Naturally, she could never get rid of the suspicion
that she was a wonderful ostrich rider…

―Ivana Myšková, Hesitation

In the summer I often meet a woman in the park. If it’s nice, she just sits on the grass or on a rug, an empty terrarium beside her, and a frog jumping around in the grass.

“I’m the same about animals as I am about bags ― bags, apartments or education,” she said when I cautiously asked her about the terrarium and the large frog on the grass. “I always wanted a dog. It didn’t matter what kind. A cocker, mastiff, terrier…”

“You wanted a dog and you’ve got a frog…” I wasn’t interested in what kind of dog she didn’t have. I was interested in why she now had a frog.

“But I’ve always lived in a town, in an apartment without a garden, looking over a dirty courtyard. I’ve always lived in a really small apartment, so I can’t have a dog. Could you manage with a dog in a small apartment?”

I had to admit that I couldn’t. I told her I had a cat.

“No, I couldn’t have one. If I can’t have a dog, then no cat either, and no cat, no guinea pig, no guinea pig, no hamster, and no hamster, not even a gerbil. The thing is, I’ve always wanted to be able to do something properly. Just one foreign language, for example. But the only problem is that I never went to uni. It’d be nice to have a dog and speak a foreign language. One language would be enough and one dog’d also be enough. But to study after a night shift and take out a dog! It’d be impossible to study after night shift or have a dog after night shift. You’d have to have more nights than days. You’d only have nights your whole life. D’you speak a foreign language?”

I said I did. One of them really well and the other I could get by in.

“See how well you’re doing! I can’t get by in any. Not that I’d even want to. I’d only want to know it properly. Read it, write it and speak it as well as I do my own. And not just get by. That’s not properly. And then I wanted a husband. Understanding, nice and great to look at. But I never found anyone who was all of those things. So in the end I wanted at least a bag. Leather, good quality, and best of all, from Italy. But I could only ever mange to get a leather one,” the woman told me, the woman with the frog. “Sorry, I should take it for some air.”

And she attached a tiny lead to the tiny collar on her frog.

Translated from the Czech by Graeme Dibble