‘Girls, this is amazing!’
Then she placed a selection of little cakes on a china plate for Pupa.
‘Mmmmm…’ mumbled Pupa with pleasure, and in a few seconds she had devoured the lot.
Beba and Kukla were astonished by Pupa’s sudden enthusiasm for sweet things. If anyone had shown a dedicated delight in food, it was Beba.
For a moment, Beba felt a little downcast. For the first time in her life, she could feel the power of money on her own skin. She had never in her life had money; she had lived from pay-cheque to pay-cheque, not even thinking about money. Money is like a coat made of the most expensive fur, she thought now. People treat a woman in a fur coat entirely differently from a woman in a sports jacket, and no one would be able to convince her otherwise.
‘Money is like a magic wand,’ said Beba.
‘How do you mean?’ asked Kukla.
‘As soon as you show that you have money, people who had looked at you like scum until then suddenly treat you as though you were Kate Moss!’
‘Ich deck mein schmerz mit mein nerz!’ said Pupa.
‘People simply respect you more,’ said Beba primly.
‘Money is shit. People are like flies. And where do flies land, if not on shit,’ said Pupa, resolutely bringing the conversation to an end.
Beba was a little offended at first because Pupa and Kukla did not appear to be particularly pleased about her winnings. She had dreamed up this little celebration for them, as a treat, but they were indifferent, or that is how it seemed to her. But then, thought Beba, she could not take credit for the money; it had come to her by chance. Why should they praise and congratulate her? On her stupid good fortune?
At that moment Mevludin, who had clearly skived off work, because he was wearing his ‘uniform’, burst into the pool room.
‘Well, well, well! What do you mean by starting the party without me, eh?’
‘Come on, we’re waiting for you,’ called Beba brightly.
Mevlo grabbed a glass from the invisible waiter and then, slipping off his clogs, walked slowly into the pool in his wide trousers, little waistcoat and turban.
‘Hey, my ladies! Here you are soaking in the pool like gherkins in brine. Well, then, cheers, my lovelies! And I want to toast my granny as well: I sent her some money a few days ago so she could have lovely new teeth made, and stop clicking like castanets all over the place,’ Mevlo chattered, and then he stopped in amazement.
Coming face to face with a little old lady on a floating lounger, wearing white socks and a swimming costume from which the Teletubbies gazed out at him, for a moment Mevludin felt as though he were in the presence of some ancient divinity.
‘Excuse me for jabbering on like this, madam,’ said Mevludin.
With almost youthful sweetness, the lady offered him her little, dry hand. Mevludin was touched by this hand that resembled a bird’s claw, and then he was ashamed of his chattering.
‘Well, Mevlo, you’re right welcome, boy,’ said Beba cheerfully.
‘Ah, my lovelies, it’s all very well for you, drinking champagne and soaking yourselves in the pool,’ Mevludin opened his mouth again, but this time he addressed Beba.
‘But you’re drinking and soaking yourself too.’
‘Maybe I am, but I’m not happy.’
‘Why not?’ asked Pupa.
‘She knows,’ said Mevludin, pointing to Beba.
‘Shall I tell them?’ asked Beba.
‘Go on, tell them, love. I’ve got nothing to hide. Good things keep mum, while misfortune kicks out, showing its bare bum.’
‘Mevlo’s in love,’ explained Beba.
‘Who with?’ asked Pupa.
‘You know, that little American girl, we told you…’
‘So you’ve been blathering to all and sundry!’ said Mevlo crossly.
‘No, I haven’t, honestly, no one knows apart from the three of us!’
‘Kukla knows.’
‘Well, that’s three, presumably.’
The women burst out laughing.
‘Honestly! It’s all very well for you to wet yourselves laughing!’ said Mevlo.
‘That’s right, it’s not nice for us to be cackling, when the girl’s lost her father!’ said Beba.
‘God rest his soul, rahmetli Mr Shaker,’ said Mevlo.
‘When did it happen?’ asked Pupa.
‘Yesterday.’
‘How?’
‘The guy kicked the bucket.’
‘How?’
‘He suffocated on a golf ball.’
‘What a lovely way to die!’ said Pupa.
Kukla drank the rest of her champagne in silence, while Mevlo, Beba and Pupa discussed Mr Shaker’s ‘lovely’ death and philosophised on the theme ‘here today, gone tomorrow’. She did not seem particularly interested in their conversation. But she did give a little start when one of Pupa’s observations reached her ear.
‘Fine. Now there’s nothing in the way of your happiness!’ said Pupa, curving her long neck and directing her bright gaze in Mevludin’s direction.
How lively she’s become, all of a sudden! thought Kukla, who was anxious about Pupa’s sudden chattiness. Because on the whole she dozed or said nothing and this unexpected liveliness did not bode well.
‘I’m in the way of my happiness, like a log,’ Mevlo replied.
‘Mevlo thinks he’s not good enough for the girl, that he doesn’t speak English, which is true, and that he lacks polish,’ explained Beba.
Here Pupa raised herself up a little on her lounger and asked in a serious tone:
‘Do you pick your nose in the girl’s presence?’
‘No, I don’t, I swear by my granny,’ said Mevlo, astonished by the question.
‘Are you stingy?’ Pupa went on.
‘No, I’m not, I swear by my mother.’
‘Remember, there’s nothing worse than a stingy man!’
‘I’m not stingy, I swear by Tito!’
‘Do you chatter a lot in the girl’s presence?’
‘Well, I like talking, I can’t say I don’t, but I control myself… And anyway I can’t speak English,’ he replied candidly.
‘You’re as handsome as Apollo, you don’t pick your nose, you’re not stingy and you don’t talk too much. There’s nothing at all the matter with you!’ announced Pupa in the tone of a doctor who was a hundred per cent sure of her diagnosis.
Beba burst out laughing. Even Kukla laughed, but like someone who was just learning how to do it. Her throat just let out a sound like whinnying.
‘Who’s this Apollo guy?’ Mevlo whispered to Beba.
‘She’s saying that you look terrific, and she can’t see what the problem is.’
‘What’s the good of it if I don’t have even the remotest hint of a brain?’ said Mevludin, turning to Pupa.
‘You have clever hands!’ Beba leapt to Mevlo’s defence.
‘Beba’s right. Do you know how many children I’ve brought into the world with these hands?’ said Pupa, for some reason spreading out the fingers of one hand.
Mevludin stared in awe at the old lady on the lounger, who now reminded him of a holy chicken, because for a moment it seemed to him that instead of her hand she had spread her wing.
‘I don’t know, madam, perhaps you can tell me how to improve my situation. You’re older, wiser, you’re educated, so I assume, you can’t altogether have forgotten the syllabus,’ said Mevlo, evidently enchanted by Pupa.
Beba moved away for a moment and observed the scene. Standing in water up to his waist, a young man in wide trousers, with a little waistcoat pulled over his naked torso and a turban on his head, was gazing in reverence at a little old lady, in the shape of a horizontal letter S, wearing a child’s swimming costume with the Teletubbies printed on it, floating on a lounger. The old lady resembled a hen, while the young man looked like a hero out of A Thousand and One Nights.
‘Shall we order another bottle of champagne?’ suggested Beba.
/> Here it should be added that in reality everything went far more slowly. The reality of a story, however, rarely corresponds to the reality of life. Or, in other words: while in life a cat struggles to catch its prey, in the tale, like a bullet, it strikes home straight away.
Mevlo signalled to the invisible waiter to bring another bottle of champagne. They poured it out, sipped it slowly and then Beba, who had resolved to help Mevlo come what may, made a solemn proposal:
‘I’ve got a suggestion: let each of the three of us choose and describe her ideal man, and then it will be easier for Mevlo to see what he’s lacking!’
The women looked at each other. Who knows when they might last have had a conversation along these lines? At school? Beba had evidently drunk too much champagne and it had made her childish. However, what happened next was something quite other than the participants could have anticipated. To start with no one had expected any response at all from Pupa let alone an immediate one, but, nevertheless, it was Pupa who piped up:
‘My ideal man is Superman.’
‘Why Superman?’
‘Because Superman is the best, quickest, cheapest and most comfortable means of transport!’ said Pupa and her blue eyes sparkled with a girlish gleam.
‘Just because he’s mobile?’ asked Beba.
‘And because he’s a handyman.’
‘What’s that when it’s at home?’ Mevlo asked Kukla.
‘Someone with golden hands who fixes everything round the house.’
‘Superman can weld a ton of steel with one glance, so he’d certainly be able to fix a cooker, a blender or a blocked water pipe. He could also be a home diagnostic centre, so you wouldn’t have to hang about in hospital queues forever. All he has to do is look at you with those X-ray eyes of his!’ prattled Beba.
‘There’s something else,’ said Pupa.
‘What?’
‘Superman mends the world. He fights evil.’
‘Like Tito!’ Mevlo burst in.
Here it should be explained that Mevludin was one of those Bosnians who valued the long-dead president of former Yugoslavia, Tito, and who were convinced that had Tito been alive in Yugoslavia, which meant in Bosnia too, there would have been no war, and therefore no shell that had so fundamentally altered Mevlo’s life.
Mevlo looked downcast.
‘I’m not qualified.’
‘Why?’ asked Pupa seriously.
‘I can fix a leaking pipe for you in a jiffy, I can change a tyre, I can unscrew a bulb and change that, but when it comes to mending the world, I can’t do that… When that war flared up in our country, what did I do to stop it? Nothing!’
‘You’ve got golden hands, you know that,’ said Beba.
‘That’s what people say.’
‘Well, just imagine that Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladíc, instead of going to The Hague, turn up on your massage table!’
‘I’d wring their necks!’
‘There you are, clever hands have great power,’ said Beba, although she was not too sure of her idea about the clever hands.
‘What about you, Beba, who’s your choice?’ Kukla cut Beba’s prattling short.
‘Hmm… it’s difficult.’
‘Come on, love, think of something,’ said Mevludin.
‘You all know who Tarzan was?’ said Beba brightly.
‘Of course!’ said Kukla, Pupa and Mevludin at the same moment.
‘But do you know his real name?’
‘Tarzan,’ Mevlo blurted out.
‘Tarzan’s real name is John Clayton, Lord Greystoke!’ said Beba triumphantly.
‘What are you implying?’
‘Half-ape, half-lord! That’s my ideal man!’ Beba burst out.
The three of them started giggling: Pupa asthmatically, Kukla whinnyingly and Beba throatily. Mevlo looked dejected again:
‘There you are, I’m not qualified again, love.’
‘Why?’
‘The monkey bit I can manage, but as for being a lord, there’s just no way!’ he said.
Once again it should be said that in reality, in this case the watery, poolside one, everything happened far more slowly. But while life will dither and shilly-shally, the tale’s seven- league boots leap over hill and valley.
‘Now it’s your turn, Kukla!’ said Beba.
‘I don’t know…’
‘Oh, come on; it’s not fair to the others!’
They all waited tensely for Kukla’s answer. Kukla grew serious, she frowned a bit, sipped a little champagne and then said, slowly:
‘The devil.’
‘What do you mean, the devil?’
‘The devil is my ideal man,’ said Kukla calmly.
‘Why?’ they all asked together, uneasily.
‘Throughout history the devil was the most dangerous opponent of ordinary men. Superman cannot be an ideal man. Still less Tarzan. The devil is a man with a long, powerful and convincing history of seduction. The devil is the only opponent of God Himself, who is, as we know, also a man.’
They all fell silent, because it seemed that there was some truth in Kukla’s answer.
‘Ah well, that counts me out as well!’ Mevlo burst out, breaking the silence.
‘Why?’
‘What do you mean, why, love? My soul is as soft as a Bosnian plum, you can’t be a devil with such a wishy-washy heart!’
‘But the devil likes women!’ said Beba.
‘So what?’
‘You like women too!’
‘I do, my dears, I like you all!’ said Mevlo.
‘The very fact that you like women qualifies you to be an ideal man!’ Beba pronounced her verdict.
It will not be inappropriate to observe once more that in reality everything took a lot longer. For while life always tends to drag its idle feet, the tale dashes on, brisk, swift and fleet.
‘Isn’t it surprising,’ said Beba thoughtfully.
‘Isn’t what surprising, love?’
‘Well, the fact that, actually, very few people actually like us, women.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Kukla.
‘The only people who like us are transvestites!’ said Beba bitterly, then she added: ‘And Mevlo!’
All three of them – Beba, who was a bit the worse for wear, Kukla and Mevlo – failed to notice that Pupa’s lounger had floated away. And when they did realise that Pupa was not with them, they turned round and spotted her lounger at the other end of the pool. Her head had slumped onto her chest, a little to one side, and now she looked even more like a hen.
‘She’s nodded off again,’ said Beba.
‘Why is her hand in the air?’ asked Kukla in alarm.
‘Why not?’
‘She’s sleeping with her hand in the air?’
Truly, Pupa was sleeping in an unusual position, with her hand slightly raised, and her fist clenched.
Kukla, Beba and Mevlo put their glasses down on the edge of the pool and hurried towards Pupa. When they got close, they saw that her two fingers were clenched in an unambiguous gesture.
‘Maybe she was a bit tipsy and was showing us two fingers,’ said Beba.
‘Maybe she’s kicked the bucket,’ Mevlo burst out.
‘God, Mevlo, call the doctor!’ screamed Beba.
Dr Topolanek came at once. Nurses lifted Pupa out of the pool. Dr Topolanek felt her pulse, pressed her jugular vein, lifted her eyelids… No, there was not the slightest doubt, Pupa had finally passed over into the next world.
‘Eighty-eight is a ripe old age,’ said Dr Topolanek.
He wanted, in truth, to add that it was nothing compared to Emma Faust Tillman, who died aged a hundred and thirteen, but he realised that his enthusiasm with regard to longevity would be inappropriate in these circumstances. So he just added:
‘May she rest in peace.’
2.
Who knows what Pupa was thinking about as she drifted away on her lounger towards the far end of the pool? Perhaps at a certain moment she
gathered that the warm, cheerful voices that had surrounded her had grown quieter and then disappeared altogether, and she was suddenly immersed in a silence as dense as cotton wool. The brightly coloured blotches – the faces of Kukla, Beba and the young man in the turban – gradually disappeared and she found herself in a world without colour, where it seemed to her that she had already died and that now the nursemaid Death was rocking her in the warm Lethe? Perhaps her memory had suddenly stretched out like that child’s toy, that little brightly coloured tongue that straightens out when it is blown, and it had then rolled itself up pliably into a Moebius loop, and, well, well, she clearly recalled that she had already been here, in this very place, before. It was nineteen-seventy something, when she had at last, after a long time, acquired her first passport. Czechoslovakia was at that time one country which vanished into two, just as Yugoslavia was one country, and now there are six. She and Kosta had been invited here to a Gynaecologists’ Conference, and stayed in this very hotel, except that then it was called the ‘Moscow’.
Pupa slipped along the Moebius loop as though sliding downhill on a toboggan, and, what do you know, she saw everything, it was all lined up, all the events of her life, those that had occurred, and those that were to come, although she would no longer be there. She felt light, all her sense of shame – mostly to do with the fact that fate had ordained that she should live so long – lifted from her. The little bodies of the children she had brought into the world, dozens and dozens of newborn babies, glided past her like stars. Goodness, she thought in wonder as she slipped along her loop, how many there are? Is it possible that she should have brought so many children into the world, and into a world which, to be honest, she liked less and less? And, who knows, perhaps that was the reason why she had clenched her right hand, straightened her bony index and middle fingers and, raising her hand a little, held them up to the world, at once accusing and gleeful.
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths S.) Page 15
