Previous Story Next Story

Contents


WATERMELON LANE

I came home dog-tired and filthy after a soccer game but feeling great, because we'd beat the team from the next house 44:37. I rinsed my hands quickly and went straight to the kitchen, sat down at the table and said, "You know, Mommy, I could eat a bear."

She smiled. "A live bear?"

"Yep."

Mommy turned back from the stove. She was holding a steaming plate. I guessed it was my favorite pickle soup. Mommy set the plate before me and said, "Here you are."

But it was milk soup with noodles and all full of skin. It was practically the same as farina. There were always lumps in the cereal and there was always skin in the milk-and-noodle soup. It makes me gag to even look at it, to say nothing about trying to eat it.

"I don't want it."

"We won't even discuss it!" Mommy said.

"It's full of skin."

"Which skin?"

Daddy came in. He looked at us and said, "What's the big discussion all about?"

"Look at him! He refuses to eat his dinner! He'll soon be eleven, but he's acting like a spoiled baby."

I'll soon be nine. Mommy keeps saying I'll soon be eleven. When I was eight, she kept saying I'd soon be ten.

"Why won't he eat it?" Daddy asked. "Did the soup get burned, or is it too salty?"

"It's boiled milk and noodles and there's skin in it."

Daddy shook his head. "So that's it. His Majesty doesn't want to have his soup. He probably wants marzipan figures on a silver platter."

I laughed, because I like Daddy's jokes. "What's marzipan?"

"I don't know. Something sweet that smells of cologne. Made especially for Your Majesty. Go on and eat your soup, Dennis."

"But there's skin in it."

"You have an easy life, my boy," Daddy said and turned to Mommy. "Remove his plate. It makes me sick to look at him. He doesn't like cereal, he doesn't want noodle soup. Isn't he finicky? It makes me sick!"

He sat down opposite me and looked at me as if he'd never seen me in his life before. He didn't say anything, but just kept looking at me like that. I stopped smiling right away, because I saw we weren't joking any more. Daddy sat there in silence. Mommy and I were silent, too. Then he started speaking, but he wasn't speaking to me or to Mommy. He sounded like he was speaking to a friend we couldn't see.

"I don't think I'll ever forget that terrible autumn," he said. "Moscow was so cold and gray. It was wartime, and the nazis were pressing on towards the city. We were all hungry and cold. The grownups never smiled. They kept listening to the hourly news dispatches over the radio.

"I was about eleven at the time, and I was growing very quickly, getting very tall, and I was hungry all the time. There was never enough for me to eat. I kept asking my parents for food, but they only had their own small bread rations and they shared them with me. Even that wasn't enough, so I'd go to sleep on a hungry stomach and dream of bread. I wasn't the only one. It was the same everywhere. So much has been written about those times.

"One day as I was walking down a little side street near our house I saw a big truck piled high with watermelons. I didn't know how they'd ever reached Moscow. They were probably going to be rationed. A thin man was standing on top of the truck. He'd pick up a watermelon, and throw it down to another man. That man would pass it on to the woman clerk who worked in the fruit store, and she'd pass it on to someone else. They stood in a line, passing the watermelons from high up on the truck right into the fruit store. You'd think they were playing a game with striped green balls.

"I stood there watching them for a long time, and the man on the truck kept smiling down at me. He was a very kind-looking man.

I finally got tired of standing there watching them. As I was about to turn and go back home one of the people in the line missed a catch. A big watermelon hit the pavement. Right next to me. It cracked open. There was the thin white inner rind and the crimson center full of sugary veins and black pits. The sight and smell of that juicy red watermelon made me realize how terribly hungry I was. But I turned away and started home. I'd only taken a few steps when I heard someone shouting,

"'Hey, you! Boy!'

"I turned around. The man who'd been standing on top of the load was coming, towards me, carrying the cracked watermelon.

"'Here, son. Take it. Take it home. It's for you.'

"Before I had a chance to say anything he put the watermelon in my hands and hurried back to the truck. I clutched the watermelon. It was so heavy I could barely carry it. When I got home I called my friend Valya, and the two of us ate that huge watermelon. Oh, how delicious it was! I can't even begin to tell you. First, we cut off two big slices. When we sank our teeth into them the rims made our ears wet. Pink watermelon juice ran down our chins. Our stomachs bloated up till they looked like two watermelons. If you'd smack a stomach like that it would sound like a drum. We only regretted not having any bread to eat with it, because then it really would have been a feast. Yes..."

Daddy turned to look out of the window.

'That autumn the cold was penetrating. Dry snow kept falling that was carried away by the wind. We had still less food than before, and the nazis were getting closer and closer to Moscow. I was hungry, but instead of dreaming of bread as I had before, I'd begun dreaming of bread and watermelons. One morning I got up and saw that my stomach had disappeared. It had simply vanished. I could think of nothing but food. So I went over to my friend Valya's house and said, 'Let's go to that watermelon lane. Maybe they're unloading watermelons again, and maybe one will fall and crack again, and maybe they'll let us have it again.'

"So we tied our grandmothers' shawls on top of our coats and hats, because it was so bitterly cold, and went back to Watermelon Lane. It was a gray day. There were hardly any people on the street. It was very quiet outside, not at all like it is now. There wasn't a soul in Watermelon Lane. We stood outside the fruit store waiting for a truck carrying watermelons to drive up. After a long while it began getting dark. Still, there was no truck.

"'It'll probably come tomorrow,' I said.

"'Yes. It'll probably come tomorrow,' Valya agreed.

"So we went back home. The next day we went to Watermelon Lane again. There was no truck. We kept going every single day, waiting for it, but it never came again."

Daddy stopped talking. He sat looking out of the window as if he could see something there that neither Mommy nor I could.

Mommy went over to him, but he got up quickly and left the room. She followed him. I was left all by myself. I sat there, looking out of the window like Daddy had done. All of a sudden I thought I could see Daddy and his friend Valya shivering in the cold and waiting. The wind tore at them, and the snow. They were frozen stiff, but they still kept standing there, waiting. Waiting. Just waiting.

I felt so scared I grabbed my plate and started eating as fast as I could. Then I tipped it and drank the last drop of boiled milk. Then I wiped the plate clean with a piece of bread and ate that. Then I licked my spoon.


 
Previous Story Next Story