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20 YEARS UNDER THE BED
I'll never forget that winter evening. It was cold, snowing and windy and so dreary I felt like howling, especially after Mommy and Daddy went to the movies.
When Misha telephoned from upstairs and invited me over I rushed right up. His house was bright and cheerful, and there was quite a crowd. Lena was there, and Kostya, and Andrei. We played all the games we knew and laughed a lot and made a lot of noise.
"Let's play hide-and-seek!" Lena said.
That was a good idea. It was a swell game, because Misha and I kept peeking, so the little kids were always "it" and we could keep on hiding. But we soon got bored playing in Misha's room. It's small and we could only hide behind the drapes, the wardrobe or the chest. We started edging out of his room and into the large, long corridor.
It was more fun to play there, because there were coat racks outside the door with coats hanging on them. Whoever was "it" would never guess I was hiding behind a fur coat, standing in somebody's felt boots that were set under the coat.
When Kostya was "it" he turned to the wall, counted loudly and said, "Here I come, ready or not!" Everyone scattered. Kostya waited a few seconds and shouted again, "Here I come, ready or not!"
This was a sort of second warning. Misha climbed onto the win-dowsill, Lena hid behind the wardrobe and Andrei and I slipped out of the room and into the corridor. Andrei darted right under the fur coat I had hidden behind before, so I had no place to hide. Just as I was about to sock Andrei and make him move, Kostya shouted a third and last time,"Here I come, ready or not!"
If I didn't want him to spot me I'd have to be quick. Just in the nick of time I saw an open door and dashed inside.
It was a room I'd never seen. There was a big, high bed near the far wall, and I darted under it. It was nice and gloomy under the bed. There were quite a few things there. First of all, there were a lot o'f shoes. There was also a flat wooden box and a tin trough set upside-down on the box. I made myself comfortable, with my head resting on the trough and my shoulders leaning against the box. As I lay there, looking at the shoes, I kept congratulating myself on having found such a good hiding place. I was thinking of the fun we'd have when Kostya finally found me.
I moved a corner of the spread which reached down to the floor and was blocking my view of the room, because I wanted to see the door when Kostya'd come looking for me. Soon somebody did come in, but it wasn't Kostya. It was Efrosinya Petrovna, a nice old lady who looked a little bit like a witch.
Boy, would she laugh when she saw Kostya pulling me out! To make things still funnier, I'd put one of her shoes on my head. I had a big grin on my face, because I knew Kostya'd find me in another minute or so.
But Efrosinya Petrovna shut the door and turned the key. Imagine! She'd locked it! She'd locked herself in, and me, too!
Everything suddenly became very quiet. I decided she'd only locked it for a second, and that she'd unlock it again in a minute and everything'd be just as I thought it would. Everyone'd laugh,
and Kostya'd be happy, because he'd've found me in such a funny place. I kept looking at Efrosinya Petrovna to see what she'd do.
She sat down on the edge of the bed, making the springs creak on top of me. All I could see now were her legs. She took off her slippers and padded over to the door in her stockinged feet. At last! She'd gone to unlock it.
I was badly mistaken. Click! went the light switch. She'd turned off the light. The springs creaked again. The room was pitch dark. Efrosinya Petrovna was lying in bed, never guessing that I was under it. What a mess! I was locked in. I was trapped.
How long would I have to lie there? I'd be lucky if it'd only be for an hour or so. What if it'd be till morning? And how would I get out in the morning? If I didn't come home my parents would call the militia. They'd come with a dog. A German shepherd. But what if there weren't any dogs in our precinct? What if the militia didn't find me? What if Efrosinya Petrovna slept through the night and then went off for the day and locked me in again? Then what? Naturally, I'd have to eat some of the food in her cupboard. Then, when she returned, I'd have to hide under the bed again, because I'd eaten her food and she'd take me to court. I'd just have to go on living under her bed to avoid disgrace.
The one nice thing about it all was that I wouldn't have to go to school any more, what with staying under the bed, but then what about my matriculation certificate? I'd not only be grown after twenty years under the bed, I'd probably be overgrown.
This made me so mad I hit the trough I'd been resting my head on. It made a loud boom. The sound seemed twenty times louder in the dark. I was deafened by it. My heart froze.
Efrosinya Petrovna was awakened by the noise. She'd probably been sleeping peacefully before the terrible boom from under the bed. She lay there for a few minutes, breathing fast, and then cried out in a faint voice, "He-e-elp?" It sounded like a question.
I wanted to say, "Take it easy, Efrosinya Petrovna. Go back to sleep. It's just me, Dennis." But instead, I suddenly sneezed louder than ever before, with two little sneezes at the end of the big one: "Ah-choo! Choo! Choo!"
I'd probably breathed in some dust. My sneezing made her think something terrible was happening under the bed. She sounded really scared, and this time she shouted at the top of her voice, and there was no question in it this time,
"Help!"
For some reason or other I suddenly sneezed again. Real loud. There was even a sort of howling sound to it, like this, "Ahhh-choo!"
She shouted more faintly, "Robbers!" Then she probably decided there couldn't be any robbers under the bed. But what if there were? And she yelled, "Help! Murder!"
What a lie! Nobody was murdering her. And what with? And what for? It wasn't nice of her to scream lies into the night. So I decided that since she wasn't sleeping anyway, it was time for me to get out from under the bed.
I couldn't see in the dark and I made a terrible racket knocking against the trough and the box.
By then Efrosinya Petrovna was probably going a little crazy from fright, because she was shouting words like "Melp! Hurder!"
I scrambled out from under the bed at last, and felt along the wall for the light switch. Instead, I found the key in the door. What luck! I turned it, opened the door and walked out. Something flapped against my face and then fell on top of me. I was standing in the closet.
Efrosinya Petrovna was making croaking noises by now. I was to stunned to say anything. Then someone began knocking on the real door.
"Hey, Dennis! Come on out! Efrosinya Petrovna! Tell Dennis to come out. His daddy's come for him!" And then there was Daddy, saying, "Pardon me, but is my son
in here?"Then the light went on and the door opened. Everyone tumbled into the room. The kids dashed in, looking for me. When I walked out of the closet there were two hats on my head and three dresses draped over my shoulders. "What's all this?" Daddy wanted to know. "Come on, tell us!" Kostya and Misha chimed in. I didn't say a word. I had a funny feeling that I really had spent twenty years under the bed.