Druhástrana (druhástranae) is the name of an alleged nation state of indeterminable geographic location. Very little verifiable information concerning Druhástrana is available, as there have been several prominent cases of stateless people claiming Druhástranian citizenship under a form of poetic license, and other, yet more unfortunate cases in which claims to Druhástranian citizenship or ancestry have been proven to result from false memories or flawed cognitive information.
Even when credible witnesses have described flying over or sailing past an island that could be identified as Druhástrana, there is conflicting data as to whether the island is currently inhabited and further conflict as to who or what the island may be inhabited by. Reports include “a bear-like species clothed in human fashion,” “some form of lizard,” and “beings either long dead or not visible to the human eye.” To date, Druhástrana has been formally recognized by only three nations. (See: Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary.) Slovakia revoked recognition of Druhástrana without explanation on January 1, 2010, and Hungary followed suit on January 1, 2013.
Several prominent thinkers have proposed reclassifying Druhástrana as a purely notional/mythical land since a) nobody seems to actually come from there or know how to get there and b) literal interpretations of the assertion that Druhástrana exists may be a profound mistranslation of Czech humor.
The article is peppered with footnotes that link to a number of essays available online:
“I Belong to Druhástrana, Republic of Beauty,” by Guadeloupe Moreno, translated by Drahomíra Maszkeradi
“I Belong to Druhástrana, Republic of Freedom,” by Anele Ndaba
“I Belong to Druhástrana, Republic of Justice,” by Tansy Adams
“I Belong to Druhástrana, a Republic That Is Judging You All,” by Nimrod Tóth, translated by Drahomíra Maszkeradi
“Nimrod Tóth Does Indeed Belong to Druhástrana, a Republic of Breathtaking Hypocrisy,” by Simeon Vesik, translated by Drahomíra Maszkeradi
Harriet has lots to tell Gretel too. About Margot and the Kercheval men: Aristide, Gabriel, Rémy, and Ambrose, four walls of a charmed prison. But the Wikipedia entry for Druhástrana would be the first thing Harriet would show her friend, followed by a selection of maps and atlases that almost uniformly substitute Druhástrana’s spot on the globe with unmarked stretches of ocean. Then she’d show Gretel photographs from her trip to the one country where Druhástrana does appear on maps. The average Druhástranian has only ever heard tell of the Czech Republic, so Harriet and Margot Lee took a trip there and had a look around. Cream cakes and amber glass, concentrations of cigarette smoke (a blue-gray mist curled out onto the street every time a pub door opened), grim light pressing down on grass so that whole fields of green stalks lean to one side, rainfall that seemed semi-divine in nature, blurring and brightening the faces of the statues. And then there were those street-corner skirmishes—three times Margot and Harriet had held onto each other so as to stay upright in a sudden wave of starched shirts and petticoats as masked men and women appeared out of nowhere, fought with axes made out of balloons, and then ran away crowing into the night, leaving the fallen where they lay, popped balloons strewn all around like burst lungs. Nobody would explain the skirmishes to Margot and Harriet, so Harriet decided they were reenactments of some key battle of antiquity and Margot decided they were prophecies of a battle to come. By the time they crossed off the last cathedral on their list and stood before an altar contemplating a Virgin Mary garlanded with precious stones and grinning an unnervingly modern grin (the kind of grin one stereotypically attributes to corporate fat cats when they’re among close friends), by the time they were standing before that altar, Margot and Harriet didn’t know what to make of Czechia and the fact that it’s a place that doesn’t get called notional or mythical, while Druhástrana does. They’ll always appreciate the acknowledgment, though. Having glanced through the literature, it’s their understanding that Druhástrana wasn’t a favorite with the Czech travelers who somehow found their way there. Most describe it as “nightmarish.” But at least they don’t dismiss it.
Harriet stands in the doorway of Perdita’s bedroom before she goes to bed herself. The room is almost entirely four-poster bed, with a doll at each post, guarding the inner sanctum, where Perdita dances, reads, sleeps, does her homework, watches TV, swigs cold tea from a hip flask, and so on. Harriet likes to look in even when Perdita isn’t there, because Perdita’s dolls have grown with her, and living with them is like having four bonus daughters. When Perdita’s among her dolls, she is part of a clique of willowy teens with exactly the same shade of improbably perfect skin. Perdita calls them Bonnie, Sago, Lollipop, and Prim. Their names match the plants they bear . . . it was Margot and Perdita who removed Bonnie’s hands at the wrist and replaced them with a pair of bonsai elm trees with leaves that separate into finger-like bunches. And Margot said to Harriet: “Whenever you begin to find Perdita too odd, just think how odd I find you.”
Sago has feathery palm leaves for hair, and Lollipop’s golden beehive hairdo is a Pachystachys lutea shrub. Prim’s open chest cavity is a dormant green right now, but for twelve weeks of the year, pink-and-white primrose petals emerge. The dolls haven’t got anything to say about these changes. They had these names before they changed, so maybe they already knew.
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