Or might it have been something quite different? Perhaps after so many years she had gone back to look for some little thing, an earring, which she had lost back in nineteen-seventy something, in this same pool. They were earrings made of onyx and silver, a present from Aaron, which she rarely took out of her ears. A trifle, a knick-knack, but still it bothered her for a long time; what is more she sometimes felt as though her ear lobes were burning because of the loss of that earring. That is why she now sighed deeply and dived – slender, young and elastic as the Moebius loop. She searched the bottom of the pool carefully and, what do you know, she found the earring stuck in the grate-like opening at the bottom of the pool wall. She had to come up three times for air before she could free it. And then she finally managed it. She clutched the earring tightly in her hand, so that it should not escape, and now that she had found what she was looking for, there was no longer any reason to go back up to the surface again.
3.
Pupa’s vanishing soul drew away with it that discreet smell of urine, which came with old age and dragged after her like the train of her dress. Pupa’s rigid body lay before them, but – as though death were like blotting paper – the smell had disappeared. The ‘old witch’ was right: death has no smell. Life is crap.
She lay on her back, in the same position in which they had lifted her off the lounger, with her knees bent and slightly parted, like an oven-readyChristmasturkey. Her slightly raised right arm with its hand bent in the unambiguous two-finger gesture, it too remained in the same position in which Pupa, lying on her pool lounger in the shape of a horizontal S, had sent her last goodbye to her friends or to the world, who knows. Unlike her right hand, with its unseemly message, her left lay hanging, as though it were still stroking the edge of the non-existent lounger. A glance at the deceased’s legs and feet, now when Pupa’s socks were finally off, filled those present with mild horror. The skin on her legs was criss-crossed with broken capillaries and swollen veins which wrapped round the spindly calves like the tentacles of an octopus. From her knees down everything blended into the terrifying colour of rotten meat. Her toenails were so ossified and twisted that they resembled claws. ‘God forgive me!’ Beba crossed herself, stunned by what she saw.
Two nurses – one small, willowy, red-haired, and the other large, white-skinned and linear as a pillar – were doing their job. After she cut off Pupa’s socks with scissors, the willowy one tried to lower Pupa’s right hand, exerting particular determination over the fingers. However, neither fingers nor hand would budge, as though they had turned to stone.
‘Careful! You’ll break them!’ Beba protested.
‘God forgive me, but I’ve never seen anything like this in my life, and I’ve been working for twenty years!’ said Willowy, crossing herself for some reason.
The linear one pressed her hands down on Pupa’s knees, as though Pupa were a folding umbrella, rather than a human being, a former one admittedly. Her knees offered amazing resistance.
‘It’s as if she’s made of iron,’ muttered Linear, rolling up her sleeves and preparing for one last effort.
‘Stop! I can’t bear to watch you any longer!’ cried Beba.
Linear shrugged her shoulders indifferently, ran her tongue round her mouth without opening her lips, just like a camel, and then spat an important question out of her mouth:
‘How do you imagine you’re going to stuff her into a coffin, with all these bits sticking out?’
‘Quite. How?’ Willowy joined in, gratuitously belligerent.
‘Well, you presumably have coffins?’
‘We’ve got one. A child’s. Made by our carpenter, the late Lukas. He made all his coffins too short and too narrow. His corpses were squeezed in like sardines.’
‘That was in communist times, when people cut corners everywhere,’ said Willowy.
‘Lukas skimped on everything apart from drink,’ snapped Linear.
‘Why don’t you turn her onto her side?’ asked Beba.
‘The foetal position, you mean?’ said Linear professionally, measuring Pupa roughly with her hands. ‘Hmm, she won’t fit,’ she shook her head.
‘Little body, big problems! I’ve really never seen anything like it!’ Willowy crossed herself.
‘Well, it’s possible it could be done if you would let her be squashed a little,’ added Linear.
‘Is there such a thing as an undertaker in this town?’ asked Kukla.
‘Yes. The undertaker is the carpenter Martin. But he won’t make you a coffin overnight. I had to wait a fortnight for my mother,’ said Linear.
‘Where did you keep her?’
‘Here, in the fridge.’
‘We’re Wellness Centre staff, we have priority,’ explained Willowy.
‘What about a crematorium?’ asked Beba.
‘In Prague. But even there the dead usually go into the oven in coffins. No one’s going to burn them in just a sheet.’
‘Only Indians are burned in just a sheet,’ said Willowy.
‘Do you mean no one ever dies here, for God’s sake?’ asked Beba.
‘We’re a Wellness Centre!’
‘I give up! Lukas, Martin, Indians, I don’t understand a thing!’ said Beba angrily.
‘We don’t understand you either. What were you thinking of dragging an old woman about with you, and never thinking that she could snuff it? And in a foreign country as well!’
Willowy probably wanted to say ‘shame on you’ or something like that, but restrained herself at the last moment, and instead said:
‘I’d never drag my mother about, not on my life!’
‘You’re not very kind, the two of you, you know,’ said Beba.
‘If I was kind I’d have popped my clogs long ago!’ Willowy snapped.
‘The conditions we live in, certainly,’ said Linear vaguely.
‘This is absolutely intolerable! You girls really know how to help a person!’ snorted Beba.
‘Let’s go, we’ll think of something,’ said Kukla, dragging Beba by the sleeve.
‘Think of something, only quickly! Our fridge isn’t large. It’s Thursday now. We can keep her till Monday morning maximum. Other people die as well, you know,’ said Linear, biting her tongue. ‘I mean it does happen once in a while, like now for instance,’ she added.
‘We’re a Wellness Centre!’ Willowy leapt in, pronouncing wellness centre with particular reverence, as though it were a matter of divine law.
‘Fuck you and your Wellness Centre!’ Beba shrieked, exasperated. She only ever swore in English, and the only English swear words she knew were ‘fuck you’.
We should add that we have had to translate this conversation into a language everyone could understand, because in reality it took place in a mixture of Czech and Croatian: that is Linear and Willowy spoke Czech, and Kukla and Beba Croatian. In fact Kukla did try to set her completely forgotten knowledge of Russian in motion, but all that emerged from her mouth was Russified Croatian. Linear and Willowy snorted at it. The Russians, it seems, had got up their noses.
What about us? We’ll keep going. Life drags as heavy as lead, while the tale just keeps racing ahead.
4.
A glance at the audience sitting in the lecture hall filled Dr Topolanek with a wave of anger, and, immediately afterwards, a wave of self-pity. He, who endeavoured to give this whole health business its rightful aura of scholarship, could not believe his eyes. The audience consisted not of guests from the hotel, but three local old ladies whom he knew well.
Dr Topolanek, who always carried a little whistle with him, placed the whistle in his mouth and blew it. The old ladies woke up and clapped. Topolanek gave them a little test: he read out loud the shopping list that his wife had thrust into his hand that morning. The old ladies began to snooze at the very beginning of the list, somewhere between ‘a loaf of bread’ and ‘a pint of milk’. Topolanek put the whistle back in his mouth. The old ladies gave a start.
‘Mrs Blaha, what are
you doing here?’
‘Can I be honest, doctor?’ the old lady asked.
‘Go on,’ said Topolanek ironically.
‘The children have worn me out with cooking and cleaning, so I’ve come to have a little rest. Besides, you’ve got that air- refreshing thing here…’
‘Air-conditioning!’ said Topolanek. ‘What about you, Mrs Vesecka, why are you here?’
‘I came with her,’ said Mrs Vesecka, pointing to Mrs Blaha.
‘What about you, Mrs. Čunka?’
Mrs. Čunka snored.
‘Mrs. Čunka!’
Mrs. Čunka gave a start.
‘I’m asking you what you are doing here.’
‘Doctor, that list you read us a moment ago… When you come to buying the tomatoes… Pan Šošovicky has better and cheaper tomatoes today than the ones in the supermarket.’
Topolanek sat down and held his head in his hands. Although his defeat was patently obvious, his nature, fortunately, was not that of a loser. Topolanek may not have been distinguished by a superabundance of backbone, but he was not malicious, and there was only one thing he could not live without – dreams. Topolanek was a child of his transitional times, and no one could blame him for having dreams that were money wise or at least tried to be. Yes: he would fill the hall with local people. The local people ought also to be included in wellness tourism. Once a month every member of the community would have one free session in the Wellness Centre! If they had recently discovered in the south of China old men of a hundred and twenty who were growing a third set of teeth, old women who had begun to menstruate again and whose faces were speckled with adolescent acne, then why should the miracle of the third age not happen here as well, in this Czech spa? He would found, the very next day, a local club for the battle against ageing, which would be called ‘Third Teeth’. He was already inventing titles in the leading international newspapers about a newly discovered source of youthfulness in the heart of ancient Europe. And a museum, there would certainly have to be a little local museum, the Museum of the History of Longevity. And he would found an amateur dramatic society. Every year the society would put on a production of Čapek’s play The Makropulos Case. The play would stimulate public discussion, should Makropulos’s recipe for longevity have been burned or not. Yes, thanks to him, Dr Topolanek, the spa town would bloom with ever more beautiful and varied flowers.
As he looked at the three creatures in the audience, Dr Topolanek was overcome with sudden tenderness.
And, what do you know, Mrs Blaha’s grey hair began to darken, the lines on Mrs Vesecka’s face melted away as though they had never been there and Mrs. Čunka’s false teeth fell out of her mouth, because new teeth had begun to grow. In the audience sat three young, vigorous women in relaxed poses, snoring loudly.
What about us? While life may land us in a dreadful plight, the tale speeds to be home in daylight.
5.
Towards evening, Kukla and Beba met in the hotel lobby with the intention of walking through the town and clearing their heads. As they left the hotel and Beba was glancing aim lessly around, she bumped into a young man entering the hotel holding his small daughter by the hand. The young man was English and apologised pleasantly to both of them, as though it were his fault. While Kukla, who was in charge of English language requirements, took it on herself to apologise to the young man, Beba involuntarily took in some details. The young man was handsome, tall, elegant, with grey eyes, ash-coloured hair, a disarming smile, while the little girl, the little girl was… hm, presumably Chinese. The little girl, who was holding a small puppy in her arms, watched Beba with wide-open eyes, in wonder.
‘… if you will insist on rushing around like a headless chicken!’ Kukla grumbled a little later.
‘It’s not as if I knocked him over!’ Beba defended herself.
‘Honestly, you barge about like a tank!’
‘So what? I didn’t do him any harm!’ said Beba, adding caustically, ‘besides, at least I choose the people I knock over! They’re always handsome young men, and not worn-out seventy-five-year-olds!’
‘Oh, sure,’ remarked Kukla ironically.
Two unusual figures were ambling through the small town, suffused in a pink sunset. One, tall and thin, cut through the air with a light step as though she were holding an invisible lance. The other, round and heavy, scuttled after her, breathlessly, like her shield-bearer.
‘So, what are we going to do, the two of us?’ asked Beba anxiously.
‘The most important thing is to have papers, the doctor’s death certificate and that sort of thing…’
‘Why?’
‘How else will we get a corpse across the border?’
Beba suddenly felt quite unequal to the situation in which she found herself.
‘And we have to find out about transport regulations for carrying a dead body,’ added Kukla.
‘I hadn’t even thought about that…’
‘And what’ll we do about the money?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Pupa has left her money to her daughter. She would be able quite rightly to accuse us of stealing Pupa’s money. And then crossing the border… After all, it’s all in cash. There are laws about that as well.’
‘And I hadn’t thought about that either.’
‘And what about the money you won gambling? Have you asked about transporting a sum like that?’
Beba was suddenly very angry with Kukla, and then with Pupa as well. What did she mean by dragging them here and dumping them in all of this! Why had she abandoned them to fritter away their time on so many problems? And then she was angry with herself, because she had rushed into the whole thing like a headless chicken!
‘Why should we go back at all? We could stay here for a while…’
‘What would we do with Pupa?’
‘We’ll go to Prague and have her cremated.’
‘It’s Pupa’s daughter who’ll decide about all those things.’
‘A lot she cares!’
‘All in all, we have a major problem.’
‘God, what a fool I am! How did I ever get involved in all of this!’ complained Beba, not considering that Kukla had got involved in it as well, through no fault of her own.
As they walked briskly along, the two women did not notice that the whole town had become immersed in a smoky pink colour. The heavy, brocade sunset had turned the little river and lavish façades of the houses pink. The window-panes sent russet reflections to one another. The treetops had sunk into the late-afternoon dusk and were giving off a heavy, intoxicating mist.
Beba and Kukla walked on, deep in conversation, until at a certain moment they stopped as though immobilised. The two women stood with their mouths wide open. In front of them appeared a gigantic – egg! It appeared, just like that, as though the finger of fate itself had rolled it where Beba and Kukla could bump into it. To be more precise, in front of them was a large shop window, and in the window a gigantic wooden egg! They had seen eggs like this, real-life-sized ones of course, they sometimes turned up in the Zagreb markets, where, having travelled from Russia, Ukraine and Poland, they rolled around on the counters, with Russian lacquered boxes, spoons and wooden dolls, the ones that fitted inside each other.
‘Good Lord, look at that King Kong of an egg!’ exclaimed Beba, almost devoutly.
The egg was painted in shiny, bright colours and muddled patterns of flora and fauna. Beba and Kukla’s eyes floated over flowery meadows, with butterflies the size of helicopters flying over them, fields blooming with red poppies, blue cornflowers and golden corn; they plunged their gaze into greenery and creepers, ferns and trees, with monkeys and birds swaying on their branches. Then they lowered their eyes to the undergrowth: there was a rabbit family hiding under one shrub, Adam and Eve under another, does and stags under a third. The egg was girded with bushes of ripe raspberries and blackberries, with mushrooms growing at their feet. Snails slid and ladybirds scuttled over their tops. The
boggy areas were particularly striking: there were luxuriant water lilies with frogs swinging on them, large fish wallowing in their depths and wading birds peeping out of the reeds. Finally, Beba and Kukla directed their eyes to a tall palm, with a camel resting in its scant shadow. Somewhere in the air above the camel a small family was sitting in an eggshell, like a little boat: a woman, two children and a man with glasses on his nose and a paintbrush in his hand. All in all, it was a garden of Eden painted by an amateur. The man with the glasses on his nose and brush in his hand was evidently the painter of this grandiose creation. The egg consisted of two parts, and metal rivets and a handsome lock with a hook in the middle suggested that the egg opened like a trunk.
That was not all. All around the gigantic main egg, life-sized eggs were scattered: wooden painted Easter eggs, crystal Swarovsky eggs, more or less successful imitations of the famous Fabergé eggs, a new series of Fabergé eggs. The eggs scattered round the main egg gave off magical reflections of bluish, lilac, golden, golden-greenish, crystal-whitish, milky- silver tones, and the whole thing was a sight that must have left everyone who saw it speechless.
The shop bore the unambiguous name ‘The New Russians’. The interior looked more like an art gallery than a shop. The walls were white and almost bare. In two or three places there were art photographs of eggs in glass frames. A young woman was sitting at the elegant white counter, and behind her was a white-painted glass display case full of exhibits.
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths S.) Page 16
