Dubravka Ugrešić - Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

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.

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.

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-ready-Christmas-turkey. 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.