Episode 2: Claus's childhood: The little house on the prairie
Exactly five months after she met Demosthenes and a full nine-month pregnancy (it helped that Demosthenes had only a vague notion of arithmetic) she brought to the world a bright, healthy kid that after a ferocious quarrel they decided to name Claus. Demosthenes had wanted a hairy boy that he'd call Vangelis, Leonidas, Marlon, Ramón or another similar name of significant testosterone. Of course, when asked if he wanted a boy or a girl he'd always answer naively "Oh, as long as it's a boy, I don't care if it's healthy!", thinking he faithfully repeated what he had heard normal people say in similar occasions. As for Olga, she wanted a girl that would grow to be pretty and rich, although not necessarily in that order. "I am pretty, but I've been poor", she'd say to her husband, taking a fierce flamenco posture, "but pretty AND rich is better!", to which Demosthenes would applaud "Olé!", with admiration for her piercing look at life, and lick his thick moustache in excitement and anticipation, because he liked it when she talked to him "like that". In his imagination, in their intimate games, he was the torero, impersonated by Clark Gable, while Olga preferred to think of herself as Merilyn Monroe with her flying skirt or Vivien Leigh, depending on her mood.
Then one day, Olga decided they needed a house for their happiness. As her mother used to say, "A woman needs a house, a car and flowers to be complete" (when her husband left her for a ballerina she added "and a good plastic surgeon" to the list). And Demosthenes built with his honest, valid hands in exactly Six days a Little house on the prairie for the three of them. Then, on the Seventh day he relaxed and drank so much vodka that he practically fell into an ethyl coma.
Soon after the house was built, Olga predictably insisted that they also buy a car for their happiness, one that she would be able to show off to her friends, one that would fit her china and her pastel afternoon-tea robes, "one that will make me proud of my name!", she said to her husband. "Of course!", said Demosthenes, the typical albeit slightly naïve male provider, and left straight for the meat market of Kosmosibirsk, their village, where he had recently seen a Volga car for sale. It still had the smell of raw meat in it. It had belonged to the richest sausage seller in the market, who was also the priest, the mayor and the only teacher of Kosmosibirsk, until he died of dyspepsia from his own food while driving home in his Volga car. And it was grey instead of pink, as would have better fitted Olga's wardrobe, but little Claus took a like on it thinking it was an abandoned 2nd World War Panzer. Olga Volga compensated by saying it was the first car produced by her family-owned Volga car industry and that her other car was a Lada Niva, to which all her afternoon-tea friends nodded with admiration.
And apart from the occasional dispute about "the flowers", all seemed to work perfectly for a while in this family (except the Volga car of course) and they lived happily ever after in the tiny village of Kosmosibirsk , which by the way was lately twinned with the Belgian villages of Erps-Kwerps and Vaux-sur-Sûre.
As for the flowers, it's not that Olga really cared about things ephemeral , but her mother had insisted that she complain periodically on that subject to her husband. "Because even if they are good to you, even if you don't know why to complain, THEY know why…", she'd wisely teach Olga during their knitting evenings together by the fireplace. And this is exactly what Olga did with Demosthenes. "You don't bring me flowers anymore!", she'd say to him and pretend it mattered, to which he'd always respond with a lethal depression of the Russian type and a kilo of vodka.
And life went on like that, "un long fleuve tranquille" as they say in French, for little Claus and his family.
Still, despite appearances, there was one particular detail that no one could have imagined would seal the fate of this seemingly happy family some years later...
I have to go now, toilet cleaning in the LEX can be very time consuming, if you see what I mean…
Lola Popov
Clich here for the song that Demosthenes played during his private hours with Olga