together resembling two humps on a camel's back. Naturally, the boy expressed the desire to climb the boulder as soon as he had seen it.
'I want to get on top, Daddy!' he shouted and made a stir to dash at the stone.
'A moment, kiddy,' the man said grabbing the boy by his hand. 'Don't hurry up if you are not willing to fall into the river and get drowned.'
He jumped onto the smaller hump of the boulder and, taking the boy with his stretched hands, carried him over and got him by his side. 'Now stay here,' he said to him and in the same way repeated their two-stage ascension upon the bigger part of the rocky peninsula; having reached the very top of it he sat on its stone seat and got his son on his lap. The boy held his breath with delight. It was wonderful indeed — they were sitting now right above the dark whirling water, the side of the boulder adjacent to the rapids of the river being so abrupt that the two felt as if they were suspended somewhere in the air with no support beneath them at all.
'Daddy, why is this stone so big?' the boy asked.
'It's the part of a great rock. It broke off it a long time ago and fell into the river.'
'Is it heavy?'
'Yeah, it's very heavy.'
'But you can move it away from here, can't you, Daddy?'
'No, of course!' the man laughed and dishevelled the boy's hair. 'You need a big tractor at least to move this boulder even a single inch. And in any case…'
'What case, Dad?'
'I mean, where will you find a rope to drag this rock with? There's no rope which can bear such a terrible weight.'
'And crane?'
'A crane needs a rope too. Where will you get it?'
'It's a pity that there is no such a rope,' the boy said after a short pause, 'or I would have a look at what is under it. Do you know what is under?'
'No.'
'And have you seen this big stone before, Daddy?'
'Certainly, kiddy. We played a good deal of time here when we were boys.'
'How did you play?'
'Oh, in many different ways. Indians. Soldiers. Mountaineers. Did yea see those vertical stone rocks over there?' the man beckoned with his head somewhere backwards. 'There was time I was climbing them.'
'With your mother and father?'
'No, of course.'
'Why no?'
'Cause they would've never allowed me this.'
'Why?'
'Cause it's dangerous.'
'Why dangerous?'
'Cause I could have fallen and crashed.'
'Were you afraid to?'
'For the first time, yes. And then it had become just interesting.'
'You were like me then?'
'No, sonny. I was slightly older than you then. Eight, I believe. And you are five.'
'And your mummy and daddy didn't know about it?'
'No, they didn't.'
'And your mummy still doesn't know about it?'
'No, she doesn't.'
'And if I tell her about it now, she won't rate you?'
'I think, no. It was a great deal of time ago.'
There was a long silence. The boy got tired of sitting in one position and stirred suddenly in his father's hands.
'Oh, devil!' the man exclaimed, instantly having rolled in his mind the terrible picture of his little one falling into the river, and made a snatch at his shoulders. 'Do you want to fall down, you, silly guy?'
'Daddy, but I wouldn't fall down,' the boy said. 'I am holding on to you tight — see,' and he squeezed his father's hands with his for all he was worth.
There was another long silence. The dimmed disk of the setting sun loomed through light clouds and powerful crowns of old poplars which stood bending above the stream and softly rustled with their thick foliage. Everything around was tinged with fresh golden and crimson paints; only the old church standing too high above the bank seemed black against the background of bright evening mother-of-pearl — black, yet not a trifle gloomy.
'It's getting late, kiddy,' the man said. 'Let's go.'
'No,' the boy frowned. 'I don't want to go from here.'
'Neither do I, but I've got tired to sit here. Let's go.'
'Good,' the boy said reluctantly after a while.
In the same step-wise manner they descended the rock and stayed for some time by the river, on the very border of land and water. The boy picked up a stick and threw it in the rapids. Snatched up by the flow, it floated downstreams swiftly.
'Where is it floating to?' the boy asked.
'To the next river.'
'And from there?'
'To the further next one which is larger.'
'And from there?'
'To the still larger river.'
'And from there?'
'Into the ocean.'
'What ocean?'
'The Arctic.'
'Is it far from here?'
'Yes, it is very far.'
'How far?'
'About two thousand miles, I believe. Do you imagine such a distance?'
The boy pondered over the figure he had heard.
'No,' he said after a while. 'You see, Daddy, I don't know how many a thousand is.'
'Well,' his father explained. 'It'll take your stick about fortnight to reach Arctic ocean, see?'
'A fort… what?'
'A fortnight. Two weeks.'
'I want to Arctic ocean, Daddy.'
'It's too cold there. Ice, no people. Polar bears.'
'I know. Just like at Snow Queen's. But I will go there with you. Or we'll float down the river.'
'Let's go home, kittie,' the man said. 'It's getting late.'
'I won't cry,' the boy said. 'See, I have not cried when I been nettled.'
The man didn't answered. The Arctic, he thought. Kiddy, kiddy, you have just forgotten that tomorrow morning you will be in the other city, eighty miles from here, and then, in two or three days you and your mother will go to the sea. To the warm southern sea — very far from the Arctic.
'Come on, Leo,' he said.
They went in silence. After a while the boy wanted to be taken in arms, and when his father took him he saw tears in his big brown eyes. The man hugged him tight and quickened his pace.
The next morning — that of the parting — had passed for him in a kind of haze. His memory retained then only the very moment they said good-bye to each other, their eyes — his green and his kiddy's brown — filled with tears again. And the whole of the subsequent month was dragging in a fever of waiting, a nasty yet strangely wonderful state of mind when all events and episodes of one's life are inexorably erased out of conscience being none in comparison with a subject of the obsession. Over and over again was he rolling the pictures of their walks, talks, games and smiles in his memory. They were all very usual — and all very singular, for there was something in them which lay beyond their purely material content; something that inexplicably revealed the crazy adoration of the two for each other which they never tried to expose verbally. After all, they didn't need spending words to show it; for them it was just enough to talk, to walk, to play together and to feel this sheer impossibility of existing without each other — slight and elusive signs of their devotion, deep and mutual.
August came; trees began to drop their leaves hesitatingly, as if not believing yet in the forthcoming change of seasons; days, still warm, were followed now by cold, almost frosty nights which left green grass coloured in hoary silver after them. The month had passed; there came the time to ring up, the time to meet. He dialed the number and heard the voice of his former mother-in-law — dull with slow suave intonations. Hello, he said. Give me my Leo, please.
'But he is with Jesebel,' he heard. Jesebel was the name of his former wife. 'She decided not to return home from the sea. I think, she went directly on her stage practice and took the child with her.'
'Where to?'
'Somewhere to Switzerland, as far as I know.'
'What else do you happen to know as far as that?'
'Nothing, to my regret. She didn't inform us in detail.'
A lie. J. D. Salinger, he recollected. A perfect day for banana-fish. A perfect voice for lie. These slow nauseous intonations. You should learn from her how to tell lies, buddy, he said to himself. Listen — no voice tremor, no perplexity.
'You just don't want to say. You're programmed so, aren't you?'
'I really don't know.'
'And when will you know, then?'
'You will know it yourself soon. She will write you a letter.'
Another lie.
'When does she intend to return, after all?'
'Well… she said, in six months approximately.'
Said at random — just to take him off the wire? On the other hand, she told something about this half-year stage practice some two months before the divorce. And now she went on the practice with Leo surreptitiously — without warning him, without giving the address abroad. But why should you get surprised, buddy, he thought, it's purely her — or her family's — style, that of performing things in a manner of well-calculated and unparaded meanness.
'Good bye,' he said and hung up.
The fever of a short waiting turned into the pain of a long one. Autumn, that year cold and rainy, conquered the ancient town which stood dull and grey and sometimes almost invisible beyond the dense veil of drizzle; even the old church could not, as ever before, soften harshness of the weather. Day rolled after day, each extremely different from the earlier ones which had been marked with their meetings — actual or shortly expected. There was no letter, and it was natural, after all — she had found her be-shameless-yet-silent-if-you-want-to-win style which in no case implied clearing things up, and was elaborating it now. He rang up her parents several times. They're all right there, they were saying, and are to come back soon. Address, phone number? Don't know, we've got no feedback, unfortunately. It was a game, primitive and mean: we lie to you, you know it's a lie, and we know that you know it's a lie but good gracious, what is your knowledge based upon? The same be-shameless-yet-silent style; and he had nothing but to go on waiting for these long months to come to end.