A
Baby With Hair
The rubber doll, probably conceived in the Russian doll factory as
a boy baby, or a baby in general, sexless like all dolls and all toys
in the world, her treasure, her baby kin, which her Mother had bought
her in the city market, her most beloved baby, that is her only one
– had no hair.
The Little Girl
did not like male babies, did not like boys, she was ashamed and disgusted
by them; she wanted a baby with hair. But Mummy had no money to buy
her a doll with hair, like the one belonging to the daughter, an only
child, or the one belonging to Mirica, her cousin, an only child:
the one from Italy, the magnificent one that sat in the middle of
the double bed in the beautiful big house, where the bed linen had
Mirica’s name embroidered on it, the one in the magnificent
pink dress with lace flounces... But never mind the dress; it was
the hair that mattered, those cascades of locks which fell over the
shoulders of Italian dolls – oh…
The Little Girl
longed, wished, dreamed, daydreamed, that she had that doll, and knew
that she would never, n e v e r, NEVER ask her mummy to buy it for
her. She knew that it could not be bought; it was rude even to enquire.
In the evening,
under her heavy woollen quilt that stifled her, pressing her thin
little hands onto her stomach, she would repeat God, give me a baby
with hair, and with that desire drifted into sleep and surfaced from
sleep, astonished that God had not fulfilled her desire – just
as she would wake astonished in adulthood if He ever did fulfil one.
If on her way
to school she went a hundred steps without treading on the line between
the paving stones, Father would buy her a doll with hair. Father loved
her, more than all of them, and every day he bought her something
which her brothers and sister would not get, he held her in his lap
and caressed her, which he didn’t do with the other children
because he didn’t have time, but she was sickly, thin as a twig,
her heart jumped and stifled her, and she went regularly to the sea
because she had to, to Zelenika, when the sick children went there,
and Father would understand why she needed that doll baby with hair
so badly, and … she had stepped on a line between the stones…
She wouldn’t even ask him.
The Little Girl
was an excellent pupil, she worked hard, she learned her lessons in
advance because she was bored in class, and the other children were
so slow to understand, she was a good girl, she longed for someone
to praise her because she was good, she never went anywhere she was
not supposed to, she didn’t say bad words, so why couldn’t
she have a doll from Italy? Or some other doll, just so long as it
had hair? She didn’t understand the words: there’s no
money. How come, when there was money for everything else just not
for that doll? Why did they have to buy so much food and wood and
clothes? You could do without all of those.
It was the spring
of 1968. The little girl took her cardboard box out onto the meadow
behind the house and took out each of her treasures one by one and
placed them on the damp ground: brightly coloured chintz rags she
would use to sew a dress for the baby she dreamed of; silk embroidery
thread which she would weave into a ribbon for the hair of the baby
she dreamed of; a little shoe box, she would use it to make a bed
for the baby she dreamed of. Here too was her only, boy baby, the
one without hair … what would she do with it when she got the
baby she dreamed of? She took the baby without hair and cuddled it,
saying I won’t leave you, don’t worry, and she nearly
cried for sadness that this one didn’t have hair, and that she
had to not love it because it had no hair, and that she had to dream
of the one with hair, which she had to love in advance, even without
seeing it.
***
Father had shouted
last night, he came home tipsy and snored on the double Bed; something
had happened that the Little Girl didn’t understand, but she
knew that it wasn’t good. Mummy had big blue bags under her
eyes this morning, and she had not stroked her head and said Mummy’s
lambkin. Father came out and said to her and her sister, Get ready,
we’re going out. They didn’t dare ask where, and got ready
and set off after him down the steep street, holding hands, without
a word, like every time they went anywhere together. The Little Girl
didn’t like holding her sister’s hand, for her Sister
hated holding hands and she hated the Little Girl because of that
hand holding as though it was her idea, but this morning she liked
it because she was afraid of being alone and her Sister’s hand
was something that connected her to the house which had been so sad
that morning, suffocating and cramped for everyone who lived in it.
They went into
a shop where the sign said Men’s Hairdresser; a man with combed
hair full of brilliantine sat them down on seats, one beside the other,
and cut off their beautiful long plaits, first her Sister’s,
then the Little Girl’s. The Little Girl did not remember much
apart from the circle of her hair lying round the hairdresser’s
chair, and sorrow, and the horror with which she knew Mummy would
look at them both, two plucked chickens with short spiky boys’
hair, and Father’s smirk when he saw their mother’s face.
I’ve got my own back, was written all over that face, which
the Little Girl had never seen so ugly, and he handed Mummy an old
newspaper with four plaits wrapped in it, sad and lonely and tearful,
like Mummy, who unwrapped them, and wrapped them up again, and put
them in the drawer of the dresser, where she kept needles and thread
and some old yellow photographs.
A few days passed;
Father was calm, Mummy was calmer, at school the Little Girl and her
Sister were ashamed of their haircuts, but there was nothing to be
done. The Little Girl went on dreaming about the baby she dreamed
of, and life, which she had thought would come to an end with her
parents’ quarrel, returned to the house. Her eldest brother
went off to demonstrate, no one knew exactly what that was, but Father
said The only way to talk to them is with a belt. Mummy rushed agitatedly
through the house, opening and shutting cupboards, rummaging through
the same drawers twice, putting away her hair that was already put
away, dusting what had already been dusted, stroking the Little Girl’s
head, although she had already done so that morning. Because of all
of that the Little Girl wound round her Mother’s legs like a
kitten, trying to provoke another caress, trying to summon the strength
to ask Mummy, Will you buy me a baby with hair? Suddenly, Mummy –
mummy knows – opened the drawer in the dresser once again, and
said Hey, mummy’s lambkin, here take this and make your baby
some hair, and handed her the newspaper with the four plaits wrapped
in it, and then disappeared out of the kitchen into the bedroom, where
she could be heard stifling sobs, but no one dared go in there.
The Little Girl
went out onto the meadow behind the house, unwrapped the newspaper
and looked at the plaits of dead hair, and saw the solution of her
desires.
From that moment,
until the moment when a pile of hair was stuck to the boy baby with
O-HO glue, several long days passed. But that didn’t matter
to the Little Girl, what mattered was that at last she had the baby
with hair that she dreamed of. What the Little Girl could not see,
but everyone around her could – first her Sister, then her brothers,
then the neighbours, and the writer of these lines – was the
fact that her little clumsy hands had not known how to stick the hair
on properly, so that the baby, in fact, looked like a little typhus
victim, with big patches of bald head and a few locks of hair which
moulted like dogs’ fur and fell out every time the Little Girl
wanted to comb it.
But, here is
the important idea of the story, it is important that I wanted to
say something, says the writer, while the Little Girl says What’s
important is the hair, and we ought, in fact, all to be pretty happy
with the outcome of this story, in which there is too much sadness
and too little hair.
It’s not
important that we are (I know, I know) on the side of the Little Girl
and that finally, as in all stories about Divine justice, a year after
this event her Mother would buy her a doll with hair, after she had
her tonsils out, as a present for being brave, and that, after that,
the Little Girl would connect every act of bravery in her life with
dolls with hair, which no one bought her as a reward.
And it’s
not important that the Little Girl, by Divine injustice, at the age
of twenty-nine would lose almost all her hair, without anyone knowing
why, not even the omniscient doctors. And that, by Divine justice,
new hair would grow again almost over night: new, curly, beautiful,
healthy, like her life, which from the moment she got her new hair
developed like a long love story which survived even the people who
did not get the main parts in it.
After the war
in 1992, one in history and the hundredth for a Little Girl of this
kind, the Little Girl gave birth to a Little Girl, a tiny baby –
her baby kin. When they placed her on her breast, tightly wrapped
in a dirty hospital nappy in the maternity ward where they washed
the babies in cold water from war canisters because there was no power,
the only thing that she wanted to know – before she fainted
with pain – was whether the baby had hair. Of course, said the
nurse, it’s a real miracle. She has long black hair.
Translated
from Bosnian
by Celia Hawkesworth