The clock ticked peacefully, slowly, unhurriedly, marking the passage of time. The house was asleep. The curtains at the windows slept, swaying gently in the quiet night breeze, intertwining with the light of the stars. The writing desk slept, perhaps dreaming of all the songs on vinyl stored in its drawers. Everything in the room slept, and so did Oleg – deeply and soundly. The soft light of the round moon fell onto the floor and onto the wall covered with “Beatles” photos.
It should be said that photos were everywhere in this room. Not just photos, of course. But there were more photos here than anything else combined.
All these pictures were pinned, taped, hung, and attached to all four walls. From the wall opposite the window, a sweet-faced Ringo stared out from a gilded frame. And from all the other pictures in the room, the Beatles looked back with a mischievous, sad, playful, and majestic gaze.
The crowning feature of the wall near Oleg’s bed was a drawing of Harrison in a suit, holding a guitar – an exact replica.
It was unclear where exactly four o’clock struck (was it already morning?), but all the rustling in the house stopped. Only for a few minutes, though. When the clock chimed one last time, something strange and mysterious stirred in the room. The faces on the photographs, as usual on a full moon night, came to life. Countless Johns, Pauls, Georges, and of course, Ringo, began quietly talking amongst themselves, trying not to wake Oleg.
Starr, from the main portrait, calmly observed all the others from his elevated position, for he hung just beneath the ceiling. The photo from the film “Help!” came to life. John approached Ringo and began shamelessly trying to take his ring off his finger. Ringo got angry:
– Hey! What, are you crazy?
John, in turn, carefully took Ringo by the lapel and said: – Starr! I don’t understand, why does Epstein need this ring?
Ringo, in turn, grabbed John’s hand, pried it off his jacket, and replied:
– Get off me! It’s a gift.
– You’ll only have one and a half Mondays left with that gift anyway. Let me wear it for a bit!
– Go to Wagner! – Ringo retorted.
The photos quietly lived their own lives. The only ones looking sad were the posters from the “White Album,” where the Beatles were separated, unable to talk or fight…
John remained silent. Paul didn’t mind. Ringo sat quietly. Only George couldn’t sit still. And just like the most rebellious one, he decided to break the silence. He pulled himself up by his arms, perched on the edge of the frame, climbed over it, and silently jumped to the floor. He thought like Raskolnikov: “Am I a trembling insect, or do I have the right? If I have the right, then I’m the most important.”
All the faces on the walls turned toward him. Someone (probably John) whispered, “Well, that’s a surprise, five packs!” Paul dropped a piece of cake on another John’s shoulder. George stood in the middle of the room, triumphantly. Nothing broke the silence until they all noticed that a cut-out George from the same poster (an exact copy of the first) was climbing out of his frame. He quietly approached the first one, sizing him up with a hostile glare as if deciding where best to send him.
The first one looked at the second, and in his eyes was a silent question: “Well? Eaten? I’m the boss – that’s it!” – and he said the last part aloud.
– Shut up, – said the second one.
– What? I didn’t hear you! – asked the first.
– Why did you crawl out of the poster? – the second one said menacingly.
– To collect your snot in a napkin and flush it down the toilet. To clean the pot after you, wipe the milk off your lips, and hang some noodles on your ears.
– Well, try it, before I call Richard Ivanovich!
– Oh, really? And if I call John Fredovich?
– Enough! – they didn’t even notice how the third Harrison from the “White Album” appeared next to them. Now three mirror images of each other stood in the middle of the room, looking at each other sternly.
The first George started stepping toward the third.
– What are you doing here! Go back to your place, or else… – he raised his hand to strike the third, but before he could do anything, the second George grabbed his hand from behind, pulled it toward him, and put a chair under his knees. Furious, the first jumped up and slapped the second across the face, causing him to fall behind the bed, risking waking Oleg.
Everything would’ve probably ended badly, but there was one more – the drawn Harrison by Oleg’s hand. All this time, he had been nervously tapping his fingers on the guitar resting on his lap, wondering how such a fight could have even started.
“I’ll tell them what I think of them,” he thought, and climbed out of his piece of wallpaper, grabbed the frame with both hands, stood up, and said: “Hey, you fools! The boss is me!” – But poor George miscalculated that the guitar was still lying on his lap. It bent over the edge of the drawing and, before George (already the fourth one, convinced he was first) could grab it, it crashed onto Oleg with a loud thud.
He woke up as if from a nightmare, looking around his room in fear. Everything was in its place: the photos hung calmly on the walls, the desk, like everything else, was where it had been before.
Oleg rubbed his bruised forehead. It hurt. “Maybe I was just dreaming,” he thought. He lay back down and slept until noon the next day.
And when his mother came to visit him that day, she paused and stared at one of the “White Album” photos: under George’s eye was a huge bruise.