CAULIFLOWER

Chapter 2

It was the last afternoon of 1975.

Nanako and Megumi wandered through the streets of Nerima and around them New Year's Fluhiden floated in the gray air. The restaurants and the cafes, the student clubs and the pubs and all other rooms that were suitable for this were brightly decorated with balloons, garlands and clocks cut from paper, all showing five before midnight. Huge amounts of alcohol and cola were bought. Everything waited for the exuberant night. Thousands of excited residents of Japan paddled through the streets of Tokyo, coughing in the gray-bluish exhaust fumes and dragging huge shopping bags, sacks and bottles with them. Money flowed freely into the coffers of all stores, only adding to the general confusion. In front of the hairdressing salons and in them all hell was going on, wherever one wanted to buy champagne, cyclones with a few epicenter immediately arose. People had an extraordinary glow in their eyes.Yes, there was definitely something in the air that afternoon.

Even Megumi remembered being invited to a party.

The invitation came from Yukiko, her cousin, who always called a few days before the planned party. Lids these parties were almost always so posh that Megumi never accepted the invitations because she just had nothing to wear. For example, if she were going to see Yukiko tonight, she would have the choice between her jeans or her school uniform.

How a person feels about material things is not always due to his worldview. For example, if one is a member of a large family with limited incomes and a reckless and indefinite relationship with them, it is very wise to show an ignoring or even contemptuous attitude towards those incomes. Megumi did just that. Besides, such a position suited her nature, which was a bit casual and completely without coquetry. Megumi was completely satisfied with both her family and her life situation.And she wasn't going to the party anyway. She planned to stay at home and leisurely read a work by Aristotle that she had borrowed from her father.

She grinned.

Her father was probably the only Japanese who knew perfectly about the culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans.

That came from the fact that he was only half Japanese and lived in Europe, or to be more precise, in Germany, for a long time. There he had learned to love the works of the ancient masters, which is why he had studied classical philology.

"> Those who have small eyes are often mean; you can see it in the example of the monkeys." She knew of no more comfortable way to read than lying down, on your stomach, with a rolled up pillow placed under your chin to keep the neck from getting stiff.

Nanako looked for something in the closet and reacted immediately.

"You, watch out! Otherwise tell yourself what I can see from your example! Mom, Megumi annoys me!"

"Megumi, don't annoy Nanako."Said Mama mechanically and went through the room with the vacuum cleaner. The mother of four daughters, each of whom had a distinctive character, Ms. Yuki Nagashi, was able to maintain her mental balance only through a special system that was worked out through years of psychological training. All of them She was only superficially aware of conflicts between her daughters, otherwise she simply couldn't survive in this chaos.

"Well, something like that, she doesn't distinguish Aristotle from annoying." Megumi laughed and her words weren't even noticed by Mama.

Nanako growled angrily and shoveled in the closet with both hands. When she was angry her brown eyes glowed reddish and her black hair seemed almost darker. Two of the Nagashis' daughters were black-haired: Nanako and Yumi, like Mama. The other two, Megumi and Aoko, had dark brown hair. As for brown-haired Papa Nagshi (who grew a little gray over time), he found that four daughters are a lot for the patience of a single father anyway.Fate - Father Nagashi asserted with his usual philosophical optimism - had taken pity on him and at least did not add the monotony of color to the monotony of sex. Indeed, each of the four daughters' heads was of a different color. Megumi's short-cut hair shone dark brown, Nanako had a jet-black mane and Aoko said of herself that she had chocolate on her head and that was a very fitting description. The youngest Yumi had thick hair that had a purple sheen.

"Ah!" Nanako suddenly shrieked. "Sorry for breaking the peace! But someone touched my tights again!"

"> Those who speak in a soft and monotonous voice are often meek; you can see it in the example of the sheep. Those who speak in a high-pitched and screeching voice are often crazy; you can see it in the example of the goats." real joy.

"Listen, you goats, where is your father?"“Our father is in town with our sisters,” Megumi replied and turned the page. "They wanted to buy cake and champagne."

“That person went crazy,” Mom stated succinctly. "You are trampling the children dead in the queue for him."

“Our father won't be in the queue,” Nanako explained. "Yu-chan is the best for the crowd."

She spoke of five-year-old Yumi, a sweet child with nerves of steel as hard as steel. This child had the gift of crying on command when the crowd formed in a queue insisted not to let the elderly, pregnant women, and fathers with children in their arms go. At such moments the child burst into tears so convincingly that the queue fell silent and cleared a place at the cash register.

“The vacuum cleaner is broken.” Mama stated, confused.

Megumi raised her head because Mama sounded strangely annoyed. There was something unsettling about her appearance, too. Mama had always been small and very slim, but today she looked even weaker.Mama was over forty years old and looked for more, because her face bore the traces of all worries that she did not let into her subconscious. Only her eyes were young - they shone a warm, good hazelnut brown, because mom was a warm and good person too, just incredibly apodictic. She was a little house tyrant, full of concentrated energy, always busy and utterly devoted to her large family.

The more surprising was her current apathy - because what was normal for someone else was a sign of apathy for mom. Mama Nagashi stood sighing and massaging her stomach area in the middle of the room and stared at the vacuum cleaner. Finally she shook her head, took a book from the table, checked the title and turned a few pages.

"Who bought this?" she asked.

"What?"

"> The second and third youth of women>"

There was silence for a while.

"I ..." Nanako finally admitted and cleared his throat, embarrassed.Megumi giggled and turned back to the book.

"> Those who have narrow and bony buttocks>" she read aloud.

"Mom, now you can hear for yourself that this witch humiliates me all the time."

"Megumi, don't humiliate."

"Aristotle! Mama, tell her she'd better read physics. Otherwise she'll never get anything better than six!"

"Megumi, you better read physics," said mom. “Otherwise you will never get anything better than six.” She sighed and grimaced painfully. "What is it, darn it, somehow I feel bad today. Listen, why don't any of you know anything about electricity? Why do I have to stand in the middle of the room with an idle vacuum cleaner?"

“Because the cord is not plugged into the socket,” Megumi advised, although she had a six in physics and had a deep dislike for electricity.

Mom was dissatisfied with the fact that Megumi was right, so she went into the next room to finally turn on the vacuum cleaner. But when she got there she immediately forgot about him and sat in an armchair, holding her stomach.Silence fell in the Nagashi's apartment.

The whole apartment was dark, only the room where Megumi and Nanako were was brightly lit. It was a small room that contained two futons that were rolled up and hidden in the closet during the day, a closet, a huge desk, a table and two chairs. It was one of the four rooms that, along with a bathroom, made up the Nagashi's apartment. The apartment was on the third floor of a large apartment building where the Nagashis had lived since Megumi's birth.

The apartment had a lot of flaws, but they were pretty unimportant since the Nagashis just didn't notice them. The apartment had old tiled stoves that had to be heated with coal. The coal was hard to come by, once received it had to be placed in the basement and carried upstairs in buckets every day. But that was just a source of excitement and joy for the Nagashis. Was there anything nicer than an old stove made of old tiles that you could snuggle up to on cold winter evenings?These people showed a similar, completely twisted way of seeing things with the broken stove in the bathroom, which threatened to blow up (which, according to Mr. Nagashi, was a work of art in German Art Nouveau), the rotten floors that were repeatedly rubbed with paste had to be (but how pleasantly they creaked underfoot!) and so on, and so on.

But it wasn't just the Nagashis who liked the apartment. Everyone who has only spent half an hour there was amazed by its beauty and indefinable charm that was here in every corner. You didn't notice that this impression wasn't due to the apartment. It was up to these people. That is why the Nagashi's guests always sat longer than they should and often someone stayed until late at night, even though only tea and bread and jam were served.

Also the fact that this apartment seemed quite large to them, so that each of the Nagashis had the feeling of being able to invite as many guests as they wanted, was a reason for continued joy for each of them.And you felt that.

Author's note:

FORGIVE !!!! Please excuse us for waiting so long !!!

I was terribly busy and had a hard time and no ideas at all!

I'm very sorry!! It will not happen again!!!!!

I hope I still get a couple of clerks ...