Ivan Dobnik - Vilenica

138 · Ljiljana Jokić Kaspar
socks, eating her grease, sticking his fingers into the jar, she decided to
give up her roles of Casanova’s mistresses and go visit her grandmother in
Bezdan, if only for a little while.
*
Those days Dafina Kasa was floating among the clouds. She ate and slept
there, and descended to Earth only for a moment when she was struck
by Viktor’s desperate look, poisonous and sharp as an aboriginal arrow.
Faced by insatiable passion and unrequited love she was almost unaware,
like a fish wriggling with its head cut off even when salted, rolled in flour
and thrown into a hot frying pan. She dove and swam in the hot oil like
a mermaid through tempestuous waves! When she descended to Earth
she didn’t know night from day for she’d gone completely blind. She was
feeling through the darkness stumbling upon the legs and arms of the
people in the house.
Lovers got on everybody’s nerves, and Viktor was turning his head at the
table when Atila was feeding her bites with his hands and fingers. Keeping
her eyes closed like a grateful pet she was taking them from him with her
teeth.
– She’ll wag her tail any moment now, Auntiegranny said to her sister
Amalija.
– You don’t understand love, Auntie Klara said.
– Nobody understands love, Lady Amalija said.
– This isn’t love, Viktor said.
– Why everybody has to say something, Kiči asked.
– Go throw up, his dumb stepfather snapped.
And when Dafina one day burnt herself with the hot oil in the pan, it was
already too late; her lover was getting ready to leave.
– Everybody loves Venice, you silly lowland cow! Where would you like
to go?! I know what you need, a meadow and grass to graze! I bought you
a present in Venice, and you threw it away! You’ve got a problem? I know
you people from the Plain, you’re all unstable and mentally disturbed! You
torture animals and eat bacon and greaves! This is why you’re all so stupid!
You go on killing yourselves for generations over some silly song, hang
yourselves in the attics just because the wind blows! The grease hardens
your brains already in your twenties!
– I never tortured animals, and my great grandmother wouldn’t even step
on a bug or poison a mouse.
– Don’t you even mention those witches who with their own hands force
corn into the ducks’ beaks. Pure sadism!
– But you nevertheless ate the liver of the fattened duck! And if you leave
now, don’t come back, Dafina screamed and walked through the house all
day with her fists clenched.