Natalia Patratskaya - Sapphire fairy. Prose in English

Here is a place and raised Katerina to eight years. Tanya’s father was a designer. They lived decently for those times. They had a two-room apartment in the next doorway. Tanya’s grandmother was very intelligent and constantly made comments to Katerina because of her pimples or because of her nose. She Katerina fed several times with Tanya. Katerina, with her constant appetite, increased Tanya’s ability to absorb food.

The girls played hide and seek in the designer’s room several times and hid behind the closet, so that there was a free corner behind it. Most of all, Katerina liked yellow, sharply sharpened pencils and white sheets of paper on the table. The Tanechka family was soon given a three-room apartment in a brick house located on the same street, and they moved. Tanya was born with a sister. The ways of the girls diverged forever…

The train went north along the ridge of the ancient mountains, where Katerina was a lady of Nedra in her previous life, and the train turned towards the Northern capital. They arrived in the big city of Leningrad. At the station, Katerina saw yellow cars with checkered side doors, they were called “Victory”. But they rode the subway to her mother’s aunt, who was a couple of years older than her mother. They stopped at Aunt Ani. In the northern capital there were still houses destroyed by the war, but this did not prevent them from walking around the Hermitage and Petrodvorets, where not all the rooms had been restored.

Not far from the golden figures on the bridge, there lived the cousin of Baba Vari, Baba Tanya, with her brother Sergey Kirillovich, they lived on the bank of the canal, near Nevsky Prospect.

Aunt Ani’s husband, Aunt’s husband, introduced Katerina and her mother to the city. Aunt Anya didn’t go on trips with them, she cooked food and drained pots to mirror cleanliness. Katerina forever remembered a tall, thin man who tirelessly showed the Northern capital and its environs. They then lived in the same room, in an apartment with their neighbors, in a very old area of the city.

The fairy tale has a long effect, and quickly people grow up and age. So Katerina returned her soul to the world of people, as if she had returned from a long business trip. Katerina is seven years old again. Katerina and her mother returned home from Leningrad, they had a penny in their pocket.

Children’s joy at that time cost 4 kopecks. She was sold by Frosya the gazirovschitsa. She stood behind a metal stand under a striped fabric roof. On a metal counter two glass cylinders with syrup towered, sparkling water without syrup cost 1 kopeck. You could buy a box of matches for a penny, but the girl added three more and bought water with syrup.

Glasses were washed on a turntable with a fountain and turned upside down on trays. The second joy cost 9 or 11 kopecks, naturally, it was ice cream: a popsicle on a stick for 11 kopecks and milk ice cream for 9 kopecks. The country has changed money. Ten-year-old Katerina realized that 90 kopecks with old coins is 9 kopecks new or three 3 kopecks old. The girls regretted one thing: that they had not accumulated yellow coins, otherwise they would have been richer ten times. Katerina had another treat for 8 kopecks – a bag of pressed cocoa with sugar.

Katerina was given a two-room apartment in a two-story house without central heating batteries. In the square they won, in comfort they lost.

The house was wooden, plastered. This is where the first TV appeared. Neighbors came to Katerina’s apartment and looked at the small screen together.

Katerina well remembers her second apartment without prompts. They had an apartment with stove heating. In the big room there was a sofa, on a shelf of a sofa there were seven elephant ivory. There was a painting on the wall where bears walked along a broken tree. Standing on a bedside table made of oak was one of the first TVs. All the neighbors went to them to watch TV.

Katerina had her first working day when the Fashion House opened. Needed a model. The school from the fashion house was across the road. Two women came to school and began to examine girls of twelve and older. Chose Katerina. She came to the Fashion House, where she was taught to walk on the catwalk. She began to sew trousers, skirts, jackets. She stood, and she was wrapped with cloth and cut off with needles. By nature, she is not a mannequin. For a long time it could not continue. The time has come to pay her money, but she could not take it. Catherine could not take the money and everything!!! And she left the fashion house. Came to her house, brought the money. She bought flippers, a mask, a tube for money. For a long time the flippers served her, and she never fell in love with diving.

Once a red-haired boy approached Katerina in school and said:

– Katerina, do you want to be a radio announcer?

Why not. Let’s go to the audition. She read the text. Everyone came running to her: very much.

They say:

– Read again.

I read it. All fled. Everything is like with fashion – duplicates are not its elements.

Sometime in May, Katerina in twenty minutes decided to complete a control work in mathematics. She was released from class to the street. Spring fluttered fresh leaves. The school was one-storeyed, several classes were temporarily transferred here. But most of all in this school, she remembered the flight of the first cosmonaut.

There was a lesson in Russian, which was interrupted by a call. From all the classes, the schoolchildren ran out into the corridor with exclamations: “Man in space!”

Katerina invented newspapers on one sheet of a school notebook. With a classmate, they drew the first newspaper on the drawing paper. Katerina wrote the first lines of poetry under each picture.

The first trees were planted around the school in the spring, the school is new. Next to the school was a deli in a five-story building. The queue for soy bars was included in the list of receiving children’s joy.

Katerina lived in a two-story house. On the ground floor, there was a friend at home, Valya. In her house they loved to make one potato dish: boiled potatoes were put on a large frying pan and fried. In the kitchen they cooked on the stove with cast-iron circles. They stoked coal in the apartment and in the kitchen where they cooked food. Next to the stove there was always a broom and a poker.

In the next two-story house lived the remaining girlfriends. Favorite game in the yard – “Gardener”, it was held on a bench against a neighboring house. Behind the bench was a table for table tennis, which was rarely empty. Volleyball is a game common to the whole yard. The yard limited the third house. The fourth house was demolished and built a brick, two-story. It settled family from the capital. In the summer they went in slaps. These shoes are called Muscovites.

The first enemies appeared simply: Katerina drew all the friends, and they didn’t speak to her for half a year after the drawings. And she painted them beautifully! In lush skirts in the fashion of the early sixties.

Getting to know fiction was simple. In the apartment of Nadya’s classmate there was a shelf, while rare books were then on the shelf – J. Verne. In this apartment, Katerina first saw and remembered the eggs.

Bath was a holy place once a week for Katerina and her mother. There was no shampoo at that time, but there was laundry soap and long hair. In the bath were long lines. At the end of the washing process, the mother poured Katerina on the head with a basin of cool water, with the words: “Water from the goose, thinness from Caterina.” Perhaps that is why Katerina was never thin.

At home in the corner of the kitchen hung an icon. Through the yellow copper was visible face painted in colors on the tree. Icon when moving disappeared.