Before anything else, you should know that I am a well-behaved little girl, in spite of everything I am about to tell you.
It was summer, and I do more things in the summer, because that is when I spend the whole of it at Grandma's, from the moment that fancy ceremony with pom-poms and little flower crowns is over (the flowers already wilted by the strong June sun) right up until I have to start school again.
Well, Mom comes to fetch me from Grandma's two days before school begins, because we also have to make a trip to the clothes shop on the corner of the block, since I grow so much at Grandma's, as if she were spoon-feeding me by the metre, the way my tired Mom puts it every single year on the day she fits me out in all sorts of blouses, over which she lays navy-blue pinafores and little sleeve cuffs that I have no idea what she irons them with, since they stand stiff as a board; I have a hunch it might be sugar, but I have never dared taste them, because Mom works so hard at them and I would not want to get a scolding.
I have always admired how hard Mom tries to send me off to school the way the other children are sent, all tidy and starched, fresh out of the box; only that I am more the sort of little girl pulled out of a box of surprises, because I never have one sleeve matching the other, my plaits are forever pulled down by gravity (not that I get up to any tomfoolery during all those breaks; thank goodness someone invented the bell, and the swing, and the gymnastics bar I can walk along on my hands, otherwise I would not go to school at all).
But let us get back to the holidays, because, as I was saying, it was summer, and from then until autumn there was this whole holiday stretching ahead that I had been waiting for ever since Christmas had passed.
The weather was lovely. Grandma kept complaining about the heat, but it did not seem hot to me, either because I was sturdier, or because I had no time to notice; for me, the weather was just right. Mind you, Grandma never shed that quilted waistcoat of hers either; I kept telling her to take it off and she kept it on all the same. Grandma's waistcoat was always on her. I do not know whether she took it off at night, but I know that wherever you saw her, you saw her with the waistcoat on, with those thick, grey woollen tights that made my own skin itch just to look at them, and one or another of her different dresses in dark shades, on whose fabric were drawn flowers, little circles, or silhouettes, or peacock feathers.
Since morning had been here for a while, I hurried off to my summer friend, Mihai, to call him out to play. Only Mihai did not seem to hear me calling at the gate, because he was not coming out, even though I could see him watching me from behind the white curtain of his glassed-in porch. So I went into the house after him, since these windows are no longer what they once were; they are made of several layers of stuff that somehow keep you from hearing when someone is calling you all the way from the gate. I shoved the gate with my foot, since it had got stuck in the asphalt, and grated it open a little, then went straight to the porch to call Mihai out to play.
"What are you doing?" I said to him, one hand on my hip.
"I'm... taking a walk," answered Mihai, looking a bit dazed.
"Where?"
"Around here."
"Around the house?"
"On your own?"
"Well, I'll come along with you," I said, and stepped closer to him.
Although he did not look too thrilled, I figured he had been at this walk for a good while, so I told myself that maybe he had a corn on his foot.
"Where are we going?" I asked, because I liked to know where I was going, not just wander about aimlessly.
"...the kitchen."
"Right, let us pick up the pace then, because the summer kitchen is not exactly close by."
And off we went towards the kitchen, and you cannot even imagine the adventure the two of us set out on.
After we had slipped our sandals on, I tripped over the threshold and went straight down, chin against the concrete. Mihai started shrieking and trembling as though it hurt him too.
"Hush now, will you," I told him, "it's only a little blood, fetch some cold water."
Off he ran to bring cold water from the well, and came back with his tongue hanging out, lugging the tin bucket half full of water and half full of air, since the frail little thing did not have the strength to carry it full. He was soaked all over, from his sandals to his short, grey trousers of synthetic cloth, but I did not stop to inspect him too closely, since they were the quick-drying kind anyway, because he wore them every day, and so they dried right after being washed, I reckoned. I splashed myself with the cold water, fanned a bit of air with my hand, and told Mihai we could go on with our walk.
All of a sudden, the way things nearly always happen, I noticed that some odd ripples kept moving about in the grey tin bucket, slightly rusty around the rim. At first I told myself I would not pay it any mind, since Mihai had sloshed that water about quite a bit on his way over to me, and by the laws of physics it was only natural for it to keep moving; but then I realised it could hardly still be moving, given that my bleeding had stopped some time ago, so the water in the bucket ought to have settled too.
"Don't move," I told Mihai, and he, an obedient friend, stood stock-still, his lips barely moving as he said:
"If it's a bug, get it off me quick!"
"Hold on, it's not a bug, you stay right there," I told him, and plunged my hand into the water.
The water was so cold that my hand hurt at once, worse than my chin, but that, no question, helped me forget I had hurt myself.
As I stirred away in there, I came upon something soft and slippery; I grabbed it firmly and pulled it out of the water, peering with curious eyes. It was a fish of one of those city species, because it could not possibly have come from our pond, from the Siret. Its eyes were bulging out of their sockets and its body was narrower in the middle than the rest.
"That's because you're squeezing it too hard," said Mihai, still out of the side of his mouth, since he had stayed in exactly the same position, as I had instructed him.
I then loosened my grip a little around its middle, since my intention was not to suffocate it, only to hold it well, for it kept slipping through my fingers.
It was an incredibly orange colour, like in cartoons, and on the crown of its head it had a cockscomb that had not grown enough, which I thought might be a swim bladder.
It looked into my eyes too, then into Mihai's eyes, and began to... mutter, or, at any rate, to make a sound resembling a knocking, not as in the act of slapping, but as in a sound you hear.
"I will grant you 2 wishes," I suddenly heard.
Mihai stayed just as he was, that is, frozen stiff.
"2?" I asked. "Not 3?"
"Only 2, because I am orange, not golden."
Orange, golden, this fish would grant us one wish each, I thought.
"Wait, two each, or one each?"
"One each, per child," said the fish again, and that was when I decided to loosen my grip a little more.
"Let us think... what would you like, Mihai?"
"For you to let me move," he said.
"Ah, well, who isn't letting you?"
"You, you told me to stand still."
"AAH," I burst out laughing, "move, then; I told you not to move back then, not now."
"But you never told me I could move either."
"Move," I told him in a rather less elegant tone, "and let us make a decision."
"Actually, that would be 2," he answered a little smugly, waving his hands about, which were probably aching.
"One each, is that all right?"
"Better. I would very much like to have my own storybook," he said, and suddenly the hardcover volume "Olguța și un bunic de milioane", by Alex Moldovan, appeared at his feet.
I froze for two reasons: 1. Because I did not expect the whole granting process to happen so quickly, and 2. Because I did not expect Mihai, an 11-year-old child raised in the countryside, to wish for a book of all things, given that he did not even have a second pair of trousers to change into.
"Now it's your turn," said Mihai, happily stroking the cover of the book.
"I would like to... I would like a... I would like... I don't know what I want," I said.
Mihai kept dead quiet, the fish looked at me strangely, as though it had never seen a child like me; it was downright awkward. And then, just the way I told you things happen, a loud quacking came from around the corner of the house. A duckling, chick-yellow, was struggling to escape the hands of Mihai's grandfather, who had got it into his head that he wanted duck breast in a sauce of pepper and mustard seeds with honey.
I did not stop to think too long, because his grandfather already had all the utensils laid out, which I will not even describe, and the duck was staring me straight in the eyes, desperate.
"I wish for Mihai's grandfather to be a vegetarian!!"
All at once the fish vanished too, the duck stopped quacking, and Mihai's grandfather called out commandingly to Aunt Marghioala:
"Marghioala, woman, put on a little polenta and a potato stew!"
And I stayed for the meal too, for Aunt Marghioala made a potato stew you could lick your fingers over.