Dubravka Ugrešić - Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

‘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.’

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’.