THE HOMELY Wench Society’s final meeting of Lent term was held in Flordeliza Castillo’s room at Trinity. Plans for a trip to Neuschwanstein Castle had been finalized and there was no real business left to discuss, so Dvo?ák’s The Noon Witch was playing, Grainne was sitting on the windowsill puffing away at an electronic cigarette with a face mask on (“A ghost! A well-moisturized ghost!”), Flor was lying with her head in Day’s lap having Orlando Furioso read to her, Ed and Marie were mixing drinks, and Theo carried Grainne’s to the window and then back to Flor’s desk as Grainne’s smoke went down the wrong way and she staggered over to Ed, sputtering: “Bettencourters incoming . . . Bettencourter invasion!”
Flor must have been in on it. Must have. Her room wasn’t easy to find. As a matter of fact, who’s to say that the events of that historic afternoon weren’t the culmination of a scheme Flor and Barney had hatched between them way back in September?
—
THE SMALL but lionhearted Homely Wench Society gathered at Flordeliza Castillo’s window and looked down upon the mass of menfolk below, many of them bearing beverages and assorted foodstuffs. At their head, in place of their president, was Hercules of Stockwell, waving a white flag with much vigor and good cheer.
dorni?ka and the st. martin’s day goose
Matko, mati?ko! ?ekněte,
na? s sebou ten n?? bé?ete?
“Mother, dear mother, tell me, do—
why have you brought that knife with you?”
—FROM “THE GOLDEN SPINNING WHEEL,” KAREL JAROMíR ERBEN
Well, Dorni?ka met a wolf on Mount Radho?t’.
Actually let’s try to speak of things as they are: It was not a wolf she met, but something that had recently consumed a wolf and was playing about with the remnants. The muzzle, tail, and paws appeared in the wrong order. Dorni?ka couldn’t see very far ahead of her in the autumn dusk, so she smelled it first, an odor that made her think gangrene, though she’d never smelled that. The closest thing she could realistically liken this smell to was sour, overripe fruit. And then she saw a fur that buzzed with flies, pinched her nostrils together and thought: Ah, why? I don’t like this. She’d gone up the mountain to look at a statue of a hypothetical pagan god; she’d taken a really long look at him and for her he remained hypothetical. But it had been a good walk up a sunlit path encircled by bands of brown and gray; it had been like walking an age in a tree’s life, that ring of color in the trunk’s cross section. As she walked she’d been thinking about city life, and how glad she was that she didn’t live one. According to Dorni?ka, cities are fueled by the listless agony of workers providing services to other workers who barely acknowledge those services. You can’t tell Dorni?ka otherwise; she’s been to a few cities and she’s seen it with her own eyes, so she knows. City people only talk to people they’re already acquainted with, so as to avoid strangers speaking to them with annoying overfamiliarity or in words that aren’t immediately comprehensible. And everybody in the city is just so terribly bored. Show a city dweller wonders and they’ll yawn, or take a photo and send it to somebody else with a message that says “Wow.” The last time Dorni?ka had been to Prague she’d made some glaring error as she bought a metro ticket—she still didn’t know what exactly her error had been . . . an old-fashioned turn of phrase, perhaps—and her goddaughter Al?běta had clicked her tongue and called her a country mouse. Instead of feeling embarrassed Dorni?ka had felt proud and said: “Come and visit your country mouse at home sometime.” So Al?běta was coming. Her arrival was a week away, and she was bringing her own daughter, Klaudie. Dorni?ka’s anticipation of this visit was such that she’d been having trouble sleeping. Klaudie and Al?běta had visited before, had filled her house with hairpins and tone-deaf duets inspired by whatever was on the radio, and she longed to have them by her again. Dorni?ka liked her work and her friends and the town she lived in. She liked that she made enough of a difference to the education of her former pupils for them to write to her and sometimes even visit her with news from time to time. But she really couldn’t get used to being a widow (she would’ve liked to know if there was anybody who got used to that state of affairs) and didn’t often feel as if she had anything much to look forward to. If it hadn’t been for Al?běta and Klaudie’s forthcoming visit she might have succumbed to the “wolf” at once. But since she had to live for at least another week she pinched her nostrils together and thought: Ah, why? Like it or not the “wolf” was standing there in her path so that she couldn’t get by. As for “why,” it must have been due to her red cape. Our Dorni?ka had decided that once you reach your late fifties you can wear whatever you want and nobody can say anything to you about it. Looks like Mount Radho?t’ is different, eh, Dorni?ka?
—
THE “WOLF” approached, paying no attention to Dorni?ka’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, Dorni?ka 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,” Dorni?ka said, pulling her hood back up.
“Yes, I see that now, so please be on your way.”
“But surely you can’t be him,” Dorni?ka declared, with a cutting glance.
“Him?”