Kukla took hold of Pupa’s wheelchair and set off towards the lift without a word.
‘What’s wrong?’ asked Beba, scurrying to catch her up.
‘Why are you angry with me? What have I done now?’
Pupa woke up for an instant and asked:
‘Has that Dr Bullshit gone?’
She meant Dr Topolanek.
What about us? We carry on. We wish Pupa, Kukla and Beba pleasant dreams, while we hasten to reinforce our story’s seams.
Day Two
1.
The girls were indifferent to the Wellness Centre’s seductive offers. Pupa was like an ancient porcelain cup that had been shattered and stuck back together again repeatedly and now had to be stored in one place and ‘used’ as little as possible, in order to be kept whole. Unlike Pupa, Kukla was in an enviable physical state, and Beba could not understand her resistance. Kukla, who shared a suite with Pupa in order to be on hand instantly, should, heaven forbid, anything untoward occur, apologised that she could not leave Pupa. But they both encouraged Beba warmly. In any case it was high time Beba finally tried to make friends with her own body, with which she had lived far too long in mutual hostility. But, as life is lived slowly and tales are told swiftly, we’re going to fast forward a bit here, and we’ll slow things down later to relate the brief history of intolerance between Beba and her body.
As she ran her eye over the list of massages with picturesque names, Beba resolutely crossed out the ‘Sweet Gallows’, a massage in which, according to the brochure, the masseur hung from a rope, swinging to and fro and scampering lightly over the back of the client on the massage table (As though I’m about to let some Tarzan use my back as a springboard!). Beba eyed the Thai hot-rock massage, the ‘Sweet Dreams’ treatment – and in the end opted for the ‘Suleiman the Magnificent Massage’. She chose ‘Suleiman’ because in the ambience of Czech spa culture and post-communist tourist recreation it sounded the most bizarre. The photograph in the brochure was appealing: it showed a naked female body lying covered in a cloud of soapy foam, like a sponge-finger in cream. Pupa and Kukla approved Beba’s choice. They both also thought ‘Suleiman’ sounded exciting.
A woman in a white uniform led Beba into a not particularly large room lined with tiles of oriental design. In the centre was a stone massage table. The woman asked Beba to undress and lie face down on the table.
‘I’ll freeze on that stone.’
‘Don’t worry, it’s a special table with built-in heating,’ said the woman kindly.
Beba climbed up the little steps onto the table, but the idea of lying face down was simply out of the question. With an apologetic expression on her face, Beba pointed to her large breasts.
‘Don’t worry!’ said the woman sympathetically and disappeared. She came back with a special aid in the form of a small hill, lined with soft sponge, with two large openings in the middle. Now Beba was able to lie face down, while her breasts slipped through the openings and were not pressed painfully against the table.
Beba hugged the little hill. The position was comfortable. Soft, agreeable, vaguely oriental music trickled out of invisible speakers. Lying on her little hill, Beba felt like a gigantic slug on a mushroom.
The woman in the white uniform reached under the table, drew out a nozzle like the ones used for washing cars and delivered a cloud of aromatic soapy foam to Beba’s back.
‘Don’t worry, Pan Suleiman will be here in a moment,’ she said, and went away.
Pan Suleiman? Covered in the warm foam, Beba waited for what was to come.
A young man came into the room. He was wearing a rainbowcoloured turban, and his upper body was bare, if you did not count his tiny, extremely short waistcoat. Instead of trousers, he was wearing wide silk oriental pants, gathered at the ankle. The young man had a virile body, nicely formed muscles in his arms, a flat stomach and satin skin. His face was oriental, or at least so it seemed to Beba, with a prominent nose, fine teeth and full lips, large brown eyes and a little moustache, which struck her as a trifle old-fashioned and therefore attractive.
‘Hai, mai neym iz Suleiman. I em yor maser!’ he announced huskily, in beginner’s English.
‘Hi! My name is Beba!’ said Beba.
At that moment, Beba’s head, poking out of the cloud of foam, happened to be right beside the young man’s pants, that is to say the young man’s pants were right beside Beba’s head, and Beba came face to face with the part of them that was about eight inches below his navel. Beba’s face flushed red. That below-the-navel part of the young man’s pants was peaked like a tent. ‘Whatever is the old woman thinking of…’ Beba reproached herself silently.
‘Reeleks!’ said the young man, running his hands over Beba’s body. Beba tingled all over with pins and needles, as though she had been given a slight electric shock. Plunging his hands into the foam, the young man began to massage her body.
The space was filled with quiet. The oriental music from the invisible speakers was barely audible. Beba thought that the young man was not saying much because his English was bad.
‘Mmmmmmm,’ moaned Beba with pleasure.
At that moment the young man happened to brush against Beba’s thigh with that below-the-navel part of his pants and now there was no longer any doubt – or so it seemed to Beba. ‘Good lord! What now?’ she thought.
‘Reeleks!’ said the young man.
Beba could not remember when this had last happened to her, that a young, attractive, half-naked male body had stood before her, in full battle readiness. Beba’s face was lit up with a dreamy smile. She pressed herself into the little hill lined with soft sponge and licked the aromatic soapy foam. Her body was tingling with expectation. As he massaged her, the young man came round the table and now he was again standing beside Beba’s head so as to reach the back of her neck. Through her half-closed eyes, she could see the young man’s smooth stomach muscles. That tent-like part of his pants was still taut. ‘Shame on you! You female Gustav von Aschenbach!’ Beba silently chastised herself.
Perhaps it should be said at this point that Beba, who con sidered herself stupid – and those immediately around her did not exactly fall over themselves to disabuse her – often chose intellectual comparisons, without herself fully understanding why she did so, and when she did understand, she had no idea where that knowledge came from. No matter, we have to move on. Because in life we each have our cross to bear, while the tale makes obstacles disappear.
‘Veer yu from?’ asked the young man.
‘Croatia,’ Beba muttered reluctantly. The young man’s appalling English acted on her dreamy mood like an icy shower.
The young man’s hands stopped moving.
‘One of us!’ said the young man in his own language, gaping.
‘A fellow countryman!’ said Beba, gaping.
‘Yes, of course, what did you think I was?’
‘A Turk!’ said Beba, although she had really thought that the young man was a Czech in disguise.
‘Turk indeed! Not on your life! I’m Bosnian!’
‘Where from?’
‘Sarajevo!’ the boy burst out, with the stress on the ‘e’, evidently imitating foreign war reporters.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Massaging, of course. As you see.’