Served up: a shocking baked surprise
“Well, Welsh, I saw that latest YouTube video of yours. Some iced tea? Lemonade, perhaps?”
This is Josh Davies, hosting a mid-afternoon luncheon for Welsh Losser and The Ferret in his apartment, which happens to be the 9th and top floor of a Brezhnev-era building on former Red Army Street, easily the most aesthetically unattractive major thoroughfare running from central Kyiv, though fortunately not through it.
But it is a strangely younger Josh Davies. The sagging gut has taken on the hardness of a stuffed pouch. The formerly doddering steps are now surer and firmer, with no teeter-tottering from side to side in a never-ending desperation to maintain balance. The hair has grown in – not completely, but enough to now cover most of the former geriatric baldness. The white feathery wisps have been replaced with rolling handsome furrows of jet, mischievously sifted with merely the first signs of winter frost.
And yet, a sort of hypnosis projected by Davies’s reverse aging onto the beholder prevents any questioning that his appearance, which continues to improve with time, should be otherwise.
“Oh, ah, er, what did you think? Did you like it, remikaflex… Nyagar-eh, lemonade would be fine – just the homemade beverage to wet my parched summer whistle – ar-ar-ar-ar!”
That, it is probably needless to say, is Welsh Losser.
“Well, that should be easy to fix – here you are. And what would be your pleasure, my fine, rat-faced Ferret friend?”
That, it also goes without saying, is Davies’s reference to The Ferret, whom Davies created in a purely diabolical experiment in Reagan-era New Jersey from a mass of biological material early in its existence that, if left alone, could have become marginally human, taking the form of a self-denying Jew disguised as a Ukrainian patriot.
“Ieeech, eche, eche, ieeech, heh-heh-heh…” The Ferret answers. He is wearing a trench coat fastened tight around the area that should be his waist and a gray fedora. Because Welsh Losser is left-handed, The Ferret is seated on Welsh Losser’s right, with whom he is secretly holding hands under the table, but Josh Davies knows all about it.
“Oh, ah, napomikarikets, he wants iced tea, aarg” Welsh Losser tells Davies, interpreting for The Ferret as he squeezes his paw, the color of his blood rising to his fireplug cheeks.
“Very well, then. Here you go, sir,” Davies says in the finest display of his intrinsic hospitality. “Oh, and to answer your question, Welsh, I think you look very good in the video.”
“Oh, nyogara chimi, ah, thank ara ara, ah, thanks so, acraminalu, ah…”
“Oh, don’t mention it, Welsh. Not atall, not atall. Indeed, I must say, you look quite in control, very relaxed, and in command of your materials.”
“Oh, well, ah, nyaga, it’s taken years of honing and perfecting, but I think I finally got there.”
“Yes, I must say… But it strikes me, and I can’t help get this impression from all your media self-promotionals and PR presentation skill instructionals, even though, if you will allow me to say so, they are no match for this latest effort… But as I was saying, it strikes me that every time you say something to the young girl interviewing you, oh, I suppose in the form of an anecdote from the great store of your knowledge and variety of life experiences, things like, ‘You know, Irina, when I first got here I really had no intention of staying – I simply wanted to use up my bonus frequent-flyer miles, and it was a choice between Saint Petersburg and Kyiv, and so I decided on Kyiv – but when I got here, I fell in love with the country and the people so much, that you can say I forgot to leave – ar-ar-ar.’ As I was saying, Welsh, every time I hear you say something like that, I can’t help but cross my mind with the notion that you, at your age and with your, shall we say, rather off-putting physical appearance, still harbor a strange, deluded fantasy that if you repeat that story often enough, then maybe, just maybe, a young beautiful Ukrainian girl will jump out of the audience and into your lap, embracing you around your missing neck, kiss your walleyes over and over again and that shriveling puckered-in mouth and exclaim, ‘Oh, thank you, thank you Welsh Losser for saying such things about my people and my country!’ and then whisper through the scissor-cut hairs of your wax-crudded ears that she wants to suck your wee-wee…”
“Ieeech, ieeech, ieeech, heh-ech, ieeeeeeech…!!!” the speechless rat Ferret screeches in protest, shaking up and down on the bench next to Welsh Losser, who has himself been suddenly stricken speechless – a true rarity.
Regabalxcrebidexhaminomjibbekrektorousnippityhar…” is the only thing he is able to eject.
But the shock is quickly worn off and forgotten, because momentarily, Babushka appears from one of the two small bedrooms at the back of the apartment pushing a tray cart. Wearing a flower print house smock, she moves slowly on old bare broad-splayed feet, varicose-veined and lump-knotted. The feet are disgusting. A bitter scowl is etched deeply and permanently in her tortured age-worn face. She carries the thick musty stench of village sweat on her days’ unwashed body.
It is preferable to ignore her and clench your teeth in restrained impatience as she makes her way past the table in this ‘living’ room to the kitchen, but what can’t be ignored is the marvel of the infant sitting atop the cart chortling, goo-gooing and slapping its hands together.
“Venus Baby!” Welsh Losser exclaims. “Hey, that’s my kid! I’ve been looking all over town for him. I thought he was gone for good! Josh, how did you find him?!”
Because The Ferret is a rat, it is difficult to discern his moods, but in response to the Venus Baby’s appearance, the sudden hunch of his shoulders, the release of Welsh Losser’s hand, and his shifting and squirming easily betray that he is peeved.
“Oh, let’s just keep that one of my little secrets, shall we,” Josh Davies says, replying to Losser.
But from precocious sexual beauty, the Venus Baby has turned grotesque, acquiring the obscene colors and nauseating fatty corpulence of the blue-tinted Krishna Baby.
Annoyed with her plodding, Josh Davies high-handedly waves Babushka on to the kitchen, but Babushka ignores him, making a surprisingly quick snapping motion at him with one hand to indicate his dismissal from her affairs. Without changing her pace, she plods on until she reaches the kitchen, into which she disappears.
“Josh,” an excited Welsh Losser exclaims, referencing his Venus Baby, “let him sit here, between me and The Ferret! Come on! Let’s fly him over here – nyag-nyuuuurrr…!”
“Oh, let Babushka do what she has to with him in the kitchen and then he’ll come out. You’ll have plenty of time to … er… digest his presence.”
“Nyag-nyuggi, I guess she’s going to feed him.”
“Oh, Babushka’s going to feed him, all right, Welsh. That’s exactly what she’s going to do. She’s going to feed him.”
Several hours pass and over many delicious courses, much conversation, and a great deal of Moldovan red wine (Josh Davies got a good deal on a case in the local liquor store just before it went out of business), all insults and injuries are forgotten. Hell, even Venus Baby is forgotten.
When lo and behold, out of the kitchen comes Babushka, plodding slowly and pushing the tray cart. On top of the cart is a magnificent big cake, crowned with a round object the exact nature of which is not yet visible to Welsh Losser and The Ferret.
But as Babushka turns the cart around so that the cake and the object on top of it face the hapless guests, they see that the object is Venus Baby’s head. At first the shock stops their tongues.
“And, pray tell, Babushka, what did you do with the rest of the colorful little tike?”
With a perfunctory thrust of a gnarled thumb Babushka points into the middle of the cake.
“Ah, very resourceful, Babushka. You may now go.” Davies waves away Babushka, who turns in the direction of the small bedrooms, back toward which she plods, clearly relieved.
By now, Welsh Losser and The Ferret shriek and scream, but oddly seem riveted to the bench, unable to bolt up and hightail it to the door.
Completely oblivious of the terror-stricken duo, Josh Davies calmly cuts through the Venus Baby head and cake with a large kitchen knife, lowering the huge wedge-shaped pieces onto large plates and placing the plates in front of his guests.
“Nyua-a-a-a, I think, ah, J-J-Josh, we’d b-better get g-going,” says a stuttering, choke-and-shaky-voiced Welsh Losser.
“Ieeech, heh-heh, ieeech, ieeech…” The Ferret readily and nervously agrees.
“Oh, no,” Josh Davies says, “you’re not going anywhere until you eat this cake.”
Filed by John Smith, August 20, 2014