Baba Yaga Laid an Egg (Myths S.)

by Dubravka Ugrešic

  ‘Hi, mai neym iz Suleiman. I em yor maser!’ muttered the young man through his teeth.

  ‘Hi! I’m Mr Shaker,’ said the American warmly, offering the young man his hand, but he did not manage to shake it. The young man pinned him to the table with a deft movement of his arm.

  ‘Reeleks!’ said the young man.

  The young man’s dreadful English would not be a problem, thought Mr Shaker, he was bright, he’d learn the language… Mr Shaker squirmed nervously on the massage table. The foam was suffocating him, and he felt extremely uncomfortable in that whole soapy set-up.

  ‘Where are you from?’ he asked the young man.

  ‘Sarajevo,’ snapped the young man.

  This information stimulated Mr Shaker’s business imagin ation. The young man was Bosnian; that should be exploited! Because, for instance, Havel and the Czechs didn’t mean anything any more to the average American. But Sarajevo still rang in the average American ear. Or more accurately, Mr Shaker hoped that it still rang.

  ‘Listen,’ Mr Shaker tried to lever himself up, but the young man glued him back to the table.

  ‘Reeleks!’ said the young man and began massaging the vertebrae of the American’s neck.

  At a certain moment the young man’s attention lapsed and Mr Shaker flapped like a tuna and straightened up to a sitting position.

  ‘Listen, young man, there’s been a misunderstanding, I didn’t come here for a massage, but to offer you a job.’

  The young man listened to the middle-aged American in amazement. He was quite baffled. ‘Could he be gay?’ he wondered. All that he managed to grasp from the American’s tirade were figures: tventi tausand, then fifti tausand, then hundrd tausand, then hundrd tventi tausand…

  ‘What’s he on about? I don’t get a word of it,’ grumbled the young man in Bosnian. ‘Are you listening to me? He’s not listening, why should he, Yanks never listen, they just press on with their own agenda. Leave me alone, I’ve already been called by the Viagra people… Oh, but you, you don’t give up, you’re like NATO! Why didn’t you come when they were shelling Sarajevo, and when that bomb exploded near me, instead of coming to harass me now?’

  ‘I have to find an interpreter! Yes, an interpreter,’ said Mr Shaker resolutely. He leapt from the table and, almost slipping, ran out of the massage room.

  ‘What a performance! What will these idiots think of next?… Hey, my Mevlo, what else have these hulks got in store for you?’ sighed the young man.

  * * *

  What about us? We carry on. While life may beguile and tempt like a gift, the tale is decisive and above all swift!

  6.

  Kukla went down to the hotel computer for a moment, to check the Croatian newspapers on the Internet. She could have done this in her room, but she felt like stretching her legs. At home she amused herself every day leafing through local and foreign newspapers. The Croatian one she usually took was The Morning News. Its format was predictable: embezzlement, corruption, quarrels between political parties and their opponents, articles about the unjust conviction of ‘Croatian heroes’ by the Hague Tribunal, financial scandals involving people who had earned small fortunes through Croatian patriotism and the war. Kukla clicked on the cultural section and was surprised to see a fairly lengthy review of Bojan Kovač’s new novel Desert Rose.

  The novel Desert Rose by Bojan Kovač will disappoint all those who think that it has any connection with Sting and Cheb Mami’s ‘Desert Rose’, or with popular romances, said the article. Kukla hadn’t a clue who Sting and Cheb Mami were so for a moment their names sounded threatening, but the way the review went on cheered her. Desert Rose is the greatest event on the Croatian literary scene for the last fifteen years, if not longer, the review went on. It is a book through which this prematurely deceased Croatian classic writer has earned the right to a second life and places himself at the very peak of Croatian literature. The novel of unusual structure, reminiscent of a rose, is rooted in the deposits of time, the biographies of ordinary people, reality and dreams, essayistic and fictional passages which treat events from the recent wartime past, from contemporary Croatian reality, and the time of the Second World War. A novel left as a legacy by a writer who lived in the shadows, far from the lights of the literary stage, is a great lesson for today’s instant products of the literary-entertainment industry. This unusual book is like a solitary rose blooming in the desert of Croatian literature.

  The Evening News announced that a review of this ‘first class work by Bojan Kovač’ would appear in the Sunday edition, while a weekly magazine advertised ‘a masterpiece of Croatian literature on a par with Marquez’s novel One Hundred Years of Solitude.’

  ‘Blah-blah-blah,’ muttered Kukla and logged off. Passing through the hotel lobby, she caught sight of Beba and an elderly man in the hotel café. Beba waved to her, inviting her to join them. Kukla declined, as she had promised Pupa that she would take her out in her wheelchair for a spin through the town. A little fresh air before dinner would do them both good.

  What about us? We carry on. While humans long for fame and glory, the tale just wants to complete the story.

  7.

  Arnoš Kozeny adored the Grand Hotel. In fact, for him it was not a hotel, but a metaphor for human interaction with other people. The hotel stood in its place, everything else changed: the times, fashion, political régimes, people. The hotel rooms were ears through which a thousand and one human stories had passed. And not one was complete: they were just the exciting sounds of human lives. As he sat in the hotel lobby, Arnoš Kozeny would for a moment close his eyes and listen in. He would go back to his childhood and the moment when he had turned the knob on the radio for the first time and tuned in to the din of the world: noises, tones, sounds… And when he opened his eyes, it seemed to him that he was holding an invisible television remote in his hand. For the most part there was no volume and Arnoš Kozeny would fix his gaze on a scene: two people at the reception desk talking about something, opposite him a tubby man reading a newspaper and sipping cognac, a young couple in the restaurant, whose outlines flashed in the glass, hotel employees scurrying outside to meet some important person, the important person coming into the hotel and going to the desk without looking round. Arnoš would zoom in on a gesture, a movement, a detail, a shadow, someone’s hand, someone’s smile, a ray of sunlight that suddenly revealed the gleam of someone’s false teeth, an ear lobe with an earring, a high heel, the line of a leg, a mouth, the rim of a coffee cup with a lipstick stain. Arnoš Kozeny read the signs, signals and gestures, just as in his youth he had read books, with great attention and great enjoyment. And that reading filled him with his old youthful excitement.

  Now that he had retired, he could not imagine life without the hotel. Compared to the great satisfaction he felt when he was there, all other options for spending the modest remains of his lifespan seemed unappealing. At one point, Arnoš Kozeny had bought a small flat in the town. That flat, which had served in his younger days as a secret refuge, now became his permanent address. All the assets he had acquired in the course of his life as a lawyer had gone to his wife and children. Arnoš had married and divorced several times and this bachelor flat was the only thing he had left. But Arnoš Kozeny was not complaining; he no longer needed anything more.

  Now he was sitting at a table with three ladies, with whom he had immediately felt at ease. He knew their country, admittedly from a time when it had been in one piece. He had often spent his family summers (not always only with his family) on the Adriatic coast. Enchanting Opatija was one of the significant topoi on the modest geographical map of Arnoš’s otherwise rich amorous biography.

  ‘Such a shame,’ said Arnoš Kozeny. ‘Do you know that I followed the events in your unhappy country for days on end? What a shame! Hey-ho, what can we do, the country fell apart, but maybe that’s how it had to be. Maybe it was no good…’

  ‘The country was good, perfectly good, it’s just the people who are shit!�
� snapped Pupa.

  ‘Which just goes to show that we never learn anything from history, as our forebears would have us believe,’ said Arnoš Kozeny in a conciliatory tone.

  ‘Indeed not!’ said Beba, blushing. (Oh God, she thought, why must I always blurt out stupidities!?)

  ‘Which might even be good, because otherwise there’d be no life!’ said Arnoš Kozeny brightly.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Kukla.

  ‘Simple. Many people don’t have the best of experiences with their parents, but they still have children, don’t they?’

  ‘That’s not a choice, it’s our biological code. We exist only in order to procreate,’ said Pupa, who had surfaced for a moment from her doze.

  ‘And love? Where is love in all of this?’ asked Beba.

  ‘A complicated question,’ said Arnoš.

  ‘In the egg!’ exclaimed Kukla.

  ‘What egg?’ Beba and Arnoš perked up.

  ‘You know that Russian fairytale… Ivan falls in love with a girl, but to make her fall in love with him, he has to find out where her love is hidden. And he sets off over seven mountains and seven valleys, and reaches the ocean. There he finds an oak tree, in the oak there is a box, in the box a rabbit, in the rabbit a duck and in the duck an egg. It is in that egg that the girl’s love is hidden. The girl has to eat the egg. And when she eats it, the flame of love for Ivan flares in her heart.’

  ‘The message of that fairytale is that love does not exist. Because no one has the strength or time to make that journey,’ said Beba.

  ‘That’s why people have sex,’ said Arnoš.

  ‘Sex is instant love,’ said Beba.

  ‘Sex is a quick lottery, a shortened version of the search for the egg,’ said Arnoš.

  ‘Oh, don’t say that, I’m a child of the sexual revolution…’ said Beba, biting her tongue.

  ‘Just as well that revolution didn’t catch you as a child,’ said Kukla wickedly.

  ‘Every revolution devours its children,’ said Arnoš.

  ‘I am the victim of the sexual revolution,’ Beba corrected herself.

  ‘You don’t look like a victim to me,’ said Arnoš agreeably.

  ‘What do you know about victims and sacrifice? You’re a man. Sacrifice is a strictly female accessory,’ said Kukla.

  ‘Perhaps. But since you’ve mentioned Russian fairytales, here is another Russian example. Pushkin’s poem Ruslan and Lyudmila. You know the story: brave Ruslan sets out in search of the beautiful Lyudmila, who has been snatched by the magician Chernomor. But actually I’ve always been intrigued by a secondary story in the poem,’ said Arnoš Kozeny.

  ‘Which one?’ asked Beba, although she hadn’t the remotest knowledge of either Pushkin or his poem.

  ‘On his journey Ruslan comes to a cave,’ Arnoš went on, ‘and in the cave there is a wise old man. The old man tells Ruslan his life story. When he was a young shepherd, he fell in love with the beautiful Naina. But Naina rejected his love. In despair, the shepherd left his homeland, founded a fellowship, put out to sea and fought wars in foreign lands for ten years. And then, tormented by longing, he returned and brought Naina gifts: his bloodstained sword, coral, gold and pearls. But Naina rejected him again. Humiliated, the “parched seeker of love” as Pushkin calls him, decided that he would conquer Naina with spells and so he spent his time alone, learning the secret art of wizardry. And when he finally discovered the last “terrible secret of nature”, there was a flash of lightning, a fearful gale began to rage, the earth shook beneath his feet – and before him appeared an old hunchbacked woman with sunken eyes and grey hair. “The embodiment of senile blight,” says Pushkin. That was Naina,’ said Arnoš, pausing significantly.

  ‘And what happens next?’ asked Kukla and Beba impatiently.

  ‘Horrified, the old man bursts into tears and asks whether it is possible that it is her, and where has her beauty vanished, is it really possible that the heavens have changed her so terribly? And he asks how much time has passed since their last meeting. Naina replies:

  “Just forty years”

  The maiden’s faithful tones responded;

  “My age is seventy today.

  Such is the way of things,” she quavered,

  “In swarms the years have flown away.

  My spring, or yours, will not be savoured

  Afresh – we both are old and grey.

  But friend, is life without allure

  Because inconstant youth forsook it?

  My hair is white now, to be sure,

  Perhaps I am a little crooked,

  A trifle slower to entice,

  Not quite as lively, quite as nice;

  But then (she mouthed) let me confess:

  I have become a sorceress!”’*

  Arnoš recited in Russian with a strong Czech accent. Perhaps it was because of the accent that Kukla and Beba had no problem understanding him.

  ‘And what happens next?’ they asked.

  ‘Next? Um…’ said Arnoš, ‘next we have an interesting and psychologically most satisfying situation. Naina says that she has only now realised that “her heart was fated for tender passion” and invites him into her embrace. However, the old man is profoundly revolted by the physical appearance of his “wizened idol”:

  My wizened idol warmed to me

  With passion, started to importune,

  On withered lips a ghastly smile,

  In churchyard tones she would beguile,

  Avowals, hoarsely wheezed, she offered…

  ‘The old man refuses to acknowledge reality,’ continued Arnoš. ‘He flees from Naina and resolves that he would prefer to live as a hermit. What is more he accuses Naina in front of Ruslan of transmuting “thwarted love’s belated flame to ire”.’

  Arnoš puffed impressively on his cigar.

  ‘Why yes, the old witch!’ said Pupa, rousing herself from her slumber.

  They all laughed, apart from Beba…

  ‘Naina apologises for her ugliness. But the old man does not see himself as either ugly or old!’ said Beba.

  ‘What misogyny!’ said Kukla. It seemed that she too had taken Naina’s story to heart.

  ‘I agree,’ said Arnoš.

  ‘Women are more compassionate than men in every way!’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Arnoš.

  ‘What a moron!’ said Beba bitterly, still mulling over the character of the wise old man.

  ‘What else could she do but become a witch!’ said Kukla, who was still protesting in Naina’s name.

  ‘Our whole life is a search for love, which you, Kukla, based on the example of a Russian fairytale, have identified as – an egg,’ concluded Arnoš. ‘Our search is frustrated by numerous snares that lie in wait for us on our journey. One of the most dangerous snares is time. We need only be one second late and we will have lost our chance of happiness.’

  ‘That right moment is called death, my dear Arnoš, an orgasm from which we no longer awaken. Because the logic of love is to end in death. And as none of us accepts that option, we all bear the consequences. Old age is simply one of them,’ said Beba.

  They were all astonished by Beba’s eloquence.

  ‘All that is left us is the art of dignified ageing,’ said Arnoš.

  ‘Dignified ageing is crap!’ announced Pupa, putting an end to the discussion.

  It was already quite late and the little group decided to disperse. Arnoš Kozeny saw the ladies to the lift, kissed each one’s hand and, before the lift door closed, he blew them a kiss for good measure.

  In the lift Beba said:

  On obol’stil menya, neschastny!

  Ja otdalas’ lyubvy strastnoy…

  Izmennik! Izverg! O pozor!

  No trepeshchi, devichiy vor!*

  Kukla and Pupa listened in surprise.

  ‘You know Russian?’ asked Kukla.

  ‘No. Why do you ask?’ asked Beba.

  Beba had quoted a stanza from Pushkin’s Ruslan and Ly
udmila. Aside from her occasional lapses, this was another of her quirks: she would from time to time blurt out something in languages she otherwise had no mastery of. These attacks occurred to Beba out of the blue, as in a dream, and so Kukla and Pupa did not wake her.

  And what about us? We carry on. While in life we stop to greet a friend, the tale speeds to embrace its end.

  8.

  A girl was standing beside the town fountain. Her head was turned towards it and she was leaning all her weight on one hip. The young man could see her luminous complexion, pink ear, which seemed to him as fresh as a segment of orange, and a copper-coloured curl that had caught on her ear like an unusual earring. The girl was wearing a simple little floral sleeveless dress. The dress revealed the girl’s plump shoulders sprinkled with rusty freckles, her broad hips and the chubby calves of her legs.

  All around, in the tops of the old plane trees, whose leaves had acquired a pale grey-green colour in the bright sun, birds were chirping. The young man walked round the fountain and stopped opposite the girl. Now he could see her face. She had a regular, full little face, almost child-like, with bright green eyes, quite wide set. The neckline of her dress gave the young man a glimpse of her ample bosom and the freckles, like an army of pale orange ants, disappearing into the shadowy dip between her breasts. The girl was licking ice cream out of a crunchy cornet. She ran the tip of her tongue round its edge, as though she were making a little pit, tidily licked up the drips of ice cream that were sliding down the outside of the cornet, pushed the foamy mass towards the top with her tongue, and then, with her full, pink lips, she sucked up the peak. The girl was licking her ice cream so carefully and with such concentration that she might have been solving a difficult mathematical problem. From time to time she took her right foot out of her clog and scratched her left ankle. And then she tucked her right foot back into its clog, took out her left foot and used it to scratch her right ankle. All this time, she did not for a moment lose her focus on the ice cream. As though the ice cream was a tiny wild animal she had caught. She played with the ice cream like a cat with a mouse.