He proceeded without stopping and didn’t turn to look in the store windows. When he finally stopped about ten minutes after their first encounter, a smile crossed Miss Anita’s lips. She liked to stop in front of stores selling baby things too. Every once in a while she would go in and browse, even though, of course, the day was nowhere near when she would have any reason to buy something.

  She couldn’t imagine what interested him there, but this was a chance to find out what he liked. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about what to buy when her son was born. She would go into the store after him and see what he bought or at least what attracted his attention if he was just browsing.

  Her son’s negligence, however, forced her to stay at the entrance to the store. He had simply leaned his bike against the window instead of taking it in with him as she would have done, regardless of the store clerks’ complaints. Children can be so irresponsible. He hadn’t even tried to secure it; anyone passing by could simply mount it and ride away.

  She placed her hand on the large wire basket over the back wheel. This would deter any thief. She looked through the display window, but it was so full she couldn’t get a good look inside. She thought briefly of entering the store with the bicycle, but that might be asking for trouble.

  She turned her back to the window and stared irately down the street crowded with people in the late afternoon. As always, whenever she was angry everyone in her vicinity was to blame. She started glaring at the strangers coming her way.

  Her frowning face didn’t soften until she saw a man in late middle age, his hair as fiery red as her son’s, whose behavior brought looks of annoyance from the passers-by. Since she herself often received such looks, she felt an immediate affinity with him. What kind of cardinal sin was it, anyway, to swing a bright red bowling ball?

  She felt like clapping in support, but didn’t have time. Just as she raised her hand from the basket, her son came out of the store. Paying her not the slightest attention, he put a colorful bag in the basket, grabbed the handlebars and started to push the bike again.

  This was careless, too, she thought as she headed after him. Why didn’t it occur to him that all someone had to do was reach out and take the bag? He wouldn’t notice what was happening behind his back. But luckily she was there, not far to the rear, to prevent any theft. What would he do without his mother’s protection?

  And then it dawned on her that she could take the bag herself! Not to steal it, of course. What mother steals from her son? She’d take it just long enough to peek inside. She was very curious to know what he’d bought. In any case, as his mother she had the right to know.

  Just as she put out her hand, he stopped all of a sudden in front of another window. She almost ran into the back wheel. Fancy shoes were on parade in the brightly lit display behind the glass.

  She looked at the back of her son’s head in bewilderment. She would never buy anything in a store like that. But if he’d made up his mind to be a dandy, so be it. True, such an inclination was hard to imagine given the shoes he was wearing now, but perhaps he, much like herself, was full of contradictions.

  This time he entered the store with his bicycle. She hurried in after him, ready to rush to his defense if the salespeople made a fuss. She knew from experience the best way to handle them. She would raise her voice to an hysterical pitch, at which point they would all become accommodating.

  But there was no need to interfere. No one took any notice of the bicycle or of what her son had on his feet. It was as though a famous customer had entered the store and could do whatever he pleased. Three salesgirls flocked around him, smiling broadly, ostentatiously obliging. No one paid any attention to her.

  The way he made his choice was the exact opposite of his mother. She would have exhausted the salespeople, leisurely trying on at least half the shoes in the store. In the end she most often didn’t buy anything and took pleasure in the annoyance she left behind her. All he did was point at the shoes he wanted without even bothering to try them on.

  As though the salesgirls already knew his size, they brought out the boxes straightaway. Miss Anita watched in delight as the pile on the counter got higher. She had always dreamed of shopping like this, hang the expense.

  In the end there were eleven boxes on the counter. Each was placed in a plastic bag and they were then hooked onto the bicycle handlebars: six on one side, five on the other. There was no payment. My son must have a charge account here, thought his mother proudly. There was a lot of bowing as he left. No one even looked down their nose at her.

  They continued down the street. She didn’t know where they were going but that made no difference. As far as she was concerned, he could keep walking for a long time to come. The confusion he aroused among the passers-by gave her pleasure, as though she was the one doing something unseemly.

  Unlike the people in the street, the doorman at the entrance to the large city library saw nothing unusual in the young man passing by him, pushing a bicycle loaded with bags. He even stood up, raised two fingers to the brim of his beribboned cap, and bowed. She was tickled by the special treatment her son was receiving, but had he taken against it she would have been happy too. She took great pleasure in squabbling with functionaries.

  Raising the loaded bicycle to his shoulder with ease, the young man mounted several steps to the elevator at the end of the entrance hall. She was hurt when he closed the door without waiting for her. She too often acted that way towards others, but they were strangers, not her own mother.

  She rushed up the stairs, accompanying the metal cage of the elevator as it clattered upwards. Out of breath, she reached the third floor just as the back wheel of the bicycle disappeared behind a door at the end of a short corridor. On it was the inscription: “Old and rare books—no admittance”.

  This, of course, didn’t stop her. The room she entered had a high ceiling but no windows. The walls were covered with bookshelves filled with thick, worn tomes. To the right of the door was a small desk. The woman sitting behind it, her hair graying red, couldn’t have been more than forty-five years old. She was absorbed in writing something in a large registry and didn’t even glance at Miss Anita when she entered.

  In the middle of the room was an enormous white bathtub, its legs in the shape of human feet. Behind the bathtub was a screen with a yellow background painted with many different kinds of footwear, all brown: shoes, boots, army boots, sneakers, wooden-soled scuffs, slippers, clogs. The young man lowered the bicycle to the floor, took the bags off the handlebars and removed the boxes from the bags.

  Then he took the shoes out of the boxes and placed them in the bathtub. When the eleventh pair was inside, he grabbed hold of the bicycle and went behind the screen, leaving a mess on the floor behind him.

  Noises were heard briefly behind the screen. When he reappeared Miss Anita could not repress a silvery titter. She even applauded in delight. Her son had outdone her. This would never have crossed her mind.

  He was wearing only a diaper and the sneakers. The diaper was too small and the tape barely held it up. He had a rubber duck in one hand and a large rattle in the other. He went up to the bathtub and got in among the shoes.

  She was proud to notice that the young man was quite handsome half-naked like this. Girls would be wild about him. She would have been attracted too if it weren’t for the fact that he was her son. He must have inherited his build from his father. She could barely wait to meet him.

  He put the toy duck and rattle on the bottom of the bathtub, then started to scoop up the shoes. He tossed them into the air and watched them fall back into the tub with a gurgling laugh. This entertained him for a while; then he suddenly frowned, grabbed the rattle and shook it fiercely.

  The graying woman raised her head for the first time and took the young man in with a glance. Then she picked up the silver bell with a wooden handle standing on a corner of her desk. The fading sound of the rattle was replaced by an equally sharp ringing.

  When Miss Anita heard a thudding sound rapidly approaching from the other side of the door, she moved a little away from it. The door opened with a bang. A swarm of children burst in and flocked around the desk. They were barefoot but each of them was carrying a pair of little shoes.

  The woman stood up and started handing out coupons with numbers on them from a little blue block. Each child who received a coupon ran up to the bathtub, threw in their shoes, then headed back toward the door, where a terrible jam was created. The surge from outside did not slacken, while the number attempting to leave got bigger and bigger.

  The bathtub soon filled up. Before long only the young man’s head was visible above the pile of colorful shoes. When a shoe finally slid to the floor, the bell rang out once again. The clamoring around the desk ceased the same moment. Children who had not received a coupon turned around and headed out. No one protested. The bottleneck at the door lasted a bit longer, until they had all left.

  The graying woman went back to her notations, and Miss Anita to watching her son. Considerable effort was required for him to extricate the hand holding the toy duck. He placed the duck in front of him, then thrust his hand back into the pile.

  The frown on his face indicated he was having trouble locating the rattle. His head slowly disappeared below the surface of the shoes, then went completely under. Miss Anita first thought this was fun, but as the minutes passed and the young man did not emerge, her face grew somber.

  She flashed her eyes angrily at the woman at the desk. How could she sit there so calmly while a child was drowning before her very eyes? She wanted to sweep everything off the woman’s desk. But there was no time to lose. She had to act quickly.

  She reached the bathtub in two bounds and began feverishly throwing the pile of little shoes out of it. As she went deeper and deeper and her son still had not appeared, panic started to get the upper hand. Her nails were already scratching the bottom of the bathtub when the rattle started shaking. But not from where she expected it.

  She raised her eyes towards the screen and saw her fully-dressed son as he emerged from behind it. He was pushing the bicycle with one hand and shaking the rattle with the other. She wanted to snap his head off. Was that any way to treat his mother? She might have died of fright, and here he was playing the illusionist. But she would forgive him this time. She liked magic shows. The trick had really been good. He would have to show her how he did it.

  The young man placed the rattle on the desk as he went by. He departed without closing the door behind him. Before Miss Anita left the room, she too stopped for a moment next to the graying woman. She picked up the rattle, shook it and slammed it on the desktop. The plastic ball shattered and little silver spheres scattered everywhere. This, however, did not perturb the woman as she calmly made her entries.

  At the exit to the library the doorman stood up once again to greet the young man, but his smile disappeared when Miss Anita passed by. He eyed her with a scowl. As though barely waiting for such a provocation, she gave him what she often did to guys she didn’t like: she stuck her tongue out at him, all the way until it reached the tip of her chin.

  At the first intersection the young man didn’t wait for the green light for pedestrians. He crossed the street, paying no attention to the sudden braking and angry honks. Miss Anita joined him without a moment’s hesitation. She liked to cross the street like that too. Here was another thing they had in common, although when she gave it some thought, as his mother she should scold him. He was still a child, after all, he might come to harm.

  When he entered the first perfume shop on the other side of the street, he left his bike by the window again. This annoyed Miss Anita. He seemed to be telling her he didn’t want her to go inside.

  As she stood with her hand resting on the bicycle basket, this time she managed a somewhat better look inside the shop. She saw a salesgirl put various boxes and tubes in front of the young man. Unlike in the shoe store, he seemed undecided here. The counter was soon covered with small objects.

  If he’d been a woman she would have understood his quandary, but what need was there to pick and choose between men’s cosmetics? They were a simple matter. A good quarter of an hour passed, however, before he finally made up his mind. He was already on the way out, carrying a blue bag, when he suddenly went back to the counter as though he’d forgotten something. He spoke to the salesgirl once again, pointing with his thumb behind his back, towards the window.

  Miss Anita was puzzled. Was he pointing at her? She felt like hightailing it the same instant, but she couldn’t leave the bike. It isn’t easy with children, she concluded. They put you in impossible positions. As she was pondering what to do, the salesgirl went up to the window and took a long red wig off one of the gray plastic busts.

  What does he need that for? wondered Miss Anita, caught in a dilemma. She brightened at the thought that he might be buying it for her. How nice! He wants his mother to have hair like his. She had never worn a wig, and up until then red had never been her favorite color, but she would certainly accept the gift. How could she refuse it?

  But no gift was presented to her when the young man left the perfume shop. Once again he took absolutely no notice of her standing by the bicycle. He just put the blue bag in the basket and continued down the street. Offended, she stared at his back for several moments, then headed after him. If it had been anyone else, she would have made a scene. But her son, of course, was an exception.

  The next time he stopped was in front of another luxury boutique. As she watched him enter, pushing the bicycle, she wondered in confusion what he was doing in a fancy shop selling women’s lingerie.

  Had she been on her own, she would never have set foot in there, but now it was clear she had to go in after him. She went quite unnoticed here too. Both salesgirls devoted their attention solely to the young man. There was no need to say anything. As though knowing what he’d come for, they hastened to a marble shelf and took down a thin box with a large gold crown embossed on it.

  Miss Anita didn’t wear such lingerie; moreover, she despised it. Even so, the pink silk camisole with thin straps and lace trim that was taken out of the box filled her with admiration. She tried to imagine herself in it. Suddenly there was nothing objectionable about it.

  The young man just nodded briefly. The camisole was folded and returned to the box, which was wrapped in turquoise paper and tied with a dark blue ribbon. There was no payment this time either. With another nod, the customer took the box, put it under his arm and went out.

  On a square not far from the shop, the young man halted at a trolleybus stop. Miss Anita smiled. Bicycles were not allowed in trolleybuses, but she still took hers in from time to time. Once she’d caused a traffic jam because the driver refused to continue until she got off. She did in the end, but only after someone had called the police.

  When they entered the trolleybus, there was none of the usual grumbling from the other passengers. On the contrary, they were kind enough to make room for the bike at the back of the bus. This exasperated Miss Anita to no end. How unfair! Had she been the one, she would have already received a torrent of disapproval and even insults, while here they were all looking kindly on her son. Although she was aware that this should actually please her, she felt a pang of jealousy.

  After they had passed several stops, a much stronger wave of jealousy washed over her. Why hadn’t she thought of it before? Of course! Everything he’d bought in the perfumery and lingerie shop had been not for her, as she’d naively thought, but for some other woman. She barely suppressed the impulse to go up and give him a resounding slap in front of everyone.

  Oh well, she must reconcile herself to the fact that one day he would leave her for someone else, he couldn’t stay with his mother forever. But it wasn’t time for that yet, why, she’d only just met him. Perhaps she was berating him unjustly. He couldn’t be the one to blame, of course, he was too young and inexperienced.

  Someone must have turned his head. The type wasn’t hard to imagine. Certainly an older and unattractive woman. They liked to pounce on young men. But rich too. Of course! That’s why he had charge accounts in fancy shops.

  Wonderful. Since he was clearly heading for a rendezvous with her, this was a chance to tell the old bag what she thought about this seduction of her son. Buying him, actually. When she got her hands on the woman feathers would fly.

  But when they got off the trolleybus she saw they were not in the part of town with villas surrounded by tall hedges, as she’d supposed. The neighborhood was rather gloomy. Gray four-story buildings lined both sides of the street and there were no shops.

  They went some fifty meters and then he stopped in front of a house without a single window. The only thing interrupting the uniform olive-green façade was a small black door. Next to it was a dusty brass plate with the inscription: “City Mental Institution”.

  She did not enter immediately after her son. A rare feeling of guilt oppressed her. Accepting any woman he was attached to, old floozy or not, would be hard. But if he’d set his heart on someone from this place, that was another matter altogether. She felt kindly towards the poor souls locked up in there. People often said that she too was crazy just because she was unconventional.

  She thought she’d find a guard behind the door, but no one was there when she entered. At the end of a long corridor she saw her son lean the bike against a wall, take the blue bag out of the basket and disappear off somewhere to the right. When she got there, she found stairs winding downwards.

  Having descended after him, she found herself at the beginning of a new corridor, considerably shorter than the one above. There was a metal door to the left of the stairs and another with a reinforced glass window at the end of the corridor, which the young man had just closed behind him. When she got up close enough she managed to read the tiny inscription on the plate under the window: “Kitchen”.

 

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