Dubravka Ugrešić - Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

‘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.’ [1] ‘Put this lady’s massage on my account.’

And what about us? While life gets tangled in the human game, the tale hastens to reach its aim!

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.