Weary of regular morning earfuls, I found an elegant solution to the problem of disappearing stockings and, with the light in the room switched off already but Grandma Martha still gossiping in whisper with her God, I tied them around my ankles, in secret, separately, one for each. My sister-’n’-brother with their pillows on the opposite armrests of the big sofa were, as always, kicking each other under their common blanket and could not follow my subtle manipulations in the dark. And I was in time to cover my legs when Mom entered our room to kiss her children goodnight. Yet, quite unexpectedly she did something never done before. Mom switched on the light, who lived under the ceiling within the bulb surrounded by the orange shade of silk, lush fringes hanging from the rim let him sleep comfortably in daytime. But now he had to spring at once from his bed and show—as she threw the blanket off my legs—the stocking shackles on each of my ankles. “Something had just pulled me to do it”, she told Dad later with a laugh. I had to untie the stockings and leave them atop the bundle of my other clothes on the chair next to my folding bed and never realize so a brilliant solution…
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In all fairness, the most unpleasant part in my kindergarten life was going to bed after the midday meal for the “quiet hour”. You had to take off your clothes and put them on a small white stool and, no matter how carefully you did it, at getting up after the “quiet hour” the clothes would be in full mess, and the stocking fastener in one or another garter would stubbornly refuse to do its job.
Besides, what’s the use of idle lying for a whole hour staring at the white ceiling or the white window curtains, or along the long row of cots with a narrow passage after each pair of them? The children would lie silently in that row ending by the far off white wall with the far-off-white-robed caretaker in her chair reading silently her book, distracted at times by some or other child who would approach her to ask in whisper for permission to go out to the toilet. And, after her whispered permit, she would in a low voice silence the rustle of whispering arising along the row of cots, “Now, everyone shuts their eyes and sleep!” Maybe, now and then I did fall asleep at some “quiet hours”, though more often it was kinda still stupor with my eyes open but not seeing the white ceiling from the white sheet drawn over my head…
And suddenly the drowsiness was cast away by a gentle touch of cautious fingers creeping from my knee up over the thigh. I looked out from under the sheet. Irochka Likhachova was lying on the next cot with her eyes closed tightly but, in between the sheets over our cots, I could clearly make out a length of her outstretched arm. The quiet fingers dived into my underpants to enclose my flesh in a warm soft palm. It felt unspeakably pleasant. But then her touch moved away from my private parts – why? yet more!