My attention to her, to her intimate affairs, meant, I figured, far more to her than physical contact. I asked the hospital hairdresser to come and cut her hair short, and she liked that. The hospital pedicurist trimmed her toenails, and I tended to her hands. I brought her face creams to hospital. Her lipstick was her signal that she was still among the living. For the same reason she stubbornly refused to wear the hospital nightgown and insisted that I bring her own pyjamas.
We went to a café near her flat for her eightieth birthday. She went through her customary routine: she got carefully dressed, put on shoes with heels, her wig, her lipstick.
‘Is it on right?’
‘Terrific.’
‘Should I pull it down a little more over my forehead?’
‘No, it’s better as it is.’
‘No one could tell it is a wig.’
‘Never.’
‘So, how do I look?’
‘Great.’
We sat in the café, outdoors, until a summer rain shower sent us inside.
‘How could it rain on today of all days! My eightieth!’ she complained.
‘It’ll pass in a minute,’ I said.
‘I get rained on for my eightieth birthday,’ she protested.
We sat in the café for a long time, but the rain did not let up.
‘We’ll take a cab! I cannot allow myself to get wet!’ she complained, though the chance that there would be a taxi willing to drive us 150 metres was slim. She was anxious about the wig. I protested that the wig would be fine.
‘I could catch my death!’
We called a cab. Her inner panic burned down like the candles on the birthday cake, which she blew out several hours later, in the company of her friends.
For the last thirty years, since my father died, she has withdrawn into her home. She was left standing there, caught off guard by the fact that he was gone, at a loss for what to do with herself. Time passed, and she continued to stand there, like a forgotten traffic warden, chatting with neighbours, while with us, her children, and later, her grandchildren, she complained about the monotony of her life. She despaired, often her life seemed a living hell to her, but she didn’t know how to help herself. She blamed us for a long time, her children: we had pulled away from her, we had left home, we no longer cared about her the way we used to, we had alienated ourselves (her phrase). Her list of refusals grew from one day to the next: she refused to live with my brother and his family (Why? So I can serve them, do all the cooking and washing?!), or to trade her flat for one in their neighbourhood (I’d be doing nothing but babysitting every day!), or travel with me while she still could (I’ve seen it all on television!), or on her own (I’m not setting out, alone like a sore thumb,with everyone watching!); she often refused to join us on short family get-togethers and excursions (You go ahead, it is too much for me!), spend significant time with her grandchildren (I’m old and sick, I’d do anything for them, but they tire me out!), with people her own age (What am I supposed to do with those old biddies!); she refused to talk to a psychologist (I’m not crazy, I don’t need a shrink!), pursue a hobby (What is the point? Consolation for dimwits!), revive neglected friendships (How can I socialise with them, with your father gone?), until finally she made her peace. She settled into the house, venturing forth only to take walks around the neighbourhood, go to the market, the doctor’s, a friend’s for coffee. Ultimately she went out only for a brief stroll to a little café at the nearby open market. Her firmly held opinions on small matters (Too sweet for my taste! I suppose I was raised to love spicy food!), her pugnacity (I will never wear those pads, I’d rather die. I am not some helpless little old lady!), her demands (Today we wash the curtains!), her candour (In hospital they were all so old and ugly!), her lack of tact (This coffee of yours smells awful!) – all were signals of an underlying anguish that had been smouldering in her for years, an ever-present sense that no one noticed her, that she was invisible. She did her level best to fend off this frightening invisibility with all the means to hand.
Once, during a family Sunday afternoon, I took some pictures of all of us in relaxed poses. I photographed her, my brother, my brother’s wife, the children, all of us together. And then I thought I’d take one of my brother’s family, just the four of them. They lined up, and at the last moment, with breathtaking agility, Mum shouldered her way in.
‘Me too!’
Every time I happened across that picture, it took my breath away. Her face, thrust into the frame, and her grin, both victorious and apologetic, melted away the heavy doors of my forbidden inner sanctum, and I would dissolve, if the verb ‘dissolve’ can describe what happened inside me at those moments. And when all my strength, the strength of my every nerve, was spent in sobs, I would spit out a tiny breathing body, five or six inches across, no larger than the smallest toy doll, with a shapely skull planted on the spinal column, a slight forward stoop, eyelids lowered as if asleep and, hovering on her lips, the hint of a smile. I’d study the fragile tiny body in the palm of my hand, all wet from tears and saliva, from some vast distance, with no fear, as if it were my own small baby.
The Cupboard
The first thing that caught my eye was the cupboard. I had picked it up by chance, during a previous visit, at a Sunday antiques fair. An old piece of homely, country furniture, with one of its sides fashioned at an angle. The old paint had been stripped, and in that lay its only value, in the old wood, stripped of paint. The cupboard had now been painted clumsily in off-white oil paint, and it stood there in the room like an admonishment.
‘This is the little surprise I told you about.’
She had mentioned in several phone calls that a little surprise was waiting for me at home, but I had paid no attention. This was a ploy of hers, she often used little secrets and little surprises as a lure, so I generally assumed that there was not much behind these promises.
‘Who painted it?’
‘Ala.’
‘Ala who?’
‘The young Bulgarian woman you sent me.’
‘As I remember, her name is Aba?’
‘Like I said, Ala.’
‘Not Ala, Aba!’
‘Fine, but why so angry?’
‘I’m not angry.’ I lowered my voice.
* * *
In fact, it bothered me. Not because of the cupboard, but because of the whole strategic operation she had undertaken out of her dislike for it. She could not bear the thought that this unpainted piece of junk was standing there in her flat; this was something out of her control, and she didn’t dare say so to me. In the past she would never have let things like that come through the door. Now, what with the new situation, she was more tolerant. But when the young woman showed up from Bulgaria, the first thing Mum came up with was this brilliant idea. She let Aba think, I assume, that I had intended to paint the cupboard myself, but had been pressed for time; how she would already have painted it herself, but, regrettably, she was no longer able to because of her illness. I assume she added that I would be so pleased when I saw the cupboard painted exactly the way I’d wanted it. I was guessing that she managed to talk the startled guest into painting it for her. It turned out that it was Aba, not Mum, who had done it – actually the two of them decided to cook up this little surprise for me.
‘I can’t imagine why she hasn’t been in touch lately,’ she worried.
‘Why would she?’
‘Since she left she has written several times. I got a few postcards from her.’
‘Really?’
‘She even called.’
Aba was a young woman from Bulgaria who had written to me a few months earlier by email. A Slavic scholar, apparently a fan of mine, she had read everything I’d written, spoke Croatian well, or Serbo-Croatian, or Croato-Bosno-Serbian, and by the way she was eager to hear what I thought of all that, since language is, after all, the writer’s only vehicle, n’est-ce pas? (N’est-ce pas? What was with the French?!), and she would love to talk to
me about the language question, and about so many other things, of course, should I find myself in Zagreb over the summer. All in all, she hoped I would set aside some time for her. She was going to have loads of time. She had been given a grant to spend two months in Zagreb and had been invited to participate in the summer Slavic seminar in Dubrovnik. She would absolutely love to meet me, she had been dreaming of the moment ever since she read my first book. No, she didn’t know a soul in Zagreb, this was going to be her first time in Croatia.
The first thing that occurred to me was that this young woman from Bulgaria might be just the person to keep my mother company. Mum had been moving in a narrow circle for far too long; a new face would perk her up. She would love having the chance to speak a little Bulgarian, I wrote in my email. And moreover, I added, if Aba was having trouble finding a place to stay, she could stay in ‘my’ room in my mother’s flat. I sent her Mum’s phone number and address. I, regrettably, was not going to be in Zagreb during Aba’s visit. My suggestion should not obligate her in any way, of course, and I would understand if it might even sound a little insulting since my mother is an elderly woman, though that was in no way my intent.
Evidently it turned out quite differently. Aba stopped in frequently to visit, as Mum boasted, and the two of them became fast friends.
‘Ala is so wonderful, such a shame you weren’t here to get to know her. I have never met such a marvellous creature.’
By her voice I could tell she meant it.
‘She is very, very kind,’ she said, touched.
* * *
The habit of repeating a word twice when she wanted to draw attention to it was new, just as was her custom of dividing people into kind and unkind. The ones who were kind, were kind, of course, to her.
‘Look what she gave me.’
‘Who?’
‘Why, Ala.’
She showed me two wooden combs with folklore motifs and a bottle of Roza rose liqueur. A little card dangled from the neck of the bottle on a golden ribbon, and on the card were the words:
‘Springtime is upon us, the trees are decked in tender young leaves, the fields are a riot of flowers, the nightingales are singing sweetly and amid it all, like Venus among her nymphs, the rose gardens glow the reddest of reds,’ I read out loud.
‘Why are you rolling your eyes?’ she asked.
‘I am not.’
‘That is just the way it used to be,’ she said, taking a staunchly defensive tone. ‘Roses bloomed everywhere. Your grandmother made special preserves every year from rose petals.’
In the wardrobe she kept several hand-embroidered tablecloths. They were gifts from her Bulgarian relatives and friends, and she knew precisely who had embroidered each one: Dia, Rajna, Zhana. The fabric had yellowed and was threadbare along the folds, but the tablecloths, in Mum’s opinion, were priceless.
‘Do you have any idea how many stitches there are here?’ she would ask me, and with solemn importance she would announce a random six-figure number she had plucked from the air.
* * *
For years she had an unsightly reproduction hanging on the wall showing an old man in Bulgarian folk costume, smoking a peasant pipe.
‘Throw that out, it’s awful,’ I’d tell her.
‘I am not letting go of the picture! It reminds me of Dad!’ she’d answer, meaning her own father. Grandpa didn’t look at all like the man in the picture. Later, in order to keep the picture from my grasp, she said that Dad (this time meaning my father) had bought her the picture during one of our summer visits to Varna. The picture was deteriorating. I finally used one of her sojourns in hospital to throw it out. She didn’t notice it was gone, or pretended not to.
She kept a wooden doll on her television set dressed in Bulgarian folk costume. The doll often toppled off the TV, but she insisted on keeping it there and nowhere else.
‘To remind me of Bulgaria,’ she said.
The Bulgarian woman had served a function far more important than the chance to speak Bulgarian now and then: she had painted the cupboard. The souvenirs, the ones that were supposed to remind my mother of Bulgaria, could not be compared to the thrill of the cupboard.
Her home had always been her kingdom. When I moved out of Zagreb I no longer had a flat of my own there. Whenever I came back, I stayed with her. More than anything she loved having people visit, yet when they left she would mutter about how they had littered the place with unrinsed coffee cups. She adored her grandchildren, her eyes would well with tears at the mere mention of their names, but after they left she would moan about how long it would take her to get the flat back into order. Whenever I left the country, I would leave some of my things, mostly clothing, there with her. She let me leave only clothes. With time I noticed that even the clothes were disappearing. It turned out she’d given my coat away to a neighbour, a jacket to another, shoes to a third.
‘You didn’t need them any more, and people here haven’t money for nice things,’ she protested.
It wasn’t the things I cared about, it was her obsessive cleaning that bothered me, her maniac insistence that she could not permit anything in her territory which was not to her liking and was not her choice, which was, after all, the real reason why she was so generous in giving my things away.
If I bought a newspaper in the morning it would be gone by afternoon.
‘I lent your paper to Marta, my neighbour. She hasn’t the money to buy a paper. She’ll bring it back. But you’d read it already, anyway.’
When I bought myself food it, too, would end up at the neighbour’s.
‘That cheese you bought – didn’t suit me,’ she’d say. ‘I gave it to Marta’s sister.’
‘And the biscuits?’
‘I tossed them out. They were nasty, the look and the taste.’
She would object if I ever hung any of my clothes in her wardrobe. She left the bottom-most shelf in the shoe cabinet for my shoes. My things in the bathroom took up only a small corner, and she’d immediately protest if by any chance my things mingled with hers.
‘I haven’t touched a thing since you left. Everything is where it is supposed to be!’ were her first words to me whenever I came back.
This only meant that she had fought off the urge to tidy up and put everything in order.
I came often. She couldn’t spend her summer alone, or her Christmas holidays, or, of course, her birthday.
‘You’ll be here for my birthday, won’t you?’
Ever since she’d got sick I came more often and stayed longer. Each time I arrived I could see her beaming with genuine delight. Tears would fill her eyes when I left as if these were our very last goodbyes. But as soon as I was out the door, I knew she would head straight for the broom cupboard, roll the Hoover out, hoover ‘my’ room, put everything back where it was supposed to be, go to the bathroom, take all ‘my’ bits and pieces, the toothbrush, toothpaste, face cream, shampoo, and arrange them in ‘my’ cupboard. She was undoubtedly sniffling all the while, dabbing at the tears, and berating cruel fate for dealing her the destiny of an old age lived alone.
She had lost her feel for cooking, she no longer had the will or the strength, so I took over. But she couldn’t leave it be. She’d come into the kitchen, elbow me in the cramped space, rinse a few dishes, carp that I should do it this way, mutter that I would never learn a thing. The kitchen was the realm of her absolute authority, and she was defending it with her last ounce of strength.
When she heard me on the phone with someone, she’d come into ‘my’ room, she’d ask or say something, raising her voice like a parakeet in a cage, so that I would have to hang up. She did this without thinking, as if not aware of her actions.
‘I have to call the old witch,’ she said, seeing me holding the receiver.
‘Sure, let me finish this.’
‘I called her a couple of times and no one is picking up.’
‘We’ll call her.’
‘Ask Zorana, she’ll know.’
> Zorana was Pupa’s daughter.
‘I’ll ask, just let me finish this.’
She stood, clutching the cupboard, and watched me.
‘And Ada hasn’t called.’
‘Aba.’
‘She hasn’t called, either.’
‘She will.’
‘We really ought to call them.’
‘Them’ is her way of referring to my brother and his family.
‘We called them this morning!’
‘Open the balcony store, the room is stuffy,’ she said and padded over to the door.
‘The balcony door,’ I said.
‘There, I’ve opened it.’
She had tidied everything and set it to rights, including the homely piece of junk, the cupboard, which I had brought into the apartment, just as she had been cleaning up and tidying her whole life. Only once, in a conversation about our first house, with its capacious garden, did she admit,
‘I was more anxious that the vegetable beds be hoed in straight lines than I was with what I’d plant or how it would grow.’
Her instalments to the funeral fund had been made regularly for years, so her funeral was fully paid for: her burial with all the formalities was guaranteed. Her mental and emotional territory had narrowed, it was all set out – like a box. Here, in this box, her two grandchildren, my brother and his wife were knocking about, along with two or three old friends (in that order of importance).
I was in there, too, of course. Sometimes she seemed to love our talks on the phone even more than our conversations in person. As if she felt freer over the phone.
Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths S.) Page 3