Episode 3: Kruella Choukroutszch and ze terrible truth unveiled
When Claus was a small boy, his mother would speak merrily during her afternoon Kaffee- und Kuchenklatsch to her friends about her son wearing robes, which she found oh! so cute! (both the robes and Claus in them). She had always desired a Claudia after all! Hence, when she spoke about it, she never told the entire truth: that Claus simply went out skating in his pyjamas, which at that time were made in the same manner as robes. But , you may ask, why would anyone in his right mind go skating in pyjamas?
And the reason is a simple one: Claus was a sleepwalker. Indeed, since he was 2 months old, he would jump out of his cradle in the middle of the night in his pyjamas, go ice skating in the family's frozen private pond and before his parents woke he'd crawl back to prepare breakfast, then return to his cradle and cry “Ouah! ouah” baby-wise again. It always worked; his parents never knew that it was him who laid the morning croissants on the breakfast table, and not Kruella Choukroutszch, his nanny.
And life went on happily, with Demosthenes prospering in his new, non-expired feta trade. In the meantime, stretching at the extremes his commercial wit, instead of expired feta he had started selling cheaper Danish feta as original, patented Greek feta. "It's Greek feta!", he'd insist to his clients, "otherwise it would not be white!" As for Olga, she took singing lessons and went on with her tea afternoons, exposing her china to her lady friends and sipping tea with her little finger extended, as she had once seen Rita Hayworth do in a film.
One day though, some years later, an unbearable truth was unveiled in this apparently perfect household when Kruella, the nanny that could never keep her full-of-golden-teeth mouth shut, and who by the way had unanimously been elected Miss Upper Dnister in 1912 and had been the winner of the 1918 local polka contest of the neighbouring village of Muamansimirsk, whispered the so far well-hidden secret to the young boy. “Claus, poor little Clauschen, Demosthenez iz not your fazer!” she told the boy one evening while force-feeding him pork pâté (Demosthenes had explicitly insisted upon it because he never really understood the benefits of breastfeeding, which he always considered more as a thing for adults). Claus already knew, of course. An over-intelligent boy that he was, he could both count since the age of three and a half months AND knew how many months a full pregnancy lasts! He definitely was not the boy of Demosthenes…
Anyhow, despite certain sui generis details of his daily life, Claus had a very happy childhood. He grew up to be a steady, handsome lad that excelled in school and athletics, one that all girls liked to be with.
But the problem was, he only liked to skate. Indeed, as a teenager, when other boys only think of reading Proust, making a better world, going to Mass or simply be good sons to their parents (n’ est-ce pas?), all Claus had in mind was skating. In the family frozen pond, during night time, wearing pyjamas or robes, whatever fitted more comfortably. It gave him more freedom during the difficult manoeuvres of skating, although secretly he also preferred pastel colours to the greyscale, boring men garments sold in "Elegantschza", the one and only factory clothes shop in Kosmosibirsk. And because in the meantime he had grown to be an athletic man he had found other ways of getting hold of his preferred night-skating, XL-sized gear. Meaning simply that, since he would never dare to buy robes in Kosmosibirsk, he got them from his mother's wardrobe. He had grown to be a man, Olga Volga had grown to be a babushka, sizes fitted perfectly…
Olga knew that, of course. She knew that her son wore her oversized robes. But with time it grew more complicated to talk to her curious friends freely about her son doing so. Some of her (rich) afternoon-tea friends had (rich) girls that she thought were a very good match for Claus and thought better not to discourage them. As for Demosthenes, if he ever found out about Claus skating in her robes, he would surely kill their offspring (born on the first day of spring of an early spring , bla bla…) with his bare hands. A real and present danger, despite the fact that in reality Demosthenes always wore latex gloves due to a stress-related eczema (thus would have never killed anybody with his bare hands in the literal sense) and at the age of 96 was obese and a chain cigar smoker. But Olga Volga always remained in awe in front of Him, especially when he puffed his Russian cigars' smoke under his Stalin moustache (very much en vogue at that time) directly on her face and looked at her with watery, killer eyes that made her mascara melt.
Hence, she stopped talking about Claus wearing her dresses to skate.
I will tell you the rest some other day, because I must go now and try to sneak in the Fête du Personnel somehow. I hear there are many handsome, young and rich men around. And chicken dumplings. Miam miam...
Lola Popov
Click here for the lullaby Kruella sang to Claus when she put him to bed