Dubravka Ugrešić - Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

What about us? We’ll keep going. Life drags as heavy as lead, while the tale just keeps racing ahead.

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.

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.