ground. 'Look, Daddy. There's a lot of them, don't you see? Help me gather them.'

They went in opposite directions and soon returned each with an armful of dry wood. After that they began to arrange them lying on the ground in some intricate way which was to imply a precise and fastidious masonry.

'That's O.K.' the boy said to his father when they finished to fix up this two-dimensional structure on the ground. 'We shall always live here in our castle together with you, Daddy.'

The man felt his heart wrought at these words — partly because of the sheer impossibility of his son's fantasy coming true, and partly because of the very tone of this phrase. There wasn't any note of superiority in the boy's voice when he was praising the man — being entirely carried away by his game, he was rejoicing at the results of their work and just wanted his father to know about it.

'Kittie,' the man said very softly, 'Do you want to fly?'

The boy tossed his head to his father's voice and began to skip with joy stretching his arms forth to meet the father's.

'Yes, Daddy! Of course, Daddy! Fly me, fly me!'

The father took his son under his arms and threw him up. The boy screamed with delight. Seven times he soared up to the height of good ten feet touching pine boughs with his head, and seven times fell down into his father's hands.

'Are you tired, Daddy?' he asked when the man put him down on the ground breathing heavily.

'Yes, a little bit. You're a big fellow. But never mind. Now I'll take a rest and then'll toss you again.'

'You are very good, Daddy,' the boy said and sighed suddenly. 'Let's go home now. I'm cold already,' he responded his father's inquiring glance. We shall come here tomorrow, right? I don't want to go away from here, but I am so cold.'

'Never mind, sonny,' the father said. 'At home we've got a castle too.'

'I didn't see any,' the boy answered.

'It's just in an album, kittie. And we shall assemble it of cardboard.'

They went home, hand in hand again, warming each other and somehow equalizing their so different ages: clasping his father's palm the boy felt as if he was almost an adult man, "a traveller", whereas the man, with the child's hand in his, recalled that remote time when he too was five or so and was walking here together with his father who had died three months before the boy's birth. You were very good Dad, he said in his mind to the man who was lying now in the grave two miles away from here, and sighed — just like his son did some minutes ago after having said, You are very good, Daddy. What a bitch the fate is, the man thought, to deprive both of us of our fathers — me at the age of twenty-six, and him at only five. And no quarter at all.