Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

‘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.’

2.

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’.