Finding the Ground Beneath the Feet - стр. 5
«Do you want us to adopt you?» my new dad asked me.
«Can I not be adopted?» I asked and explained immediately, «Well, not for real because I could pretend that Herman was my fiancé and I would have a future.»
Dad smiled, and the boy (he heard what I said too) seemed to be on the verge of tears.
«Do you need a fiancé for the future?» Mother smiled.
«Well, if there is a fiancé,» I shared my thoughts, «Then one day there will be a family… I know I’m going to die anyway, but just for fun, can I?»
My mother cried and allowed it, and Herman hugged me and told me how good I was. It got so warm, it was impossibly good. I had no words at all, only tears. I cried a lot that day, more than I think I had cried in my whole life.
At lunch, it turned out that I had little willpower, and the pain made the tears flow. Dad even scolded me a little.
«You mustn’t tolerate pain,» he said while caressing me. «If it hurts, you have to tell me.»
I was ready for Daddy to take the belt, but he caressed and scolded me so gently that I wanted to cry again.
«Aren’t you going to give me to a psychiatrist?» I asked because… well… «No psychiatrist, please.»
«Poor baby,» my mother hugged me. «What have you been through…»
«No one will give you to a psychiatrist.»
I noticed that those words made Herman look very pale. He must have been afraid of that liar too. Dad told me that he would help me stop the pain. And I believed it, of course. Then, Herman took the spoon from my trembling hands and began to feed me like a baby. I didn’t want to eat, but I had to be obedient…
«Let’s eat some more,» the boy told me. «Then, you can rest while I do my homework»
«Can I come too?» I asked him as piteously as I could, and my «fiancé» agreed.
Herman didn’t mind being a fiancé at all. I even asked him why, and he answered:
«You’re a miracle,» he said and caressed my head so tenderly that I squeezed my eyes shut in pleasure.
Oh, I forgot! It turned out that I was ten years old and almost a year away from the dreaded academy. And I didn’t look like Mariana in the mirror, not at all. So I definitely died and became a new person. Someone wrote about this in some books, I don’t remember the name. The academy was in the book, so I thought: if the surnames are the same, then I’m in the book, right?
Herman got down to his lessons, and I rolled closer: not to distract him, but to be busy with something. He put the history book in front of me and told me not to distract him. So I was reading the story without distracting him and imagining that if I had distracted him, he would have been very upset, and I didn’t want to upset my «fiancé», even if it was just for fun. Herman was doing his exercises and was upset because something was wrong. I looked in his notebook and almost immediately saw that he had mixed up the minus in the beginning with the plus. I used to make that mistake too, that’s why I noticed it. I was sitting and worrying about it, and Herman was worrying too, so I couldn’t resist it.
«Herman,» I called him softly and touched his sleeve. «May I disturb you, and later you can beat me up for it?»
«Oh…» The boy was angry at first, but then, when he heard what I was suggesting, he just hugged me and held me tight. «You little kitten.» It was so tender that I sobbed. «What’s wrong with my dear one?»