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.

3.

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.