Contents
THE SPYGLASS
I was sitting on the windowsill with my shirt pulled down over my knees, because Mommy was patching my pants.
"This is the limit," Mommy said and stopped stitching. "His clothes just melt away."
"Yes," Daddy said and folded his newspaper. "They do. He's forever climbing fences and trees, and roofs. I can't seem to keep him in clothes." Daddy was silent for a while. He stared hard at me and then said, "But I've finally thought of something that'll put an end to this."
"I didn't do it on purpose," I said. "You think I tore them on purpose? It just happened."
"Of course. It just happened," Mommy snapped. "Your pants are so mean they keep thinking of ways to get caught on every nail, just to upset your mother. What terrible pants you have! It just happened! Imagine!"
She could go on like that all day, because her nerves were shattered. Anybody could see that. So I said to Daddy,
"What did you think of?"
Daddy looked very stern and said to Mommy, "You've got to concentrate and invent something that'll let you keep track of your son when he's outdoors. I can't now, because I don't want to miss the soccer game, but you can easily construct a spyglass. I know you'll succeed. You have a good head on your shoulders."
Daddy went over to his big drawer for odds and ends and got out a large magnet, a small mirror with a chipped corner, some nails, a button and a few other things. He set them out on the table before her. "Here. This is all you'll need. See what you can do."
Mommy saw him to the door, came back and said I could go outside and play. When Daddy and I got back in time for lunch I saw that Mommy's hands were full of dry paste. There was a nice-looking big blue paper tube on the table. Mommy picked it up and said,
"Look, Dennis."
"What is it?"
"It's a spyglass. My own design."
"To see what's far away?"
She smiled. "Not at all. To keep an eye on you."
"How?"
"It's really very simple. I designed and made a spyglass for parents. Like the kind sailors have, except that mine is much better."
"Will you please explain the principles of construction, the functioning, et cetera," Daddy said.
Mommy stood by the table, like a teacher standing by the blackboard, and said in a voice just like a teacher's,
"Now, whenever I have to leave the house I can always keep an eye on you, Dennis. Even if I'm as far as eight kilometers away. The minute I decide I haven't seen you for a long time and want to know what you're doing, I turn it on, hold it up in the direction of our house and, guess what? I can see you as big as life."
"Excellent! It's the Cutlet-Buzzer Effect," Daddy said.
I was taken aback. I never dreamed Mommy could invent such a thing. Mommy was so slim and young, but look at what she'd invented! The Cutlet-Buzzer Effect!
"But how d'you know where our house is?" I asked.
That didn't stump her. "I've got a special magnetic compass inside that points directly to our house."
"That's the Nanny-Granny reaction," Daddy said.
"Exactly," Mommy agreed. "So you see, Dennis, anytime you climb a fence or are someplace you shouldn't be, I'll know all about it. Right away."
"What've you got inside it? A TV screen?"
"Of course. Remember the mirror? It throws back a reflection of you right into my head. So I can know whether you're fooling around with a slingshot or are just dawdling someplace."
"It's the Sneezable-Windpipe Law in action, as could be expected," Daddy mumbled and then suddenly said, "I'd like to interrupt you for a minute, if I may. There's a question I'd like to ask."
"Yes, of course. Go right ahead," Mommy said.
"Does your spyglass run on electricity, or what?"
"Electricity."
"Be very careful then," Daddy said. "You don't want to have a short circuit. If you do, you'll have a blowout in your brains."
"There won't be any short circuit, because there's a fuse."
"That's a different story. But be on the lookout anyway. You can't fool around with electricity."
"Can you make one like it for me?" I asked. "So's I can keep an eye on you."
"What for? I assure you I don't intend to climb any fences."
"Who knows? Well, maybe you won't climb a fence, but you may cross right near a passing car. Or maybe you're a jaywalker."
"Or maybe you pick fights with the janitors, or argue with the militia," Daddy added and sighed. "Too bad we don't have a spyglass like yours to keep an eye on you."
Mommy made a face at us and said," It's an original design and the only one of its kind, so there!" Then she stared hard at me and said, "Don't forget, I'll have my sights on you all the time from now on."
This new contraption was going to make my life pretty awful, but I didn't say anything. I just nodded and went to bed.
When I awoke the next morning and started living my new life I could see there'd be nothing but black days ahead. Life was torture now, thanks to Mommy's invention. For instance, after I'd decided that Kostya'd been getting too snotty and was due for a licking, I stopped in my tracks, because I remembered that Mommy's spyglass was trained on my back. How could I give Kostya a licking? To say nothing of the fact that I'd stopped going to the pond in the park for tadpoles. My happy, carefree life was now out of bounds.Dull, gray days dragged on and on. I was melting away like a candle and always felt grumpy. I was probably nearing an unhappy end.
But then one day when Mommy was out and I was rummaging in my junk drawer, looking for my old inner tube, I suddenly spotted Mommy's spyglass. It was lying on the bottom of the drawer and looked rather battered. You could see Mommy hadn't used it in a long time. She'd probably forgotten all about it. I grabbed the spyglass and began taking it apart to see what was inside and figure out how it worked. Honest to goodness, there was nothing inside. It was empty!
That's when I realized they'd tricked me. Mommy hadn't invented anything. She'd just used the make-believe spyglass to scare me, and I, like a silly fool, had believed her. I was so scared of it I'd been behaving like an angel.
This made me so mad at the whole world and at Mommy and Daddy, too, that I raced outside and began fighting Kostya, then Andrei and then Lena. Even though the three of them gave me a good beating, I was happy. After we quit fighting we went up to the attic and out onto the roof. Then we climbed a couple of trees. Then we went down into the cellar and the boiler room and fooled around in the coal bin till we were blacker than soot. I felt as if I'd sprouted wings and could fly.