Sofka and the Crusader

FOR SCARLETT

Sofka and the Crusader is a follow up to The Fruit Thieves and describes various adventures in Sofka’s life including the ones where she has several encounters with the Crusader spider. Here is the first chapter which I hope the reader will enjoy:

CRUSADER

Remember the Grinev children, Pasha and Sofka, from The Fruit Thieves? A year after the previous events, several things happen to Sofka that we must relate to our readers. What happened was not completely out of the ordinary but interesting enough for others to hear. The Grinev children, especially Pasha, were now spending much of their time in the Glumins’ overgrown orchard, which their father had acquired the previous year. Pasha was mostly there with his friends, as the Glumins’ orchard drew the children with its magic fruit and the best hiding places that no other orchard in the street could boast. The boys had built a big den from broken tree branches where they had enough room to put an old raft in the middle of the floor to play chess. That raft, if you remember, was a piece of the fence that got detached during the floods a year earlier, and Pasha’s father had brought the old man Glumin and his dog Albert to safety using that broken piece of fence. Now it was used as a chess table. Sofka, however, still liked better their old snug and cosy hiding den by the Bullins’ apricot tree. She remembered many happy days spent there with her brother, and returned to the place, often by herself, either to play with her dolls or to read, just like her brother used to do until not long ago. Sofka had recently discovered a joy in reading and followed her brother’s example of hiding away to do it. Her father was very pleased about this new interest in books and bought new books for her as presents. They were mostly about world geography or interesting events in history, even about science. Sofka was quite good at maths, as the family had discovered, and her father often said, ‘Well, my girl, I am sure we can make an excellent engineer out of you.’ She suspected that it was her father’s dream, but for now she really enjoyed reading fairy tales and was more than half-way through The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. If you remember, she fantasised about Thumbelina living with their local toads in the river at the bottom of the street. Now as she was reading The Little Mermaid, she was sure she heard mighty splashes in their river, and was wondering what could it possibly be. The river that season was quite full thanks to a fair amount of rain in June and those loud splashes early in the morning were very mysterious indeed. But better not to say anything to Pasha. He would just get angry with her.

Sofka continued to make her morning trips down to the riverbank to watch beautiful dragonflies and also to see Dora, whose amazing outhouse she never gave a miss. She only wished they had some old wallpaper in the house to cover the timber of their own toilet out in the orchard, which was smelly and grim with lots of cobwebs and flies. Oh well, maybe one day she could persuade her father to smarten up the loo. Should not be that difficult.

Sitting in the small den with The Little Mermaid in her hands, she was completely absorbed by the story in which the Prince was telling the Little Mermaid that he was about to marry a princess, thus breaking the Mermaid’s heart, for she was very much in love with him. The only problem was that at that very moment Sofka desperately needed to go to the loo. She bookmarked the page and crawled out of the little twig hut on to the path and ran towards the door of the wooden toilet. All that wonderful homemade juice of Grandma’s was about to spill out of her. Hold on, hold on, she told herself. She swung the toilet door open and was about to dive in, but immediately froze to the ground in shock and gave out a loud shriek. Her eyes were fixed on the eyes of an enormous spider suspended in a huge cobweb just above the hole in the wooden pedestal where she had to sit. In an instant, some inner force pulled her away from the door, leaving it open. Crusader! The thought flashed through her mind. The spider was so big she could see its long hairy legs and a thick black cross covering its entire body. Then she averted her gaze and ran some distance away from the loo. She even forgot her desperate need to do a pee. The so-called crusader spiders were quite common in the surroundings of their town, Gorsk, and could be seen suspended between tree branches or shrubs, but more often under the gables of the one-storey houses in the town’s outskirts. Typically, in Gorsk, there were many myths and tales of various kinds heard, including the ones about the supernatural spirits that populated the old cemetery on Frantiha Mountain. Among the children, scary stories were going around also about the crusader spiders. The spiders were called ‘crusader’ because of the huge black cross on their bodies. The story was that if you stared at the spider for a long time it would go for your eyes and blind you. Therefore, Sofka very quickly removed herself from the proximity of the crusader in fear of being blinded.

She was soon reminded of her urge to do a pee. Without further hesitation, she dived into the raspberry shrubs to relieve herself, scratching her bottom on the prickly raspberry branches as she pulled her knickers down. Having done her business, she emerged back on the path and looked in the direction of the open toilet door. So now what? We cannot use our own toilet. The crusader has moved in. She thought to herself. Something had to be done. The spider must be evicted! But how? She certainly could not get rid of the spider herself. And she definitely was not calling Pasha for help! She knew Pasha could not be in the same room with a spider, as he feared them more than she did. She once saw how he had murdered a spider in their room with mosquito spray, even though their father told them on many occasions that spiders did no harm to people, at least not the spiders of Gorsk. Therefore, she could not bear the thought of Pasha killing the spider in their loo. Grandma! She must ask her grandmother to help. They all knew that Grandmother was partial towards spiders because they caught flies and Grandmother could not stand flies in the house. She kept a fly swatter in the kitchen and used it without hesitation if a fly flew in.

At this moment Sofka all but forgot the Mermaid and the Prince. She was on a much more important mission than saving the Mermaid.

‘Grandma! Come! Come!’ Sofka flew into the kitchen where their grandmother was making their favourite cherry dumplings.

‘What happened, dove?’ Grandma looked at Sofka, somewhat alarmed.

‘We must get rid of the crusader!’ Sofka blurted out, all agitated.

‘The what?’ asked Grandma, now all confused.

‘Crusader! A spider!’

Adults did not normally call those spiders ‘crusader’. But Grandmother understood what Sofka was talking about. For Sofka’s grandmother, the spiders probably did perform a crusader role in annihilating the flies and she was ready to help.

‘Where?’ she asked.

‘In the loo.’

‘Right. I will get the broom and remove it. Do you want to come and watch?’

‘Certainly not!’

‘All right. Wait here.’

After a few minutes Grandma returned triumphant. ‘All clear,’ she announced, and turned to her dumplings.

Sofka went back to the loo just to confirm that the spider was gone. She approached the door very carefully, inspecting the ground around in case the spider was hiding somewhere. But all was clear. Now Sofka was determined that she herself must take care of their disgusting toilet and make it at least presentable, if not grand like their neighbour Dora’s. A beautified toilet would surely deter spiders from settling in.

She went back to the house to speak to her grandmother. ‘Grandma, do we have some old but pretty rags I can use? Ones you do not need any more?’

Girls always like making clothes or bedding for their dolls, and Sofka’s grandmother decided that that was exactly why Sofka was asking for some pretty rags. ‘We have a couple of old bedspreads in the bottom drawer of the chest, in your room. Help yourself.’

Sofka pulled out the old bedspreads, inspected them carefully and decided that they were good enough. All she needed to do was to cut them in half as they were too big for the walls of the small toilet. Some had holes, she noticed, but who cares about the wall covering in a bog? Up until now it was her brother who had demonstrated skills of cobbling up things together with a hammer and nails. She still remembered the long pole he had constructed with a nail at the tip in order to steal their neighbours’ apples. It got him into trouble in the end, but the idea was clever. It was Sofka’s turn now to prove herself. She fished out a hammer and some nails from her father’s toolbox. Not quite advanced engineering skills to hang some old rags on wooden walls, but it might be a start. She found a big enough plank to cover the hole in the toilet to avoid falling through. She also collected some bricks to put under her feet so that she could reach high enough on the walls to bang the nails in, on to which she would then hang the rags. Soon banging could be heard in the neighbourhood, but no one paid any attention. Once the job with the nails was accomplished – a bruised finger or two could not be avoided – she carefully hung the rags on the nails. They were uneven in places, or too short and narrow, but she decided that their toilet looked much better now, very decent in fact, and she was sure that the family would be impressed with her ingenuity. The more she looked at the result, the better she liked her toilet. And when Sofka showed it to her grandmother, the old woman was very complimentary. ‘I thought you needed the rags for your dolls,’ Grandma said. ‘Well, it’s very jolly! What can I say?’ Father also approved. Only Pasha sneered at the ‘stupid idea’. But Pasha would, wouldn’t he?

The following day Sofka spent most of the time playing with Pasha and his friends in the Glumins’ orchard. It must be said that the Glumins had a very comfortable outhouse, not as grand as Dora’s, but not bad by Sofka’s measure. That afternoon Sofka decided that she should show her toilet to Dora. She was sure Dora would appreciate it. She went to Dora’s and knocked on the door. The first thing the old woman said when she saw Sofka was: ‘Do you need the toilet, girl?’

‘No, no!’ Sofka grinned. ‘I would like to show you ours. Come!’

Dora wondered what kind of surprise awaited her and followed Sofka to the Grinevs’ orchard and then along the path in the direction of their outhouse. When they came up to the door of the toilet, Sofka looked smiling at Dora and pulled the handle. As she opened the door, the black cross of the enormous spider hung suspended above the hole.

‘Grandma!’ shrieked Sofka in panic as she ran towards the house, leaving her somewhat shocked guest behind.