Kaleidoscope. English edition - Irina Bjørnø

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best private school and got married a German baron, who didn’t have any money, but title. Then the Second World War broke out, and her Baron as good German went to Hitler’s troops, and she lost her job as laboratory assistant at local hospital because of her German name and her husband’s nazi sympathy.

      After her mother and father passed away, she continued doing her mother’s job in the Russian church, where they opened a hospital for Russian soldiers. Her faith in God was undoubted, and she was involved in organisation of everything connected with the church, including the financial part. It gave her some money for existence and possibilities to play the role of the real Russian Countess. She had often appeared on local radio and sent the articles about the history of Russian church – of source old Russian church – and her personal stories of Russian Countess living in exile to woman’s magazines. These old magazines with her interviews and yellowed faded pages from past time, were gathering now dust on her coffee table, waiting for the new visitors, who came round to see her less and less.

      She kept her personal stories for them, which she polished to perfection over many years of practice, repeating them again and again. She liked the story of the ladder, which is hold by the angels, and the souls of the dead climbing up on it to the sky, most of all. She used to tell this story a lot, as an example of Russian faith in God. Now, when she became old and was sick, she would not want to accept that it was her time to climb the ladder, wreathed with flowers and supported by angels, preferring to take medicine and suffer, but to be there on the Earth and play the role of the real Russian Countess.

      Who knows what will happen to her, in the heavens and what role she would have to play in the company of God? The role of the Earth’s Russian Countess had made her happy, and she did not want to part with it.

      The Countess closed her eyes, with clumsy made every morning makeup done with her shaking hand, and her sick body fell asleep. But even in her sleep she dreamed of admiration, diamonds, and herself, young and beautiful, who was endlessly dancing at the court ball. That was just a dream.

      The Countess deceived herself all her life, couldn’t see what was going on, either in this small Scandinavian country or in remote and incomprehensible to her Russia, lulling herself and the others with fairytales about tzars, princes and countesses. That was her role in the life. And she was playing this role, which she had got by chance, until her last breath.

      That day, she fell asleep in her old faded royal chair forever, having played the role until the very end of play, the role of last real Russian Countess.

      Dedicated to my close friend Countess Tatiana Sergeyevna Ladyzhenskaya.

      The Danish Miss Pigli

      Miss Pigli was thinking, while lying on her side. She was feeling warm and comfortable. Her relatives and friends were next to her. They were standing or lying around in this yard, which was full of wonderful, tasty smelling food, poured into metal trays.

      The room wasn’t very big and Miss Pigli heard other pigs behind other walls. There were “oinking” and “squealing”, but there was neither fear nor anger in the voices around her. Everything was quiet and very nice in this pig’s world.

      Miss Pigli, her relatives and friends had been here in this yard for two hours already. They were taken here in a big spacious truck, and she remembered the road and the bumpy way with an unpleasant feeling. Why were they taken here from her home?

      One of the door opened, while she was thinking about it, and a man, wearing an overall came in with a spade in his hands. Miss Pigli was used to these people with spades wearing overalls from her childhood and wasn’t afraid of them. She knew that these people were there to feed them, to wash and to take care of them every day. She thought that their pigs’ kin was probably very important, otherwise why people would serve them and fulfill all their whims and wishes. And they didn’t have many wishes: just to eat well delicious food, to play with friends, to wallow in a puddle, and to have a warm sleep.

      People in overalls did all these things for pigs: they washed them under the water jet, removing their excrements, cleaning their yards, pouring them warm hogwash made from steamed barley or wheat.

      Sometimes pigs were given the leavings from beer production being to ferment oil cakes of barley with wort and hop. It was favourite dainty for sows and for herself, Miss Pigli.

      Miss Pigli was born in Denmark on a pig farm, her mum was an old pig, who had many piglets. She didn’t know that there were three pigs corresponding to every living person in Denmark and that due to them, pigs, this small country had the opportunity to build free schools, hospitals and the seniors centres. Sows were an important chain in assistance for unemployed people as the taxation from selling pork (Denmark took the third place in the world selling pork to Japan, England and other countries) was sufficient enough for developing the tiny kingdom of Denmark.

      Miss Pigli didn’t know about it, but she sensed herself as an important ‘person’ who people worked for, devoting their time, strength and life. Miss Pigli really enjoyed such a position.

      She liked her pig farm, her mum, her brothers and sisters and the people, who made her life easy and comfortable. In these people’s world pigs’ money was respectable and desired and moreover, pork had been preferred food for Vikings since olden times. They enjoyed eating fried cracklings of well done fore ends of pork cooked in a stove with mustard and horseradish.

      Sows played an important part in the women’s beauty as well: lipsticks and facial cream had some lard and the beauties’ legs were warmed with the boots made from the pigs’ skin. Danish men used strong hog leather to produce trousers’ belts and for irreplaceable wallets which were made from the same hog leather for keeping indispensable money. Diabetic patients were grateful to pigs for insulin, produced from viscera of these farm animals.

      People used pigs for their senseless social animals experiments, because pigs were the next intelligent animals after dogs and monkeys.

      Miss Pigli didn’t know anything about it, but she had an idea that she was an important figure in this world. Why then neither Muslims nor Jews liked her or her brothers, she couldn’t understand that.

      Was she really worse than silly rams or always frightened, dung smelling sheep with felted hair? Her meat was more delicate than old goat’s or smelling mutton one. She looked like a small plump baby as by structure as by smell.

      Miss Pigli couldn’t understand these people with their religions, the God, and thousands of silly rules, but here in Denmark she was loved and she was considered as the national animal, even the holly one for the descendants of great Vikings, for whom the Christmas and the fried pork were almost the synonyms.

      When the representatives of the Allah countries started to move to Denmark in the 90-s, who didn’t love those pink snots and curious round eyes, Miss Pigli and her family thought that their time was over and people would no longer serve the pig’s family, but nothing like that happened.

      Farms were not closed and pork processing plants didn’t stop working, so pig’s money flew through the taxes distribution system into the pockets of orthodox Muslims as well as their five-times prayer – Salat (Namaz). They went to the Danish municipalities and received their benefits for life, paid for with the money from pork’s sale, they kept those obtained without any labour money in wallets, which were made from pig’s skin, and their wives and daughters put on their lips bright lipsticks made from pork fat.

      And what about Allah? Maybe he had not seen these deviations from its rules, as he didn’t notice the migration of orthodox Muslims to the country of atheists, pig-eaters and alcohol drinkers?

      Miss Pigli looked at the man, who nodded his head:

      “It is time, dear,” he started to push her to the

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