Mr Shaker was pleased to meet Dr Topolanek. He promised that he would be sure to visit the Wellness Centre the following day and attend the lecture. Pupa and Beba learned that Kukla’s dancing partner was called Mr Shaker, that he was American, that he was staying in the same hotel and, like them, had arrived that day. However, by then it was quite late, so Kukla suggested that they go their separate ways.
‘Goodbye!’ said Beba and Kukla to Dr Topolanek.
Beba shook hands with Mr Shaker.
‘See you, die!’ she said.
The American took a step backwards. There was an uncomfortable silence.
But here we should explain that Beba had some unusual traits and one of them was a tendency to linguistic lapses. So she did not understand why Kukla was apologising to the American, when she had simply bid him farewell with the usual: ‘See you, bye!’
Kukla took hold of Pupa’s wheelchair and set off towards the lift without a word.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Beba, scurrying to catch her up.
‘Why are you angry with me? What have I done now?’
Pupa woke up for an instant and asked:
‘Has that Dr Bullshit gone?’
She meant Dr Topolanek.
What about us? We carry on. We wish Pupa, Kukla and Beba pleasant dreams, while we hasten to reinforce our story’s seams.
Day Two
1.
The girls were indifferent to the Wellness Centre’s seductive offers. Pupa was like an ancient porcelain cup that had been shattered and stuck back together again repeatedly and now had to be stored in one place and ‘used’ as little as possible, in order to be kept whole. Unlike Pupa, Kukla was in an enviable physical state, and Beba could not understand her resistance. Kukla, who shared a suite with Pupa in order to be on hand instantly, should, heaven forbid, anything untoward occur, apologised that she could not leave Pupa. But they both encouraged Beba warmly. In any case it was high time Beba finally tried to make friends with her own body, with which she had lived far too long in mutual hostility. But, as life is lived slowly and tales are told swiftly, we’re going to fast forward a bit here, and we’ll slow things down later to relate the brief history of intolerance between Beba and her body.
As she ran her eye over the list of massages with picturesque names, Beba resolutely crossed out the ‘Sweet Gallows’, a massage in which, according to the brochure, the masseur hung from a rope, swinging to and fro and scampering lightly over the back of the client on the massage table (As though I’m about to let some Tarzan use my back as a springboard!). Beba eyed the Thai hot-rock massage, the ‘Sweet Dreams’ treatment – and in the end opted for the ‘Suleiman the Magnificent Massage’. She chose ‘Suleiman’ because in the ambience of Czech spa culture and post-communist tourist recreation it sounded the most bizarre. The photograph in the brochure was appealing: it showed a naked female body lying covered in a cloud of soapy foam, like a sponge-finger in cream. Pupa and Kukla approved Beba’s choice. They both also thought ‘Suleiman’ sounded exciting.
A woman in a white uniform led Beba into a not particularly large room lined with tiles of oriental design. In the centre was a stone massage table. The woman asked Beba to undress and lie face down on the table.
‘I’ll freeze on that stone.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s a special table with built-in heating,’ said the woman kindly.
Beba climbed up the little steps onto the table, but the idea of lying face down was simply out of the question. With an apologetic expression on her face, Beba pointed to her large breasts.
‘Don’t worry!’ said the woman sympathetically and disappeared. She came back with a special aid in the form of a small hill, lined with soft sponge, with two large openings in the middle. Now Beba was able to lie face down, while her breasts slipped through the openings and were not pressed painfully against the table.
Beba hugged the little hill. The position was comfortable. Soft, agreeable, vaguely oriental music trickled out of invisible speakers. Lying on her little hill, Beba felt like a gigantic slug on a mushroom.
The woman in the white uniform reached under the table, drew out a nozzle like the ones used for washing cars and delivered a cloud of aromatic soapy foam to Beba’s back.
‘Don’t worry, Pan Suleiman will be here in a moment,’ she said, and went away.
Pan Suleiman? Covered in the warm foam, Beba waited for what was to come.
A young man came into the room. He was wearing a rainbowcoloured turban, and his upper body was bare, if you did not count his tiny, extremely short waistcoat. Instead of trousers, he was wearing wide silk oriental pants, gathered at the ankle. The young man had a virile body, nicely formed muscles in his arms, a flat stomach and satin skin. His face was oriental, or at least so it seemed to Beba, with a prominent nose, fine teeth and full lips, large brown eyes and a little moustache, which struck her as a trifle old-fashioned and therefore attractive.
‘Hai, mai neym iz Suleiman. I em yor maser!’ he announced huskily, in beginner’s English.
‘Hi! My name is Beba!’ said Beba.
At that moment, Beba’s head, poking out of the cloud of foam, happened to be right beside the young man’s pants, that is to say the young man’s pants were right beside Beba’s head, and Beba came face to face with the part of them that was about eight inches below his navel. Beba’s face flushed red. That below-the-navel part of the young man’s pants was peaked like a tent. ‘Whatever is the old woman thinking of…’ Beba reproached herself silently.
‘Reeleks!’ said the young man, running his hands over Beba’s body. Beba tingled all over with pins and needles, as though she had been given a slight electric shock. Plunging his hands into the foam, the young man began to massage her body.
The space was filled with quiet. The oriental music from the invisible speakers was barely audible. Beba thought that the young man was not saying much because his English was bad.
‘Mmmmmmm,’ moaned Beba with pleasure.
At that moment the young man happened to brush against Beba’s thigh with that below-the-navel part of his pants and now there was no longer any doubt – or so it seemed to Beba. ‘Good lord! What now?’ she thought.
‘Reeleks!’ said the young man.
Beba could not remember when this had last happened to her, that a young, attractive, half-naked male body had stood before her, in full battle readiness. Beba’s face was lit up with a dreamy smile. She pressed herself into the little hill lined with soft sponge and licked the aromatic soapy foam. Her body was tingling with expectation. As he massaged her, the young man came round the table and now he was again standing beside Beba’s head so as to reach the back of her neck. Through her half-closed eyes, she could see the young man’s smooth stomach muscles. That tent-like part of his pants was still taut. ‘Shame on you! You female Gustav von Aschenbach!’ Beba silently chastised herself.
Perhaps it should be said at this point that Beba, who con sidered herself stupid – and those immediately around her did not exactly fall over themselves to disabuse her – often chose intellectual comparisons, without herself fully understanding why she did so, and when she did understand, she had no idea where that knowledge came from. No matter, we have to move on. Because in life we each have our cross to bear, while the tale makes obstacles disappear.
‘Veer yu from?’ asked the young man.
‘Croatia,’ Beba muttered reluctantly. The young man’s appalling English acted on her dreamy mood like an icy shower.
The young man’s hands stopped moving.
‘One of us!’ said the young man in his own language, gaping.
‘A fellow countryman!’ said Beba, gaping.
‘Yes, of course, what did you think I was?’
‘A Turk!’ said Beba, although she had really thought that the young man was a Czech in disguise.
‘Turk indeed! Not on your life! I’m Bosnian!’
‘Where from?’
‘Sarajevo!’ the bo
y burst out, with the stress on the ‘e’, evidently imitating foreign war reporters.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Massaging, of course. As you see.’
‘I mean, how did you end up here?’
‘I was a refugee.’
‘When?’
‘A bit before Dayton…’
‘So how long have you been here? Twelve years?’
‘About that…’
‘So how old are you?’
‘Twenty-nine… Well, am I going to massage you or what?’
‘I don’t know, I feel a bit awkward now. I could be your mother…’ said Beba, trying to get off her little hill. The young man hurried to help her.
‘Why should it be awkward? I’ve had all kinds of bodies through my hands, since I’ve been doing this.’
‘But even so…’ Beba mumbled, embarrassed.
Somehow Beba clambered up and sat on the table, but the aid remained stuck between her breasts. Seeing Beba in a cloud of soapy foam, with the aid, and her breasts sticking out of the openings like two watermelons, the young man began to roar with laughter. Realising what a ridiculous situation she was in, Beba too burst out laughing. Her laughter sent the foam flying in all directions.
‘Oh, my! Now you look like a Yeti!’ said the young man, in his Bosnian accent, trying to suppress his laughter.
The young man helped Beba remove the pillow and brought her a towelling robe. Wrapped in the white robe, Beba wiped the foam from her face with a towel.
‘Fancy a fag?’ said the young man in his characteristic Bosnian accent.
‘Sorry?’
‘Shall we have a smoke?’
‘Here?’
‘Well, why not?’
‘Oh, all right.’
‘I call the shots here, love. I’m untouchable! And what kind of a Suleiman would I be if there wasn’t a smell of tobacco round me, eh?’
Beba and the young man lit their cigarettes.
‘Eh, I haven’t had a good laugh like that in years!’ said the young man warmly.
‘Eh, my Suleiman…’ Beba sighed cheerfully.
‘My name’s not Suleiman!’
‘What is it?’
‘Mevludin.’
‘Muslim?’
‘Hardly, love! I’m like the former Yugoslavia, like a Bosnian stew, I’m a bit of everything. My dad was Bosnian and my mother half-Croatian, half-Slovene. And there were all sorts in the family: Montenegrins, Serbs, Macedonians, Czechs… One of my grandmas was Czech.’
‘Eh, Mevludin…’
‘You can call me Mevlo. I’m known as Pan Mevlička here. Suleiman is my professional name. It was the Czechs who dressed me in these pants, they say Turkish massage is great for tourists. They haven’t a clue, it wasn’t them who had the Turks breathing down their necks for five hundred years.’
‘You strike me as something of an actor.’
‘Sure, I’m an actor. But I’m trained as well, as a physiotherapist. People say I have golden hands.’
‘It’s true, you do,’ said Beba solemnly.
‘What good are they to me…?’ sighed the young man, frowning.
‘What do you mean, what good are they?’
‘What’s the use if I don’t have anything else?’
Beba didn’t know what to say. As far as she could judge, the young man was fine in every way. More than fine.
‘This thing of mine stands up like a flagpole, but what’s the use, love, when I’m cold as an icicle? It’s as much use to me as a cripple’s withered leg. You can do what you like with it, tap it as much as you like, it just echoes as though it was hollow.’
‘Hang on, what are you talking about?’
‘My willy, love, you must have noticed.’
‘No,’ lied Beba.
‘It happened after the explosion. A Serbian shell exploded right beside me, fuck them all, and ever since then, it’s been standing up like this. My mates all teased me, why, Mevlo, they said, you’ve profited from the war. Not only did you get away with your life, but you got a tool taut as a gun. Me, a war profiteer? A war cripple, that’s what I am!’
The young man looked dejected. Out of the corner of her inquisitive eye, Beba observed that the relevant part of his anatomy was still just as perky.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘I’m hiding here in these wide pants. I act the part of a Turk, and keep waiting to get better. I’ve asked some doctors. They’ve examined me; they laugh and say there’s nothing wrong with your tool, Pan Mevlička. That’s how it is in life, love, everyone wants to push and shove, but no one to cuddle and snuggle… I’d go back to my Bosnia, I felt really great in Bosnia, even during the war, but they’d all make fun of me there. Mevlo the Superman, Mevlo the Golden Tool, you know what our lot are like. That would really do my head in. I can’t go back like this, I’m not a man, or a woman, I’m nothing… I’ve had some women after me here, actresses, all sorts, you know what working in a hotel means, you’re on room- service twenty-four hours a day, everyone thinks they’ve got a right to pester you. Some people tried to talk me into making a porn film, some Germans, Russians, Yanks… I gave one of them a proper hammering, I broke all his bones, I got a bad reputation, but at least that means people leave me alone. Maybe it would be easier if I was gay, what do you think?’
‘The main thing is that you have a good heart,’ said Beba gently and at the time she sincerely believed what she said.
‘I’ve got a heart as big as a mosque, but what’s the good of that!’
Beba smiled.
‘And I’m sure you’ve got brains as well.’
‘Well, now, that’s something I haven’t got,’ the young man brightened up. ‘I’m a fool, love. And once a fool, always a fool.’
‘It’ll all get sorted out somehow, I’m sure,’ said Beba compassionately.
‘Well, if only this boa constrictor down there gets sorted out. I’m sick of the sight of it! It’s as though that Serbian shell put a spell on me, fuck it to hell!’
The young man looked at Beba and a gentle smile spread over his face.
‘Hey, sorry for swearing like that.’
‘It doesn’t bother me.’
‘And sorry for all the stuff I’ve offloaded on you. If only someone could unwitch me, the way the shell bewitched me. That’s what I dream about every day, love…’
There was a knock on the door. The woman in the white coat came into the room.
‘Pan Suleiman, there are two clients waiting for you outside.’
The young man helped Beba to get off the table and accompanied her to the door.
‘How long are you staying?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know.’
‘Will you come again?’
‘For sure.’
‘Do. Don’t forget. Call by after work, and we’ll go for a beer… You’ll find me easily, I live here in the hotel. Just ask for Pan Mevlička. Everyone knows me.’
‘I’ll do that!’
And then in eloquent Czech, he turned to the woman in the white coat:
‘Napište masaž teto damy na muj učet.’*
* * *
And what about us? While life gets tangled in the human game, the tale hastens to reach its aim!
2.
Dr Topolanek was standing in front of a colour photograph projected onto a screen. It was the portrait of an old woman sitting in an armchair, dressed in a suit, a white shirt with its collar and cuffs emerging from the jacket sleeves, and with a brightly coloured pullover thrown youthfully over her shoulders instead of a shawl. The old woman had curly grey hair, blue eyes sunk deep into their sockets and lips that were completely sucked in. The most striking things about her were her hands, with their fat, misshapen fingers, exactly like claws.
‘They could at least have put lace gloves on her,’ thought Beba, looking at the photograph.
Dr Topolanek handed everyone in his audience a list of people over a hundred years old. Beside their
names were their race, gender, nationality and the number of years they had achieved.
‘You are wondering,’ said Dr Topolanek, ‘who the woman in this photograph is. If you take a look at the list, you’ll find her name at the very top. Jeanne Calment has been proclaimed the oldest person in the world. Mrs Calment died at the age of one hundred and twenty-two years and sixty- four days! “I’ve only ever had one wrinkle and I’m sitting on it! Je n’ai jamais eu qu’une ride et je suis assise dessus,” she announced to the press. Mrs Calment rode her bicycle until she was a hundred!’
Dr Topolanek continued: ‘Sarah Knauss, Lucy Hannah, Marie-Louise Meilleur, María Capovilla, Tane Ikai, Elizabeth Bolde, Carrie C. White, Kamato Hongo, Maggie Barnes, Christian Mortensen, Charlotte Hughes – I could go on. These are all the names of ordinary people, heroes of longevity. Or more accurately: heroines. Take a closer look at the list. Ninety of the people there are female, and ten male!’
Dr Topolanek looked significantly at his audience.
‘We men are called the stronger sex. But has it ever occurred to anyone that we are apparently stronger than women simply because somewhere deep inside us we have a built-in bio logical alarm, the realisation that we will leave this world far earlier than our female companions? The future belongs to women: both metaphorically and literally. And once we are no longer needed for reproduction, which will happen very soon, the whole male gender will be definitively thrown onto the rubbish heap of history.’
Mr Shaker was the only man in the anyway sparse audience. Beside Beba, Kukla and Pupa, who was dozing in her wheelchair, and a few other old women, Mr Shaker was definitely in the minority. And when Topolanek explained in such a picturesque way that he was about to be thrown onto the rubbish heap of history, Mr Shaker got up and left the hall.
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths S.) Page 9
