Mom and dad are walking along a charming park path. To the right, the fir trees are green, and to the left, a neatly planted row of pine trees is a delight. On the lush green grass, an adorable baby tries to chew on a pine branch, which, for some unknown reason, causes the little one to burst into laughter across the park. From the tree branches, now on one side, now on the other, the chirping of jackdaws joyfully crisscrosses overhead. The sun shines in the clear blue sky, brightening the already charming path.
"Szymborska was probably right after all, you know, there was something to it, I guess," Mom began.
"No, of course. She's been through so much, well, you know." In the distance, he noticed two friends bantering and thought to himself that the rivalry appropriately spiced up the idyllic scene.
"You know, I recently remembered a poem by Szymborska, so sad, so... moving!" "Mom said the last word was too loud, for which she mentally scolded herself.
"Well, yes, moving. Once, back in college, after a party, well, after a party, I read"—her dad smiled, and after a moment's thought, mom smiled back at him—"her 'Calling to the Yeti.' It was the first time I'd ever read anything by her, and what can I say—they were beautiful. I really like her way of thinking.
" "I know, there's so much kindness in her poems, and... she writes very well about tolerance and..." For some reason, Mom decided that to continue, a slight, yet mischievous smile was necessary—just like the Little Prince did for our son.
After a short pause, Dad smiled slightly, yet mischievously, too.
"Well, who spotted them? Any more, and there would have been those sugary fairy tales; it would have reeked of commercialism!" he replied, trying to pronounce the ending forcefully, but it came out somehow shaky.
"They're cool," Mom smiled, even sincerely, seeing her partner's imperious tendencies. "They paint pictures so effortlessly that you don't even need pictures, although the ones there are are simply beautiful.
" "I'm definitely... I was captivated, you know, by the simplicity of how, in such easy, everyday words, this... Exupery!... talks about such important things. You'll read to him, right?
" "Yes, the boy will like it. I'm sure. Okay, you have to go."
The transition from Exupéry directly to the farewell phrase confused Dad, and for a moment, but literally a moment, an unpleasant vagueness reigned. Just a moment, because then, from Dad's muddy thoughts, the idea of a kiss emerged—a wild, passionate farewell, which, according to Dad after a conversation steeped in poetry, was a truly excellent idea. So he embraced his wet nurse's waist, looked at the redness of her lips, and brought his lips close to it. Mom was instinctively stunned, but in a moment she understood that with these gestures, more or less apt, her man simply wanted to kiss her. She agreed, allowing him to take her lips and let his tongue gleam within them. Dad, after finishing his work, smiled, quite confidently; Mom—belatedly, but sweetly. They both seemed to think that was enough to rip open the bag of goodbyes, kittens, teddy bears, tigers, inflatable kisses, papatki, etc.
Mom walked home, no longer along the park path, but along an ordinary gray street, and tried to focus on that. She didn't even notice when she began to ponder whether the kiss was passionate or merely pretended to be. However, after a moment, she scolded herself for even questioning her husband's intentions and categorically cut off her thoughts with a short, "He was passionate." So she made her return pleasant by thinking of stanzas from her favorite poems, and with a smile, she returned to the genius, to the feelings conveyed by each line, and to the smooth phrases that so easily and so confidently slipped inside her, along with those feelings. She also thought, for balance, about what she considered more difficult poems, but her thoughts drifted helplessly to her favorites, most of them very familiar, which greatly angered her mother.
"You can't always be easily charmed," she thought, and resolved that from next week onward, she would read more difficult poems.
She opened the door, entered the apartment, and heard the familiar hum of the television. The apartment was very tidy, even in places, if only slightly, artificial. The walls were painted in muted colors, suitable for any room. On the walls, to break up the tiring monotony, hung shelves with pleasantly old props. The entire apartment was pleasantly enlivened by the varnished oak floor, and the touch of its delicate texture soothed her mother's feet after a hard day. A feeling of home spread through her mother from her feet to her face, where every little trinket was utterly familiar and unconsciously reminded her of a usually insignificant episode from the past. Without getting too sentimental, as if wanting to turn her domestic affection into a family success, she took Exupéry's "The Little Prince" and went to her son to tell him what she intended.
My son was charmingly sprawled on the couch, half-lying, his arm stretched out in front of him on the pillow, remote in hand, flipping through channels. To his mother's secret delight, the whole situation must have been utterly exhausting, because he didn't stay on any program for more than a second and generally stared blankly at the television. His mother, already on the couch with her son and Exupéry, didn't hesitate a moment:
"I bought you some great cartoons, we'll read them together, you'll be smart."
His son shifted his blank gaze from the television to his mother and said the only thing appropriate in such a situation:
"Hi, Mom."
If Mom's train of thought had any form, it was a train; that train had hit a pointless log on the tracks, derailed, and plummeted into a black abyss.
"Hi. " "She replied, and the already belated thought automatically came to her mind: maybe if she'd said "hello" at the beginning of the sentence, her son would have been disarmed of the possibility of a paralyzing response. She recovered slightly, and started again:
"I bought a fairy tale, we'll read it, it's clever."
For some reason, Mom thought that was enough to expect any reaction. There was none, so an awkward silence ensued. Doubly awkward for Mom, because her son, his expression unchanged since he'd been watching TV, inadvertently held Mom in the same, blank stare.
"Well then... Oh! Look, this is (she opened the book) the fairy tale of the Little Prince."
The son looked, saw a drawing of the Little Prince, shook his leg, bit his lip, spotted a fly on the wall, looked at the drawing again, and... smiled, innocently, as childishly as only children can. The warm oak floorboards were shattered by the stone released from Mom's heart. Ignited by joy and the fervor of victory, she forgot herself a bit and laughed childishly, as if she wanted to beat her son at this trick (if that was truly the case, it must be admitted that she completely succeeded). Taking advantage of the little one's attention, his mother sat down next to him, her book open to the title page.
It must be said clearly that the boy really, really enjoyed this situation—that is, being away from the television, which had long since become so disgusting to him, and his heart free from even the slightest shred of compulsion—in short, he was glued to the book.
His mother began reading as fairy-tale-like as she could. She gave up on the strange vocal acrobatics, so that the story would sound gentle and enchanting. Of course, her voice occasionally drifted into comic tones, but only locally, so the overall effect was not at all, but not bad, for which his mother shyly praised herself.
His mother's voice pictured in his mind a boa constrictor consuming an elephant, a crashed airplane in the desert, the little prince's planet with its three volcanoes (two active, one extinct, but you never know), and then the planets of all the symbolic figures. Although no, the above description needs a slight correction. Not all of them, because on the lamplighter's planet, specifically, when the little prince admired him for lighting and extinguishing the lamp so faithfully on the pointlessly fast-spinning planet, the boy asked, out of pure curiosity,
"Why doesn't he go away and find something more interesting to do?"
Mother was filled with immeasurable joy – my son asks questions, my son thinks, my son will be a wise man, my son will finish his studies, maybe he'll be the scientist he will become... etc., etc., and so on, and so on, but she restrained herself, because curiosity had to be satisfied in comfort.
"Because he's faithful to his orders," Mother replied with a smile after a moment's reflection.
"And what does he get out of it?"
Although Mom's thoughts drifted back to the momentary joy of asking questions about the world, for reasons completely unfathomable, she began to feel somewhat uncomfortable. Mom decided that this time she would think much more carefully, so as to come up with a neat answer. So she thought. And outside the window, the sunset was beginning. Slowly but inexorably, it permeated the entire room, including all the shelves, shelves, and the trinkets on them, the thinking Mom, the son hanging in curiosity, and the Little Prince, with a fiercely red light.
"He's satisfied with having fulfilled his mission. Such things are appreciated.
" "Who appreciates?" he asked in the same voice, completely neutral, even indifferent.
"Well, someone must have given that order," Mom said, noticing that maintaining the fairytale tone was taking more and more effort.
"And he's supposed to sit there until someone comes, pats him on the shoulder, and leaves him for the next few years?
" "Son, values are important." Mom was no longer concerned about the tones; she focused solely on the content.
"If he went somewhere else and did something else, maybe he'd make money, and others would be happy with what he does. "
Devastated by her son's calmness, his mother tried a trick.
"And if you told your teacher in kindergarten that you didn't want to do what she told you, what would happen?" A slight breeze of malicious satisfaction blew from a completely unknown direction. As it turned out, too soon.
"Mom, there's no one there," his son remarked, and for added effect, he tapped the drawing with his finger: the Lamplighter's planet, the Lamplighter, and nothing else.
"But if there were, he'd scream.
" "But there isn't. He sits alone, turning on and off, for some reason, the idiot."
And then something snapped inside Mom. Something snapped, but the incredible thing was that it was impossible to figure out what had broken through, what had overflowed, or whether anything had broken through or overflowed at all. Was it the "stupid" at the end of the sentence, or the boy's generally careless remarks that struck Mom as dismissive, or perhaps the fiercely red sunset had frayed her nerves—she didn't know. She didn't know, but she understood that she had to shout and (though where it came from—also a mystery) wring from her son a proper aesthetic sense, sensitive to beauty and simplicity.
"These are values, beautiful and wise. Exupery is passing on beautiful and wise values to us!" Mom accelerated like a locomotive weighing several hundred tons, on whose path if anything got in the way—woe betide her. "How can anyone think that beautiful and wise values are stupid?! Beautiful and wise values must be honored, and their creators deserve respect, because, just like values, they are beautiful and wise!" The lighthouse keeper was right, for he was faithful to values that are beautiful and wise!
A telling silence rang in the room, broken by his mother's loud gasps. My son continued to sit in the same place, in the same way, but during this fiery discourse, he had strangely become at least a head shorter. He still had a few polemical remarks that naturally suggested themselves, but somehow he was completely unwilling to articulate them. So he shrugged and snorted,
"Okay."
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