Page 79 - What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours

discovery that both strudel and currant buns remain on the edible side after

delivery by forty-eight-hour courier service. From time to time they briefly
discussed recovery, and Myrna began to hear a change in the language her
mother used to describe her pain—they were words that spoke more of bending
than breaking.

—

MYRNA HAD ASSUMED command over two boys who lived in the flat above her

own: Jindrich and Kirill, the Topol brothers. Myrna was both boys’ grand
passion . . . they called her “London” and longed for a chance to rescue her from
some danger or other. Sometimes one brother would menace her so that the other
could defend her, even though she’d emphasized from the beginning that all she
required of them was that they both die for her if and when such endeavor

became necessary. The Topols were in the process of teaching Myrna some
Czech, so her instructions were mostly mimed, but the brothers understood her at
once. Death frequently crossed their minds, and why shouldn’t it, when Myrna
had become a participant in their Sunday afternoon wrestling matches in Olšany
cemetery? Kirill was ferocious and Jindrich was fleet of foot, but Myrna was
nimbler still, and her brutality was fed by her desire not to cheat. Instead of
laying hands on her opponent she wove figures of eight until he was exhausted

and some obliging tree branch gave her the height to safely grab Jindrich or
Kirill with both feet and slam him to the ground, with the additional offense of
forcing him to break her own fall.

—

WITH ITS TENS OF THOUSANDS of graves, Prague’s Olšany cemetery is a large

village, a small town, in itself. I, Gepetta, have been there, and I know that
something travels in that place, something passes among the trees. I cannot say
what this traveler is, since we’ve never crossed paths, but what I’ve been able to
see for myself is that in some of Olšany clearings leaves lock together and form
shadowy bridges from branch to branch, and the barks of these bridged trees peel
back to show a color that glistens with rawness and decay, sap and old bone. The
Topols and Myrna followed this trail, switching wrestling arenas for about a

month, scrambling through swathes of undergrowth, administering the
occasional surprise fly-kick (no matter how many times it’s happened before, it’s
always startling to be assaulted by a bush) before they discovered the little
wooden devil. The wooden devil had been aware of them for weeks. She was