Vovka tilted his head back to the sky, as if sensing that something important was about to happen — the most important, the most vivid thing that could ever happen in a life. Yes, right now, this very instant! And whatever was coming would change everything, would turn the page, and from it — from that new, clean page of life — millions of colors would come splashing out at once. He flung his open palm up to the sky and froze, greedily listening to the whisper of a lazy July breeze.
Well… Come on! Where are you? Here — here's my palm!..
The breeze wrapped around Vovka's fingers, played with them tenderly, and then gently laid a flower in his palm. A small orange lily of the valley. Orange… Not the color. The fruit. Without breathing, Vovka held it out to Vika:25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfeurBkWFtO
"It's for you!" — and he blushed deeply.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkTqn9mV4yE
"Is this your first time giving a girl a flower?" Vika breathed in the scent and laughed.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGlzYfmzf9O
Vovka didn't get why she was laughing, and blushed even deeper.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡMA9DsHFu9F
"Yes. But why do orange lilies of the valley fall from the sky?"25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡum1ueH0Shl
"Don't you know?"25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7cS3p547c3
The question threw Vovka off. Vika felt it.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeGBi6vmGPf
"My papa told me."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTIIADkmL6S
"Papa?"25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡSfHSciKbnN
"Yes, my papa. Sergei. He died, and now I'm all alone."
Vovka pressed his lips together and went pale. A thousand times, night after night, he had wondered what it was like to have a papa. What did it feel like? A huge, gentle man who tosses you into the air so high it takes your breath away, and then, when your heart clenches with delighted fear and your palms go cold, catches you just above the ground... And you both laugh until you ache, and he kisses your plump pink cheeks, and you squirm from the prickle of his stubble and laugh even harder, dissolving in it... He had seen it in dreams that came from nowhere and went back to nowhere... And he would wake in the morning and find his pillow wet with tears again. It's a lie — papas don't die. They're made to be with you always. Vovka was sure of it.
But said nothing.
Vika shook her head.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlFLz5x3a68
"Completely..."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡFPuI7rHGW0
"No," Vovka croaked, "you're not alone... We're together now."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkqc3pUXuAO
Vika laid her head on his shoulder and sighed:
"My papa told me an orange lily of the valley is a herald of a wish. The most important one in a life. It often happens — a person lives and doesn't know why, doesn't know what he needs in life, or what for... But if a lily of the valley comes down into your palm, then the person will understand, will find what to live for, and the wish is sure to come true. You, Vovka..." — she gently stroked the petals with the tip of her little finger. "It didn't come down to you for nothing... Tell me — do you have a wish?"
Vovka pressed his knees with all his might. Until his knuckles went white. He always did that, for as long as he could remember, whenever a decision was needed — even the tiniest one... Because in the end, out of all of them, tiny and not so tiny, one would take shape — the most important one in a life. If only he knew which one... Right now Vovka didn't know, but something deep inside him was shouting — the hour had struck.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡEBYwqw16A8
"Tell me about the orange lily of the valley," he whispered. "The way papa told you..."
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Olga Vitalyevna looked at the strange duo. They'd been drawn together like magnets on their very first day, and the staff never quite got it — they only saw how Vovka and Vika stuck to each other at once and forever, and the one torment in their life became separation — a long, rusty, nasty separation from evening till morning, until they could sit again on the battered bench, like now, and stare together in silence at a single point. Stare for a long time, for the whole day if need be, without stirring, without moving, only their fingers intertwined in a tender pattern...
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"It's about the gardener," Vika felt Vovka become all ears. "He's blind, but he knows his mistress's vast garden — Madame Sophie's — like the back of his hand. Every morning Jocoteau — that's his name — comes out to greet the roses, then, humming an old romance, waters the azaleas... When suddenly, no one knows how, ivy starts climbing the apple trees from seeds in the ground, he puts on his beige velvet gloves and, with a guilty look, cuts away the green, juicy shoots... Madame Sophie comes by his little room in the mornings, hidden behind the jasmine bushes, and says: 'Jocoteau, I'm waiting for a divine miracle from you! Yes, yes, today of all days! Because it was on this very day...' and she tells him what miraculous thing happened on this very day, once upon a time, to someone, and why."
Vika painted Madame Sophie in the air with her fingers, and Vovka saw what a huge, kind heart beats in her chest, saw how lonely Madame Sophie was, how dear the old gardener Jocoteau was to her. So old he remembered Madame Sophie's mother getting married.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjlV7XuyJsT
"Does she have no one at all?" Vovka broke in with a whisper. "Is she lonely?.."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ83iHff00vA
"Yes. No one but Jocoteau."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡeWNff6HoI5
"And that's why she has such a huge, warm heart?"25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ7yA6R0vH2d
Vika thought for a moment.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡQsaFkkve8j
"Probably... A heart pumps blood, love, suffering... A lot of work..." — and she fell silent.
Vovka gently touched her arm with his fingertips, ran them up to her neck, slid them into her hair. Then with his index finger, barely touching her skin, drew across her forehead to her neat little nose and pressed its tip lightly, like a doorbell:25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡfO2bW1G806
"Orange lily of the valley," he quietly reminded Vika.
"Jocoteau isn't just a gardener. He knows how to work miracles. He's the one who bred those roses — the Glühwein — whose petals warm freezing climbers. His narcissus, the one they called 'Eyes,' bloomed for the first time here, in Moscow, on the Sparrow Hills, and all the butterflies in the world fly to it. Yes, yes!" Vika spoke with fervor. "Can you imagine? Everyone wants to see these narcissi bloom. Even swallowtail butterflies come from South America just to land and breathe in the scent! We'll see it for sure."
Vovka held his breath: he had never seen a swallowtail, couldn't picture where South America was, but something inside him — some nonexistent painter — was moving a brush across a canvas and filling his imagination with a riot of colors.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡjNbKObvUUo
But one day — Vika's voice changed...
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That morning Madame Sophie woke earlier than usual. On that rare warm morning, when the birds were already chirping away in the garden, and sunbeams were dancing in rings on the lawn. She had a strange feeling — all night she dreamed of an unusual flower: she held it in her hands, breathed in its fairy-tale fragrance, which still surrounded her even now, but she simply couldn't recall the pattern of that beauty, its outlines. All that remained on her fingers was the tenderness of the flower and the freshness of its petals.
Madame Sophie got out of bed, fluffed her lush hair, and, wrapping herself in a light Chinese robe her husband had given her many, many years ago, went down to the pond. She hoped the morning water would wash away that strange feeling, but — alas! It didn't. On the contrary, something tightened in her chest, and a languid unease ran through her heart.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡlWV1GtjsJP
Without breaking tradition, after breakfast she stopped by Jocoteau's to remind him about the necessity of a miracle...
"My dear Jocoteau," Madame Sophie had already bid him goodbye, but came back from the doorway, "would you not name the flower that lay in my palm last night?"
And she held out her hand. The blind gardener took off his hat, brought her palm close to his face, and breathed in deeply:
"It's an orange lily of the valley, madame!" Jocoteau grew immensely surprised. "But how!.. How did you find it?"
Madame Sophie shrugged:
"I don't know. It just came down into my palm..." — she looked at the gardener in some strange way and sank thoughtfully onto a chair. "This morning, Jocoteau, I caught myself thinking I don't know you well enough. How strange... You have served me for so many years, we talk at length every day, and yet... And truly, I don't know you nearly well enough... But today, when the fragrance woke me, I suddenly understood that a wish lives inside you — vast as an ocean, ghostly as mirages in deserts, and unattainable as the love of stars. And so it exists. Am I right?"
While Madame Sophie spoke, the gardener listened with his head slightly bowed, and did not breathe. Sitting like that a little longer, he slowly rose and went out. Madame Sophie knew he would return in a couple of minutes with two cups of fragrant tea.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡAMQzFRp4b5
Everything happened exactly so. The gardener poured two cups, placed them on a tray, and — like a bat that sees the outlines of objects only in its own imagination — without brushing a single corner in the kitchen, returned to the table. To the steady ticking of the clock, they each took a few small sips.
"The orange lily of the valley, madame, the one that was in your palm," Jocoteau said at last, setting his cup down on the saucer without a sound, "is not just a flower. Many years ago I bred that variety, but — strange thing — it was lost. Yes, it simply vanished unexpectedly... As if the lily of the valley exists, and at the same time it doesn't. Since then I have never once held the flower in my hands."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGHzqhTQQmG
"How can such a thing happen?!" Madame Sophie exclaimed.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkNJDisqaYT
"As you see..." Jocoteau smiled guiltily and shrugged. And added: "But in this story it's not me who is interesting, and not it. Not me at all..."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1hpGsHUjlx
"Then who?" Madame Sophie raised her eyebrows in surprise.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡxV7QjNQKj0
"You!"25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡm0g2EpMJba
"Good heavens, Jocoteau!.."
"Yes, yes, you! The lily of the valley came down into your palm, not mine. Believe it — there are reasons. It won't come down into my palm, that much is certain. The lily of the valley knows about my wish, and it will probably come true. I truly can't imagine how, but that doesn't matter right now. That's why it chose you. You — not me — need to fill life with a wish, and the last years I have known you bear witness to that."
"Explain yourself, my dear friend!" Madame Sophie pleaded. "Why is it so?"
Jocoteau pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, dabbed at the beads of sweat on his forehead, and apologized:
"Forgive me, it's not from the hot tea..." — then he carefully folded the handkerchief and put it away. "When I think that one day I will be able to meet Anna, my sister..."
His voice trembled. Madame Sophie, struck to the very heart, froze: so many years had passed since the day they first met, and what a turn! And she had had no idea!
"...I know that one day I will be able to meet Anna..." Jocoteau went on. "I know she is alive! And blind, like me, and lonely. We were separated in childhood by a terrible blow of fate — an earthquake. In childhood, when you don't yet remember yourself... But much later the news came: our parents died that very day, and we were miraculously saved, but no one even thought that we were brother and sister. A brother and sister, blind from their injuries."
"But how did you find out about it?" Madame Sophie implored.
"I'm a gardener!" The old man shook his head. "I was born one, and I'll die one. And the first thing I remember is a lilac bush. I don't know how old I was, but I remember its thick scent and I remember our fleeting conversation. The breeze bent the branches, and they rustled: 'Hello, lonely Jocoteau. You don't know why you're lonely — I'm sorry! Neither do I. But what I do know is that one day you will become the greatest gardener ever. The petals of your roses will warm freezing people, and the most beautiful butterflies in the world will fly across oceans to taste the fragrance of the flowers you have created.' It's not that you're blind that's frightening, the lilac added, it's something else. Can anything be more frightening than blindness? — I thought. Yes, said the bush, reading my thoughts, and you will understand it soon. When? But the breeze began to die down, and the last thing I heard was — everything in its own time. Probably," Jocoteau went on reasonably, "that very time has come, when in the city park a hazel tree said it had heard from the wind news of the fate of my loved ones. And that day I understood: there are things more frightening than blindness... For example..."
"...loneliness," Madame Sophie finished the sentence.
"And longing for your loved ones," Jocoteau added quietly, knowing that memory would now carry him back, to the hazel tree:
"And now, look up!" the hazel tree smoothly raised its branches to the sky. "Do you see?" Little Jocoteau suddenly believed he would be able to see. He tilted his head back, but there was nothing there but bottomless darkness. He kept looking until his eyes ached, until tears came, and only then did the tree answer: "There — there is your not-yet-born flower, the one that comes down from the sky and grants the most important wish in a life. It chooses for itself whose palm to fall into. You will create this miracle. Not for yourself — for others. Your own main wish has already been born, and you have no need of the flower. Others need it."
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Madame Sophie, her palms wrapped around the cup of cooling tea, sat in silence for a long time...
"How strange..." she whispered at last. "How strange that the flower grants a wish, and not its fulfillment... But there is a deep meaning in that, isn't there?"
"Yes, madame," the gardener nodded. "I'm glad you think so too. Just as I'm glad that last night the orange lily of the valley chose you."
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Vovka sat swaying and picturing how it had all been... And Madame Sophie, and the earthquake, and Jocoteau... little, blind, having lost his family, and then, sometime later — the greatest gardener ever.
"Anna?" Vovka turned to Vika. "Madame Sophie — her wish... For Jocoteau to find his sister Anna?"
"Not quite..." Vika took Vovka's hand again.
"What then?"
"It's hard for a blind man to search for a person..."
"Did he get his sight back? Come on, tell me!"
Vika stroked the petals of the lily of the valley...
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Olga Vitalyevna glanced cautiously around — not a soul in sight: the children had already been taken away for their afternoon nap. Except for Vovka and Vika. She had begged to let them stay up during the day, knowing that separation was torment for them. Carefully pulling a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, she lit one...
"Smoking? At your workplace?" a kind voice whispered over her ear.
Olga smiled — such an "attack" could only come from one person in the world, her director, Kirill, with the already archaic patronymic Vikentyevich. Beside him stood a tall, middle-aged dark-haired man with a warm, captivating gaze. Olga pressed a finger to her lips. The dark-haired man nodded knowingly and whispered:
"I know — they have very sharp hearing. I'm Chermyshev, from the Serbsky Clinic..."
Kirill added quietly:
"Their star in child psychiatry."
Olga felt something kindred, something close — a man who would love the children just as she did. Chermyshev stood beside her, peering intently at Vovka and Vika. Then he whispered:25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkwSPw6VB2M
"Forgive me, Olga Vitalyevna, they pulled me out so fast... I didn't manage to grasp everything."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡkwwdt5sPUL
Olga covered her lips with her palm. She had done this every time since Vovka was brought in: it saved her.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡVAzF7UHGYY
From tears.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYEfy9zQMAw
"They have..." — she named some syndrome known only to specialists. "Blind and mute, only their hearing. Brother and sister. Born in Canada, their father was working there on a contract. They were two days old when a gas station exploded outside the maternity hospital. It wiped out three city blocks. Their mother died. First they found Vika and the father, Sergei, and brought them back to Moscow. And a few years later, by a miracle, Volodya. Identified by DNA. By the time he was brought in, Sergei had already died... That's how it is..."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ2UzfB6T0M8
Chermyshev's lips pressed into a thin thread.25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbs6BF6jmIS
"Do they know?.. That they are brother and sister..."25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡrOUPJRJEY6
"No," Kirill whispered. "We're only preparing them for it. That's why you were invited. And for now, they sit and stare silently at something... What's on their minds?.."
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Vika stroked the petals of the lily of the valley, turned Vovka's palm over, and slowly lowered the flower into it:25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡbqmPZRKres
"You'll tell me what yours is?"25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡLZWxE1ze4y
Vovka nodded:25Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡGQ8RxRNRHI
"Swallowtail butterflies. They'll come soon... and we will see them for sure."
and then Add to home screen.