"Baba Yaga is an old hag who lives in a house built on chicken legs and kidnaps small children. She is one of the most pervasive and powerful creatures in all mythology.""But what does she have to do with a writer's journey to Bulgaria in 2007 on behalf of her mother?""Or with a trio of women who decide in their old age to spend a week together at a hotel spa?"By the end of Dubravka Ugrešić's novel, the answers are revealed. Her story is shot through with spellbinding, magic, involving a gambling triumph, sudden death on the golf course, a long-lost grandchild, an invasion of starlings, and wartime flight, the consequences of which are revealed only decades later.
You don’t see them at first. Then suddenly a random detail snags your attention like a stray mouse: an old lady’s handbag, a stocking slipping down a leg, bunching up on a bulging ankle, crocheted gloves on the hands, a little old-fashioned hat perched on the head, sparse grey hair with a blue sheen. The owner of the blued hair moves her head like a mechanical dog and smiles wanly…
Yes, at first they are invisible. They move past you, shadow-like, they peck at the air in front of them, tap, shuffle along the asphalt, mince in small mouse-like steps, pull a cart behind them, clutch at a walker, stand surrounded by a cluster of pointless sacks and bags, like a deserter from the army still decked out in full war gear. A few of them are still ‘in shape’, wearing a low-cut summer dress with a flirtatious feather boa flung across the shoulders, in an old half-motheaten Astrakhan, her make-up all smeary (who, after all, can apply make-up properly while peering through spectacles?!).
They roll by you like heaps of dried apples. They mumble something into their chins, conversing with invisible collocutors the way American Indians speak with the spirits. They ride buses, trams and the subway like abandoned luggage; they sleep with their heads drooping onto their chests; or they gawk around, wondering which stop to get off at, or whether they should get off at all. Sometimes you linger for a moment (for only a moment!) in front of an old people’s home and watch them through the glass walls: they sit at tables, move their fingers over leftover crumbs as if moving across a page of Braille, sending someone unintelligible messages.
Sweet little old ladies. At first you don’t see them. And then, there they are, on the tram, at the post office, in the shop, at the doctor’s surgery, on the street, there is one, there is another, there is a fourth over there, a fifth, a sixth, how could there be so many of them all at once?! Your eyes inch from one detail to the next: the feet swelling like doughnuts in the tight shoes, the skin sagging from the inside of the elbows, the knobby fingernails, the capillaries that ridge the skin. You look closely at the complexion: cared for or neglected. You notice the grey skirt and white blouse with the embroidered collar (dirty!). The blouse is worn thin and greyed from washing. She has buttoned it up crookedly, she tries to unbutton it but cannot, her fingers are stiff, the bones are old, they are getting light and hollow like bird bones. Two others lend her a hand and with their collective efforts they do up the blouse. Buttoned up to her chin, she looks like a little girl. The other two smooth the patch of embroidery on the collar, cooing with admiration, how far back does the embroidery go, it used to be my mother’s, oh, everything used to be so right and so pretty. One of them is stocky, with a noticeable bump on the back of her head; she looks like an old bulldog. The other is more elegant, but the skin on her neck hangs like a turkey’s wattle. They move in a small formation, three little hens…
