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68
The Fortune Teller
n the morning Laura has to eat at least a cuckoo’s
mouthful. Otherwise she can’t go outside, because the
cuckoo – that’s the famine cuckoo can coo-coo-cuckoo
her away. If she’ll be coo-cuckooed away, then next year
there won’t be any mouthfuls, neither a cuckoo’s nor a non-
cuckoo’s. Nor a non-cuckoo’s! Laura laughs – that’s funny!
Mīma is firm about this, laugh or don’t laugh, and she
herself eats a cuckoo’s mouthful, breakfast she’ll eat later.
After she’s finished her morning chores.
Grandpa wants to be left in peace. Grandpa won’t go
outside so he doesn’t need such a mouthful, let that cuckoo
hang himself. Grandpa isn’t preparing for next year.
Laura will go and spend some time with Rita at Lejasupītes
farm, alright? OK? Please, Mīma, please. She’ll show Rita
her new candy wrappers. One of these is from a candy
called
Vāverīte
– that’s a squirrel in Latvian and it’s very
valuable. It’s gilded. It can be exchanged for three
Vēžu
kakliņi –
crayfish necks, which are not gilded. Fine, OK,
fine, Mīma gives her permission to go.
God knows where the kids have wandered off to, but Rita’s
mama doesn’t know. She doesn’t know where the kids,
those skunks, are hanging out. They take after their fathers,
the little parasites.
I