EDA KRISEOV
A
613
into actions and relationships. Beings dark and light moved from past to
future. It's a strange fate, the thread we follow from the beginning to the
end of our lives. One, two, three coffees-and then I had to stop.
Everything I foretold on that island later came true.
The Sicilian, who was from somewhere in VrSovice, was predicting
love for the porcelain doll: he would be bearded, and she would meet him
in a large group within a month, or at most two. It would be a great love,
love at first sight, and the man would protect the doll from all evil and take
her away from the world. I don't ever speak that concretely, but rather in
pictures, metaphors. I wondered if they would like it, and whether I would
see anything at all.
"You're having coffee, right?" the hostess called into my ear, shaking
me and bringing me back to myself. "Hilda will do Jana's cards now, and
in the meantime we'll drink the coffee and tap our cups, so we can find
out what we don't know. Hilda's got everything worked out, she doesn't
need to know anything more, but I'm really badly off, and so now Jana will
read me and then we'll bring you in as well, because more witches know
more."
''I'm next in line for Hilda," said Jana, ''I'm always reading and every–
one forgets about me."
I asked the hostess for coffee and she disappeared again behind the cur–
tain. I know burly women whose spirits are like those of newly hatched
doves, and I know delicate lilies who manage to blackmail men wi th sex
their whole lives; I know dreamers and vigilant sleepwalkers. But I also
know women stately and mysterious in love and joy, to whom, regardless
of their age, those less alive fasten themselves, and always until death.
"But Jana," Hilda said, "you haven't got it so bad."
"I haven't got it so bad!" Jana said angrily, showing a temperament
from both Sicily and VrSovice. "You all think that I've let go of it, but I
still love him. The further away he gets from me, the more I love him, and
when he comes back, it's unbearable after just a few minutes. He's always
saying 'Jana, you're a woman for the hard-to-please. I am an ordinary man
and you have a train station in your head. One train is coming, another is
leaving, a third is getting ready to go, and a fourth is waiting, and I can't
make heads or tails of any of it. It's nothing but whistles and shrieks and
speeding from one tunnel to the next-who can stand it?' I say
to
him,
'Stay here, I need someone to be here so I won't be scared at night,' but he
is afraid of me-he's told me that. Do you know what he told me?-'Jana,
you'd like to make me into Prince Charming and I'm just a frog.'"
"You should have taken him just as he is," said Gabina. "I would take
my tomcat just as he is, if only he were here, if only he would leave that
witch of his. You're too demanding,Jana. He's with you at Christmas, and
