Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

She was obsessed with cleanliness. A glistening flat, freshly laundered curtains, a gleaming parquet floor, freshly aired rugs, a wardrobe in which all the clothes were neatly folded, perfectly ironed linens, clean dishes, a bathroom that sparkled, windowpanes without a single smudge, everything in its place – all this gave her great satisfaction. She terrorised us – my father, brother and me – with cleanliness when I was small. Her daily cleaning rampages were accompanied by the phrase – We don’t want to smell bad the way… – and then she’d give the names of people who, apparently, smelled very bad. Lack of cleanliness was invariably coupled with the word ‘disgraceful’ (Disgraceful! That filth is disgraceful!). When I was small she would box me into the corner with a crate, and on the crate she’d arrange my toys. I stood trapped in the corner until the daily cleaning was done.

The last time I heard that word (Disgraceful!) and that intonation was three years back, during our last visit to my father’s graveside. We usually went there together, and if she couldn’t go, she’d send my brother and me.

‘It’s disgraceful the way people treat their tombs,’ she said pointing to nearby tombstones, and then she added,

‘Here, let’s rinse it one more time.’

To rinse it was to splash the tombstone with water. The whole job of cleaning the stone was arduous. You had to keep taking a bucket over to a water fountain that was not near by, and keep lugging bucketfuls of water back. Usually we scrubbed the tombstone with a brush and detergent, and she’d splash it with water over and over, but this time my mother was not satisfied.

‘So, a little more,’ she commanded.

The path from Dad’s grave to the cab stand was a long one, and she was walking along it, leaning on me, for the last time, though we had no idea then.

‘Now this one always sparkles,’ she said at a tomb we always passed. ‘But these others have been so neglected. Disgraceful!’

In hospital Mum confided in me that she’d sneaked out at night and gone back to the house.

‘Impossible. How?’

‘I slipped out and took a cab.’

‘What did you do at home?’

‘I quickly tidied everything up and then came right back here.’

‘I was at home the whole time; if you had come home, I would have noticed. You dreamed it.’

‘I did not,’ she said, a little anxiously.

I came to hospital every day. The first thing she’d ask when I appeared at the door was,

‘Did you tidy up the flat?’

* * *

Over the last three years we have often had to call an ambulance. It is the easiest and quickest way to sidestep the elaborate bureaucratic procedures and get my mother admitted immediately to hospital. We called an ambulance once when she was in a crisis. As the nurses, supporting her under the arms, were guiding her to the lift, Mum ducked down, spryly, and snatched up the plastic rubbish bag by the door, left there to be taken down and tossed into the bin.

‘Ma’am, please!’ shrieked the doctor, catching sight of her.

When I asked her to tell me something from her childhood, now she would answer curtly, describing it as happy.

‘What was happy about it?’ I’d ask.

‘Everything was clean, and Mother did us up so nicely.’

In hospital, with a tube in her mouth and an IV in her arm, she never let go of her handkerchief. She was constantly dabbing her lips. When she had recovered a little, she immediately asked me to bring her a clean pair of pyjamas:

‘Don’t bring them if they’re not ironed.’

Three years ago – when she sank quite suddenly into a lethargy – I took her first to a psychiatrist, probably unconsciously postponing the day I’d have to take her to hospital, which was what happened immediately thereafter.

The psychiatrist followed the routine.

‘Your first and last name, ma’am?’

‘Vacuum cleaner,’ she said softly, her head bowed.

‘Your name, ma’am?’ the psychiatrist repeated, this time more sharply.

‘Well… vacuum cleaner,’ she repeated.

I was flushed by a wave of idiotic embarrassment: I cannot say why at the time I felt as if it would have been easier to bear if she had said ‘Madonna’ or ‘Maria Theresa’.