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Since the envoys had brought news of the arrival of the Emperor, Bolesław’s kingdom had been overwhelmed by an all-encompassing state of commotion. Aside from the settlers living deep within the deepest forests, there was probably no one who did not, in some way or other, (...)
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8
The phones are always going wrong, so my parents aren’t upset when there’s no dialling tone. They’re at the fortieth birthday party of a female friend from their class at high school. They say they’re going downstairs to the phone booth for a (...)
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Tomasz MatkowskiMousy on holiday
About the book
They had received another invitation by mistake. They’re always getting them. Evidently some celebrity lives nearby and the postman gets muddled up. (Or maybe he does it on purpose because he doesn’t like the celebrity, but he does like Mousy and Bear because they always have a chat with him? Perhaps the celebrity’s a megalomaniac and treats the postman like a bedbug?)
Teddy Bear is also a bit of a megalomaniac. It’s true that he’s still polite and kind to everyone, but these invitations have put it into his head that he’s a celebrity, and he pulls such a proud face that everyone really does take him for someone famous, and they all wonder “who’s that?” That’s what happened this time too. It began when they received an invitation to a “welcome the spring with caviar” celebration at a fashionable restaurant. There would be artists, businessmen and other Creative People, and there would be a performance (or maybe a happening; this bit of the invitation was smudged).
Bear hates being sociable on principle, but when Mousy read out from the bottom of the invitation that there would be lots of sandwiches, he said he would sacrifice himself and go.
The party was not until the evening, so they had the whole afternoon free and went off to the supermarket. Just for some butter and sugar, promised Mousy.
After an hour Bear began to groan: “Why have we been walking about here for an hour now? We were supposed to get two things, that means go to two counters and then straight to the check-out…”. But Mousy silently dragged him from one counter to another, stopping at each one to ponder goodness knows what, as if it were impossible to just take an item and go on. Worst of all was at the cheese counter – she picked up each cheese in her paws and sniffed it, and must have sniffed at least two hundred of them before she decided on one. Bear, who hates mushroom picking and all kinds of activity where you have to stop and move on, stop and move on, stop and move on, and so on ad nauseam, finally rebelled. “I’m going skating,” he announced. “You can go on buying sugar for as long as you like.” And he left. Right in front of the supermarket, next to the parking lot there was a charming little skating pond surrounded by spruce trees, free of charge and advertised all over town by an enormous picture of an upside-down squirrel. And he skated (he always has his skates in the boot for just this sort of opportunity) and skated and skated; he did rockers and mohawks, and when he put on the brakes the whole slab of ice shook (the people on it too). And he felt so good that when at last Mousy came out of the supermarket and started hustling him, saying: “We’ve got to go now, today’s the party”, he groaned: “Booo! I don’t want to go! The other children are allowed to go on skating!”
Indeed, there were a lot of children on the ice, with their mummies sitting on a bench keeping an eye on them, and the mummies turned to Mousy and said: “Why not let your husband skate a bit longer? There’s still more than an hour to go before it’s time for his bedtime story, so you can take it nice and gently!”
At home, Mousy really did have to be nice and gentle with Bear, because he could hardly have turned up at the party with such a big bump on his head where he whacked it against the ice. The compress she used was made of ice too, from a small piece Bear had discreetly chipped off the edge of the skating pond on Mousy’s instructions.
When they finally got to the “happening-performance-to-welcome-the-spring-with-caviar” it was already late. To save time, Bear had not changed at all, and was still in his colourful hockey outfit, with shin-guards and elbow pads, and protective padding on his tail-bone (which in his case sticks out a bit). He only took off the skates, tied the laces together and slung them over his shoulder, so one dangled down his back and the other down his front, and he looked very fetching and original. So original that the bouncers said: “We’re not doing any advertising here”, and refused to let him in because they thought it was the hostess from the local ice-cream parlour trying to advertise Penguin ices, but Mousy said: “The gentleman is with me,” and they let him in.
Inside, there were lots of celebrity guests welcoming the spring with the help of Campari, caviar and petits fours. And each person was wearing something green as a sign that spring had arrived, either a green scarf, or socks, or knickers… And there was also a photographer from the Vanity & Vanity agency taking pictures of everyone with his flash, whether they wanted him to or not, including appealing snaps of star X reaching for a petit four, and star Y smiling meaningfully at her presumed paramour Z (enough for a five-page article about their romance). Illogically enough, the flashing didn’t bother anyone, and you might even have got the impression (mistaken, for sure) that some of them were deliberately provoking the camera’s interest. Bear excelled at this, not only presenting himself to the lens, but also giving the photographer instructions. “Why not add the following caption to this one: ‘The B-list celebrity event was honoured by Bear himself in person. He arrived quite normally, like mister average, on foot, not in a limousine…”
“…and got stuck into the sandwiches,” Mousy was quick to add as she pulled him away from the lens and towards some colourful tables laden with sandwiches, because she knew it was the only way to pacify his narcissistic impulses.
And as they were standing there, munching away, Mousy said: “You know what, Bear, I feel as if I know some of these people from somewhere, but I can’t work out where I’ve seen them or who they are…”
“That’s understandable, Mousy,” put in Bear in a tone that heralded some wisecrack or a private joke. “These B-list celebrities are hard to recognise,” he went on. “But you recognised me straight off, didn’t you?”
“Yes, by your walk,” affirmed Mousy politely, reaching for another petit four.
Next day the papers were full of reports on the “social event of the capital” at which “the whole city” had been present (in other words a bunch of brain-dead narcissists, as Bear puts it, and in this case Mousy entirely agrees with him); they focused in particular on the mysterious person with the skates and speculated on his identity: was he an eccentric millionaire from Davos, or an anti-globalisation protester disguised as an Eskimo, or maybe a Yeti?
But none of them hit upon the fact that it was just Bear, who by wearing his winter gear was trying to ward off the spring and hasten the onset of winter, and along with it his hibernation.
Unfortunately, it was quite the opposite: spring had come, and with it came an unjust irritation, of which Mousy reminded Bear that evening.
“Did you know, Bear, today’s the day the clocks change,” she said.
“So we get to sleep longer?” he asked hopefully.
“No, the other way around,” Mousy corrected him.
“Ah, I get it,” said Bear. “So we get longer to sleep.”
Translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
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There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
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