Chapter Four, In Which Tain Bb Fries Letters And Hello? Tells Her Story
Whilst the girl was having a wash and sorting herself out, Tain caught a full sack of letters. They occurred there in abundance. Identical in size, but of varying thickness, the letters, squeaking happily, chased each other and went willingly into Tain’s hands. Shaking all the letters out onto the ground, he found those he needed to form the word ‘FIRE‘.
The fire lit up instantly. Then Tain chose the tenderest and meatiest ‘M’ letters, cleaned the.’M’ a little, pierced the ‘M’ with a skewer, and placed theM on the flaMes. The ‘M’ letters, dreaMing of being eaten and ending up in the tuMMy, rejoiced in the fire. And they even cooked theMselves splendidly, presenting to the coals first one then the other side.
Very soon the tuMMies of the travellers were full of yuMMy and nourishing food.
‘Thank you,’ Hello? said with feeling, and pecked Tain on the cheek.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ blushed the talented cook. ‘You can come again.’
Later they lay their coats on the ground and lay down together, looking up at the starry sky. Hello? broke the silence first: ‘Perhaps I’m ready to tell you something. Only please listen carefully and don’t interrupt…’
Hello?’s Story
‘So, my dear fellow…as they say in similar circumstances, I was born and grew up in a typical family, I didn’t make anything special of myself. Like all young girls I played with cards…’
At this Tain opened his mouth with surprise.
‘Only joking…’ Hello? began to laugh. ‘With dolls of course, I didn’t think about anything, apart from princes sometimes. Time went by. I grew up. Nothing in life changed either for better or for worse.
‘But on one occasion I was walking with my best friend Fifi and an old-aged man stopped alongside and exclaimed with surprise: ‘Look, people! What beautiful eyebrows this girl has got!’ ‘Well, perhaps he didn’t say it exactly like that,’ Hello? yawned. ‘But that was the gist of it…the rumours quickly began to spread around our little town. At first the neighbours, and then the other residents, upon seeing me, stopped looking at my eyebrows and at the same time began to sigh and tut. Very soon everyone, absolutely everyone, was convinced that my eyebrows were the most harmonious and complete anywhere around.
‘By chance there ended up in our town a photographer who worked for a famous fashion magazine. He came to see his sister or maybe to go fishing with his brother, but either way he took my picture and it ended up in the magazine. And not just anywhere but on the cover. So the whole country found out about me. And so it began…’ Hello? angrily thrust a blade of grass into her mouth and, having chewed a little, spat it our reflexively. ‘To be honest it’s all very boring. Although at first I liked it, a lot even.
Just imagine, people queued up at the hairdresser’s to have similar eyebrows done. My eyebrows were everywhere: in bars, in shop windows, on advertising posters. Very famous cosmetic companies sent me their exclusive products, vying with one another for the best contracts. I was photographed in adverts for silk underwear, vacuum cleaners and wind screen wipers. In spite of the wig and sunglasses people on the street would recognise me instantly, greedily demanding an autograph. An unknown group recorded a song, ‘Brown ’brows’. It ended up on the radio and straight away enjoyed enormous popularity.
‘Aha,’ nodded Tain Bb, ‘I remember that song, it drove me mad at the time. There’s a stupid chorus:
‘When I walk on my ‘brows,
Everyone stares like cows.’
‘There you go,’ Hello? continued. ‘The fame went to my head, I became more confident and, what’s more important, richer. A glittering career, happy parents, a house with a wonderful garden, finally. What else does a young girl need? In fact , the young people who surrounded me at the time were very kind. They talked with me exclusively about eyebrows and about parties they had been to or intended to go to.
But for some time I had liked one particular fellow. We sometimes went to the cinema. But somehow I missed the moment, failing to notice that he appeared less and less in my field of vision. Soon he disappeared altogether and I later found out that he was going out with my best friend Fifi.’
Here Hello? sobbed.
‘It was very painful for me. All he had to do was wait a little until the storm had blown over. But he didn’t want to and I didn’t manage to explain anything to him in time.’
Hello? fell silent and turned away.
‘Of course it’s difficult for any fellow to see his girlfriend transformed from an ordinary girl into a star. But for me he isn’t just any, he’s the best, since I chose him. At any rate that’s what I wanted to think. But he left… and didn’t just leave, but left for my best friend. Why? I didn’t show it of course but, believe me, I was very upset…’
Tain listened, without interrupting or commenting in any way. The coals were glowing with a pleasant warmth, and one them, poking through a dark film, could be seen every shade of ruby. Tain blew on the flames and a shower of sparks flew into the darkness.
‘With everything else,’ Hello? turned back to Tain. ‘I became mindlessly irritated, against a background if complete indifference to life’s pleasures. To those closest to me I became a real shrew. Peevish, contrary and an unbearable hysterical woman. And one thought occurred to me: that I couldn’t carry on this way, that there was something wrong with me, that was obvious. So I bought a ticket, got on the train and went to another town where my grandma lived.
‘I had often visited her but every time I arrived it was like the most special holiday for her, so much did she love me. And I loved her no less.
‘And so I arrived and said, ‘Help me to be happy again, gran.’ She heard me out then muttered something, at first I didn’t even understand what. ‘Varnished bath,’ it seemed like to me. ‘ What bath?’ I said. ‘What do you mean, grandma?’ And then we started to laugh so much we couldn’t breathe. And when we had finished laughing gran said: ‘Not Varnished bath, or Garnished laugh, but Tarnished path, my dear. You went along your own path, clean, white and sparkling, but in a moment it grew narrow and became dusty and dull. This happens to everybody in life. And they either find a way to clean their Tarnished path or follow it to the end without joy.’ And my grandma also said that, according to the rumours, you could find it and clean it in the Light Forest, you just needed to really, really want it.’
‘That seems like,’ Tain pronounced thoughtfully, ‘Go there, I don’t know where, and bring it here, I don’t know what.’
‘It just seems that way at first glance,’ Hello? disagreed. ‘As I understand, it wasn’t a path at all, but something that you could only feel or fail to feel. But my grandma said that she believed in me and I didn’t intend on disappointing either her or myself. And the rest you know yourself – a technical matter: a pillow, a fan, spit on your boots….whoosh! And I’m already here.’
‘Aha, I understand. But all the same…’ Tain couldn’t help himself, ‘Where did you get the bike from?’
‘I don’t understand myself,’ Hello? answered honestly with a yawn. ‘It’s probably one of the local jokes. I lost consciousness, woke up – and I’m riding a bike at a crazy speed, and there you are.’
‘Yes, they love their jokes here,’ Tain replied gloomily, remembering the wheezy-voiced Guide and his tail that had suddenly grown.
And no sooner had he opened his mouth to tell his own story than he discovered that Hello? had fallen asleep. He covered her with his coat and sat near the fire, hoping to see in it something he had never seen before. But he very quickly began to fall asleep, lulled by the warmth. And the most vivid dreams literally pressed him into the ground, freeing him for a time from the need to be surprised by his surroundings and to ask himself questions.