Mothers & Daughters: The Melon Pond

THE MELON POND

Spring 1840.

Lelya invited the children to go melon planting near a distant pond where they had yet to explore. This was not the pond in the grove of the “large dacha,” but one that was much closer. After breakfast, they set off straight through the melon patch, where watermelons and yellow kalminki ripened on the dug-up soil and warmed by the sun. There were scarecrows placed in all corners, but flocks of sparrows, unafraid, flew up every now and again. While they were walking along the boundary, every now and the girls, without any embarrassment, pulled up other people’s cucumbers and ate them with great appetite. They eventually arrived at a pond that was overgrown with grass and yellow water lilies. Pitchers, shining in the sun, swayed on their wide round leaves.

“Exactly like baked turnips on green plates!” Lelya announced.

Bushes grew around the pond, and an old willow tree, cut from above, stood with silvery branches that dipped into the water. In the middle of the pond, there was a small island, overgrown with reeds, along which a flock of tiny goslings walked, nibbling the grass.

They were like fluffy yellow balls that swayed from one leg to another, jostling, shaking off their tiny wings. They cackled around the mama goose, who swung her long neck importantly, cleaning her feathers with her bill. The gray goose swam to the side, between the lilies, holding her head high, turning neither to the right nor the left, only occasionally moving her orange webbed feet under the water. Lelya climbed onto a stump and sang some kind of song, with different roulades, waving her arms and addressing the children like an actress to the audience. Aunt Nadya tried to use some kind of stick with a hook at the end to catch and pick the lily.

“How I wish the little geese would go into the water!” said Vera, admiring the goose family.

“Well, we can drive them away now,” said Lelya, jumping from the stump to the ground and bending over for a pebble.

“Ah! No!” Vera stopped her by the hand, “Please, don’t throw stones! You’ll still end up hitting a gosling.”

“Here’s more nonsense! What tenderness! I’ll drive them away from the island now.”

“What if they don’t know how to swim yet?” Vera shouted in terrible anxiety. “What if they drown.”

“Geese?!” shouted Lelya, who burst out laughing with Aunt Nadya. They began shouting, scaring off the geese, waving a stick, and throwing things at them. The geese, naturally, became alarmed. The mama goose, who had sat down to rest in the sun, stood up and cackled restlessly around, calling her babies, who, pushing and rushing in different directions, hurried after her into the pond, tumbling and pecking at the water. The mama goose, not paying any attention to the alarmed family catching up with her, swam faster to the other shore. One little gosling kept falling behind, squealing pitifully as it tried in vain to catch up with its mother who was swimming away.

“Leave it! Please leave it!” Vera pleaded as she grabbed Lelya’s hands. “They are already in the water! They are already swimming away! Leave them alone! Quit it!”

Lelya & Vera At The Pond.^[1]

But Lelya and Aunt Nadya did not let up. Without listening to Vera, one of them grabbed a large stick from the ground and threw it after the geese that were swimming away. They rushed with a loud cry in different directions. The larger ones even flapped their strong wings and flew, but the mama goose sailed the water heavily, collecting and urging on her frightened babies. Only one goose, legs crossed, and wings spread wide, continued to fly straight to a nearby hut, which they did not notice at all. Finally, the entire bird family reached the shore. With a loud cry, the whole herd began to quickly waddle towards the hut. On the disturbed water, darting in circles and ripples, a single little gosling remained. After some minutes it stopped swimming, and, turning its white belly up, remained motionless on the water. Seeing what they had done, Lelya and Aunt Nadya looked at each other worriedly. Vera screamed and burst into tears.

“He’s dead! You killed him!” Vera repeated, inconsolably. “Evil! Ugly! I told you! I told you!”

“Shut up!” Lelya barked. “Look! There’s a woman coming here from that hut! Quick! Let’s get out of here. Quicker! There’s the guard!”

As they started to run away, Vera looked back and saw a woman walking quickly towards them with a very angry face. Forgetting her tears, Vera rushed after the others. The woman, seeing the dead gosling, also ran after them.

“Oh, you worthless girls!” she shouted after them. “Shameless girls! The little gosling was killed!” The woman chasing them did not stop screaming and cursing all the way to the grove.

Lelya and Aunt Nadya were running up ahead, laughing. Vera lagged behind (not unlike the gosling,) listening in horror to the stomping behind her, half-expecting the angry woman to reach out and grab her. When they reached the dacha, they rushed headlong, barely catching their breath, and turning into the alley.

“Look, they’re running away! Nice young ladies, you are! Such, awful, naughty girls!” was heard behind them. “I’ll catch up with you! Stop, you won’t get away with this!”

The woman suddenly stopped in bewilderment when she saw that they were running to the balcony, where all their people had gathered, waiting for lunch.

The woman muttered something reproachfully, turned, and walked back, panting heavily.

They ran onto the porch. Aunt Nadya sat down on the steps, barely catching her breath from fatigue and laughter. Lelya bolted up the balcony, jumped up, and hung on to Aunt Katya’s neck with laughter. Vera rushed to Baba Lena.

“What’s wrong with you, children? What are you afraid of?” asked the grownups.

“Vera killed a gosling in the melon patch!” screamed Lelya.

Vera could only gasp in indignation.

“Not true!” cried Aunt Nadya cried. “Lelya, why are you talking nonsense and lying? It wasn’t Verochka who killed the gosling—it was us.”

Aunt Nadya told everything as it happened.

“Ugh, what a shame! Well, aren’t you ashamed to behave this way?” Baba Lena asked.

“They don’t do anything!” sighed Dede Andrushka, walking along the balcony. “They don’t study at all now. Studying only with Antonia Khristianovna is simply not enough. Teachers need to come here from the city to visit them. Otherwise, they will go completely crazy. Nadya is already a big girl—almost a young lady, and she is messing around with her nieces!” Dede Andrushka looked at his guilty daughter. “Isn’t it a shame, madam?” He sometimes wondered if Lelya might indeed be possessed by the “seven spirits of rebellion.”[2]

Without answering a word, Aunt Nadya got up and left. She really didn’t like it when people made comments to her. Lelya calmed down, sitting down at Aunt Katya’s feet, who with a smile smoothed her bristling silver hair, curly like a ram’s, and rising from under Aunt Katya’s little hand.

“Were these geese from the melons patch?” asked Baba Lena. “They are probably the guard’s geese. We need to pay her for the gosling. Tell me Verochka, was he big?”

“No, tiny! Such a poor little thing! He kept falling behind,” Vera said, almost crying again. “I said that they would kill him, but they did not listen. I feel so sorry for him!”

“Oh, you little black-eyed mouse!” said Dede Andrushka as he grabbed her chin. “You’re almost smarter than your older sister and your aunt, huh?”

“Of course!” said Baba Lena with a laugh. “Smarter!”[3]

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