We went out to the road with the streaks of melting black tar over the joints of concrete slabs in the road surface. I knew that road which went down from the Gorka blocks towards the House of Officers. We did not follow it though and only crossed into the thicket of supple bushes cut with a narrow trail which brought us to a house of gray logs with a sign hanging above its door for those who could read.
The boys did not go any farther. They started dawdling aimlessly between the bushes and the weathered-gray logs in the house walls until an adult unclie came out of the door and crossly ordered us away. Our leader answered his parents sent him to pick up the newspapers and mail, but the unclie grew even more angry, and I went home well taught what they mean by mentioning the Where-Where Mountains…
Yet, I still believed that adventures and travels would certainly come my way and getting ready for them was the must. That’s why, spotting a maverick box of matches upon the kitchen table, I grabbed it without a moment’s hesitation or delay—you have to train yourself to get the knack at vital arts, right?
A couple of initial attempts proved that lighting a match against its box side was something easy indeed. And there at once popped up the urge to proudly demonstrate to someone my newly acquired skills. Who to? To Sasha and Natasha, sure thing, they would be much more impressed than Grandma. Besides, my authority by them called for repair and restoration after all the recent flops.
(…however, this list of motives is made by me in hindsight, from the immeasurably distant future—my current present over this here fire loaded with potatoes to bake.
But then, in that immeasurably distant past, without any philosophizing and logical justifications, I perfectly knew that…)
I should call the younger ones to some hide-out and show them my apt control of the fire. The most suitable place was, of course, under the parents’ bed in their room, where we crawled in the Indian file. At the sight of matches in my hands Natasha oh-ohed in a warning whisper. Sasha kept silent and watched the process closely.
The first match caught fire but went out too soon. The second developed a good flame, yet all of a sudden it swayed too close to the mesh of tulle bed cover hanging down by the wall. The narrow tip of the fire bent forward, the upturned icicle of yellow flame burst thru the tulle forming a black, ever-widening, gap. For some time I watched the scene before I guessed its meaning and shouted to my sister-’n’-brother, “Fire! Run away! Fire!” But those little fools stayed where they were and only boohooed in duet.