Verunka

Contents

The Knee-highs

The Twins & CO

Kino

Hands and Feet

The Kitchen Window

Mr. Pigeon’s Street

Hail Mary

The Ant’s Hill

Papa and His Boy

The Puppet Theater

Being Ill

The Bloody Knee

Fireflies

Papa’s Work

The Green Banana

Mama’s Work

Family Pictures

The Funnycolor Train

The Peter’s Hill

The Enchanted Castle

Fortepiano

The Big Whip

The Peacock Hill

Ferry the Ant

Moon Gazing

Grandmama’s Present

The Tiny Silver Book

Grandmama

Vacations!

The Knee-highs

The time has come when the most disobedient girls finally won the war with their parents over wearing knee-highs to school. At noon, almost everyone, girls and boys, rolled them down to their ankles. The girls untied a jumping rope from around their waist where its hanging wooden handles clashed together, clicking like castanets along the way down the hill from school. There, at the building entrance, for a few minutes, would each of the girls exhibit the best of their jump series before parting, and after deciding on where to spend the afternoon, and what to bring from home.

Often, in Verunka’s case, the jumping parade got interrupted by an arriving streetcar to the stop right in front of her house, and by its passengers getting off. The streetcar would then continue to the very last stop which was a loop. The noise of the arriving streetcar could be heard before seen from the bottom of a long hill: its driver shifting gears with a silver crank, the conductor announcing that no more passengers descended or climbed on, by blowing his silver whistle, and by clicking of the trolley through the wiring above the wagons, sometimes shedding sparks, especially while making turns. The trolley occasionally dislocated itself from the wire, and fell down with a dangerous swing; the streetcar stopped with a jerk, the conductor jumped off and pulled on a thick, blackened rope to place the trolley back on, which looked as if it flew up, magic-netized by the wire.

The streetcar often brought along sounds from below the hill, from the train station, and even lower than that, from the river. Verunka listened to the distant metallic rattling and ringing, to the steam engine signals, steamboat horns’ hooting, and the tugboat bells when they approached a bridge, which meant they would bend down their chimneys to go on. The boats passed with an effort against the river current, guarded by an ancient castle towering high up on the opposite, steep river bank.

The mysterious tales about the old castle, from which a brave knight escaped in one jump across the river on a flying horse, lived in Verunka’s memory, ever since she heard those tales from her Grandmama. Verunka always thought that after the jump, the hero galloped up their hill where the streetcar tracks shone in the pavement, just like the horse’s silver shoes which must have been ringing with each jump in their escape.

The windows of the place where her family lived, looked the other way, facing an upright, high, rocky wall of another hill, called the Peacock Hill. Crossing the streetcar tracks meant to overcome the fear of the approaching traffic. Paying a close attention while crossing the street was also needed to avoid stepping into horse patties left behind either by the blue post carriage, or the milkman’s cart, pulled by a horse, or in warm weather by the ice-carriage that delivered massive ice-blocks for the pubs’ cellars where they kept beer, at the Saint Anna’s, and two other pubs on the same street, called Mr. Pigeon’s Street, bellow another hill, called the Ant’s Hill.

Verunka lived in a brick apartment building with an elevator, and a dark basement laundry room with spacious marble basins, and scary, loud, spinning machines. She often helped Mama there with the wash. To get down there, they always needed to sneak by heavy and smelly ashcans, lined up in the murky vestibule.

The ashcans were much larger than Verunka. Her heart kept always pounding whenever she passed by alone, and she always did so as quickly as possible. What if it was true that the ashmen’s job was to empty the ashcans without looking inside? What if she was thrown in by someone who was waiting for her in the dark? She feared that some grownups didn’t like children enough to want to make them disappear. That’s why she always ran up the two flights of stairs as fast as she could, and didn’t stop, until she could ring the door bell, and heard someone opening the door for her.

The best was when she crossed the street with her Grandmama, hand in hand, or with a friend who lived as far from her school as she did. Sometimes, the girls followed her even without a jumping rope, but with a little ball, or a piece of chalk in the pocket. Her sidewalk was wide and best for drawing a hopscotch on. The tiled, brown wall of her building, warmed up by the sun, felt cozy to lean backward against, and was smooth enough to throw the little ball at, and catch it easily again, playing the little school. One only guarded the ball not to let it bounce into the street.

Flying Horse

…the horse’s silver shoes ringing with each jump in their escape…

The Twins & CO

The other side of the street was boarded with a long, weathered, wooden fence of silver-gray color, too tall to see over, even for an adult. Only a few, empty knots at Verunka’s eye level, stuffed mostly from the inside, could possibly reveal what was behind. With such a permanent quiet behind the fence, no one could answer when she asked what was hidden behind the boards, and she couldn’t guess. The mystery remained unsolved, even when she discovered a see-through, drafty hole in the fence, and pressed one eye against it. All she could spot were strange objects in a pile, resembling an enormous umbrella carcass. She didn’t know where it might have come from.

If Verunka continued further up along the tall fence, she’d arrive to a crossroad, leading to Mr. Pigeon’s Street, where the Twins lived at the end of the suddenly curved street, past where children seldom ventured. The girls got called Twins because they liked it. Katka, short, with straight hair, and taller, curly haired Elena didn’t share the same last name. Verunka found it friendly, because in her own family, almost no one shared the same last name. She knew also the Real Twins, although those too looked more like sisters, younger than Verunka. She’d play with their sister Linda, while waiting for Mama who’d pick her, and the baby up at the Nanny’s. The Nanny happened to live in the same house as the Real Twins.

Their house was old. Its gate was built wide for horse carriages; the dark driveway led to the long courtyard with goat stalls, accessible by another door surrounded by many windows, reaching up to the round ceiling, and set with colorful glass: yellow, red, blue, green, and clear. The sunshine coming through illuminated and painted in those colors the whole dark entry passage. When that happened, it felt like being inside a kaleidoscope Verunka once got. She thought it was one of the most magical things she ever saw, until someone broke inside to see those ever changing, colorful stars. They only said: oh, is that all? when the pieces of glass mirrors and other things fell out. Verunka forgot who broke her kaleidoscope, but never forgot its wonder.

In Linda’s and the Real Twins’ house she loved the lingering smells of animals in the narrow courtyard, although they no longer lived there; she enjoyed sniffing the stench of the coal smoke from the kitchen stoves, and saliva prompting food odors, sneaking from under the doors in the building cool hallways. During the winter, breath was visible there; but not on the days when everyone wore knee-highs.

Linda and Verunka often climbed the last flight of stairs to a spacious attic, used for drying laundry on clothes lines, visited by cats, sometimes by thieves. Linda’s mom said they weren’t allowed to get the key by themselves, the largest key Verunka ever saw, and open the creaking attic door to play there. Instead, the girls carried to the door, in front of which a small platform yielded their play, old lace curtains, torn sheets, and short planks. They both turned into princesses, their princes killed with a sword ever-awake dragons, won wars all by themselves, or built enchanted castles. Both would whisper, or point mutely, for the echo might have carried their voices about the hallways, and could betray their secret hiding place, which they swore to never tell anyone about. Linda’s big brother always spied on them, but Verunka sneaked into hiding first. She’d wait on the attic platform, and Linda followed later, after her brother was sent to fetch coal in a scuttle from their basement cellar.

Every year, Linda’s big brother teased the girls with threats of an earnest Easter flogging. He kept his mighty witch hazel whip since the last year, when he learned how to weave it from nine shoots! On Easter Monday, boys always chased girls, and demanded a pay. Usually, decorated eggs in a basket satisfied the boys.

Linda explained to Verunka how her mom collected eggs from cooking way ahead, before the advent of Easter: she didn’t break them, she’d blow them out, and kept the shells for decorating. She’s got by then six of them on a string, like a necklace! She promised to share some with the Real Twins, she admitted. Verunka mentioned sadly, they didn’t have any eggs saved. Linda comforted her by saying she’d give her one of hers as a decoy.

Verunka decided to ask Mama for blowing out eggs, too, and keep the eggshells for decorating, whenever she’d cook with them. On Easter Monday, said Linda, she always stuffed a pillow inside her panties before she went outside, that way the flogging didn’t hurt. All girls should do that, she added, and stick out their tongues at the boys who wished to whip them hard.

"Or, conversely," said Verunka because she suddenly remembered the word, and believed it was important to use it, like the word perpendicular, the girls might grate carrots at the boys, when their bottoms are pillow-stuffed! She drew her hands close, and grated the carrots with the right-hand licking finger over the left-hand one.

Or that, agreed Linda, impressed by the new word.

Across the street from Linda’s house, above the streetcar tracks, the girls often played on a grassy plain with scattered wild rosebushes and low, crooked apple trees, growing on a slope ending by a fence around groomed, spacious grounds of a kindergarten which both girls used to attend. The high grass attracted more children as a playground. Older boys with their ballgames often disrupted the girls’ wreath weaving, and singing of old songs, accompanying certain games and dances, like The Golden Gate’s Open and She Wove in a Rosemary. Someone always taught the rest a new old game. Particular games needed to be played at sundown, during the twilight, because they were scary.

The Bloody Knee was one of them. It always came at the strike of midnight, and made the game inescapably thrilling for the younger players. Verunka knew it was necessary to be prepared for a mad run when the rhythmical countdown reached close to midnight: the eleventh hour chimed and the Death hasn’t come yet, but she was usually struck motionless, observing everyone growing terrified, yet utterly hoping the Bloody Knee would chase after them. Her heart was pounding mightily, while she was at the same time wishing to become invisible, and if picked, she prayed to have so much velocity and swiftness in her feet that the Bloody Knee would have to give up the hope to catch her, whoever they were. Who got caught, became the next Bloody Knee.

On the flat, grassy part of the plain, there was enough running space, until new bleachers filled it halfway, and on the summer nights an outdoor cinema took place with the projection on the building wall painted white, right by the Saint Anna’s pub, around the corner of its little garden where there grew one only, but the most beautiful tree Verunka ever saw, because of its majestic crown of green-silver long leaves. Grandmama called the tree olive.

The pub windows gaped open, and the cigarette smoke was pouring out, along with loud men’s voices, arguing and cheering, when full glasses clashed and clinked; or the guests, listening to the radio, joined the excited reporter’s voice who rapidly commented a football match, exclaiming the victorious goaaaal! in unison. The sound of outdoor movie projections blended with the street noise, but the clamor wasn’t happening until evenings. Perhaps the Bloody Knee let the noise loose with the huge key from the attic door where the girls were forbidden to play.

Kino

Every week on Sunday morning in the late fall, and through the winter, Verunka would get fifty hallers, and follow children from the neighborhood down the road to a pub in the mid-slope, toward the train station and the river, below the post office, passing the barber, the butcher, the cabinet maker in the rear who could repair her wicker doll-stroller. He could also replace the cat’s heads in the driveways, because the pavement cobbles were wooden, but so worn out and greasy that one couldn’t tell. Verunka often wondered about the unusual clop-clop sounds under