The prettiest babes

A few years ago I witnessed a somewhat silly conversation on a Hungarian mailing list, about the following question: in which country can you find the prettiest babes. At the same time I was reading Giraudoux's drama "L'Apollon du Bellac" in those few moments when I was not obliged to study. These two experiences added up to the following writing.

The prettiest babes

The prettiest babes live in Germany. Severe love radiates from their clear blue eyes. It suffices to look at them, and the desire awakes in you to settle some longtime overdue affairs. The prettiest babes may be found in Italy. At the age of 14, they are fragile and ethereal like one of Fra Angelico's angels, later they acquire a mature beauty, and they cook like goddesses. Still, the prettiest babes might be the Ethiopians. Starvation consumes their bodies almost to the degree of invisibility, giving this way a peculiar emphasis to their deep-brown eyes and to their fine features, which shelter the melancholic smile of a multi-millenarian culture.

The prettiest babes are exotic.

The prettiest babes may be seen at the beauty parlors, with thick layers of white cream on their face. Nobody approaches the ideal of infinite Beauty more, than she who is just about to become more beautiful, by her own effort. The prettiest babes are hidden in cloisters and harems. Their face is veiled, and dark clothes cover the lines of their body. Thick-walled buildings guard them, like mountains the ore of gold.

The prettiest babes are never seen.

The prettiest babes are those, who are not noticed by anybody, because the color of their hair is "dull", they don't follow the fashion, and the shape of their body diverges from the current official standard of beauty. As in the case of the diamonds, the highest price is not given for the gems of the most regular shape, but for those, which reveal the most original patterns. The prettiest babes are like the Sun: it might well turn out that other stars are shinier and larger, it is only from your Sun that you receive warmth, and it is only Her brightness shining in your days, banning into invisibility all other celestial bodies.

The prettiest babes are those whom you know best.

The prettiest babes sit in wheel-chairs at the homes of the elderly. Their hair is silver, their words are incoherent, sometimes even incomprehensible, still the wisdom of an entire life is condensed into them. Their beauty is the same as that of the Venus of Milo, which is even in her fragmented state the most faithful image of Completeness.

The prettiest babes have no idea how beautiful they are.

The prettiest babes are nurses taking care of the dying in the hospitals. They adjust the pillow below your head, they give you an infusion, and meanwhile they promise with a twinkle in their eyes that tomorrow you will be already dancing with them. They do so, even when they do know that for you there will be no more tomorrow.

The prettiest babes are the ones you meet in the last moments of your life.

The prettiest babes make the most difficult minutes of your life easier, and the dullest hours shorter. They tell straight into your face about your faults, and they are the ones who encourage you to overcome them.

The prettiest babes are those on whom you may always count.

* * * The prettiest babe is made prettiest by her smile: this is the unfading lesson of the Gioconda. Everything else is only frame to the picture, and explanation for the mentally impaired.

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