Baba Yaga Laid an Egg

Arnoš called the waiter and ordered two French cognacs, which the waiter brought with the speed of lightning.

‘Get that down you, you’ll feel better,’ ordered Arnoš.

And Beba downed the cognac, and she really did feel a bit better. If nothing else, at least her ears had popped.

‘Well, warmest congratulations!’ said Arnoš, raising his glass and clinking it against Beba’s.

‘What for?’ she asked.

‘How do you mean, what for? How much did you bag? Go on, tell me!’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘People are saying you cleaned the casino out of half a million euros and that you’ve ruined that Russian.’

‘What Russian?’

‘The Russian, they call him Kotik, he’s the local con artist and Mafioso.’

Beba felt a wave of exhaustion sweep over her again.

‘Are you yelling

the truth?’

‘You’re a wealthy woman, my dear,’ said Arnoš.

‘Me? Healthy?! ’

‘Have a look in your handbag, they must have given you a figure…’

Beba opened her bag, took out the form and showed it to Arnoš. It had the hotel casino’s stamp on it, and some signatures, including Beba’s.

‘Why yes!’ said Arnoš. ‘That’s what I thought, more than half a million. €612,500 tax free, to be precise.’

‘How did that happen?

’ Beba asked as though a great misfortune had occurred.

‘I don’t know. Ever since I’ve been hanging around this casino, I’ve never seen anyone scoop up so much cash so quickly, effectively and in such a stupid way. Didn’t you notice that they were all freaked out?’

‘Why were they eked out?’

‘Dear child, you’re in a state of shock, you don’t know what you’re saying,’ said Arnoš sympathetically, giving Beba back her piece of paper.

‘Put that away. And remember that Latin saying: Dantur opes nullis nunc nisi divitibus! Let me see you to your room, I can see that you can barely stand.’

Beba leaned her full weight against Arnoš. She was grateful that he was there. She would think about everything in the morning, it was best to weep on it.

Here perhaps it should be said that in addition to her tendency in moments of excitement to pronounce words wrongly, Beba sometimes also reeled off series of numbers. But of course she was not aware of it. So once when she happened to be involved in a short-lived love affair with someone and he had hit her, instead of returning the blow, or bursting into tears, or saying anything, Beba had responded to the shock by listing a series of numbers. The guy was a creep, bone idle, but he did not lack imagination, so he wrote down the numbers, the next day he bought a lottery ticket, and, what do you know, he won a substantial amount of money, which he did not mention to Beba of course. After that the relationship went rapidly downhill, because the guy often hit her, frightened or insulted her, in the hope that she would again spit out some winning combination. Beba soon sent him packing, but the guy did not leave her in peace until she started another love affair, also short-lived, with a policeman.

What about us? We charge ahead at full steam. While life may not know where the rudder and the prow are, the tale cuts through the billows, following its star!

6.

Who knows what factors shape our biographies? Lives can be very different, but Kukla’s life was like a bad film. And a very bad film at that. Perhaps Kukla’s future life’s choices had been determined by an incident that had occurred long ago, when Kukla was a very young girl. And what occurred was something comical, or tragic, or even banal: judgements of this kind generally depend on whether the person is a partici pant or an observer. In short, in her first sexual contact with a young man, inexperienced as she was herself, Kukla had what the medical profession calls a vaginal spasm. Although later on she found out something about it, she was not consoled by the fact that it was neither as bizarre nor as rare as people think. But in those days psychotherapists and sexual therapists barely existed. Be that as it may, Kukla buried that disagreeable episode deep in her subconscious and simply forgot it. However, the episode did not forget Kukla, and continued to disrupt and interfere with her life. To make matters worse, Kukla married that unfortunate young man, they were connected by the shame of the unpleasant incident, but after their wedding it turned out that the young man had leukaemia and very soon Kukla became a widow. And a very young widow at that.

* * *

Kukla studied English language and literature at university, she got a job teaching in a secondary school and stayed stuck in the same school her entire working life, until she retired. Kukla’s second husband was some fifteen years older than her, he was a prominent politician, but almost immediately after the wedding he had a stroke, and Kukla spent the next ten years nursing this man who had turned into a demanding houseplant. And a very demanding one at that.