Tanya Grotter And The Vanishing Floor
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“I warned you! Either you sit quietly or… In short, you forced me!” Tanya adjusted the seal on the trunk and both ghosts in a flash became quiet.
Gathering her courage, Tanya rang the doorbell. “Interesting, how will the Durnevs react to my return? Most likely not very pleased!” she thought.
The sound of the doorbell had not yet died down but the dachshund already began to bark in the apartment. The dachshund was called One-And-A-Half Kilometres. Fat and troublesome, it was a worthy member of the Durnev family. Its favourite occupation was to nip at the heels of guests. If it was chased into the corridor, then from malice One-And-A-Half Kilometres would drool into the boots there.
In half a minute, a door was already thrown open in the depth of the apartment, and thick heels started to thump resonantly on the linoleum. Tanya shivered. Aunt Ninel! Her steps could be recognized out of a thousand. “Why are you barking, my young rat? Come to mommy!” Aunt Ninel started to lisp like a child. Her thick heels finally stopped thumping, and Tanya understood that she was being narrowly examined through the peephole. “Oh, no!” Aunt Ninel howled in an ugly voice. “Oh, no! Herman! Herman! It’s your niece! Not without reason some skeleton was choking me all night tonight!”
Someone else’s footsteps were heard. This time they were quiet and sounded approximately like this: “juk-juk-juk.” Uncle Herman was three times lighter than his spouse. Emaciated, with a green face, he strongly resembled a vampire. And even, it seems, he was related to Count Dracula. However, not along Tanya’s line but along some entirely different one. In any case, Yagge so asserted. Only, in contrast to his relative with big fangs, Uncle Herman was not a magician. And he did not believe in magic at all. Here he would be astonished if he were to find out that Tanya had not been living in the railway station these several months but studying in a real school for magicians. “Yes, it’s her! I said: frost hits, and she’ll drag herself along without a peep!” Tanya heard the venomous voice of Uncle Herman. “Pipa, Pipa, come here! You also take a look!”
Guessing that now a maliciously rejoicing Pipa would look into the peephole, Tanya as a preventive measure stuck out her tongue. It was well known that the Durnev’s daughter could not stand her. During her entire early childhood, Tanya was poisoned by contact with Pipa. How often she insulted Tanya, locked her on the balcony, told tales, and played dirty tricks! During the time that Tanya was in Tibidox, the school of magic, Pipa could hardly have changed for the better.
“Tanya Grotter! Oh no! It’s really too much that she’s here! I so hoped that something had happened to her! That a brick had fallen on her head or they had put her in prison!” Pipa began to yell, turning away from the eyehole.
“Pipa, what are you saying? Never say that. We must pity a poor orphan. She’s not guilty that she has good-for-nothing parents and she herself is useless just like them,” Aunt Ninel said in an affected voice.
“No-o! Mama, papa, don’t open! Let’s barricade it and not let her in! Let her roll back to where she came from!” Pipa began to squeal, hanging onto her mama’s leg.
“Calm down, Pipa! Not possible not to let her in. The journalists find out and they’ll spoil your papa’s career. Better we quietly get rid of her later to the boot camp for children with criminal inclinations,” Aunt Ninel whispered.
“Why later, why not right now?” Pipa yelled. “If you let her in, I’ll leave home! It’s because of her I’m bald! And she also scalded me with tea! Give her a rug and let her spend the night on the stairs! Is that clear?”
However, Aunt Ninel and Uncle Herman decided otherwise. The lock clicked, the door was thrown open, and Tanya found herself face to face with the Durnevs. Aunt Ninel towered in front of everybody like an unapproachable bastion, like a hippopotamus in a house robe and soft slippers. The dachshund was seething in her arms. Uncle Herman was standing slightly to the side, and Pipa was looking out from behind his back. The hair, which Pipa had lost, attempting to flood the magic book with glue, had time to grow slightly and now stuck out like a short prickly hedgehog. But Pipa had four times more pimples. And she was even in pyjamas. “So, it’s night time at the moronoids now! Oh, I saw that it’s night! Why did I not consider it immediately? I roused them!” Tanya recollected suddenly.
However, in this case the circumstance played into her hands. “Do you know what time it is? Almost three o’clock!” Aunt Ninel said grumpily. “Already late tonight, I’ll have a talk with you tomorrow!”
Thus far, Uncle Herman had kept silent; however, his small eyes maliciously drilled into the unknown leather trunk and the bundle with Black Curtains. Tanya surmised that now without fail Durnev would be interested in what these things were and where she took them from.
“Uncle Herman, and how are your rabbits getting on?” she asked, hoping to soften him up. “Already asleep?” Her question – the most innocent, it would seem – forced all the Durnevs to turn blue with rage. They could not stand to recall this episode in their life. About how Uncle Herman, trying to box Tanya’s ear, hit the magic double bass. And magical instruments do not like it when they are so treated. As a result Uncle Herman thought of himself as Lisper the Rabbit, brought into the apartment a whole one hundred big-eared fellows and even gave an interview on TV, stating that he was giving up a political career because he adored animals…
“I don’t want to hear about the rabbits anymore! We sent them away to the zoo! Understand? Predators must also be fed,” Aunt Ninel said gloatingly.
“By the way, papa was again elected deputy! Voters almost unanimously voted for him after that interview… Papa is now terribly popular! He even signs autographs!” Pipa added.
“But indeed Uncle Herman… You also truly loved them! You yourself were the very rabbit Lisp…” Tanya was surprised.
Uncle Herman began to stomp his feet. Since he was very emaciated, in order to stomp louder, it was necessary for him to jump up high. “NO! Keep quiet! I was not anyone! I’m Herman Durnev – deputy! Head of the best faction and chairman of the most humane committee! Is that clear?” he roared, sputtering. He turned so green that Tanya was afraid that he would hit her, and moved aside just in case. “Clear, clear. In fact, I’m going to bed…” she said, sadly thinking that Uncle Herman was much more likable as a rabbit.
Although Uncle Herman almost choked her, the recollection about the “carrot-cabbage” period of his life forced the best deputy to forget about the suspicious trunk. He pressed his temples with his hands and, swinging like a pendulum, left for the bedroom. Behind him, mincing with short legs, Pipa ran away. Only Aunt Ninel was left with Tanya. “It’s now winter, cold on the balcony, you’ll sleep in the big room! And only try to roam at night along the apartment – I’ll skin you! No switching on the lights! Don’t touch the TV!” she said, looking somewhere at the wall above Tanya’s head. Aunt Ninel locked all the locks of the entrance door, slid in the chain, and withdrew, following Uncle Herman.
“Welcome! Now I’m home!” Tanya thought sadly. Having climbed onto the sofa, she hugged her knees with her arms. She recalled the farewell with Bab-Yagun and Vanka Valyalkin. Parting, they exchanged addresses. Will they write? She left Tibidox only six hours ago, but now solitude was already gnawing her like a worm. She terribly needed someone close and loving, with whom she could talk about everything.
She moved the trunk with ghosts under the sofa, placed the bundle with Black Curtains on the armchair, and lay down, pressing the double bass against herself. “Only you are left with me! Don’t even know if we’ll be able to fly around here.” sobbing, she said to the double bass. The strings of the double bass began to hum sadly.