Vyhľadávanie
Clara decided to paint a picture.
“I’ll do it to please Rover,” she told herself.
Then she wondered what to paint.
“I’ll paint a sponge biscuit bone. He’s sure to like that.”
But then something occurred to her.
“I won’t paint a sponge biscuit bone. He might eat the picture,” she thought.
And she put her thinking cap on once more.
“I’ll paint a rabbit.”
But something else occurred to her. “He might bark at the picture,” she told herself.
And she pondered again.
“I know what I’ll paint!” she exclaimed suddenly. “That’s what he’d like.”
She painted a dog.
“He must be a rusty brown, like Rover,” she said to herself.
So she painted a rusty brown dog.
But it wasn’t a HE.
It was a SHE.
MAG-GIE, Clara wrote under the picture.
She was very pleased with it.
“Maggie is a beautiful name,” she said. “Maggie is a much more beautiful name than Eleonora. Or Philomena. Or Gertrude. Maggie is almost as nice a name as Clara.”
Then she picked up the picture and hung it on the wall.
Rover came trotting by.
He looked at the picture. Just glanced, with one eye. He didn’t mean to stop, because he was going in the direction of the kitchen. On the table in the kitchen was a sponge biscuit bone.
But he couldn’t help it.
Rover couldn’t tear his eye away from the picture.
“MAG-GIE,” Rover read, dreamily. He opened the other eye, in order to get a better look at Maggie.
“Do you like it?” asked Clara, pointing to the picture.
Rover nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
Rover was looking at Maggie.
He was imagining running around the park with Maggie. There was soft, green grass in the park. Maggie was chasing Rover. Rover could run much faster than Maggie.
But Rover always ran so that Maggie could catch him up.
Then he imagined howling at the moon with Maggie. Rover could howl a lot louder than Maggie.
But Rover always howled in such a way that Maggie’s beautiful voice could be heard above his.
Then he imagined having lunch with Maggie in a big hotel. There was a sponge-biscuit bone that smelled delicious. Rover was much hungrier than Maggie.
But Rover offered the bone to Maggie first.
Having imagined all this, Rover hugged his stomach and rolled his eyes.
He fell ill.
“I’ve fallen in love,” Rover told Clara. I’m head over heels in love,” he sighed and nodded in the direction of the picture of Maggie.
Clara prepared a cold compress for Rover.
But Rover still felt ill.
Then she made him some herbal tea.
But Rover felt far worse.
Then she brought him some pure honey.
But Rover didn’t feel any better.
In the end Rover had a horrible dream.
He dreamt that Maggie fell in love with a large black dog. He dreamt that he bit the dog, so he couldn’t run after Maggie. But then he dreamt that the big black dog bit his leg in turn.
It was very painful.
Just before Rover woke up, the big black dog took rusty-brown Maggie to be his wife.
It was awful.
When Rover opened his eyes, the picture of Maggie was no longer on the wall. Clara had taken it down. All that remained was a blank, green wall.
Rover looked at the wall.
“That green wall reminds me of a picture,” he said.
And he remembered Maggie.
Clara painted the green wall blue.
Rover gazed at the blue wall.
“That blue wall reminds me of a certain green wall. There was a picture on that green wall,” Rover said.
And he remembered Maggie.
Clara knocked the wall down. She carried the bricks outside and buried them in a hole in the ground. She swept up the plaster and tipped it into the hole. Then she washed the floor and poured the water away in the streamh.
Rover looked at the space where the wall had been.
But he couldn’t see anything there.
“I thought there used to be something there,” he said. He took another look.
But he still couldn’t see anything.
Rover suddenly felt better. He took some paints and went outside. He lay down on the steps in front of the house.
He began to paint a picture.
First green grass. Then a blue sky. Lastly a big rusty-brown heart.
Translated by Heather Trebatická
(From Rover and Clara, Knižná dielňa Timotej, 1989)
