Why are they teasing me with a richie boy? - as if by chance Lena was asking, looking closely at the boy.
He is very young, hardly older than seven years. The hair seems dark because of the dust and the gray eyes look very childless.
Lenka spends her tongue on dry, rough lips. Even after so many years, he feels all the wounds left over from his life with his stepfather.
- His father was a merchant," Ivan said, turning his back on his face, and therefore did not notice how his companion flinched.
They speak a little more, and Lenya gets up saying goodbye. The boy looks after him, however, without any hope and sighs.
Lena cannot calm down for a long time. Dinka looks anxiously at his trembling hands, tightly squeezed lips and darkened eyes. On the way home, he talks and talks, though she usually talks Dinka.
- The richie boy is teased... A big deal! Can you imagine?! - he turns abruptly to her and almost with childish despair embraces her wide palms of her wrists. - And the teacher indulges them... I know of such people - his voice becomes alien and infinitely distant. - I remember.
- Let's take him? - offers Dink and, although she also has anger in her chest, she restrains herself.
Lenya never says, does not remember her childhood, the time until he was in the Arseniev family, and only through such rare outbreaks can we understand that he has not forgotten anything.
Dinka cuddles to his shoulder looks into his eyes. He exhales, brightening his face.
- You think... Can we manage?
- Of course! There's another thing," she sniffs mockingly, "why can't we handle it?
- Macaque, - and now Lenka is smiling with such familiar and native smile. He kisses Dinka right in the middle of the street, not shy of anybody, and she hugs him by the neck with a happy laugh, hiding her nose in her shoulder.
- Eh, - he throws his hand to the back of the head in a boy's gesture. - It's true! We can do it!
- Oh, - Dinka laughs gently out of the blue - as I imagined... I remembered what we did when we were kids. Poor Wanka. Well, will you believe him if he says he walks only on this square and does not get into any trouble?
- Doesn't he walk on a slender board across the abyss? Doesn't he sell fish at the bazaar? - is picked up by Lenka. - Doesn't he jump through the woods at night?
- Yes, - Dinka concludes. - We will have to control ourselves and at least pretend that we have no idea about anything!
They collect adoption documents quickly and easily. It is much more difficult to give a letter to parents and sisters who left for Pyatigorsk to correct their father's poor health.
In an orphanage, they are looked at as if they were mentally ill, without much hiding. The Arseniev family in Kyiv knows well, and the more surprising it is for the bosses to take the decision of Lenka and Dinka to take a boy from the former nobility. Political, revolutionaries, arsenals - and the son of a wealthy merchant!
They find Vanya in the yard. He usually stays away from playing children, and Dinka's heart shrinks.
- Sobolev! - His boss calls for him.
The boy comes up to them, looking at their faces with suspicion. His eyes slightly widen when he notices Lenya, and his eyes are frightened to rush from him to his boss and to Dinka, not yet familiar to him.
- Sobolev," the boss said. - Ivan.
- Hello," Lenya interrupted her and reached out to the boy. - Do you remember me?
He nods and eats his lip. He is shaking with a shiver from the tense, painful waiting.
- And this is Nadezhda, but everyone calls her Dinkoi, - Lena sits on squat to be with Vanya on equal terms. - I work at a factory in Arsenal. Will you come to live with us?
- Live? - he asks questions and licks his lips.
- Yes, - Dinka descends next to Lena. - We want you to become our son.
As soon as the boy looks at them too mature for his six years of age. He lowers his head and the bangs hide his face when he asks:
- And why?
The question confuses all adults at once. The boss and the teacher exchange eloquent views, Dinka looks at Lena and tries to remember what her mother said to her many years ago.
- Because it will be the right thing to do," says Lenka. - I was also adopted once.
Vanya opens her eyes wide and goes ahead.
- Shall we go? - Dinka smiles at him and stretches out his hand. - Shall we pack your things?
The boy slows down but still puts his hand in her palm.
All three of them come out of the orphanage, holding hands tightly.
