Chapter 2. Waiting for a thunderstorm...
The covered crew stopped so abruptly, that Andri almost flew nose forward, and the girls shouted scared.
Somewhere in the distance, noisy unpleasant voices sounded in the street.
- What's the matter? - My father asked loudly. The coachman answered him, but Andri did not understand the vague words. I only saw how harshly the professor frowned. His father's look became sharp and strangely alien. An incomprehensible alarm would have flooded the crew at the top, taking away a pleasant semi-slummer in which the Goranov family stayed, returning home from the theater.
Heavy moments stretched slowly. Andrew heard how snorting and stepping from foot to foot horse harnessed in the crew, but the wagon remained in place. He tried to push the curtain on the window to look outside, but his father grabbed his hand with hard as a vice finger and awarded him with a strict warning look. No one else in the crew even tried to move. The girls were frightened to their mother and looked at everyone with their eyes wide open. Andri himself was not afraid. Just because he didn't understand anything.
Finally, his ears got a muffled "H-no...", and the crew slowly moved away. The further he got, the faster he gathered speed, taking his passengers away from the loud voices.
- What was that, Daddy? - Lisa asked quietly when they'd gone far enough away and the horses were back on track.
- Nothing, baby. Nothing special. It's just a little of a mess outdoors.
Andrew had never seen his father lie.
But now he immediately realized that the words of the professor are much less true than it would be desirable. He became even more convinced of this opinion when his father was the first to get out of the crew and looked around with anxiety before he gave his mother's hand.
The children's homes were immediately sent to their bedrooms. And even Vlad did not try to indignantly demand traditional evening tea in the dining room, and, like everyone else, silently agreed to warm milk, which Antonia brought directly to the beds.
Andrew was lying in his bed, looking at a wooden boat, a long thread attached to the ceiling. The little brigantine was slowly, barely noticeably turning from side to side - it was a slight draught from the window that filled her sails. When Andri was very young, he dreamed of becoming a captain and, standing at the helm, discovering unknown countries... Then his father took him to the Sea Cadet Corps, where a pampered professor's boy saw a stern mushroom and learned that the steering wheel was not the captains, but the helmsmen. This was enough to make the dream go away by itself. Moreover, even then he understood more and more what way he was really meant to go... Andri began drawing early. At first, his art was admired only by his parents, and then somehow it turned out that the watercolors of the younger Goran appeared in almost every famous house in Alexandburg ... Especially if there were boys.
Andri drew sails. Clippers and brigades flying over the sea, brave sailors at the helm and seagulls over the waves. And also quick-legged horses, balloons, his friends who are fond of games, and sometimes his mother...
Andrew sincerely believed that his mother is the most beautiful in the world. Vlada is also the most beautiful woman in the world, but he can't be compared to his mother! Mom has such a gentle face with dimples on her cheeks, a little of an upturned nose and blue eyes like a clear summer sky. Andri loved to look at her most of all when her mother was sitting by the window, and the sun gilded the brown curls of her hair, mischievously escaped from her hair. He was able to see the lighted face endlessly, trying to catch the slightest shades of color. No matter how much I tried, but I couldn't really pass them on... I couldn't transfer the finest transitions of colors to paper or canvas...
The wind blew stronger, and the ship swung aside.
Andri thought it was a good thing. Tomorrow, in such a strong wind, it would be possible to raise the snake high and high...
But in the morning it became clear that no snake was out of the question.
The fact that the day did not go well, Andri knew as soon as he woke up: it was twilight in the room, despite the extended curtains. Drops were knocking loudly on the tin window sill, and they were breaking up the sleep.
Andri lay there for a few minutes, looking out the window sadly. The whole sky was covered with clouds, heavy as thoughts of something very bad. And out of these clouds, it rained on the city, shallow, but continuous. He turned the street into a gray set for a sad play like yesterday.
A walk in the park was canceled, which is understandable.
Without getting up, Andri felt under the bed an album with a pencil put between the pages and opened on a blank page. But I couldn't draw this morning either, as soon as he put a pencil over the sheet of paper, the door opened slightly, and Antonia looked carefully into the room.
- He woke up," she said with reproach. - Why don't you get up? Probably not a lord, to track down all day long. Come on, get up, you marmot!
Continuation in the next part of 7.