Dubravka Ugrešić - Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

We brought out the bags that had been left at the main desk that morning. While we waited for the taxi in front of the hotel, I asked her how she had spent her time.

‘Nothing much, I wandered around town a bit.’

And then she looked at me carefully, and said,

‘Ah, yes, I went over to your grandmother’s – Dospat Street, n’est - ce pas? ’

She had deliberately stabbed me in the flesh with her sharp little claw, there could be no doubt. Fury bubbled up in me in an instant. I quietly sucked the blood from the invisible wound and said,

‘Why? There is nothing there!’

At that moment the taxi arrived.

‘I can hardly wait for you to come to Zagreb and tell me all about how it was in Varna! I can hardly wait,’ she repeated excitedly during every phone conversation. I could recognise in her voice the routine excitement she always expressed the same way: I can hardly wait.

I rehearsed versions of my report in my mind. Maybe it would be better to tell her I had stayed in Varna for two days, that the weather had been bad, which was true, and that I had hardly seen anything. Or should I tell her that with the help of a kind Varna policeman I had been able to locate her Petya, who looked well, beautiful in fact, had sent her regards, but, unfortunately, couldn’t write, because she was having difficulties writing. Her son, Kostya, who, by the way, had stopped drinking, was looking after her with genuine devotion. And Varna, Varna was so wonderful, but I hadn’t brought her any pictures because I pressed the wrong button on that new digital camera.

‘I don’t recognise anything here,’ she said, peering at the images on my computer screen. ‘Is that Varna?’

She was surprisingly cool and collected. Of the wall that separated the school yard from the street, she said, ‘No, that wall wasn’t there before. Something new.’

Amazingly she was not as disappointed by the grey scenes of the city beach as I had been.

‘That city beach was never very nice. Do you remember how we always preferred to go to Asparuhovo and Galata? The water was cleaner there.’

When I next visited I urged her to look at the photographs again. She seemed to have forgotten she’d seen them the first time. Her comments were identical, and her indifference troubled me. I had not received the anticipated ‘payment’ for my service as a bedel , the emotional reciprocation from her end. Then again, maybe I hadn’t deserved it. I had clearly done the job badly. I had brought back nothing from my pilgrimage, and received nothing in return. I can’t tell whether she had erased the Varna file in her memory, or had saved it somewhere else, but I was sure that neither she nor I would be opening it again any time soon.

This time I noticed that she had changed the way she walked. She was trying to stand a little straighter when she pushed her walker, and to lift her feet a little more with each step.

‘That is what Jasminka told me, to lift my feet.’

Jasminka was her physiotherapist.

We went, as usual, to her favourite café at the marketplace for coffee. She went in with the walker, stubbornly refusing to leave it outside ( I don’t want anyone stealing it! ). People had to get up and move their chairs to let her pass. I think she was not unaware that her arrival at the café with the walker was causing a fuss.

‘When you aren’t here with me, the waiters lend me a hand. They are all very, very kind. People are generally very kind, especially when they see me with the walker,’ she said.

She always ordered the same thing, a cappuccino, and Kaia or I would bring her a cheese turnover, a triangular piece of pastry, from the shop two steps down from the café. Without her ritual turnover and the cappuccino, the day wouldn’t function. If the weather was bad and she couldn’t go out herself, someone else would bring the turnover, and the cappuccino would be made at home.

After she sat for a bit, she had to go to the bathroom. She came back from the bathroom upset.

‘How could that happen to me! The prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood!’ she grumbled.

She refused to wear the incontinence pads with the same obstinacy that she refused to wear flat-heeled orthopaedic shoes for the elderly ( I can’t bear them! I have always worn heels! ). Someone had told her she was the prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood. A year earlier she would have been insulted by a similar sentiment, but now she was pleased to say it over and over: Everyone says I am the prettiest little old lady in the neighbourhood! It is true that she said it with a hint of irony. She used the phrase as an apology for her clumsiness and as a request to respect her ‘exceptional’ age. The incontinence was the worst insult her body had come up with for her. And she was irked by her forgetfulness ( No, I did not forgot! ) yet ultimately she relented ( Maybe I forgot after all? ) and finally she made her peace with it ( It is hardly surprising that I forget things nowadays. I’m eighty years old, you know! ).

‘If this happens again, I’ll kill myself straight away,’ she said, indirectly asking me to say something to console her.

‘It’s perfectly normal for your age! Look on the bright side. You are over eighty, you are up and about, you are in no pain, you live in your own home, you go out every day and you socialise. Your best friend, with whom you drink coffee every day, is ten years younger than you. Jasminka visits you three times a week. Kaia brings you breakfast, lunch and dinner every day, and she is an excellent cook and keeps you on schedule with your medical check-ups. Your doctor is only five minutes’ walk from your house, your grandchildren visit you regularly and love you, and I come to see you all the time,’ I recited.

‘If I could only read,’ she sighed, although she had little patience for reading any more, aside from leafing through newspapers.

‘Well, you can read, though, it’s true, with difficulty.’

‘If only I could read my Tessa one more time.’

She was referring to Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

‘As soon as you decide, we’ll go ahead with the operation. It is a breeze to remove age-related cataracts.’

‘At my age nothing is easy.’

‘I said a breeze, not easy. Do you want me to buy you a magnifying glass?’

‘Who could stand reading with a magnifying glass?!’

‘Do you want me to read you Tess out loud? A chapter a day?’

‘It’s not as nice when someone else reads to you as when you read for yourself.’

She responded to all my attempts to cheer her up with obstinate childish baulking. She’d give way for a moment ( Maybe you’re right ), but the next instant she would clutch at some new detail ( Ah, everything would be different if I could only walk a little faster! ).

‘I have changed so much. I barely recognise myself.’

‘What are you saying? You haven’t a single wrinkle on your forehead.’

‘Maybe so, but the skin sags on my neck.’

‘The wrinkles on your face are so fine they are barely visible.’

‘Maybe, but my back is so hunched.’

‘You’ve kept your slender figure.’

‘My belly sticks out.’ she complained.

‘Sure, a little, but nobody notices,’ I consoled her.

‘I have changed. I barely recognise myself.’

‘Can you think of anyone your age who hasn’t changed?’

‘Well, now that you ask,’ she’d relent.

‘What were you expecting?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Your beloved Ava Gardner, for instance.’