All was going well. It felt like I was just settled into bed when my alarm went off. I heard the creaky floorboards outside my room signalling that my father...no, dad, was awake. His footsteps were receding and the soft pitter patter of Belarus' feet now dominated the floor. With a light groan my door opened and she crept in.
"Russia," she whispered into my face. "Wake up."
"Hmph," I rolled over the to other side.
"Come on. Papa is waiting for you,"
"We don't need to go collect firewood so early," I whisper-groaned back.
"Now we do," she said, opening my curtains. "Grandpa is coming today."
"WHAT!" I bolted upright and looked at her with surprise. "No, he was supposed to come after tomorrow!"
"Change of plans," she sighed, airing out the room. "The house looks like a mess and we still have stuff to do."
"That's his fault," I grumbled, stumbling out of my room to the far end of the hall. I washed my face with the icy water in a metal basin that was standing in the shower. When I finished with my regular morning routine, I went to change clothing and met my father downstairs. He greeted me and passed some oatmeal, we ate quickly and silently and we went outside with Belarus skipping down the steps soon after. The sky was still grey but all the snow had already fallen on the ground. The soft crunch of wet snow under our feet was the only sound heard as we entered the forest where we collected wood. After finding the right thickness of tree, our dad gave us both an axe each and told us what trees had to be cut. Soon the song of the axe reigned the quiet landscape.
"I think this is enough," father wiped his brow. "To sustain us for the next few days, at least."
"When is grandpa coming?" Belarus asked.
"When he wants to," he huffed in reply, tying up the wood blocks into uneven piles. He gave the lightest one to her and the middle on two me. The whole process took under twenty minutes. We left the woods and I could feel again that snow was falling. "Snow again,"
"Yay!" Belarus tried to catch the snowflakes in her mouth. "I love snow."
"Of course you do," I patted her head with my free hand.
"Hopefully grandpa won't get stuck in the snow," she seemed worried by that fact. Father and I exchanged a look of 'I sincerely hope he does'.
"Of course not," father said to her affectionately, though he had a strained edge to his voice as if he couldn't hold the lie in too long. Thankfully our grandfather wasn't here yet. We came in and found that everyone had woken up and had eaten the oatmeal on the table. "Good. I don't have to waste time," father said and immediately began to tidy up.
"Why now?" Germany asked me when I came over.
"Change of plan," I told him. "He's coming today."
"WHAT?" Germany had the same reaction as I did when I found out. "Wait, why today?"
"He does what he wants..." Ukraine muttered under his breath while cleaning the countertop. I took a cleaning cloth and motioned for Germany to follow me upstairs. I gave him a cloth to clean the rails and doorways. I took a bucket with soapy water as well.
"Picky?" He asked when I gave him the instructions to what to do.
"He says he has 'dust allergies'. I think he's faking it, but he might." I said while dusting the railing. It definitely had a fine layer of little debris on it, but nothing very serious.
"Russia!" I heard my father yell to me from the back. "Open the door in my room and air it out!"
"Okay!" I took Germany by the wrist and pulled him to father's room.
"You could've asked me to come," he hissed, clutching his red wrist.
"You would've took too long," I opened the door and stepped in. I crept quietly into father's room, which smelled strongly of yew berry and pine. The soft brown carpet muffled my steps as I made my way across the room. Father's room didn't have anything on the walls, but he had a bookshelf all dedicated to photo albums. On the nightstand next to the bed was a book without a title on the front and a bottle of medication. I opened the door of the balcony, and the wind blew in, spraying snow in my face. The room instantly lost its aroma, to be replaced with the cold wind scent. Germany was busy cleaning the little nooks around the bookcases and he almost finished it all. "Are you one of those people who loves to clean?"
He looked up at me in question. "Who likes to clean?"
"You,"
"Uh, no. I like cleanliness, but not the actual process. My dad was the one who liked it...until he accidentally poured cleaner fluid in his eye." He rubbed the dust off of the desk he was brushing with a force.
"We don't even have that," I said, spraying a fine layer of water over the desk and clearing off till it shone. This should please grandfather. "We have water, soap and bleach. That's about it."
"That is all a household needs." Germany sighed heavily from his work. "Cleaner fluid is bad for skin anyway." He stopped cleaning when we both heard a loud cursing from downstairs and a ring of the landline phone. "Your grandfather," Germany grimaced before he heard a roar from below. He automatically put his hands on his ears and bent down.
"WHY ARE YOU STILL CALLING?" Father's voice echoed across the house. "CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND THAT WE'RE BUSY?" A little pause told us that grandfather was speaking, usually in his oily and sometimes irritating voice. But I heard father no more and in a couple of minutes he banged the phone on the charger. The call was finished. Next to me, Germany was very tense and didn't breathe. I touched his shoulder and he looked at me and in his eyes I could see that he was genuinely scared.
"What. Was. That?" He whispered harshly.
"Grandfather." I pried the cloth from his hands and dropped it into the dark water. "As you can see, we aren't normal."
"I wasn't counting on you all being normal." He shuddered and stood up. "But I was just shocked. I feel like I'm being yelled at when somebody raises their voice." He closed the door behind us when we left the cold room. Kazakhstan was in the hall, rubbing the floor with a wet mop. We had to creep around the dry edge next to the drop to get down. Father was doing two things at once and Belarus was skirting under everything to clean and cook simultaneously. Ukraine was vacuuming the living room and shaking out all of the pillows. The double doors were ajar and I could see tiny flecks of dust coming out into the outside.
"You finished?" Father asked, stirring a pot of soup, adding ingredients haphazardly without any notice.
"Yes," we said together.
"Please clean the white room," he handed me a new and clean bucket of hot water and shooed us away. Germany almost bumped into Belarus who was running around with peels on her head. I grabbed two sticks and hurried out.
"Let's go," I made sure he followed me to the room with the glass ceiling, notorious for being the most calm and strange room in the whole home. The noise became dimmer and dimmer as we went deeper down the hallway. The low couch in the back was pure white with its numerous fluffy throws and accent pillows. The two wooden chairs were put up against the far back wall in the empty wood floored lodge. The glass ceiling was covered in whiteness and the glass walls showed the deep snowy fields outside. The pine forest in the distance looked weighed down by the snow on the branches. No life stirred, and the only thing that moved were the snowflakes, dancing around with the help of the wind. I took out the two streaming rags and dropped them on the floor. "So you see this 'T' shape here?"
"Yes,"
"You put it on the floor, on the rag, and drag it across," I showed him how.
"Oh, okay," he copied my position and we made our way along the floor. After a working silence he stood up and shook his head. "Do you always do this?"
"Not as hectic as like right now." I explained. "I think grandfather just wants to pull father's last strings."
"That's kind of mean,"
"Was Russian Empire ever nice?" I replied finishing the final corner. "He likes to be in control. His shtick. And if it means we all fall over ourselves, the more the better."
"My grandfather doesn't do that," he said.
I shrugged as if I didn't care. "Well, they're all different. 'Tsar RE' loves his titles."
"Should I call him that?"
"In his face, yes. Don't call him 'mister'. We'll all have to hear about it." I rolled my eyes. "But under all those titles, he actually cares about us." I picked up the bucket of now tepid water and moved it over to the glass walls. "Are you ready to paint the glass?"
"With what?"
"Water," I leaned the stick with the rag on the wall and slowly dragged it up and down, like a painter painting a partition. Soon enough, Germany followed suit until all the glass was soaked then dried. "Well, we're done!"
"Finally," he dropped his stick on the floor. We went out of the now spotless room and saw that the only place that was now messy was the kitchen. Ukraine had closed the doors already and was putting fresh logs into the unlit fire. The light in the dining room was on, even though it was relatively light in it and Kazakhstan was setting the table in his well...unique way, by putting napkins into the glasses with the utensils which were wrapped inside the napkins. The cups with the napkins and utensils inside were placed on the plate, right in the middle. I knew that grandfather would hate it until he found out that Kazakhstan did it. Then he would coo and say how thoughtful of him. Kazakhstan was definitely was the favourite grandchild. Meanwhile, the kitchen looked like an atom bomb exploded in it. Peels were everywhere and so we're different batches of sauces, mixing bowls, cut up vegetables and a large piece of thawing meat. Father was rummaging in a cupboard and had already taken off several shirts. He was only wearing a dark grey t shirt and was sweating profusely from the vapours of the multiple post on the stove. His commands to Belarus were accompanied by at least three swears at the end. I stepped carefully out of the kitchen when Belarus gave us a death glare.
"Okeey, everything is under control here," our rooms on the first floor didn't have doors so it would just be flowing from one chamber to the other. Ukraine was shaking out the doormat and placed all of our shoes under the dresser desk next to the entrance.
"There," he said before sneezing from the dust.
"Будь здоров," I told him.
"If I didn't need to hurry," he responded, placing the mat down. "Dad and Belarus didn't want any help. They said 'they're fine'."
"Its too small for everyone to be there," I pointed out.
"Well, that's because bowls are all over the place. Belarus started to put peels into her pockets because the trash bin is overflowing." He snickered but then resumed to frowning. "I'd help them...if they let me. Kazakhstan finished his decorations."
"Ta da!" Kazakhstan zoomed up to us and showed us his masterpiece. He put a spoon on a sting and hung it in the middle of the old chandelier in the dining room. It looked very tacky, but it was what he wanted.
"Very nice," Ukraine choked out, trying to resist the impulse of ripping it off. The next couple of hours would go on like this...
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After the disastrous mess in the kitchen was cleared and all the food was set and ready, we all waited for grandfather to get here. Father was very angry, since he burned his whole upper arm and had to bandage it with aloe, since he was tripping over himself to get things done. Alone. With nobody's help. We sat idly on the seats and couch, waiting for grandfather to show up. I gave some of my smaller clothes to Germany so that he had something new to wear. The ticking of the huge clock that we had in the dining room was ticking slowly and it was the only sound, along with father's heavy breathing. Kazakhstan was busily preening his wings with his small fingers and Ukraine and Belarus were playing a game with their hands requiring no communication between them. Father looked at the clock darkly and clenched his jaw, rubbing the spot where he was burned. Germany tapped his feet on the carpet and whistled.
"Stop it," father growled. Germany immediately ceased to whistle. "If you whistle in the house, you'll have no money."
"Sorry," he whispered. After a few more minutes of silence, there was a heavy knock on the door. Father bolted upright and went over to open the door. It was him. Our grandfather.
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Будь здоров - bless you (be healthy)