THE “WOLF” approached, paying no attention to Dornička’s repeated requests that it do no such thing. It pushed back the hood of her cape.
“Oh!” said the “wolf,” and shuffled back so that it was standing on the side of the path, out of her way.
Somewhat offended, Dornička stared over her shoulder and into the “wolf’s” glassy eyes.
“Am I that bad?” she asked.
“Not at all, not at all, no need to take that tone,” the “wolf” demurred. “I just thought you were young, that’s all.”
“Nope, just short,” Dornička said, pulling her hood back up.
“Yes, I see that now, so please be on your way.”
“But surely you can’t be him,” Dornička declared, with a cutting glance.
“Him?”
“The Big Bad Wolf, of course.”
The “wolf” tugged its whiskers with an air of self-consciousness. “The truth is, that fellow is modeled on me…”
“Wasn’t he killed by the woodchopper?”
“Yes, yes, but go back to the beginning and there he is again, ready for action. This is the beginning again, and I thought you were her. In a way it’s good that you’re not her. The wolf gets to eat a lot before she comes along…”
“She being…?”
“Never mind, never mind — I’ll just wait for the next one,” the “wolf” muttered. And Dornička wondered what on earth could be inside that rotting skin.
“Good… you do that,” Dornička replied, and then, a few steps down the path, thinking of “the next one,” she sighed and returned to the “wolf.” “But what is it you need, exactly? You can’t be hungry; you just ate an entire wolf.”
The “wolf” shrugged its shoulders and said: “You wouldn’t understand.”
The forlornness of its voice prompted Dornička to coax: “Come now, you can tell me.”
“Life,” said the “wolf.” “I need more life… do you think it’s easy for the seasons to change here amidst all this stone?”
“I see,” said Dornička. “It must take a lot.”
“I almost have enough, but I just need a crumb more. Something juicy and young.”
Ah, whatever you are, you really stink. The “wolf’s” haphazard configuration made her own feel loose; she tapped her thighs and forearms. They hadn’t changed. She’d scowled whenever her Tadeáš had slapped her bum and chuckled, “Built to last,” but for now that was a blessing. A group of hikers strolled by; as they realized they were witnessing the encounter of age-old adversaries they booed the “wolf” and urged Dornička on toward her fated triumph, and would have taken photos if it weren’t for the fact that Dornička refused to drop the hood and reveal her side profile. The “wolf” was happy to pose…
“What an irregular costume… interesting!” The hikers moved on, but one of their party, a rosy-cheeked girl who looked to be sixteen or so, knelt on the ground to retie her shoelaces. Dornička watched the “wolf” stir.
“What can I do to help you change the season here?” she asked, snapping her fingers in front of the “wolf’s” snout.
A tongue darted out across a flaccid muzzle. “Send me something juicy and young.”
“Then I will,” Dornička promised. “But you can’t go after anyone. Just be patient and I’ll send you something nice. OK?”
“OK…” said the “wolf.” “But just to be sure…”
It raised its paw and dealt her a staggering blow to the hip; by rights this should have shattered the bone but it didn’t. It just hurt an awful lot. “That should do it…”
The “wolf” padded up the mountainside and folded its carcass into a rocky crevice, awaiting the arrival of the morsel Dornička had agreed to send.
Dornička limped home, and from there to the emergency room of the local hospital, where she was assured that no part of her body had been sprained or broken. But a bruise grew over her left hipbone; it grew three-dimensional, pushing its way out of her frame like a king-sized wart. The bruise wasn’t colored like a bruise either — it was a florid pink, like a knob of cured ham. At times she felt it contract and expand as if it were suckling at her hip joint. The sight and feel of that made her nauseous, but a doctor scanned and prodded both Dornička and her lump and said that Dornička was in fine fettle and the lump would fall off on its own. When Dornička was fully clothed it looked as if she was pregnant or experiencing extreme and left hip — specific weight gain. People remarked upon it, so the day before Alžběta and Klaudie arrived, Dornička took a carving knife, put her left foot on the edge of the bathtub, and cut the ham-like knob off. As she’d suspected the severance was painless and actually relieved the tension she’d been feeling, as if she was a patient in an era in which bloodletting was still believed to be a procedure that brought balance to the body’s humors. She treated the wound, wrapped gauze bandages around it, washed and dried the heavy, oval-shaped lump of flesh. Was it fat, muscle, a mix of both? She pushed her finger into the center of the oval. Soft, but elasticity was minimal. Like lukewarm porridge. Lukewarm… Ah, this thing had better not be alive. Of course it wasn’t, of course it wasn’t. She thought about weighing it and decided not to. She also thought about taking the severed lump to the “wolf” but that would be a wasted journey, since this flesh didn’t meet the “wolf’s” requirements. She buried it in the garden beneath an ash tree. Then she put her considerable talent for making nice things to eat to Alžběta and Klaudie’s service, simmering and baking and braising through the night.
—
KLAUDIE had nineteen years behind her and who knew how many ahead; her eyes sparkled and did not see. Sometimes she used a cane, sometimes not, depending on her own confidence and the pace of the crowd around her. In Ostrava she didn’t use her cane at all. That autumn she went around Dornička’s pantry lifting lids and opening cupboard doors: “What is that delicious smell? I want a slice right now!” Alžběta and Dornička served up portions of everything that was available, tasting as they went along, but Klaudie sniffed each plate and dismissed its contents. Then she went and stood under Dornička’s ash tree and drew such deep and voluptuous breaths that Dornička began to have the kind of misgivings one doesn’t put into words.
“Come, Klaudie,” she called. “I need your help with something.”
The project Dornička invented wasn’t especially time-consuming, but it was better than nothing. Klaudie took up a power drill and Dornička a handsaw and ruler and they made a small, simple but sturdy wooden chest, and when they had finished Alžběta fetched out her own bag of tools and fitted the wooden chest with a lock—“Free of charge, free of charge, and I hope it holds your treasures for you for years to come, dear Dornička,” she said, giving her godmother a big kiss before turning in for the night. Even though the locked chest was empty Dornička slept with her fingers wrapped around the key that fit its lock; that hand made a fist over her stomach.
—
DORNIČKA was one of twelve caterers who made meals for the town’s coal miners. Alžběta and Klaudie helped her deliver her carloads of appetizing nutrition; they were well-beloved at the mine and there was much laughter and chatter as they stacked lunchboxes on the break room counter for later. Several fathers had Klaudie in mind for a daughter-in-law and sang their sons’ praises, but most of the others warned her against chaining herself to a locaclass="underline" “Travel the world if you can, Klaudie — go over and under and in between, and if there happens to be a man or three on the way, that’s well and good, but afterward just leave him where you found him!”
Klaudie listened to both sides; these were people who felt the movement of the earth far better than she, and when she visited Dornička she thought of them often as they moved miles beneath her feet. Tremors that merely rumbled through her soles broke the miners’ bodies. They knew risk, and when they encouraged her in one direction or another they had already looked ahead and taken many of her possible losses into account. There was one among them who kept his mouth shut around her, as he was a coarse young man who didn’t want to say the wrong thing. When Klaudie spoke to him he answered “Eh,” and “Mmm,” with unmistakable nervousness, and she liked him the best. Dornička favored candlelight over electric light, and as Klaudie went about Dornička’s living room lighting candles in the evening the wavering passage of light across her eyelids felt just like the silence of that boy at the coal mine. Dornička invited the boy to dinner but the invitation agitated him and he refused it. Alžběta, whose snobbery was actually outrageous, said that the boy knew some things just aren’t meant to be.