Those little eyes have seen something an adult would not be able to go through. Four-year-old – too young to remember, too helpless to fight it, too innocent to die.
It was a hot August in Crimea – the everlasting horizon, the awfully calm Black Sea, scales and coral reefs. The car stopped and people forgot everything in the world and rushed down the scale to finally feel the cool water. A little one in a red dress tried to find the way to get down with elder kids, but powerful hands dropped on her tiny shoulders preventing the girl from moving forward. That was her father. He picked the little one up and helped her get down. She took off her sandals and dipped her legs into the sea, jealously watching her elder brother and his friends swimming, diving, and fooling around in the water. She could not swim. Her mother promised her to teach her this summer, but she never did. “Too busy with the adult things” she would tell in a mumbling tone to a fish, who was tickling her toes. She wanted to reach it, pet a little bit. The fish got scared and swam away, but the youngling could not. The wind blew and the falsely calm Black Sea was not that calm anymore. The water made her panties wet and she pouted her lip and cried for mom, but another moment and she was all alone, face to face with awfully strange feeling she have never experienced before – she could not breathe. Stormy waves pulled the child who was as light as a feather deep under water. She tried to yell, to cry, to be angry at the sea, tried to explain to it that mom will be very upset and will not buy her ice-cream, then she threatened the sea telling that her dad will stick up for his only daughter and the sea will be sorry for playing this silly game with her. Then there was panic - both, in the water and on the reefs.
I’ve seen the parents’ eyes, freaked out, trying to figure out where their baby was, what went wrong … “Where is Nuta? Have anyone seen my girl? Dima, where is your sister?” they would yell at each other. The REAL terror grew in the parents’ eyes: they found sandals, but not their owner. She could not swim and she was only four.
Her eyes have seen something no child should ever see. She waved to death with her tiny hand as if they were good friends. She simply did not know what to expect – she did not know what it meant to drown, not be able to breathe, not be able to see mom and dad, not to be able to learn how to swim. No one taught her to. She still thought that people were immortal, she was just too young to know, too young to care, too young to everything. The child’s mind was filled with innocence and there were not too many memories to flash in her mind before the end. She saw her life right there in front of her – her happy moments, taste of ice-cream, her dad swinging her into the air, her mom teaching her to make coоkies, fighting with her brother, then the fish, the wave, the darkness…but then the splash, the warmth, the light. She could breathe again, not without effort, but she could. She did not know how she got out and where she was, but it did not matter anymore – she could breathe! She opened her eyes and saw worried faces. She gave them a weak smile and wept for a long time. Telling her story: “I told it to stop, but it would not listen!” She complained about being squished in tight hugs, laughed innocently and went to get her shoes. As she passed by, she waved to the Black Sea like nothing ever happened.
She was four and she fought the death itself. She was too young and it made a difference.
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27.05.2008 в 00:45-
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27.05.2008 в 18:57-
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27.05.2008 в 19:35-
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27.05.2008 в 21:08В школе задали...кстате история немного фальшивая...я просто все смутно помню...в основном по видеозаписи...