Childhood and summer are a fabulous combination. For some reason, most of our warmest memories are associated with this particular time.
Summer is a time of unlimited freedom, which is why you grow the fastest in summer.
My vacations usually took place near Kyiv at the dacha, in the village of writers, very similar to Peredelkino near Moscow. My grandfather, a writer, had a house there, a garden, a kennel, and sometimes even a stable. This place is called Koncha-Ozernaya, a long series of lakes, water meadows and forests, in which there are berries and mushrooms, and the singing of birds, sweet as in paradise.
Soon the horse was munching on still-virgin buds and gigantic fragrant petals…
But my story is about the stable. Just before summer, a new stallion turned up there, harmful, harmful, and we affectionately christened him
«Fool», although he, of course, had a different spelling name. We called him that for many dirty deeds, the main of which was the masterful throwing of an unloved rider into a dunghill. Whether he understood that it was not only unpleasant, but also insulting for a person to be there, I do not know, but he did this feint many times. He treated me differently. Our neighbors were the Bazhanov couple — he, Nikolai Platonovich, an academician, the founder of the Ukrainian encyclopedia, she, Nina Vladimirovna, a beauty from St. Petersburg, a blonde, a doctor. From one trip to Italy, Nina Vladimirovna brought a hundred rose bushes and planted an immense rose garden under her windows. And then one unfortunate day, when I, ten years old, climbed on a new colt to ride a little bit, he went directly to this rose garden. Despite my desperate cries, he took me out through a gate that was not closed by someone, opened the gate leading to the plot with a flower garden, and after a few minutes he was munching on virgin buds and giant, saucer-sized, fragrant petals open towards the sun … Hosts no, they were in Italy. My desperate cries and kicks did not spoil his appetite at all. He managed to eat half a rosary by the time the housekeeper jumped out on the threshold, guessing only to grab a broom and deafen the neighborhood with foul language.
In the evening they sanded me. At a big family meeting. The adults tried very hard to show strictness, but it turned out badly for them: the stallion ate Italian roses too comically. I don’t remember how I was punished, which means not strictly.
The next summer the stable was empty, but I didn’t want to ask too many questions. We went horseback riding to the shepherds, in violation of all oaths that I didn’t go to “these bandits”. With the neighbors, the analysis turned out to be simple: they brought other roses, and my parents compensated their expenses.
One summer succeeded another, leaving in memory bright spots that over the years you absolutely don’t want to erase. What was it — childhood, summer, holidays? When you reach for the sun, like a green shoot, and nothing can stop your curiosity: why is something impossible and what is generally where it is not visible, beyond the horizon, for example, or in the future? I really wanted to stand on tiptoe and look there, into this tomorrow, which does not cease to be different as long as you continue to grow.