I looked up at the balloon. It flew upward smoothly and calmly, as if this was what it itself had wanted all its life.I stood there with my head raised and simply watched, and so did Aljonka, and many adults stopped and also raised their heads to watch the balloon fly - and it kept flying, getting smaller.It was ascending higher and higher, and when it flew past the windows of a huge building's top floor, someone leaned out of that window and waved at it. It kept going up and a little to the side, flew above the antennas and pigeons, and became so very small... something was ringing in my ears during its flight. Then it almost disappeared - it flew behind a cloud, fluffy and small, like a rabbit. Then it reemerged, then disappeared again - this time completely. It was probably near the Moon by now. And all the while we were watching until some tailed dots and patterns started to flash before my eyes. The balloon was nowhere to be seen. Aljonka sighed barely audible, and everyone went about their business.We also left. And we were silent, and all the way while we were walking I thought how beautiful it was outdoors during the Spring, when everyone was dressed up and cheerful, and cars were driving here and there, and a policeman was wearing white gloves, and in the meantime, red balloon was flying into the clear, blue, blue sky farther and farther away from us. And I also thought - what a pity it was that I couldn’t tell Aljonka all this. I could never find appropriate words. And even if I could, Aljonka wouldn’t comprehend them anyway, for she was too small to understand. Here she was, walking right next to me, all so quietly, and the tears had not yet dried up completely on her cheeks. She probably missed her balloon.And so Aljonka and I walked in silence all the way to the house. But then, near our gates, when we were about to say goodbye to each other, Aljonka said: - If I had money, I would buy another balloon... so that you could let go of it once more.
All of my father’s and mother’s friends told me: “Wow! Do you even realize that your father wrote this book about you?”I am sure that many children at school or in the yard had adventures a hundred times more interesting than Deniska’s. If that was the case, than any literate person could become a children's writer in no time. Ask your child what happened at school today, write everything down and hurry up to editorial office! But the real writer should think up his stories himself. So all of “Deniska’s stories” were made up by my dad. Perhaps, except for the story “Third Place in Butterfly Stroke” and a few pieces from the stories “What I Love”, “...And What I Don’t Like!”. Those actually happened. But everything else is fiction from the first to the last word.In fact, my dad and mom were entertainers. In the stories, however, dad is an engineer, and mom is a student. In the stories, mom and dad are very young, but in fact, when I was born, my father was thirty-seven years old, and my mother was twenty-six.And with that I conclude that - no, 'Deniska’s Stories' are not about me. It seems that everything has been proven very convincingly.And now, since we got it clear, I'll also say - yes, of course, they are about me!But I’m not talking about seperate adventures, which, I repeat once again, are all made up, from the first to the very last case. I'm talking about the life itself that is described there.