Last Call

13.1.09

 

PACING THE BIRD
BY JAAP STIJL







Chapter One: Floating Weightlessly Above A Jazz Club

Throughout the entirety of the writing of this I have struggled with
how to begin. There's the once upon a time of fables, the starting
from the ending and working your way back to the beginning, the
how-I-got-here beginning, the piecemeal,
drop-you-in-the-middle-of-nowhere beginning that forces you to start
reading before you are even aware of what is going on and who is
talking.

This doesn't exhaust the possibility of beginnings of course but
simply samples the possibilities that have exhausted me in trying to
figure out where to start.

The way I look at it, you don't meet friends or even strangers from
the beginning but you meet them right in the middle of nothing
usually, somewhere in your life and theirs where the stories
intersect and if there's any kind of spark, any kind of adhesive
substance to that intersection then the stories come later, the
histories are unravelled with time.

Ernesto reminds me the Bible seems to begin from the beginning.

Fair enough but I'm here right now. Three of us, actually.

"
Two dozen bars or so into "Better Get It
in Your Soul," the band mossy with sweat,
May 1960 at The Half Note, the rain
on the black streets outside
dusted here and there by the pale pollen
of the streetlights.
William Matthews, from "Mingus At the Half Note"


Before you even open the door, you can hear the strains of music
leaking out and once it's opened, a blanket of sound and smoke and
promise shields you from the truths of the world outside, wraps you
in the womb of jazz.

As we descended the short stairway into the main room, the stage was
immediately to the left, crammed with musicians like a rush hour
subway. In such close quarters you can smell the respect of one
musician for another. Competition reeks. It's humble but it's a
humble one-upmanship. Like the Møller Attack in Tidsskrift for Skak.
Nxg5 h6! Sacrifice for the development of initiative.

To the right, a row of booths all flanked with black and white
photos at crooked angles and dust-collected frames; the club's
highlights through the years, spelt out in haunting images as the
past so often is.

The interior smells of years embedded in the walls and the floor,
tobacco smoke, drinks spilled in 1957, the stale feet of Handsome
Eddie who played here throughout the 60s and whose photos are
prominent in every corner, the breaths drawn and expelled through
Rico Royal reeds, everywhere, the interminable hours of music, which
unexpectedly, if collected throughout the years, would still have
numbered less than a lifetime of a single one of the musicians
themselves.

There is a tingle of perfume from a trio of women who stare up at
the stage like groupies, wet with excitement, lips parted
expectantly, dressed exuberantly for a big night out, coaxing,
preening, gawking. One of them, a redhead with nearly matching
lipstick, lit a match and held it against her cigarette whilst her
foot tapped to the syncopation.

In seeking out accommodation for the four of us, we spoke in
respectful whispers as though we'd arrived on camels to see the
magical Jesus baby in a crowded little tent. A tenor sax, which had
been giving birth as we approached the entrance, had hushed, its
holder's head bowed as the pianist went into a solo to subtle
applause for the saxophonist.

There was little conversation at other tables and even those
conversations were muted, respectful. The pianist, tall and lean
with age, was the only regular at this once-weekly jam and he was
not unlike a reverend speaking psalms through the keys he touched
with expertise. And jazz, at its most mournful is not unlike a place
of worship.

Although we'd been here before, this particular outing had been
conceived by Ernesto Zambrano, self-promoting pioneer of the modern
guitar montage who, a few weeks after our first meeting held for me
an impromptu exhibition in his flat: chilling photographs of mothers
holding dead babies, the rotting corpses of Frente Martí Liberación
Nacional fighters on the dirt roads of a dirt road in the peasant
underbrush, graphic imagery everywhere, life histories he'd
constructed from dust and put to music, composing song after song, a
Goyaesque concert to the capricious affairs of incessant human
cruelty.

Now he was sat in front of me, anxiously fiddling with the sugar
packs in the condiment set on the table, waiting for the first beer
as though he were in a hospital waiting room expecting bad news.

Beside Ernesto was Lydia, his girlfiend, a non-cloying but powerful
presence of dark curls hiding all but the chin and the mouth and the
nose, symmetrical until the eyes, housing some spirit indelibly
powerful, shone through like beacons leaning you toward her. The
kind of girlfriend a boyfriend spent a lot of time fending off the
advances of other predators for, the kind of girlfriend everyone
else around the boyfriend was secretly in love with but never spoke
about, men and women. She could be lively, fiery, brutal and
persuasive all at once; dragging others in around her the way the a
whirlwind makes pieces of paper dance on a chilly autumn afternoon.

But more than anything, she was Ernesto's. Yes, Ernesto was talented
and handsome even without her presence but the fact of her presence,
the fact that he and he alone was immune to her, shall we say,
magnetic qualities, the fact that he could maintain at the worst of
times a sort of playful indifference to her made him artificially
seem even more so.

And to maintain his hold of her, the grip of the relationship firm,
not dissimilar to the way a horse is handled by its trainer in a
circus or groom at a stable, he had the habit of taunting her when
he spoke in Spanish but was a gentleman to her when he spoke in
English, cognisant of the ears of Americans and their politically
correct hypersensitivities, aware of what others might learn and
judge about him.

Ours was an easy triangular friendship forged in the vertigo of
intoxication and smoke, laughter and creative tension, hidden
thoughts and secret glances.

They had initially arrived by virtue of, and then far out-stayed,
their student visas both, from the same fishing port town in the
northern Spanish province of Asturias, called Llanes, intertwined by
history, love, language and experience, and had both clothed
themselves in the appropriate anonymity escaping both discovery by
the INS and, perhaps by virtue of the transient nature of their
immigration status, even themselves, neither of whom ever seemed
particularly destined to anonymity in the first place so mutually
exclusive were their personalities and characteristics, somewhere in
a Bronx we never bothered spoke much about. To them, a place of
habit, of hiding, of housing. For me, a borough I avoided for years
and took care to block out both in rare daylight hours and even in
semi conscious thoughts in midnight bars with the sound dulled for
reasons I might explain in greater depth a little later but for the
purposes of describing these two accomplices in front of me without
deviating too far from the course of the describing, I will say only
that somewhere out there I was certain my mother still existed
somewhere there even though I hadn't seen her in years since she'd
disappeared without a clue.

But there, I've deviated already and Ernesto is getting impatient.

As a means of survival, Ernesto is a photographer and guitarist. He
is classical enough with his fingers to find studio work with his
guitar and disturbing enough with the view of his camera that in
Spain, he had already published a pair of books photographing human
suffering. Not that I'd ever heard of him before I met him. Coffee
table books on human suffering was not a priority of mine before
meeting Ernesto and whilst it still isn't, the knowing of Ernesto
has lent more credibility and poignancy that might have otherwise
escaped me had he remained an anonymous soul and traveller to me.

It makes you wonder at all the millions of things people have ever
written or created in the history of humanity, books, scraps of
paper with recipes, diaries of profoundly disturbing secrets,
unpublished chronicles of misery and delights, photographs taken and
lost in moves or in estate sales, poems that have never been read by
a single other person in history and have long since disappeared
like the papyrus they were written on, brittle and then dust.

But for Ernesto, such endeavours were merely part of daily life, a
shrug in the face of complexity. He was talented and he was talented
in that nonchalant way that only artists and athletes can perfect
without appearing to give even the minimal effort in making it
happen, despite all the hours and years of practice hidden behind
the façade.

In her role, which Ernesto would say in Spanish to her, sotto voce,
as the human footnote to the life of Ernesto, Lydia appeared content
to revel in her dewy infatuation, her own talents like a child that
doesn't cry and attracts little attention.

She still struggled with shaping the English language like bashing
the dents out of a Mercury's body despite her best efforts. In a
sort of fitting rendition of the competitive struggle she endured in
their relationship, Ernesto, predictably, spoke a fluid, guttural
English and had mastered American idiomatic nuances with a flourish.

Whatever she endeavoured, he could outperform, wherever she went he
had been before, whatever words she spoke, he had already heard.
Ernesto was a competitive man and Lydia, perhaps inexplicably, was
content to be in his shadow, perhaps she thought he was greater than
her, perhaps she loved and admired him, perhaps because her own
insecurities prevented her submitting a wilful personality of her
own, a proper competition to face Ernesto with, or perhaps just fear
of losing. You don't know these things about people when you know
them in a social drinking way. You can only guess, or make
assumptions. And whilst some of their personality will rise up like
a dead body in a water other elements of it will remain deep and
distant, unspoken, unknown, a human hieroglyphic which can be
interpreted only by the partner.

There was nothing to dislike about Lydia, she merely dulled in
comparison given how little she was willing to compete against him.
Ernesto often speculated aloud that she should have been with a much
more usual man, a man she could outshine by merely remaining in
repose. But it was up to the relationship gods that she should be
saddled with an overbearing bundle of inexhaustible achievement like
Ernesto as a lover.

They came as a matching set, his and hers illegal aliens
multi-talented, infinite wells of surprising phrases, compelling
angles of observation and despite the distances they had travelled
carrying personalities stunted by a foreign language, they were
appealing to me from the first meeting, as much for the intrigue as
their capacity for drinking.

The method of our acquaintance was a simple though coded one: on
stage at the Oblong Club, Albert and I and a guitar player we had
hooked up with for the occasion named Ernie Lee, were between
numbers, standing in postures that bled indifference and fatigue
when I smelled the unmistakable black odour of Ducados wafting
through the air. Through the crowd, I searched tables before
spotting Ernesto sitting back calmly, exhaling Ducado smoke like a
factory worker on mid morning break. I coughed into the microphone
and requested the culprit come forward and donate a Ducado.

Ernesto obliged and as we chatted at the foot of the stage, Albert
and Ernie Lee pretended to tune up, act busy. And with the crowd,
shuffling and restlessly murmuring, it came to light that he was a
guitar player himself and although he wasn't so very well versed in
the blues, or really much in jazz either, well, he was sure he could
fake it if we wouldn't mind his joining us on stage for a song.

Of course it would not surprise me any longer, but then, I didn't
know this guy but for his Ducados and it was a shocking surprise
when he borrowed Ernie Lee's guitar, fumbled quickly with the
strings and then burst into a sort of flamenco version of Cry Me A
River, which bowled the crowd over and pretty much ruined any
semblance of being coherent musicians I and Albert and Ernie Lee had
the rest of the night.

I didn't resent it of course. We knew we weren't very competent
musicians. Maybe we even took pride in it. But from that moment on,
Ernesto and Lydia were with us like mascots to our mediocrity.

In any case, here I was, months or perhaps years, it is sometimes
difficult to tell, back from the grand journey, one man's dust
scattered in the East River, another decomposing and the two remaining friends sat here as we all pretended I hadn't been moping for weeks, that they had to nearly physically drag me out and bring me here, this once-favourite haunt of ours.

Adding to the tension was the revelation that they'd invited a date
for me to this meeting, a date who was running late already and who,
even if she did show, was not likely to be impressed with the speed
of my beer consumption, the ragged edginess of my discomposure and
the rapidity of my frequent descents into quietude and drunken
reflection.

She arrived in a rush, this Tamara, although despite the rush, the
outward presumption of regality of her entry was a dead give away to
me, straight away that Ernesto and Lydia had been overly optimistic
about our pairing, their matchmaking. I could sense like an animal
sensed fear that this meeting was going to be doomed and perhaps it
was fear and it was Tamara, not myself who sensed the fear and knew
at once we were not destined to be despite the matchmaking and we
would all simply have to hunker down for a socially acceptable
period of time before one of us made our excuses to leave.

I wasn't sure if I could like her at all no matter how much Ernesto
and Lydia genuinely wanted or pretended to want to believe that I
would like her at all but we all seated ourselves and listened to
the music as it gradually poured on to us like a spotlight, grateful
for the temporary distraction.

(NB: then something triggers the memory the beginning, perhaps it is
only as she is listening to the music and then when the story ends
he is still sitting in the bar listening to the music.

There had been others my two matchmakers had involved in the past,
and I, a somewhat willing albeit pessimistic participant, had
suffered them freely these matchmakees, perhaps eager for
affirmation once the minimal interest had flickered and faded as
quickly as it originally appeared.

Fortunately we had the music to transfix us for awhile after cursory
introductions allowed us all to seat ourselves at the same table
under the semblance of knowing one another before allowing the music
to distract us.

I'd been briefed on her for days. Tamara would come along like an
unannounced song whose melody was familiar, rebounding from a bout
of post-infatuation traumas emitting milongas which were as they
say, pleasing to my ear. Mutual pain attracts and the assumption was
we might get along well primarily because of our mutual yet secret pact never
to bother spreading the miseries of our past relationships like a
runny egg yolk ruining a perfectly good piece of dry rye toast.

The pianist's solo sutured seamlessly with a trumpet player who'd
suddenly stood from a chair on the stage having previously sat
motionless, head bowed, a mannequin springing to life, a flower's
petals opening.

Our rapture was broken by the waitress' long awaited arrival with
beers and even though we seemed entranced by the trumpeter, once the
beer had made its appearance, gradually the humble sense of our
silence began to give way, the music a background rather than the
speck of sound the spotlight sprayed upon.

We were two couples, two weeks into a binge without specific
purpose, two couples feeling their way through each other, trepid
syncopation as we fumbled through the notes of conversation
attempting to find a mutual note.

The purpose of our afternoon out was multiple. On the one hand,
there was the mutual obsession with drinking. Drinking needed a
background excuse, something we could hear sounding like an echo of
justification but which did not deafen. The perfect excuse: let's go
listen to jazz at this club I want to show you was just a
subterranean pathway to let's go on the roll, blur our afternoon
into a semblance of acceptability.

It was also a scouting mission. How good was the talent? Would
Ernesto or I think ourselves capable of standing up on our own on
that stage, somewhere in the future or would we simply talk about it
endlessly over cigarettes and beer until the chairs were turned
upside down on their tables and the waitresses began their nightly
sweeping?

Of course initially, the cowardice of sobriety was sufficient to
keep our lips and fingers cooled to the idea. Ernesto, at least, was
talented yet his forte was classical, not jazz and so rarely had he
attempted to suffuse the two together, he preferred, as he'd
explained before inviting me, to simply enjoy the musicians who'd
gathered. But his blood spilled for performing, and I knew
instinctively that the invitation had been more of an audition for
my ears, an evaluation of whether I would dare go up, this time, or
perhaps the next, an accomplice to help him overcome his own
insecurities.

"But you, Witold, may be the inspiration, the push forward for me to
perform my own pieces," Ernesto had explained one night after we'd
all four had too much sangria and now were working on the tapas.
"You are not afraid to perform before others, unconcerned about
whatever distaste may form like saliva at the corners of their
mouths..."

I had no strong convictions about my talent and nor did anyone else.
In some ways, I was to music like homelessness was to mortgages. But
I was what they called a gamer, willing to make a fool of myself if
need be just for the chance that there might be just one in the
crowd to step forward later and launch an appreciative bluster.

There are people like that, you see. There were always people
needing to cling as willingly to fashion as religion, fads as
traditions, talents on stages, whether real or imagined, caused some
people needed the reaffirming nature such associations affirmed;
their good taste and thus their lives, miserable as they might have
been for clinging to some stage presence which I add caveat to
caveat to, such as I am no talent but they can't seem to recognise
that. There will always be one of them in the crowd to say that they
understood if only for the vicarious thrill of speaking with what
they perceived leaving the stage, something that might reaffirm them
- look at me, they might seem to bleat, I am reaffirmed.

Of course, this sort of admiration was no admiration at all, just
another oily human rubbing the soil of their failings all over your
skin.

This stage we hung near longingly was too professional however, the
musicians too accomplished. I knew my limitations. It was one thing
to play an open mic somewhere where people expected nothing and so
few crumbs or talent they would appreciate - evaluations are simply
comparisons and to many, the comparisons were more grandiose the
rarer the talent.

Here not only the musicians knew what they were doing but the
audience knew what they were listening to. No fraud could be
perpetrated here. No avant garde or experimental music excusing
my lack of talent could be feigned in this venue. I could not pass
counterfeit denominations created in my kitchen sink to a bank
teller who would not instantly recognise the fake.

So regardless of the beers we took in, limited in some fashion by
the irregular visits by the waitress, there was no kidding
ourselves. Had we'd already polished off a bottle of Tequila and
were just working our way down the ladder to the beer, the thought
might have leapt out at us to try our hand and play anyway but not
then. The talent was too sobering and the intoxication too fleeting.
None of us felt any particular compulsion to speak despite the auspices of this blind date sort-of gathering. We nestled, the four of us, at this table, clarifying our silences with silent sipping, as the musicians lifted us before gently bringing us back down.

Later there was a break. Even though the musicians from shadows were gradually replacing each other, taking turns to be spell-binding, the tall and lean pianist stood his full height at the end of one song, raised his arms above his head slowly, turned his head left and right. He sipped his drink then mumbled a vague banter about taking a break, everyone taking a break.

And into this new silence came the suddenly oppressive need to address the issue before me, the blind date before me, Tamara who now, equally cogniscent, as were we all by this point, of the begging need for small talk, began a few tentative forays.

Lydia and Ernesto tell me you are also a musician, she urges. I am in the midst of rolling a cigarette but nod wordlessly until the roll-up is done and lit and I can speak between exhalations of smoke as though this action somehow lent me an unspoken credibility.

Yes. Not very well, of course. Not like Ernesto, for example. Not like any of the musicians assembled here for this jam. But yes, I play. Saxophone. Just back from a somewhat ramshackle tour of a few cities in Europe. Not sanctioned or official, mind you. You might even consider it a sort of glorified busking but with indoor venues. Or you might consider it a bunch of shit me and a friend or maybe two friends cobbled together on the run in the spare moments before the drinking set in. In any event, wow, there I’ve gone and not even taken a breath, in answer to your question again, yes, I am a musician. Of sorts.

This sort of long-winded reply was not going to help me at all. I saw out of the corner of my eye that Lydia and Ernesto had exchanged nervous glances while Tamara bravely feigned interest. Or perhaps it wasn’t feigned. Perhaps, at least for the first 30 seconds of explanation, it was interest but an interest which was fully capable of retracting, waning, shutting down and closing shop.

Naturally I allowed myself a silent self-castigation. Nothing was easy any more. Simple conversation with strangers.

But Tamara was up for the task, temporarily anyway.

Wow, she allowed herself to exclaim delicately balancing real interest with phoney over-exuberance. She attempted to move her head away from the stream of my cigarette smoke. Europe. I love Europe. Where were you then?

Holland and the Czech Republic, mainly. But a lot of other ridiculous and occasionally sublime places in between as well. Far too many places I think sometimes now in hindsight. But, there you go. I shrugged.

And now she was allowing herself, having completed her trepid toe-in-the-water line of questioning, to bring out both barrels of her powerful, powerful ability to talk. Ironically, I found myself amazed that I’d ever worried about my own verbosity, which now, in comparison, seemed like a miniscule little single chirp in the wake of her verbal onslaught.

It was a losing bet, I knew this. But I’ve mastered this little technique over time. You don’t have to listen to anyone, not the words anyway. Just the intonations which instinctively, you can pick out from the regular rambling sufficiently to discern where one juncture of the sentence or breathless run on required comment or acknowledgement. I see. Or uh huh. Or wow. Really? These kinds of fillers.

Worse still, the free time now allotted to me by virtue of Tamara’s extrapolative discourse on Europe and European culture and European anything, time for my mind to wander.
And wander it did.

It was as though no one was with me any more. As though I’d left my body and was floating not above this table observing me pretending to listen to Tamara or even floating above the city the bar was situated in. Just floating. Far and away, as I was prone to do lately. Away from the present. Hovering yet again over the past…

Chapter Two: A Journal of Sustainability Gradually Sheds Its Pages

“I was raised with the strong of heart
But if you touch me wrong I fall apart
I found a woman who's soft but she's also hard
While I slept she nailed down my heart.”

-Morphine, All Your Way, from Yes, Rykodisc, 1995


I'd been underachieving for years.

There'd been a period of unemployment, a spotty record of warehouse
jobs at minimum wage and night after night alternating between
intoxication and hangovers.

Pervaded by a listlessness and lack of direction, punctuated by
lonely nights listening to jazz or blues in dark rooms lit only by
candles, chain-smoking, thinking about as little as possible until
the veil of drunk slowly eased over the eyes, through the pores,
numbing and transcendent yet all the while as though killing time
with the acupuncture of oblivion, bottle by bottle.

And perhaps just as inexplicably, what had seemed acceptable for the
better part of winter suddenly tasted like the bile of a bad meal
eaten too quickly.

I had to find something else, some other method of living, some
escape from the futureless present into a more tangible reality. I
needed a career.

Yet the two primary contributing factors to my DNA, namely a pair of parents whose antics I will detail more forensically later, consisted of two polar opposites, both of whom eventually affected my lack of upward mobility, motivation and general, all-around championship apathy.

Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s time to play that age-old favourite of blame shifting and responsibility shirking called “Blame The Parents”:

Contestant One, My father, Zbiegniew, being a second generation Pole growing up in the Lower East Side and Contestant Two, my mother, Miranda, a first generation Puerto Rican living in Harlem, were not, at the time of the onset of their little conspiracy to create then ruin my life, moving in
intersecting circles, either socially or culturally

Compounding the improbability of their meeting, my father had two
great passions which dominated his life and shut out most else: he
had been an electrician's apprentice by the age of 14, dropping out
of school to help his mother make ends meet (my grandfather had died
in a construction accident many years before forcing my grandmother
and father into early destitution.) and gradually building on his
experience to start his own small company, beginning with the wiring
and rewiring of his own building to that of several buildings owned
by the same landlord all over the city once he had proven himself.
One of the buildings happened to be the one on the Upper East Side
in Spanish Harlem, where my mother lived.

My father's other passion was Dixieland Jazz. Whenever he wasn't
working he was at home listening to recordings by trumpet player
Henryk Majewski, pianists Mieczyslaw Mazur, Wojciech Kaminski and of
course, Jan Boba. He bought his first trumpet when he was 12 and had
played both trumpet and piano ever since, sometimes for church
functions, sometimes for social gatherings, sometimes for street
fairs but with virtually every spare moment he had away from working
his lips were puckered, or his fingers were exercising the keyboard.

The day my father met my mother was one summer afternoon when he
happened to working on a flat in my mother's apartment building and
overheard a bomba recording emanating from one of the adjacent
flats. So intrigued by the drum ensembles, the rum barrels, maraca
and the singer and chorus calls responding alternatively to one
another that he took the brazen step of actually knocking on the
door to ask what it was.

As it turned out, it was my mother who answered, just 16 at the
time, who knew little about the specifics or the history that my
father wanted to know about, but loved to dance to it and because
she was able to bridge the language barrier between her mother's
historical narrative and my father's inability to speak Spanish, she
acted both as an interpreter and demonstrator of some of the dance
moves.

Not to mention that Zbiegniew was astounded from the moment my
mother opened the door.

Some days, many years later, my father would catch me off guard in the middle of a Saturday afternoon whilst he'd been seemingly, though not yet literally drown in his own thoughts propelled by whatever
symphony or jazz combo he was absorbed in whilst drinking one bottle
of beer after another, contemplating perhaps one of my mother‘s frequent, unexplained disappearances, he would suddenly stand up, pull the lone, tattered and barely populated photo album out of the closet and sit next to me in beery recollection, one photograph after another like precious and out of print baseball cards, collectors editions, of black and white, sometimes colour Polaroid photos of Miranda, my mother, the 16 year old girl who'd invaded my father's up-to-then unblemished heart.

Look at how beautiful she was Witold, he would mutter. Imagine what
it was like to walk along 1st Avenue with her on my arm, by Christ,
the stares we'd get from passers-by made me imagine I was walking
with a movie star. You just didn't see beauty like that in this
neighbourhood. Not back then. It was all blonde and blue,
child-bearing hips and pinched immigrant faces. Miranda was like a
matinee of fireworks shooting off stars in everyone's eyes.

I often wonder about that afternoon, somewhere in some anonymously
massive apartment complex overlooking the East River on a warm June
afternoon, my father transfixed by a new sound he'd never come
across before and my mother, dancer and translator of music from her
native island. What an odd sight it might have made; the electrician
and the beauty school student, weaving a new history in the course
of an afternoon delicately balanced on a common interest in music.

Of course, it didn't end there. There wasn't anywhere in his own
neighbourhood where he could listen to such music live and he
certainly wasn't socially capable of making the leap to weekend
visits to Spanish Harlem on his own to watch live bomba dancing and
singing and so eventually, it was sorted out that he would join
Miranda, her family and friends one afternoon for a delicately
monitored social visit which would include an evening of local food,
music and dance.

And perhaps it's not such an amazing surprise that from those
twice-monthly visits, my father attempted boleros, started listening
to music like the Rafael Munoz and might have forgotten all about
his precious Dixieland Jazz musicians were it not for my abuela's
interest when he casually mentioned one day that he too played
musical instruments quite passionately.

This eventually led to an excursion of the Melendez family down to a late August Sunday afternoon of stifling Dixieland Jazz at the Ukrainian Street where they formally met the Kazmirsky family over kielbasas, pierogies, blintzes, bacalaitos, carne guisada and empanadillas washed down with cold Polish beer and rounds of Puerto Rican rum in a cultural summit of unprecedented proportion for ours or their neighbourhood.
Zbiegniew was swollen with some sort of love sick hangover for
months and this festival was the culmination of it all. Meeting by
meeting Miranda and he had been exchanging secret glances, passing
notes in mutually yet characteristically different broken English,
using music and family gatherings as excuses to sneak away when
nobody was looking.

And before anyone was the wiser, they were already hammering out the
fine print of their relationship across the front seat of
Zbiegniew's pick up, pushing away the tools, lying down on estimate
sheets and newspapers well after the light had escaped from the
afternoon and windows had steamed up enough, the rum was gone,
nothing but crumbs left and both families were approving of what was
impossible to disprove: Miranda and Zbiegniew were an item.

Sure, it was an unusual cultural stew, taking up with a white boy,
taking up with the Chicano teenager, a West Side Story without the
gangs and knives, the choreographed dancing and well-rehearsed
singing.

Both families were compelled to agree: there was something
appealing and endearing about them – memories of their own past
passions sprang up in front of them and as though they were looking
at the children of others and remembering their own, the
cross-cultural romance of Zbiegniew and Miranda was compelling
enough for both families.

As things progress in natural causes, eventually, I became the next
bit of miraculous news to hit the two families.

It was a bit stressful of course, given that Miranda and Zbiegniew were not
married, but once that sticky situation was resolved with a ceremony
that covered two different Catholic churches, one on East 7th Street
near Tompkins Square park and the other near East 91st Street, the
only unresolved problem was whether I would grow up in Spanish
Harlem or in the East Village – as it turned out, a bit of both,
until the timely death of old lady Sadowicz in a building just
around the corner from my grandmother's flat provided an opening
which Miranda and Zbiegniew seized without much hesitation once it
was agreed there would be plenty of subway and bus rides back and
forth between the two neighbourhoods.

*****

How does this explain my own shiftlessness and dead end career
choices? Well, as in many romances which begin with focused passion,
inexperience and closed quarters, reality gradually set in, almost
imperceptibly; nearly translucent cobwebs formulating in the corners
of each's heart, petty arguments over money and of course, the
constant nip and tug and pull of two distinct cultures grinding
against each other like sand in the gears.

My mother's career as a beautician was in essence, ended upon
impregnation. My father was earning a decent living as an
electrician, we were in a rent-controlled flat and there was little
need for my mother to work.

And so their intentionally interwoven lives might have strangled
them.

Most weeks went on the same; my father off for work near dawn, my
mother trying desperately to find a means of idling away the hours –
housework in a small flat was no day-long episode and by noon, the
cleaning and shopping had been done, the boredom set in.

Some afternoons if the weather was bright, she'd drag me out to
Tompkins Square Park, mingling with the homeless and the junkies
just for a sniff of a few trees, a glance at the skies by staring
straight upwards. In my country, she liked to say, the sky is
everywhere. You don't have to break your neck to find it. Here we
live like rats in holes, staring everywhere around you Witold, look,
apartments, windows, brick and concrete. How can we live so trapped
like this?

Other afternoons, she'd pack us up on the subway or the uptown bus
to the barrio and I would spend the afternoon lost in a word of
foreign sounds and smells. It was incredible that we could travel
such a short distance to find ourselves in another world. What was
this world? It must have been similar to what it was like looking
out at East Berlin from West Berlin in the 70s. My mother made that
commute as often as possible, from the black and white and drab to a
vibrating binge of colours, animation where stoicism had only hours
before, prevailed. My sky is here, she said, looking out over the
East River. It isn't pretty, but at least it's alive.

My mother often reminded me, in her occasionally bitter, nostalgic ways, of a fruit ripped from the familiarity of its tree, gathered by migrant worker on a bleak hourly wage barely above starvation level, placed into a box with other fruit the hungry labourer couldn’t eat, and transported to the
supermarket where it was then selected by someone who had a better paying job, and later, or perhaps right there on the spot, greedily consumed, juice dribbling down the chin.

Despite the consumption of her outer skin her seeds yearned to return to that same tree and begin the process all over again.

This was how we wiled away the hours of my childhood. Long walks
seeking clear views of the skies, subways and buses, leaving one
world for the next and then returning.
Later, we'd retire home to prepare dinner and begin the vigil of
waiting for my father. Depending on how business went that day he
might be home by 6 or 7, weary, but emotionally bouncy at the
thought of what he'd accomplished that day. Other times, the harder
days, the days with disagreements with customers or, more
inevitably, other contractors and labourers, he'd stop somewhere on
the way back to wind down with a beer or two in one of several
neighbourhood Polish or Ukrainian watering holes. Some nights, after
particularly gruelling days, the socialising took a more serious
form and the drinking was more concerted and meaningful with
oblivion being the goal, shots of vodka with mugs of cold beer
chasers being the mode of transportation.

Those nights my mother and I would wait around for hours and then
gradually, she would acquiesce to allowing me to eat but would hold
off herself on the vague hope that any minute he would come bounding
up the stairs and through the front door.

Over the early years however, a pattern emerged, as it often does,
and as time went on, we ate every night at the same time, regardless
of whether or not my father was planning on being around, once a
silent, mental deadline had passed in my mother's mind, her eating a
distraction from the seething disappointment that wallowed in her
like a taxidermist's fluid.

And when my father did eventually make it home, it was no longer
fatigued but angry. Angry with the world, with the contractors, with
the crooked businessmen, with the fact that dinner was no longer
waiting, that neither I nor his wife were there at the doorstep to
great him. Those nights all hell would break loose – screaming,
yelling, threats, dishes shattering, bottles breaking – a world
within the walls of our flat of a slow breakdown of détente, a
renewed vigour for finger pointing and accusations.
And although most nights it didn't reach histrionic proportions; a
few minutes of hushed voices, the slam of a door and that was the
end of it, the pace was gradually set in stone. Some afternoons we
would take the uptown bus and rather than a few hours of cosy chat,
"we" would decide to spend the night with the abuelos. Rather, I
would, and my mother would disappear for hours at a time.

But my father, despite his habits of late nights in bars after
particularly frequent rough afternoons, was still a hard-working man
and regardless of the state he woke up in the following morning he
was always out the door by five or six at the very latest, freshly
showered, ready to take on the world. In some ways he was
machine-like in his ability to shake a hangover off, a
characteristic I would later inherit and come to appreciate but at
such a young age, at the time, I had no sense whatsoever of what was
ever going on behind the scenes.

Sometimes, if my mother and I spent the night in Harlem, my father
would return home early the following afternoon with flowers and the
world's troubles long ago off his back, smiling and singing, playing
the trumpet whilst she prepared the evening meal. Those were
harmonious and happy nights which all of us recognised as being part
of a larger pattern of redemption – the ebb and flow of happiness at
home.

My father worked Saturdays as well but usually much shorter days and
when he came home it was never with the same menace or venom he
returned with on the weekdays. Saturdays and evenings following
overnights my mother and I spent in Harlem, were always the happiest
times in our home.

My parents would play records with teenage abandon all afternoon and
evening, starting with Chopin and Debussy, moving on to the
avant-guard jazz of the Polish 60s, Kurylewicz and Trzaskowski's
hybrid of modern jazz and contemporary philharmonic hall music,
followed later by the Andrzej Trzaskowski Quartet and my father's
new favourite, "Ptaszyn" Wroblewski, the brilliant tenor sax and
flutist. And while this went on they'd sit in the parlour drinking
rum or vodka or cold beers, smoking and talking like the two
youngsters they were as though they'd peeled off the thick skin of
adulthood for an afternoon and enjoyed themselves in precisely the
manner they'd have done if they'd had a longer youth together before
I'd come along to add the weight of parenthood around their necks
like a millstone. I would watch them quietly fascinated, only vaguely acknowledged and perpetually attempting to be as obsequious as possible.

When I was older, my father would try and teach me a few things with
the trumpet and although I was receptive, it was the tenor sax that
really tweaked my ear. The first inklings were of Lester Young and
his gentle manner I listened to within the Count Basie Band
recordings before unconsciously following the chronology, the
gawking aggressive sound of Coleman Hawkins, especially in those
days leading a combo with Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and Max
Roach, among others, as sidemen.

And then Coltrane swung into my hearing and whilst at one time I had
merely dabbled, it was Coltrane's mad spiralling; his out of
consciousness playing that hooked me once and for all on the
instrument.

When the polkas and waltzes and jazz records had all been played, by
that time the room was thick with smoke and the careless, incessant
laughter and howling of late afternoon/early evening Saturday night
drunks and then my mother would insist they listen to jibaro
records, the cuatrom guitar and guiro ensembles, bongos and bass,
the old periódico cantaos of the plena, made up from old stories of
old neighbourhoods of my mother's former island, the seguidors,
segundos and requintos reverberating off the walls, shaking past
midnight with the boleros and danzas until the flat was magically
transformed by booze and music into a personal dance hall for my
parents – furniture shoved aside, yipping and clapping themselves
into a frenzy which would inevitably end with me being left sitting
in a room alone whilst they disappeared into their own for
mysterious yet equally noisy undertakings.

And of course, on Sundays, there was atonement. I, of course, had
nothing to be sorry for, nothing for which to ask forgiveness – sins
are few and far between until you first are aware that they are
possible and second, are willing to try them out.

It usually began and alternated between St Stanislaus Church ,
followed by dinner at Babcia's of stuffed cabbage, kasha, peirogies,
blintzes and pickles, a quiet afternoon of dulled senses from the
church service to the heavy meal to the silent hours sat in the
front parlour listening to the condensed orchestras of Liszt's piano
and Chopin polonaises before Mozart, Bach and Beethoven were all
brought out in due course – music for remembering in that household,
dark, craven thoughts, not conversing as it was clear in my
household of my father's youth, little talking, unless absolutely
necessary, went on at all. My babcia would only stare morosely at
photographs of my father's father, showing my the black and white
albums, their youth in Poland, the countryside, the funny dress, the
world outside a world outside a world of memories and lost hopes. It
was depressing, even for someone as young as myself who hadn't even
started school yet, just to be sitting in such a heavy, stilted air
of musical harmony yet emotional distress. We could all feel it and
not a single one acknowledged it. Still, the flickering snatches of a past and a country and culture I didn’t know fascinated me, filled me with wonder, lent substance to dreamy afternoons of silence sitting, staring at nothing.

On alternate Sundays, we would dress up and all climb into father's
pickup truck with the words Kazmirsky Electricians painted on each
side door and we would drive up town to meet my mother's family for
the day, and afternoon invariably filled with contrasts, afternoons
which whetted my appetite for exotic day dreams and although we were
still on the same island of Manhattan, it was easily as though we
had transported ourselves to another world altogether.

Of course, my parents' translation skills were required in all these
endeavours – afternoons with babcia would require my father to
translate the Polish to English for my mother's sake. I was already
familiar with the language and the sounds yet owed to age, my
vocabulary in any language was strictly limited.

On the days in Spanish Harlem, my father would endeavour to muddle
through some of the phrases he picked up via my mother, via
labourers he came across, via the little islets of Hispanic culture
appearing on nearly every street corner, and of course, via the
lyrics of the music he'd become so fond of, but even then, for the
more serious conversations he required my mother's interventions for
dialectical phrases, specific questions requiring specific answers
rather than broad, philosophical strokes of whimsical speculation.

And in the early days especially, for its flavour, colour, beat and
sassiness, pure interest alone, I was growing up more Hispanic than
Polish and imperceptibly, as they'd likely intended, large weeds of
Americanism sprouting up through the cracks in the pavement of my
Puerto Rican/Polish heritage.

But more often, I grew up in a house of boredom that epitomised the
hopelessness, the gutted future of my mother since I spent so much
time around her and so little around my father.
Although only a 40 minute bus excursion through traffic back to her home, my mother was in some ways, cut off from her own life, the life of security and
familiarity, to be thrust in to a new role of motherhood in a neighbourhood of prying, fat babushkas who spoke in dialects she could not understand as they sniffed and pointed and mumbled whenever we entered a deli or stopped in somewhere for a egg cream.

She was ostracized from social circles outside of my father and
grandmother by those who jealous of her steamy beauty, her
flamboyant personality and the loud salsa that emanated from our
windows.

She took me out of the neighbourhood frequently, enough so that I
grew up hearing more Spanish than Polish, but it wasn't enough to
take field trips thrice weekly to Spanish Harlem simply to have a
brief dip in the pools of her culture. Gradually, the unease
graduated to unhappiness, mild at first, growing as I did and my
needs for her waned.

Thinking of the future, my father began taking on more and more work
which in turn led to being home less and less frequently and even
when he was home, he was tired, overworked, grumpy, no longer the
hard-working yet simultaneously carefree Pole with a passion for
Dixieland Jazz but simply greying in flesh, tiring in spirit, dying
in soul.

Then there were fights – many of them in fact, some weeks, nearly
every night so that I grew up with the impression that the two
people who were meant to mean the most to me simply hated each other
outright, tolerating one another's existence simply out of a sense
of duty to me, as if I'd had any say in the matter at all, as if I
were the collective anchor weighing around their necks, as if it
weren't for me, Miranda would be working as a beautician somewhere
in Spanish Harlem, surrounded by her culture, surrounded by her
family and friends, surrounded by boys who chased her and praised
her beauty knowing it was not being disassembled daily by the
existence of a half-breed son neither Puerto Rican nor Polish,
simply existing somewhere on a plain of foreign American neither
here nor there.

No one came right out and said this of course, but it was there,
palpable, for all someone who spent the entirety of their day with
another, to begin to allow to sink in. My father resented me for I'd
meant more work, driven a barrier between himself and the sexual
passion of his wife, not to mention, taking away any semblance of
free time to practice his beloved music. And my mother, although at
first enthusiastically carrying me from place to place with her like
an adult pacifier, gradually began to lose interest. She was too
young to be so old and it was too early to have packed in a
promising future so early.

So rather than a prize in a game of tug of war, I became the object
of mutual resentment and blame, the cause of unhappiness, the ending
of potentials and futures. Or so it seemed. Sometimes it doesn't
take a complicated thought process or a licenses in psychotherapy to
draw simple conclusions.

Don't think it wasn't a relief to get out of the flat and finally
start school. It meant freedom for us all.

Well, not exactly freedom. True, I was free from being toted from
place to place and let out of the environment that was suffocating
me with it's resentment and blame, but I wasn't exactly free, just
on furlough.

For my mother, there was first the relief of not having to take a
kid around with her everywhere she went, but also the freedom in
there not being me around to report on our comings and goings to my
father when he came home. This in turn led to some rather strange
behaviour on the part of my mother who discovered a vicarious
excitement in affairs of all sorts which might pop up from anywhere,
any street corner outside of our or her neighbourhood, any chance
propositions, any furtive glances of lust in her direction for
regardless of being burdened with motherhood, my mother was still
quite young and still quite attractive.

Eventually her disappearances became more frequent and lasted longer.

Some times my father would come home from work, find me buried in
books and command me to come along with him, driving up to Harlem,
riding in silence up and down the streets in search of Miranda, a
habit I would later undertake myself, albeit without the pick up
truck and a lower quotient of anger boiling inside of me.

Like watching water swirling down the drain after uncorking the
bathtub so was it to watch the disappearances eating away at my
father, so it was like watching the marriage flounder, Miranda's
sudden appearances at home, drunken or remorseful, bursts of passion
flowing between them as though they both knew the legacy was ending
for both of them and I was forced to stand witness to it.

Years went by like this – it's remarkable to think how normal it all
seemed somehow. Day after day turned year after year, schooling
continued, dinners were burned, arguments erupted but were quickly
placated by my father who, although resigned to my mother's
scattered disappearances, knew there always existed the possibility
of avoiding them just like the arguments – by keeping silent,
seething within as if she wouldn't notice the resentment, as if she
were impervious to being ignored, she would remain faithful, not at
his side but not utterly abandoning the two of us either.

You wonder what goes on in two peoples' minds and hearts, linked by
a sentence of marriage with occasional furloughs of genial grace,
walls dripping with polite interaction, please, sorry, excuse me,
might I…etc.

And then as if by silent, mutual accord the incessant bickering and
the wild, drunken arguments ceased. I would often wonder for years
what precipitated this truce – if they had in fact conspired
together in the interests of their lone son's sanity or perhaps
their own, to put a definitive end to the hostilities and carry on
quietly with their lives together, yet apart. Or if this had been
precipitated by one, perhaps my father was having an affair to
counterbalance those my mother was most certainly if not openly
engaging in herself, but in any event, during the winter months a
change came over the both of them.

*****

Perhaps it was at the point when the arguments ceased entirely that
whatever lingering passion was extinguished forever.

To me and perhaps to my father it was clear my mother was merely biding her
time. She argued for the chance to go to night school and finish her
diploma. She started taking up interests completely outside the
realm of our household; palm reading, bowling, jogging, drinking and
smoking less, calm, collected, cleaning on schedule, putting dinner
on the table like clockwork, agreeing to everything my father said
much in the way he agreed with any suggestion she made. A truce of
magnificent emotional retraction, two icebergs passing in the night.

It was early in my 16th April of having played the role of millstone
around the necks of this couple with this accumulated and
uncomfortable truce of silence and impeccable politeness that an
evening arrived and my father did not make it home for dinner. As I
said, this happened once or sometimes twice a week, as it had most
of my life but that the primary difference between the early years
and the last several months being that although he would arrive back
to the flat late, he did not reek of alcohol, did not come home
shouting his displeasure or swaying with one hand on the kitchen
table, rather he would return meekly, quietly on tip toes in the
darkened room so as not to wake me and then push open the bedroom
door for whatever silent fate awaited him inside. It was on these
nights the atmosphere was almost feral and their lovemaking, no
matter how discrete they believed themselves to be, was enough to
keep me awake until the early hours of morning.

And because this was almost like clockwork, these once or twice a
week midnight returns to the flat I did not grow concerned until
dawn had begun to rub the black from the night and I had not
witnessed his return. By five in the morning I was out of sofa bed
and ritualistically having removed the sheets and pushed the
mattress back down into the recesses of the sofa quietly, having
folded and put away those same sheets in the storage space just
above the sofa thinking in the back of my mind perhaps he had
arrived with even more stealth than usual and I had simply missed
his return or slept more heavily than normal, when I had set about
making the coffee as I did most mornings so that it would be ready
for my father when he slipped out to go to work I had convinced
myself by then that this must have been the case, I must have simply
slept through his return.

But hearing the rustling in the kitchen, the bedroom door opened as
if on cue only this time, instead of my father's weary face it was
my mother's tepidly poking out and I watched as she took the scene
in quickly, myself standing there alone, and the recognition in her
face, like mine that the convincing it had taken our minds to
entertain explanations for this figment of imagination, that Witold
had somehow arrived without our knowing and perhaps left just as
stealthily, was a fabrication the light of day would not allow us to
continue believing.

And as my mother sat at the kitchen table in her nightgown slowly
sipping the coffee I could see the wheels of imagination turning in
her mind contemplating all the possible explanations. And being
privy to a not-so-secret secret regarding Witold's affair we both
allowed ourselves to believe if fleetingly that perhaps rather than
simply stopping off for a few hours of blissful infidelity, Witold
had decided to spend the entire night this time and would arrive
through the door at any minute, sheepishly and fighting off the
accusations with the excuse that he had no time to discuss things,
he was running late for work,

I could see my mother seething silently at this possibility. I could
almost see in her eyes the scenario she held for him upon his
return, how this would be the last straw, how this indiscretion
would invoke the final argument and all hell would break loose
either this morning or by evening.

And just as easily I could see as 5 became 6 and then nearly 7, this
seething was replaced by uncertainty and as though we were one mind
we turned over the idea that perhaps he had in fact decided to leave
us, had taken the initiative to decide our fates for us without
further discussion and perhaps had simply moved in with this woman
without further preamble and there would be some word, a telephone
call, some explanation of the decision taken, regardless of the
repercussions.

Whilst my mother continued busying herself with these possibilities
I got ready for school and before leaving, kissed her once upon the
cheek and took with me my books with the silent acknowledgement in
both our eyes of what had transpired and the confused state this
left us both in.

I couldn't concentrate that day in school. I secretly entertained
the idea that magically my father would appear at my school either
to pick me up and take me to this new place of his or to offer an
explanation of what had happened the night before as a preamble to
explaining the same to my mother. But he did not magically appear. I
felt every hour passing with excruciating anticipation for that
evening's meal both dreading the consequences of my father's
decision and the arguing and fighting that would be the hallmarks of
this final showdown between himself and my mother.

I ran home after the final class and found my mother still sitting
there at the kitchen table still in her nightgown and accompanying
her at the table an ashtray filled with finished butts and a bottle
of rum slowly inching its way down to its conclusion. No music
played and nothing was said between us. There would be no dinner.
There would only be the waiting for this grand finale which was
certain to kick off in grandiose fashion now that my mother had
lubricated herself against all possible scenarios, plotting the
details of her revenge in silent fury.

I decided then that rather than try and occupy this space with my
presence, intruding yet again on their private turmoil, I would
instead take my books to the public library and spend the late
afternoon and early evening until closing time at 9 at first
feigning study and later simply sitting by myself at a table staring
blankly at pages of a book I was pretending to read.

And at 9, as they were turning the lights on and off signalling the
close of library hours I gathered up the books and made the 35 block
walk back to my neighbourhood, back to the apartment where I had no
idea what would or would have transpired. As I made it down the
street I stopped meekly looking up to the windows of our flat and
saw that no lights were on.

I entered the apartment expecting at the very least some remnants of
the carnage but instead there was nothing. No sounds coming from the
bedroom, the air stale with cigarette smoke and no one inside. I
even pushed open the bedroom door after knocking twice and getting
no response and finding only my mother lying there still in her
nightgown, splayed across the unmade bed, snoring comfortably to
herself.

Unbeknownst to me whilst my mother had sat at the at the kitchen
table in her nightgown slowly washing down a bottle of rum with her
cigarettes, the phone had been ringing off the hook. At first she
ignored it believing it was only him, checking to see if she were
there, if it might be safe for him to slink back to the apartment
and gather up a few clothes for the secret move. She waited with
great anticipation for that moment, surprising him at the door as he
crept in slowly reeking of guilt but he did not arrive at all and by
the afternoon she allowed herself to answer the phone whose ringing,
in combination with the rum was beginning to drive her to the brink
of madness she believed.

But every time she answered it was someone different. A contractor,
a customer, his employees, friends all asking the same question of
where the hell was Zbiegniew, why hadn't he shown up at this job
site or that one, why hadn't he picked up his employees as he did
every morning before work with a few donuts and several cups of
coffee?
Having no explanation herself and finding herself increasingly
embarrassed to play the role of the wife who had no idea of the
whereabouts of her husband, she stopped answering the phone the rest
of the afternoon and concentrated fully on her bottle of rum trying
not to reflect too deeply on what it meant that not only had
Zbiegniew failed to come home the evening before, not only had he
not dropped in to pick up his clothing or his shaving kit, but that
he had shirked the responsibilities of his work equally and
uncharacteristically.

She didn't want to contemplate what it might have meant. She had
never known him to be anything but industrious. No matter how much
he'd had to drink the night before, no matter how enthralling their
lovemaking or hatemaking had been the night before he was always
awake the following morning by dawn ready to start the day again,
eager to begin work.

The following morning I repeated the ritual of making the coffee and
waiting but there was still no arrival of my father, sheepishly or
otherwise and this time my mother did not stir from her slumber and
I spent my breakfast with my heart in my mouth no longer capable of
imagining scenarios simply wishing something might return to
whatever might be construed as normal.

The following afternoon when I returned from school, launching
myself up the stairs with eager desperation for news, I found my
mother dressed this time, still seated at the kitchen table and
drinking coffee this time instead of rum although the pile of
finished cigarette butts was at least as high as the day before.
I've had to notify the police, she stated in an even voice without
looking up at me.

What do you mean?
Your father has disappeared.

Just because he hasn't come home for a few days…it went unspoken the
accusation that given all that had happened over the last year, her
infidelities and his, it wasn't so odd in hindsight that he would
fail to come home – this was the speech I had rehearsed so often in
my head over the last several days convincing myself that the
abnormal should in fact, have been expected - but I let the sentence
die there without saying another word until my mother lit another
cigarette and finally looked up at me with what I mistook for
amusement.

So you think that this is all my doing, do you, she accused,
exhaling. Her eyes were not playful at all rather sealed with a deep
seeded hatred I had never seen focused on myself before, only my
father. Would I now become the target?

I'm not saying it's anyone's fault, I'm just saying that perhaps he
hasn't disappeared but…

Your father has not shown up for work for the last two days, she
interrupted triumphantly as though in revealing this she could grind
my argument into the dirt as quickly as the suggestion had arisen.

And of course, we both new what this meant. We both understood
without stating so that whilst his not coming home for a few days
might have been folly the fact that he hadn't shown up for work was
a darker sign indeed.

What did the police say?

They took the details. I don't know if they took it very seriously,
of course. Men leave their families quite often apparently, she
laughed bitterly. They took the details and said they would look
into it.

And although my mother hadn't quite brought herself to believe in
their sincerity, let alone their professionalism, two days later
they reported that his pick up had been located on the corner of
Avenue C and 4th Street, not very far from home in fact, but there
was no one in it and no sign of where he'd gone or why he'd
abandoned it.

Perhaps the police themselves began to take the disappearance a
little more seriously thereafter because it appeared that after a
few more days, they had canvassed the neighbourhood near the
abandoned pick up and had found a person or two who could vaguely
recall having seen a man plunge himself from the East River Park off
the banks into the East River and begin swimming toward Brooklyn on
the other side.

No one could be certain of course if this was my father. As those
sightings had appeared after midnight, the few witnesses having
thought little of it, a madman swimming across the East River in the
middle of a Spring night perhaps drunk, perhaps encouraged by
whatever inner evil they could not imagine springing forth, none had
considered notifying the police. Not in that neighbourhood whose
residents were more concerned with turf wars and shootings to be
preoccupied with a man swimming across the river.

What he did or did reckon for was that the Atlantic tides that run
through the narrow channel of the East river make it the most
turbulent in the area and were famed for the problems they gave to
sailors in the 17th century, so much so the midway point was
nicknamed, because of its deadly whirlpools and rocks, Hell Gate.

My mother didn't make it to the memorial service.

Once the idea that my father had drown himself, either intentionally
or accidentally, began to sink in, she appeared to see the light.

I was 16 by then, old enough to know the time was drawing near and
sure enough, within days, I came home from school one afternoon to
find the house empty.

Well, the furniture was all there, there were foodstuffs in the
cupboards, the laundry and dishes had been done. One less chore for
the guilty conscience. But she was gone, I could smell it the moment
I opened the door. This wasn't a disappearance to aggravate my
father, my father was dead. This was a disappearance to liberate
herself entirely from the memory of her life.

I checked the closets for her clothing and found a great deal of
them gone. All the shoes, all the dresses, all the hats and scarves.
A few winter coats remained, a few drabber styles and retired
undergarments stayed behind but all else, toothbrush, mascara,
deodorants, perfumes and soaps, shampoo and the essentials for
running away for good were gone.

And there I spent my entire afternoon, morbidly sorting through all their private stuff neither had wanted to take with them, wherever they ended up.

There were some bits of correspondence in my mother’s boxes; letters in Spanish back and forth from Puerto Rico, little scraps of paper pledging love in my father’s careful script, notes she kept to herself on mundane miscellanea, bits and pieces torn from magazines with tips on hairstyles, skin care, love- making, fulfilling dreams, get-aways.


Odd, I thought. My father was dead yet all of his personal effects,
all his clothes, all his documents and papers, auld tax returns,
business statements, photographs, music – all of it were still here
lingering like a foul odour. On the other hand, my mother had left
little behind but the shell of the skin she had shed, free for the
first time in her life.

On the kitchen table, which I had somehow missed in my investigative
rummaging, was what I thought was a letter but as it turned out,
merely bank statements, account numbers and passwords. Their legacy
to me.

She'd put the bank accounts into hers and my name jointly so that I
could take money whenever I needed it. I never really knew if she
trusted me not to simply empty it out, if she had another stash off
a life insurance policy she planned to cash in or if she simply
didn't care, had another source of income to draw from, hell, maybe
even another man, a sugar daddy. Or a series of them. I didn't know
and yes of course I was curious but more than curious I was hurt,
abandoned and very busy turning my emotions and my soul into a
tempered steel I presumed would be strong and durable enough to
withstand any future such abandonment.

Not that I had any intention of drawing close to anyone. I had never
been that close to anyone to begin with. Having spent as much time
as I did growing up either on my own or in the company of a quasi
catatonic grandmother who didn't speak a word of English anyway, I was rather accustomed to entertaining myself. Games, fantasies, books, finding little niches in the cityscape that would allow me to watch people from a secluded vantage point.

I can't really say that I was ever lonely. No, I didn't have many, or
perhaps on reflection, any friends to speak of. There were a few
Polish boys in my neighbourhood about my age who went to my school
but mostly they targeted me for spare change or verbal or physical
abuse rather than friendship.

There were a few kids who were about my age in the barrio my mother
took me to during her family visits when she was utterly sick of the
East Village and dragged me along with her on a series of buses back
to her home. Those kids seemed to despise me even more than the kids
in my own neighbourhood. What was my mother doing with that white
kid. What was that white kid doing in their barrio, on their turf.

They didn't want to befriend me, they wanted to beat me. They wanted to abuse me for being different or for even being some impurity between white
and Puerto Rican, having a foot in both worlds but a foot hold in
neither.

So I’d already learned from the start to stay away from them and everybody else. My mother was quite satisfied that I left her to her own whims. When I was younger, and probably only because I was too young to be left alone or my mother had serious doubts my grandmother was capable of caring for me, she
had no choice, but it didn't take much cajoling from me, once I'd reached 10 or 11 to convince her I could be trusted to stay in the flat on my own content with my instruments or my books and when I told her I wanted to spend the
day in the library, sure, even she looked at me a little disdainfully but agreed without much protest.

They tell you that shit about not feeling loved but the truth is, I
don't think I was ever really aware of what that was. I wasn't
cogniscent of missing out on anything because frankly between what I
saw in my own household and what I saw or heard of or about those
around me, it didn't seem like I was really missing out on much
anyway. For the most part life was pretty much a self-contained
world of wonder at that around me, the greatest city in the world,
and the strangers in it. Wondering who they were but not wanting to
know the truth, just imagining what their own daily lives were like.

So despite the fact it was still somewhat shocking, the duel events,
formative perhaps but still, when it happens to you it's as though you're dreaming it anyway, there isn't the distance to judge it by or really even the wisdom to perceive it either from up close and inside or further away, the situation never felt as traumatising as I would later read others believed it was when they told me or I read about their own experiences. A bunch of excuses
not to get on with it, or get on with it in some shitty way that made you miserable instead of feeling lucky.

I admit, I did feel lucky.

The Blame Game was officially over.

All I'd ever really wanted to do when I was growing up was to get grown
up and get on with my life. With both parents gone by 16, sure
enough, my life was there to get on with.

In some ways I'd have expected my father to have been a little more romantic, a little less pragmatic considering his early love of music. It's
probably the main thing I wondered about him as I grew up in my late
teens and watched others. What event had caused him to forsake the
music and get down to business, to become so focused not just on his
trade but on making money from it.

Sure, I felt the resentment - it was brought up often enough to
stick in my memory, the idea that if I hadn't come along when I did, or if I'd been aborted, there'd have been plenty more good times in the years ahead to squeeze in before parenthood for both of them.

I read enough immigrant stories in my time to realise how many
parents sacrificed their own futures for the sake of their children and certainly from all appearances that was the noble business my father was carrying on with. But perhaps it was tinged ever so slightly by the unnerving feeling that even though he was doing it, he did so grudgingly, resentfully, maybe even angrily.

Adults would ask me stupid questions when I was a kid like, what do
I want to be when I grew up. I want my youth to end abruptly,
caesura by parenthood, to adopt a profession that I might well have
cared about but was forced out of a sense of responsibility to take
far more seriously and far earlier than I'd ever expected. I wanted to resent my life, my child, my spouse, all anchors, millstones around my neck so that at least even if I hated every second of my life I could shroud myself with a sense of chivalric justice that I'd done the right thing.

Here's how I'd hear about it: a favoured theme I'd overhear in drunken
arguments in the bedroom late at night- it'd be muffled of course
but eventually, if you hear the same phrases enough times, even
muffled, you begin to get the gist. You begin to decipher, to
translate, to read between the lines.

My father would be complaining about the injustices of it all, the responsibilities of work and fatherhood, how his life was ripped from him and logically, my mother would feel offended and hurt, would scream in Spanish at him until he'd slap her quiet and then you'd hear that angry, hard cold
voice asking snidely and rhetorically, what - should I be like
people in your neighbourhood and just forget about it, shirk my
responsibilities, run away, abandon them for my own freedom? Should
I go on welfare like your father? Then he would snort in disgust, a
few more slaps would ensue and more often than not he'd go back out,
doors slamming everywhere, somewhere into the night to drown his
sorrows even deeper and find other drunks to drown them with. Drunks
who understood exactly what he was talking about.
So naturally I was curious: what would my father's life had been like had I not been born? What would he have been doing?

I asked him this once when we were out walking along the
piers on the West Side looking out over the Hudson River at Jersey
when he'd spat out some incomprehensible hatred he'd been mulling
over in his head unspoken for days but for monosyllabic grunting.

He smacked me in the head. Not hard, mind you. Not out of anger,
more out of some barbaric form of loving denial. What kind of stupid
question is that Witold?

I shrugged. It was a Sunday, early in the morning and we were on one
of the walks he would go on every Sunday morning, usually alone only
this time he'd dragged me along for some reason and clearly seemed all the more annoyed for having done so.

I don't know. I was just curious.

It was his turn to shrug. In his world an honest question deserved
an honest answer. Or maybe he was just still a little drunk from the
night before. I didn't know. I didn't inhabit his world, just a satellite around it.

Well I don't know Witold. I don't waste my time thinking about things like
that. Nor should you. You are my son and that's that. Why would I
waste time thinking about if you weren't my son? What would be the
point?

I dunno. Sometimes I think about what if I'd been born with one leg instead of two or if I'd been born in another country instead of America or if we lived on the West side instead of the East side. I don't know why.

Well, it's a stupid way to think. You are what you are. You have two legs,
not one, you live in America, not Russia or Poland, for which, I
would add you should be very grateful for on both counts. So don't
waste your time thinking about what could be or could have been or
might be. Just deal with what is. You should be happy that you are
in the situation you are in. Do you know what kind of life I had as
a boy? Nothing but work. You don't have to work at all. You will
eventually, but you don't now. It's a luxury I didn't have. My
father made me work when I was 8 years old, helping him with his
deliveries, helping him try to make ends meet so we didn't starve to
death. And you know what Witold? As crummy as my childhood was it
was a million times better than my father's, just like yours is a
million times better than mine. Don't be an idiot. Enjoy it. Soon
enough you'll be a man of your own with your own real problems, not
fantasy problems. You'll have your own responsibilities and then you
won't have time to worry about what if. Only about what is.

And my mother? Sure, for many years when I was growing up, despite
the burden, I was the source of immense pride to her. She took me
everywhere, bragged to her friends and family what a bright and
promising boy I was, taught me to be a gentleman to ladies, light
their cigarettes, open doors for them, flatter them about their
beauty and worship them.

But eventually, who knows what age exactly, 5 or 6 or 8, somewhere
along the line I began to resemble my father too much perhaps. I
asked too many pointed questions which were unanswerable perhaps,
but anyway, I became less important, less a source of pride, more of
a burden, more of a reminder of what she couldn't have as long as I was tagging around.

Maybe it started when she stopped going so often back up to the
barrio, like it was too much work or there were too many
complications, but somewhere along the line she started drinking
more frequently - not with my father but alone, in that flat, in the
afternoons once she knew my father wasn't coming home for dinner anyway so I'd be left to sort out my dinner on my own.

In any event, she stopped bringing me anywhere she went. If I stayed
in she'd look over at me and ask me why I wasn't outside. Sometimes she'd
demand it, go out and play with the other kids. Why do you sit at
home all the time reading, dreaming your time away? What's wrong
with you? Why don't you have any friends? Get outside, it's
beautiful out, GO play. Leave me alone. Leave me in peace for
crissakes. Get out of my hair. I don't care what you do, just go,
get out. Here, take a few dollars, just get out.

And frankly, it was easier being away. All the theatrics would be
concluded by the time I'd gotten home. Usually after midnight. Yeah, the library closed at 8 or 9 and I'd just wander the streets, never really getting in
trouble - sometimes I'd go to the movies, sometimes I'd just wander
around Times Square watching all the strange people doing weird
things to themselves and others, sometimes I'd just wander along on
main avenues where it was safest, away from gangs and troublemakers,
just another anonymous figure in the darkness. I'd learned from
boyhood beatings to sort of blend into the background as though I
didn't really exist or as though I were invisible. And I preferred
it that way.

It helped too that I did well in school. I didn't mind school, other than all the bullshit about getting picked on or made fun of or beaten up. The parts in class, absorbing, listening, demonstrating I knew the answers, that was all good fun.

But year after year, the classes became less interesting, more time
was spent trying to control uncontrollable classes and thus
eventually I lost interest in that too.
Which of course, was all resolved once my father disappeared and my
mother followed in short order.

I was 16, I could drop out and didn't have to bother any more. It wasn't that I didn't want to learn.

It was wanting to learn what I wanted to learn at my own private
speed, not limited by the abilities of teachers to simultaneously
subdue the rowdiness whilst continuing to teach. And to learn about
what interested me, oftentimes which wasn't part of the curriculum.

***

I didn't have many marketable skills to speak of. I'd learned a few
whispers of the trade my father worked in and picked up skills like
lint in the bellybutton merely by the experience of being on the job
sites in my own free time when I wanted to earn a little extra cash
after school.

My father probably dreamt some day of passing his electricians
business still intact down to his son one day but of course, without
my father, that business didn't last forever.

With that there was little more. How they were ever married was
always somewhat of a mystery to me. Your father, my mother used to
tell me in the following weeks leading up to her own disappearing
act, was not only quite charming, but industrious, always on the go,
always working, always saving money, thinking of the future. So in
the end it probably wasn't love so much as a means of extricating
herself from her own barrio of listless machismo that centred around
bodegas and cat calls and whistles collecting unemployment or other
forms of government benefits. At least that's how she presented it.
I wanted to get out, anywhere and your father was the only available
ticket. That ticket was gone but she was still young, there was
still some residual value left in her to trade upon.

 CHAPTER THREE: The Contiguousness Of Solitude And Acquiecence

Without solitude
You bang your head
Against the Walls
That other people built
--From The Diaries of Witold Kazmersky, notebook three, somewhere
between pages 113-117.

Of course, this put me in a bit of a bind yet also afforded me my
own inherited flat, a luxury not many schoolmates could brag about.

I told no one of my mother's disappearance, insisting instead that
she was in bed suffering from the depression of my father's death
and some sort of intestinal flu when she missed the wake.

Given the heavy pall that had nearly suffocated me in that flat, I
can't deny it was a little more than liberating to realise that I
had the place to myself, that there was no reason to keep any of
their memories sitting around me like uncollected rubbish.

I had to make diurnal visits to babcia simply because she was still
in the neighbourhood but by god, it was stifling. The unrelenting
tears and babbling away in Polish that I kept insisting to her I
didn't understand, the foods she cooked for me whilst making little
croaking noises about the no good mother of mine rotting away with
some sickness in bed whilst I was left to fend on my own. I didn't
have the heart to tell her my mother had already disappeared and
frankly, I was worried what babcia would have insisted upon had she
known, so I kept mum about it and as she never really left her own
flat very often to begin with, it was a secret that lasted until she
finally gave in to the end of life herself several months later,
still believing my father, her son, was still out there somewhere, alive. She died believing it.

And although I still had the number and address, the Puerto Rican
side of my family who had once caressed me with unadulterated
fascination, vanished as though I had only imagined them all along,
perhaps conspiring guiltily with my mother or perhaps simply not
caring or even forgetting I'd ever existed in the first place. They
had their own troubles and didn't need me adding to them.
So I was alone and I didn't waste much time to relish in it after
all these years cramped into that one bedroom flat with my parents,
stifled into reclusion.

Oh, I kept the hi-fi, the records, and the photographs. I kept the
things that mattered to me about their existence. Month by month, in
secret rubbish sacks, I assembled bits and pieces of the past and
left them out by the kerbside for the homeless and the scavengers
and eventually, the garbage men. The bed and the sofa and the
kitchen table were all disassembled hacked to manageable pieces with
a hatchet I purchased from the hardware store on the corner and
carried out in the middle of the night to the kerb.

There wasn't much money left but I calculated roughly rent and
utilities, the cost of pedestrian meals on a monthly basis and how
long I could last on the remaining savings in between. Approximately
two years. My father had been quite industrious after all.
I stopped going to school of course. What was the point? I had
entire days, week after week into months with nothing to do, no
obligations, no one stifling their hatred and arguments for my
benefit, for the benefit of peace. It was everywhere this peace. I
started hanging out in the Public Library on 42nd Street, liberated
from strict curriculum to read what I saw fit as I saw fit, whenever
and wherever to educate myself as the desire arose testing myself
only against myself and how much I wanted to learn.
It had been a lonely existence when they'd been there yet somehow,
in their absences, I felt a comfort I had never known – relying on
myself was no novelty – not having to feign normalcy, was. But this
loneliness was no longer as palatable because there was nothing to
contrast it. Order needs chaos to be order by comparison. Now I was
without the chaos. Order no longer seemed like order. Chaos seemed
naturally internal now instead of external. It liberated an entirely
side of me I had barely known existed.

Alone there are no toes to step on. You are free to walk as you
please.

Unfortunately, not every memory of them had been removed from the
house. There were two bottles of vodka and a crate of beer which I
finished off in the first week. In seven days I experienced every
degree of euphoria, desperate despair, boredom, excitement, lucidity
and fog imaginable. I played their records day and night, drinking
without few breaks but for to pass out, vomit, wake up and start
again. This was my mourning and my toast to their lives, discovering
the path to alcoholism. It's not like they hadn't left plenty of
markers along the path to guide me to their legacy.

So the money didn't last as long as the Two Year Plan would have
indicated. And eventually the reality of needing to find some sort
of gainful employment began creeping in. I'd lost the only job I'd
ever had working for my father as an after-school and weekend
electrician's apprentice still several years short of competency,
and was rather stuck then for something to do.

What followed was a transient tide of part time jobs requiring no
skills and paying even less, jobs in restaurants as a dishwasher, as
a busboy, as a waiter eventually all the way up to a bartender
although even this was done with great mediocrity and depressing
incompetence, miserable Ukrainian dumps and delis, third world and
Old World juxtapositions in a workaday world of one uneventful week
after another.

And so on it went, year after year, futureless vista after
futureless vista, drowning my sorrows in my dead father's flat,
reading books bought from street vendors, mincing around in
Ukrainian and Polish pubs between worlds, listening nostalgically to
fading salsa records that mother had never bothered to take with
her, biding my time until one day perhaps I too would follow my
father's legacy into the East River.

But something happened along the way to give me a little kick, a
slight start.

I somehow happened across Albert through these myriad fluctuations
and pointless meandering from point to point in no discernable
pattern. One night I came across him slouched at the bar in his
porkpie hat, a Winston hanging from his lip as he stared at some
point in the wall in deep meditation. He had a scraggly greying
beard and the appearance of a man who had just been pulled out of a
spider hole after 6 months on the lam.

It was barely eleven and I was already swaying, this pub being only
a pit stop on the way to bigger things.

I stood next to him, sipping the beer and taking particular notice
of the labels of every bottle on the shelf in front of me, becoming
intimate with the names, memorising them and the order in which they
ran, right to left. There was music playing from the jukebox,
familiar music. Have you ever seen a dog watching you whilst
pretending not to watch you? That's how I stood beside Albert.

There was another guy to my left who had been drinking quietly and
smoking with fever who suddenly began muttering to himself, sparked
apparently by the song on the jukebox which he found, he stammered,
beneath us all, an insult to humanity. It was some catchy Motown
song which elicited a barely familiar melody in my ear but filled
this guy next to me with revulsion. Albert looked up from his dead
stare into his ashtray when the guy croaked a few bars of Ein
Deutsches Requiem by Brahms.

That was my father's favourite, Albert admitted unprompted. But I
always hated it. Nietzsche accused Brahms of making a fool of
himself by trying to pass himself off as the heir of Beethoven.
Delusional, false. He falls back lazily on the past, fooling himself
with the familiar rather than fooling the crowd into believing he is
uniquely the great modern style, like Wagner, false and fooling the
crowd rather than himself with this myth of modernity.

Albert's eyes are closed as he speaks. The smoke from his Winston
curls around his head, wafting upwards. When he opens them again, he
points to the bartender, signalling another beer for himself.

The guy to my left appears uncertain of how to proceed. You could
see his eyes, one second filled with the lust of a great monologue
building, the next second, puzzled. He shrugs inwardly, almost
imperceptively and looks down at his beer, deflated. There was no
bark left in him as he busily tried to address the idea of the
delusional and the delusionist. Brahms and Wagner. He was like a man
enmeshed in a crossword puzzle, cranking out the words, one line
after another until finally, stumped, he puts the crossword down and
goes back to his beer.

The song was over and another began. There was no further
commentary, both back to their neutral corners.
Albert rocked back and forth on his heels, lighting another Winston
once the previous one had been ground out and took a victorious,
smirking sip of beer.

"Ridendo dicere severum",

The man to my left finally and suddenly erupted. Through what is
laughable say what is sombre. German composers are too serious
anyway. I used to teach Nietzsche at Manhattan City College. I
remembered reading that rubbish aloud, forcing those poor bastards
to memorise chunks of texts like Talmud students.

Albert stopped rocking, took a long puff off the Winston.

It is the ethereal we are looking for, he cackled uncertain for a
moment perhaps if he was even serious himself but pushing onward
anyway, carelessly tossing provocative statements in the air like a
bored baton twirler.

Like Chopin's Polonaise in A flat Major, Op. 53? I had cleared my
throat to make sure I wouldn't be misunderstood, looking first to
the man on my left and then Albert.

Precisely! Albert proclaims, finger in the air.

My father played that song every Sunday, during breakfast, for
years.

Interesting. My father was a violinist in the New York Philharmonic,
Albert exhaled, looking at me through smoke-squinted eyes in
re-evaluation.

My father was an electrician, I replied with the straight line.

My father was a Trotskyite! The man to my left exclaimed as if
releasing the secret of his life out of his hands to fly away.
I signalled the barman – another three beers, the first round of
solidarity purchased in a night wavy with empty proclamations and
beery toasts.

*****

By the time last orders were called, the man to my left, Gifford, as
it turned out, was swaying unequivocally like a man on a ferry
crossing across a choppy and disturbed sea. The jukebox was playing
Billie Holiday's Strange Fruit.

I've got to go, he muttered, feeling around his pockets for
unidentifiable objects, hanging his coat over his shoulders.

Wunnerful. Unexpected.

Albert and I were left contemplating last orders and what to do
next.

Of course, what to do next was a simple manner, in many ways. More
beer. More beer as though there was nothing else going on in the
world but the distance between this bar, the corner bodega and my
flat. Why? Why, you can ask yourself night after night wondering
when enough is enough, if it is ever enough. It never is. Just
around the corner, after the next brain cell has desisted, lies
peace. Numb and fluid.

*****

After that first night , which after hours of desultory poking into
one another's business, sharing histories; in my case, abrupt and
brief, in his, spiralling into core values, important books and
philosophical bends, political diatribes and hateful harangues on
fellow humanity which, even in the fog of drinking, seemed to convey
a bitterness so refined, so enmeshed that I wondered why in the
world he'd ever begun speaking to me to begin with, why he'd left
his own flat to venture into the herd, ended with what seemed
notification by him that I'd passed some unspoken examination and
looking back on it, perhaps the examination was more the artesian of
his potential protégé than mutual strangers venturing into a rare
air of grudging friendship, that is, not equals but symbiotic – for
him, the ego of finding an appropriate and willing student, for me,
the opportunity to latch on to someone not only sparing me an
indefinite sentence of continued solitude but providing me with the
materials with which to paint my masterpiece.

It was through Albert and only commencing from a period of time
shortly after meeting Albert that I began to sit up and take notice
of myself because of his excoriations on my listlessness and
pointless existence. He summoned me to take pride in myself, dazzle
myself with underdeveloped possibilities, tending to me daily like a
botanist discovering an unknown form of weed. He provoked me to
wonder if there wasn't something more to my life than this endless
series of dead end jobs and sweet memories of meringue music mixed
with Polish waltzes.

It was Albert, through his cunning and encouragement that compelled
me finally to try and figure out a method of moving forward, forget
all about the past and reconstruct a future out of the present
beginning with now.

Dropping out is just another form of mourning, he told me one night
when we had spent the afternoon smouldering in dark, dank bars whose
only populations were morose, intoxicated and hopeless. The
intellect is the remedy, one of the few. The intellect stimulated by
music. We are two musicians with one bass and one saxophone.
Certainly, irregardless of the parameters of talent we possess,
between us we should be able to find some modicum of releasing the
mourning and embracing the feel of it.

You've got to have self respect to have confidence and to have self
respect you've got to have a reason, he went on, his beard speckled
with beer. Pride. So have some pride in yourself, stimulate
yourself, and get out of this rut, this cycle of dead end jobs and
emotionless drifting. And in the meantime, we'll begin our band.
That will be the release of the mourning. Work for self respect,
like your father did and just as he did, find your haven in your
music.

Are you crazy? Why would I want to emulate someone who drowned
himself in the East River? And what about you, I countered? You have
no job.

And this was in fact one of the many pieces of the puzzle of Albert,
not only the air of self sufficiency, but the fact of it. Indeed, he
was unemployed and when I questioned as to whether he had ever
worked at all, in moments of brazenness when I asked how he managed
to live this life of seeming self-reliance with his own flat,
apparently endless financial resources and few constraints save for
his fear of allowing his self-described original thoughts being
suffocated by the collective of society, he would only frown as
though I had violated an unspoken etiquette and indeed, had he been
a stranger I would never have imagined asking such a question, but
since we were spending so much time together and since so much of
that time spent together bordered on manic intoxication, such inner
protocols seemed ambivalent at best, unnecessary at worse.

Ah, but I've had a career, he dismissed one evening, the arm
attached to the hand which held the ever-burning cigarette falling
to the table like an uncontrollable twitch. It's necessary to give
perspective to a life of listlessness. Of course in my own eyes,
this sort of existence is quite the inverse of listlessness, it is
the damning reassurance of a regular, numbing profession which is in
fact the listlessness, the demands of working to the benefit of the
employer whilst simultaneously subjugating your own needs to that
employer, all for the purpose of having a sense of belonging, for
the purpose of some misery pay which you will scrape together a
living with, all conspiring equally to suffocate the soul, erode
desire that isn't desire for material goods assimilated through
thousands of hours of not-so-subtle advertising convincing
somnambulists to want to purchase goods they don't even know they
wanted in the first place. Listlessness is doing things simply
because you're told to do them. Report at 9 am in a shirt and tie
and sober, ready to do whatever tasks assigned to you. Leave when
you are told. Eat the foods you are told to eat because they are
good for you or because one company's food product has more
advertising revenue than another's. The list goes on and on but the
gist is you are not your own. You cannot think for yourself unless
you wish to think about ways to improve yourself which are
professionally and socially appropriate.

And yes, I'm quite fortunate in that respect. But I did at one time
subjugate myself similarly and I can say the experience, Witold, is
worth it. Because it is important to couch such knowledge in
empirical evidence – you should not take my word for it or anyone
else's and certainly it will have little basis solely by thinking to
yourself that you don't like the idea of putting on a noose and
hanging your life from the scaffolds of corporate brainwashing. For
it to matter, for it to compel you to revulsion strong enough to
reject the notion entirely, you have to learn to hate it yourself,
first hand and thus, understand why you hate it.

As for your employment history, these have all been jobs that were
simply menial labour. There is in fact, not enough demoralising
environment to drown in, the existence itself is more demoralising
than any environment can overcome. But place yourself in a corporate
environment, Witold, and you will see the true nature and soul of
the enemy be that it external or internal and you will know for sure
whether or not you hate it enough to reject it.

And as you have asked countless times, how do I, with no apparent
method of supporting myself, continue to exist a life more
comfortable than a person leashed to the corporate mentality, the
answer is that I do not. With the exception of music, books, tobacco
and alcohol, I spend very little money at all. The flat is rent
controlled, which is a key element dyspeptic aversion to constant
employment, minimising unnecessary expenditures, and yes, I believe
housing, given the obscene amount of revenue landlords generate
simply by owning real estate to be unnecessary, and as for my
sources of revenue, it was clever investment of stolen goods, a
rather nefarious past I will admit to only vaguely but the truth is,
I took what needed to be taken, not necessarily what I needed but
what needed to be taken from others, excesses which bordered on the
obscene.

Yes, I targeted expensive automobiles but some were targeted solely
because they were popular and easy to sell on the stolen car market
or were targeted because they HAD been popular once and thus their
parts were worth more. Sometimes these were not even the most
expensive cars. But there are many levels of criminal
ostentaciousness and yes, you might find it ironic that I would use
the word "criminal" to describe a person's ostentaciousness but not
an act considered by society to be criminal and you would be correct
but inaccurate, but briefly and at its very basic there are two
within the car market – those expensive enough those purchasing them
are doing so to announce their wealth thus, the owners' importance
and the other being the popular car which is never popular because
it is cheap but because society has trained them to believe it is
popular. I won't bore you with my analysis of advertising for
automobiles, perhaps another time, but for the purposes of revealing
a portion of my past to you and in explanation as to how I came to
have the resources to sustain myself without working, I took other
peoples' cars on a fairly mass scale in a city with unlimited
resources of expensive automobiles and used such actions for my own
profit.

It is viewed by society as a criminal act or in my case, a series of
criminal acts and yet, I feel no remorse for one because I don't
believe there is need for cars in a city with such expansive and
reliable public transportation and thus, those driving cars when
they could just as easily use such public transportation are
inevitably contributing to the darkening of the air I breath, again
an irony coming from a man who chain smokes but for those who don't,
the air is already choked with pollutants so why add to it more
simply out of laziness or a sense of entitlement when all those
millions of working class people themselves are subjected to the
trials and tribulations of a seemingly expansive and reliable public
transportation system.

Owning a car in this city is in fact, mocking those who either chose
not to own one or who cannot afford to own one and that sense of
superiority in my code of regulations is as criminal if not more
criminal than my stealing such cars and turning them into my own
profit. Perhaps had I given the profits away to charity I would have
been able to make a better argument, based upon the nobility of the
action, that I was not in fact a criminal, but the fact that I did
not and used such profits to enable myself to avoid the same
drudgery as my fellow citizens, if anything, THAT makes me criminal
but I am willing to live with that. I am hurting those I wish to
hurt and my motives were purely selfish and yet I feel no remorse.

What does that say of my character? It says that I will do that
which is necessary to avoid that which I find unnecessary or
distasteful. All very convoluted, I assure you and as you will have
already noted by the irony first of describing those from whom I was
stealing as being more criminal than myself and the issue of added
pollutants in the air I breath when I myself am a chain smoker but
not all of life is logic, Witold, no matter how much the
rationalists would like you to believe it.

Despite immodesty and his drinking, Albert was in fact, quite
diligent in his pursuits. He would spend hours alternating between
reading and practicing his double bass which loomed in his spare
bedroom study like lover waking up from under the covers.

Whereas Albert had once been my drinking buddy, chess companion,
mentor in matters of literature and music, the older brother I never
had, as if he had rehearsed the same song my father and mother had
played, the departure theme, he too would one day be gone and when
he was gone I'd been busy making amends.

From him I'd learned to drink Guinness instead of gassy Polish
lagers, roll and smoke my own cigarettes, read and listen not to the
classics, but those writers and composers falling between the cracks
of the classics who often escape notice save by those who find it
compelling to stretch themselves beyond the classics or whose
interest brings them, perhaps like a scuba diver donning a wet suit
as opposed to a person sticking their toe in a body of water and
finding it too cold, retracting the toe with an embarrassed giggle
and never knowing the creatures existing beneath the surface. And
each day I would feel as though these unknown heroes of the sublime
were walking throughout his apartment, room to room. The walls would
shake with their compositions, books were spread open to key
passages, highlighted and underlined for my edification. Another
world opened up that I scarcely knew existed.

There was a lot I learned about him in the interim and I would have
imagined by comparison there was very little he was learning about
me simply for the fact that I was undeveloped and thus, beyond a
brief history, there was little to know, much to learn. It was true
for example, that some of his teeth were rotting and I knew this not
because I had looked inside of his mouth but solely because on those
rare occasions when his breath was not masked in a camouflage of
alcohol and stale tobacco, the breath of rotting teeth was palpable.
It was true that he wasn't the most conscientious groomer. Not that
he didn't bathe or that he smelled foul – but he was consistently
dishevelled and I got the idea at whatever I might have appeared at
his flat, regardless of whether the visit was planned or
unannounced, that I had just woken him from a long sleep. His eyes
were alternately dreamy and intense, depending on the subject
matter. As you progressed through his flat the smell gradually
metabolised into stale beer and cigarette smoke clinging to every
fabric, deep in the years of abuse. There were tropical fish,
televisions set at different angles throughout the sitting room,
loud music at all hours which his neighbours came to express their
dissatisfaction for in torrents of abusive language and slamming
doors, beer everywhere, stained on the counters, in the cushions,
across album and CD covers, soaked in the rugs – a virtual
laboratory of misjudged beer.

The funny thing was no matter how much he drank he never seemed
visibly intoxicated. Certainly this was an illusion woven by years
of public drinking and functional alcoholism, but it was an
impressive trick he performed for me as my own head grew more and
more muddled by the hour.

Albert was a man of the Classics hidden in a drunkard's life.

And I, until he decided he wanted to experience some
fantasy of trans-American highway adventure, his prodigy.

*****

The experiment in finding a career was naturally, given my
disinclination for bowing to societal pressures and social mores, an
absolute failure.

I entered on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder, the copy
machine. I choked a tie on every morning, ate a disgusting diner
lunch every afternoon and came home at night, salivating with the
thought of drinking beer to quench the tireless boredom.

We rehearsed sporadically. Usually we were at Albert's flat simply
so he wouldn't have to drag the bass to mine. We both worked on
compositions in our free time, compositions which bordered on being
rip offs of other with extended improvisations. The extended
improvisations weren't the progressions of ego but more lack of
discipline and they also allowed us time to practice without
practicing together.

We didn't have a particular philosophy of the music although we
usually followed a pattern wherein I would produce a melodic sort of
lead line, Albert would allow for some elaboration and then
introduce his own bass line. It made for a very mellow and lonely
linear sound. It was in short, as Albert coined, "thinking music".
After a few months of this regime, Albert free to carry on as he had
before meeting me and I going to the copyist's job in the
corporate's world to add depth to a thus-far shallow series of
experiences, none of which once my mother disappeared, had been
anything but avoidance of such miserable experiences, and the two of
us meeting with the excuse of rehearsing to drink.

On weekends, after particularly raucous Friday Nights, Saturday was
spent lying in bed with the hi-fi droning out melancholic blues and
jazz, sometimes sombre chamber music. Usually the relief of washing
the grime of that hideous suit and tie world where I was nothing but
a person treated with the simultaneous disdain and civility one
treats a retarded person in public, was a half day's work in and of
itself.

I didn't hate the work, mind you. It was simple. Document
duplication. Nothing duplicitous, like shredding documents. Just
reproducing them. And not in a Kinko's-style entity in the global
juggernaut matrix with a name tag and a fake sugar collegiate
how-can-I-help-you pasted-on smile but on the 37th floor of a
massive office building housed on Park Avenue just a short walk to
Grand Central Station.

Multiple page documents fed into a feeder, sometimes just a stack
left and pulled through on their own through the miracle of
technology. Then it was just the watching of the LCD digital display
panel counting off the copies made in a room lit adequately enough
to allow the reading of brief snatches of the newspaper pages folded
to wallet size and hand held, listening to patterns in the operation
of the copier, the click as one page fed into another, the
electricity formulating positive charges in the air above the
photoreceptor, then the purr of the machine as the beam of light
hits the photoreceptor and where that light doesn't hit the
photoreceptor, voila, the positive charges remain to produce the
desired pattern , feeling the low vibrations of the machine,
sniffing in the vague vapour and dust emitted from the paper and ink
cartridges as the negatively-charged toner is shaken over the
photoreceptor and the blank sheet is pressed against the
photoreceptor.

Sometimes I would revel in these patterns wishing I was allowed to
practice my saxophone at work to harmonise with the machine and
although I'd asked and the request had been denied presumably
because work is work, work is not fun, fun is fun and fun is not
working, and it's best for the work-minded not to confuse the issues
lest productivity suffer as a result, the first several weeks of the
job would send me home with haunting lead lines in my head based on
a mixture of the copy machine noises and the vast idleness of the
mind attempting to compensate for the Zen-like enlightenment in this life of menial service.

Of course, there would always be something to fuck up these smooth
harmonics. Papers would jam, the cartridge would run low or run out
of ink, the entire process would be stopped until the issue was
resolved and then begun anew.

At lunch I would go outside, removing my tie on the elevator ride
down to the ground floor to feel free and spend an hour wandering
the streets of mid town watching the go-go chaos of thousands and
thousands of people converging simultaneously upon already congested
and over-squeezed streets and restaurants. It reminded me of a video
I once watched about the wildebeest's clockwise migration from the
Serengeti plains to Kenya's Masai Mara, amassing on the
crocodile-invested Mara River and making a maddening crossing, some
surviving, some eaten, some drowning. The metaphors were singularly
and consistently crushed in the Spring once winter coats were
discarded and leggy secretaries and assorted office personnel in all
shapes, colours and sizes began to populate the streets when it
became impossible to steer myself to the Public Library and instead
ventured for strolls along Bryant Park watching the momentarily
listless stretched out for impromptu picnics in the sun before
trudging back gloomily to their florescent honeycombs of
productivity.

This pattern went on for months although rather than developing my
disgust for all things corporate, rather than encountering the
nature and soul of my mortal enemy Albert had insisted I would
discover once that shirt and tie were worn, I found myself growing
comfortable within the role. Sure, I disliked being treated like the
office idiot simply because I hadn't wasted eighty grand on an
undergraduate degree, or, as the interview for the job had failed to
uncover, I hadn't even finished high school or bothered to obtain an
equivalency.

Instead I was amused that these poor little robots with human-like
qualities who had been spoon-fed their educations for years almost
longer than they could remember only to find themselves admitted
into a prestigious race against time to find quality before death or
before the effects of the anaesthetic drip of consumerist tripe wore
off and left them writhing in existentialist agony.

And when that five o'clock hour kicked off and I was out the door,
bursting like a handful of Chinese fireworks for the chance to find
the alternative; either out for a neighbourhood pub crawl on my
lonesome, fishing with a variety of lines, apnoeic and unoriginal,
for what passed itself off to the casual ear as hieroglyphic banter,
or recovering from the night before in the confines of the flat
listening to variations of Miles Davis' Blue in Green, double time
solos and Mozart's Divertimento in E Flat whilst reading with one
hand, Hesiodus or Kant or Kundera or Coelho and feeding chilli
burritos or fried noodles and fried pancakes into my hung-over mouth
with the other, I knew, in the barren outposts of reflection that
either alternative was better than herding on to another train with
all those superior-feeling colleagues who loved looking down their
noses at me who were ground down to chuck meat in a suburban
hamburger palace in New Jersey or Long Island.

My apathy at my plight vexed Albert to no end some nights. During
those evenings of rehearsal he would be monitoring me, secretly he
thought at first, for signs that my embrace of this dehumanising
corporate culture was weakening and the doldrums of discontent were
wearing thin my complacency. This was one element of his presumed
experiment that wasn't going to plan. He wouldn't reveal what
conditions he himself had been exposed to that had led to his own
satori of hatred of the corporate world or what specifically had
turned him from working for a living to working for himself stealing cars for a living to a premature retirement pickling himself in alcohol whilst
simultaneously attempting to stimulate his brain with music and
literature in a cocoon of complacency in his own semi-contained
flat.

And so it might have remained for uncountable years. Perhaps we
would have developed from rehearsing in his flat to playing on
stage, perhaps we would have taken the neighbourhood by storm with
our conveniently unscripted lack of talent. Perhaps I would have
continued on indefinitely in this vein, going to this same job,
pretending, like Albert, to flush the numbness from my skin with a
potent cocktail of alcoholism and music and literature. We weren't
going anywhere and like most else around me, I couldn't quite bring
myself awake enough to care.
Not until one weekend when Albert announced we were going to
Washington, DC.

Why the fuck would we go there, I wanted to know, with the world's
greatest city beckoning like Gustave Caillebotte's Nude Woman
Stretched Out On A Sofa from every street corner?
Two reasons. First of all, change of venue. Changing your venue can
be as refreshing as a hot shower after a week without bathing. But
change for change's sake is a futile and meaningless effort.
Thus there is another, more pertinent reason. The other reason is
because I met Gato Barbieri last night in the lounge of the
Buckingham Hotel and after a rather awkward beginning, he confided
to me he was headed to there for a gig at Blues Alley in DC this
weekend. We chatted for nearly thirty minutes. Fascinating guy. Soft
speaking stream of consciousness sort of conversation. You know me,
my favourite kind of conversation. And some good stories. About
Argentina, Buenos Aires, how there were no instruments to buy when
he was growing up and had to wait for someone to die to get one.
Anyway, I think he was jealous of my irrevocable consumption.
Reminded him of the good ole days, perhaps. He told me how he used
to take a lot of coke and drink too much. Wore him away, he claims.
You wear away anyway, I corrected him. But he's like a child with a
new toy, him and this sobriety. He says he's stopped drinking,
started exercising and eating healthy. It would have been repulsive
but for the stories and the histories.

Anyway, Albert carries on, exhaling and sipping an espresso, staring
out at the leggy pedestrians on a warm spring afternoon near
Tompkins Square Park, he seemed to like me for some reason. I lied
and said I was going to be in DC this weekend anyway. He says he'll
put me and a guest on the list. So there you go. You and I to DC, to
Blues Alley, Gato Barbieri. Should be fantastic.

*****
So Saturday morning we get up and catch the bus down to DC. It's an
odd city. A museum of French government architecture in the middle
of a ghetto. We were due to catch the 8pm show but Albert had
brought a flask with him on the bus and we passed it between us with
such religious fervour we stunk of it by the time we got off,
already swaying.

There was no false pretension at playing tourists in the Capital of the United States of America. No sir. We could spot them from a mile off, cameras hung around their necks like ornithologists, Midwestern fat erupted from beneath their shits, fat flowed like lava over their waistbands. Baseball caps, stupid remarks about casual sightings. It wasn’t for us. We weren’t one of them.

I say we splurge, he says as we hop into a cab and ask to be taken
to Georgetown. I've been here once before. Let's get a nice hotel,
fuck it. Dressing pigs up in tuxedos. We'll stay at the Georgetown
Four Seasons. Imagine their disgust and imagine our pleasure in
stinking of this cognac, dressed like slobs, flippant at their gaudy
pretensions.

And so that's precisely what we do. We don't have any luggage. One
duffel bag between us. Change of clothes? Forget it. Clothes cannot
change what we are. We'll flaunt our arrogance with our apathy in
our appearance. Who cares? These people love clothes. It's a big
fuck you to their pretensions that they won't mistake.

And why make such a production of pissing people off? Why dress like
slobs when we are presented with an opportunity to dress out of
character, like cultured adults rather than subculture experiments?

Because we are desperate to prove our apathy about outward
appearances. We are determined to enunciate our disgust for false
pretences and to illuminate the value of the character within those
outward appearances.

We spend only a few minutes in the room before leaving, stopping in
the first place we could find that was open, a Brazilian café. We
drank Caipirinhas, entertaining the barman with our incessant,
meaningless banter, word associations – the kind of stunted dialogue
produced by tired minds, drunken minds. We mixed Brahma beers with
the Caipirinhas, as though trying to prove some obscure point. When
we mentioned going to see Gato Barbieri at Blues Alley, he asks,
offhandedly, if we were going to the matinee show.

And this is what became our downfall, what began our plunge in the
absurd. The matinee show.

*****

We arrived by cab, dropped at the alley and stumbled up to the front
door demanding to see Gato.

There was no mistaking our potential hooliganism; we certainly weren't the typical matinee crowd. The door man listened to Albert's wind up patiently, indulgently waiting for a long sputtering spiel of off colour ramblings to come to a merciful end before politely informing that we were not on the guest
list of the afternoon show and we would not be getting in. It helped
not one iota that Albert became slightly abusive at that point,
demanding credentials, demanding justice, demanding again to see
Gato personally for discussion on this slender point. Another
doorman approached cautiously and soon we were surrounded by linemen
sized men who took us in at first as a curiosity but once the
curiosity had been exhausted, quickly began losing all patience with
us.

One of them took me aside whilst Albert continued his harangue to
another. Listen, he hissed, the two of you are disgusting. You're
drunk, you're loud and obnoxious and frankly, unless you're both
members of Gato's family, you wouldn't get in here even if you were
on the list for the matinee show. My advice is that the two of you
go sleep it off. You won't be welcomed here, not this afternoon, not
this evening, not ever, frankly.

And when the doorway was shut tight leaving us standing there
swaying in the alley with a gentle breeze, Albert suddenly slumped
as though the life had been kicked out of him. He leaned against the
side of the building and lit a Winston. Fuck 'em. We don't need
these bastards anyway. I've got a better idea.

And those next few minutes would prove to be well fateful for as he
spoke to me, pork pie hat twisted in his hand, he spotted a cab
driver on the lower end of Wisconsin Avenue getting out of his cab
to talk to another cabbie who was leaning against the hood of his
car reading a newspaper. I watched with interest as Albert pushed
himself up from the side of the building and sauntered over towards
the idling cab.

Then, without warning, he suddenly jumped into the driver's side of
the cab just as the other two took notice and as they leapt,
shouting after him, Albert threw the car into gear and sped off,
wheels squealing, up to M Street, hung a right and mingled into
traffic at speed. The two cabbies shouted after him before stopping,
noticing me standing there and vaguely recalling my presence next to
Albert only moments before, approached me cursing.

I don't know anything about it, I protested. I'm just as surprised
as you.

They weren't in the mood to debate and I could see the thought
pattern in their brains tumbling between grabbing me and chasing
after the stolen cab. They waved me off with foreign curses and hand
gestures, hopping into the others' cab and taking off down M Street
in pursuit leaving me there wondering what the hell had just
happened and what my next move was going to be.

Albert would later tell me that endlessly that he hadn't actually
"stolen" the cab perse. He was just bored and wanted a little
excitement. The kind of dysfunctional excitement bred out of
intoxication; senseless, without preamble, without premeditation. I
just wanted to pick up one fare, just to see the look on their faces
when they got in and I tore off from the kerb like a mad man. Just
one fare.

But he didn't make it that far. Naturally his driving skills weren't
very lucid given his consumption and before long, instead of a fare,
he'd run straight into a parked car, jumped out of the cab bloodied,
only to be overtaken by the two cabbies who between the two of them
and the help of another passer-by, managed to hold him down in the
street long enough, dazed and wounded, a burning Winston still
perched on his lips, until the cops duly arrived about three minutes
later, the moment of madness punctuated like the fluttering dropkick
of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D major, Opus 35.

*****

Two years later, Albert says the judge was lenient. We had a little
joke in the court room. Either that or she was trying to find the
motivation for my seemingly random anarchistic and criminal act.
What are your dreams, she asks me at the sentencing. I gave her
several different scenarios. To tread water until my limbs grow too
tired to tread anymore and I drown. I thought I was being clever.
She shook her head. Are you still finding this a joke, she asks me,
incredulous. No, it isn't funny at all your honour, I sincerely
don't have any dreams. Not dreams that would be rendered coherent in
an incoherent society anyway, your honour.

You said that? I took another swig of the pint, these repetitive
motions were all part of communication in the world Albert and I
were sitting in. He nodded his head enthusiastically. So what did
she say?

Nothing for a minute. Silence. Summing me up in her head. Clearly
she was impressed by me in some indefinitive way she was quickly
trying to calculate. Would it be more helpful if I told you it was
my dream to be the guy who assembles display furniture all day long
at an Ikea factory outlet mall? Then her eyes were like little
slits, comprehending I wasn't taking my sentencing seriously at all.
What did I care anyway. I know the maximum sentencing guidelines. I
wasn't a murderer, I hadn't committed a violent felony. Four years
maximum, free food, regardless of how shitty it might be, the
experience of prison, time to work on my book, I could have gone on
all afternoon about the exciting possibilities a small prison
sentence would have afforded me.

By then, the judge wasn't interested in any of my answers. She'd
tried a tact, tried to be humane. Inexplicably, while my public
defender turned white with incredulity, she became
almost jocular, leaned over the front of the bench. Too ambiguous,
she stated, nearly inaudible and very slowly as though I had some
sort of learning disability rather than genius.

How about an interpretive dance, done with feeling and emotion, I
offered. But the game was over. She slammed the gavel down, suddenly
impatient and poof, sentencing was on. Do you know how many times I
told that fucking story to my cell mate? How many variations, how
many different tenses, different languages, different angles I've
created that story into, sheerly out of boredom?

He pinched out his cigarette with an annoyed look on his face. I'll
tell you something Witold. It wasn't as bad as you might imagine
jail to be. No rapings, no beatings from prison guards. A lot of
long hours with nothing to do. It drives some people crazy but for
me, it was two years to think.

 CHAPTER FOUR: The Cash Cow Gets Milked All The Way To Europe
“Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don't wanna do. All the things that I don't wanna be. Places I don't wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don't understand that.”

Henry, in Barfly (1987)
*****

With Albert being housed in a prison just outside of DC I was left
again to the daily disconnection of events which seemed, on the
surface to have meaning and connection yet substantively accumulated
as nothing more than motions. That familiar void in the soul which
had its origins in the heart returned. It would be an exaggeration
to say that I was lonely or that I was sad. As had been the case
when Miranda left on the tail of my father disappearing, I rather
welcomed the solitude that Albert's stint in prison afforded. Not
that I had anything particularly profound to accomplish in this
solitude. The simple countermanding of the predominant culture was a
definition I comforted myself with whilst reading that no definition
of reality can substitute reality itself.

I realised in hindsight that Albert's appearance had lent a
background to reality, gave depth to my own consciousness which I
hadn't experienced in years and in his absence, rather than struggle
to find a replacement I simply reverted back to the solitude that
begat me.

For a few more months I continued working the same job as a
corporate copyist simply out of habit, I suppose. Although it had
given me a vague sense of belonging to something, a sense I'd craved
and became aware of only once I'd begun it, I began to feel more and
more out of place, swimming back and forth in this sea of humanity I
found no connections with.

But with Albert gone so was the experiment and instead of being
content with the simple experience, I began to crave finding
something more stimulating, something with even a vague promise of
upwardly movement. Albert wasn't going to be back any time soon and
time was wasting.

My existence as corporate copy boy might have gone on indefinitely
were it not for these changes. At first there were small nuances in
my appearance. The shirts were no longer pressed and hung on my body
in the precise state I'd plucked them from the dryer at the corner
of 6th Street and 1st Avenue. The tie I wore I wore grudgingly and
as loosened as far from the collar as possible without actually
taking it off. In this dishevelled state I took to wearing the same
pair of pants every day – the same pair I spent nights out drinking
in, slept in, and took off only to shower. Unbeknownst to me, I
began to smell somewhat like a vagrant and although most of my
working hours were spent in a room alone, those brief moments when
people came in to drop off documents to be copied were sufficient to
render a series of unusual complaints.

I'd spoken to my "boss", Mr Claymore, less than a half dozen times since
I'd started. There was the first day of work wherein he described to
me to me in excruciating detail, the duties of the job itself, the
functioning and maintenance of the machine, how to order more
supplies, the lunch hour and a few other human resource details such
as holidays and pay days. Other than that, he had little to say to
me and more often than not, I'd simply forgotten he'd existed at all
until one morning when he summoned me to his office for a
discussion.

I didn't have to know much about Mr Claymore that couldn't be sussed
by spending a few moments with him in his office. He was every bit
the corporate sycophant, from his hairstyle to his tie to his facial
expressions and manner of speaking. On his walls were the prototypes
of slogans I'd often glance at hung from the walls of the hallways
of the office; slogans about productivity, team work, common goals,
etc. He spoke in the language of the robot, the brainwashed, the
self-important cog in an unimportant machine. I neither loathed nor
disrespected him in any fashion. He existed, perhaps in the mind of
some, to some utility, but as far as I could tell without knowing
the details of his personal life or his facility with spreadsheets,
he was in short, a man without a soul, a parasitic vulture with
sagging facial features, the jowls and paunch of middle age
self-satisfaction entombed in an existence consumed by numbers which
meant nothing outside of their walls, a marriage that had produced
the requisite number of offspring to no specific conclusion, a man
who took his holidays with his family to the same places every year
at precisely the same time. A man who lived by the book whose pages
he read without ever comprehending.

In short, after a rather embarrassed and hesitant beginning prefaced
with the obligatory niceties and sterile questions about how I was
finding it here, he revealed to me that there had been several
complaints about my hygiene of late and that whilst he would have
been willing to ignore these complaints as minor indiscretions had
they been sporadic, capable of turning a blind eye to the stray
complaint since there had never been a complaint about the quality
of my work, the fact was it had become such a problem that
colleagues sent subordinates to deliver the documents to me because
they couldn't stand the smell that had accumulated in my little copy
room over the last weeks.

And then as if on cue the officiousness disappeared, melted away in
a sudden reflux of employee manual compassion and he compelled
himself to enquire of me, this unhygienic little cog occupying a
stale and smelly room within the office he presided over, if there
were any personal problems that needed addressing, if I'd had a
recently traumatic experience, if I were suffering from trouble at
home, etc. As if wanting to found this line of questioning on a new
reality, he couched it with the observation that it wasn't merely
hygiene but complaints that I stunk of booze most days more often
than not. I could tell he was reaching out this olive branch with
great discomfort knowing that he had no casual interest in my
personal life and this unsavoury matter of discussing hygiene and
personal problems with a lowly copy machinist as though we were
discussing philosophy or politics over dinner and the appropriate
wine in the comfortable confines of his family home in suburbia. I
could tell that this was even for him and his vast experience an
unusual set of circumstances he'd been confronted with and whilst
his concern about my personal plight was not genuine he was in fact,
vaguely perplexed with how to go about resolving it short of handing
me a bar of soap, a dry cleaners business card and the date and time
of the nearest AA meeting.

On the other hand, I was equally confused by these sudden turn of
events. Those people who had entered the room I occupied solely to
copy their documents, those people who had smiled passively at me,
who had acted civil if not occasionally friendly, dropping casual
lines about the weather or sports, had in fact been whispering
behind my back not only speculating about my character but openly
complaining about my sense of hygiene and that I reeked of the drink
from the night before.

In a sense, it was a hilarious contradiction to be dressed in
corporate clothing, the very symbols of enslavement and conformity
yet stink as though I were homeless, like those who came in off the
street to bath in the bathrooms of the public library or sleep in
peace in reading rooms and cubby holes. Where was my sheen of
invulnerability? Was it not sufficient to come in on time, do the
job and do it well and leave when expected I wondered with a
self-satisfied smirk.

This was not like the openings discussed in the 150-page book on
chess called Libro del Ajedrez written in 1561 by a Spanish priest
called Ruy López de Segura. This was more akin to his unsporting
suggestion that the pieces be arranged on the board so that the sun
shines in the opponent's face. And before I would answer Mr Claymore
I'd have to determine who was more uncomfortable with this sudden
dissection, myself or him.

I considered a variety of defences; the time-consuming Norwegian
defence wherein my goal would be to eliminate the white bishop or in
this case engage in a long and protracted discourse on the nature of
the fallibility of human kind generally, the Steinitz Defence which
would have surrendered, although not fatally, the all-important
middle of the board such as admitting it was all true and without
proper reason pleading for the moment another chance at hygiene and
sober living or, as I finally decided in the end, the Bird Defence,
the uncommon variation with which I could hope to surprise Mr
Claymore into making uncharacteristic moves, or making a mistake
that would leave him in a vulnerable position.

Should I have opted for complete admission, to invoke a teary tale
of my past; the disappearance of my father and mother within weeks
of each other, the idiotic prank by Albert that had seen my only
friend off to prison, I'd have likely only made things worse. As I
was now, a simple employee with an unusual problem that didn't
involve motivation or productivity, perhaps we were both interested,
I could sense, in a simple redaction of previous behaviour with a
promise to correct it immediately.

But I wasn't even certain that I cared about the outcome either
tactic would have on my future employment. I was more interested in
the kind of reaction I could extract from this man before me
feigning paternal concern.

Do you mind if I'm absolutely candid with you Mr Claymore, I began,
inhaling profoundly and wishing I'd had a cigarette prop with which
to aid my performance.

He fell all over himself with platitudes of course, eager to assist
if he could, prepared to refer me to human resources for counselling
if necessary. He was a father after all and I perhaps young enough
to be his wayward son. Whatever ailed me it could certainly be
ironed out, this difficulty will have passed and I, with my
unsavoury smells would be out of his office leaving him to dance
again alone with his spreadsheets, statistics and motivational
slogans.

The truth is Mr Claymore, that my offending smells are a form of
protest.

His eyebrows rose, as the eyebrows are wont to do when the ears are
confronted with a perplexing reality they don‘t want to hear. I'm not entirely certain what you mean, Witold, he began with uncertainty revealed in both the
sudden nervous gestures of moving papers from one side of his desk
blotter to another and making sure to avoid eye contact whilst
sensing like an animal instinct that what he'd hoped to be a simple
conversation with a simple resolution was suddenly going to go off
the rails into unexplored territory. Protest against what exactly?

Here I hesitated, uncertain myself of the direction I planned to
take with this. But rather than giving away the fact I would be
making this up as I went along, my hesitation seemed to reveal my
own apprehension at discussing the matter in detail.
For months I have been an anonymous person employed here. I'm
separated from all the other employees in a little window-less room,
I'm never invited to office functions or happy hour festivities with
the other employees, and don't think not only that I don't notice
this slight but that I'm unaffected by it – on the contrary, it has
had a devastating effect on my moral and on my daily living. I feel
utterly worthless and unnoticed in this office, Mr Claymore and I
assure you, there is nothing worse than being left out when all the
others, from the lowliest secretary to the post room staff, are
included. This social exclusion has ruined my confidence in myself
and the work I do and although I have endeavoured to carry on with
my work as this is what I am paid to do, I do so with increasing
difficulty. It is almost too much some days to bring myself to come
to this kind of environment where daily humiliation is such a large
part of the terms of my employment here. If no one cares about me,
I've come to reason, why should I care about them? Why should my
personal hygiene matter when I am so insignificant? I haven't done
this maliciously mind you, simply to make myself noticed because it
has been nothing short of demoralising to spend 8 hours a day in an
environment that openly chooses to exclude me.

Oh, these words carried a weight of some kind, I could tell by the
whitening of Mr Claymore's face as he digested them. Now we are
getting somewhere, I thought to myself, something humane, some
degree of revelation that hasn't been prescribed in simple textbook
management formulas.

Or perhaps they were. He played absently with a pen as he nodded his
head in paternal recognition of this ongoing yet unconscious slight.

I'm surprised by what you've told me, Witold. Of course there is no
policy in place to exclude you. Just the opposite, we try to foster
an environment here where everyone feels included and where everyone
feels as though they are part of the team which is working together
to achieve the goals we have set out. I feel terrible that you might
have somehow slipped through the cracks, so to speak, of this
concept of teamwork and inclusion but first of all let me say this
with the caveat that the more appropriate method of addressing your
concerns would have been addressing them to me as they arose rather
than choosing your own, how shall we say it, unorthodox methods.
That is why we have a system in place for addressing grievances so
that such grievances are not allowed to escalate unfettered. On the
one hand I empathise with your feelings of exclusion yet certainly
do not condone the method you've chosen to address those feelings
with. However, that said, I'm glad that we've been able to discover
the root of the problem, so to speak and on behalf of the company
and its staff, allow me first to apologise for any inadvertent sense
of exclusion that was placed upon you.

He exhaled with the exhaustion of a man who thought he'd encountered
every potential problem in the course of his career and knew the
appropriate means of dissecting and resolving it only to discover on
this day a different nuance – one which he would carry home with him
on the commute home, one which he would still mull over even after
he had swallowed his dinner, left his kids to their homework and his
wife to her sitcoms.

Fortunately for all of us, Witold, tomorrow is another day. For my
part, I will have a word with the staff generally, not revealing of
course that the purpose of a refresher speech on employee inclusion
is based solely upon the case of yourself, and will meet with you in
two week's time to discuss the progress of this matter. On your
part, I would ask that you end your protest, by whatever method,
resume acceptable hygienic practices and that if any problems,
similar or otherwise, arise in the interim between tomorrow and our
next meeting, you bring them to my attention before they grow to
unmanageable proportions not only so we can work to resolve the
matter before it worsens but also because frankly, that is the
philosophy by which I'd like to think I manage. Again, I feel
terrible that you've suffered like this without informing me but now
that it's been brought to my attention, it will be dealt with and I
would ask again that should any other problems arise you inform me,
as noted in the employee manual, before such problems escalate and
create a mushrooming of problems so to speak.

He stood from behind his desk. For today, I would suggest you take
the rest of the afternoon off as personal time and tomorrow morning,
let's say that you will arrive refreshed, so to speak, in all
possible ways. Is that fair, Witold?

I nodded, smiling with the appreciative employee smile as depicted
in the employee manual, and held out my hand for shaking as to test
the limits of his endurance considering, as he must have when
regarding that outstretched hand of mine, where a person who smelled
as badly as I did, might have allowed that hand to roam. In the end,
he pushed his hand forward allowing it to brush briefly against mine
in some effete gesture of completing the deal and I left, free for
the afternoon, which I took as an unscheduled opportunity to drink,
hour after hour, giggling to myself over the absurdity of the entire
experience, imagining the regurgitation of another faux-enthusiastic
speech from Mr Claymore the employees would have to suffer, on the
need for employee inclusion in all social events.

*****

Thereafter, I tried a different tact. Considering that it was no
great mystery why those assistants arriving with their bundles of
documents for me to copy suddenly effused cheerleader-like
enthusiasm for the day, taking care to greet me and ask how my day
was going, the changing weather patterns and minor complaints about
their work loads which was meant to be inclusionary, I made the
added effort myself at not smelling albeit moving only one extreme
to the other.

The day after our discussion I brought with me a 4.2 ounce bottle of
cologne, the cheapest I could find in the drugstore and liberally
doused myself and my clothes with it to the point where even I had
trouble breathing comfortably in the copy room. I wanted Mr Claymore
to hear from others the overcompensation with which I had treated
the complaints, much in the same way the other employees
overcompensated for their earlier disregard by plying me with boring
tales of their daily lives.

I patently refused all invitations to go out with others that were
offered, making a face when they offered as though the mere idea of
socialising with them revolted me. I already have plans, I would say
to each and every offer without apology or explanation.

This path of course, was leading only to another meeting in Mr
Claymore's office, which is precisely the next step in this social
experiment that I wanted to take. By now I so loathed the officious
compliance of textbook and manual to human behaviour that it was all
I could do to quit on my own, prematurely. What I wanted was nothing
less than to be sacked. I didn't want to resign meekly as
anonymously as I had been taken on to begin with. I wanted stories
to be told about me long after I was gone. I wanted my memory to
linger in theirs as an appropriate epitaph to my career on Park
Avenue because there would be other jobs somewhere down the road, I
knew it, jobs which would bear equal hallmarks of mindlessness and
futility and to endure them, I too wanted a memory to leave with.

*****
So when the appointed meeting with Mr Claymore was scheduled to take
place I was rather disappointed that he was accompanied by the human
resources representative to bear witness to my sacking thereby
eliminating all prospects of yet another shocking yet engaging
conversation with the man himself, to delve into the inner recesses
of his thought process, shock it from regularity into confusion.
Instead, it was a brief and cordial meeting wherein I was informed,
not even by Mr Claymore himself, that we had come to an unfortunate
breach in my career with the company and with two weeks severance
pay in my pocket, I was advised to seek employment elsewhere.

*****

Having been blessed twice with a facility for language other than my
own, namely Spanish and Polish owed to my parental heritage, I
decided to forego my apprehensions about the future and burn time
finding a new work experience; something which would allow me the
apparition of being something more interactive something less
machine-like, something requiring just a pinch more of thought and
awareness outside of myself and my immediate environment.

So when I saw an ad for a bilingual paralegal for the Law Offices of
Richard Pennymaker I decided to give it a swing even if my
qualifications were minimal save for the linguistic skills. I knew
nothing about law but as it turned out, I didn't need to. It, like
most else, was spoon-fed from the beginning and personal injury law
in particular seemed, from the point of view of handling cases with
a simplistic ritual already in place, a matter of applying new
information to simple skills which even a chimp could perform.

So in relying on my present skills rather than my past in particular
I decided to see what might happen if I applied for something more prestigious than copyboy, something I might people to use my brain a little for, something that wouldn‘t humiliate me to admit doing.

The interview was a circus to say the least and should have been
sufficient indication, even in my fragile state of desperation, like
a low-grade fever and sore throat, of the terrible influenza that
would this job would become.

There were many layers to the Richard Pennymaker phenomenon which
would have been impossible to grasp without the benefit of hindsight
but it was apparent straight away that Pennymaker was deranged in a
not-so-subtle yet still socially acceptable fashion. It was apparent
in his vanity – a pathetic state of denial; the comb-over of greasy,
dandruff-ridden greying hair, the belt around the pants so tight
that the fat would seem to explode in all directions if he dared
inhale deeply, the generally vagrant look to his appearance –
pleated corduroy pants, oversized NYU sweatshirt, psychotically
shifting eyes, all warning signals that I chose to ignore.

The interview itself was fairly straight forward in that we
discussed my background, or lack of background as it were in matters
of personal injury before quickly moving on to a wide range of
topics which had nothing to do with the job or law at all but more
with his manic desire to impress upon me the goodliness of his
nature, the selfless, fading 60s hippy ideologies and the somewhat
incredible admission that he fancied himself some sort of modern day
Robin Hood, taking from the big, bad corporate insurance companies
who were, in themselves, some of the worst kind of thieves
imaginable, and giving back to the indigenous, the poor, the needy,
a tiny pocket of wealth to help them back on their feet.

The interview, as it were, went on for hours as he told me the
history of his crusade, the indignities he'd suffered at the hands
of corporate buffoons and political tyrants, the dreams which had
been snuffed out by the callous indifference of a controlling
society of greedy, lecherous types, all of whom flew the same sort
of corporate flags again and again of indifference for the plight of
the less fortunate.

We were interrupted frequently – the receptionist for important
calls from insurance adjusters, witnesses, new potential clients,
existing clients, doctor's offices, reconstruction experts and
plastic surgeons. A pattern of clients, all of whom had been
scheduled more or less around the same time, brought in, cases
dissected, medical treatments diagnosed, advises dispensed like a
neighbourhood guru to the parasitic.

That the clients were brought in for these meetings in the middle of
my interview didn't seem to bother either him or the clients as I
was introduced as a prospective employee, invited to ask questions
on cases, all without the benefit of knowing anything about the
field whatsoever, save for what I was trying to digest in between
clients.

When one particularly important client arrived unannounced, he
excused himself and brought the receptionist in to replace him.
Alicia was my competency exam, a political refugee from El Salvador
who had been in his employ for a few months. Pennymaker merely
introduced us in his own broken and brackish version of Spanish and
invited the two of us to sit alone in the conference room for a chat
to flesh out my abilities in Spanish.

It wasn't difficult. Frankly, Alicia was one of those barely
literate immigrants of Central Indian descent who had somehow
managed to escape the village she was from and land on her feet in
America. She was terrified of Pennymaker, that much was clear and
had no tangible idea of how or what was expected of her in the
conversation so I took it over myself, pigeon holing her about her
past, the village she was from, her musical tastes, her favourite
foods, what she thought of New York City and America in general,
whether she had a boyfriend (no) or any children (two already),
where she lived, how long she had been working for Pennymaker.

I told her about my mother, romanticised the days excluding the
drinking and the screaming fights and hot tempers, the beatings and
the bruises.

In the end, I befriended her because I thought it would be the
easiest way to win her approval. I flattered her unnecessarily and
ruthlessly, pouring it on thick, relying heavily on a combination of
lyrics from Julio Iglesias to Mercedes Sosa, which were the
backbones of my vocabulary in post-Miranda Spanish, the lovesick
months over women I had never met. In fact, I was quite adept at
spouting beautiful, philosophical phrases about love gone wrong and
heartsickness in general and although it had nothing to do with law
or personal injury, by the time Pennymaker had finally returned some
thirty minutes later, Alicia was like putty in my hands and as it
turned out, gave a glowing review of my incredible Spanish to
Pennymaker as I sat there admiring my handiwork, not the slightest
bit embarrassed or disgusted by what I had just done. Desperate
times after all.

And so this was how I embarked on my odyssey of personal injury law
paralegal slash translator.

*****

It was all going quite well, all things considered. I had steady,
disposable income. I had some vague sense of self-esteem that
bordered on self-importance when asked what I did for a living, no
longer mumbling none of your business or what the fuck do you think
I do. I had yet another skin to cover that of the alcoholic, that of
the struggling and hopelessly untalented musician, enough money to
set up the flat in the Lower East Side, go out and try and impress
unimpressionable women, find a group of people to start a band with
and wow the unwowable city with whatever it was I imagined I
possessed.

That is, until Albert showed up again.

*****

Although I'd often sent him odd packages with collections of
non-sequential, unrelated miscellanea discovered in nocturnal walks
through city streets, we hadn't seen one another in nearly two years
since he'd left to pay his debt to society in a prison in the
outskirts of DC before early release for what he called not only
good, but exemplary behaviour, teaching the inmates to read,
teaching the guards to appreciate jazz and classical, making his
mark with the best and most efficient laundry press work of anybody
on the block, so he said anyway, in his sporadic yet voluminous
letters to me.

So I was rather surprised as I strode home in my monkey suit
swinging my briefcase which contained nothing but old newspapers, a
flask of vodka, and several emergency packs of Drum, at passers-by
in menacing fashion drawing occasionally hostile stares, when I
spotted Albert sat on the stoop in front of my apartment building, a
Winston dangling from his lip, a pork pie hat perched on his head, a
yellowing neck brace and a cast on his right arm.

What the fuck, I managed to blurt out loudly, stopping in my tracks,
the briefcase hitting me in the back of the knee.
Long story, he muttered, standing up from the stoop and snubbing the
Winston into the side of the sculpted three foot high lion beside
the steps. The lion's head had long since taken on a Dadaesque
melting quality by virtue of years and acid rain and god knows
whatever other kind of abuse it withstood over the years.

I got into a car wreck, ironically enough, hit by a drunk driver, he
laughed, half-snorted, looking up at an old woman who was shaking a
rug from a window several stories above the sidewalk.

As it happened, the story spun out over a night of the kind of
debaucheries perfected only by long-lost, beer-swilling mates in a
time of utter black-out.

He had, sure enough, been involved in a car accident not long before
and had suffered a series of minor albeit financially lucrative
injuries as a result.

It's the cash cow – I could almost hear Pennymaker's horrific Jersey
accent grinding into my ears like granules of sand – the cash cow is
the knee, he liked to tell me, sitting back in one of his grandiose
moments of self-delusion in his office, hands behind his head and
unbearably philosophical - once you get the knee injury, the torn
cartilage, or better, the meniscus, oh, then we've got them.

Never mind that because his law firm of two lawyers and a half dozen
paralegals was built upon the worst nickel and dime sorts of claims,
the overblown cervical and lumbar strain, the whiplash, the
headaches, the inability to work, etc., could only rely on a cash
cow like the knee. He could only dream about the accidental deaths
on job sites or horrific car accidents resulting in permanent
disabilities because that kind of lottery ticket was never going to
drop in his lap no matter how many ambulances we chased, no matter
how many ads were done on Spanish language television stations, how
many pink business cards that were handed out, the big break was not
going to happen to a man whose law firm was a constant threat to
collapse entirely from the burden of stupidity and mismanagement
that evolved out of it.

So you've got to take the knee if you can, I explained to Albert
later that night. You've got crap knees already, don't you? Aren't
you always complaining about them aching? Well, here's your chance –
perhaps they'll find some previously undiagnosed tear, some
arthritic change brought on by the vicious impact of the collision.
In any event, you're looking at thousands.

Albert squinted up at the ceiling, exhaling a draft of smoke from
the back of his mouth and watching it be shot in frenzied directions
by the overhead fan. How long is all of this going to take, he
wondered sceptically, schooled in the no something for nothing
academies. Still, you could see his brain working out the variety of
implications a sudden thrust of income would have on his liver.

Regardless of how long it takes, so long as you play the role
properly and to the hilt, you will get rewarded. If you need income
before then, well, they're certain to be able to work out some kind
of loan based on your potential settlement as collateral.

So we are migrating nomads, Albert surmises through squinted eyes.
What are nomads in search of? Water, arable land? We are nomads in
search of cheap beer, loose women and a hedonistic apathy about
global economics. We have no cattle, no sheep, no pigs to bring with
us and thus must sustain ourselves on our insubstantial wits – that
and a healthy personal injury settlement – which I share with you
for helping me gain it to begin with…

So just like that, it was sealed.

The following morning, I brought Albert with me into the office.
Pennymaker's eyes lit up to see Albert coming in behind me with a
limp, a cast and a neck brace. You couldn't actually see the dollar
signs ringing up in his eyes, but perhaps a fleck of saliva watering
his lips.

This is my friend Albert, I began. Car accident, utterly the fault
of the other driver. The only real issue I can see for us to
speculate on Richard, are policy limits. The magic words, policy
limits. Otherwise, the sky's the limit.

We went to work immediately, ringing the insurance company with the
policy number, gradually filtered to the claim number. And yes
indeed, broken wrist, cervical and lumbar strain, possible knee
injury. Music to Pennymaker's ears who listened greedily as I spoke
to the adjuster.

The three of us talked numbers in Pennymaker's office.

Let's say, conservatively, $2,000 for the whiplash, another few
grand for the wrist and the knee…he shouted out to the paralegals
gathered on the edges of the office: Somebody get Dr. Shoenshoin on
the phone, get Albert an appointment, right away.

Dr Shoenshoin was the orthopaedic surgeon we often used for
potential knee injuries.

My god, we could be looking at anywhere between 5-10 grand for the
knee, at least. Policy limits Witold! We've got to get the policy
limits somehow. See how much we can soak these bastids for. He
rubbed his hands over the top of the desk as though caressing a
woman's breasts whilst leaning over her supine, writing body
beneath. Oh, it's the cash cow, he muttered to himself before
snapping out of his reverie and looking up, his eyes glistening with
giddiness, shimmering.

Well boys, Witold's got it from here now. The rest of you, standing
there? What the hell is this? C'mon, c'mon. He clapped his hands
together. Every one out and working! What the hell is this? He
turned to me, shrugging his shoulders. Albert looked at me, grinning
evilly, shrugging his shoulders. I shrugged my shoulders as well.
Now I was the goose that laid the golden egg.

Albert, man – this is the ticket, I murmur as we went outside to the
parking lot for a cigarette before he was off to his appointment
with the orthopaedic surgeon. Not only are you going to make some
good money but you've elevated me in the eyes of that pederast, I
exclaimed.

And sure enough, within a few days, once the initial prognosis of
Albert's knee by Dr Shoenshoin was spectacularly successful –
possible torn meniscus. Possible surgery, months of paid therapy,
ching, ching, ching.

Pennymaker was effusive in his mothering of me thereafter. I was
moved into my own office. A few weeks later, complaining of the
conditions bitterly, having it out in a tirade of ranting bile for
every one to hear. Spoiled and pampered and demanding attention like
an open wound. Admittedly, I was hung over, skittish and anxious to
jump over the edge.

But Pennymaker, grateful for this unexpected windfall that held his
focus day in and out ever since Albert's arrival, silenced me
quickly and conspiratorially with his rodent voice – We're just
going to have to get you a secretary…

Pennymaker had a knack for creating turnover. Employees came and
went. Half of his days were spent interviewing. He fired people at
the drop of a hat, humiliated anyone showing the vaguest sign of
weakness, hired people after hours and hours of interviews that
interloped with client meetings, telephone calls, newspaper reading,
speechmaking, autobiographying. It was like the accounts of losing
friends on the Front. You were afraid to befriend anyone lest they
be gone the next day.

Rumours went on around about how he liked younger men – one story going around was that at a city street fair which he had set up a booth to promote personal injury claimants, he was overcome by lust for a a 14 year old kid in a Barney costume. He was demonstrated enough fucked up qualities, you sort of believed it to be true whether you wanted to or not.

Interviews were embarrassingly at times, little more than extended dates. The
air was thick with a fetid sort of sexual harassment as Pennymaker
hired certain younglings, barely out of college and those of us
still around the next day were left to watch a stumblingly
untalented neophyte delicately fend off the advances of Pennymaker
who would spend days with the new boy, "training" him closely, until
inevitably, by the end of the day, he'd raise his arms in
frustration and say ah hell, you're too goddamned stupid to work
here. Get out! Get the fuck out!

And then Pennymaker would sulk for a few days in his office, refuse
to see clients, showing up for only half days, sometimes looking as
though he'd just rolled out of bed into the office, slipping on the
same mangy corduroys tightly belted so the rolls of fat pinched out
underneath some grease stained sweatshirt or a dress shirt that was
two sizes too small and clung to him like a baby – all the fat
oozing out from every direction.

You had to wonder about a guy like him. Something sinister and dark.

*****

Pomifer autumnus fruges effuderit, et mox Bruma recurrit iners." –
Horace Odes, Book IV: Autumn, bringer of fruit, has poured out her
riches, and soon sluggish winter returns…
From the Diaries of Witold Kazmersky, cahier one, p 100

The excitement of Albert's arrival, the elevation of my status in
the Law Offices of Richard Pennymaker and even night after night
going out to see jazz bands and hone our visions, hear poets give
open readings and rehearsals with my saxophone and Albert's newly
acquired bass were all conspiring to dull my nerves.

The first issue of course, was Albert himself, who did nothing for
months but attend physiotherapy sessions, limp back to the apartment
and drink the cases of beer I lugged back on his suggestion most
nights after sweaty subway rides with the armpits of humanity
stuffed in my nose and a full day of work under my belt.

It didn't bother me that he didn't work because this was an
investment – splitting the proceeds of what was bound to be in the
neighbourhood of 25 grand, even after Pennymaker took his cut, once
the case was settled. It didn't bother me that his knee was still
too prone to go out and lug a case or two of beer back on his own or
drop a bag of garbage out the window on to the street curb with
steady aim at three in the morning when there were few passers-by
along the sidewalk. It didn't bother me that he didn't cook or clean
– I wasn't much in the habit of myself quite frankly. Nor did it
bother me that every evening upon my return there was a heavy pall
of smoke in the living room, CDs lying around in a disc jockey
chaos, newspapers and magazines strewn over every available empty
space between seat cushions, overflowing in the bathroom, on top the
television and the stereo – because that's how Albert spent his free
time, reading, plucking at the bass as he leaned, using it like a
crutch for his gimpy knee, chain smoking, inventing new expressions like “Hey Witold, we’re out of beer”, or “Hey Witold, maybe you might go out and grab me a few packs of smokes? Put it on my tab….“ that, and of course, drinking beer.

The elevated status at Pennymakers grew dull once the excitement of
Albert's case wore off and it was back to the every day soap operas
unfolding with Pennymaker's ever-fluctuating and evolving obsession
with young male graduates flowed in and out of the office and his
knowledge that secretaries and receptionists were equally
replaceable, all birdbrains in his repertoire, flushing them out of
existence almost as soon as we'd become accustomed or even sometimes
enamoured with.

And while it had been less than a year squired away under the
constant scrutiny and back-stabbing, I no longer felt that itch of
working to scratch, especially knowing that once Albert's pay day
spilled forth, so did mine and that it was unlikely in any event
that I could withstand the daily uncertainties and chaos for much
longer without seeing it spill like untreated sewage through the
streets of my subconscious, invading my nightly rituals and sullying
everything else being constructed around it.

I knew instinctively that once that payday had been cashed in there
was little else left to keep me there under such primitive
circumstances although what I planned on doing in lieu of it –
returning to hit and miss jobs with contractors, dead end temporary
assignments or bartending in pockets of hovel humanity – was left
unassigned for later duty where I was busy imagining any number of
possible scenarios that inevitably involved kicking up a great storm
and leaving.

What bothered me in the end was simply the lack of space.

Although the flat had once been sufficient for the likes of my
parents and myself despite my having to sleep on the pull-out sofa
in the living room growing up and study at the kitchen table with
the distraction of my mother preparing dinner around me, both Albert
and his double bass were too big a presence in the room once he had
taken it over.

In The Odd Couple, one guy is a slob and the other has a cleaning
fetish. In The Even Couple, the sitcom Albert and I were playing out
every night, I would arrive home flush with the spoils of the liquor
store, pick up the empty tins of takeaway and deliveries stuffing
them all into a bin heaving with empty beer bottles and crushed
empty packets of former cigarettes, knock off the ridiculous shirt
and tie act and the two of us would head out for the evening with
the laugh track roaring in our ears.

It doesn't matter who you're with whether it's a long time mate,
partner, girlfriend, lover, relative, sushi and chopsticks Wall
Street financial advisor, whatever, if you spend every waking hour
in their presence and half of those waking hours are further spent
nailed away in some dodgy dive bar peeling away beer after beer to
find intoxication waiting underneath, eventually you tire of the
presence. Eventually you begin to notice the habits and the quirks
of the other and while you were once intrigued by the novelty of
discovery, once they'd been discovered, they seemed to play over and
over relentlessly repetitive, repeated annoyances growing to
grievances to too much truth talking in too many loud bars in
between laying bad lines on princesses sipping cocktails who
couldn't hear you over the music if they wanted to anyway.

Once the annoyances begin piling on they become like an inner city
grime you can never fully wash from the windows that cloud your
vision of the view as though you were suddenly suffering a mild form
of cataracts and knowing you were gradually going blind.

Gradually, the hints were dropped like carpet-bombing silences
afterwards. Instead of coming home I'd stop off directly after work
still caked in my suit and tie loosened then pissed then stumbling
home with a takeaway, the lights and smoke blinding once in the
flat, stumbling further into bed with the takeaway perched on my
chest, snoring fitfully into the morning. Other times I'd come home
and he'd already be out, sometimes a note of where he might be
headed, sometimes a nothing which was meant as a message of
something.

Either way, we tried avoiding one another as many days as possible,
endeavouring to create space between us before eventually filling it
back up again with consecutive nights rehearsing in the flat, the
banging on the walls from neighbours until gradually relenting, back
to sitting in the living room, drinking more beer, eating more
takeaway, reading passages from magazines and library books which
were never returned.

We were waiting out the end of a prison sentence. We both knew that
the settlement which was to come would liberate us and it was all we
could do to mark off the days on the calendar in black circles
filled in with sinister dollar signs, waiting, purgatory.

Gradually we got around to talking about the spoils as though it
were some dirty, unspoken truth between us that had to be gotten off
our chests.

The rehearsing going on hadn't been entirely in vain or delirious. I
felt like I owed to my father and this particular flat and all those
nights he and my mother had listened to records or my mother sat
quietly sipping rum whilst my father played private concertos for
the two of us.

I dreamt often of being in clubs – perhaps because Albert and I were
in so many of them night after night showing up in cheap jazz clubs,
not the flashy 25 dollar a head dinner table sort of jazz that
flowed through Manhattan like a third river running through the
middle of the island but the jazz of students and unknowns, up and
comers, fading downers and never would be's. I dreamt of playing
alongside my father on stages all over the city, polkas and jazz
blending in with calypsos and salsas, spinning into bottles and
spinning back out again into the faces of my mother over the years,
hair up, hair down, with and without mascara, in happiness and in
health, sadness and poverty, emptiness and sullen and later like the
fat peasant woman in Diego Rivera's La Molendera, before finally
disappearing altogether and my father no longer beside me on stage,
playing to the fishes in the East River or swept out into the
Atlantic and then Albert with his stand up base, pork pie hat, head
down in concentration, unlit Winston perched on his lip, loud
Hawaiian shirt with camouflage pants and jack boots and there I was
beside him back in the flat going line over line again, stopping and
starting, snorting and laughing through rehearsals as though living
out a piece of what this flat and my father never lived long enough.

One thing we could tell ourselves is that we weren't very good in
particular although in the abstract we were almost plausible.

And because the last month had been one long cold spell and we were
cooped up in my little flat breathing in each other's chain smoking and viruses, it was Albert's idea, once he sensed he was wearing out his welcome,
that the two of us should take out musical act on the road,
somewhere in the distant spectacle of Europe.

Why indeed, he liked to stammer. Why not some cross country porno
film cabinet masturbation of the great American dream bustling
through the urban sprawl and dull poetic landscapes of Midwestern
nothingness? Because that was where I last left off Witold, that's
why, Albert explained night after night until it sounded like an
imaginary drum assembled on a beat machine in a distant African
night. That is precisely what I chased when I last left New York,
looking for my lost America. But it isn't here. It's over there,
across the Atlantic, the lands of our fathers, the continent where
history spills out of bins and is casually swept away into a larger
pile of rubbish and carried out to the countryside to be buried in a
landfill or carted off by ship to someone else's landfill until some
piece of it pokes out inescapably again to remind us. We must go to
Europe.

 CHAPTER FIVE

...All travelling becomes dull in exact proportion to its rapidity.
-Ruskin, Modern Painters


Albert begins a slow whine about his creaking knees, fresh out of
the train from Antwerp, stopping in the middle of the station's
tides of passers-by to mewl and set down his bag for a moment. It's
almost too much to bear. An entire town to be eviscerated by our
greedy, insatiable needs awaits and a middle aged ache cripples him
as if he were kicked in the balls. I make a rotten cabbage face, set
down my bag and roll a cigarette, clenching it between my digits
with unquenchable agitation before firing up the butane and touching
it to the cigarette tip. I exhale a mind suddenly dull for its lack
of curiosity. Will this be requiring immediate surgery? I ask, my
eyes begin to race around the minor circus of food peddlers,
discount record stores, blaring video screens and this tiring
chatter of humanity around me. Should I be concerned? Should I
consult the phrase book for the appropriate foreign phrases dealing
with emergencies; will this require a thrombectomy? This food
disagrees with my digestive system and is planning an uprising? I
spatter these questions out to Albert who already has the Winston in
the yap, wincing from his knee pains and searching out a cafe or a
pub to dull the aches.

Fuck you. He says this matter-of-factly, as though he'd just wished
gesundheit to an old lady following a sneeze.

He sees me like a sort of flying, buzzing insect around his face and ears, but instead of swatting, he picks up the bag again, nodding over to the station
cafe where a gang of stragglers putter around their little round
tables, pushing cigarettes into ashtrays, glasses to lips, weakly
attempting to prop up the jowls with a feigned interest at every
item of human flotsam floating past in a vaguely intoxicated dream.

I'm going to have a beer. And he sets off to cross the floor and
find a table to unload himself, peel off the sport jacket and pork
pie hat, loosen the knot of the tie and swallow some of the local
brew. When he travels, he dresses like an old Southern Baptist
dressing for Sunday sermons. Dignity distinguishes, he often
complains.

If I don't follow him, it leads to a lot of confusion. We'd been in
Holland for two days already blurry. Schiphol to Centraal Station to
the first pub we spotted across the tram, taxi and bus strangled
entryway outside the station where crowds of a wide array of freaks
were assembled for various causes.

Why a pub? Why a goddamned pub when an entire city awaited us, an entirely new and different country, another continent, for crissakes, when I stared t ransfixed at barkers preaching Jesus with megaphones in bright orange jumpsuits and off to another side a trio consisting of a slide guitarist, a tin can
drummer and vocalist were battering out a horrible rendition of
Roadhouse Blues and to the right of me hordes of backpacking sheep
whilst to the left lie in wait the hungry wolves with dirt in their
eyes and beneath their fingernails ready to pounce?

Why when I stood transfixed by trams which I had never before seen in anything but photos, the canal boats beckoning with tours of history and from
everything I could withstand, New York was growing pale in its
youth?

Because Albert was in charge, that's why.

How many hours since we left Kennedy, he mumbles in scruffy
justification. Haven't had a proper beer, haven't been able to sit
down and enjoy a cigarette, haven't had a second of time to just sit
and absorb toxins as if they were my closest relatives and this was
a family reunion. Amsterdam's been here what, fourteen hundred,
fifteen hundred years? It isn't going anywhere while I sit having a
few quiet beers and a few smokes and get my bearings, now is it?

Well, they say it was settled by two Frisian fishermen, I interrupt
him from his reverie of intoxication in a city renowned for
hedonism. The beginning of the 14th century or the very end of the
13th century, depending on whose book you read.

Two Frisian fishermen and a dog on the Amstel River, they say.
That makes it about seven hundred years, not fourteen hundred or fifteen hundred years that it's been around. And no, I'm not worried about it disappearing while you drink yourself into an inertia of overindulgence but I am worried about where we might sleep at least. You know, once you get
rolling you can't be distracted. Can you envision yourself, twelve
pints in, getting up suddenly, clapping your hands then rubbing them
together like you had a stick between them and you were rubbing it
against a rock trying to make a fire and yelling enthusiastically,
hey! Let's find a place to crash for the night before I start my
13th pint?

Albert shrugged as we marched resolutely across a road with a pack
of pedestrians and cyclists and trams and cars and buses all passing
back and forth in front of us, around us, between us as though every
step taken risked collision.

If you're bothered by it, he sneered over his shoulder as the smell
of greasy Belgian frites smothered with a dollop of mayonnaise
lingered in my nostrils. Go and find a place yourself, it doesn't
matter to me where we sleep. I just got here. There are welcoming
drinks to consume with the natives. It's tradition, in travelling.
Welcoming drinks, chat with the locals, get a lay of the land from
inside a pub before you dare venture outside.

Whilst he carried on chattering and our seemingly aimless walk continued, we were suddenly in front of a place. He opened the door and marched in. Like a dog fearless following his master, I was close behind him.

Light is the focus of many Dutch artists. Painters as Rembrandt,
Vermeer, Jongkind, Dibbets etc. are famous for their use of light, I
was muttering this like a mantra hoping beyond hope at the last
minute to achieve a stay in the proceedings, to swing wide of the
door and back out again with the sudden satori that we could've
gotten drunk just as easily in Manhattan and there was no reason to
come this far simply to try another brand of beer.

But there was no last minute stay. Albert was determined. And so we
went into the oldest brown café in Amsterdam, Karpershoek, walls
stained with years of tobacco smoke, maybe almost 400 years worth of
smoke and all the accompanying tales ground beneath the silver sand
tossed upon the wooden floor to make cleaning all the easier, the
floor with the sand acting as a sort of ashtray. A place, I
suspected, with little to no light.

This used to be a sailor's pub back in the days when about 10% of
the Dutch adult males were sailors. So the barman tells us when
Albert asked, trying to fend me off with a local's history. We are
immediately muzzled with a few beers and take a seat in the pale
light filtering through a window debating the origins of lager.

Someone overhears the debate and leans into our conversation to talk
about brandy instead. The lager conversations have long ago bored
him. It's Dutch, you know, he says proudly, rolling a cigarette with
one already tucked behind his right ear. He looks to be in his 30s,
skin glistening with the night before still clinging to him like an
influenza. He is drinking a half glass of beer, dressed in a sport
coat over a tee shirt and a pair of torn jeans. A pair of reading
glasses is perched atop his head which he'd been using before our
entry to read De Telegraaf.

Comes from the Dutch for "burnt wine," he states matter of factly,
flipping the rolled cigarette into his mouth, perched between his
lips and lighting it with a match scratched across the floor.

Brandewijn. You see, fermentation doesn't yield a high enough
alcohol. It needs distillation and then a boiling of the resultant
ferment, capturing the vapour which is richer in alcohol than the
liquid.

He gathers us in, sitting back in his chair which he'd pulled up to
our table without invitation, regarding our bags and instruments.
Are you here to play? Another band of gypsy musicians to assault the
already overblown air?

We're here to get drunk, Albert corrects, standing to get another
round of beers noting their diminutive size and enquiring about
pint-sized glasses.

But certainly those instruments mean…

Consider us like gypsies if you wish, Albert continues across the
room whilst waiting for the beers to be poured. We'll be playing in
the streets such a ruckus that people will pay us to stop playing.
It's anti music really, our protest against order. Playing badly is
an underappreciated art form.

But I always considering pop music to be anti music, he mentions,
nodding to a patron who entered only to turn around and exit again
as though he'd just realised he'd forgotten his wallet.

Albert corrects, imperially. Improvised music is often described as a
form of dialogue, wherein one musician is communicating with another
via instruments. It is during this conversation that the identity is
negotiated and the common is formed. Our ruckus of course, is
still no atavistic charm but we are prepared to accept the curses of
passers-by and indignant stares. We have no egos to be wounded. We
are simple workmen, labourers of music with no appreciable skill.

I'm Wim, he says suddenly, perhaps stumped pulling his glasses down over his eyes and sticking his paint-spackled hand in front of my chest. I shake it
reluctantly wondering all the places it had been, all the things it
had touched since last being washed. He wasn't filthy but he wasn't
clean either. Somewhere between junkie and alcoholic, lonely and
bored, head still reeling from the night's party stilled only
momentarily by the further investment of beer coursing through his
nervous system. Repressed by a mediocre society.

Albert returned with another round in what appeared to be record
time, announcing we were here, we might as well get drunk in
preparation - which seemed to pick up Wim's spirits considerably,
continuing to eye the two of us as though we had just appeared out
of an underground comic book and here it was, the café barely open,
more customers straggling in, the interior filling with the
beginnings of a din.

Hours later none of us had moved other than shifting in our seats,
standing to walk to the toilet or to order more beer.

We were slurring on about the settlement of Amsterdam,
Aemstelledamme we were corrected by Wim, dam on the Amstel is the
meaning - the river was damned to keep the settlement of huts on the
banks of the river from flooding over at inopportune moments. The
history of this city, like the history of this country is above all,
avoiding floods. This place, he says, has been around since 1620s or
earlier depending on who you talk to.

*****

A day later, or perhaps it wasn't a full day, 18 or 20 hours later,
I was waking from a bench in front of the train station, my bags
tied around my ankles to prevent thieves while I slept, from seizing
the booty. And I raised my head, in the grass about 20 yards away,
Albert was fast asleep, snoring even, with the double bass like a
mistress lying beside him still in it's ominous looking white
Kolstein Uni-Air Bass Carrier. His duffel bag was underneath his
head, the strap tied around his neck.

And here we were arrived in the station in Utrecht two days later having hit the
rewind button and finger poised over the play button ready to set
the nihilism back in motion. This was some preview of Albert's
Europe Tour – dead of liver poisoning in the first two months.
Hospitalised with exhaustion. Accidental drowning in the Oude
Gracht.

So far, the plan was working with precision. It was like a business,
Albert had preached in New York. We had to be serious if we wanted
to be taken seriously. We'd even gone to the expense of hiring out a
small recording studio to do a few demos of songs we made up as we
went along, so lubricated with drink that the end result was too
shoddy to bother bringing with us to Europe with the idea of
impressing local club managers. We had no promotional capacity
behind our playing. If that meant playing in parks or on bridges, if
it meant open mic venues, or if it meant just knocking door to door
looking for desperation to seal our fate, we weren't going to be
taken very seriously, incapable of pulling ourselves out of the
first pub we came across. Not unless we stumbled across a wedding
looking for two avant-guarde drunks with thick tongues pasty with
drink and abilities rendered still-borne by a fog of apathy, to act
as a sort of wedding reception sideshow

Albert waved off my concerns. Called me too tense. Too future tense,
more specifically. How can you imagine having a feel for the people
if you're rushing around tsking and multi-tasking about where we'll
end up playing? We haven't really learned any songs. What do you
suppose we're going to play at all these magical recitals? Once we
have a feel for the people, have a feel for their local drink, their
local food, their language, the music on the radio, the jazz they
play in a few nightclubs, then we'll have a better grasp of where we
need to head next. This is all an experiment; we are the vanguard of
our own shadows. Calm down, have a beer.

I pushed a few orange banners hanging from the ceiling, away from my
head. The entire country was done up in orange. Orange banners,
orange flags, orange t-shirts, orange bunting, orange underwear,
orange beer. This was patriotism. This is what a football tournament
did to a society's subconscious. I tapped the guy next to me on the
shoulder.

What's the deal with all the orange anyway, I asked impatiently, my
eyes riddled with two days of orange and not a single football
match.

The man turned, bristle-chinned, pipe hanging off his bottom lip and
regarded me with curiosity. He removed the pipe from his lips and
exhaled a cherry tobacco scented plume in my direction.
We are celebrating the House of Orange. Orange, in the likely event
you don't already know, is in France, the warmest, temperature-wise
anyway, city in France. But that's neither here nor there. You see,
Charles the V, Holy Roman Emperor, was born in Ghent, a Belgian city
several hours south of here, and raised in the Netherlands. Part of
the booty of the Empire was the Burgundian lands and the Spanish
kingdom. But it's all a bit confusing to visitors with no grasp of
history, I can tell from the blank stare in your eyes.

It wasn't a blank stare, I corrected, offering to buy his beer
anyway like putting more coins in the jukebox to hear another song.
I'm mesmerised by a chance encounter with an historian. Think of all
the reading you're saving me.

Albert swayed in between us, eyeing the stranger and pulling on his
own spackled beard, days of roughage sprouting little barbed hairs,
splotchy with tobacco stains and greying whiskers. We're going to
Belgium in a few days for the Euros, he coughed, dribbling his drink
against his lips and buying the guy yet another beer. Let's hear all
about it, he barked with sudden, inappropriate enthusiasm.

Well, considering you've now given me two extra beers, I suppose I
can reveal that the Holy Roman Emperor passed on these lands to his
son, Phillip, who was Spanish. The Protestants and Calvinists
chaffed under Catholic rule and little outbreaks started happening.
The Calvinists went crazy in Brussels, destroying Catholic statues
and calling them heretical, like false icons. Spain sent troops.
Smashed it all up, chopped off some big heads and thereby started
the fire of a full scale revolution for independence.

Oh, isn't that typical, Albert bellowed, drawing a few looks from
around the bar before placing his beer softly on the bar and smiling
gently. Everyone's little religious fumblings ending in mass murder.
Why can't we just get on with answering the simple question, why is
everything in Holland covered in orange? Witold and I are well
familiar with the history of human cruelty. We were looking for
inspiration not lectures.

Naturally the guy who had been patiently laying the groundwork for
an elaborate reply to my single, innocent question was more than a
bit taken aback by Albert's rude directness. It was one of the
reasons Albert had so few friends to begin with, his impatience, his
lack of tact, his utter disregard for diplomacy. And why? Because,
as he explained quite often in the early days of our knowing each
other when I would ask him why he was such an opinionated asshole
sometimes and why he couldn't give people the benefit of the doubt,
time is short. Suffering fools is a full time addiction for some but
the way I see it, the less time I spend listening to what I'm not
interested in, the more time I can spend finding people who are
saying something worth listening to. It's a matter of Pet Shop Boys
versus Shostakovich, so to speak. Our time on earth is limited and
I'm not going to waste my time politely listening to someone with an
undisciplined sense of communication imprison me with their lack of
focus.

After a moment's pause, the guy who one moment ago had been warming
up to his topic grimaced as though someone had given his nuts a
pinch. He wasn't quite certain how to approach Albert's insouciance.
Take it as a challenge, like a heckler in a crowd? Walk away in a
huff? Albert would tell me later it is how to get an instant gauge
of one's character. How they dealt with confusion.

In the end, he carried on anyway as though Albert had said nothing.
There was still the matter of one and a half beers to drink and so
on the one hand, since he couldn't bring himself to turn away from
free beers, he couldn't very well turn his back and continue
drinking them, he was stuck with the choice of staying and drinking
the beers or surrendering them and walking away.

Eventually, he made his way to the elder Protestant prince, William
the Silent, assassinated for talking too much about independence
from Spain, the guy began again, having made his decision to prolong
his experience with us if only for the remaining beer. He brought us
through the royal family photo album, the younger brother, Maurice
of Nassau, who became the Prince of Orange after William was killed
and carried on the fight against Spain. He was killed in battle
against Spanish Forces and his son later became King of England.
The beers had been drained. He wiped his lip gently with a cocktail
napkin and leered over at Albert, tapping him on the forehead. I
sure hope, he said, taking his coat, that you communicate better
with that bass than with those lips.

*****

From the Utrecht Central Station, miraculously having convinced
Albert we had reached our temporary destination and were capable of
making it to a B&B booking agent, we were finally stretching our
legs out of the train station café.

As we are walking Albert recounts the story of Descartes first
arriving in Holland four hundred years earlier after joining the
army of Prince Maurice of Orange, then at Breda. As Descartes was,
like us, walking through these streets for the first time, he saw a
placard in Dutch and curious as to what it meant, stopped the first
passer by and asking him to translate it into his language, French,
or Latin. As it turns out, the first passer by was a guy named Isaac
Beeckman, the head of the Dutch College at Dort. Beeckman agreed to
translate it but only if Descartes would answer the placard. That
is, the placard itself, translated was a challenge to the entire
world to solve a certain geometrical problem. Descartes worked it
out within a few hours, and he and Beeckman became good friends.

So, as neither you nor I are Descartes but we are in fact, walking
through the streets of Utrecht with no tangible cognition of the
language, why don't you find yourself suddenly curious and excited
at some seemingly benevolent sign in Dutch and stop the first girl
with a pearl earring you see, asking her for the translation. She
will in turn invite us for coffees or for a beer in some swank café
and our first evening in Utrecht will be predetermined.

He isn't serious, he is sweating. It's unbearably warm outside; the
humidity is peeling layers of water out of him beneath the bags.
What I would say about Utrecht is that it is a city with the feeling
of small town. Een stad met het gevoel van een dorptje. How clever I
feel when I repeat this phrase in Dutch night after night in a
variety of pubs and cafes: It is one of the few phrases I learn
straight away and memorise from a crumbled piece of paper and to
each person that I recite it, I am rewarded with the gratitude of a
simple person understanding a simple observation. Like a child in a
pub making precocious comments. They are impressed. They think you
are clever.

But what you come to know straight away is that a great deal of the
day to day experience is about the weather. Like any other place, a
consistent diet of clouds, mist, sometimes driving rain and gusting
winds, wears away the resolve over time. You bend to the will of the
weather. You suffer silently. As people have always done, making
little comments about the weather, staring out the window at the
changing cloudscapes viewed from inside a café through a large
window. And when you're in such an environment, when you've resigned
yourself to the weather, you will no longer care about the weather's
mendacity or its sometimes cruel and disappointing nature. What you
will learn to appreciate instead is the appearance of the sun. The
appearance of the sun will become an event, a happening during which
the dispositions of those around you will visibly brighten, your
step will lighten and all the burdens of daily living seem almost
magically transformed.

It was hot and sunny that first day in Utrecht and thus, without the
hindsight of weeks of unbroken cloudy hangover days to balance our
enthusiasm, it immediately became an outdoor summer concert of
faces, a circus of smiling and big horse Dutch-toothed mouths, a
shuddering orgasm of activity and all around us, the small town
bristling.

Eventually it could become a disaster of solitude, of stunted
conversations, drunken poetic waxing which have meaning only in the
embryo of the brain and die still borne once they are uttered aloud,
in public. In search of a confidante, a brother in calculated misery
and introspection, you realize instead that you are merely
drunk, getting in people's pointless and meandering conversations,
infused with the pettiness that comes in a small town of gossips
where everyone knows each others' business and exploits it to the
fullest...it is then you realize you've missed the transitional
phase of the evening when the prematurely drunk have already
returned to their beds and the nocturnal gibberish that follows is
all a temporary illusion in which every utterance is forgotten almost the moment it is spoken. You tour the bubble of cafe life along Loeff Berchmaker and Voorstraat with the same lack of success, the curse of learning a language so you can realize no one has anything of interest to say and it was
better off being incomprehensible and mysterious. It is within that
bubble you realize that you are still a stranger, still the outsider
attempting to assimilate a lifetime of experiences in matter of
ragged months. But that will be much later.

Dutch windows are inevitably and unusually large, partially because
they are gateways to light and partially to limit the weight of
buildings. A wall taken up by a window will weigh far less than a
wall taken up by concrete or even wood and when you think about how
much of Holland's land was built through Dutch ingenuity rather than
naturally made, you think of how soft the land really is, how simply
foundations could sink in drained water turned to land– windows
create less weight and thus such buildings with large windows are
less of a burden on the land beneath them.

I sensed in Holland that everything is put in its place to shape it
by light and shadows, trapping and reflecting light to create form,
giving energy and life to even the drabbest surroundings. The
climate is drab and thus the lighting, diffused through windows,
thin curtains and tiny openings, acts as a gentle luminance shaping
material and space.

Fortunately, as we made our way up the Voostraat after crossing the
Oudegracht and turning left from Neude,. dragging baggage behind us
past cafes and restaurants which weren't yet opened, employment
agency after employment agency teeming it seemed, from what little
we could make out, with vacancies and offers, travel bureaus and
small shops selling anything from antiques to snacks to CDs and
modern furniture, books and occasionally clothing. Voorstraat
gradually gave way to Wittevrouwen and then finally, crossing the
Stadsbuitengracht, the canal that rang outside the old city's
borders, onto the Bildstraat, past the Moluks Historical Museum
before finally reaching the Hogelandse Park, turning left onto FC
Donderstraat and after several miscues and mistakes despite the tiny
map in our hands, reaching the B&B just as the grind of city
outskirts were giving way to neighbourhoods. The flat grandeur of
the mini boulevard shared by buses, bikes and automobiles gave it an
oceanfront feel. There is something sterile yet simultaneously
filthy about Dutch cities. The sterility, we came to believe, was
owed to the language, even though everywhere we went smelled like
Drum and stale beer, everywhere being of course, the cafes and pubs
we littered.

You cannot forget about the history with the Dom and the Cathedral
lurking just around nearly every corner or looking down over bridges
on to curbed canals loaded with cafes, clubs and restaurants. Since
the late Middle Ages the Dutch have been making mud flats and
sections of the ocean habitable by draining the water and making
high levees blocking.

The Dutch had learned, early on in the War of Independence against
Spain that they could build a homemade defence by flooding low lying
areas. Once they'd succeeded in evicting the Spanish, Maurice of
Orange came up with the idea of protecting Holland with a line of
flooded land protected by fortresses that ran from the Zuiderzee
down to the river Waal.
They built sluices in dikes and forts and then built fortress towns
along the line of sluices. Those flooded areas were carefully kept
at a level that was not flooded so as to allow enemy boats and yet
not so shallow that enemy soldiers could march along it with ease.
In the winter, they could manipulate the water flow to make the ice
weaken and incapable of supporting troops.
And thereafter, they turned their thoughts to building land out of
water – as they famously boast. God didn't make Holland, the Dutch
made Holland.
The building of the Barrier Dam started in 1923. The 30 kilometer
long dam was made of boulders and clay, the spaces in between were
filled with sand, stones and brushwood. On the final day of
construction the tide turned and the Ijsselmeer, a freshwater lake,
was created. The dam also got sluices for draining excess water and
locks for maintaining shipping.
After the dam was built, the draining began. Four enormous polders
were drained in the IJsselmeer and the result was 165,000 ha of new
land. The Wieringermeer Polder and the Noordoost Polder are beeing
used for agriculture, Z
The Afsluitdijk (Closure-dike) is a major dam in the
Netherlands, constructed between 1927 and 1933 and running from Den
Oever on Wieringen in North Holland province, to the village of
Zurich (mun. Wûnseradiel) in Fryslân province, over a length of 32
km and a width of 90 m, at an initial height of 7.25 m above
sea-level ( 53° 00' 00" N 05° 10' 00" E) . It is a fundamental part
of the larger Zuiderzee Works, damming off the Zuiderzee, a salt
water inlet of the North Sea and turning it into the fresh water
lake of the IJsselmeer.
Previous experiences had demonstrated that
till (boulder clay), rather than just sand or clay, was the best
primary material for a structure like the Afsluitdijk, with the
added benefit that till was in plentiful supply in the area; it
could be retrieved in large quantities by simply dredging it from
the bottom of the Zuiderzee. Work started at four points: on both
sides of the mainland and on two specially made construction-islands
(Kornwerderzand and Breezand) along the line of the future dike.
From these points the dike slowly grew by ships depositing till into
the open sea in two parallel lines. Sand was then poured in between
the two dams and as it emerged above the surface was then covered by
another layer of till. The nascent dike was then strengthened from
land by basalt rocks and mats of willow switch at its base. The dike
could then be finished off by raising it further with sand and
finally clay for the surface of the dike, on which grass was
planted.
Construction progressed better than expected; at three points along
the line of the dike there were deeper underwater trenches where the
tidal current was much stronger than elsewhere. These had been
considered to be major obstacles to completing the dike, but all of
them proved to be relatively straightforward. On
May 28, 1932, two years earlier than initially thought, the
Zuiderzee ceased to be as the last tidal trench of the Vlieter was
closed by a final bucket of till. The IJsselmeer was born, even
though it was still salty at the time.
The dike itself however was not finished yet as it still needed to
be brought up to its required height and a road linking Friesland
and North Holland (the current A7/E22 motorway) also remained to be
built. It would not be until
September 25, 1933, that the Afsluitdijk was officially opened, with
a monument marking the spot where the dike had been closed. The
amount of material used is estimated at 23 million m³ of sand and
13.5 million m³ of till and over the years an average of around four
to five thousand workers were involved with the construction every
day, relieving some of the unemployment following the Great
Depression.
Beside the dam itself there was also the necessary construction of
two complexes of shipping
locks and discharge sluices at both ends of the dike. The complex at
Den Oever includes the Stevin lock (named after Hendric Stevin, a
son of mathematician and engineer Simon Stevin) and three series of
five sluices for discharging the IJsselmeer into the Wadden Sea; the
other complex at Kornwerderzand is composed of the Lorentz locks
(named after Hendrik Lorentz, the famous physicist, who personally
did the calculations of the tides that were crucial to the
construction of the afsluitdijk) and two series of five sluices,
making a total of 25 discharge sluices. Periodically discharging the
lake is necessary since it is continually fed by rivers and streams
(most notably the IJssel river that gives its name to the lake) and
polders draining their water into the IJsselmeer.
The Amsterdam-Rhine Canal or Amsterdam-Rijnkanaal is a canal in the
Netherlands that was built to connect the port city of Amsterdam to
the main shipping artery of the Rhine. Its course follows a
generally southeasterly direction as it goes through the city of
Utrecht towards Wijk bij Duurstede where it intersects the Lek
branch of the Rhine and then continues on to the Waal river near
Tiel, with a branch, the Lek Canal, to the Lek near Nieuwegein.
Along the Rhine we could have passed through Arnheim, Dusseldorf,
Cologne, Bonn, Strasbourg, Basel.
Castle Vredenburg
or VredenBorch was built in the early 16th century by Charles V in
Utrecht (Netherlands). Its main purpose was to retain control over
the city. For that reason the castle's main armament was aimed at
the city.
The castle was destroyed in 1577 by the citizens of Utrecht.
Some of the remains of the castle can still be seen underneath the
current Vredenburg music centre.
built in the late 7th century by Willibrord, the first bishop of
Utrecht Dom Square
knowing that for years before they had merely loaded barrels of beer
and cartons of supplies to the restaurants, blacksmiths, cafes, and
FEBO automated food dispensers above, shoving rondvleeskroketten,
frikadelen, Bamis and kaassoufflés into our drunken gobs when the
restaurants were shut or we were too impatient to eat to wait at a
table pretending to be civilised.
Those canals were for later. So too was the Cathedral and the Dom.
As we strode down the street, sweating out hangovers in stultifying
heat and humidity, beneath backpacks and dragging suitcases by the
nape of the neck, I could only hear Albert bitching and complaining
behind me about my impatience for finding taxis and because I wanted
this experience to be on the ground, inhaled, exhaled and with great
exertion. Nor was it a far sight from girls and women plucked out of
fantasies I never knew I had coasting on bikes, chattering away to
the people riding beside them in a language that sounded almost
English for long enough to lead you down a dead end street of
undecipherable, guttural utterances.
This is supposed to be my great grandparents' tongue, Albert spat
with disappointment, sweat pouring over every stretch of pale, bare,
smoked skin and darkening his shirt as he paused to shake out a
Winston and lit it to his lips. It sounds like people are vomiting
all around me for crissakes. How can a country that drinks so much
beer speak a language that sounds so thirsty?
We carried on to the B&B with only the thought of beer that would
transpire once we'd shed our belongings and poured ice water over
our heads.
*****
After a few stops, we eventually made our way back to Neude, past
the statue of the rabbit-thinker and turning from the clatter of the
Potterstraat right to Loeff Berchmakerstraat, cobbled together
sometime around 1393, where we were afforded, by turning around, the
sight of the Dom as we faced south and then gradually, making our
way up this narrow domain of cyclists and pedestrians as few cars
can comfortably pass through it, we saw it open onto the corner of
Breedstraat, and beyond that, the sight of the water tower, which
had been built in the late 1890s. This little spread of land was to
become our province, our waking and intoxicated realm, our ground
zero, so to speak.
Impossible to miss, our eventual landing was in Café Marktzicht and
although all along it was unbeknownst to us, this particular locale
would become our watering hole extraordinaire, our centre of
information, gossip, conversation, friends and in essence, our
living room and front yard for many months.
It was merely the Oranjeboom sign hanging outside that drew us
inside originally. We barely noticed the three 17th century facades
at the corner of Loeff Berchmakerstraat which would fixate us for
hours and months not particularly for any fascination with the
restoration rather because when you sat on the terrace of Café
Marktzicht, it was impossible to avoid staring at, if you weren't
engaged in some nagging conversation before you. Three facades that
I often wondered idly about when sipping an amsterdametje and
staring off with whimsy, concerning myself with histories I couldn't
possibly know.
But the Oranjeboom sign was a novelty to us. Pubs everywhere
advertised their home draught, Heineken, Grolsch, Brand, Dommelsch
and on and on. It was because of this sign, more than the people
inside whom we'd yet come to know, more than the hard wood floors
and tables, the oblique lighting hidden in nooks and crannies in
crevices above the bar, the Arrow Rock station playing
ever-so-subtly in the background or even, at the moment, the crowded
terrace filled with sunbathers masquerading as drinkers, or vice
versa, the publican and his family, the billiards table or anything
else that history and afterthought might ascribed as having been
endearing. Just another anonymous café filled with anonymous people.

The humidity was oppressive and had been so for several hours so
rather than jostling for a spot on the terrace we plunged ourselves
into the quasi-cool darkness of the interior, nearly barren save
those with similar thoughts of escaping sun and heat. Admittedly
unfamiliar with customs, dissatisfied in our thirsts for the
Dutch-sized half pints, seized upon full pints of the Oranjeboom
which frankly, in the humidity, was probably not the wisest choice
of drink but cold and wet and satisfying nonetheless, sitting down
at the bar's edge, still squeezing the last semblances of exhaustion
whilst the heat and humidity clung to us in the un-air-conditioned
indoors with only the coolness of shade and the soupiness of beers
to comfort us, we settled straight into the familiar pints,
forsaking their half pint beers and native-brewed beers. We were
already enamoured with the Belgian beers and finding some steady
supply on tap was precisely the venture we were going to spend our
capital on.
We were strangers, no doubt and no more or less curious than any
other stranger who wandered in, not even for our accents and lack of
Dutch skills. It wasn't until we'd had a few pints (which of course,
even more than our language set us up as foreigners) and the day's
weariness began to settle comfortably that we spied the television
screen in the back left corner of the bar and began querying about
whether or not the football would be on.
This simple question brought on speculation of all sorts as there
were two matches being played that night, one on the Dutch channel
and the other on the Belgian channel and we were making our choice
known in typical foreign arrogance before we'd even established
whether or not the café would care to have their séances of
conversation interrupted by the lull of a football match the Dutch
weren't participating in. And before long we'd attracted a crowd of
sorts beginning with Cees, who had the appearance of having spent
well over three hundred of his three hundred and sixty five late
afternoons to early evenings for the last recollectable years in
this very same café, holding court with a fluctuating collection of
regulars who varied in shape and form from documentary producer to
builder to computer programmer to bicycle shop owner to carpenters
to ploughman and muckrakers.
Cees was immediately transfixing on his first approach swooping down
on us – we were unable to take our eyes and ears away from him, a
sometimes sputtering, wildly gesticulating, maddening cacophonous
force of inner-connected phraseologies as though blown throw several
horns simultaneously all in different notes.
At once the three of us were like long lost brothers – Cees
expressing shock and amazement that two Americans would care at all
about football, let alone venture opinions about which match might
be better to watch, was a twitter in our ears and before Albert had
even mentioned his Dutch background, Cees was in another tail
spinning uproar about what are two Americans doing here from the
heat pounding down pints and talking about football all the while
hands flicking inward and outward, fingers twirling the grips of his
handlebar moustache and slapping his leg simultaneously.
Before long Henk emerged from a table, ambling up to the bar on the
pretext of change for the cigarette machine, overheard Cees and
Albert's conversation and proceeded to ante in his opinion, catching
my eye a time or two as he attempted to ejaculate himself into the
conversation. Before long, defeat slumping in his shoulders as he
could not out shout Cees, he turned to me, looking me up and down –
ugh, another tourist in the café! And then he guffawed slapping my
shoulder lightly to reassure me it was all in good fun, the hilarity
of the circumstances.
He ordered himself a beer and flicked a finger over towards me
before sliding in closer. So what are your impressions of our city
so far?
There isn't much to be fair – we just got off the train an hour ago.
Yes, we know all about the coffee shops stinking of skunk, the
whores flexing in front of windows in scant, alluring outfits.
Window after window of sexually sculptured bodies preening and
advertising. But beyond that, it's pretty much a clean slate.
What you should notice, should you venture outside of the city, is
the landscape, the moods that nature effects on trees, canals, and
shop windows…I myself am an artist. I've just been working on a
painting in which we, rather than the landscape, are the giants. I
have not drawn the horizon low on the canvas but rather only as a
sliver at the very top. Beneath it, humanity, eating, gobbling up
the landscape. Actually, I'm planning it as a triptych, wherein in
the first painting would mirror something like Ruisdael's Wheat
Fields gradually giving way in the subsequent paintings, to What
Fields?
He gave me a tap on the arm again – you see? Understand?
Yeah, I mutter ungenerously, sipping the beer quickly. The usual
patter about man destroying nature…what about nature killing man?
What about volcanoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, that sort of thing.
What has that to do with human control? I think man is often the
forgotten victim here…I sneer into the beer, tapping him on the arm
to reassure him. All in good fun, the hilarity of the circumstances,
like you said.
Uh huh, he pondered. His mind was already racing back towards the
conversation unravelling between Cees and Albert – Albert was in
mid-explanation of how we'd gotten here, our intention to stay here
– for the time being anyway until we headed back out for Belgium to
watch the football matches whose tickets we'd purchased via the
internet months before.
The café was getting more crowded. So what do you know of Dutch
painting, then, Henk returned to me, decided to ask, stammering for
a topical venue, clearly uninterested in football.
The Golden Age, I recited dutifully. Great artistic production
brought on by the capitalism awoken by the bourgeois power after the
war with Spain…that's about it and even that I only just read on the
train here from Amsterdam. He listened for a moment but his question
was meant more as a precursor for his own tiresome ramble.
Well you see, he began to pontificate, going back to the idea behind
my painting, the inverse of the earlier Dutch enchantment with their
newly formed homeland following that war, the celebration of the
landscape in 17th century enthusiasm, I am remarking not only on as
social commentary about destruction of the environment but also the
effect of the population explosion in Holland on the landscape. We
have very little space here and yet we revere space so fully. Space
and shapes and object – tangible things. All of it, like the
landscape, is slipping away. I envision one day we will be nothing
but a series of high rises all across the land, housed much in the
same way of the high rise containers of pigs or chickens to conserve
precious space…

He went on in this vein for quite a spell. I felt myself fading in
and out of focus, drinking faster, smoking more; simple distractions
that helped keep me rooted in front of him, a smile frozen on my
face, nodding and hmmmming where appropriate.
You never know quite what to do in these situations, utterly
trapped. I couldn't very well break off and stick my head back into
the Albert and Cees' conversation without appearing rude. I couldn't
make the excuse that I had to leave, as Albert was still there. I
wanted to just squirm and mumble enough! with verve, to make him
stop in some way. I was powerless to change the course of the
conversation or the converser. People who appeared far more
interesting butted in and out of the human barrier beside the bar,
only to disappear again once they'd retrieved a drink. Lucky people
who could escape.
…..once artists were out from under the rock of the wealthy and
powerful, like the Church, they were free to cater to the wider
tastes of the growing middle class…and even though there was a guild
in place to attempt to limit the amount of painters and paintings
and to each have their niche, well, even then actually, by guild
definition, even house painters were considered painters simply
because they used a brush – can you believe that!
Henk was barely drawing a breath by then. I'd already bought him two
beers and one still stood full on the bar so busy he was with
talking and filling my ears with the sound of his voice. I stared at
the lines in his face, along his brow, in the corners of the eyes
when he smiled, wondered where they derived from more, a life of
tobacco smoke and beer or the years of holidays getting burnt
beneath the sun of Portugal or Spain.
And beyond Henk, I could see the café filled to capacity,
conversations everywhere, laughter erupting in pockets all around
the room, Drum smoke forming a bluish haze overhead. I tried
imagining what an equivalent café here in Utrecht might have seemed
like in the 17th century. On the outside of the café was carved 1678
in the edifice. The name, Marktzicht, meant Market View in deference
to the open air fabric market which had been given its charter all
the way back in 1597 for the linen weaver's guild to hold a twice
per year linen market. It had grown in that time to weekly open air
market not only of fabrics, the largest in Holland, but as a rag
market in general, a place to wander with a head full of Friday
night, mystifying yet comforting– the façade of Markzicht was
dominated by the large ground floor window, opening to the terrace
in warm weather, overlooking the small square and outside, even with
the light beginning to fade slightly, you could see the streetscape
outside. And such a source of entertainment for punters sat on the
terrace sipping Duvel or the regular groups of workers at tables
near that front window, fascinated by every little weird nuance of
life moving through. Comments about the parking jobs of certain
women who might nearly reverse into other cars, chuckles over
someone struggling with a large package, amusement with the kafirs
wandering from the coffee shop on the corner, waving their mobile
phones and stinking of weed, whatever little sampling developed was
under the scrupulous eyes of the beer drinkers and like all Dutch,
eager to poke their noses in, eager to add in their two cents worth.
So were painters back then knocking back beers and talking about
their new found source of wealth, the middle classes, gibbering on
about their theories of the future of their art? Were they worried
the Spanish would fight back again, seize Dutch independence, reduce
them back to decorating church organs in the name of The Reformed
Church?
As it turned out, Henk cautioned, it was the war with France that
killed off the art market in the 17th century. The economy was
diverted, art became a luxury, not a necessity and of course, after
a half century of paintings being produced en masse, the market was
already glutted to begin with…by 1650 or so, Utrecht's art market
was already in decline although Delft, not too far from here, was
still prospering.
Fortunately, Cees had begun to lose himself, having already spent
the better part of four hours drinking beer prior to our arrival,
and announcing his departure loudly, intervened between Henk and I
to shake my hand, twitching in my face, demanding Albert and I
return here the following evening for the football match. And thus,
Albert was able to rescue me from Henk's relentless monologue and we
were able to escape, back out into the street, back out to find a
different reality.
That's what it's like crawling from bar to bar, a moving picture
with changing backgrounds yet inside, fantastically enough, similar
scenes were being played out everywhere. Not just all along Utrecht,
but all along Amsterdam, Den Haag, Rotterdam, Eindhoven, Maastricht,
in every mind bending corner. It was incomprehensible to ponder the
amount of beer being consumed in Holland at that very hour.
*****
We didn't have long. Part of the rationale behind stopping off first
in Amsterdam and then Utrecht before we'd departed for the Belgian
phase of the European Championships was to scale the rather
difficult proposition of deciphering
A.) if we liked the place well enough, if Albert's historical links
were important enough, to chose Holland as the beginning point once
the championships were over and
B.) if so, then attempting to find articulation of our music would
become the next point, whether there were sufficient venues,
sufficient interest by those venues and sufficient motivation on our
own part for staying.

EXERPT:
Success was guaranteed by the production of art which matched the
buyers' expectations. Many painters depended on secondary sources of
income to survive. Vermeer was known to have dealt in works of other
painters but it is not known how much success he may have had.
However, even though in his early years he had secured a patron, the
well-to-do Delft burger Pieter van Ruijven, who bought approximately
half of his artistic production, in the later part of his career he
was not able to support his numerous family with his own dealings
due to his unusually large family and the ruinous war with France
which had suddenly and gravely damaged the then flourishing art
market. Ironically, the advantage of having a fixed client/artist
relationship with Van Ruijven was later to have hinder the spread of
the artist's fame outside his native Delft since almost all his
works were in the hands of few clients. Vermeer depended largely on
the generosity of his well-to-do mother-in-law in those difficult
years.
*****
I was the wooden dummy beside him at first. In the other corner I
spied an ongoing chess match which had been played for years with no
solution, one man winning one day, losing the next, too many beers
or too few. I eased my way over to study potential moves, sneaking
them in my head across the board, knocking over pieces, dropping a
beer on the floor and collapsing through the table, chess pieces
flying everywhere, beer spilling out and hopelessly lost.
But I shook my head instead – the beer was making its way
incoherently into the system and the reverie was expelled like a
toxin and my attention was back to Cees and Albert and their
discussion of cheap places to live in town. It was our third
consecutive night awash in beer and football. Three nights stumbling
home up along the Biltstraat at three in the morning, pit-stopping
in an early morning Halal grill for gobfuls of Doner kabobs and
frites.
And three mornings in a row, in a desperate ploy to regain a sense
of depth, something filling in these great corridors of fatigue,
illusion and vague coherence with a semblance of sanity, composure,
I stopped for a short nap and a short read in the
Gemeentebibliotheek Utrecht, the oldest public library in the
Netherlands which in 1564 was converted into a library for the
university by the city library of Utrecht. But now it was a place to
sit and knowingly pull out books from shelves expecting illumination
in an unknown language through osmosis alone.
This is where we should make our base for the next several months,
Albert croaked the next morning over his eighth Winston of the
morning from a man who wouldn't get out of bed for a cup of coffee
before he'd had three cigarettes, ordering a beer from the table
service as soon as he'd drained his koffie verkeert. I've got a
feeling about this place, that it's the sort of place with enough
going on we can find a place to play – big university life will
swallow our queer jazz with a confusion they will attach both to our
creativity and the collective mistranslation of intent.
And so began our first foray into seeking a place to live, finding
locales wherein we might begin to play, establish our sound as it
were, and settling in to a new culture.
Among other things about Utrecht you might notice if you were in our
position, looking for housing is that very little suitable housing
exists. Well, the estate agents had plenty of ridiculously priced
luxury-style flats which we would have lived like furniture-less
kings in, but because of the influx of homeless students coming in a
few weeks before the new semester was to begin, in order to find
realistic housing, we would have to sign up for something before we
were even off for our month-long meandering through Belgiumfor the
European Championships.
When the B&B became prohibitively expensive, we switched to youth
hostel near the water tower off of Amsterdamsestraatweg and
continued half-hearted efforts of finding a more permanent place. It
seemed ridiculous to pay a month's rent for a place we wouldn't be
living in but the idea of not having our own place when we got back
seemed even more ridiculous. After all, once the fun and madness of
the Euros were over, it would finally be time to get down to
business and we weren't going to get much done without a rehearsal
space, packed into bunk beds in a youth hostel. On the other hand,
the odds were stacked against us.
Cees had a grand time with our search. Do you know that every year
hundreds of first year students stream through the streets looking
for tiny flats, three by five meters for five hundred a month,
anything – they search advertisements in newspapers and little
advertisements on the street and all the while, long, long waiting
lists - and imagine yourselves looking, not as students, for cheap
housing but foreigners, adult foreigners, surely no students, and
you'll begin to realise your chances are quite slim indeed. The
locals were quite happy to bemoan the lack of housing but there were
tragically few leads.
Every afternoon we'd stroll into Marktzicht and every afternoon
greeted by how's the search coming along, and every afternoon,
empty-handed, we'd sidle up to the bar or take a seat at a window
table if it were free and drink away our frustration.
Locals had just as much trouble. Gert had been looking for three
months. Pieter another one who had been living on a sofa for half a
year. They got a kick out of our futile searching.
Perhaps more annoying however was that we had no place to rehearse.
For one, the outskirt location of the B&B meant, due to the size,
weight and encumbrance of Albert's bass we couldn't venture very
far. There wasn't a single venue suitable for practice or play. The
B&B owner, although sympathetic, was no masochist, and warned us
that any rehearsals we wanted to undertake within the premises would
have to be sporadic and short. It's not that I don't like jazz, he
explained with a shrug of his shoulders. I admire it in some ways.
It's just that the other patrons…and his voice wandered off to the
rest of the buildings leaving us to infer the disturbances of
tourists and weekend honeymoonists up from Belgium and France or
Germany.
And certainly we weren't going to leave. The breakfasts alone, full
table spreads of cereals, fresh fruits and juices, platters laden
with cheese and meats, were enough to keep us. We rationalised that
there wasn't very long before we'd be leaving for Belgium and the
European Championship anyway so a few more weeks out of tune
wouldn't hurt us.
For that matter we might as well have left our instruments behind in
New York for all the good they'd done us to this point, for all we'd
struggled carrying them first from New York and all the hassles
involved with customs, dragging them around Amsterdam and then
leaving them to gather dust at the B&B. Albert hadn't taken his bass
out of the casing nor I my saxophone and not wanting to carry either
we went out each day leaving the instruments behind wandering around
futility seeking housing and when not seeking house, more often than
not, hanging around like vagrants at Café Marktzicht where we were
fast becoming causes célèbres for our prolific, daily consumption of
beer and toasties, outrageous banter and the looming voyage to
Belgium, two yanks in search of football.
We tried vainly to sort out some semblance of a scheme but given the
temporal nature of our existence prior to leaving again, there
seemed little point. We wandered from estate agent to estate agent,
looking at flats which were situated in the most expensive
neighbourhoods simply because that was all they had to offer. We
wanted to find a dump, anything that wouldn't drain our coffers
quickly and a place where the noise of our rehearsals wouldn't
bother anyone. But it wasn't easy. We dropped hints everywhere we
went, every pub and café and falafel house we stopped in. We pried
and poked, questioned and demanded, all with equal futility. And by
lunch or mid afternoon, having exhausted ourselves and whatever
cryptic leads we had followed that day, we headed invariably back to
Café Marktzicht.
And every afternoon we'd stroll in, now familiar, greeted by the
stragglers who weren't at work or were off work early, order our
customary pints and settle in, sometimes by the window in front at
the tables reserved for the regulars and other times seated at the
edge of the bar, all the while doing the same, sipping our beers,
chain smoking our cigarettes and grousing about failed opportunities
until someone or another would strike up a conversation and steer us
in other directions.
And one afternoon, like all the others, the spell was momentarily
broken when we met Jan one afternoon sitting outdoors at a café with
our instruments, which we'd brought with us that morning on the
half-witted notion of finding a place in a park to at least rehearse
awhile in, languidly sipping Belgian Trappist beer in preparation
for our outward journey. Jan spotted Albert's double bass carrier in
particular, hard as it was to miss, which Albert had brought along
simply because he's already worked out a deal to leave it on
premises for the duration of our Belgian tour and invited himself to
our table, ordering another round in the process. Harmless enough.
So, he concluded after we'd chatted amiably for a half hour and
established, as we did with nearly everyone we came across, the
dignity of our goal, to establish ourselves here as jazz musicians
with our own delicate and unique sound, just after the Euros were
over and we'd sated ourselves with hedonism, of course, I'm in a
band myself and while we aren't looking for any added musicians, we
are playing in a small little festival not far from Utrecht in a few
nights and I'm sure the festival proprietors would be happy to add
some kind of jazz act to the bill. At the moment it's mostly rock
and pop but yes, the more I think about it, the more I believe this
would work out perfectly for you, your first gig, your first chance
at getting heard someplace other than in your minds, he added with
typical Dutch subtle yet direct derisiveness.
But we haven't really developed any real play list or really any
songs of our own, Albert explained. We play in the tradition of
spontaneous jazz musicians, making it up as we go along more or
less.
Jan assured us it wouldn't be a problem. It isn't going to be very
professional. A neighbourhood hell raising fundraiser is all – you
wouldn't be critically judged, I can assure you. Not to mention the
fact you are not Dutch but hoping to live here and establish
yourself as jazz musicians, well, we don't get much of that even
though we have such a vibrant blues and music scene here with all of
our festivals coming this summer it would be a chance for you to
enhance your résumé so to speak.
And so it was agreed, rather suddenly, with little time to rehearse.
We would invite those among the clans in the cafés we habituated, we
would invite people by word of mouth and in a few weeks time, just
after our return from Belgium, we would have our first gig, even if
we had yet to find a place to live.
from the Diaries of Witold Kazmerski, cahier 1, page 81


Oh senseless man, who cannot possibly make a worm, and yet will make
Gods by dozens.
-- Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, Essays, bk. 2, ch. 12, An Apology of
Raimond Sebond (tr. by John Florio, 1580). The Columbia Dictionary
of Quotations
The European Championship was in full gear. We'd already had a heady
week of bars and cities and football matches in Belgium, the co-host
nation. We'd gotten caught up in the mini-riot between the Belgian
police and the German and English hooligans. Actually, they weren't
technically hooligans. The real ones, despite the pre-tournament
hysteria, had by and large, been kept back in their respective
countries. What was left was just the core of drunks and the core of
Belgian riot cops itching for action.

We got into Charleroi on a morning train from Brussels. It was an
fleeting industrial town, devoid of anything of interest, far away
from refined humanity, a prison-like town far enough away from the
action to hold a match between the two rival countries with the
worst fan reputations in Europe. Throughout Belgium, measures had
been taken, in a haphazard sort of way, to control the masses. The
riot police were out in number a great deal, some cities restricted
the sale of beer to only the legally weakest kind and there was the
general self-vigilance that being aware of one's reputation
preceding one's arrival was likely to fertilize. But not Charleroi.
Their economy was so depressed, the local proprietors didn't care
about hooligans. They just knew they drank a lot of beer and would
spend a lot of money doing it.

The June sun was already bearing down us heavily by 9. As people
began to arrive, the old town square, Place Charles II was opened to
numerous cafes and outdoor terraces which, of course, with nothing
else of interest to do in such a dump, was the first place everyone
headed out of the train station.

Supporters on both sides seemed to drink as though the world were
about to end. The Germans and the English aligned themselves on
opposite sides of the square, staking out their respective
territories, content to swill trough-levels of Belgian beer in
plastic cups under the Belgian sun with the football match still
another 10 hours away.
Albert and I nabbed a pair of seats on the English side, the sunny
side of the square, eager to watch the unravelling as two countries
with the most notorious hooligan problems were assembled, as though
fate had requested their presence merely to watch a riot play out.
The beer wasn't a gradual swell either. It began suddenly and
swiftly, as soon as the overwhelmed cafe staff had been able to
assemble themselves in the factory line type of service required for
the sort of instant beer gratification that was demanded with the
pounding of plastic tables and empty bottles.

By the afternoon however, the singing began, somewhere in synch with
the level of intoxication on each side. Before long both sides were
singing and chanting with equal passion, snarling and screaming with
the sort of red-faced relish that they seemed so accustomed to under
the conditions. In the midst of this a few young girls skipped in
and out of the fountain in the square as though oblivious to the
debauchery going on around them whilst English screamed out clever
little chants like, Hitler, Hitler, what's the score? And shouting
we hate the Germans at the top of their raspy voices.
An English fan held up a German flag and set it alight before the
Belgian police stepped in. Then a German supporter made his way to
the fountain as the parents of the girls watched, unconcerned,
oblivious or transfixed as the German began making gestures toward
the English side and was rescued by the Belgian police as both sides
rushed forward, crowding into the fountain – a potential throw
thwarted again as out of nowhere appeared a lovely young Belgian
woman who began juggling a football for several minutes at a time,
transfixing the savages. Hitler, Hitler, what's the score, the
English continued chanting as the woman eventually abandoned her
plot, realising the futility of entertaining beasts.
The singing only heightened the tensions and not long after, someone
tossed the first plastic chair in the direction of the other. It was
impossible to tell from where it came since the first thing anyone
noticed was a plastic chair whistling towards and coming to rest in
the no man's land part of the square between us. It didn't matter
really. The act was good enough. Soon chairs were flying across the
square from all directions, followed in short order by the plastic
tables and the Carlsberg umbrellas. The Belgian riot police, who for
hours had been salivating like leashed Dobermans at the prospect of
trouble, didn't hesitate to jump into the fray with their riot clubs
and mace. Following them was the water cannon.

The water cannon kind of snuck up on everyone. One minute there was
chaos, with both German and English alike turning their assault on
the riot police, fending off the blows and delivering their own. The
burst of activity had come so suddenly, the best Albert and I could
do in response was to stand up, holding our beers and watching as
the water cannon aimed and unleashed its potent force, blowing
people off of the pavement, flying in the air, smashing into tables
and chairs, scraping along the ground. Despite the fact we merely
observed from the vantage point of our beers, the eye of the storm
rising around us, the riot police grabbed us as well, dragging us
away from our beers like jailors and demanding to know whether or
not we were English. Apparently, their orders had specifically been
to sort out the English. Fortunately, we were able to produce
passports proving we weren't and were released in time to have a few
more beers once everything had settled down and the realization that
the match was still to be played had settled in.
*****
It was riding the wave of football madness that we decided to head
back to Utrecht finally, exhausted by the ordeal, running low on our
monthly stipend of cash we'd tried to strictly adhere to, ready to
return to our new flat, ready to begin the business at hand finally.

Two consecutive weeks of binge drinking, football hooligans,
nationalistic songs and chanting, two consecutive weeks of
mosquito-invested slums in Antwerp, insufferable humidity drenched
our skins as readily as the beer made it sweat-soaked through our
pores and clothing, two consecutive weeks of train-hopping, watches
matches in great detail on to forget the details later in pubs
throughout Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp were more than enough to
calm our voracious souls for at least long enough to find a place to
call our beds, hose down our clothing, shower properly and get back
out into the sweltering afternoon of Utrecht.
*****
Around 11, we began subtle gesticulations at preparing ourselves to
go on stage. Albert, exhausted by a combination of beer and the
heavy ride trying to balance his stand up bass on the bicycle on the
way here, was leaning up against one of the pillars in front of the
stage, a Winston unmoving between his lips save for an occasional
labial twitch and puff of smoke. His eyes opened when I got nearer.
All I know is that I'm not pedalling that fucking bass all the way
back into town when this nightmare has finally concluded he hissed
with the cigarette bobbing up and down in his mouth. No problems I
reassured. I've already spoken with Jan about the bass riding back
in their van with them. We'll be meeting with them at Fabriekzicht
afterwards. Albert snorted and removed the cigarette to replace it
with his mug of beer. A little late now, eh? I'm so exhausted
already I'll need another half dozen beers before I can stand
straight.

The band ahead of us, electric violin, screeching guitars and a
belchy, subterranean growl from the lead singer, were winding up
their last song, building a crescendo, sweating beneath the lights
while an overly enthusiastic group of junior high aged girls swung
their arms and shook their legs, wild, tangled hair in every
direction. The crowd was diverse enough but following music like
this was a bizarre mix, an embarrassing fart of jazz to let leak out
on their uninitiated ears. As usual, we had tried to prepare the
talent pickers for the fact that we were talent less, inept,
embarrassing. But the more we said that, the more convinced they
became that we were really something special. Something unique out
of America, an unspeakable hip ness that would blind them all with
its profound exuberance. Holding the sax, I looked through the crowd
at familiar, expectant faces. Our friends of the last week, complete
strangers in other lives a month ago and now we were going to
humiliate ourselves with an unmatched zeal.

Once on stage, we'd planned on an elaborate verbal waste of time to
get us through the early expectations. A note hit here and there for
emphasis, but basically, a ridiculously elaborate history of the
song piece, a virtual encyclopaedia of liner notes on a song we'd
just rehearsed only two days before for the first time. By lulling
them to sleep with the vocabularies and translations, the sheer
enormity of the words and sentences to the point of
incomprehensibility, the strange and unequally timed jazz number,
completely original and completely without skill, would be an almost
welcomed respite, no matter how bad it was. Billing ourselves as
avant garde lent itself an automatic elasticity where this sort of
performance art jazz was concerned. Simple chords, in a chaotic
enough fashion, sufficed.

I could tell, a few minutes into the second number, that we had them
right where we wanted them:
Uncertain as to whether we sucked or we were great.
Logically, had we actually been great, the chances that we would be
playing in this little neighbourhood festival were pretty slim so
for me, it left the door wide open to the idea that we sucked.
Fortunately, Albert and I had worked with this incompetence long
enough to have learned how to dress it up a little, enough to create
that uncertainty. They sound like they suck, but they look like they
know what they're doing. We'd perfected it through watching years of
talent less musicians performing on MTV. While we lacked the
pyrotechnics of talent, we were able to create enough sparks to get
people to believe the burning was only a matter of time.

The last number involved getting the audience to participate, making
noises that ran, more or less, in tune with Albert's thumping bass
notes over and over again. There's no doubt if we'd had a talented
drummer, we could have really sounded like we knew what we were
doing, but lacking the drummer, we used the audience. And of course,
being one of the last bands to play, everyone was pretty drunk by
the time we'd gone on. My vacant preambles on music history only
made them drink faster. So by the end of the last number, we were
all in on the conspiracy, the conspiracy that we'd created together.
That's how Albert and I had come up with the name to begin with: The
Deadbeat Conspiracy.

When it was over completely, we were such a hit, Jan was somehow
able to fit both Albert, his bass, which he now carried around with
him like his date, and I into the van along with the other guys in
his own band. It was the space of being accepted, for whatever
delusion they harboured. People were everywhere, crawling on top of
one another, laughing, singing loudly over the stereo as we rattled
along the canal in the van back into town.
*****

We wake up to a Fiat giving birth to painful horn honking, a
determined bastard on the road outside presses down on the horn with
the kind of persistent hand motion he could only have mastered in
his pimply teenage years staring and drooling over back issues of
garage sale Playboys. I raise my head and peer over the sprawl of
bodies and limbs, the snores of hedonism so entrenched in the
subconscious that even the dreams are haunted by strobe light
scattered images of the previous night's piecemeal memory. No one
else's sleep is even faintly disturbed. With a strychnine-jointed
grimace, I gather myself off of the floor, reassembled in a standing
position, and take a sniper's peak out the front window to the
annoyances below.

A very disturbed sophomore twitches and fiddles with varying degrees
of urgency at his coat lapel, his nose, the side of his face, right
pant leg, greasy hair. He looks like a fidgety third base coach
giving bunt signals to a batter who has just stepped out of the box
to adjust his cup. He looks hung-over, or like a cat who just
escaped from a washing machine. I can feel the fraying of his nerves
from the window and the honking has only grown more urgent.

I open the front door and edge my head out, feeling the cold air
tweezer its way through my nostrils giving me a mild headache like
the kind you get from eating ice cream too fast. Hey! I yell
inventively, gesturing an empty stab of malice. What the fuck is
going on?

The honking stops immediately and the Fiat guy fixes his desperate,
bugging eyeballs in my direction. He rushes across the lawn as
though he was tossed from a moving vehicle and quickly arrives in
front of me, reeking with the urgency of a man with overactive
bowels. He flails out a sentence, which I can't understand because
it isn't in English and looks at me expectantly. I shrug my
shoulders. Agneta he clarifies suddenly as though speaking to an
embassy bureaucrat. Where is Agneta?
Agneta is half clad under a pile of parkas somewhere left of the
kitchen, perhaps under the dining room table but I'm not going to
tell this guy that unless I know a little more about him. The fact
that he uses a car horn as a means of communication is not a good
starting point. I squint at him suddenly, my memory comes back to me
at high speed from around a sharp curve on two wheels and his face
becomes vaguely evocative of some idiot's conversation I stumbled
over somewhere in the post-twister trailer park of last night's
festivities. Agneta's face had parked itself somewhere in that
memory, seated at a table where a half dozen of us had congealed,
braying over each other with intoxicated opinions on over valued art
and the rise of the Euro. This guy had played a large role in the
braying, his foreign service accented English constructing sentences
of non-sequiturs and mangled inferences with such a lack of charm
and dexterity that I couldn't now see how it were possible I'd have
forgotten him, even for a few moments.
But I had, and whilst I waited patiently as he went about explaining
a rehashing of his life story from the last month and a half forward
in excruciating detail, it began to dawn on me that he was leaving
and he wanted to wish Agneta goodbye. Leaving? I bellow, why you've
only just arrived!
And on it went further, more explications and disentanglements,
deeper detail until I, now reaching in the dark for the light
switch, begin to realise that he was leaving Utrecht, had been
living in Utrecht and wanted to say goodbye to Agneta.
What have you done with your flat, I huff without preamble and
without divulging the whereabouts of Agneta. I haven't done anything
with it, he admitted, sheepishly. I haven't paid rent in several
weeks and I've got a job offer in Rome, so I'm leaving, the hell
with it, I don't care what they do with it.
Where is this place, we'll take it, I say simultaneously, as he
tried to look around me, over my shoulder, somewhere through the
house where Agneta was alleged to have been crashing. What do you
mean, he stammered suddenly flustered simultaneously by my refusal
to divulge the secret location of Agneta and my insistence on
knowing and having his former flat.
Look, here are the keys, he throbbed aloud, pulling them out of his
pocket and dropping them into my palm. They'll be pissed about my
not having paid the rent but if maybe you offer to compensate them,
they'll just let you take over the broken lease. It's on
Amsterdamsestraatweg, see, just down the road a pace – just stop in,
it's above a Surinaam call centre and take away place – ask for
Belay and it's probably yours.
Agneta, I stood back and swung my arm laboriously sweeping behind
me, is underneath a pile of parkas beneath the dining room table.
*****
As we assemble in various stages of vulgarity and stumble out into a
fortunately clouded sky which eased escaping the bright sunlight in
little shells underneath covers over mattresses, I inform Albert
we've found a flat. Well, we haven't seen it yet of course, I amend,
but we are going to this afternoon.
Naturally, once setting upon the Somalian take away we had plenty of
explaining to do. It took two stabs and a few glasses of tepid tea
to meet the proprietor who arrived with the self-important airs of a
business man on the make, double parking his Mercedes in front, a
handful of keys jangling in his hand as he barked out orders to a
languid aide busy shuffling through calling cards in one breath and
turned to greet our shaggy countenances in another.
I understand you are friends with the man who was renting this place
from me and left two months arrears in rent he opened the bargaining
perhaps hoping to weasel extra money from us in the process.
On the contrary, I corrected, sniffing again the tempting aromas
that wafted down from the kitchen above before straightening to
embark on a course of enthusiasm and explanation that the person in
question had only been someone we'd met at a party to whom we'd
explained our situation and from whom we'd received this rather
miraculous solution.
There was no telling what background Belay was reconvening us from.
His eyes were full of delighted expression considering on the one
hand the rent in arrears to be paid and on the other, two more
borders of questionable character. The brief orders he barked to
aides were in fact given with the voice of authority yet not
authoritative, more like a loud suggestion than a command. The aide
hopped to it nonetheless and as languid as the other workers
appeared, they weren't relying on third world custom, loitering and
shiftless but were all agreeable and efficient. Men at work yet men
simultaneously relaxing.
Belay's expression waned replaced by calculations no doubt – one
could see an adding machine in his head, reminding himself that the
estate agent down the street who'd set up the last tenant had cost
him already two months rent not to mention the commission and here
were two more in the last's place having arrived without invitation,
no less unsavoury but musicians to boot. Still, we had quickly
offered two months rent in advance as a deposit and there was the
factor after all, of not having to pay the estate agent's
commission.
So what do you play? Please, sit down, he suddenly said, emerging
from whatever torpor had precluded his manners to begin with and
realising even if these were prospective tenants they were still
guests. He barked out a few more commands and several more cups of
tea were in front of us all, seated at the desk he'd brushed another
assistant away from, two chairs pulled up to join him, a chance to
discuss.
We play jazz, Albert without the usual preamble or elaborations. It
had been a late night with plenty of excitement and at the moment,
he just wanted to get the flat sorted out once and for all, collapse
onto a mattress or floor and sleep a few hours uninterrupted.
Ah, he noted, preparing to launch upon a long discursive about the
history of Somali music. We have some jazz-infused versions of our
own native music, well Somali and Islamic influences. Perhaps you
have heard of Maryam Mursal? He barked out a few more commands and
out of nowhere, as both Albert and I were confessing our ignorance,
as though we weren't even proper musicians if we hadn't come across
such music before, a boom box appeared and we were suddenly being
coached through the first opening bars of Somali's once famous
female vocalist, who, Belay patiently explained, because of some
criticism of Somalia's then-president Mohammed Siad Barre for his
murdering ways, was forced to give up her career to drive taxis for
a living before eventually being rediscovered by none other than
Peter Gabriel.
Albert scoffed, sipping his tea, the irritation of his sleeplessness
showing in the lines of his face like electricity coursing through
live wires, mumbling aloud at who hadn't Peter Gabriel and Paul
Simon exploited amongst unknown third world musicians between them.
This is wonderful music; I interjected quickly and diplomatically
before Belay could fully digest Albert's words. You must be quite
proud, I suggested. Belay's eyes glistened, likely more from the
sudden memories of civil war in Somalia than the music, but
glistening nonetheless and appreciative that I appeared at least to
grasp the impact of her singing with sufficient levity. He wasn't
measuring us any more, I could tell. It doesn't take much sometimes
and more fortunate still he spared us both the humble rectitude of
lecturing us or congratulating us on our own government's foreign
policy amid his recollections and merely stood up suddenly. So,
would you like to see it?
As we made it up the first flight of stairs he explained the
intricacies of the flat itself. The second floor was a kitchen area
which we were welcome to use as we needed although during the
afternoons, as was evident, the sole chef, a large elderly dark
women with a tooth-missing grin, was busy at work preparing the
evening's take away food. The entire kitchen reeked of spices and
heaven. At the back of the kitchen was an entryway door which opened
into the courtyard used by all the neighbouring houses and flats and
which we would have a key both for the gate and the door and of
course, the toilet with a small shower. The shower was filled with
the remnants of vegetable stalks and shavings, clearly used for
other purposes in the absence of tenants and the toilet, although
functional, didn't appear to have been cleaned in months. Nor did
the light bulbs in either the shower or the toilet work although we
were assured of hot water.
And then he invited us through another door which again had its own
lock and the tall, narrow stairway leading to the landing which was
the floor of the flat itself. Evidentially the last tenant had left
a few articles of clothing, a mattress and a broken stereo in his
haste, all of which, Belay assured us, we were welcome to use or
throw out as we saw fit. He admitted there was a table from the
downstairs that we could bring up ourselves and use for own purposes
but beyond that, we were on our own. There was a small kitchenette
and sink area within a smaller area that doubled as both dining area
and storage space. To the left, a small ladder leading to an alcove
which he helpfully suggested could be used for either storage or
sleeping, large enough as it was for either and then of course, the
main uncarpeted studio area with sufficient space for another bed or
sofa or whatever we might see fit to use it for. All in all it was
neither a hole nor a middle class dwelling. Simply a flat. Just what
we needed.
What about our rehearsing? Albert brought himself to ponder aloud
still anticipating having to lug the bass up and down the narrow
staircase. Would there be a problem with our rehearsing?
Oh nothing, no problems, Belay assured us. Of course, best not to do
so during our socialising hours, depending on your skills, ha-ha, he
added, but we are closed up by 11 and after that, you are free to do
as you wish.
There was really no question as to which path we were headed. This
was everything or would be in time, we were looking for albeit
cramped. It was a decent price with a perfect location; 10 minutes
to either the train station or to Marktzicht, the only two places we
would imagine having to leave for.
We paid our rent in cash after very subtle negotiation on price for
our being two rather than one tenant and by the early evening, we
had moved what few belongings we had inside.
*****
There was something simultaneously disturbing and yet comforting
about having a place to sleep, our own place, after so many weeks on
the road. In any event, once we'd taken the keys and had moved our
few belongings in there was little question that we would have to
venture forth immediately to Marktzicht to celebrate our good
fortune.
*****
Over the next few weeks our lives began to take some semblance of
shape. That which we had subliminally craved, namely domesticity,
familiarity and most importantly, an end to the indecisiveness
brought on by living in a state of constant temporality was suddenly
before us without further preamble. We woke the first morning
without coffee, the first indication of an abject lack of planning
and the recidivist's familiarity with an apathetic future. The
showers were ice cold and following much fumbling we managed to make
it out into civilisation again to the Café le Journal in the Neude
where we hunkered down over koffie verkeerd and opened newspapers
whose headlines we tried incomprehensibly to decipher.
So we've got to get a lot of stuff for that flat, Albert mentioned
off hand, flipping the pages of the Volkskrant without interest. The
odd thing is neither of us had lived with anyone other than each
other for those few months in New York in many, many years and we
weren't sure how to approach things. A female, he reminded me, would
have had the lists drawn up the night before but being two drunks
without a plan, we'll have to improvise. A female would have the
place cleaned and decorated he added for emphasis, perhaps fatigued
already with what seemed the enormity of the planning given that
we'd spent the better part of the month on the fly with the most
difficult dilemmas being which beers to order, which cities to
visit, which train to catch.
We were, it might have appeared to the outsider's eye, two
road-weary men of indiscernible age but old enough to have settled
these scores long ago, somewhat puzzled by the possibilities and
scenarios ahead. Neither of us had much facility with planning, worn
as we were by the drinking and the spontaneity of movement suddenly
coming to a halt.
There was a twofold problem based on practicality when it came to
furniture. One, transporting whatever we bought from A to B without
any form of transportation save for our legs and the local bus. And
two, once we brought it to the flat, how to negotiate those
staircases with awkwardly sized furniture.
I wonder what they'd suggest at Marktzicht, I ventured knowing it
was far too early for the first beer but knowing as well that its
patrons were often a useful source of practical information.
Practical information we were none too keen or capable of
disseminating ourselves. Albert grumbled incoherently. The waitress
brought two more coffees and little cookies that went with them that
I bit into hungrily. For the first time since the movement had
begun, now that it had temporarily ceased, I was feeling homesick.
Homesick for simplicity without practical decisions confronting me,
without having to feel like an odd couple of non-tethered people on
the brink of insanity fuelled by alcoholism and futility. At least
at home I knew where everything was and how to get it from Point A
to Point B.
By the early afternoon we'd made our way out of Café Le Journal and
had taken to wandering vacantly from one shop to another without
anything in particular in mind to purchase. What we really needed
was a pair of beds or mattresses at the very least, a sofa some
tables perhaps a chair or two and this was just the most obvious
things. The smaller details mattered less but would loom important
with time – music, books, something to play the music with and
shelves to store the books on. These were, after all, our bread and
butter but after weeks on the road we needed at least to make the
place seem bearable.
So instead of furniture we spent the morning listening to and buying
CDs. We still had nothing to play them on except the broken stereo
left by the previous tenant but at least we felt as though we were
accomplishing something by making an accumulation of something. We
needed collections to give home a feeling of home even if the
collections were arbitrary and perhaps non-representative of
anything other than the whim of the moment.
By the afternoon we were in fact back in Marktzicht having a few
beers and having convinced the barman to play Miles' Birth of Cool,
a few Shostakovich String Quartets, Joe Turner, Dexter Gordon and
Lester Young so that most of the afternoon we'd had the few
aficionados praising our selections and taking over the stereo
system to listen to what we wouldn't even be able to listen to at
home.
There were of course, plenty of suggestions on the dilemma of the
furniture - labourers' trucks and vans could be borrowed or procured
for the price of a few beers for a few hours with the added labour
thrown in for free, a pulley system could be rigged (failing the
fact that the windows would have to be removed and then reattached),
and several mentioned the idea of Ikea of other similar assemble
at-home furniture which would solve both the problem of transport
and stairways at once.
And so by the end of a week's time we had the semblance of home
assembled.






(THIS SHOULD BE PLACED AFTER RETURNING FROM PARIS)
The weirdest thing to me is that this language, the lack of a common
one – fascinates me. Here, take the Dutch word gift which means
like, poison or venom, the opposite connotation of the word in
English. It's as though the word connotates some psychological
feeling in one language different from another. They use the same
word and mean something different, having a different feeling to the
same word I use in English to mean practically the opposite.
You've been to the coffee shop, I see. Albert said with no tonality
in his voice. We were trying a new café for a change, a place right
up the street from us filled with blue collar, single men who
slumped over their beers, got up to go to the toilet or play the
slot machines, but were otherwise quiet. There were a few women
coming in and out from time to time but this was, for the most part,
not an interesting place and I'd merely tried to invoke some
conversation.
Take weather expressions for example – have you noticed them,
listening to the radio? It sounds so beautiful: "morgen braekt het
zon af en to door" – I imitated in my Dutch weatherman's soothing
voice. Tomorrow the suns break through from time to time – I love
the simplicity yet precision of it.
Firstly, because so much of the language you overhear is peppered
with the words of other languages – that's because it's a land of
trading with other countries –
Look, coffee shop too. Think about what image coffee shop elicits in
small town America and then think about the image of coffee shops in
Holland splashed with fresh coats of the yellow and green painted
colours of Jamaica, music buffeting the door way and the subtle
clouds of Dutch reared sativa like a dry ice mist as you enter. Same
words strung together altogether different meaning. It's difficult
to feel responsible when everything linguistic seems familiar and
yet the deception lies in these different meanings for the same
word. And that doesn't even count the fact that otherwise, the same
meanings have different words completely.
You only think it's confusing because most of your time in public is
spent drunk or getting drunk or starting to get drunk from simply
drinking. Your entire perception of reality is gnarled, like the
discs of a spine which need to be straightened into place by
chiropractic therapy.
Without warning or preamble, a girl approached the table. She was
reasonably cute but didn't look the slightest bit Dutch. She had
hard green eyes, short black hair died red so that it looked almost
purple, a petite figure and a sweet fruit nose which curved ever so
slightly upwards, flaring her nostrils unintentionally. She's
celebrating her birthday and just yesterday Albert had been
celebrating his. They both find this absurdly fascinating. But that
connection wouldn't be put into gear until later. At the moment, she
made her way to the table with determination; her left hand was
curled into a ball and only moments before she had been staring
dreamingly at the stained photo wall before she began to overhear
us.
This conversation you're pretending to have is not realistic enough,
she accused, stopping just before our table. I don't believe either
of you are sincere. Why don't you talk about your feelings instead
of vacant eyed ideas? She held up Albert's glass to the light. What
the hell is this you're drinking? What could possible compel you to
prattle on like that about the fact that languages are different?
Are you so completely inebriated by facile observations that you can
no longer hear the difference? What are you doing here anyway?
We're musicians; Albert smiled, taking his glass back. These facile
observations are in fact a furthering of our communication on stage
between my bass and his saxophone. Our musical is predicated on
simple thought. We believe repetition in sound is the finest method
of building faux spirituality. Or perhaps barbaric spirituality.
None the less, we were merely rehearsing with words as our musical
notes. Imagine coming into this café and finding two dolphins in
lounge seats at this table chattering away in dolphin saying exactly
the same thing I was just telling Witold here about language. The
same story sounds more fascinating in a language you don't
understand. And that's precisely what we intend on portraying on
stage.
*****
Ova, she bellows much later in the evening where the three of us
have been taking turns trying to out-drink ourselves. The feminine
suffix of generally every woman's surname in Czech is ova – which
means daughter of or belonging to, and is tacked on to the end of
the surname of the father
.
What about it, Albert shrugged, puffing luxuriantly, splayed across
the back of the pullout sofa I slept on in the living room Doesn't
it allow you to be immediately identified as a female, branded, open
to attack from all sorts of perverts with a telephone book?
It's demeaning, she huffs, sipping a snifter of claret.
But you're not even Czech! Albert sits up suddenly knocking over an
empty beer bottle with his elbow and ashing on the floor
unintentionally, limbs akimbo.
She watches him with curiosity, the suddenness of Albert's
detangling from the sofa and coffee table paralysing her a moment
before regaining consciousness, not literally of course, but almost
stunned in a way. She had never witnessed one of Albert's face dives
into the coffee table high on absinthe. At least this time nothing
was broken.
No, I'm not Czech but I've been there before and when I found out
about this –ova- business, I turned right around and left.
If you're not Czech then what are you?
Slovakian, hahaha. She burst out laughing as though on the verge of
manic hysteria. I don't think Albert understood what the fuck she
was laughing hysterically for but it was infectious. Albert, from
the floor, laid his head back down and held his belly, his body
trembling with the effort to burst out laughing. And then, like some
sort of airborne virus, I too became infected, laughing, hey it's
ok, laughing what the fuck are we laughing about anyway?
*****
Albert and Marie became an item in a short few days. I shadowed them
like a sole paparazzo lost from the flock, every intimacy
recrucifying me with memories. I watched them with a masochistic yen
feeling closer to my own solitude looming larger thinking of what I
might find time to do to get away from them. But eventually it was
too much. Consummation needs privacy, so I decided I was going to
head out of town, find a train going somewhere and get away,
romanticise the travel as a sedative.
They bid me good bye with their arms around each other's waists,
probably muttering don't hurry back to themselves as they shut the
door behind me.
Where was I going to go but of course Paris. Not the touristic Paris
but the no alternative Paris wherein I'd prowl the streets thinking
about every fifth corner that just around the block was a girl who
looked just like Anastasia, enough so that I'd gasp audibly. I know
this because I caught myself hearing it and thought what the hell
kind of weird thing it was to actually gasp at the thought of the
sight of her. If I had been any weaker I'd have needed a wheel chair
and someone to push it otherwise at that very corner I would be
stuck standing as the image walked past me and what I thought had
been Anastasia had been some other waggish beauty with an entirely
different history, a completely different perspective, unawareness
of my existence entirely, immune to me as she continued on the
sidewalk. And this was entirely how Anastasia had once been. .
And what does a drinker do in a city like Paris with all the statues
and parks and monuments and history beckoning like a lurid filmy
cartoon whore? Why he finds a place with a good view of people, has
a seat and orders a litre of wine, of course.
When you drink alone in an empty café on a weekday afternoon there
isn't anyone but the staff to socialise with. I wrote that down on a
piece of paper and congratulated myself for forgoing the second
litre when the first was empty, standing up and straightening out
and walking aimlessly around the streets breathing in as many as I
could take in without stereotyping. I ended up after a few trips on
the Metro at Père Lachaise, watching people walking around looking
at tombstones, an outdoor museum of the dead, the famous lumped with
the infamous, what a fascinating collection of ghouls who walked
hand in hand from section to section of the cemetery with maps in
their hands to help them identify locations of names they weren't
even sure they knew but figured that if they were on the map they
must be famous somewhere.
I caught myself fantasizing a life wherein this walk through this
cemetery was eventually going to take me back to Anastasia's flat,
ringing the bell and hearing a tinge of excitement in her voice as
she sang out and pushed the security buzzer to let me in.
And then I caught myself hours later in a jazz café off of a main
boulevard, a candlelit cave with smoke and music. And listening to
the band playing I sat back and poured a few more litres of wine
down my throat, gradually of course, and let music and
interpretations fill my head instead of realities which were thus
far unrealistic.
*****
Albert and Marie together were not believable. How many months had I
heard Albert disdaining the complication of emotions whilst
simultaneously composing Te Deums to legalised prostitution.
And this is the same Albert who loved nothing more than to spend an
afternoon on the terrace of café near the Oude Gracht sipping
Belgian beer out of snifters and giving me little monologues on the
history of prostitution in a vain effort to shrug out of the
overcoat of guilt he felt for allowing himself such pleasures.
Even in the Middle Ages everyone was pretty pragmatic about it, he
would shine, warming to the subject for the 100th time. I could
recite the speech from memory I thought to myself as he continued.
Of course, back then it was more encouraged because it kept all the
perverts busy who might otherwise have been preying on the chaste
women ripe with rape and defilement in their eyes. And then of
course our dear friends the Protestants came along and started
forcing people into crazy ideas like tolerating sex only within
marriage. The Protestants made it a sin and a crime in the 16th
century. Get it? The Protestants regulating Prostitution, likely
only because people were getting the two mixed up.
Albert wheezed into his beer, grinding out a cigarette with an
athletic vigour only a heavy smoker can muster. Anyway, as you can
see, Prostitutants; whores disclaiming sex. God, I hate religion. He
spits phlegm into a handkerchief he pulled out of his front pocket
brought along specifically with such a use in mind. You can't spit
on the street, can you now, he asked at my somewhat repulsed
expression. So never mind about what religion does to your dick,
think about all the spitting and pissing in the streets that went on
back then. Unpaved roads, probably. Cows and sheep and chickens all
over the place. Open fires on the road side, soot everywhere.
What the hell are you talking about I ask suddenly as if only then
realising he was talking about nothing at all just putting sentences
in senseless organisation. This was how we practiced our music
without ever using our instruments. We couldn't imagine music as a
skill because it was too much about non verbal communication, an on
stage charades with notes until one picked up the rhythm of the
other and there was a reasonable understanding of something, simply
scratching the surface with repetition until the pattern became
familiar enough to recognise.
*****
However difficult it was imagining those two as a couple, always on
the brink of menacing the other, they were in fact, spending a lot
of time together which meant that eventually we were becoming a
trio.
Oh, Marie can play, Albert assured me as we were riding bikes back
at night after a concert at Ekko, some sort of tango opera. Marie
can play the accordion and congas. She could be very useful.
He knew quite well what I would think about it considering Anastasia
was the real missing piece to the trio and without saying what we
both knew, that this was just a crass replacement, an ornament to
stick on the hood of a jalopy, and eventually, I succumbed to it
anyway because frankly, I was outnumbered.
*****
Eventually I was back to going out alone simply because of the
intensity of intimacy going on in the flat making me feel like I was
in some suburban family room instead of a shabby flat above a
takeaway on the Amsterdamsestraatweg. Then they would demure and
demand that we practice in the flat instead of going out. We brought
beers in from the corner market by the crate, each of us carrying
our own along with a few bottles of Jinever to tinge the evening
further.
These rehearsals were like séances each of us attempting to conjure
up something that simply wasn't going to make an appearance. Other
nights, for some magical reason it would begin to appear as if it
were coming together a time or two. We have to get used to her
playing and she has to get used to ours, Albert complained in
between sets, sweat pouring down from his face just before he
slugged down a half dozen throatfuls of beer from his bottle. We
pretended we were in clubs because we had no gigs. And we couldn't
have performed in such a state. Albert and I alone were barely
credible but the three of us together, off key, out of sync,
disjointed and confusing, were simply incomprehensible. We might
have been forcibly removed from stage.
So we stayed in the flat at night and practiced. After weeks, we
were back out in the night again going in different directions
because night after night had made us sick of each other. Albert
went to Marktzicht, sometimes with Marie in tow but sometimes Marie
would go back to her flat and reality and spend a night away simply
to clean herself of the soot that hung over all of us from so many
nights in that little flat with nothing but those instruments, beers
and smoke.
I would head for Fabriekzicht and sit quietly at a corner stool at
the bar watching the people all around me out of the corners of my
eyes.
*****
One night I dreamt that I was dead, in heaven somehow and at the
entranceway I was met by a chubby Mexican woman with a silently
proud Mayan face. She was my guide and she took me through each
level of this place, dead musicians from various decades on
different floors like a boarding house, just hanging around talking
and drinking – in each one I searched for a sign of my father,
holding his horn casually as he stood in a corner watching everyone
else. This Mexican woman, who needed no name for my recognition of
her was immediate, as though she were the mother of all mothers, led
me from room to room, knowing who I was looking for but not
acknowledging whether my search was in vain.
I stopped in a room that was empty. Must be the future, I tried to
laugh. The Mexican woman was gone, the wall slid open revealing the
streets of Paris.
*****RETURN TO UTRECHT*****
Now I wouldn't be any more likely than you would to just rush off to
Paris in search of my father, primarily because I'd come to believe
that he was dead. I mean, you don't hold a thought like that for so
long and then suddenly come to disbelieve it simply because of a
dream.
But just as Albert had discovered what he'd hoped were the roots of
his soul in Holland, so I allowed myself to believe that perhaps my
roots, inexplicably, were somewhere in Paris, or perhaps a hint or a
sign of them were somewhere there, waiting to be discovered. Perhaps
the image of my father in the dream was merely his way of showing me
a sign.
I suppose secretly, I didn't believe a scrap of it. But now that the
idea had planted itself, there was no reason not to just have a
look. A few days. Just a look.
Albert was sitting in his bathrobe having a coffee, smoking with a
distant look in his eyes as he stared at the wall.
I'm going to go to Paris for a few days, I announced, pouring a cup
for myself and leaning against the kitchen counter. Albert didn't
say anything at all, blowing smoke rings patiently. What's going on
in Paris?
Nothing in particular. It's just that we've been here for several
months and I feel like I should at least get out for a few days,
make an effort to see someplace else for a few days. That, and the
fact of this weird dream I had last night which seemed to summon me
to Paris.
More smoke rings.
So you had a dream about Paris and now you're going to go there?
This morning? He smiled to himself. How very faithful of you…

Well, it's not like I believe the dream or anything; it's just a
good excuse as any to go I suppose. Certainly the City of Light must
be somewhere there on that tiny agenda hidden underneath the beer
and Winstons…I mean hell, I imagined we'd be barnstorming across
Europe by now and yet I feel as though I'm only here to listen to
the ticking of the clock, drink more beer and forget I'm alive.
Well, at least the venue is different.
Indeed and so shall the venue be different again. I'll be back
before it's even registered that I've gone.
*****
It was this nagging solitude rather than any overt horniness that
eventually drew me to the whores. Utrecht has a tiny red light
district consisting of one guttural street, appropriately named,
Hardebollenstraat and oddly enough, only a short walk from
Martzicht, charmed so to speak, by women of mostly Caribbean,
African or Latin American descent, most of whom were, to put it
mildly, overweight and past their prime. Albert liked to joke that
it was Utrecht's solution to prostitution; stemming desire with
hideous and over-shaped women but there were men who either liked it
or didn't care, otherwise, it could never have been in business in
the first place. But clearly these women didn't make the cut from
the upper crust of prostitution, banished to a melancholy back
street. Further away, a twenty minute bike ride towards the Red
Bridge lay a dazzling array of nearly a hundred houseboats all
docked as mini-brothels rented by the half day where beautiful women
from all over the world collected in little windows or stood
alluringly on the short footbridge from the sidewalk to their canal
boat, preening and stretching like cats in the sun.
Frequenting prostitutes is, by and large frowned upon by the Dutch
who tolerate it as they tolerate many other distasteful aspects of
humanity that collect in their society like unwanted garbage on a
busy city street. It isn't something you brag to the locals about,
coming in for a post-coital beer. By many men's estimations Dutch
women are cold fish at heart, relentless capitalists looking for an
appropriate mate to breed and raise family on upper middle incomes
with. They aren't interested in romance and certainly not the pawing
advances of drunks. Not with so many available whores around. Dutch
women are discreet whores in many fashions. Out for success. Out for
a family. Out for the Dutch dream of fertility. But they are alleged
to take your balls of Dutch men with them in the bargain. The whores
are infinitely cheaper.
Albert had filled me in on more than enough occasions as to the do's
and don'ts, the wheres and whens and sometimes even the whys, so I
wasn't ill prepared for this venture but equally, I couldn't quash a
sense of shame riding with intent up to that infamous area of
alluring houseboats.
Not that it isn't fascinating. Albert was right in a sense. Were it
not for Puritanical ethics you might consider sex a simple
transaction, like going to the local shop for a crate of beer or the
butchers for a few tenderised pork chops. It is women selling
themselves, as Albert often pointed out, with a refreshing honesty
tinged with a melancholic apathy. And like all professions, there
are prostitutes who enjoy their work and those that don't. The trick
of course, is finding those who do rather than being tainted by one
that doesn't.
So put all your petty judgements aside, I thought to myself,
steering my bike to a fence post and double locking it against a
stray, sturdy foundation. I'm not walking here with a hard-on
anxious for action, I thought, lighting a cigarette nervously. I
only want a woman's embrace for awhile. Even if I have to pay for
it. Bah, I countered again to myself as I walked from the bike
towards the line of houseboats. You are merely being lazy. No, not
lazy, I correct again, these two voices of reason and absurdity
continuing their debate, what's the point of investing time in
falling in love when I'm already in love and it already hurts too
much?
Oh, this debate went on for hours. I walked back and forth, up and
down the canal boat-lined road, looking at women of all shapes and
sizes, all ethnicities and faces thinking for tiny moments that one
or another was particularly appealing and then remembering, they are
only whores, after all. Of course they want to attract you. Of
course they will make their humble offerings to you, as they would
any man passing by. There is no attraction. There is no romance.
There is no winning over or wooing. There is merely desire and a
place to house that desire and the matter of the money changing
hands before.
Yes, ha-ha, I'm embarking on a noble cause. Anastasia has
disappeared and I will fill the vacuum with a filthy sense of
debauched decorum. I will sully this magnificently painful
experience of yearning with a crude and vulgar substitute. And yes,
I thought, it won't be cheating! Good god, how many before me had
stumbled along this road letting these same idiotic thoughts course
through them as though drinking embalming fluid in advance of death.

But I'm here already anyway, I began to persuade. And what if I
don't really ask for sex at all, what if I merely ask for time
itself, explain myself to my potential half an hour partner, that
what I really want is just to lie down and have some one hold me?
I never realised there lingered preferences within me. Should I
choose a brunette to mirror Anastasia knowing all along she wouldn't
measure up, or a blonde to be completely different, or perhaps a
woman from the Dark Continent or a fragile, nimble Asian? All these
years feigning nonchalance at women in general culminating with
absolute surrender in the form of Anastasia and here I was, prowling
like a pervert, weighing out my possible choices. I felt disgusted.
What do you really hope to accomplish, I reasoned. What whore,
tainted by night after night of man after man is possibly going to
let down that professional barrier and give a man an oh-so-fragile
cuddle? What kind of man was I becoming? Why was I so weakened?
Simply because for a few days strung along through months had given
me some vision, some feeling of belonging to another after all those
years accumulated building such a stoic and impersonal exterior? Is
this what loving does?
And what would Anastasia think? I pushed those thoughts away
immediately because it would have melted any lingering resolve. Why
couldn't I just satisfy myself with longing?
Meanwhile there was the typical heavy evening trade. Men were coming
from all over. Not just Utrecht, but all the surrounding areas.
Driving up in cars or taxis, the slow traffic of gawkers, everybody
amazingly polite or distracted – not a single horn tooting
impatience. Men parking cars and walking purposefully to certain
houseboats, or emerging, dishevelled and embarrassed, satisfied or
puffy-chested as though paying for a fuck were a rite of manhood.
The night was lively but not chaotic despite the transactions of sex
and desire hanging thickly in the air like an oppressive humidity.
What will I do, I continually asked myself, pacing down the length
of the street only to turn around and pace the length again. Should
I just GO and try it, should I shrug off any sense of decorum, send
myself flying off into the fates or continue walking just this one
last time until I reached my bike, unchained it and pedalled back
off into the night?
I am not worthy of any of these women who present the lonely man
with the most delicate of services. They will take cripples into
their arms and never think twice, brush the hair out of a man's
frustrated eyes and squeeze the last fragrance of futility out of
him. They weren't whores, they were nurses.
I wrestled with myself to exhaustion. This may have been Albert's
paradise and the paradise of many men but for me, this pathetic
little mewl for companionship would not be sated by doling out a
handful of Euros for a hand job and a hug. I rode my bike back to
the town centre to be distracted yet another night by non-sequential
conversation, the warmth of humanity humming around me and beer
making its way from a half pint glass into my belly.

CHAPTER THREE PARIS




"Then love," she said, "may be described generally as the love of
the everlasting possession of the good?" "That is most true."
Diotima to Plato in The Symposium of Plato, Jowett translation
When a man loves the beautiful, what does he desire?" I answered her
"That the beautiful may be his." "Still," she said, "the answer
suggests a further question: What is given by the possession of
beauty?" "To what you have asked," I replied, "I have no answer
ready." "Then," she said, "Let me put the word 'good' in the place
of the beautiful, and repeat the question once more: If he who loves
good, what is it then that he loves? "The possession of the good," I
said. "And what does he gain who possesses the good?" "Happiness," I
replied.
--
Diotima and Plato from The Symposium of Plato, Jowett translation

PARIJS
In an after-hours boozer, long ago lost in the Pigalle's old, hilly
curvy cobblestone streets, ash cement buildings, cracked paint and
steep lamp lighted stairways, I wandered into the basement of a
candlelit club, seated myself at the first available table never
once allowing my eyes to leave the girl I'd been following.
I'd followed her in. I'd followed her, my own little Edith Piaf who
I recreated in the following as a tempestuous little street singer
dressed in a black, hand knitted dress, a borrowed scarf hiding a
missing sleeve.. I followed her walking through the red light
district in full swing and with everything, the sex shows, sex shops
and prostitutes clamouring for my attention, all the way from Place
Blanche I'd followed her down Boulevard Rochechouart until she took
a right on Rue des Martyrs and appeared to lose me near St Georges
until I spotted her again on Rue St Lazare. I stopped when she did,
to light a cigarette beneath a light rain and when she entered that
after-hours boozer, so did I.
I hadn't bothered once whilst I followed to wonder why I was doing
so. Perhaps it started simply as a little game at first. Sure, she'd
caught my eye but I as I settled in at an even pace a half block
behind her I didn't imagine that I was following her as much as I
was following an instinct or perhaps just following to have
something to do, a break in an otherwise monotonous series of
drifting movements from one café to the next as the afternoon hours
blurred into the evening and almost imperceptively into a nocturnal
lagoon of listlessness that neither the drugs nor the drinking,
fastidiously applied for just that reason, were able to overshadow.
And of course gradually, perhaps just after I'd become aware that
I'd made a left when she'd made a left and made a right after she'd
made a right, after I'd slowed when she stopped to peruse a shop
window, gradually, I began to realise that there was a purpose in my
following her.
Sure, it might have even started as a little game. See how long I
could follow until she disappeared somewhere I could not follow.
Imagine myself to be some secret agent tailing a suspected double
spy. Find a little opening in a stranger's anonymous existence, tear
it open wider until I could see myself what was inside.
But she was attractive, of that I was certain. I had seen her face
only for the briefest of instances but I could suss this out even
from watching the back of her, watching her move from behind; her
steps purposeful yet light, watching the ringlets of her dark hair
bouncing with each stride against the back of that black hand
knitted dress and covering the bare of her back where the dress
opened just enough but not enough to prevent the briefest exposures
of her skin which naturally high in melanin and yet bare for the
mildest of warm Indian summer evenings and of course, breathlessly I
might have taken in the curves as they realigned with each step,
figuring and refiguring but always returning to a pleasing state.
And once I knew; having realised I was following and continuing to
follow anyway, that there was some purpose to my following, some
means to this end, I then allowed myself the luxury of imagination.
I drafted the opening lines I might use to pry a smile or a spark of
interest from her. I imagined her replies. I imagined her in
innumerable different versions of her own life before my having met
her, of her routines and schedules and of the hours and the days we
would spend together and what we would be doing in the interim.
Oh it was quite an elaborate amount of daydreaming passing between
my eyes to the back of her as she walked and then without warning,
it came to an abrupt end as she stopped in front of the club, lit
her cigarette and went inside.
My heart raced unimaginably. I passed the club and continued on in
panic before finally stopping, taking a breath to gather myself,
light a cigarette of my own and walk back to the opening of the
club.
The first floor was a fog of smoke and bad lighting. Tables were
filled with people, shadowy faces carrying on conversations in
unintelligible languages, laughter and drinking and as I attempted
with great concentration to unite myself with her again, this
mystery woman I had followed for nearly 30 minutes of walking which
had reached no conclusion despite arriving here to this club and
amongst all the faces I could discern at these tables or standing
idly impervious to the smoking and laughing of others I could not
find hers.
Again I could sense a unmistakable panic although whereas the first
had overcome me outdoors in attempting decide the next step to take,
to carry on walking or to turn back and continue following, the
second wave of panic was of loss or perhaps being lost as people
stared at me sometimes openly, sometimes out of the corner of their
eye as people do in the middle of conversations they're only
listening to one side of, the loss of my purpose, the mission of
finding.
I had almost given up hope yet incredulous that she could have
simply disappeared into thin albeit smoke-choking air, before I
spotted the stairway and cautiously made my way down the narrow
passage which led down into a cavernous sort of opening with another
stage and a still-smokier area.
And there I spotted her once again, this time standing, alone at the
far side of the bar, her back to the wall, that bare back covered
from time to time by those dark ringlets of hair across her olive
skin and having fixed my sight on her only for a second, I turned to
try and find an empty table.
Seated I attempted take in more of her as well as the dim light and
the requirement to be inconspicuous would allow. I imagined that the
shadows muffled her beauty or imagined beauty where I could see no
details. I could make out her head and the shape of her face at the
other end of that bar but the details were entirely inaccessible.
Not to mention the fact that carrying on a conversation with her, or
even attempting to spark one to life would be rather impossible from
the distance.
So then it became important not simply to sit there paralysed
because failing to communicate or even attempt to communicate with
her after following her over that time and distance would be not
merely wasteful but humiliating. I rolled another cigarette with the
nagging half-expectation that any moment another man would emerge
from the shadows, her man, and they would embrace or perhaps kiss
lightly on the lips and that would be the end of this ridiculous
charade once and for all, before I had even gotten up from the seat
or begun screwing up some courage.
I stood back up from the seat after the private, subliminal pep talk
I'd given myself about seizing the moment and taking the bull by the
horns and a half dozen similar clichés recited like a rosary litany.
She had been talking briefly with the bartender but then stood
alone, comfortably alone, and looked off into the general direction
of the stage.
As I walked towards her in what in movies would have been slow
motion but in reality was simply taking cautious steps forward
careful not to angle too far in her direction yet still angle in
that direction, I imagined what it might be like to be moving with
the intention of ordering a drink and then suddenly discovering her
as though I hadn't just followed her all that way into this place to
begin with.
To try and relax I considered my potential opening lines as though
this were a game of chess and my opening line would be my opening
move as White, a variation known as the Staunton Gambit which had
been named after Howard Staunton who played it against Bernhard
Horwitz in a match in London in 1846 and included in his famous
Chess-Players Handbook published a year later.
The Gambit attempts boldly, by giving away White's central pawn, to
expose Black's king and here, by giving myself away, walking slowly
towards her, I would hopefully expose her vulnerability rather than
my own.
Still, as I approached, I debated the merits of establishing early
pawn control of the centre, to allow myself to linger at the bar
with a glass of house red wine pretending that I hadn't come there
all along with the explicit intention of chatting her up. Dozens of
ideas ran through my brain but before I'd even considered how to
order the wine: to contemplate whether to simply address her in
English in the hope that she wasn't solely a Francophile or muster
up some mangled mixture of what few French phrases I had attempted
to memorise on the train to Paris earlier that morning.
In the end, I said nothing, muttering red wine please to the barman
and standing there staring at the bottles arrayed along the back of
the bar, whistling in the dark to a mindless tune and before I could
even kick myself for myself she was beside me with an unlit
cigarette between her fingers, wordlessly requesting a light.
Oh, I fumbled with the lighter at first but after the second try and
trying to laugh the embarrassment, I regained some sense of verbal
clarity and before she could edge away again I blurted out a
breathless and disconnected dictum about "Le Bel Indifferent",
Cocteau's play written for and starring Edith, perhaps still
dreaming in a foggy, alcoholic trance that this woman in front of me
was somehow Edith Piaf, or her ghost.
My sudden unravelling seemed to catch her off guard.. Perhaps she
expected more sophistication from a man who had followed over many
city blocks for nearly a half hour. She regarded me with a look of
amusement, a carnival in her eyes, engaged, then disengaged,
considering the rapid development of her own pieces.
"I will be going soon to sing" she explained in heavily
accented-English, nodding towards the tiny stage where currently sat
an experimentational jazz trio who were still, it appeared to me
anyway, tuning up their instruments. In all likelihood, what I
mistook for tuning was the actual performance. I feigned interest
for a moment but immediately extinguished any look of interest in
the trio when it appeared she was inhaling again, preparing to
finish a thought, it was difficult to discern. "Perhaps you will
like to speak with me at a more opportune time, for example, when my
singing is finished? Perhaps in one hour's time, or so?"
Aha, this had been too easy. Certainly, even though I couldn't even
remember my words, I hadn't said anything particularly profound – I
was confused and instead of catching her off guard she had made a
move I hadn't seen coming in staring at the pieces assembled on the
board. I'd expected a polite brush off perhaps or a slight flicker
of interest at best. Certainly not an appointment.
Sure, I said hesitantly, watching her out of the corner of my eye. I
didn't realise you'd be singing, I found myself apologising. I'll
just have a seat and…well, watch the performance, I shrugged.
But she shook her head lightly as though I'd lost myself in the
translation. I could not discern the colour of her eyes which
somehow lost anyway in the shadows.
I must explain…I cannot bear singing for the first time in front of
people that I know. I can only sing for strangers. Otherwise I get
too nervous. But I will meet you instead. There's a little café at
the corner, one street over from here called Café Saint Amant. Why
don't you wait for me there? It's just a short distance from here. I
can meet you inside or just outside the entryway between one and one
and a half hours from now...
Well, sure…I answered in the voice of a man pretending he didn't
realise he was being brushed off. Her voice had the effect of
intoxicating me, the room felt unbalanced and out of focus. I'll
meet you at Café Saint Amant, I said as though it was something we
did on a regular basis. In an hour or two.
Sure, I thought to myself. I'll sit there. I'll wait and wait and
wait. I shall place myself in the trust of her honesty. I will beat
back the voices of derision in my head and wait patiently as though
doing so would be enough to guarantee her appearance.
Ok, I'll see you there? Her eyes did not hide from me even though it
was apparent her thoughts were already moving from me to thinking of
the set she would perform. It was the possibility of meeting her
where she suggested, when she suggested that compelled me into
compliance even though I doubted the outcome. I was curious to hear
her sing yet the facility with which she had first allowed me in,
then made arrangements for later, then turned back to the business
at hand of the stage with barely a second thought, was unnerving and
I convinced myself that I'd be better off leaving before my nerves
got the better of me.
Yeah. See you in a bit, I greeted, backing off and leaned in the
direction of the entrance. I wanted to look back to catch her
looking at me but instead I imagined her gaze stayed fixed to the
stage, focused without giving me a second thought.
"I'll wait until you get there." I noted, suddenly enthusiastic. The
experimental jazz trio had morphed into one tune together, at the
same time, something vaguely familiar before it hit me: The "West
End Blues" 1928 recording performed by Louis Armstrong, Earl Hines,
Fred Robinson, Jimmy Strong, Mancy Cara and Zutty Singleton. Or
perhaps it was the jukebox. The room was far too smoky to discern
the stage any longer. She was smiling at me blankly as though she
knew I was already supposed to have turned around and left but in
seeing me still standing there she had no idea what sort of smile to
leave me with and had decided, at the last minute, to remain
neutral. Had I remained standing there, I imagined there was quite a
good chance her smile would melt, her eyes would hiss and a few
strong-arms would grab me and dump me outside the door without
further notice, back out into the spattering rain and the cold and
the strangers.
"See you then..." I waved, turned on my heel in an effort at
careless optimism and headed for the exit. Fate indeed. Whether our
conversation went any further or not was entirely her decision.
**********
It wasn't too difficult to find the Café Saint Amant. Especially
considering I only half-expected it to exist at all. I knew there
could have been a myriad of potential road blocks. Was it the corner
one street over to the left or to the right, one street further down
before being on the left or right? Did it exist or would I just
wander the rest of the night in search of it?
But there it was, as soon as I'd reached the corner, one block over
to the right, lights on, a few people scattered around the outdoor
tables, fewer still inside. I took a seat outside, nearest to the
sidewalk and waited, taking in the neighbourhood around me.
Toulouse-Lautrec had once painted the surrounding area into a
district of cabarets, circus freaks, and prostitutes and at this
hour, with the remaining stragglers lurking and leering and drooling
a dazed sort of enthusiasm as they passed and bumped into me and
threw up in the alleyways, I imagined I could see what he'd have
seen, the nocturnal circus of haphazard humanity.
I'd read somewhere that Toulouse-Lautrec, because he'd broken both
of his legs in his early teens, and neither had ever properly
healed, both had stopped growing. It could have simply been urban
legend but I couldn't help wondering that this Tom Thumb genius had
abnormally short legs as an adult and was only 1.5 meters tall. I'd
read that he'd been a heavy drinker in Montmartre and that because
of his heavy drinking he was eventually confined to a sanatorium,
battling the drink, battling his insecurities and his pain.
I spent my waiting time in the café in a variety of fashions. First,
the effort of waiting for the waiter. At first I tried looking at
other customer who were sat around me trying to decipher their
conversations. A pair of middle aged women speaking to one another
in secretive tones, laying out, no doubt, the case against the lover
of the other. Another lone man sipping a beer and engrossed in a
book whose title I could not make out. A pair of young students
speaking to each other in German, battling philosophies.
With no one to speak to I thought instead about the things I'd lost
forever due to my own carelessness or apathy, or by virtue of
someone else's fuck up. I began to sketch a list of them, a
dispassionate list because you had to become dispassionate about
such losses in order not to let them gradually destroy you like the
slow leak of air from the pinprick of a rubber inner tube. In the
end, it is about denial and the acts and losses which deny you are
like angry, self-loathing little people who derive great pleasure
from denying you over and over again. The list grew impossibly
longer as I thought about it further and stared past people seated
around me as though they were ethereal, temporary visions. As I
choked down an Anise aperitif served with water that I'd ordered
solely to appear as though I knew what I was doing, I began to feel
sickened at the losses and resolved to make up for the losses with
gains. Monumental gains that dwarfed the world. Explosions of
personal insights and epiphanies.
The list I'd begun to sketch had become a doodle, an
incomprehensible, unhinged triptych growing darker and darker with
each subsequent swoop of my recollection: childhood toys destroyed
in fits of rage, writings and drawings ripped to shreds in
frustration, musical instruments bent and dented beyond repair at
the most subtle, corrective hints from strangers when I played on
street corners, friends discarded because of distance or because
they'd grown intolerant of appeasing me, lovers, dead in the heart,
wilted, ashed and forgotten. An entire gawking collective of
memories and strangers mocking me. My blood pressure was rising, I
was sure of it. The anise tasted terrible and the water was as warm
as piss. However intrigued by this girl, I didn't know if I could
bear it even another minute of sitting alone in bitter recollections
that stormed in from out of nowhere.
"So there, you've found your spot and look, you've even begun to
sketch the customers!" She seemed delighted to see me, far more
delighted than a stranger would be meeting another stranger after a
few seconds of introduction and a completely blank history of
conversation. But the cloud which had stuffed my head and my ears
and was adumbrating everything around me passed suddenly and quickly
as she removed an imitation velvet cloth coat with a fake fur collar
and shook the rain from it before setting it down along the back of
her chair. "May I have a look?" She attempted to remove the sketch
from beneath my hands as she seated herself across from me but I
kept my palms flat on the table, the paper snug inside.
I cannot allow strangers to see my drawings, I teased, reminding her
of having to leave the club for her, relegated to this table alone
for nearly two hours yet secretly joyous that she'd arrived after
all.
"Do you know that Toulouse-Lautrec used to sit like you in this
neighbourhood, in crowded nightclubs, drinking and laughing with
patrons and drawing sketches. Then he would take those sketches with
him to his studio and work on them as bright-coloured paintings. Is
that what you're going to do, take these sketches of yours back to
your studio and turn them into paintings?"
I scoffed. Hardly worth the bother. Besides, I don't have a studio.
I don't even have a room for the night.
Oh, she said quietly. I didn't mean to pry. I didn't realise…you are
homeless?
I suppose, in a way, yes. But not in the way you're imagining. I've
just arrived here this morning and in the excitement of being here,
I guess I just sort of forgot to look for a place to stay. I don't
really mind actually. There's something romantic about going to a
place without a plan, not knowing where you will end up when it's
all said and done, wandering around a new place without a specific
purpose…
Ah, but you seem to have had a specific purpose, haven't you? After
all, you followed me for quite a distance, yes, I knew it, but I
wasn't sure why and then when you appeared again in the club, well,
I was rather curious to know why you'd been following me. I thought
perhaps you knew me and in the club, as dark as it is, well, it was
difficult to tell whether or not your face was familiar and yet now
that I see you here it seems quite apparent that I don't know you at
all, so still, I am curious. Why were you following me earlier?
I didn't realise you'd been aware I was following you, I began with
embarrassment. I guess I wouldn't make much of an undercover cop,
would I?
She laughed nervously and I imagined I could sense her reassessment
of having agreed to meet me at all in the first place. Any minute I
expected her to realise the business of solving the mystery of my
having followed her was no mystery at all, merely one lonesome man
prowling the streets who happened upon her and decided to see where
she was headed for lack of anything better to do. I expected her to
allow the mistake to sink in for only a few moments before politely
excusing herself mentioning the lateness of the hour and
disappearing back into the night she'd emerged from, gone forever.
But she didn't appear eager to go anywhere.
So tell me, stranger, she asked, touching my hand lightly, why have
you come to Paris then and why did you chose to follow me?
For the same reason you agreed to meet me here, I replied easily,
relief in the knowledge that she wouldn't be taking her leave of me
just yet, that the interview wasn't quite concluded, I was curious.
Her eyebrows were raised remarkably, the habitual, beaten path lines
of comers-on etched in the cynicism of her expectations.
And so tell me then, stranger, what precisely were you curious
about?
Unfortunately, I had no good answer. I suppose in the world of
flirtation, male bravado and self-confidence there are answers that
lend momentum to a snappy, comfortable rapport which would have
fallen from my lips as the tongue of a panting dog, But in this
world I inhabited, there were no well-honed comebacks. I was like a
heckled comedian who lost his nerve on stage.
She must have sensed my unease because her hand returned to mine
again with reassurance and she smiled, turning her head slightly as
though seeing me from a different angle might provide some clue.
You could begin by telling me your name….mine is Anastasia.
And so it began, the stuttering lack of timing and grace gradually
succumbing to an unexpected outpouring of detail beginning with
Albert's arrival on my door step, flowing into the personal injury
claim, the departure for Utrecht to discover ourselves, the success
of one gig that made us believe we might actually be able to
subsidise ourselves through a combination of guile and music, waking
up the other morning suddenly with that dream still lingering and
deciding to take the train, just on the whim of the dream, finding
myself here almost as suddenly as I'd decided to come, wandering
aimlessly all afternoon in expectation that something unexpected
would happen to justify my having come at all.
It's funny. I was readying myself to pack it in for the night, find
a room and start again tomorrow in a different arrondisement, wander
more until that inexplicable something would reveal itself to me. I
mean, it's odd because I had faith in it, faith that it was bound to
happen, bound to be discovered, if only I were patient and
diligent…and then, I spotted you.
So, she said cautiously, am I to infer then that I was the dream?
She laughed to herself softly, amused by me in a way that a mother
is amused by some unexpected expression uttered by her child.
Well, not entirely…certainly if I wandered long enough, something
was bound to grab my attention, fulfil the expectation of finding
something, whatever it was. For all I know it could have been a
painting or the view as I turned down a particular side street. As
it turns out it was you. Not the dream of course and not even
necessarily the purpose of being here. But when I saw you, I wanted
to know where you were going because perhaps where you were going
held some answer…
And as it turned about, a jazz club, she inserted. How ironic, for a
jazz musician.
Well, not that I got to hear any of it, I answered shyly.
Perhaps there is some sort of internal yet cosmological magnet
between musician, singer, you know, all that jazz, she giggled,
feeling clever.
I can't deny we would certainly be aided by a chanteuse, Albert and
I, but somehow I have the feeling there's more to it.
Her cheeks pinkened and her pupils dilated slightly, perhaps a
reaction to the fatigue of the evening or perhaps out of the game of
the curiosity, I wasn't in a position to tell.
Strands of sweat still lightly tinged her eyebrows and even the nape
of her neck was damp. I wondered what her singing voice had sounded
like. I wondered what those other dark and anonymous faces had
registered as she sang.
Well, there's always a chance of almost anything happened, if you're
in the right position, she teased, smirking, took a cigarette from
the pack she'd tossed down next to the ashtray and lit it quickly
before the act registered in my brain and my hands could reach for
my own lighter. She exhaled quickly, tracing an absent circle with
her index finger in a small pile of salt that had spilled several
diners before.
I knew she wanted to witness me squirm from the discomfort of having
been misinterpreted. I knew it was a little game she was playing
with herself, but I wasn't feeling generous any more. Verbalizing
the train ride had disembowelled a section of the dream yet again,
reality had crept back. She was little more than a desperate urchin.
She'd take me back to her apartment, finish me off with a bottle of
Absinthe back in her rent-by-the-week apartment in some still
seedier section of town, take off enough clothes for the later dream
sequence to appear as though we'd actually fucked, then allow me to
pass out before stealing my wallet, grabbing what few personal
belongings she had in the room that she wanted to keep and then
disappearing forever into the buxom night of Paris. I felt sick and
lonely all at once, a wave of self-pitying nausea. I stood quickly,
clearing my throat.
Well, I suppose we've had our fun…your curiosity is satisfied, I
know where I can find a jazz club and perhaps I should be pushing
on…
"I'll go with you." She volunteered, dropping the cigarette to the
floor and grinding it out with the toe of her shoe before standing.
The top of her head barely reached my stomach. Suddenly she seemed
harmless. "Besides, what do you know of the city? You don't know
what neighbourhoods to steer clear of, you don't speak the language
and you have no place to stay. I couldn't very well just leave you
to wander through the mysterious night of your Paris dream without a
guide, could I? Besides, I'm always wound up when I finish over
there. I can't sleep for hours. Usually I just go home alone and sit
quietly in the dark, drinking wine and listening to music. It would
be interesting to try something different.
Her questions ran along with her trying to keep up with me as I
pushed out into the night air which I gulped with great relief and
satisfaction, the dyspeptic dread finally departing as though I'd
already showered and changed and was seated on a living room sofa
with my feet up on the coffee table, a pipe in my mouth and the
evening paper beside me.
"You were magnificent" I said suddenly, taking her by her tiny
shoulders and looking down at her.
"How? What do you mean? Did you spy on me this evening?"
Nothing of the kind. I meant to say, you are magnificent. I feel
better already. Maybe I won't even bother with the train back to
Amsterdam after all. What would you say if I told you that? What
would you say if I said I wanted to stay a few days, or a week even?
Would you let me hear you sing?
I began walking again without waiting for her reply. The night air
had suddenly filled me with unassailable buoyancy. I kicked myself
inwardly nevertheless for having made the decision to leave the horn
behind. Now would have been the most appropriate time! I could have
latched onto the banks of the Seine just as the dawn began and lent
my own dissonant blaring to bounce off the hours and airs of Paris.
All the while Anastasia followed behind, or as closely to my side as
possible, double timing her half steps to my determined yet
absent-minded strides as we went in no particular direction, street
corner after street corner until she finally begged, in exhaustion,
that we stop, that the incessant marching cease..
"Le seul honnête homme est celui qui ne se pique de rien" – La
Rouchefoucauld
It was late, the sky was littered with traces of dawn.
So if you are a horn player, why have you no horn, she asked as
though just making the observation as she pushed open the vaulted
front door of an apartment building. I had no idea where we were.
She had led me through a labyrinth of winding, ascending streets,
alleyways and across sudden boulevards to get here.
I left it behind in Utrecht. I didn't see the point of bringing it.
I hadn't been intending on performing any serenades although in
hindsight, that lack of foresight seemed crippling. Not that I'd
have impressed you with my playing anyway, I admitted as we ascended
the stairs leading to her flat.
She opened the door, flicked on the light and tossed her keys on the
table beside the door which was already overflowing with things
having been tossed on that same table without having been picked up.
There was smallish front parlour and to the left a kitchen nook that
further led down a slight hallway. In the very front of the parlour,
facing the door was a television set which had been gutted and then
stuffed with as many teddy bears as could possible fit inside, all
crammed in with the same blank expression of teddy bear
enlightenment, despite the cramped quarters.
What do you think about strangers when entering their flats? A quick
glance at the wall coverings before making a beeline for the
bookshelf. That's what Albert taught. Nothing reveals more about a
person than their books.
In Anastasia's case, there was no book shelf. But the studio
reflected her passion for collecting, certainly. The teddy bears
stuffed into the empty television screen, a few posters on the wall
announcing gigs in cafes I'd never heard of by musicians I was
utterly unaware of and then, the photographs, everywhere, spread out
on tables, on the floor, clipped and cropped, pasted on boards,
everywhere little scraps of lives and even glancing at them casually
it was apparent that none of those pictured where Anastasia.
Shall we have wine or coffee she asked, already moving into the
kitchen and taking a bottle from the cupboard.
As it transpired, we spent a great deal of time looking at photo
albums, scrapbooks of strangers even she didn't know, more
photographs from piles of postcards with 50 year old postmarks. I
collect photos, she admitted sheepishly but without further
elaboration.
I read somewhere, she said finally, that there are two types of
refugees. Those with photographs and those without. Which one are
you?
I am without photographs, I admitted, although not a refugee, merely
the world's immigrant. Not one, not even in your wallet? Nada, save
for my passport photo, I suppose.
Well, my parents were never really ones for taking photographs…we
didn't even really take holidays. Trips out to the ocean some
weekends, once, a trip to the mountains upstate, but more or less,
we spent our time in our neighbourhood and didn't really leave very
often. There were occasions for photographs, I suppose – birthdays,
anniversaries, parties…but my parents weren't interested in
photographing their memories. Frankly, I think they believed there
wasn't much all that memorable to begin with.
She stared at me a long time without a word, her green eyes through
which I imagined I could see the neighbouring candlelight flicker,
focused on my face as though looking for a hint of a break in the
stoic poker player's face. My defences were taut, disciplined for
even then there was something about Anastasia that told you to keep
up your guard. Perhaps it was simply the mystery of why. Or that
lack of trust in why. It wasn't as though I didn't believe I
belonged with her – it could just as easily be me as anyone. More a
question of why she had chosen me when just as easily, I could have
failed to advance past the initial introduction.
I, on the other hand, had merely shown up, having followed her
without any particular reason or purpose. I felt certain it wasn't
as simple as a matter of timing – well, perhaps timing in that she
was between relationships rather in the middle of one, but certainly
not that if I had arrived through the doors of the café a day
earlier or five weeks later all chance would have evaporated.
*****
How often I stared with placid imagination at buildings, hundreds
and thousands of windows and the goings on going on behind them.
Have you ever wondered, I asked her, stopping for a second in
mid-pace to stare up and down a building of flats, admiring the dull
brick, the identical windows located in identical places one floor
above another above another, ever wonder what goes on behind each
window? Ever think about the scenes of domesticity or violence or
love or boredom playing out, the undusted corners of lifetimes
playing out to silence without recognition?
Yea, she said, her voice trailing. But what about the prying eyes
outside? What if I step from the bath, fully naked and wander just
for a moment, lingering, not with the idea of exposing myself to
some pervert just standing there in front of a lit, uncovered window
with his dick in his hand just waiting for my appearance, but with a
sense of freedom, a sense that there aren't thousands of gawkers and
perverts and psychopaths, just people minding their own business,
walking by without a glance…just for a moment so I could stand naked
in the light of the window and watch them going by.
You'd see much better with the lights turned off, I offered. You
can't see much of anything coming from the vantage point of light,
peering into to darkness. Haven't you noticed that before? Stand in
a room some night, well lit. Stand there and try to make out the
darkness outside - ok, it can't really be done in a city where light
outside is everywhere - but the next time you are in the country,
try it. You can't see anything but then when you turn off the light,
poof! You and the darkness are one. Once your eyes adjust you can
see with clarity.
We were having a drink at a Café Vachette at the corner of Blvd St
Michel and rue des Ecoles, far enough from the entrance of the
cinema to digest a somewhat forgettable film we'd just seen
(forgettable of course, the name has already left my memory and yet
what if for her it was a significant, transitional moment? What if
for her it was a night never to be forgotten?) without the
predictable palaver of pedestrians ejaculated from the same cinema,
discussing the same film with the same stunted background of a
crippled culture to carry them or the same pompous yet false erudity
clinging to their words like a stinking sweat to the underarms.
What I meant, I start in again as if the conversation about the
humanity behind the windows we'd had prior to entering the cinema
had never ended and instead had been carrying on continuously
throughout the film in the back of our minds, was about those lives
and what fascinates me about them - not the collectiveness of their
existence but the individuality.
She frowned, having perhaps been thinking of something else or else
digesting some forgotten fragment of dialogue from the film turning
it over and over in her mind only to be intruded upon again with
this talk about what goes on in buildings, behind windows.
Individuality? Whatever do you mean? That the lives of identical
people with identical cultures, identical thoughts, who watch the
same television shows laughing at the same time behind the canned
laughter or crying on cue with the crescendo of the music? Or do you
mean those flipping through the same magazines and photographs of
celebrities, those same dull minds covered in some undulating film
of repetition, watching the news broadcast the same story or slight
variations thereof over and over? What is so individual about them?
This collective humanity? This mindless beast in a mindless herd?
She has worked herself up into a minor froth. I place my hand gently
on her wrist and then run the tip of my index finger from her wrist,
tracing the outline of each finger.
Of course I didn't mean those people, I scoff with a palatable
albeit feigned contempt. I meant the woman stood in the kitchen
worried about whether or not the man who she thinks she is falling
in love with is thinking about her at that same moment as she's
stirring a couscous mix into boiling water on the hob.
I meant the undersexed 20-something still suffering the remnants of
a devastating case of acne, awkward and skinny, silent and shy
amongst his colleagues in some office building stuffed full with fit
birds, unimaginable sexy in tight skirts and opened blouses,
anonymous but for the jokes others snicker about him around him,
just out of earshot, who comes home at night to some flat alone and
surfs the internet sated with photographs and movie samples of
pornography, maybe even violent pornography and indulges himself in
fantasies about what it would be to be noticed and recognised, to
have those flock of fit birds talking about him sotto voce to each
other adjoined with half phrases about getting him into bed or doing
him in the elevator, atop the copy machine…
I meant the man and the woman, one visiting the other's flat for the
first time, the gentle music in the background, the studio filled
with 50 or 60 candles, the pullout bed, the silk or satin sheets,
the meal that will be cooked but go uneaten, the inaugural sex, the
romancing, the beginning - the things that happen between two people
at the start of something, all going on behind those windows
somewhere as we walk past a building oblivious.
And then we were talking louder, both to ourselves and to others, an
impromptu performance art of sorts, ordering another carafe of red
wine from the waiter with recklessness observing even his eyes, the
flicker of something; amusement, disgust, befuddlement, we aren't
sure and we'll never ask to find out but the second carafe arrives
and Anastasia has now found the syncopation of the idea, delighted
with a little game of imagination, thinking in the back of her mind
perhaps that the others sat around us might have abandoned their own
dull conversations and are now eavesdropping or listening
clandestinely whilst still formulating the sentences they are
speaking half in and half out of the game…
Do you mean also the heartbroken teenage girl who cries herself to
sleep at night, hidden under the covers waiting for her stepfather
to make some excuse to come in?
Or perhaps the single mother of three, scratching out an existence
without pleasure, the joy of these three once-beautiful children now
deformed by the insistence of realistic choices; new dresses for
that one, a new pair of basketball trainers for that one, worried to
death the third is hanging out with the wrong crowd and any night
there will be that call from the police…all the while squeezing
meals out of such a tight budget like a fat woman into a dress two
sizes too small, worrying whether she will have enough to last the
week and wow, never once contemplating her auld fantasies of life
sitting there in the kitchen with a glass of wine and a cigarette,
feet up, children asleep or away, suddenly discovering she is now
too auld, her stretch marks too wide, the lines beneath her eyes to
deep, the jowls sagging too far gone to ever return to youth before
she was ever a mother and dreams were a possibility not some city
you've just departed from an aeroplane she knows she will never
return to again?
I nod my head, pouring us both generous cups of wine in reward,
indeed. There are all sorts behind those windows…a man whose wife
has recently died who must now sit in the flat they shared an entire
life in suffocated by memories and waiting out each day like a
lifetime prison sentence waiting for his own execution, the release
of death from misery having long ago forgotten what life had been
capable of without her and not caring anymore as he had moored his
boat of adventure to her so long ago for so many years there never
was another lifetime to have contemplated.
And we carried on in this vein for some time, sipping our wine,
trying to out-imagine one another, forgetting there were others
around us at all, at ease that none of the lives we described or
imagined were ours at the moment, no prisons, no death sentences, no
slow crawl of endurance.
We were free!
And we left the café laughing, leaving money behind which could have
fed the poor or given another drink to the homeless slug who was
always sat on a cardboard box around the corner with his head bowed
and a little can in front of him wearing a sign that might have
proclaimed he didn't drink or do drugs but needed money for food.
*****
Do you believe in fate, she asked me one afternoon when we were
sprawled out, limb in limb, tracing the outline of each other's
skin, watching the shadows lengthen through the windows. Why do you
ask – do you have us in mind? I stood up then to have a cigarette
and pace but she pulled me back down again, nonono, she whispered, I
just mean in the sense of where any of us are heading, the direction
you chose, the direction I chose, why certain strangers walk past
you on certain days but never again, why some are born in one
country where there is poverty and starvation yet others in a market
economy perfectly adept at handling the possibility of that
individual's economic potential, you know – in a vague yet not too
general way…
I could quote Emerson, for example, I said, growing more
uncomfortable and making another, more successful effort at
releasing myself from the floor and the mattress and getting up to
the table to roll a cigarette. Emerson said that fate was just deeds
committed in a prior existence.
That doesn't answer the question of whether you do or don't believe
in fate, Witold. What made you choose to leave NYC? And once you
left, why Utrecht and once in Utrecht why did you leave your friend
behind to come here and once here, why did you decide on entering my
club and even then, that we were placed in the same place at the
same time, something gave you the nerve, the verve, the desire to
approach me and even though I wasn't the most receptive possible,
merely calculatedly mysterious, you were eager to see the
possibilities through without worrying what disappointment might lie
ahead. Was it fate, partially fate, partially choice, or just dumb
luck?
There's no such thing as dumb luck, only good and bad luck. In the
instance of meeting you, I'd say it was more a matter of chance than
of fate or choice. Is chance considered fate when chance is created
in part at least, by your own choices? I think fate implies it is
absolutely, utterly out of our hands – like the weather. You can
dress up for the cold or for rain but you cannot control if it rains
or becomes cold. I cannot control that I met you however, the
circumstances were in part, created by my own actions – unknowingly
at first, let's say up to the point when I'd first spoken with you
in the club – but thereafter, it is less a matter of chance or of
fate than of two people with somewhat similar goals, even as broad
and simple as getting to know each other.
Well then, let's say it is a matter of fate or for destiny, her hand
ran along her left shin bone and stopped at her knee. Fate would
have been determined by something beyond our control as in, some
higher power brought us together for a reason. Could be the fate of
souls perhaps, souls which are destined, in the course of living to
meet again and again through various stages of existence perhaps.
You know, like perhaps in another life, if you believe such things
of course, we knew each other very dearly and even though the lives
that were the vessels of our souls had long expired, once new
vessels were found, like this life we are living now, our souls were
bound to be reunited.
Smoke tapered upwards from her cigarette left burning in the ashtray
as she sipped at her wine. Fate, on the other hand, might be much
similar in that those souls are still meant to be reunited but we
too are participating. Perhaps we are doing so knowingly or
unknowingly. You coming to Paris, my being on the street I was on
when you first started following me.
If we did not follow this destiny, it would have been fate.
I exhaled and stared out the window of her flat overlooking Rue Mont
Saint Genevieve. She had already stood as well, changing the disc
from a sombre yet unknown jazz pianist to a wild and
incomprehensible Ornette Coleman as though the cacophony might
release us both out of the cocoon of the fledgling comfort of roads
still on the horizon, yet untaken.
Well, most of these photographs are of people I don't even know, she
commented, turning page after page, stood in her panties in a brazen
display of either self confidence or apathy. Her words, as I focused
unflinchingly on the bulb of her buttocks the fabric of the panties
couldn't quite cover and then downward to the arc of her calves into
her ankles, as much as those words were to have been cherished, were
somehow lost, as though they weren't being spoken at all, merely
forming a background symphony to an visual presentation. And then I
faded back in time to catch her continuing: Sometimes, she
elaborated as though I'd been paying attention all along yet somehow
sensed the impossibility of my concentration and hence her stance
there in the twilight of the flat in her panties, lighting a
cigarette of her own, it's more interesting trying to interpret the
lives of others through the memories represented by their
photographs than it is reliving your own…
And without an introductory preamble she suddenly changed discs
again and the Chet Baker River was flowing between the walls,
carrying us on a fool's errand.
*****
Nothing happened.
I stayed for two weeks in that flat with her.
The second morning I stole the keys, crept out in secret although
secretly she was likely not such a heavy sleeper she would have no
idea I was heading out, and got out into the streets of morning
Paris.
Regardless of the last day and twelve hours, I'd had a yet
unperformed desire to walk the streets alone. Especially at this
particular moment when you need the space to reflect on all that was
taking place inside the walls of Anastasia's flat in that time frame
from which we hadn't left since entering.
Without wanting to break the yolk, the rhythm, the syncopation of
bonding, I still felt compelled to get out - the air, the smells,
the foreign language until now had consisted primarily of everything
inside her flat and nothing of the world outside. Not that I minded,
but it was getting unnerving as though without a backdrop of some
sort of reality to add dimension, the entire encounter might well
have been some sort of dream, a prolonged stare out the window in a
moving train letting my idle thoughts wander into the woods, over
the plain, of mystery.
I wasn't gone long, mind you. I wanted to stretch my mind, like my
legs, to ascertain what I was thinking – my thoughts had not been my
own for the last day and a half. It was as though I had been sitting
for a painting and now wanted to see what it looked like.
At first, it was just a roll up and a coffee in the first café I
came across. But there was no real concentrating. Every fabric in my
skin breathed her – I could smell her perfume, her hair conditioner,
her sheets, her voice lingered in my ears – everything that had been
in that flat had come with me in scented form and it was after all,
impossible to escape.
And there was no real walking. Yes, the movements were similar but
inside, I was floating – as though watching myself walk without
having to actually perform the act, or incapable of it. This is what
it is like in the last milliseconds of life, I thought – the
experience often recounted of rising above the body, above the room,
the earth beneath you eventually growing so distant it is but a
speck as you are drawn to a greater light. This was infatuation in
action.
The barman was saying something to me – no idea what – I had been
speaking aloud to myself, muttering as though completely alone and
now, caught in mid speech, I stamped out my cigarette, shrugged to
the barman and headed back out of the café into the street again.
I was able to accumulate a few provisions before returning to the
flat. Some eggs, several different cheeses, none of which were
familiar and so like gambling, just as with the wine, placing bets
based on the colour of a label or the way the words were assembled.
Bread was easy enough and ham I was well familiar with, as were the
smoked sausages and fruit.
When I returned to the flat it was as though we'd been living
together for years. There was an air of familiarity which only a
short period of time had woven yet a familiarity untinged by boredom
or fatigue. These two lives were affixed, however provisionally, to
one another, slapped together like a sandwich constructed from the
remnants of the fridge until one of us would allow a larger hunger
to gnaw at us and it would all be consumed. Was it prophetic or
merely inevitable that one or the other would eventually wear this
relationship like a stringy sinew snapped and twisted, a meniscus
tear or rotator cuff gone off its wheels.
Already she had assembled herself prior to my return, fatigued with
dreaming, too excited to lie still in contemplation, fidgety with
the temporality of my disappearance. This is how it was at first –
those first few drinks were just settling into the bloodstream and
you could feel the effect of the alcohol in the head yet the vision
was still clear, the speech, unslurred.
There was a hot bath running whilst she went about picking up the
clutter of accumulation the last few days had assembled.
What did you bring me, she asked impatiently, reflexively leaving
the sink and the dishes to greet me at the door as though we'd been
doing this already for years. Proudly, I emptied the contents of the
sacks – feasts for lovers, enough wine to set us into days of
oblivion – on to the table for approval. The contents said all I
cared to say: let us not leave this flat, not now, not ever, let us
maintain this clean oblivion and nest herein forever.
Her reaction was mixed.
It wasn't as though she didn't necessarily share the enthusiasm but
perhaps the enthusiasm, in hindsight, was tempered by reality – the
reality of knowing her own life rather than flinging herself
recklessly into this ritual as I was willing to do.
That's a lot of cheese and wine, she noted, picking through the
selection with expertise, rubbing labels with her thumb and
forefinger as though hoping to peel away a more sublime quality.
Starving artists, she shrugged to herself without further comment.
But it did not escape her that this appeared to be a survival kit
assembled to last for days, rather than hours. She wasn't yet sure
how that felt.
We shared meals although eventually, as though realising a hidden
crime in spending the entirety of my time in Paris in her flat,
Anastasia was able to lure me outside when the sun was brightest and
the flat was growing stale.
Out we went for walks on clichéd tours of the bookstalls of the
Quay, sifting through paperbacks and manuscripts, art histories,
bartering prices when one struck either of us. We spent hours in
museum cafés yet visited no museums, walked along the Seine, one
bank to another, crisscrossing bridges with reckless abandon and
spent token gestures sitting for hours in cafés, before eventually
touring bars and allowing a different form of intoxication to
overcome us.
And so it went most days and nights. Mornings, incapable of sleep
once the repetition of traffic began outside the windows like the
breaking of waves on the beach and before long I'd be standing,
already accustomed to the reality that Anastasia would sleep well
beyond the stirrings of civilisation outside the flat and there
would be long hours alone for myself, these sort of moments I once
longed for, bathing in the oil baths of solitude until I began
waking up in her flat. Then it was simply a matter of killing time.
I killed time by walking as though boredom is a bomb waiting to go
off once motion stops.
I began with short forays, circles around neighbourhoods with the
spirals outward growing gradually. You could be utterly ignorant of
history and still wonder through timeless unfamiliarity, overcome by
the senses – Albert would've had to page through a myriad of history
books and start each jaunt knowing precisely where he planned on
ending up simply because that's how he went about travelling. But I
was content to move in a dreamlike sequence, imagining history
without the facts, piecing it together in from the stories I
imagined overhearing conversations I couldn't understand in
family-run cafés, butchers, cheese mongers and tobacconist shops.
Infatuation has a way of weaving its way into every moment, every
sight and sound, every impression and no matter how many far I
walked, I was dreaming in this web about a future with Anastasia
spent here – that I barely knew her or her habits made little
difference as I tiled together a mosaic of future moments walking
those same streets, the moments and sights and experiences conjured
up from an imaginary future with no basis in reality, no matter the
wishing or dreaming it were already so.
I tried to rationalise that this was simply a temporary experience,
following temptation, morsels of Anastasia left like crumbs
throughout the day to nibble on. I knew at the bottom of the barrel
there would nothing left eventually – I knew this simply for the
historical precedents of other women that had already arrived and
departed in the year long terminals of train station after train
station.
But there was no stemming this benevolent rush of water overwhelming
the emotional levy built in time to prevent precisely this sort of
infatuation from overrunning me. There was only walking and dreaming
and when once noon had come and gone I knew it would be time to head
back to her flat, that she'd already be awake, drawn gradually back
to consciousness by coffee with a tiny shot of anisette.
And when I returned, there was no cause for further dreaming because
there I was, living the very dream I'd been walking through – a
punctual kiss and back to the business of waking for already I was
learning that nothing could be forced upon her and it was better
still to leave the hints and suggestions to her lest those dreams
start leaking from my head out of my mouth and into her ears and the
entire hideous charade was exposed.
By early afternoon it was back out in the streets for a small lunch
followed by another walk through one of many parks she seemed
attached to. It was by no means solitude but there was still a
unique intimacy that must surely have been apparent to strangers who
might happen to have watched us from a distance.
I wanted to convince myself that we were like other couples we came
across but there was little evidence – you sensed that those people
around us had already had lengthy histories, had gone up and down a
hundred different times, had loved and spat bile at one another. We
were neophytes, tentative, hardly ourselves but the best impressions
of ourselves.
And always it was me poking and prodding into her past getting
desultory answers which made the piecing together all the more
impossible. She showed occasional interest in my own background but
for her part she appeared to prefer finding out my background via
tactical philosophical questions, the kind of questions on computer
programmes designed to evaluate your answers into a psychological
profile.
She didn't like talking much about the past. She'd dummy up
immediately and between us it would seem as though a storm had
suddenly blown in on what had moments before been perfect weather –
sometimes she'd just change the subject abruptly, other times refuse
outright to delve any deeper – in either case, I didn't get much out
of her save for observations of things going on around us or little
historical miscellanea prompted by a turn around a corner, a
building's face, a street sign where a resistance member had fallen
in the liberation of Paris.
In so many ways it was an odd experience that I should have either
just broken away and returned to Utrecht before I'd become any more
pathetic with a lack of emotional control like a premature
ejaculator or should have somehow managed not to allow the emotion
to pervade me, to deflect it one moment after another like swatting
gnats around the head, late summer afternoon.
And thus I was in the unique position of constantly fluctuating
state between joy and melancholy, my nerves jumbled by too many
quirky stops and starts, too much caffeine, emotion on the
fingertips like a match held too long and in some ways, when she
would leave at night, I'd be relieved.
On the nights she had gigs, she always demurred my self-invitations
to come along in audience. You would be too distracting, she'd
deflect. I would forget the lyrics of songs and lose a note or two.
This is my profession, Witold. You wouldn't have wanted me hanging
around with you in that law firm of yours, would you? Of course not,
and so it is with me in my work place, even if it is just a dingy
nightclub, even if you are on holiday with too many hours to kill.
It would be too difficult for either of us to understand.
The enigmas of Anastasia were partly woven by odd phrases which I
could never quite decipher whether they were meant to portray a
deeper meaning than a twisted phrase in English, or were merely
grammatical errors with no hidden agenda. How can you tell with a
woman around whose every corner another unsettling inability to
pinpoint lurked?
One afternoon we were walking and as we walked she started telling
me about this Parisian girl named Amélie Hélie, a singer at the
beginning of the 1900s. She was nicknamed the Casque d'Or for her
lengthy, golden hair. The leaders of two rival bands in the
neighbourhood, the Corsican Leca and his rival, Manda, both fell in
love with her, madly, brutally. Their competition for her eventually
grew into a big battle one day on this very street, rue de Haies. A
big battle with knives and guns. They were arrested and then
appeared before the magistrate. The magistrate keeps badgering Manda
about why the battle grew in the first place, refusing to believe
that it wasn't over neighbourhood territory, but a girl. Manda said
something to the magistrate like, we fought each other, the Corsican
and me, because we love the same girl. We're crazy about her. Don't
you know what it is to love a girl?
So what happened I asked, thinking the magistrate saw the logic of
the explanation and let them free to fight some knightly battle for
the girl's hand. We both had stopped walking and were simply
standing off to the side of the street as passers-by dodged us.
I think Manda got life and Leca got many years and they were both
deported off to hard labour.
Hmmm. The magistrate wasn't swayed toward violent demonstrations of
love? Free will out the window?
Something like that, but worse still, after all of this…she paused,
waiting for me to light her cigarette. A friend of Leca, seeking
revenge for his comrade, stabbed Amélie one night in the club where
she sang. She didn't die, but she could no longer perform as a
singer. She's buried at Bagnolet. Sometimes it isn't sufficient in
life not to let yourself fall in love because letting someone else
fall in love with you can have equally damning consequences.
*****
Instead of ripping my fingers into her soil and digging further, the
foreboding facial expressions, the slight change in pitch of vocal
chords, which she must in any case, as a singer been a master of,
all conspired to convince me to be satisfied with not knowing
further, to accept with further innuendo, whatever was presented.
Left me to my own devises by the time rush hour traffic was hitting
its peak as though the timing of it were meant not to leave me alone
but united with the thousands of souls racing around the boulevards
and traffic circles to keep me company in her absence.
It was then the thirst would overtake me. I needed conversations in
a city whose language I didn't speak.
Instead I walked from wherever we had been, the scent of her perfume
still in my nostrils and headed for the Panthéon, the beginning of a
long, winding journey through a bastion of student life forward to
the Place de la Contrescarpe and then behind there, a few streets of
misdirection and I'd find myself at Le Teddy's for it's bedroom-like
salon of chess players and beer drinking, the ground through which
I'd slammed my pole and flag of discovery as my local, my oasis and
new-found reality all at once.
Walking worked well in the mornings but once the dark of day's
business end drew a curtain across the sky and the paths were more
uncertain, the markings less clear, it was time to head indoors and
as most places before and since I would discover, with time,
persistence, a predictable presence, eventually humanity would
return to me. Perhaps it was equally myself once a few beers had
registered, oiling my jaw and mouth enough to dare speak to
strangers without knowing the language of strangers and intimated
through facial movements and hand gestures until inevitably, someone
would show up or make their presence known and the roadblock to
communication would disappear through translation.
There were delineated stages of the evening defined by the coming
and going of customers and regulars whilst I remained planted at a
key position in the middle of the bar, wandering through one
conversation after another until the hours had filled up as simply
as empty beer mugs and before I knew it, time to return to
Anastasia's flat for a midnight snack and a shower.
Yet even within the course of several nights haunting this same
place I was able to discover revocable bonds with some of the
locals, Didier, in particular.
Inside Teddy's we are roaring to life beyond happy hour. Didier, as
his comrades have fallen away, one after another yet somehow our
space at the bar ebbs and flows until now, flooded as it is with
humans, he must nearly shout his questions to me.
Do you feel as though you've been especially summoned, that there is
a special calling for you as an artist? Are you particularly
aliented with a pronounced sense of being misunderstood by
conventional wisdoms, bourgeois moralities? He was asking me these
questions, he the unemployed poet, the aspiring artist, the man who
couldn't simply allowing himself to drown in his drink and keep
quiet about it.
What's the point anyway, I ask pointedly. Isn't this all some crutch
you use to get through your daily misgivings your dissatisfaction
with yourself in comparison to the accomplishments of the others?
What purpose does your art serve other than a selfish mechanism of
petty, egotistical indulgences?
What purpose does my art serve? He asked with incredulity. What
purpose do you serve if we are speaking about purposes. What is your
utility? Is there some very special yet hidden trait woven into your
genomes that will come to fruition and blossom in the righteousness
of your purpose?
Calm down, Didier, I caution, licking my lips nervously as other
patrons are looking at us out of the corners of their eyes. What I
mean to ask is what purpose do you propose your creativity to be
used for other than yourself?
Why should my creativity serve any purpose other than for myself, he
asked, clearing his throat of Gitanes phlegm like a plumber snakes a
clogged toilet. I suffer enough from my choices, they make sure I do
suffer indeed for not being one of their productive members of
society…I could never calculate the psychological damage brought
upon me by seeing the contempt in their eyes. And why then do you
think I drink? Who wouldn't under these circumstances? What are you
saying, simply because I cannot subordinate my art into acceptable
consumerist values like writing commercial jingles about disposable
diapers or creating new superlatives for the unique comfort and
absorption of a particular brand name tampon, I should crawl into my
preternatural cave to wallow in my own isolation, fed on disgust,
shat into neat little pellets that can be easily swept up and
disposed of as if I never existed?
He was easily excitable this evening, either in a particularly foul
mood or simply unreceptive to my line of questioning. In any case,
the monologue was spat forth with great intensity, with barely a
breath drawn. And just why are we suffocated with this doomed sense
of having to justify ourselves and our utility to others? Do you
think the pimply teenage bagging groceries in the Carrefour
hypermarché is pissing himself over his lack of purpose? A
paper-shuffler, lost in a bureaucratic labyrinth of spread sheets
and interoffice memos is scratching his head wondering why he hasn't
yet soared to the heights of his corporate manager, fluent in
corporate techno speak gibberish?
This silly question of yours, questioning the purpose of my
forsaking the chain gang of subordinates, pacified by television
soma, beaten into submission by the overwhelming nature of keeping
up, this is nothing to me. I laugh at it. I am proud of being poet,
a craftsman. Proud of not being nothing, beautiful for it, in fact.
Look, Gautier once wrote that only things that are altogether
useless can truly be beautiful; anything that is useful is ugly
because it is the expression of some need and the needs of man are
base and disgusting as his nature is weak and poor. -
And furthermore, he added, warming to his subject like a university
professor unwittingly lured from the patina of his daily monologue
in front of an unfocused group of students, Pessoa agreed, "Freedom
is the possibility of isolation. You are free if you can withdraw
from people, not needing them for the sake of money, company, love,
glory or curiosity, none of which can thrive in silence and
solitude. If you can't live alone, you were born a slave. You may
have all the splendours of the mind and the soul, in which case
you're a noble slave, or an intelligent servant, but you're not
free. And you can't claim tragedy, for the tragedy of being born
what you are belongs to Fate alone. Hapless you are, however, if
life's very oppression forces you to be a slave, Hapless you are ,
if having been born free, capable of being separate and
self-sufficient, poverty then forces you to live with others, This
tragedy, yes, belongs to you and follows you…"
And that is what the purpose of my art is. Not to cultivate myself
out of egoism, not simply to avoid the plague of working for some
other fat pig who will make profit from my sweat and leave me
scratchings in return. The purpose of my art is to elevate me out of
this slavery of civilisation…to free me to be myself, not just the
self in front of you in physical disarray, but the self I am beneath
all the surfaces, the subconscious, the bones, the gristle and
blood, the ineptitude of years, deep down below all of this, like an
object buried in a landfill which will never be dug out, lies
myself, the self I am trying to discover, my only reason for living
here, now drinking this beer with you, walking home – all of it
seems entirely without purpose unless it is in the name of this
search.
I heard Didier's voice ringing in my ears all the way home, having
finally extracted myself politely, excused myself, my existence,
wondering whether I was beautiful or ugly, useless, or useful…the
world was upside down and I was rapidly becoming a slave to the
schedule of Anastasia. This was my sense of purpose.
*****
And sometime before dawn I would hear the key in the door as I lie
attempting to sleep despite the racing of an adrenaline heart and
the anticipation like a dog of his master coming home and I would
hear her footsteps creeping quietly across the front room floor and
after giving her time to pour a glass of wine and have a seat, I
would rise as well, feigning as though I'd been sleeping all along
and we would go through a predictable round of apologies for waking
me as though I hadn't been waiting like a predator all evening for
this particular moment to arrive and my subsequent dismals of the
apologies for wanting her company and pouring a glass of wine myself
she would unwind her evening to me in great detail, each song that
she sung, the reaction of the crowd at particular moments, whom she
spoke with, whom she met, what she had to drink in between sets
until every detail had been scratched into my imagination deeply
enough that I could almost convince myself I'd been there as well.
She was often exhausted by the effort, the reliving and recounting
but would relax more deeply asking me about the conversations I
managed to remember from the evening, which characters I could
myself recall through the hazy evening. Half the stories I made up
from conversations I'd had before with Albert because the truth was,
a great deal of the conversations I'd had, mired as they were in a
lack of common language and the tilting back of glasses invariably
meant that I'd spend most of those conversations determining the
dialogue myself as though I were writing it now free from the
slowing tactics of alcohol and translations.
Don't you get bored of that place, those people, the same beers, the
same faces?
No, they are like a human glue holding me together some nights. I
suppose I could have found better uses of my time but the truth is,
coming home to your empty flat with so much time to kill is like
sitting on death row awaiting a stay of execution. I need these
people, like I've needed all the people before them – if I am a
juggler, their faces are the balls I am juggling and concentrating
on those faces I am able to juggle.
Through the candlelight of the flat, I could see her staring at me –
why you're just a drunk, Witold; you don't have to make excuses just
for me. I can't judge you any more than myself – it isn't the faces
as often it is the drink you are juggling and instead of helping the
concentration it is merely distracting it. I know, I've done in for
many years here and alone.
But we don't have to be alone, I would protest as though arguing
with a republican about the merits of the royal family. We've worn
paths through ourselves in that pattern, being alone and just as
easily, with time, we can wind paths through each other…
And the moat would be drawn back in and her feet would curl and her
knees hugged closer to her chest. Not now, she would murmur. Not yet
and maybe never but still always possible. There are a lot of years
on that same path with too many false steps in wrong directions.
That's why I need this time alone even if the one thing I seem to
want most is to be with you.
The value of life can be calculated only by the itemisation of the
sum and intensity of experiences, she said.
One of the reasons I keep all these photographs of strangers, she
was explaining early that morning after undressing and pouring a
glass of cognac from a bottle purloined from the club, is because I
try to abstract the particulars from the universal, the parts from
this composite. I wonder all the time what it is that makes one or
two men, say, out of a collection of them in one photograph, here,
she gestured, handing over a photograph of black-faced miners
standing below the photographer looking up as if from the bowels of
hell, regarding God. Look at this photograph. Notice how one or two
of the faces particularly grab you – why? Is it the angle of the
light, the photographer's vision, or some internal aura that the
captured soul demonstrates for that one split second?
She calmed after this sales pitch of the individual over the
collective and visibly decided that I could be trusted with her next
line of reasoning. When I regard men I wonder what qualities about
them I might admire, what characteristics might I absorb through
being in their presence – of course, the obvious – the only
qualities which are not intentionally hidden or cannot be hidden in
our venal society, are the easiest, yet least accurate measure of
judging. I cannot tell from looking at this photograph, any history
of the strangers below. I cannot decided who would be the more
caring lover, who would make the better father, who would be the
drunkard or the wild spirit yet in their eyes, those little white
circles peering out from the soot of their faces, I can tell who
among them is a decent man…

The candour was overwhelming when it came spilling out of her like
that so unexpectedly that I'd almost want to ask her to repeat it
again to make sure it hadn't been just another imagined bit of
dialogue in my head on a morning walk of dreaming.
I wanted to believe her but I wondered instead, with a vague jealous
passion, what she was doing. I wondered about friends which she must
have had whom she didn't introduce me to. I wondered if there was
someone else allowed to attend her gigs, wondered how many lovers
amongst the musicians she had taken or still took. I wondered who
stared at her dreamily as she sang, who invited her for drinks
between sets, who she shared jokes with and if of any of them, she
explained my sudden appearance.
Her minute descriptions of her evening always pointedly ignored what
was probably the reality of most of her evenings, whether it was
merely in my imagination or not.
I have to admit, my heart was fairly limping along with me those
nights. It was a rather unfamiliar feeling; queasiness, excitement,
uncertainty. The hours we spent together seemed like part of the
same stitched together during sleep and the moment we parted,
reality loomed ahead again. I didn't think about Utrecht or Albert
or any other moment in my life. I was living solely for the moment
when we would meet up again.
*****
I have something to tell you Witold, she mentioned casually as we
sat in Jardin du Luxembourg tearing off hunks of bread from a loaf
and stuffing it with cheese whilst washing the meal down with wine.
I sat up, alarmed. Finally the penny would drop.
I've had a month-long gig scheduled for some time, a gig that I
can't really break or postpone and it's not here in Paris.
No problem, I shrugged, I'll come along.
No….she drew her words out carefully, shaking her head. We can't
really do that you see…first of all, the place that booked me allows
me free room and board which isn't to share…
I could find a place wherever it is and stay back, in the
shadows-like, I smiled playfully, unable to mask the fear in my
voice.
Well, you know how I feel about having you see my gigs…there just
isn't much point. Besides, I want to have some time alone. To digest
all of this, she explained calmly, waving her hand somewhere in the
vicinity between her and I.
Aha, I knew there was a catch to all this sudden happiness, I lamely
attempted to joke. Boyfriend stashed away somewhere else?
She smiled patiently. No, no boyfriend stashed elsewhere in a secret
cupboard in another town. It's just like I said, time alone to
reflect. Besides, aren't your friends going to start worrying about
you?
Ah, so it is your concern for my friends…I felt instantly and
regrettably bitter. She caressed my head and looked deeply into my
eyes as though willing my comprehension.
When I return, I will come up to Utrecht to visit you…
*****
There were, of course, untold questions I wanted to ask but I wasn't
sure I really wanted to know the answers. There were nights of
unflinching truths I'd often heard my father express about things I
could only imagine, truths which were usually better left unspoken,
as he often impressed upon me about my mother.
Deep down the desire to pout and pull in as though doing so would
alter the reality of the situation was overwhelming at times. Any
inducement out of pain, any remedy for the imagination of incessant
infidelities or worse still, apathy. I wanted to insist on coming
along, verifying myself things were as innocent as they were being
portrayed but I wasn't certain I wanted to be around to find out
they weren't.
I wanted to say fuck the whole thing, sorry I'd come along for the
ride, wanted to roll in a slough of my own bile, my own greed for
more, my own in fatigable paranoias and distrust. But I didn't want
to feel this new limb severed, didn't care for the idea of feeling
the numbness set in, the futile blankness of knowing something that
was once full with promise had been emptied, deflated, punctured. I
knew better somehow, innately, not to want either extreme for
neither extreme instinctively, was not the answer, merely a
impatient conclusion.
Play it cool, coldly and calmly and play it warm, supple and with
feeling.
*****
So the next morning, bitterest of mornings, reeking fear and regret,
I was seen off. Anastasia seemed genuinely disturbed by the looming
departure but I, as the entire time I'd been trying to piece her
together, hour by hour, sleeping or awake, through gestures, facial
expressions, hidden meanings in seemingly innocuous utterances,
remained as confused as ever about whether there was any difference
between what she appeared and sounded and felt and what she really
was – what did I knew even after all these days and hours
accumulated like rain water in a bucket left outside in a draught,
was that I didn't know her at all. I didn't trust her, I didn't
understand her yet somehow I was able to convince myself there was
something growing in me which she was unquestionably a part of – as
though the root of an indigestion can be pinpointed through a
specific meal, oh, it was the chilli dogs and sauerkraut, no doubt.
So departure was drawn out with a breadcrumb trail of promises and
yet still somehow, even though I was apprehensive about it, relieved
and heavily medicated from our farewell night that drew out into the
early first train of the morning in the direction of Amsterdam, I
wanted to leave the thread of this emotion at the station and let it
unravel all the way to the end of the journey so that at any time,
if either of us had been so inclined, we could merely follow the
strand of thread all the way back to the origin, crawling through a
tiny hole in the universe that had begun with a stilted conversation
in a night club.
*****
Odd, what a difference a woman can make.
As Paris faded away and gradually made its way to Brussels, it was
impossible to ignore the simultaneously twitching in my brain,
staring out the window lost in reliving every memory I could manage
to piece together as though relieving every note played in a show,
the heavy eyelids of two sleepless nights holding sway in between
the sticky familiarity of a train ride which was heading back to
what was almost familiar yet still lacked the feeling of home.
*****
Was it so long ago pulling into the Utrecht Central Station with
Albert, eyes brimming raw with excitement and now, one woman later,
every kilometre left behind on the tracks was a deeper surge of the
incommunicable pain racing through the veins, numbing yet
simultaneously heightening the pain.
There was little to do in Utrecht but pine away, stuff two week's
worth of memories into every day to be replayed over and over, hour
by hour like a television sitcom you've seen so many times there
isn't an unfamiliar episode remaining.
It's not like we ever had that much to do to distract ourselves with
in the beginning.
Considering our cramped quarters, it was a relief to pick up black
work through a friend of a pub friend, if only to get out, focus on
something other than memories and clear some space in the head.
My apprenticeship as an electrician interrupted, I had retained
enough familiarity with a job site through the summers with my
father to be able to work my way around Arjen's when it came to
carpentry and basic electricity and so passed most days working off
the steam of infatuation with my hands.
At first it was more than sufficient as a distraction. Day over, I
would gather myself back to the flat, filthy from head to toe and
exhausted. If he wasn't already in a pub or café, Albert would be
drinking steadily in the flat, chain smoking and listening to music
through the flea market stereo he bought the first week we'd moved
in.
The flat itself was above a Somali takeaway on Amsterdamsestraatweg,
one flight above the kitchen where food was prepared we shared the
bathroom and shower facilities with the cook and her staff and then
another flight above it, the top floor of the building which opened
from a kitchenette into a 10 x 15 metre bare wood floor flat.
We'd partitioned the space as best as possible but it was a small
space for two people. A large kitchen table never used for eating
on, just dumping stuff on – books, papers, empty beer bottles,
clothes, rags and whatever else found it's way into the flat but no
further – the kitchen table like a border guard, was off to the
right clearing a vague path into what we determined to be a
combination of a front parlour and makeshift bedroom made up of a
futon which I slept on although usually only it's sofa form, rarely
bothering to even pull it out lest the trouble of having to push it
all back in the following morning. Just before entering the parlour
there was a small ladder leading to a small crawl space within which
Albert had tossed a mattress and a few small drawers. It wasn't of
such a height that he could stand up straight in it but in most
cases he didn't seem to care as it was enough work to crawl up into
the space and onto the mattress to snooze away the hours.
We had no television – like freaks without societal connections, our
only method of newsgathering was via innuendo and gossip in
Marktzicht and even then, limited. The familiar faces that took the
favoured places in the café gathered there every day as if following
through on a daily reservation, other workers coming in from a long
day with plenty to complain about, observe and contemplate, all
within the half pint amsterdametjes that were poured down their
thirsty gullets.
Everything had a method in the day of a worker. Following work there
was the obligatory shower although some either too lazy or too
impatient for drink would go directly to the café and start in. In
either situation, by 6, the café was flush with workers sat around
tables, depending on the weather in or out of doors, drinking beers
and gossiping, filling the air with themselves, their voices, their
laughter.
And then as though deflating, they would one by one, get up and head
home for dinner content that they were sufficiently buzzed to make
it through dinner, an hour or two of blank stare television and then
bed.
The first night out with Albert I attempted explaining the meeting
with Anastasia. I'd sent a few cryptic postcards to him that I
wasn't coming back straight away but beyond that, I hadn't mentioned
anything. Now I was a faucet that couldn't be turned off.
In time it was up to Albert to shut me up. Nothing's more annoying
than listening to someone going on and on about some girl, some
infatuation, some inability to shut one's mouth for a moment long
enough to allow the other to get a word in edgewise. So you see,
there is nothing more boring. We have an entire world here to talk
about, gigs to rehearse for, side streets to explore, people to
meet. I can't stomach the idea of spending the next few weeks listen
to you waddle on about some girl you just met as though you'd
already had five kids with her and you were reliving your memories
on a deathbed fifty years later. Enough already. I get the picture.
I've got every detail stored away in my head. Now seeing as how the
situation won't be changing any time soon, might I suggest we go
back about our business and end this incessant warbling about love
and women?
He was right, of course. At this rate I would drive away every
friend we'd met since we got here so I directed this passion and
enthusiasm to writing letters to her instead. Fucking encyclopaedias
they were, devotionals, hymns, scraps of poetry, lyrics, new Dutch
words I'd learned, things I saw in a given day that reminded of her
in every blade of grass, every shift in the wind, changing of the
sky, dawn to dusk as though there was not a droplet of a single
second I wished to pass without her having knowledge of it.
Anyone can tell you such obsession is not only unhealthy, but bound
by its very nature to disappoint, he went on, perhaps feeling a
tinge of guilt for his recriminations. Unless of course, you can
imagine a reciprocal relationship where the emotions of one are
equal to the emotions of another, in depth and intensity – puppy
love, if you will, which is not bound to last. For every pair of
high school sweethearts there, rolled out like a line of custom-made
Rolls Royces, there are five times as many crap cars manufactured
whose shells you will see littering streetscapes – just like these
false senses of love and harmony. We aren't meant to spend our time
wallowing in love with one another; we aren't wired for it because
it's too self-destructive. What would man ever accomplish if he
spent all his time trying to fall in love rather than merely trying
to get laid?
Albert was one to often preach the utility of whores – lamenting the
simplicity with which man's second most difficult labour after the
effort to acquire power, the effort to get laid, could have been
made if the world had merely embraced prostitution rather than try
to sweep it under the carpets of morality. Can you imagine, he would
struggle breathlessly with the potential of this fantasy of his, can
you imagine if everywhere in the world were like Holland, if getting
laid was merely a matter of walking around the corner with 100
guilders and a hard on in your pocket? Can you imagine all the
broken hearts that would have been saved, all the fucking time and
trouble we men could have been spared all these years? Fuck. You
think man has progressed and advanced so far in this space of time
and yet you wonder what he might have been able to do, far greater
heights in far less a period of time had he not been consumed with
constructing methods and schemes for getting laid….
But Albert, I said, deciding to play the devil's advocate solely
because I had a flutter of infatuation in my heart and because it
was still early afternoon yet I was already feeling light headed
from beer, uncertain I would last the night. Certainly you can't
imagine all of those girls being enterprising young capitalists who
don't mind exchanging a series of sucks and fucks over a period of
several years in exchange for financial security? Surely you
recognise that the majority are there against their will, or against
their nature, forced by circumstances into a life of prostitution.
Surely you can understand how unsavoury it must be for them, day in
and day out to take men into their bodies, no matter how clinical
the method is with which they deal with these bodies who have little
or no personalities, just hard little dicks to compel them. I mean,
do you imagine them all merely nymphomaniacs who found a sound
financial mechanism through which to express their nymphomania?
Albert scoffed. It is volunteer work, he muttered into his beer.
Sure, maybe the idea of servicing a dozen disgusting men a day isn't
so appealing but I'll tell you what IS appealing…the money they make
afterwards. I've spoken to them in great detail about this because
I'm fascinated by their lifestyles. Do you realise that here, out
into the light of freedom rather than the dark shadows of some
moralistic insanity that forces prostitutes into true servitude;
pimps, beatings, rapes, the whole nine yards, here, it is a simple
matter of paying your rent for a room for the night. You pay the
rent and the rest is yours, the decision on how much you make, how
many you are willing to fuck, is entirely your own. It's free
enterprise, he stated, poking his finger in my chest. Let's say, and
I know from having asked, that a room costs a girl the equivalent of
200 bucks a night. In an eight hour shift, and, ironically, EU human
rights labour laws play a role in this, a woman can take, on average
eight to sixteen men at let's say a going rate of 50 dollars a pop.
Do you realise the money involved? Hell, if I were a woman, I'd do
it. I wouldn't care. Keep your eyes closed, let your mind wander,
what's the difference? At the end of the night you've got a fat
bankroll of cash to keep you company.
You're going to absurd lengths to justify visiting whores instead of
trying to meet the local girls, I pointed out.
Bah, he spat. Meet the local girls. What for? So I can waste hours
of my time trying to impress them? So I can spend my own money on
them, to treat them like royalty, let them think their own shit
doesn't smell, say anything just to impress, just to convince that I
should be allowed between her legs? Why the stultifying
conversations alone make that a withering proposition. I don't want
to talk to women. It's been my experience that women, once they
believe they have you in their clutches and no longer have to be
interesting, will immediately fall back on the old clichés of
shopping and nagging, nagging and shopping, planning the nest,
blablabla. The whole thing makes me sick to contemplate. And for
what? Just to get laid? I don't want to have any children. Do I look
like husband or father material, he asked with a laugh, standing
back, holding out his arms so that I could regard his full
character. No, of course not. And so what am I left with? Lies.
Acting. Convincing myself that wasting a several hours of my time in
a bar with a complete stranger is somehow worth it all just because
on the periphery of it all lingers the faintest hope that perhaps
this stranger will be convinced or perhaps this stranger will become
drunk enough that she no longer requires any further lubrication and
there we go. Just the possibility mind you. Now what kind of
investment is that?
He took another long gulp of beer, wiped his lips with his shirt
sleeved and let a low, subtle belch escape him. On the other hand,
he whispered conspiratorially, I can pay my wages and cut right to
the chase. God, I love it here, he emphasised again. Suck and fuck
they say, right down to business. Can you imagine if we could all be
that honest? I want a suck and fuck, how much?
But it's crass, Albert. These aren't cattle or pigs we're
discussing, they're humans. There's a certain finesse required when
dealing with our equals. You couldn't by that same token, walk into
a bar and point out a few burly men and say, hey, let's go – there's
a farm house up the road I've had my eye on and I need a few men to
help storm it. And think about this, Albert – if all that was ever
required for sex was a few guilders in your wallet, wouldn't the
lustre erode over time? Sure, the novelty here of the concept here,
for you at this moment is enthralling, more so than I can really
comprehend frankly, but that's beside the point. Once the novelty of
a world of whores wears off, what are you left with? Wouldn't you
then go out in pursuit of pure women, virgins even, who are yet
untainted by the experience of other men? Wouldn't you then, sated
with sex on demand, begin to ask yourself what love is?
Bah, he waved his hand at me dismissively. You're love sick, that's
all. That's all you think about, the girl. It's unhealthy to put all
of your emotions into one sack like that which she could just as
easily drop off the side of the Pont Neuf and never see again. Who
needs it, he mumbled.
*****
Fortunately, between the black work day labour, cleaning off and
passing the rest of the night drinking somewhere or rehearsing in
the flat, there managed to be some time spent other than devout
letter writing in an abundance of unanswered correspondence which
would be piling up through the mail slot whilst she was away in an
incessant effort of connecting myself with her even when she was
nowhere to be found.
There were times in the first few weeks when I toyed with the idea
of returning to Paris, even for a weekend, as though to be within
its borders would be near enough to her but invariably, Friday
nights after working would become night-long debaucheries which
culminated in the early hours of Saturday morning and an entire
afternoon sleeping with the shades drawn, the window slammed shut to
try and block out the sound of traffic, white noise CDs playing all
afternoon at low volumes from the stereo left over from the
evening-ending post-pub-closing beers Albert and I would stutter
through, already leaking through the pores with beer regardless.
By mid or sometimes late afternoon once of us would begin to clatter
around and by then it had snuck into the subconscious that the early
trains to Paris had been missed long ago and there was no sense in
just getting up there with enough time to turn around and come back
in time for work on Monday. I was too broke for that. I earned a
decent wage working black but most of it, ninety nine percent of it
anyway, was poured back into the pubs and cafés of town, consumed in
late-night halal meat takeaways and crates of Grolsch brought up the
stairs at some point nearly every day.
Money doesn't last long in drinking binges which is to say nothing
of the effort involved following a cold shower, of clearing your
head of enough of the molasses to be able to pedal a bike around the
streets in and out of traffic, around pedestrians and other
bicyclists, every potential obstacle in your furry state of mind a
disaster waiting to happen.
Yet I kept on feeding it to myself in a rapid cycle to burn the
hours I would have otherwise haemorrhaged through, bleeding
internally thinking about her, wondering what she was doing, whether
or not she was giving me any thought.
*****
But the more I thought about Paris the more I realised there was no
possible good outcome. If she was there, she obviously wouldn't have
wanted my communication. If she wasn't there, what was there for me?
A city of memories? A city to mope around in reminded at every turn
of Anastasia?
It was almost too much merely being in Utrecht because even in its
own stunted way, Utrecht was reminding me of Anastasia, reminding me
of the euphoria upon my triumphant return – the train station
arrival over a month ago imagining how one afternoon she would be
here and we would be walking along Amsterdamsestraatweg out for a
stroll from the flat, stopping in for a small beer or a glass of
wine.
So if there was no clean slate, at least I could avoid what reminded
me of her. Great lengths I'd go. For example, every time I passed
the Smakkelaarsveld just outside the station I'd think of the first
time seeing it in my return back to Utrecht from Paris.
As the bitterness and disappointment festered day after day without
reply I couldn't bear the sight of it any longer so I'd take an
elaborate route to escape the view, taking the back way out by the
bus station, down Moreelsepark, across the Catharine Baan along
Mariaplaats then wander back to Weerdzijde, Oudegracht overlooking
the cafes bursting with tourists and locals relaxing over lunches
and drinks, all the way down to Kaatstraat before turning onto
Oudenoord, Stroomstraat to Kerkweg then left on Blokstraat until I
hit Amsterdamsestraatweg near our flat, a feat which took a good
thirty minutes longer than simply walking straight across to the
Amsterdamsestraatweg and having to see the field – stupid, I know,
especially since we hadn't actually spent any time there, but
indicative nonetheless, of the fruitlessness of trying to venture to
Paris without her.
*****
I developed elaborate rituals in her stead. After work, after
showering, after grabbing a quick meal, I'd head off by myself to a
place Willemstraat to a pub decorated with local regulars, presuming
as such as they greeted one another like family, played cards around
large tables or sat quietly reading newspapers. It was here I could
normally find a good sized table to myself because other than
regulars, not many others came in and although the regulars numbered
quite a few at times, there was always sufficient space, if you
could drown out the slot machine and the Dutch folk music playing in
the background, to sit down and compose my letters to Anastasia.
And there I would order my beer, set it down on a fading Leffe
coaster which existed even though the Leffe didn't, and from my pack
take out the French/English dictionary, the pad of paper, set the
pen down, all an elaborate ritual as if preparing the table she
would soon be joining me at although instead it was merely my
obsessive thoughts of her and the paper and pen.
Sometimes it would be snatches of lyrics or poems, but more often
than not, it was a breakdown of the minutia of the day, what the
weather was like, what the work that day had been, conversations
with the builders, the lunch, perhaps a few glasses of wheat beer at
the Ledig Erf after we knocked off work, snatches of local politics
I'd gleaned from listening to conversations…it was all quite boring
I'd imagined, sprinkled with memories of Paris, excerpts of
historical passages I'd read.
And when I wanted to wander further, I'd wander back behind the
train station again, moving westward along the Moroccan and Turkish
shops of Kanaalstraat through the residential yet occasionally seedy
public housing Lombok neighbourhood, down Coenstraat past the
Molenpark and the big windmill, left on the Leidsekade along the
Leidsche Rijn past the boathouses until I reached Kanaalzicht, a
café pub set across from an ugly factory complex which was equally
spacious though somewhat louder but with a bigger outdoor café area
to write.
From the Diaries of Witold Kasmersky, cahier 2, p 331.
It's now that I begin to devour the history of Paris trying to pry
little figs of information through obtuse channels I flick through
trying to find images of Anastasia. I'm not sure what the siege of
Paris from September 1870 to January 1871 in the Franco-Prussian war
had to do with it other than September was fast approaching and I
could see myself laying siege to Paris myself. But the intrepid men
using hot-air balloons to take messages in and out of the surrounded
city certainly intrigued me in the absence of a word from her.
Or perhaps this was the Paris of August and September of 1914, when
the second German attempt to take the city was stopped by Gen.
Joseph Gallieni –a prostate cancer-ridden, retired officer who saved
the city by staying and fighting when he responded "Nowhere" to the
question of where the line of retreat would be in case they were
overwhelmed. Instead, 600 red Renault taxi ferried troops to the
spot in the front of the German line where a gap had been left and
each taxi making two round-trips a day until the enemy was stopped.
It takes ingenuity to overcome a sort of crisis.
*****
After three weeks we had finally managed to convince ourselves to
make another go at an open podium performance. The last one had been
so underwhelming that the crowd's distaste for our style was
politely palatable. Not one came up to us afterwards to offer any
encouragement as though by their collective silence, they might will
us out of their recollection of the evening.
This time we weren't giddy and flush from the success of a
surprisingly well-received gig. We were humbled and even though the
majority of our free time was spent drinking there were moments of
coherency well groomed enough to have managed three new songs to
perform.
I tried to conjure up Anastasia to give me confidence but it merely
unsettled me more as instead I had been busy calculating how much
longer before she would return and would knowingly begin to doubt
with each day nearer, that she would arrive in Utrecht at all – it
was certainly a distraction from pre-gig butterflies and the gloomy
uncertainty of how these three songs would be received, but it was
merely a replacement gloom, a heavy gloom, a heart-wrenching worse
than any potential embarrassment on stage.
Thinking of Coltrane's solo in Walkin with Miles Davis on the same
stage was no better encouragement. I was a little ant in comparison
and a little ant that wondered what the hell he had planned going on
a stage in public and playing. It boggled the mind, overwhelmed,
suffocated. Who was I kidding?
This time we'd invited a few friends for morale support figuring
that if we'd already been able to uncover a few souls who were
unafraid, willing even, to accept us, certainly, if we hit the right
songs, we could enlist a few more.
I spotted a few of them through the smoke of the club as the MC
clattered on unintelligibly in Dutch before we finally heard ….De
Deadbeat Conspiracy….a smattering of applause before Albert began
plucking out the first few chords and I began a memorised preamble
of the obituary of a Dutch politician, in Dutch for several
sentences before emphasising notes that peaked at the wrong moments
of the sentiment of the phrase as though driving us all backwards
before pulling us forwards again. Albert punctuated these swings and
the room was silenced as we went on, confused as to our direction
yet drawn in by a vague familiarity.
It was a dark cavern we were leading them through. Albert's thumbing
bass notes were the stalactical tears to the wails I hit with the
saxophone, raising my torso against it in effort as the sounds
bounced off these imaginary, slippery walls in a damp cavern the
crowd followed us through.
As usual, we didn't know precisely where we leading them. Rehearsals
were merely familiarisations with where would begin and end but for
the playing in between, we were on our own, one off the other and
back again as though our hands were holding a rope instead of an
instrument and the rope was what was holding us both in the same
line, the same line that the others were clinging to as we wandered
further into some low and slow flow melodies, tiny hints of melodies
really, suggestions as to directions which invariably led down dead
ends to turn around and head back from.
And when it was over there was the familiar silence as though they
were all expecting it to begin back up again until several seconds
hung between us and the realisation that it had ended, unexpectedly
– and just then, in that split second as they began to realise it,
as though we were too afraid to wait to find out if the silence
would last or melt into applause, we were already pulling them back
forward again.
*****
I woke up two Saturdays later wondering what it was I should be
expecting. For over a week the realisation that Anastasia was to
have returned, at least to Paris, was a constant cloud hanging over
me but for the hours I pined away drinking with Albert and friends
and I could quell it for a time only to have it punch me again in
the stomach without the slightest bit of forewarning.
There was no word from her.
Not that it had been all that well planned out. She taken down my
address but did I really imagine in hindsight that the minute she
got back to her flat in Paris after a month on the road she would
repack her bags and set on the first train headed out to Utrecht?
In fact, when I went over it in my mind, it was hard to ignore the
realisation that she hadn't pinned herself down to coming
immediately. She had merely said she'd come, not when she'd come. I
found myself analysing key words. After I come back, she'd said. Not
how long after, not soon after or years after. I'd been so over the
moon when she'd said she'd come I hadn't bother to read the fine
print – WHEN?
I seemed to take quite a lot of pleasure out of kicking myself over
that one. I was pinned down with just my King clinging to a corner,
three moves from mate. I resolved to pretend the month hadn't passed
at all or alternatively, that I had imagined or dreamt the entire
experience, that there was no Anastasia to begin with, I'd spent too
many hours in a coffee shop, had smoked myself into a stupor.
But every morning I woke up again there was a thick knot of nausea
in my stomach as though it weren't the overindulgences and late
meals that was doing it but some shattered dream that had collected
itself in pieces all around me waiting to be picked up.
Every morning I made the coffee, sat in silence at the kitchen table
after clearing a mound of clutter and rolled a cigarette so I could
sit back and smoke whilst staring out the window down into the
courtyard wondering how long I would manage to hold out before
writing again or worse still, taking a train to Paris and paying an
unexpected and unrequested visit.
Every morning, after the cigarette was stubbed out on the bottom of
my boot I drained the remainders of the coffee in one long gulp and
headed outside, unlocked the bike, got on and rode to the job,
another afternoon of filing dirt and assorted particles underneath
my fingernails, carrying wood from a pile, hammer nails into wood,
measuring, cutting, hammering, stopping for a coffee break with the
others at 10:30 and then lunch at noon seated on overturned plaster
buckets eating sandwiches with filthy hands, washing them down with
cold milk that offset the soot of destruction and construction
combined with the stale taste of every cigarette break until finally
we'd pack it all up again, get back on our bikes and ride off in
different directions to different homes, different pubs, different
understandings of the day.
I arrived home to the familiar strains of something bleak and evil
leaking out of Albert's headphones at full volume, sipping a bottle
of Grolsch with hand, alternating with the Winston in the other, the
smoke trailing from it like a plane that had been hit and was on its
way to smouldering ruins on the ground.
When he managed to notice me, somehow the feel of the room must be
different when all other senses are completely absorbed in the holy
trinity of music in the ears, beer in the hand, cigarette to the
mouth – there must be some perceivable alteration in space when I
entered because no amount of noise I made could have penetrated that
veil – but he noticed something changed in the balance of the room
and so turned to see me.
He removed the headphones which for a split second before he also
turned down the volume were as loud as the speakers might have been
without the headphones plugged in, took a swig of beer and nodded in
my direction. Good day?
I brushed off more dust and held up my hands. The day of a labourer,
I lamented before leaning over the crate and plucking out a beer to
pop open.
Oh yeah, Albert mentioned as casually as possible. Letter for you
today.
*****
You know what the simultaneous experience of elation and dread feels
like? As if two boxers, when clenching up between each other in the
middle of the ring covered in sweat and pain, suddenly begin to kiss
and I mean a deep, probing and soulful mashing of the tongues
against each others', held long enough for the passion to mount
before one of the boxers reaches behind and delivers a razor sharp
punch to the kidneys of the other.
I drained the beer whilst simultaneously hovering over the contents
of the kitchen table, bottle opener, overflowing ashtray, Dutch
advertisements for high tech electronics at low tech prices, empty
packages of Drum, empty packages of Winstons, empty wine bottles
with candles stuck in the tops like corks and melted wax hardened on
their sides, yellowing copies of Metro and De Volkskrant, pliers,
electrical wire, odds and ends of emptied pockets, lighters awaiting
refills, and finally, there it was emanating like magic atop a
musician's magazine and a flyer for free pizza delivery –
undoubtedly the letter, undeniably, the fate.
Of course, I couldn't open the letter yet. After all these days and
weeks accumulated waiting there would be at least one night's
festivities with a least part of the harness of doubt loosened –
there I was, my name in her antiquarian script on an envelope, proof
enough that I hadn't merely hallucinated a few weeks of time.
Evidence that I must have crossed her mind at least once in crossing
the gulf between us. Enough for heel-kicking and a shower and a
night out to celebrate the fate, whatever it was for at least for
the moment, I was going to live…
*****
What should I have expected such a letter to say? After all, she'd
promised to visit, not write. I could imagine nothing but a dark
foreboding, her left handed scrawl conducting apologies and excuses
simultaneously and between the lines, the truth that it had all been
sort of memorable but unremarkable mirage of events which had
transpired indeed, but had perhaps been blown out of proportion.
Surely by now my daily letters had reached her, my unhealthy
obsessiveness and oblique paranois apparent like some filthy secret
I'd unburdened to her.
But even looking at the postmark I could tell it wasn't from France
at all, but Italy and as I tore open the envelope and read hungrily,
I was overwhelmed with the realisation that the letter was only a
partial answer – if she wasn't in Paris it explained in part why she
wasn't here (logically, because she'd not yet returned) – but it
didn't explain more than some place where she was, the gig extended,
a brief confessional of an exhaustive battle with mental demons.
In the end, her words were almost as nostalgic as the thousands I'd
composed in all those letters but no regret other than her personal
trials. So in the one sense, I could afford to feel elated – I
wasn't being rejected, I was being put off for a time, postponed.
The gig was actually a big hit, she'd been singing in places
throughout Italy it turned out, Milan, Rome, Napoli, Firenze – all
over and as her status had grown, so had the demand for her, hardly
surprising, I supposed, but disappointing nonetheless because what
it all boiled down to was that she wasn't coming back straight away
and couldn't even say really, when she'd be back at all, although
promising definitely to be back and as soon as she was back, she
hadn't forgotten she was coming to visit in Utrecht.
Of course it was equally disturbing her casual questions like, have
you thought of me at all, I don't even know if you remember me any
more, perhaps I was just a fling for you, killing time in Paris –
(when all the while I'd thought it might have been the other way
around,) and the uncertainty of when this string of gigs would
finally end – she thought there might even be a small recording deal
in the offering. All things I felt proud of, that she was that
talented but also that amid all this excitement she thought of me,
wondered how things were working out in Utrecht, wondered if I
thought of her at all and imagined how much she missed our moment.
What it all spelled out in the end was that we wouldn't see each
other any time soon on the one hand, but that my hopes hadn't been
in vain, not necessarily, on the other hand. Just enough hope to be
maddening.
*****
After all those months of unreturned letters, there was bound to be
an answer eventually. I hadn't expected to just run into her outside
the flat though, I have to admit.
Yet there she was, seated regally atop one of her bags of luggage,
casually smoking a cigarette and watching me with amusement as I
neared and my eyes roared to life from a dull and listless stare.
And so here she was. Weeks, months of writing had conjured her as
mystically as I had met her. She shrugged her shoulders at my
incredulous gaze. I suppose I never really believed that all the
writing would work. I suppose deep down I had prepared myself for
the worst case scenario and despite the optimism bred in the act of
writing all those letters, sharing all those thoughts had somehow
grown with little nurturing like a cactus that needed little water.
I was away on holiday, she explained. I was gone three months,
staying with some friends near St Etienne and when I finally
returned to Paris, your letters were sitting there waiting for me,
like an unfinished novel. For two straight days I read them all,
word for word, stopping only to cat nap a few hours here and there.
Your presence coursed through me like a hot shower. I decided to
take the train here immediately.
I would love to have a chance to freshen up she mentioned when
several moments had passed without my saying anything and had simply
looked at her instead, dumbfounded. It was a long train ride…
Of course, I immediately stammered, picking up her suitcase and
hurrying through the front door of the café. The men playing cards
around a table stared up expectantly when we entered, amused by this
sudden stranger who had declined their hospitality for hours and had
preferred only to sit outside at the lone table and chair nursing a
glass of tea and watching the flotsam of Amsterdamsestraatweg
passing by.
I made brief discussions, as brief as possible: friend from Paris,
stopping by a few days…but their curiosity would not release it's
clutches from us and they continued on with questions, bemused or
perhaps encouraged by my impatience.
How long are you staying for?
Why are you here?
What part of Paris?
What do you do?
Did you come by train or plane?
Why are you with this one?
When we were finally released I clattered up the stairwell without
waiting for her dreading whatever humiliating disarray awaiting us
in the flat. When we reached the stairwell I stopped a moment in the
kitchen which was devoid of the afternoon help peeling potatoes and
the smells of cooking still hanging in the air like someone else's
memories.
You'll have to excuse the state of this place I forewarned, pushing
open the door to the second landing. She shrugged me off. You've
prepared me quite well in fact she mentioned, reminding me of the
degree to which I had described the flat and the lingering smells of
the kitchen. So far it is precisely as you wrote. So far, I laughed
to myself.
My, she stammered to herself taking it all in, stepping back and
wiping a stray hair from her forehead which had fallen in the
exertion of walking up the steep incline of the second stairway. My,
she repeated, having a glance at the piles of accumulated
bachelorhood; the vague indifference of the unwashed plates, piles
of empty containers, newspapers, empty beer and wine bottles, the
stale smoke hanging in the air like a dense fog even though all the
windows had been left open.
Well, perhaps you underestimated the degree of your slovenliness,
she laughed.
I had to set about explaining the contraption of the shower and
toilet combination in the floor below, struggling to find clean
linens and towels, bemoaning the lack of good mirrors and even the
simple addition of a small table inside the shower for grooming. We
weren't particular after all. But she wore a face of pleasant
indifference which in the effort to conceal produced a mixture of
shock masked by a determination not to allow her disgust to
register. She didn't have to say anything. I was well aware of what
any normal human being might begin to imagine seeing such squalor
first hand. Albert and I rarely noticed – there were no guests
invited in this hovel and thus how we chose to keep it had been
precisely how we chose to keep it without the intrusions of keeping
up appearances.
While she disappeared into the shower I quickly leapt back up the
stairs into the main room to make some demented effort at
straightening up; ashtrays dumped into empty pizza boxes and halal
meal containers, bottles quickly collected, drained into the sink
and placed neatly back into their respective empty slots in the
crates they were once carried in, magazines and newspapers piled
into one corner, clothing picked up and thrown into a pile within
the makeshift closet.
However we had no vacuum and little more than a hand broom to sweep
up the lingering odours and ashes, dust and stains, mildew and
assorted filth. By the time she had finished freshening up the flat
had taken on an almost unrecognisable order which despite the state
of it's interior, was vastly improved by any effort to render it
back to it's original state which quite frankly, had never been too
charming or too clean to begin with.
Albert was no doubt already at the café and as I huffed and puffed
around the room I remembered myself – that I too was covered in the
dust and woodshavings and drying concrete, that my clothing hadn't
been washed all week and that I likely smelled far worse than the
pong of the interior of the flat. I lit a few candles and several
sticks of incense hoping carelessly to mask it all in perfume, the
room and myself.
She wasn't fooled. She made the best of it, put on a smile,
pretended it was another world altogether and yet still one we were
both in.
So we were fine. I just needed a shower and to let Albert know the
one room flat being used by two people had now become three people.
******
Of course, it was Albert's idea, one which had crossed my mind
several times but never reached my lips, to include Anastasia in our
rehearsal. We hadn't done much for weeks until then but one night
we'd stayed in, ordered Somalian food from downstairs and ate it on
the table in the Styrofoam containers they were served in, plastic
forks, napkins, washed down with a few bottles of beer.
So how about you sing a few with us? He asked grandly, pushing
himself away from the table and tossing the remains of his meal in
the large bag of rubbish that was opened just a few feet from the
table. We haven't had much inspiration these days, Albert explained
and I've heard from Witold that you've got a beautiful voice.
Anastasia, not one for self-promotion, at least not from what I'd
witnessed, rolled her eyes. But I came to see Witold, to get away
from singing, she tried to explain.
Still, we've got to rehearse and well, don't you have to keep your
voice in shape?
I could tell he wasn't going to let this one go although I wasn't
certain if he was making a big deal out of it simply to annoy the
two of us, because he was sceptical, curious or just wanted to hear
her. I started to beg off, not much in the mood to play myself but
then an evil little grin crossed her face and she nodded sure, why
don't you play a little for me now and then, well, if the mood
strikes me, I'll join in. After all, I haven't heard either of you
play before…
We don't know any songs, I fumbled, again explaining how we
ad-libbed everything, never learned a jazz song and probably weren't
worthy of having her singing anyway. But Albert was having none of
it. Oh hell, Witold, we haven't needed to know songs before, let's
show your guest a little sample of what we can do…
He got up from the table and moved with sudden dexterity into the
living room where the bass was leaning up against the side of the
sofa. Reluctantly and knowing there was expectation in her
bemusement, I too rose from the table and made my way into the
living room, our little improvised studio with horrific acoustics.
Outside the hustle and bustle of Amsterdamsestraatweg was audible.
Anastasia made to clean up the table and light a few candles while
the two of us tried to tune up and get into each other's keys.
And it was true I thought to myself, putting the reed in my mouth, I
was curious and excited about the idea of her singing with us. We'd
discussed it but never with any seriousness and she was here after
all, why not?
But maybe it was the nerves or the outside noises or fear that the
landlord would hear us down two floors and complain at the racket
because normally we waited until late at night when they'd already
shut down and the café was closed before starting to rehearse,
normally well into a session of beer, reaching blindly for
inspiration but here we were anyway and Albert looking at me
expectantly, fingers poised. Goofing off to relax, I blew a long
sequence to begin a sort of soulful snake charmer song, holding and
blowing while Albert slowly filled in behind me, plucking furtively.
In time we started to build on it a little more, lost a little
deeper until I was no longer aware she was even in the room. We went
on like this for quite some time before realising there was nowhere
for her to step in, even if she'd wanted to. I stopped playing and
stood there with the sax around my neck and looked up at her staring
at us both with arched eyebrows, bemused.
I don't think I've heard anything quite like, she stammered for a
moment. I've never sung to anything like it, that's for sure, and
she tittered and we all guffawed, relieved for the moment. You guys
are, well, a bit weird, I'll say. I didn't realise…
We tried a few more on for her, laying it out thick and
experimentational until ever so slowly, sipping a drink of scotch
Albert had poured her from his alcove stash, she stood up and made
her way towards us, hips swaying slightly until I closed my eyes
entirely and then I heard it: she wasn't singing words, just trying
to find a melody somewhere amid the confusion, her voice huskier
than I'd imagined, having never heard it before and only conjured it
in dreams. Soon I was trilling and Albert was slapping and we began
to hear this mournful humming that gradually birthed into some sort
of lullaby in French.
I don't know how long it went on, maybe it was only seconds, or a
few minutes, it was impossible to tell, but just as suddenly as it
began, it ended and we all stood there in the room not saying a
word, staggered not by a sudden genius but by the strangeness of the
collaboration until Albert finally set the bass to the side, wiped
his brow and lumbered back into the kitchen to pull a fresh beer
from the crate and settled back down into his chair. That's enough
for me for the moment, he mumbled into his sleeve as he wiped it
across his lips. I think I need some time alone, why don't you two
have a night out?
*****
None of us said anything about those few moments as a trio and
several days went by before we were encouraged, by virtue of several
bottles of wine, to do it again. In the interim, Albert stayed long
hours away from the flat, giving us our space. Anastasia was much
more animated out of her surroundings than she had been in them. She
regaled our friends at Martkzicht with steamy tales of the clubs
she'd been singing at in Paris and in Milan, embellishing, I hoped,
for my benefit rather than that of the others. She revealed tiny
shards of her past to me over days drawing out on canal walks, bike
rides and afternoons sat on various café terraces soaking up the
rare sun and sipping Belgian ales. She seemed to demur less and less
as though whatever fears had held her back when we were in Paris had
mystically evaporated. Don't get me wrong, she wasn't a sputtering
fountain of information. What little bit I learned was drawn out
over a long process but at least it appeared I was making headway,
at least I was no longer feeling like an intruder on her secret
life.
And then a few nights later, when we were sipping wine around the
kitchen table, listening to a few CDs she'd brought over with her,
she suddenly asked if we knew how to play any jazz standards. You
know, she said, My Funny Valentine or Mack the Knife, or anything
really, something I could sing to that wouldn't require, hmmm, too
much skill for you two to play. Not that I don't think you could
play standards well, I dunno, what do you think? Do you ever play
something known?
Albert and I looked at each other with a mutual grimace. We'd never
tried it before to be honest. What was the point for a double
bassist and a saxophonist when we had no one else to back us? We'd
been left with improv and weirdness out of necessity and even with
lovely female vocals we doubted the two of us trying to slam out
some jazz standard was going to sound very good.
But hell, Albert said. We can try it a time or two, just for the
novelty. How bad can it possibly sound just because Witold can't
read music and I can't play anything I didn't make up on my own? He
snorted into his glass. What do you think, Witold, are you up for a
little Mack the Knife? I'll do a smooth walking bass line to start –
and you just start going from there…
But before we even started, Anastasia wanted to get us in the mood
by telling us how the version we knew was nothing like the original
murder ballad, the tales of Mackie Messer, Und Macheath, der hat ein
Messer, doch das Messer sieht man nicht and she sings it with real
sinister intent, the man with the knife no one sees waiting to
spring it out and stab away, the cold hearted murderer…
And sure enough while she's telling us this, setting a background,
Albert began thumping the notes, slow and morose. And she sang a
little more and then, struggling to find the right note, I blew a
little – it was rudimentary, no doubt. Pitiful maybe, but Anastasia
seemed to gain a little more life because our efforts. She let us
walk through a few versions of it while she hummed the beat she
wanted. Man, it was a lot of run throughs as I kept missing the note
and trying to figure it out from a little memory and a little help
from Anastasia's humming but after awhile, it started to take form.
Not any form that any of us had ever heard it in before because it
was slow and melancholic and not snappy in the slightest. And we
went through it several more times until it began to feel a little
less stunted and then we were ready, from the top and wow, we were
just blown away by Anastasia singing this horrible song about a
murderer, changing the lyrics, switching from German to Italian to
French, nothing like we'd ever heard with that low husky voice until
she broke with a higher pitched warble, a plea, almost.
And again we were all a little overwhelmed, and it felt a little
kinky almost, the three of us standing together there in that room
past midnight, sweating and letting it all ooze into us and then
breathing it back out slowly.
*****
The next morning we decided we would learn at least three songs,
this Mack the Knife version, like a sinister milonga, My Funny
Valentine and How Long Has This Been Going On. Each one had its own
strange stamp to it, the tentative, nearly talent less version of
our playing that she worked so hard to overcome and indeed, her
vocals were quite capable of carrying us beyond. We forgot all about
drinking for hours, simply rehearsing in that room over and over
again until we all began to feel comfortable with it.
Between these three standards we sandwiched two originals – well,
two songs that Albert and I sort of made up as we went along and
which Anastasia showed an adept ability to sing around. I had to go
to work during the day, Albert stayed in sleeping and Anastasia took
trips alone to Amsterdam, unbeknownst to us, scouting around places
we might play. It was if we all had some purpose – well, Anastasia
had had a purpose in her mind all along, it was Albert and I who
really felt the difference, really felt as though for the first time
since we'd come here we were finally doing what we'd come to do. And
Anastasia was the alchemist who turned our slovenly, drunken and
pointless hours into quasi-disciplined sessions of rehearsals. I
didn't have the energy to drink. We would rehearse for a few hours
at night after dinner and then I'd drop off to sleep sitting there
on the sofa afterwards. And after a few weeks it began to feel as
though we were really on to something. Just what, we weren't quite
sure but at least it had this tactile quality of accomplishment
about it.
*****
Riding my bicycle back from work, covered in cement dust and paint,
I found myself veering predictably for Marktzicht. After all, it was
Friday, the week over and I was exhausted from the week of work and
practice something no one else in the trio was undertaking.
Anastasia had her own wealth, I was certain of that. You don't have
a flat in the location she had in Paris without some resource hidden
away somewhere even if everything about her seemed to exude material
poverty. She bought her clothes from second hand shops, rarely
seemed to eat and certainly was no extra strain on my budget staying
with us. Both Albert and I were subletting our flats in New York but
unlike Albert, I wasn't charging the market value and making a neat
profit on the side. I suppose I should have done but there are so
many people in those neighbourhoods who come there with their stupid
little dreams of success and fame that I didn't want to be the first
to gouge them. Let them learn on their own.
And so yeah, I was the only one working. We still had plenty left
over from Albert's settlement although my cut had been dwindling and
this forced the work in a way, I still preferred working. Firstly,
for the social aspect of it – I couldn't sit around the flat all day
listening to music and reading like Albert could. I'd had years of
that already and frankly, I could have done that back in New York. I
preferred this life of labour, it was in my blood just like these
efforts at music. All in the name of the father, so to speak. And of
the mother? My mother? I couldn't think of her because doing so only
worried me. I considered her dead. As dead as my father whether it
was fact or fiction.
Swinging down Loefstraat, I spied Albert already out on the terrace
entertaining himself with a few locals and locked my bike up against
an iron post.
You've just missed Anastasia, he enthused, clearly in a celebratory
mood. She's gone back to the flat to change but stopping by here,
she brought a little news with her.
I motioned for my usual Amsterdametje and took a seat, still covered
in the day's dirt. So what it is it?
A gig, he smiled. Anastasia's gotten us a gig. In Amsterdam.
*****
I awoke that morning as I had each of the four mornings before it;
for the first few seconds of consciousness I felt nothing - that
delicious absence of pain – didn't even realise the pain I would
feel again coming on as slowly the fog in my head lifted and memory
returned. But then in one millisecond I would remember where I was
as I stared up at the browning stains of the ceiling, the cobwebs
gathering in the corner directly to the left of the sofa upon whose
arm my feet were resting and in that millisecond every would return
like a cramping abdominal pain in a mid-spasm episode of irritable
bowel syndrome. Well, not everything. Just the realisation that
Anastasia was not here followed quickly like a right hook follows a
series of penetrating and exploratory jabs looking for the opening,
that I didn't know when she would be back nor when I would see here
again, here or elsewhere.
And then a psychosomatic pain would rub it's way through my joints
individually until I could feel myself involuntarily curling into a
foetal position, inch by inch until my knees reached my elbows and
the blankets were pulled not over a recognisable human form, but a
cruel and tiny, curled char of a human being's soul.
I could already smell Albert's Winstons burning away in the room as
he sat in the kitchen having his first coffee and vainly attempting
to focus on the words of his dog-eared copy of the English
translation of De Gedichten van Constantin Huygens. He had been
reading the same book for three weeks, always at the same time of
the morning, getting no further than the first dozen pages, reading,
then rereading passages until eventually the caffeine would kick in
and a few of the words began to focus. By then it was time to stand
and face the day.
As I had every morning since she'd left with her unbearable little
note, I contemplated a series of actions to ease the pain. I could
sit up and reach for whatever dregs of the evening's beer were left
over in the bottle on the coffee table beside the sofa. I could
continue lying on the sofa and practice squeezing my abdominal
muscles until I could distract the pain out of me in yoga like
fashion, or pretend to feel it leaving. I could try and imagine
myself in a nightclub somewhere, imagine the inhale and exhale, the
fingers along the saxophone, the people in front who were but blurs,
passengers on a distant imagination train stuck forever in the same
terminal. Any number of tricks employed to forget, none of which
would work, leaving me with the uncomfortable conclusion that whilst
lying forever on the sofa was perhaps the act of a man stricken with
inertia, it was not the act of forgetting, nor easing and thus,
inevitably, I would swing my feet off of the arm of the sofa and
place them on the floor simultaneously pushing myself to an upright
position.
You're up! Albert chirped with annoying alacrity. For a man who
himself greeting the onset of each new day like a new pain
discovered, Albert had been disgustingly enthusiastic ever since
we'd discovered Anastasia's letter. Not because he was happy to see
her go but that he believed, in his own misguided but
well-intentioned way that somehow, by exposing this new, nearly
criminal zeal for existence he could also influence me to embrace a
like-minded approach to the impending disasters of the day, as
though his sugar-coating misdirection of the pain I could not help
but embrace and wallow in like a man infatuated with his own disgust
would somehow similarly afflict me and remotely ease my burden.
I gave him high marks for the effort. It was not easy for Albert to
feign enthusiasm when his entire being, as long as I had known it
anyway, had been constructed for precisely the opposite, an
appalling aversion to cheerleading, a sterile blanket of immunity
and apathy that covered him and his flesh like a thin, ratty
overcoat. I admired him for the effort – the first time I could
recollect any such effort streaming out of him solely for the
benefit of another. As I scratched my head and focused my eyes on
first the coffee table, then the overflowing ashtray and the empty
bottles in front of me, I felt vaguely appreciative for such
efforts. But they were all for naught. The feigned enthusiasm merely
underscored the severity of my situation as though he had come with
a cheery countenance to my death bed to tell me what a beautiful day
it was and how many more beautiful days there would be to follow.
I cleared my throat severely several times until I worked up a
healthy wad of phlegm into my mouth, spitting it reluctantly into
the ashtray. The day gives birth. I stood finally with aches and
pains that one becomes aware of only in an ultra sensitised state of
low esteem and made my way to the kitchen table where Albert sat,
staring at me expectantly.
Gradually, I regretted to note, the scent of domesticity was ebbing
from what had become a sort of breakfast nook during Anastasia's
stay and in its place reappeared the gruesome dishevelment of two
miserable and sloppy men living in a miserable flat looking out over
a busy street of passer-by strangers and impatient traffic. The few
dishes we had were again piled unwashed from the residue of
Indonesian and Somalian late-night take away meals, bottles were
everywhere, ashes dumped in any convenient container, a general haze
of smoke, a hue of greyish ambivalence pervaded and outside, another
cloudy day to greet us.
It's Saturday, Albert exclaimed as though revealing I'd forgotten
having slept through Christmas Eve and a pile of presents waited for
me under a childhood tree adorned with tinsel and blinking lights.
No work, he added, as if I needed the reminder.
No work means nothing to do but wallow, I thought to myself as I
stared at his ridiculously happy moon face finishing off the last of
his coffee and lighting another cigarette. This Saturday means that
last Saturday I was waking up with cowbells in my ears and Anastasia
in my arms and it means that this Saturday I have woken to a
grudging acceptance of a miserable fate awaiting me. What possible
joy could be found in opening this unending bag of coal?
Wordlessly, I poured coffee while Albert watched me expectantly as
though I were a pregnant cat about to give birth to a miraculous
litter of kittens.
I sat down across from him and fumbled for a pack of Drum.
I was thinking we could go to the Saturday market, load up on
herring and salmon and mature Gouda cheese and make ourselves some
kind of feast for the afternoon, I'm starving, he recounted as I
continued staring at him as though this new Albert were something of
an alien who had taken over the previous Albert's soul casing. And,
he said gradually having elicited nary a sound of approval or
disgust from me, I have a surprise. Two surprises, actually.
I rolled a cigarette and tapped it against the kitchen table before
popping it between my lips and lighting. I inhaled deeply and almost
immediately induced a brief coughing spasm before drowning it out
with a quick swig of bitter black coffee.
Which surprise do you want to hear about first?
C'mon man, I chided, what the fuck are you talking about? Since when
do you have surprises?
He stood up from the kitchen table, grabbed a bag from the floor
just beneath the ladder leading up to his nook and produced two
tickets. Voila, he stated smugly. Two tickets for tonight's show at
Tivoli to see Walter Trout and The Radicals. He waved them under my
nose and then dropped them next to my cup of coffee while he leaned
over and pulled a fresh Grolsch from the crate and popped it open
for emphasis.
Damn. I wasn't beside myself but grudgingly, I let some of my
delusion leak out to be replaced by a vague enthusiasm. This kind of
blues guitar could be just the tonic. I glanced over at Albert who
was still watching me for a reaction. And oh yes, for the price of a
ticket, I let a slow smile escape me.
***
So what's the second surprise, I asked after enough coffee had
entered me to send me on a morning colonic and refreshed, returned
to the kitchen table to pop open my own Grolsch and pretend to feel
human again.
I'm in love.
For some reason, this sent me into a spasm of hysterics. Albert, in
love? With me kicked in the balls and groping for solid ground,
Albert, the man with few discernable emotions has suddenly decided
to find himself in love? What sort of sick irony was this at work?
With what, I asked reluctantly.
Not what, he corrected. Who.
Oh fuck off. What are you talking about?
Well, check your cynicism at the door my friend. This isn't some
ridiculous tale of meeting some fanatically self-referential Dutch
woman last night in a pub last night and falling in love, oh no,
this is much more beautiful than that. You see, I went to visit the
whores last night (this is what he called it, frankly enough,
visiting the whores…) and I came across an exceptional character
whose honesty, forget about whose beauty, simply knocked me loose
and sent all my change spilling out of my pockets.
I drank my beer faster shaking my head. Tell me you haven't fallen
in love with a whore, my god, what a cliché.
Not just any whore, Witold. An honest whore. An honest whore who
told me everything I ever wanted to know about the psychology of
whores without ever having taken my dick out my pants. A whore who
told me things I never realised not about herself, but myself.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I have too much ego, Witold. This is what the whore told me. She
wouldn't fuck me. She wanted me to go until I insisted I'd still pay
her even though she wouldn't fuck me. I wanted to hear why she
wouldn't fuck me.
How hard could that be to figure out? You stink of beer, you have no
respect, you can't get hard? What was it?
She told me that as a rule, she only fucked cripples and ugly men
and men with no egos. She said for a beautiful woman, her profession
would be disgusting if it were merely the money and the act itself.
She was looking for redemption and she found redemption only through
helping lost causes, like a saint, or a nurse. Her logic was that
any man who had too much ego sullied the goals she had in mind. She
wants to give comfort to those less fortunate not to give comfort to
horny, drunken men. Not to give a suck and fuck to a man too lazy to
find love on his own but only to those who could never find it on
their own and had to pay for it because no other woman but a whore,
would fuck them.
And this was enlightening?
Well, hardly at first. It pissed me off, quite frankly. But in the
middle of listening to this good faith whore who only fucks lost
causes, this patron saint of pussy, it suddenly dawned on me that
this was precisely the woman I've been looking for all these years,
if I've been looking at all. A woman who isn't out to take my money
and feign pleasure for a fee. A woman who doesn't even want to give
me the time of day because I am not needy enough. Do you get that?
Not needy enough? The audaciousness of such an attitude from a
whore. It fascinated me. So I paid for her for hours, just to
discuss things with her. Not just the aspect of being a whore, but
everything. It turns out she's a medieval history major at the
university in Delft. Working on her doctorate. Can you imagine that?
You've lost me somewhere Albert. Somewhere between not getting laid
and paying a whore to talk to her. And to pay her all night to talk
to her no less.
No, you're missing it entirely, Witold. It isn't anything about
that, it's about finding someone who is real. Someone who is both a
scholar and a saint.
You believed some line about you not being needy enough? That she
only takes money from gimps and pathetic cases, a whore with a
heart? Is that what you're telling me? Am I hearing correctly?
It was amazing of course, getting lost in this absurd conversation.
For awhile I completely forgot my own misery, let it slip away as
though reading the news about someone else's misfortune and
shrugging it off.
And I'll tell you something else, Witold. I'm going back again
tonight to her after the show. I want you to come with me. I want
you to meet her.
You're out of your fucking mind, Albert? Do you hear what you're
saying?
Sceptical little man with a broken heart, yes, I hear what I'm
saying. I've lived years waiting for this moment that I never knew
was expected of me. There is hope for me yet. I have found the
saintly, intellectual whore and I intend on finding out more.
*****












The weirdest thing to me is that this language, the lack of a common
one – fascinates me. Here, take the Dutch word gift which means
like, poison or venom, the opposite connotation of the word in
English. It's as though the word connotates some psychological
feeling in one language different from another. They use the same
word and mean something different, having a different feeling to the
same word I use in English to mean practically the opposite.
You've been to the coffee shop, I see.
Look, coffee shop too. Think about what image coffee shop elicits in
small town America and then think about the image of coffee shops in
Holland splashed with fresh coats of the yellow and green painted
colours of Jamaica, music buffeting the door way and the subtle
clouds of Dutch reared sativa like a dry ice mist as you enter. Same
words strung together altogether different meaning. It's difficult
to feel responsible when everything linguistic seems familiar and
yet the deception lies in these different meanings for the same
word. And that doesn't even count the fact that otherwise, the same
meanings have different words completely.
You only think it's confusing because most of your time in public is
spent drunk or getting drunk or starting to get drunk from simply
drinking. Your entire perception of reality is gnarled, like the
discs of a spine which need to be straightened into place.
The whore approached the table. She's celebrating her birthday and
just yesterday Albert had been celebrating his. They both find this
absurdly fascinating. But that connection wouldn't be put into gear
until later. At the moment, she made her way to the table with
determination, her left hand was curled into a ball and only moments
before she had been staring dreamingly at the stained photo wall
before she began to overhear us.
This conversation you're pretending to have is not realistic enough,
she accused, stopping just before our table. I don't believe either
of you are sincere. Why don't you talk about your feelings instead
of vacant eyed ideas? She held up Albert's glass to the light. What
the hell is this you're drinking? What could possible compel you to
prattle on like that about the fact that languages are different?
Are you so completely inebriated by facile observations that you can
no longer hear the difference? What are you doing here anyway?
We're musicians; Albert smiled, taking his glass back. These facile
observations are in fact a furthering of our communication on stage
between my bass and his saxophone. Our musical is predicated on
simple thought. We believe repetition in sound is the finest method
of building faux spirituality. Or perhaps barbaric spirituality.
None the less, we were merely rehearsing with words as our musical
notes. Imagine coming into this café and finding two dolphins in
lounge seats at this table chattering away in dolphin saying exactly
the same thing I was just telling Witold here about language. The
same story sounds more fascinating in a language you don't
understand. And that's precisely what we intend on portraying on
stage.
*****
Ova, she says much later in the evening where the three of us have
been taking turns trying to out drink ourselves. The feminine suffix
of generally every woman's surname in Czech is ova – which means
daughter of or belonging to, and is tacked on to the end of the
surname of the father.
What about it, Albert shrugged, puffing luxuriantly, splayed across
the back of the pullout sofa I slept on in the living room Doesn't
it allow you to be immediately identified as a female, branded, open
to attack from all sorts of perverts with a telephone book?
It's demeaning, she huffs, sipping a snifter of claret.
But you're not even Czech! Albert sits up suddenly knocking over an
empty beer bottle with his elbow and ashing on the floor
unintentionally, limbs akimbo.
She watches him with curiosity, the suddenness of Albert's
detangling from the sofa and coffee table paralysing her a moment
before regaining consciousness, not literally of course, but almost
stunned in a way. She had never witnessed one of Albert's face dives
into the coffee table high on absinthe. At least this time nothing
was broken.
No, I'm not Czech but I've been there before and when I found out
about this –ova- business, I turned right around and left.
If you're not Czech then what are you?
Slovakian, hahaha. She burst out laughing as though on the verge of
manic hysteria. I don't think Albert understood what the fuck she
was laughing hysterically for but it was infectious. Albert, from
the floor, laid his head back down and held his belly, his body
trembling with the effort to burst out laughing. And then, like some
sort of airborne virus, I too became infected, laughing, hey it's
ok, laughing what the fuck are we laughing about anyway?
*****
Albert and Marie became an item in a short few days. I shadowed them
like a sole paparazzo lost from the flock, every intimacy
recrucifying me with memories. I watched them with a masochistic yen
feeling closer to Anastasia for the pain. But eventually it was too
much. Consummation needs privacy, so I decided I was going to head
out of town, find a train going somewhere and get away, romanticise
the travel as a sedative.
They bid me good bye with their arms around each other's waists,
probably muttering don't hurry back to themselves as they shut the
door behind me.
Where was I going to go but of course Paris. Not the touristic Paris
but the no alternative Paris wherein I'd prowl the streets thinking
about every fifth corner that just around the block was a girl who
looked just like Anastasia, enough so that I'd gasp audibly. I know
this because I caught myself hearing it and thought what the hell
kind of weird thing it was to actually gasp at the thought of the
sight of her. If I had been any weaker I'd have needed a wheel chair
and someone to push it otherwise at that very corner I would be
stuck standing as the image walked past me and what I thought had
been Anastasia had been some other waggish beauty with an entirely
different history, a completely different perspective, unawareness
of my existence entirely, immune to me as she continued on the
sidewalk. And this was entirely how Anastasia had once been. Non
entities. Visions in an incomplete future. Parasitic souls searching
for other souls to suck dry.
And what does a drinker do in a city like Paris with all the statues
and parks and monuments and history beckoning like a lurid filmy
cartoon whore? Why he finds a place with a good view of people, has
a seat and orders a litre of wine, of course.
When you drink alone in an empty café on a weekday afternoon there
isn't anyone but the staff to socialise with. I wrote that down on a
piece of paper and congratulated myself for forgoing the second
litre when the first was empty, standing up and straightening out
and walking aimlessly around the streets breathing in as many as I
could take in without stereotyping. I ended up after a few trips on
the Metro at Père Lachaise, watching people walking around looking
at tombstones, an outdoor museum of the dead, the famous lumped with
the infamous, what a fascinating collection of ghouls who walked
hand in hand from section to section of the cemetery with maps in
their hands to help them identify locations of names they weren't
even sure they knew but figured that if they were on the map they
must be famous somewhere.
I caught myself fantasizing a life wherein this walk through this
cemetery was eventually going to take me back to Anastasia's flat,
ringing the bell and hearing a tinge of excitement in her voice as
she sang out and pushed the security buzzer to let me in.
And then I caught myself hours later in a jazz café off of a main
boulevard, a candlelit cave with smoke and music. And listening to
the band playing I sat back and poured a few more litres of wine
down my throat, gradually of course, and let music and
interpretations fill my head instead of realities which were thus
far unrealistic.
*****
Albert and Marie together were not believable. How many months had I
heard Albert disdaining the complication of emotions whilst
simultaneously composing Te Deums to legalised prostitution.
And this is the same Albert who loved nothing more than to spend an
afternoon on the terrace of café near the Oude Gracht sipping
Belgian beer out of snifters and giving me little monologues on the
history of prostitution in a vain effort to shrug out of the
overcoat of guilt he felt for allowing himself such pleasures.
Even in the Middle Ages everyone was pretty pragmatic about it, he
would shine, warming to the subject for the 100th time. I could
recite the speech from memory I thought to myself as he continued.
Of course, back then it was more encouraged because it kept all the
perverts busy who might otherwise have been preying on the chaste
women ripe with rape and defilement in their eyes. And then of
course our dear friends the Protestants came along and started
forcing people into crazy ideas like tolerating sex only within
marriage. The Protestants made it a sin and a crime in the 16th
century. Get it? The Protestants regulating Prostitution, likely
only because people were getting the two mixed up.
Albert wheezed into his beer, grinding out a cigarette with an
athletic vigour only a heavy smoker can muster. Anyway, as you can
see, Prostitutants; whores disclaiming sex. God, I hate religion. He
spits phlegm into a handkerchief he pulled out of his front pocket
brought along specifically with such a use in mind. You can't spit
on the street, can you now, he asked at my somewhat repulsed
expression. So never mind about what religion does to your dick,
think about all the spitting and pissing in the streets that went on
back then. Unpaved roads, probably. Cows and sheep and chickens all
over the place. Open fires on the road side, soot everywhere.
What the hell are you talking about I ask suddenly as if only then
realising he was talking about nothing at all just putting sentences
in senseless organisation. This was how we practiced our music
without ever using our instruments. We couldn't imagine music as a
skill because it was too much about non verbal communication, an on
stage charades with notes until one picked up the rhythm of the
other and there was a reasonable understanding of something, simply
scratching the surface with repetition until the pattern became
familiar enough to recognise.
*****
However difficult it was imagining those two as a couple, always on
the brink of menacing the other, they were in fact, spending a lot
of time together which meant that eventually we were becoming a
trio.
Oh, Marie can play, Albert assured me as we were riding bikes back
at night after a concert at Ekko, some sort of tango opera. Marie
can play the accordion and congas. She could be very useful.
He knew quite well what I would think about it considering Anastasia
was the real missing piece to the trio and without saying what we
both knew, that this was just a crass replacement, an ornament to
stick on the hood of a jalopy, and eventually, I succumbed to it
anyway because frankly, I was outnumbered.
*****
Eventually I was back to going out alone simply because of the
intensity of intimacy going on in the flat making me feel like I was
in some suburban family room instead of a shabby flat above a
takeaway on the Amsterdamsestraatweg. Then they would demure and
demand that we practice in the flat instead of going out. We brought
beers in from the corner market by the crate, each of us carrying
our own along with a few bottles of Jinever to tinge the evening
further.
These rehearsals were like séances each of us attempting to conjure
up something that simply wasn't going to make an appearance. Other
nights, for some magical reason it would begin to appear as if it
were coming together a time or two. We have to get used to her
playing and she has to get used to ours, Albert complained in
between sets, sweat pouring down from his face just before he
slugged down a half dozen throatfuls of beer from his bottle. We
pretended we were in clubs because we had no gigs. And we couldn't
have performed in such a state. Albert and I alone were barely
credible but the three of us together, off key, out of sync,
disjointed and confusing, were simply incomprehensible. We might
have been forcibly removed from stage.
So we stayed in the flat at night and practiced. After weeks, we
were back out in the night again going in different directions
because night after night had made us sick of each other. Albert
went to Marktzicht, sometimes with Marie in tow but sometimes Marie
would go back to her flat and reality and spend a night away simply
to clean herself of the soot that hung over all of us from so many
nights in that little flat with nothing but those instruments, beers
and smoke.
I would head for Fabriekzicht and sit quietly at a corner stool at
the bar watching the people all around me out of the corners of my
eyes.
*****
And then one day, it was all over before the first gig was even
staged. All that hard work for nothing. Albert was fed up. Too much
fucking touching too many reassurances required, he complained. I
was right all along. People are too fucked up to have relationships.
They should all just accept solitude and get on with creating
something meaningful out of their living, something more meaningful
than fucking reproduction and mass consumption.
They had one outburst and that was the end of it. She came back to
Marktzicht one night and threw a glass of beer in Albert's face. The
punters around us all clapped with amusement as she turned on a heel
and walked back out. Albert accepted the barman's beer-soaked towel
and wiped his face off with it, smiling. I'm glad that was your
beer, Jan.
*****
Now the sensation of being in Utrecht was wearing thin.
Both of us had nearly had the last member of the trio in their
clutches only to see them escape in the case of Anastasia and get
relegated in the case of Marie. Now we'd both had an experience that
involved all three of us and now there weren't any more experiments
to be conducted in this city. It was bad luck. We weren't getting
anywhere.
The place we should go, Albert suggested one night as we were
spending thirty minutes trying to unlock our bicycles in mutually
drunken stupors, is Prague. Prague is where we will find our trio,
our muse.
******
Making matters worse was that Albert was beginning to grow restless.
I like it here, he confided one afternoon when we were sitting out
in a terrace swallowing beer and enjoying a rare sun despite the
chill. But we aren't getting anywhere with the music and I'm getting
bored having the same conversations with the same people, playing
the same game of cards over and over again. I'm beginning to think
it's time to move on.
Move on? But why? I thought you liked it here. It's your heritage
after all, isn't it?
Well for one, I've been thinking a lot about Prague. The more I read
about it, the more I hear others talking about it, the more I've
begun to believe that it'd be a better place for us – it's a lot
cheaper for one – the beers are almost free, the culture is
bursting, the women are rumoured to be angelic not to mention horny
and well, it seems more conducive to jazz and just odd enough a
place to accept us.
But we've been accepted here…
Oh, in bits, yes. But not overwhelmingly so. Besides, let's face it,
there aren't that many jazz locales, not enough gigs, and frankly
not enough inspiration. We're pissing away scads of money every day
we remain here – we've got to find something cheaper, somewhat
western yet with a hint of mystery – and old communist stronghold,
an historical nugget, my god, do you know Kafka lived there for
example?
Well what would we do there? We don't speak the language, for
example and whilst that's not a problem here, it could be a big
hurdle there.
Hardly. I've read there's some 20,000 expats living there – we
should be able to straddle the border between expats and locals,
find jazz venues, drink cheap beer and meet racy women. What more
could be expected? I'm tired of whores, I'm tired of getting stoned
to oblivion in coffee shops, I'm tired of drinking these little
glasses of lager, tired of living above this hideous Somalian
takeaway, the weather sucks and most of all, here you are moping
around most waking hours, thinking about that girl. It's not just
for me, but for you as well. The change of venue will do you good.

CHAPTER FOUR - PRAGUE


**************
It was 18 hours by bus to Prague. Cramped seats, dishevelled sleep,
casual slugs from Albert's flask of Oude Ginever, the strong juniper
flavoured Dutch liquor from which gin is rumoured to have evolved,
fueled my insomnia along with the excitement of the destination
ahead of us, and instead of sleep, quietly humming to myself,
covered in a barely comprehensible issue of De Volkskrant purchased
at the origin of the journey in Amsterdam, a comically coloured
weekend edition of USA Today as well as the International Herald
Tribune, whose crossword Albert had completed at the journey's onset
in less than a half hour, I snuck peeks, through the dancing
moonlight of a German sky, at Jiri Weil's Life With A Star, whose
reading I'd timed for this trip, this story of Josef Roubicek, a
Jewish bank teller who is waiting to be called up for deportation to
Terezin whilst his fellow Jews were increasingly persecuted in a
Nazi Prague…
Neither of us had known much more than a communist Czechoslovakia in
the entirety of our collective existence and the idea of this
one-two punch, the Nazis followed up by the Russians, seemed like a
positively devastating set of circumstances.
And all this after the promise of the Treaty of St German in 1919,
Albert read, upon successful conclusion of the International Herald
Tribune crossword without breaking a sweat, from some notes he'd
scribbled in anticipation of our journey, some background fillers,
arcanea and trivia, solid facts and useful information he'd been
gleaning in his spare time for weeks once he'd known in his mind he
was ready to leave Utrecht.
You see, he began, warming up to his topic as we left some truck
stop somewhere between Belgium and Germany by late afternoon,
offloading a few travellers, uploading a few more whilst giving
passengers a chance to stuff themselves with cafeteria snacks and
junk food for the journey ahead, Czechoslovakia itself was the one
of the many offspring of the dismantling of the Austro-Hungarian
Empire after World War One and with that treaty, the return to the
romantic notion of the medieval Czech statehood
Now, how did they lose that statehood to begin with, he smirked, I'm
glad you asked. He pulled at his beard, staring out the window with
cosmogony in his eyes.
The Czechs, you see, were in a pretty good position if you go back
to the 14th century. Their King Charles IV, King of Bohemia and even
Holy Roman Emperor believe it or not, the chief of All-Time Czech
chiefs, had set it all up proper-like. Not only that but he's the
one who commissioned so many of the Gothic buildings that still
stand in Prague, also started up the University of Prague, etc.
You'll see half the city appears to have stuffed named after him.
Anyway, he led this golden age for the Czech Empire and diplomat
that he was, later on he established several treaties of his own, of
primary importance that with the Hapsburg family in Austria and
surprise surprise, surprise, the Arpads in Hungary which, you
guessed it, was the foundation of the very Austro-Hungarian Empire
that needed to be dismantled some 550 years or so later.
His daughter married Rudolf IV, the Habsburg King and they enter
into a contract of mutual inheritance between his family and the
Habsburgs wherein if one family became extinct, the other took over.
Another Rudolf eventually became the Czech King but this wasn't the
proper downfall - no, that came because of, yes you guessed it,
internal religious wars between the Catholics and Protestants. We'll
save Jan Hus and the Hussites for another day, Witold but suffice it
to say that from that point on, the Czechs were no longer their own,
they were the Germans' and it wasn't until that treaty that they
became so again, however short lived.
Hitler once bellowed, sometime in 1937 I think, Czechoslovakia would
be wiped off the map! Smashed with military power, he threatened.
England, France and Italy helped sign his power to do so in Munich a
month later and by the Spring of 1939 not only was so-called
Sudetenland under the Nazi thumb, but their troops had entered
Prague.
So that, as they say, was that, Albert moaned, rolling his back to
me, head against the window, long legs curled inward in a futile
effort to fit his frame into a comfortable position for sleep. Not
on a bus. I returned to Jiri Weil's book:
..Ruzena, I said, people are now drinking coffee, well, perhaps not
real coffee, but they are sitting somewhere warm, after a satisfying
lunch, and I am freezing, Ruzena, and I am hungry…
It was a thoroughly demoralising book about human cruelty and the
rooms of mild insanity that thrived within them. By the time I'd
finished, I'd temporarily forgotten my fixation with Soviet Prague
and resolved to spend one afternoon, like Josef Roubicek, sweeping
leaves in a Prague cemetery.
Meanwhile Albert slept from the start, I noted jealously. You have
long hours to stare out the window yet most of the journey was made
in darkness so even staring out the window gave you the feeling that
you were enduring rather than travelling, transported anonymously
through historical lands in a god damned bus stinking of the bad
breath of two dozen snoozing foreigners instead of riding horses
like Sugambrians and the Suebian Tribes raiding along the Rhine.
Morning slowly unveiled and with its unveiling, the countryside
danced naked.
But as we made our approach to what we assumed was Prague there was
a growing ill ease. Everywhere had a hue of grey, industrial soot,
abused and staggered.
Expecting Bohemia, anarchy, surrealism and intoxication, we were
disappointed at our dropping point,
a bleak Želivského bus station on the outskirts of town.
You think you know a place by reading about it, reading the
literature spawned from it, listening to the stories of other
travellers but ultimately, its like imagining what it would have
been like to sleep with the vintage version of Marilyn Monroe or
Ingrid Bergman – you might conjure up the face, fill in the blanks
of the intimate curves of the body, cobble together personality
traits from interviews and photographs but in the end, the
imagination is dulled by the inability to make it real.
During his few waking hours, Albert had continued his overview of
Czech literature and history on the bus ride out of Amsterdam
through Germany, filled me in on the Slavonic liturgy like the 10th
century legend of Ludmila and Wenceslas, the break of the monopoly
of lecturing in Latin in Prague by Karl Heinrich Seibt in the 18th
century, the Age of Reason with its secular focus that condemned the
Baroque, affected by mythopoeic patriotism, the birth of
neo-Classical literatures influenced by folklorism, the concept of
autonomous national culture, , the 19th century Czech Romantic poet,
Karel Hynek Mácha (whose poem Máj, he was even able to spout of few
lines in butchered Czech that he'd memorised), the effect of the
Ausgleich, which split the Empire into the dual Monarchy of
Austria-Hungary leaving Czech nationalism to the wayside, the Czech
submission to bourgeois Vienna, Hanuman, the poem by Svatopluk Cech
about civil war between clothed cosmopolitan and naked nationalist
natural apes, Masaryk and the Realists, anarchist utopianism - and
that's as far as I got in my reading so far, he shrugged
apologetically as the bus made a dinner stop in some German
self-service diner on the Autobahn.
This is Prague? Albert managed to moan, setting down his bag,
quickly lighting a long-awaited Winston and pulling the collar of
his coat up around his chin and grimacing. Prague's first nucleus
was founded in the latter part of the 9th century as a castle on a
hill commanding the right bank of the Vltava: this is known as
Vyšehrad (high castle) to differentiate from the castle which was
later erected on the opposite bank, the future Hradčany. Soon the
city became the seat of the Země koruny české Kings of Bohemia, some
of whom also later reigned as emperors of the Holy Roman Empire
I think so, I noted cautiously, sniffing the sulphuric air around me
and looking around for something familiar. Imagine if we were like,
dropped in here in like August 1968 when the troops of the USSR,
Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria were rolling in to douse the Prague
Spring. Imagine the euphoria of a greater democracy, economic
reforms and the abandonment of controls over mass media doused in a
matter of a few nights of occupation.
Jan Palach, Albert muttered, puffing greedily on the Winston and
wondering where the first pub might be located even though it was
barely seven in the morning. I've read this city is loaded with
non-stop bars, he explained in a typically distracted sidebar before
returning to his original thought. Less than five months later, he
continued, Jan Palach infamously performed an act of self immolation
in protest of the Soviet disbursement of reform. If you want to
imagine something, try imagining making the decision not only to
protest, but to kill yourself in protest and not only kill yourself
in protest but kill yourself by setting fire to yourself in protest.
That, he said, tossing the cigarette butt on the ground with
hundreds of others, and two historic acts of defenestration, are
what Prague symbolises to me before I've even had my first Czech
beer.
Did you know, Albert, that the average Czech drinks 11 beers a day?
Go on, that's not possible - that means some are drinking 20 some
beers a day whilst others, only a few…it would be a country of
drunkards, surely the ratio is skewed…
We carried on out of the depot and began the slow, uncertain walk
towards what we sensed was the city centre. It was clear from
looking up and down the Vinohodská that the east end was a trail of
the city trickling away into suburbs and the west direction appeared
to be the only other choice. Fortunately for us, unwittingly, it led
straight down, albeit after quite a pace, into the centre of town,
the Národní Muzeum
So we carried on, Albert lugging his bass with only a small duffel
bag over one shoulder and I, with the saxophone in its case, also
travelling lightly – clothes we would buy on the cheap – these were
third world prices, after all and despite effusions about history
and literature, like most others who had come, we were there for the
cheap lifestyle.
Ten minutes down the street and the strap on a bag snapped and fell
harshly into the slush of the sidewalk as a menacing dog held on a
leash by a disapproving old lady began barking at us. Fuck off,
Albert growled back at the dog as the old lady shouted something at
us incomprehensibly.
So this is the dream? Albert demanded after twenty minutes of
walking got us closer to what passed as the skyline. This fucking
dreary slum of a city?
Hang tight, I cautioned. First impressions are not always the right
impressions. Something tells me we've entered from the wrong side of
town. Have some faith, we're going to be dazzled, I guarantee it, I
preached boldly, trying to overcome my own trepidation with
something resembling optimism despite the bleak surroundings.
And sure enough, by half two, we'd quartered our belongings in a
quasi-posh hotel, showered off the dirt of the bus ride, found a
street-side stand to gobble incredibly greasy potato pancakes
lathered in sour cream and thick, crunchy sausages dipped in mustard
served on a cardboard square with a hunk of brown bread, had a flyer
for a promising youth hostel and were already in a famous watering
hole U Zlatého Tygra
‎ where great writers like Hrabal and Karel Hynek Mácha once drank.
*****
The religious split between Catholics and Protestants is followed
everywhere on an historical trail and Prague is no different. The
rationalist reaction against devotional Roman Catholic literature
was a constant spasm, like a dodgy sphincter, Albert explained as we
strode swiftly now, eager to begin. Sort of on par with the literary
rebellion against white males hogging all the good lit publicity for
themselves, he added. And look, in the 16th century, the
predominately and fevered Catholics of the Habsburgs took over,
pushing the Protestants aside, much like the Spanish king did to the
Protestants in the Netherlands. See the pattern of Europe during
these times? Religious intolerance.
But like the Dutch revolt, the bubble burst eventually when at the
Prague Castle, an assembly of Protestants tried two Imperial
governors, Wilhelm Slavata and Jaroslav somebody, for violating the
right of freedom of religion, found them both guilty, and threw them
out of the high castle windows, There you have your first Czech
defenestration.
Undeniably, the euphoria of historical partaking in Prague had long
since worn away within the last decade between the first intrepid
Western youth settlers to today's overindulged yobs, stag parties
and frat boy mentality sweating through pint after pint in one
trendy location after another. There were few remnants of Communist
Prague to sip on a leisurely afternoon, the aura had been vacuumed
and binned and its place cropped up a nihilistic subculture of
intellectual sewage who came to Prague much in the same way they
came to Amsterdam. Hedonism as an art form.
It was almost as though the old wooden theatre called the Bouda
(hut) had never been erected on Wenceslas Square – in fact it had
been demolished after a few plays were put on, mostly by Viennese
writers.
That isn't to say Prague didn't have its charms. And it would be
hypocritical to pretend that for determined drunkards like Albert
and I, latter day successors to the son of the esteemed Charles IV,
King Wenceslaus the Greatest 14th and 15th century drunkard, this
wasn't a sort of Beer Mecca we might have dreamt about once the idea
of alighting in Prague became apparent. Not solely because Czech
custom, being one of the greatest consumers, per capita of ale in
Europe, of imbibing but also because the beers were bigger and
cheaper.
They've been brewing beer here what, 1200 years? 8th century?
Bavarian hops are in the eyes of some, the worlds best. Whereas it
started off people just brewing on consuming on their own property,
by the 11th century they started pooling their resources, brewing
collectively. And here it is, dirt cheap and consumed en masse. We
will live the auld days of communism; smoky cafes, drinking lots of
and lots of cheap domestic beer.
And we knew there would also be more exotic yet powerful pit stops
along the beer super highway like plum brandy in the form of
Slivovice or the herb-laden Beckerovka and even absinthe.
But more importantly there were the Disney-like facades of what
remained a sort of fairyland architectural backdrop. There were the
working class pivnices in Zizkov where men traditionally supped on
gallons of beer in dingy yet church-like reverential quarters. There
was the cheap which made life a bearable bargain. There was Vaclav
Havel running the country instead of the literary resistance. There
was the underlying hum of informality when it came to proving
competencies. You didn't need a sparkling CV to do something, you
merely had to do it. And one can barely mention Prague without
mentioning the birds of Prague, whorish with deadbeat intellects yet
charming naivité, or, as the Czech poet Mácha described them pale as
an amaranth, withered in the spring
Albert didn't need much convincing, once we'd established quarters
in U Zlatého tygra which a guidebook had directed us to.
Albert judges every place he goes based upon the cost of a pint of
beer. Cheap beer in Albert's mind equals worthy society. Expensive
beer means they're all more than likely just a bunch of yuppies,
flesh merchants or worse, snobs. The upper classes lack poetry, he
was fond of repeating whenever we were accosted by ridiculous
prices. Life in sterility. So when we ordered our very first pints
in Prague the first thing he did was a little jitterbug on the way
to sitting at a table singing to himself, it's true, it's true! The
beer is cheaper than water!
Do you understand what we are creating by hopping now to this new
location, abandoning incomplete the experience first of New York and
then Utrecht? This is a poetics of surprise and variety giving us
the illusion of motion and expansion. Our acts are begun and never
completed. Our equilibrium is unstable because we are constructing
on several levels at once, each level with a different perspective.
And now we throw into the blender, the abundance of cheap beer, an
even deeper hedonism, a surreal blur of experiences. If this doesn't
emancipate our music, nothing will!
This is better than Mexico, he went on after having his first few
sips. I hate Mexican beer, he sneered, even though it's cheap like
this. This, this Pilsner Urquel from Bohemian hops, he sang, holding
the pint up in front of my face as though I wouldn't understand his
subject without visual aids, is the sign of times to come! And he
chugged down the remaining eleven gulps without breathing, placing
the glass softly on the table top and wiping his chin with his right
wrist.
Take it slow, lad – an old man who had been sitting dead for all we
knew, across from us, suddenly came to life, holding out a wrinkled,
age-spotted hand in caution. You lads are all the same. Your first
beers you drink like the first girl you fuck, quickly and without
comprehending what you are doing. If you are to be drinking many
beers in my city, eventually you will learn there is no hurry. There
is always another beer waiting somewhere just around the corner.
The old man introduced himself with an outstretched hand as Pavel
and when he got around after a few puffs on his pipe to asking us
what we were doing in Prague, we let it out quite casually that we
were here to start a jazz collective and slip into an irredeemable
vortex of hedonism in the process. No small feat and his eyes seemed
to instantaneously lose their tired sheen and first light
brilliantly with memory and then as the memory apparently slipped
gears from the pleasant to the unpleasant and back to the pleasant
again, he volunteered that his command of English, be patient, he
cautioned, this might become a long story, was owed to migration as
a boy of 14, just after the Communist's final coup for power.
Actually, only a few days after Jan Masaryk, he added as an aside,
the Minister for Foreign Affairs, was found under the window of the
apartment. They called it suicide but we all knew better. We were a
drop in a river of emigrants flowing out of Czechoslovakia,
disgusted and powerless, carried by the tide of that disgust and
powerlessness we went hiked through a thick forest for days and days
until finally arriving at the Austrian border.
He paused here, perhaps for dramatic effect or perhaps distracted by
a sudden outburst of laughter from three young men seated at a
corner table whose heated discussions were incomprehensible to our
ears but whose slurring demeanour and loud gesticulations
demonstrated them to be clearly in the hold of an early afternoon
bender.
During this pause I searched Pavel's eyes for perhaps a hint of
those of perhaps my own grandfather who had emigrated from Poland
just after the second world war. For the first time since we'd left
New York I was beginning to feel the stirrings of my own heritage,
even if this were a different country, a different background the
stories were similar. Homelands overtaken by ideologies, oppression
and force. Unlike my father, who had been born in America, had set
roots in America and had ultimately killed himself in that same
America, the same East River he'd grown up around, Pavel had
actually seen his homeland before and after the ravages, not once,
but twice and then again a third time, the euphoria of the
revolution in 1989, as he called it, by then an auld man of 55,
resigned to the fate dealt to him and thousands of others…
Well, I say we, he admitted, coughing lightly, but I hadn't really
had a say in the matter. My mother and father wouldn't have dreamt
of leaving me behind, not to mention the fear of what kind of
retribution I'd have been exposed to from the government once the
disappearance of my parents was discovered. So from the beginning, I
was told I was going and that was that.
The problem was, a girl of course. I was in love with a girl, Jitka
and we were inseparable and because of the goddamned Communists,
because my father worked for Lidove Noviny, the paper whose editor
was once Karel Capek and whose publication was banned by the
Communists in 1948, my father decided it was time to emigrate.
What that meant of course to me was separation from Jitka. Well not
just separation. Not like your summer camp romances. Jitka and I had
known each other since we were small children; she grew up in a flat
two blocks from our own. We spent all our time together growing up
and of course, as the human body and sexuality began to take shape
our friendship became one of experimentation.
What you must understand is that if it hadn't been for the
Communists, if it hadn't been for the decision of my mother and
father, fearful of persecution, to leave and to make me go with
them, I quite probably would have married Jitka and we would have
had a family and life history of our own. But this was not to be our
fate. Instead, our fate was sealed by events out of our control and
so, no matter how much I cried and pouted and stamped my feet and
sulked and screamed and threatened and cursed, my parents were
steadfast in their refusal to allow me to stay behind.
Of course, like any young couple in love faced with a forced
separation, this only made our will stronger and we decided on our
own to run away. We wouldn't have to flee in the back of a pickup
hiding under piles of straw, crossing under the eye of a well-bribed
and perhaps even sympathetic border guards. We didn't care about the
Communists, it was my parents we had to escape, not the Communists.
The Communists didn't care if we held hands or made love or got
married.
But our escape lasted less than 24 hours before we were discovered
and when I was forced back home my father said that was it, that was
too close a call, we were leaving that night - no more could the
effort be postponed.
There wasn't much I could do. My father and mother both begged and
whispered and cajoled all that day about our having to leave,
regardless of what I felt about Jitka, this was our only way of
survival. Jitka would still be here when we returned, they promised.
But of course, they never returned. I made efforts to write to Jitka
but of course do you think for one moment those letters ever reached
her? Or even if they had, that any letter she wrote in reply to
escaped émigrés living in a foreign land, flouting the failure of
Communism, did anyone really come to believe that such letters would
be delivered, regardless of how devoid of political content and how
utterly overflowing they were with descriptions of painful
unrequited love that had been forced from our clutches cruelly? Of
course not. Well, I can't be certain. Perhaps the censors rode
roughshod through my correspondences with a black marker line but I
never bothered with the political. Sure, I tried to express the
differences which would have been apolitical to the paranoid mind of
the state censor, but the rest of the letters, they were filled with
nothing but love, expressions of longing, elaborate detailing of
minutely sculptured suffering. The minute my parents had convinced
me I had no other options was the minute that I would never see
Jitka again.
From Austria, he continued slowly, taking a sip of his beer and
accepting a light to set the pipe afire anew from Albert whilst
sitting back slightly in his seat to see if we were sufficiently
captivated, we made our way to England, Slough precisely, where my
father got a job in the brickworks.
I suppose the initial excitement about escaping, the boyhood craving
for the exotic, allowed me to make the decision I wouldn't have made
otherwise. But once we'd made it out, past the border, a new reality
struck me. The reality that I would not allowed to go back, not
ever. The problem was of course, Jitka. My heart burned. Every
morning I woke up, both in Austria and then in England, my stomach
was compelled by bile, a sickness, a longing. Do either of you know
what it's like to have love torn from your clutches like that,
irretrievable?
We didn't need to look each other. And although it was presumably a
rhetorical question on the basis of building to a crescendo of
disappointment, disillusionment, we both shook our heads solemnly.
We needn't bother with our own silly little tales. Pavel and Jitka,
the love which had never been allowed to flourish, eclipsed anything
Albert or I might have imagined.
Pavel shook his head sadly, even to this day. He knocked out the
embers of his pipe and took another long swallow of beer. I noted
then, perhaps for the first time or perhaps for the second, that
Pavel had the kind of pinched, broken blood vessel-lined face that
you could instantly recognise in an alcoholic. A sort of club
membership symbolism, like a fencing scar for drunks.
Before I was forced to leave, Jitka and I had often discussed how we
would be able to reunite. It was out of the question of course, once
I with my mother and father had crossed into the West, to return to
Prague and thus it would be up to Jitka to escape on her own. We
both agreed it was too risky and she too young to attempt something
like an escape but agreed we would both wait for 4 years; 1952 when
we were both 18 and then she would cross into Austria, just as I had
and we would meet on Christmas Eve, 1952 in front of the Sudbahnhof.
For four long, desperate, delirious years I waited for that
Christmas even to arrive. In the interim of course we had no true
means of communication. About a year and a half after we'd gotten to
England, the Zelnices, a family who had lived in our building who
had also emigrated, were able to contact us from their new home in
Canada and with that contact came a small box of precious, precious
letters Jitka had handed to the Zelnices and begged for them to
forward on to me once they were settled.
They were letters from her to me, a year's worth which had been
edited and cut so that they would all fit into this tiny box that
the Zelnices smuggled out with them as a favour to both families.
I'm afraid rather than making the transition easier, I became even
more despondent. I was to have been practicing music, my parents
insisting of course that I was a protégé and yes, I admit, the
musical studies and hours upon hours of practice were indeed a
welcomed distraction. But once those letters arrived and I read them
through and through, over and over again, every single day since
they're arrival, the wait to 1952 was becoming unbearable.
I was dying in that home in Slough, I tell you. By the beginning of
1951 it was becoming too much for me and not even the music was a
significant distraction. I became a member of the London Schools
Symphony that year , as my dedication and need for distraction
through music probably turned me into a much more talented musician
than I'd have ever become on my own but none of it was enough.
He exhaled a long bluish stream of smoke and rubbed the side of his
face nostalgically. Somehow however, I did survive. And do you know
why? Jazz. Jazz, he repeated softly and slowly as if it were Jitka's
name, melodic and mysterious, pronounced by the 18 year old Pavel in
front of the Ostbahnhof station in Vienna on Christmas Eve 1952.
Well, perhaps I am over dramatising, he chuckled to himself with
amusement. Not simply jazz, any jazz. I was a classically trained
musician, not a jazz musician, you see. It wasn't until I first
heard of Oscar Peterson that I became fascinated. You see Oscar
Peterson had been classically trained, just like myself. He'd
studied under Paul de Marky, a Hungarian concert pianist.
The thing is, he also studied under a classically trained veteran of
the Harlem jazz scene and was rather enamoured with the swing music
of Benny Goodman which he heard via the radio. Rather than pursue
the concert pianist route, he chose jazz piano. I had never heard of
him although he'd spent several seeming fruitless years in Canada
exhausting the jazz scene there.
But in '49, Carnegie Hall, as part of a concert of Jazz at the
Philharmonic, Oscar Peterson made his debut in America as a jazz
pianist.
And in 1951, as I was pining away for Jitka and trying to
concentrate instead on studying music, the Oscar Peterson Trio was
formed with Ray Brown and Charlie Smith. Ah, and this trio, Pavel
cooed, was the beginning of my life being saved.
It wasn't until he paused further still and we were like children
sitting at the feet of our grandfather recounting war stories. Like
Oscar Peterson, Pavel also traded in his years of classical training
at the conservatorium, he explained, because he instantly loved,
upon hearing his first bootleg copies, Thelonius Monk and Oscar
Peterson and because the music distracted him from Jitka.
Jitka, of course, although she loved music, had no idea that . After
the Nazi occupation jazz flourished in Prague. Jazz was that
yearning for freedom we all craved. Not only did I play, but I read
and learned about the history as well. The history, for example, of
Bedrich "Fricek" Weiss, who was deported to the concentration camp
Terézin, where he led the Ghetto Swingers. In 1944 he, together with
his father, was transported to Auschwitz and directly to the gas
chamber.
And 1952 was a bad time for Czechoslovakia. I worried increasingly
for Jitka's safety. By then the communist show trials had begun and
even from England we could feel the fear bred during the trial of
Rudolf Slánský and thirteen other prominent Communist personalities
in November and December 1952. Whilst Jitka and I were busy planning
our reunion in Vienna, Slánský was executed, and many others were
sentenced to death or to forced labour in prison camps.
It was very difficult to obtain a passport in those days, he
explained wearily recollecting sadness. You had to apply for
official permission and to get official permission you had to have
an employer. Well, Jitka was able to convince her employer to deem
her a reliable person and she was able to obtain permission but due
to bureaucratic twists and turns I had no knowledge of, it was not
until February of 1953.
Of course, I was there, Christmas Eve in front of the Ostbahnhof
station in Wien. I waited there in the snow and the biting cold
expectantly without having had any confirmation that she would in
fact be arriving and yet belief, faith, made me wait.
I waited for several days out there, sleeping in the station to keep
warm before the idea began creeping into my head that perhaps I
should somehow get closer to the border so that she wouldn't have as
far to go. I could imagine millions of scenarios; being shot by
border guards, getting lost, starving in the forest, getting
frost-bite, dying, a million different things that could happen to
her that could have happened to her to prevent her from reaching our
mutually agreed destination at the appointed time.
It was insanity of course, to believe this could turn about into
reality. After several more days my money was running out and new
fears began to play in my head; evil fears of infidelity to the
dream. Who was to say, even though she'd written those letters,
those letters had been written two years before, who was to say that
in the interim she hadn't met someone else. Someone whom she
wouldn't have to escape her country to meet with. Someone for whom
she wouldn't have to pull up roots and futures to be with. Someone
perhaps better looking, more accommodating, anything. Anything
anything was possible! He slammed his hand on the table gently as
though living through every moment of those days in Wien again.
And what the hell did I know? I was 18. I had no real experience in
the world. Not from Slough. But I would not go back, not ever. I
decided in the end I would wait and in doing so, I auditioned for a
job in a Viennese bar to play piano, jazz piano. And whilst doing so
I waited and I waited and I waited.
The problem of course with a lack of communication was that I had no
idea of her situation back in Prague and she had no idea that I
would have waited for her. Without the confidence of knowing I would
be meeting her, the idea of simply getting out and leaving, of
disembarking in Vienna and never returning home again, without the
sanctity of knowing I was going to be there waiting for her, was too
much.
How do I know all this? He laughed bitterly. Because in fact, we
were finally reunited one day. 1990. She had married by 1955 and
started a family of her own. We weren't children after all, any more
and whatever dreams we had once had of reuniting, they were gone
forever. She could never again have the opportunity to escape Prague
and even if she did she would have no idea of how to find me. And so
that was that.
She married and raised a family of two children, became a
grandmother by 1980. And where was I? Still in Vienna.
Teaching kids, he confessed into his waning beer as the barman slid
through collecting empty glasses, taking orders and working the room
with a beer gathering mania that bordered on shamanism. I was
teaching kids who had no interest in learning about the piano but
were forced by their parents who saw classicism in them instead of
western consumerism. I didn't play in any more concert halls. I
played in pubs and bars around Austria and Germany when the need to
move forward fit but by and large, I stayed in Vienna until that one
day, that one day that was always a piece of my hypothetical life,
that one day…
It took me nearly a year to track her down now with a different
surname although the husband had died some time before. And of
course by the time I had tracked her down it was 1990, 38 years
later than expected, a lifetime's ocean between us.
I don't know which made me more sad. That we hadn't met at all in
1952 or that we were finally reunited in 1990 knowing it had already
passed us by.
But enough about these things, he suddenly waved away, digressing
into pity and sadness. What instruments do you play and what sort of
jazz is it you are conspiring?
I play the bass, Albert volunteered as the barman returned with
three more pints and ticked off three little slashes on our scrap
paper tally sheet which we watched with amazement. And Witold plays
the horn, neither of us very well, I might add.
Lacking astounding talent, Albert continued, we prefer a minimalist
approach to music. We don't play fancy 15 minute solos, we don't
spiral, we don't necessarily shake or groove or incarnate anything.
We try our best not to remind our audience that we struggle with
even the most rudimentary of beats and that neither of us could read
a music sheet any easier than we could read a newspaper written in
Sanskrit. In fact, to call us musicians might even be a stretch.
Conceptualists, perhaps. Like children who haven't yet conquered
speech.
Pavel stared at us for a few moments before taking a pipe out of his
coat pocket and relighting it, a shot of flame from a match struck
on the floor, audible puffs and the Pope-like smoke firing out of
the top of the bowl indicating he had finally digested Albert's
words in full. You will be very successful here then, I would
suppose, Pavel smiled slyly. This is precisely the kind of place
where you could pull something like that off.
We've already been a hit in Holland, I added unnecessarily, we are
in the middle of a series of six month tours from one country to the
next, enough time to ingest the cultural and regurgitate it in our
music, all patterned locally.
Unfortunately, most of my contemporaries are long passed, Pavel
mentioned, thinking aloud. But if you are interested, perhaps one
afternoon you could come by my apartment and we could organise a
little session of sorts. It sounds as though it could be very
intriguing indeed.
Prague was like that in so many ways. By that, I mean opportunities
seemed to fall from the sky. A little initiative, a distinct lack of
fear and a modicum of self confidence and there wasn't very much in
Prague that couldn't be accomplished given time.
For weeks, like in Utrecht, we stuttered in our efforts to find a
place to live. It wasn't our intention to become permanent residents
of the hotel we were quartered in, even if there was a sauna in the
building with masseurs and masseuses, professionally asexual but
imminently competent at squeezing out the aching of alcohol from
your bones and muscles every afternoon before beginning the next
binge.
And make no mistake, those several weeks of stuttering was primarily
owed to a child-like fascination with spending entire afternoons and
evenings glued to the same table as customers came in and out,
joining tables with complete strangers, becoming acquaintances, beer
partners, co-conspirators. When that wasn't enough there were the
Non Stop mini gambling establishments where, incredibly, you could
drink 24 hours a day if needed.
But it wasn
't only musicians or drunkards or ex-pat detritus that we were
dredging up in our sojourns and night prowling as we ambled or
stumbled variously from tram to side street, down dank beer cellar
stairwells, sat at tables with strangers, chain-smoked in a
dishevelled pattern of on again-off again conversations before
emerging hours later back up onto the suddenly chaotic streets, the
touristed pedestrianisation of human mish-mash with a gargle of
foreign tongues tingling in our ears.
One night we were in U Stare Pani killing time with cigarettes and
no particular goal in mind once the time had been killed other than
staring at the bar maid, a particularly engaging Moravian champagne
of a woman with flowing chestnut curls, dimpled cheeks, bright brown
eyes and a careless smile that whispered into every male heart it
was pointed at.
It was quite some time before the first act was coming on and we
weren
't even certain we would stay long enough to hear the initial chords
when a foursome of performance artists arrived - we could sense they
were performance artists, dressed as they were in a variety of
costume but carrying no musical instruments thus clearly not the
opening act.
They took a table near us and set about their little gag: Milos,
Jaroslav, Robert and Ivo, all of whom shared a spacious attic duplex
in Prague 6, Bubenec, each speaking in character of their chosen
character: Milos as T G Masaryk, the Czech ideologist and
politician, dressed in an overcoat with woolen collar open at the
neck covering a white shirt, wearing a distinctive pince-nez,
whitish goatee covering the area around his mouth and chin. (more on
Masaryk accomplishments, etc)
Jaroslav as 1984 winner of Nobel Prize for Literature and poet,
Jaroslav Seifert, native of Zizkov, our favourite neighbourhood
dressed in simple peasant clothes, flannel shirt and stained grey
sweater his large face surrounded by a mane of white hair, the only
one of the foursome without facial hair, so chosen Jaroslav later
confided because he had difficult, with his light complexion and
fair hair, at growing facial hair at all.
Robert as Jan Hus, populist reformer, most imposing of them all with
his hair in typical medieval tonsure, long, almost triangular white
beard (although this was a sticky point, Robert admitted that
although oft depicted as such, he wasn
't entirely certain Hus had a beard) dressed in a burlap robe and
wearing a paper hat with pictures of the devil on it, which is what
was alleged he was made to wear whilst imprisoned, speaking Bohemian
rather than Latin, which was translated for us sotto-voce along the
lines of Lord Jesus Christ, I am willing to bear most patiently and
humbly this dreadful, ignominious, and cruel death for Thy gospel
and for the preaching of Shy World.
And finally Ivo as Antonin Dvorak, flowing handlebar moustache
speckled with grey and white, waistcoat, bow tie, black overcoat and
holding of course, a baton.
It doesn
't make any sense, Albert protested, shaking his head and wagging
his finger simultaneously. Firstly, you're all of different eras and
save for Seifert over there, you'd all be dead so such a gathering
would be physically impossible.
Oh no, Seifert corrected, I
'd be quite dead as well.
Well, it
's artistic and tourist-oriented, Jan Hus explained. You see this is
primarily a method of promoting cultural awareness for both Czechs
and tourists alike, dressing up like this we promote Czech history
and culture. Of course, we aren't always IN character but on the
other hand, it is rather enjoyable to gauge peoples' reactions when
for example, after a long day of socialising with the hoi polloi,
working hard for our grant from the Czech Tourism Authority, we
enter a palace such as this eager to quench our collective thirst
and forget about the burdens which harangue our mutual characters.
Seifert, or I, rather, have nearly 30 volumes of collected poems,
born in Zizkov 1901, journalist until 1950 when I started being
respected and paid enough as a poet to earn a living on that alone.
Never toeing the party line. Want to hear my acceptance speech from
December 1984 in Stockholm? He cleared his throat, but we protested
we didn
't have enough time…Of course, he interrupted, by then I was very
old and very weak, not like now…
Of course, it
's not all about government grants or even eccentricity, Antonin
added patiently. In order to understand those with whom we want to
identify, we mimic them. I love Dvorzak's music and yet can't play
any musical instrument, have no talent or inclination towards
composing myself and of course, philosophically I would add that I
could never assimilate entirely, just as we are alive acting as dead
people who were once alive, Albert. It would create a split
personality, a duality between the person I am imitating and myself
and I would honestly struggle to delineate the difference between
myself and Dvorak.
Oh, c'mon! Masaryk laughed, slapping his palm on the table. No
amount of imagination, no costume, no nothing could ever create the
illusion that you were he or as talented or frankly, anything. Face
it, you're out of work, not composing. Instead of creating software
programmes, or sweeping crumbs off of a white linen table in a fancy
restaurant populated by politicians or cultural icons or German
tourists you have placed yourself in this vortex of character
imitation, not enough yourself so why not be someone else, correct?
Well for that matter, Dvorak confessed, I'm probably more entitled
to dress as Goofy or Donald Duck at the Euro Disney than I am a
famous composer but character imitation being what it is, guild-less
and free, well, there is no prerequisite and the entire plausibility
of it ultimately comes down to me. I can be prideful of being the
best Dvorak I can be but Goofy? Good or bad or indifferent, I would
be simply lost.
Masaryk scoffed and the conversation was becoming uncomfortably
heated as though all of the petty controversies polluting the daily
life of four grown men who lived together, spent most of their days
together dressed as other people, parading characters for tourists
and countrymen, was finally coming to a head, their frazzled ability
to maintain a semblance of civility between each other, as it would
appear a suddenly famous rock band whose fame had grown their egos
to unacceptable proportions and led to their ultimate split up, we
could sense the fabric unravelling.
We left them, Seifert warming up to his acceptance speech, Jan Hus
giving speeches about sacrifice, Dvorak waving his baton to an
imaginary orchestra and Masaryk rearranging the ashtray and
straightening the table cloth.
*****
During the course of our wanderings from neighbourhood to
neighbourhood exploring the inside of one pub after another, we
heard about a youth hostel which would be infinitely cheaper, filled
with personalities from all over the world and also had a bar on
site.
A few days later we were set up in our own double bunk room to
ourselves, still not cheaper than finding our own flat, but given
the circumstances, housing shortages, need to establish contacts,
figure out how willing we were to avoid the moving to the expat
ghetto outskirts of Prague, home of the panelaks, the cold,
heartless concrete buildings.
You can thank, in part, Swiss architect Le Corbusier, the precursor
to the simple and efficient Functionalism movement of the 1920s and
30s, for the existence of panelaks because in many ways, they are
modelled after that design, deformed over the years by Communism
into the symbolism of the alleged material equality and collectivist
style they were peddling. They'd always been a source of cheap
housing in a city notorious for its lack of living space, a simple
answer to the question of how to be quartered in thin walled,
cheaply built edifices glorifying communism. Ironically, they were
now the great way station of the ex-pat life for those living on the
thin of their wits who didn't mind long bus or tram rides back in
the middle of a cold, bleak night. Communism was dead and the
foreign hedonists and pseudo intellectuals were moving in.
We decided by straw poll, the two of us in an empty non-stop bar
near the banks of the Vlatava, that budgeting money would come
elsewhere. The only place we could imagine living was in Zizkov,
which had become our headquarters, our oasis from tourism and centre
of the most pubs per square metre of any other street in the city.
There was a collection of dead-enders who had fled their respective
countries to find not only hedonism but jobs in Prague. Jobs so they
could stay longer, drink more, pretend to be on the cusp of
something very important. In the early and mid 90s they liked to
regurgitate the notion created by foreign media that they would one
day constitute a movement of some kind, literary, artistic and
glorious, fancying themselves post-Communist Hemmingways and Joyces
and Steins.
I suppose it was to be expected in a way, Westerners flooding in,
held back and out precisely for their decadence, their unseemly
wealth, insatiable greed. The Americans held a disproportionate
majority of these temporary immigrants as though the word had been
disseminated solely through college radio, some 20,000 estimated at
one point with such heavy media coverage that you were almost
guaranteed back then, if you stayed a few months, to be interviewed
by someone for something but always with the same particular angle,
conjuring up Paris of the 20s and 30s.
It was only a joke if you took it seriously and by the time we'd
arrived, this crowd had eventually, like a shifting tide, begun to
trickle away, replaced by a newer corps even more intent on quantity
over substance. Yet you could still find these morons, lording over
some collective of misanthropes with misguided senses of cool, all
trying to out-hip each other as if it were they were doing the bump
in unison.
This was the point, in large part, of staying in Zizkov. There
weren't many places you could actually escape the disease of these
people gathering in what would otherwise be pristine pockets of
Pragueness, the local pivnices still holding on to their blue collar
perspectives and prices, unwilling or perhaps incapable of
surrendering to the mass collection plate of consumerist tourism,
the parasitic nature of all tourism in fact.
Jan Hus, a theologian and lector at the University, held his sermons
in Prague. From 1402 he summoned his followers to the Bethlehem
Chapel, speaking in Czech to enlarge as much as possible the
diffusion of his ideas about the reformation of the church. Having
become too dangerous for the political and religious establishment,
Hus was burned in Constance in 1415. Four years later Prague
experienced its first defenestration, when the people rebelled under
the command of the Prague priest Jan
Želivský and threw the city's counselors from the New Town Hall.
Hus's death had spurred the so-called Hussite revolt. In 1420
peasant rebels, led by the famous general Jan Žižka, along with
Hussite troops from Prague, defeated the Bohemian King Sigismund
(Zikmund, son of Charles IV), in the Battle of Vítkov Mountain.
In the following two centuries Prague strengthened its role as a
merchant city. Many noteworthy Gothic buildings were erected,
including the Vladislav Hall in the Hrad
čany.
Albert had no interest in working, even though he'd watched me spend
hours some afternoons with a Czech dictionary and the local
newspaper's want ads looking for housing and employment. He spent
entire mornings undercover, snoring through breakfast and sometimes
lunch even though I would be in the backyard outside the window of
our dorm room practicing the saxophone against the walls of the
building.
Boleslav The Cruel is notorious for the murder of his brother St.
Wenceslaus, the result of which brought him to the Czech (ducal)
throne. Wenceslaus was murdered during a feast, and precisely that
time Boleslav's son was born. He got a strange name Strachkvas, what
meant a dreadful feast. Being remorseful of what had happened,
Boleslav promised to devote his son to religion and educate him as a
clergyman, and kept his word.

One day we met Alois, a friend of a friend, outside a pub on
Executioner's Hill and apologies for the pub being shut, led us
downhill through finally street after street, a look at the flat,
actually a state subsidised flat rented by his girlfriend, Maria,
who was moving in with him to save money.
It's an old building across from a small, triangular park right on
the corner of a pronounced intersection of Kon
ěvova and Jana Želivského
and on a tram line. The elevator barely fits one so we walk the
three flights of stairs, left at the hallway to the end, in the
corner, Alois pushes open the door.
Immediately in front is a shower. To the right of the shower a three
foot corridor which opened into the main room and to the left, just
before the symbolic entranceway of the main room, the kitchenette.
Just to the left of the front wall separating the kitchenette from
the main room was a tinier corridor which led to a small cubby hole
of a room, the size of a closet, really.
Being state subsidised, it was cheap anyway so we weren't expecting
much. There was a mattress set against one wall and behind it a
small bookshelf whose half dozen Czech books Alois leaned down to
peruse before picking up a copy of Post Office by Bukowski. I love
Bukowski, he exclaimed in his very limited English as though
suddenly breaking through the hush of our inability to communicate
in much more than hand signals, Alois' English being raw and our
Czech being absolutely nil outside of learning the proper case
declinations for the word beer as need be.
Bukowski's great, man, I exclaim, suddenly buoyant, shocked at the
discovery, amazed they'd heard of him, not realising the reach of
Bukowski in the international subterranean world we were entering.
You like? He asked pointing around the room. Very good. We take. Our
English began to mimic his unconsciously as though by speaking in
broken English we might be better understood. Like people who talk
louder when speaking English to a non Anglophile as if the louder
the language is, the easier it is to understand, like talking to a
dog.
To celebrate, although we had no idea that was the purpose when
Alois led us from the apartment down the wide street to a pub table,
we were compelled to get inebriated. The speed and subtle fury with
which we drank through Clint Eastwood clenched teeth, the savagery
with which we attack first the beers and then, as Alois became
emboldened, calling the waiter over, going into a long monologue
punctuated with laughter which could only have been asides to more
serious business and then waiting expectantly as though the
announcement of his first child were eminent, demonstrated to us the
liquor and the glass – Becherovka, he taught patiently, draining it
in a quick gulp and urging us to do the same.
There weren't many in the restaurant yet and the few dwindlers
carried on their own languages in whispering corners. One shot after
another, chased with the beer which the waiter motored back and
forth with a speedy predictability. A man was picking his teeth with
his salad fork behind us. To the right, a pensioner couple were
talking in hushed tones about the dog's bowel movements and the
speakers placed around the room in corners near the ceiling, purred
some strange Bohemian folk music.
We were able to converse only by the limitations of the palm-sized
Czech-English dictionary Albert carried with him every where. But
what did it matter really? We weren't saying anything important.
Bonding like apes before language was invented, simply grunts and
hand signals. I faded in and out of these communications,
transported back again to Anastasia as though she were my homeland
and the faintest whiff of home cooking sent me tumbling backwards
down the stairs unable to break my fall.
We were in a café in Amsterdam. Café Hoppe in fact, the brown café I
had come to frequent because the book seller across the road was
particularly good and one of my favourite coffee shops was just
around the corner. We were in Amsterdam for the day on the premise
of scouting a few jazz clubs we would enquire about and perhaps line
up a gig or two. Albert had stayed home nursing the last stages of a
flu that had bedridden him for days.
We were sitting at an outside table as the scenery rolled past us
like intricate waves peopled and dazzling with the enormity of
anonymous humanity washing by. Anastasia had been recounting a
morsel of her past – a recent past of course, I knew nothing about
her, no story she told was older than a year as though she had only
existed at once, out of nowhere, just beginning that evening in
Paris when I'd first met her. But even still, it was a morsel, like
a crumb from one of the biscuits they served with the koffie
verkeert in the morning when just around the corner a baker was
doing a bustling business.
The air was ripe with rain. Only that morning we'd been caught in a
sudden downpour, soaked to the bone as we wandered through a museum
and later snacked on apple pancakes washed down with black coffee.
For hours it had cleared and now the clouds had returned, anxious to
begin another hymnal of precipitation.
She was explaining one of the gigs that had gone wrong in Milan. The
microphone had started feeding back inexplicably half way through
her morose recalibration of Wild Is the Wind and the microphone
started crackling briefly before the sound went out all together.
She carried on with the song whilst the crowd murmured its
distraction and Christ, she said, stirring her coffee absently, I
felt as though I had just been fucked in some back alley and left
lying in the road. What was I singing for? Nobody was paying
attention? Those fucking people in Milan were all like that –
transparent and shallow. Wonderful stylish clothes and ghouls
lurking on the inside. They couldn't wait to be distracted, time was
wasting. Finally I stopped singing and walked off. A few cat calls
followed. It was ok for them to ignore me but for me to ignore them,
it was an insult. The manager tried to placate me but I was having
none of it. I'll never play in this shit hole again I remember
screaming in French to the dumb Italian who was torn between the
now-partisan crowd and me, the diva singer who was packing up her
things to leave.
I aware of it, you know, she said coyly. I know how difficult I can
be to work with. I've got to have everything just right and if
there's so much as a hair out of place on the trumpeter, I simply
can't stay focused. But this club had already had a week of me and a
week of problems. Lighting was terrible, the air was damp and
smelled like an auld whore with all those fancy women in their
fashionable clothes. I felt like I was suffocating up there every
night. Do you know what that's like? Of course you don't. You and
Albert just play, you don't give a shit. The walls could fall down
around you like a poorly constructed theatre set and you probably
wouldn't even notice. Too damned drunk half the time, aren't you?
Well anyway, that was it for the club. I told my manager I was
through with Milan in general. I gave him an earful of the treachery
that city had displayed throughout its history. And all the while he
would pat my arm and my shoulder as though I were some mangy dog
shivering in the cold. I wanted to punch him or scratch his face,
leave him with a mark his jealous wife would ask about later that
evening when he came home and stripped his sweaty clothes off of his
garlic-laced body.
She lit another cigarette then, even though there was still the old
one burning and then she stood up. Even thinking about it now brings
back the anger. I really hated that place Witold. It's so much nicer
here. The people aren't such….barbarians.
She took off for the bathroom, powder her nose or stare at her
reflection in the mirror, whatever it was women did when they used
the bathroom as an escape route. And whilst she was gone I sat there
sipping my little glass of Amstel, looking over at the chair she had
just been sitting in. I started imagining a day when she would be
gone again and I would be seated like this on another sort of day
like this in this very same café remembering just this precise
moment with the empty chair but Anastasia still here, gone for only
a few moments rather than months, sure to return from the bathroom
composed again, apologising for worthless emotions and asking that
we both have a glass or two of whiskey because she loves so much the
peaty taste so and then we'd be taking off on another rollercoaster,
drinking and talking until we were both obliterated, obligated to
maintaining the high, bouncing from venue to venue as though the
motion were the only thing holding us up.
But Alois and Albert were still there at the table, fumbling through
conversation. We had our flat again. We had a home. Something for
Anastasia to come back to, if she ever decided to come back again.
As for Albert, the nights were hell on him in a way. We were both
out doing the business; mixing, drinking, floundering to grasp what
people were saying and doing, prodigious and copious amounts of beer
consuming led on by locals who only encouraged us with their own
habits. Albert took it more to heart, particularly the Absinthe.
The name of this comes from the Greek, Dragan patiently informed us
one night out after suddenly ordering a round of it with our beers.
Dragan was a Croat who had moved to the hostel to help with the
remodelling of the upper floors of the building the hostel was
located in with the idea that the upper floors would also be
converted into more dorms, more beds, more people. Imagine what
those fat old, pinch-faced communist legged ladies thought of this
as they snooped and scoffed, sniffed and snorted their displeasure
at backpacking hedonists taking over their building, shouting and
puking in the hallways on each floor at all hours, every night, year
after year. The chokehold of Communism receded only to be replaced
by an invasion of loud, boorish drunks who were there solely for the
purpose of drinking and sleeping and fucking.
Dragan had been a graduate student in Shakespeare studies in Zagreb
and for money, had come to Prague where a small cell of fellow
Croats had established this hostel leaving him to ponder sonnets and
plays whilst he hammered nails on dreary afternoons. He was
sophisticated in a dark, knowing manner. The world around him was
just history. He had seen it all in the making, he had loved and
hated it. The worst moments were always just around the corner and
no amount of brilliant literature or hours of classical music in
little beer gardens were going to make those memories go away. Only
the Absinthe.
Absinthe comes from from the word absinthion, which my understanding
is means undrinkable in Greek, he continued, lighting a Start
cigarette and gulping down a mouthful of Mestan . The French used to
use it in Algeria in the 1830s to combat malaria.
The shots were lined up in front of us as his preamble continued.
Thereafter, Parisians took to it, moving from one café to the next
during Green Hour, stinking of Absinthe. Wine became too expensive
because of vineyard destructions created by some sort of insect and
thus, the working class stopped drinking wine and moved on to
Absinthe, far cheaper industrial alcohol. Toulouse-Lautrec was
rumoured to have carried a hollow walking stick filled with a
draught of it, sometimes adding shit to it like bitters, or wine, or
champagne. But here we shall take it in a pure shot, without the
boorish traditional burning sugar and spoon – just shots for men,
straight down. He raised his thimble like glass of green liquid and
urged it down with Albert and I following in dreadful pursuit.
And that night was a hoax, a deep mystery we were buried under.
Nothing was recollectable. Dragan took us down all sorts of memory
lanes, the ugliest stretches he could remember until even his own
words, slurring and weighted, began to lose all meaning and
thereafter it was all a blank save for the horrible waking the
following afternoon, heads pounded, stomachs acidic and vomiting.
Thereafter, Albert was hooked on it as well, going off the rails
several nights claiming it held hallucinogenic properties. He would
sometimes sneak a few shots of it down quickly before practicing. My
bass is my lover, he would proclaim reluctantly yet proudly. I am a
bear and my bass is a bear and we live in this cave of a life,
blablabla. Imagine trying to get rehearsals in with the bear and the
bass bellowing in the cave of life. It wasn't easy.
Problem is, Albert is a big man and when he begins to lose
equilibrium he is like a tranquilised elephant, capable of crashing
down on his side at any moment, regardless of what he crashes down
upon. Two coffee tables broken in two that way. No matter how much
he drank, Absinthe was the only thing that made him visibly
intoxicated. I suppose I was right there along with him, I dunno,
it's hard to remember, ha.
Afternoons reading until the urge to crawl out and begin the night's
gradual unravelling until by early morning, leaning on his bass when
the beer grew too heavy, and plucking out notes from his
subconscious as the night sputtered to conclusion.
*****
And, as I'd hoped, the distraction of moving, the diversion of a new
language, new culture, different people all conspired to rid me of
the listlessness of emotion, which were catacombed and awaiting
unearthing. Anastasia was in the background for far too many
moments.
The flavour was bittersweet. She was there like a vague toothache
that at times would throb and remind you of the potential pain and
then in an instant gone again – there was too much stimuli around,
too much of the culture's aroma in every room, around every corner.
And thus, there could be times when all was forgotten. There could
be times when she could have passed through me and I'd not have
noticed, committed to forgetting as though the effort itself weren't
a reminder.
On Sundays the little literary gatherings at Radost where everyone
smugly played their roles as ex-pat geniuses. Albert and I sat in
the back, drinking overpriced bottles of Budvar, chain smoking,
wondering where all the talent went. Albert was affected by
Anastasia's disappearance almost as much as I was although his heart
wasn't as committed in the rubber room – her singing in Holland had
given us instant credibility and without her we were out there, a
desultory duet of double bass and tenor sax, insolubly brief,
irreconcilably flat and uninspired as though all the confidence we'd
gained initially had been punched out of us and there we were,
bloodied and crawling in the streets again waiting for another
break.
Anastasia had committed to memory all of what we had pandered to,
effortlessly. Our confidence was shipwrecked and this remote island
in an inaccessible city painted and stripped and painted again each
night.
Maybe we should try and find another singer, Albert suggested one
dreary afternoon where we'd spent unsociable hours pouring beers
down in search of inspiration. Instead, it rained as we sat beneath
a canopy and slurped, observant of the shapes passing before us.
What would be the point? We're not going to find another Anastasia.
I hated these sessions of pointless speculation that we so often
rounded to on afternoons like this.
Well, I hate to be crass, but you're not going to find another
Anastasia. You've got something weird and clichéd invested in it.
Infatuation, lost love, longing. I'm only yearning for another
singer. It's much easier. Perhaps if we did so you might find it
distracting.
I keep up my writing campaign knowing how well it had worked from
Utrecht. Afternoons after work, evading the plain clothes ticket
inspectors from tram to tram until I'd made it back to the
neighbourhood and slid easily into a chair at a boozy table at the
far end of a bar room where the smoke and smut of blue collar fates
had collected like a grime on the walls of buildings. The beer would
arrive, the piece of paper scored and I would open a Czech study
book and another, smaller notebook used to pen these waking thoughts
of affairs from far away.
They weren't devotional letters in word, the act of course bordered
on zealotry, but I was careful to couch perceived emotions in
innocuous terms as though I were writing to her about two people I
knew, lovers I'd seen and deciphered and calculated. These bar rooms
were safe. Populated by entirely male faces, there were no couples,
no hand holding, no stolen moments of intimacy. And if an auld man
would saunter over to my table with a beer in his hand curious about
my pecking away in the notebook with a variety of pens, I would add
the smudges of our stilted conversation between the lines which I
constructed to depict Prague as anything but what it was;
debaucherous, homely juxtapositions of insanity and mirage.
The only piece I didn't hold back on was the truth that it wasn't
only I who wanted her back but Albert as well. We were struggling
without her on stage. She knew of course, the legitimacy her vocals
lent to our performances. We almost seemed competent once and now we
were plucking away at an internal illness we couldn't define.
Colicky moments of inspiration were infrequent. We were lost. We
needed her singing to charm as though we were performing in front of
a crowd of cobras.
The truth was, we weren't doing too badly. We'd enlisted a variety
of musicians, one night to another, from a range of instruments, to
come and play with us, add depth and perspective, round out our
sound, however illegitimate it sounded in our ears.
But I didn't let on in these letters to her. It was a struggle. We
were eating crumbs when we weren't pillaging our brains with beer
and circular conversations in a language we didn't understand. Come
back to us and we can really stun this city. But Albert and I alone
were bicycle mimes, pedalling furiously and getting nowhere.
And then perhaps like someone rubbing a magic charm over and over
every day in the hopes something would come of it with these
letters, eventually there was a scrap.
A postcard from Budapest. I am here for a two week tour, was all she
wrote.
To me, a clear invitation and I didn't bother waiting to contemplate
it any further. I'd just gotten back from work and Albert was just
warming up to a mid afternoon rant about wars and diseases and
divine punishment and trying to drag me back around the corner for a
few quick pints before we headed out for the night. He was
pretending the postcard didn't exist on the one hand, careful not to
become too overanxious about the possibilities and twisting with
curiosity on the other hand, wondering if this might be the
beginning all over again.
I've no idea when the next train for Budapest is, I announced as I
quickly threw what few clean clothes I had into a sack and busied
myself with trying to calm down. In a matter of minutes I was packed
and heading out the door. Good luck, Albert mumbled, waving half
heartedly as though he didn't expect to see me back.
The excitement was short-lived. The last train had departed two
hours previous and the next one wasn't until 7:30 the next morning.
I returned to the flat, distraughtly calculating the postmark and a
two week tour – how long into had she been when she'd finally
decided to write? Where in Budapest would I find her with nary a
clue?
*****
It was no simple jaunt, a 7 hour train ride to Budapest that saw me,
heart gulping air almost entirely oblivious to the sanctity of
arriving in a new city. I didn't know how much time I had and I
didn't know where I was to begin looking for her. But it had to be
fairly simple. Jazz club gigs couldn't be too a plenty, I reasoned.
The only question was finding where they were and who was playing.
The problem is, Anastasia had an odd tendency to sing under
different names, depending on her mood. I knew this because she'd
mentioned it off handedly one afternoon when we were rowing along
the Oude Gracht. She was sat with her arms around her knees, looking
up at me as though from an imagined world. Do you know how many
different stage names I have, she asked. Of course not. I grunted
and shrugged, rowing. Ten? She rolled her eyes and tried to catch a
ray of sun that had suddenly showed itself from behind a cloud.
Three. Depending on my mood. Do you think that's how many moods I
have, three? I shrugged again. I've seen at least five I smirked.
But I'm expecting if it's only three, the categories are rather
broad.
They are. Up, down and indifferent.
And what are the names then? I started rowing faster, thinking we
were nearing the Ledig Erf and how much I wanted to grab an indoor
table before all the cyclists started showing up in their Lycra
biking outfits. I could almost taste the wheat beer on my lips and
see the chess board between us.
I'll tell you one, she demurred. See if you can figure out which
mood it represents. She closed her eyes for a moment, shaking her
head as though transforming herself, or preparing to transform
herself. I thought how odd it might be if she spontaneously
combusted and what I would do to put out the fire before the row
boat went up like an aquatic box of kindling and I'd be forced into
the canal, treading water and trying to gather up all her ashes.
Flavia Arbessi, she whispered, leaning forward as my body bent and
pulled with the motion of the oars. I stopped rowing and the boat
continued skimming along the surface with the momentum of my sweat.
We drifted like that for a few moments silent as the sun slid back
behind the stage above us and I attempted calculating the hidden
symbolisms.
Flavia. Well let's see, I debated. Isn't the origin of the name
Latin, for yellow? A blonde? More fun? Couldn't be a down name.
Yellow, blonde is too optimistic a colour isn't it? On the other
hand, perhaps you're trying to establish a sense of irony with that
stage name. Flavia in a depressive, suicidal mood…
She splashed water at me from the side of the boat. Why not
indifferent, she demanded. We were just coming around the bend and I
steered the boat towards the bank in preparation for unloading to
the Ledig Erf. Because indifference would be symbolised by some sort
of unisex name like Francis or Robin or something. I grabbed at the
mooring and stood up out of the boat, holding out my hand to pull
her up.
Well, I'd never use Francis or Robin for a stage name.
Why not? Robin, singing like a bird? Like little Edith Piaf?
Her nickname was the sparrow, not the robin.
Ok, I'll guess Flavia is for your up mood then.
I pulled her onto the bank and then yanked the boat up behind her.
So what's the answer? She smiled sweetly, watching an approaching
barge distractedly. I can't say really. I'll leave it for you to
figure out some afternoon when you're all by yourself and have
nothing better to think about…
I didn't have so much as guidebook to Budapest, knew nothing of the
language, had no map and no idea where to begin. Looks like it'll
have to be the auld standby, I amused myself in thinking. The
alcoholic's tour guide, hitting the locals and trying to milk as
much information as possible while watering my imagination with
Hungarian beer. I didn't even know what Hungarian beer tasted like.
So many bridges to cross.
By evening I'd accumulated a map and the names and address of five
different jazz clubs. I'd spent most of the late afternoon wandering
around through crowds; picking out faces and noting each one of them
was not her. Not surprising. What are the odds after all, to find a
familiar face among the hidden random in a city of Hapsburgan
bloodlines? For the purposes of distraction, I stepped into a wine
bar marked by the dilapidated characters gathered inside.
There was an auld and fat peasant woman standing behind a table
holding three different buckets of wine with ladles in them. I
merely pointed and she filled up a plastic cup. Around me pensioners
were smoking and playing cards. A few gypsy kids hung out by the
lone arcade game, begging cigarettes from stragglers and
entertaining themselves by imagining making millions in gun running.
I drank a watery white wine, smoking distractedly, ignoring the fact
I hadn't bothered trying to find a place to sleep that night. I
would put all my eggs in one basket. I would find Anastasia and stay
with her. As long as it took.
But there was no Anastasia. I found that out after enquiries at
three different jazz and blues clubs that ranged from seedy to
opulent. She played here last night, the bartender in the third club
informed me as he poured a German lager for me. Unbelievable voice.
Haunting. She was here for nearly two weeks but I'm afraid you've
missed her. Last night was the finale.
Of course the bartender had no idea where she was headed next. Do
you know her, he asked suspiciously. A groupie, I explained
half-heartedly, stung by the nearness of my miss for fuck's sake. If
I'd only caught yesterday afternoon's train here, the story would
have had a happy ending. Do you know where she was staying, I asked,
grasping at straws. He shrugged. No idea, mate. But she sure had a
lovely voice.
Back in the flat in Prague I returned empty-handed. Albert regarded
me from behind a book with the walls vibrating with a Brahms
concerto when I dragged myself home the following afternoon. What
did you expect, really, he surmised. What is this, some movie you're
writing the ending to? C'mon. It was rather ingenious of her, wasn't
it? Close enough to smell but too far away to touch. How bittersweet
for you.
What difference does it make? If she's out on gigs that means she's
already doing well enough. Do you really imagine she's going to come
rushing back here breathlessly urging us for the chance to play
together again as a trio?
What fucking difference indeed. Only my heart on a skewer. Heart
kebab. Care for a taste? Marinated in futility, lightly salted and
deep fried in false hope. We really should find another singer,
Albert ventured hopefully. And where would we find a singer
comparable to her? Are we just going to stumble upon someone as
though the streets are lined with them?
We played a gig of our own a week later. My heart wasn't in it. We'd
both had far too much to drink before we'd gone on stage and if we'd
been electric, they'd have pulled the plug. Instead, we were
ignored. What's worse than being ignored? Being forgotten? The
conversations in the crowd only grew louder, hoping to drown us out.

We really should learn a few standards, Albert remarked one evening
after we'd been drinking beer outside all afternoon listening to
Coltrane from a small garden next door to us.
Standards?! Why so by comparison everyone will know how bad we are?
I think we're best sticking with being too bizarre to decipher. It's
our only strength.
One afternoon we ran into Pavel again. We hadn't seen him since our
first afternoon in Prague and we greeted him as though we'd grown up
as neighbours and hadn't seen each other since the erection of the
Berlin wall. He was taken aback by our disproportionate enthusiasm.
We were out of ideas.
I told you we could get together for a recital one afternoon, didn't
I, he reminisced as we bought another beer for him. That's where all
our bated breath was blowing towards, in fact. Anything different.
He was game for it. I'll invite Frantisek and Jiri and yes, we'll
all assemble in my flat like the auld days. Perhaps some Chopin to
begin, then Thelonius then I dunno, perhaps some Stan Getz, what do
you think?
But the afternoon never materialised. As we were to find out later,
Jiri had died many years ago and Frantisek had immigrated to Paris a
decade before. They were still in his head as though they were
there, delusional. We came to an empty flat. No piano, no furniture.
Just old newspapers and a cat keeping him company. Have a seat, he
greeted enthusiastic and grateful, pushing the newspapers around as
thought they were antique furniture pieces. He made us some tea and
we sat quietly listening to the ticking of the clock. None of us
mentioned the lack of the piano that had been promised. Albert
stewed, still sweating from lugging the double bass all the way from
our flat. No old musician friends.
It's typical, he spat later on after we'd left and were back riding
the tram, Albert crowded the midsection of the tram with his double
bass, commuters staring at us angrily. It's typical that every
avenue we turn down, the despair gets wider. You think it's a
coincidence that Pavel as he described himself doesn't exist?
Ephemeral, like our music.
So we decided to forget gigs for awhile and concentrate on
rehearsing instead.
I hadn't left her behind in Paris and certainly not in Utrecht –
there was no escaping. Prague was the diversion. My liberation from
heartsickness drowned in nightly debauchery. No excuse, we know but
at least I had one. Albert's was more complex yet like a fur ball
waiting to be hacked out. For me, it was Anastasia, haunting based
on mere weeks of experience, yet haunting as bitterly and painfully
as though she had been there all my life.
from the Diaries of Witold Kazersamski, cahier 2, page 1732
...there was a lasting odour of doubt for months thereafter.
Albert's despondent drinking blossomed for days at a time before
wilting into empty political rhetoric and finally, asleep, snoring
on the sofa, the burnt-out tip of his Winston still clenched between
his index and middle finger. It rained for two weeks straight. A
cold, gusty rain that turned the middle of October into an aura of
bleak autumn dying into its winter that kept even the Shot Out Eye
out of walking distance for several days in a row. Then we'd hire
Jiri to take our pitcher and run up to the corner pub for a fill.
Jiri, the acne scarred teen who lived above the corner pub and often
hung out in front of the Europa Hotel trying to convince tourists
into guided literary tours of the old town. When we needed
something, we'd stick our heads out the window and yell down at the
corner. Since most of the time, Jiri was standing in front of the
Europa Hotel smoking, practicing German from a Prague Guide phrase
book Auf Deutsch.
We'd already read all the few paperbacks we had in the room twice.
The cassettes and CDs had been played raw. Albert had the stand up
bass and I had the horn and once in a while, when we'd had just the
right balance of beer, cigarettes and instant coffee we cooked using
only hot water from the tap, we'd improvise. There was a
high-headedness, a mystical dizziness, a general gnawing of boredom
like a bone ground within our teeth, a perpetual gloom punctuated by
the open window and the hail hitting against the whipping drapes. It
wasn't necessary to have been in Prague. A prison anywhere would
have suited just the same. We'd outspent our monthly allotment in
one week and were stuck for three more living on nubs. Well, it
wasn't as bad as scouring the rainy streets for cigarette butts to
roll. We had enough left over for several litres of beer, a kilo of
sausage, two cups of tepid instant coffee and 11 cigarettes apiece
each day for the rest of the month but nothing else. Albert was
still decompressing from 12 years of intense television vision and
the fact that the only source of entertainment in English he could
get was listening to BBC, which he hated and ranted and raved about
to no end some evenings, only served to raise the tensions, as
though the 11 cigarette per diem didn't create enough tension as it
was.
On Sundays we went to the neighbourhood theatre, a large
garage-sized building down a winding driveway from a main apartment
house with dirt floors and folding chairs run by a wide bodied and
hard boiled old fat lady who grabbed at our crowns without preamble
more than a grunt without looking up, nodding her head behind her in
the general direction of the film. There were never more than three
or four people inside. It felt like going to a state fair peep show,
creepy and oily. The movie was always terrible. It was as painful as
going to church and so in our roundabout way, we were paying our
dues along with religious humanity, suffering along with the rest of
them in solidarity but skipping masses and séances wherever they
arose.
In many ways, it was the lack of events that made it most difficult.
We lived like dogs, waiting for hours in anticipation of a ten
minute walk or another plateful of the same smoked sausage with the
same jar of horseradish. Then, just as abruptly the pleasure had
begun it ended and the wave of euphoria receded and it was still
raining and it was only two in the afternoon and there were only 3
cigarettes left. When it wasn't raining, I went out, no matter what
time it was. I walked from one end to the other, fast and fogged
with the anticipation of reaching the end, turning around and going
back, outrunning the trams, looking into the windows with the old
women staring back down at me. Fear of cultures clashing, the
monuments against the sledgehammers, the pain against the pain free,
the eyes of those old women seeing everything and knowing nothing
more than the human nature of their neighbourhood, while I didn't
even know the nature of myself, the unpredictable actions were
unnerving. There was no oasis and no abyss and the movement was
meant to keep one afloat in between the two.
*****
One night I was finally able to convince Miroslav to allow us to
open for a blues band scheduled to play the following Saturday
evening. Most of the regulars in the Shot Out Eye had heard us play
and were still confused enough about our talents that they hadn't
formed a solid opinion against us yet. The illusion was still
working and so long as Miroslav felt assured that our playing
wouldn't spawn a mass withdrawal from the pub, he was willing to let
us try and entertain.
It seemed quite natural to show up at 1:00 when he opened. Albert
dragged the bass onto the bus and we rode down as soon as we woke
up.
You know you're not due to play until 10:00 o'clock tonight, don't
you? he asked, still groggy, vaguely annoyed. Albert, with his arm
around the bass case as though it were a drunken comrade, pushed
past Miroslav and dragged the case behind him. I've been in that
fucking apartment for eleven days straight. I need a shot of
slivovice and a beer as soon as humanly possible.
While we drank beers at a leisurely yet steady pace, we played a
best out of five chess tournament against each other. As people
began filtering in, we used a clock and played one round after
another of speed chess too fast to think, our hands a blur, our
eyes, disinterestedly staring into thoughts only the robotic
movements of our hands could decipher. The music was already louder
than normal. It felt like a Mexican peyote séance with painted faces
and dancing in between beers, hopping from foot to foot on the way
to the bathrooms, trying not to spill the beer in the hand.
By six o'clock, we were already too impatient to play our normal
route of slow and off key, the anti-jazz we wanted to portray it as,
too hip and out of place to be anything but they might cautiously
consider genius while at the same time weighing the distinct
possibility that we had no idea what we were doing. The usual
lengthy preamble, the encyclopaedic history of a few nonsensical
stanzas thrown in around a chorus I'd lifted out of the obituaries
in the local paper, Dnes, had to be shortened considerably given the
language barrier. So we had to play more music and talk less,
leaving us with considerably fewer options at our disposal. There
were the three set pieces we'd learned in Holland. We knew snatches
of more traditional standards, snatches we would blend in all
together haphazardly, like a tribute to musical sound bytes without
any cohesion. But it was stunning. No one knew what we were saying,
not even ourselves. I sang Berlitz lines from six different phrase
books. I sang obscure American curses, commercial jingles, lines of
Edgar Allen Poe. Whatever came into my head with the same
organization of watching shit blow across a street on a windy day.
Lyrical flotsam. Musical jetsam. By the end of the set, it was clear
we'd fooled them. Miroslav slapped us on the back and handed us
another shot of slovovice.
I'm relieved my friends. You didn't spoil the party. You didn't
drive them away. We've witness a musical miracle! He laughed loudly
and bitterly but it was all a show. He liked the sound of it. A
musical miracle in the Shot Out Eye. The jazz vagabonds stuck in
Prague, unable to extract themselves from a hedonistic scrum, had
shown a modicum of worth for the first time in its two month
existence. We weren't malingerers and leeches after all, not another
pocket of touristic resistance to squelch. Now he wanted us to meet
some of his friends. Now he stopped by our table and joined us for a
beer, signalling to the waiter for another round. Now we'd never
fucking leave.
*****
A few weeks later I'd finally scored a job at the American Business
School teaching remedial English to a bunch of Serbian economics
majors. This school was the spawn of the new independence of the
Czech Republic, driven mad by the market to create English-speaking
managers and automaton employees for multinational companies hungry
for new human flesh in the new world be ushered in and I was
delighted to play a part in wrecking those fertile little minds of
future imperialists.
Once in awhile, I'd have a few beers in the Praha Holesovice train
station café next to the school with Marshall, the American who ran
the school's library, a patchwork collection of donated textbooks
from military bases, socialist non fiction, and a smattering of
Updike and detective novels that reflected his own taste's more than
the students'.
The train station café served a watery goulash and bottles of
Gambrinus and as Marshall would foment rebellions in his mind about
library autonomy, unrealistic funding aspirations and snatches of
his life as a Berkeley liberal who migrated once and for all out of
the slobbering jaws of American capitalism only to find himself
faced up against it again in even more sullied and contemptible
forms.
A series of budget crisis had left the school in tatters, desperate
for teachers of any walk and housed in a converted barn that reeked
of cabbage all day long. The caretaker and his wife living on the
ground floor and the stench of her gastrointestinal meals that made
the thought of food unbearable.
During breaks, I would go outside with the students and smoke
cigarettes. For the most part, I was ignored. I didn't like them
very much myself and I think they sensed that. There was something
about their aura of third world privilege that turned my stomach.
They'd come here to find their peasants to look down at. There were
plenty where they'd come from, but it must have gotten boring,
mistreating the same servants over and over again. These kinds of
people needed variety. Fresh faces to sneer at. But I was an
anomaly. I wasn't one of them and I didn't step in from the scenery.
I'd come from another planet. They didn't know what to make of it. I
sensed that if I'd cursed more, if I thrown Yankee slang around in
confusion parables about lust and capitalism, they might have warmed
up to me a little but it was impossible. Each class was an endurance
test. All I could think about was getting out, sneaking back on the
tram, and riding around town reading my copy of one of the library's
crappy novels for the third time. The other teachers were even worse
than the students. They ran the spectrum from podgy, collegial
buffoons from England to psycho dramatic liberal arts graduates from
large metropolitan areas in America. Everybody qualified to teach it
seemed.
What were my qualifications after all? A few forged documents
Xeroxed at a local printers? I could have been a mass murderer on
the lam for all they knew. It really didn't matter. As long as the
students didn't complain about you, you were fine and as long as you
let the students waste their time in whatever way they say fit while
giving them the illusion of teaching them something meaningful they
could manipulate in the future, they were satisfied.
But there were weird memories of Praha Holesovice station. Getting
there was a dream with the names of stations recited mechanically in
that sexy, Tolstoy cold female voice as we swept through on the
yellow B line towards Northeast Prague: K
řižíkova to Invalidovna to Palmovka and then Českomoravská, and at
every stop, the pre-recorded chime would go off and then she would
speak:
Unkonèit prosim, vystup a nastup, dvere se zaviraji., followed then
by Pristi stanice – and then whatever station was next. I would
tremble with delight at each word, wondering who this mysterious
woman was, if she was an embittered ex-Communist living in a panelak
flat somewhere in Zli
čín, chain smoking filter less Start cigarettes, staring out a rainy
window, deep in thought about the wonder years.
After a ten minute walk, across Vrbenského, ending through a strange
tunnel which ran underneath the tracks, I would arrive through the
portal of Praha Holesovice into a dank corridor which housed the
kiosk where the workman would gather in their ragged, blue jumpsuits
stained an invisible brown matching the colour of the soot around
them, chatting about the night before, some sipping acrid Turkish
coffee and some others getting an early start on bottles of
Gambrinus or Budvar, all smoking their filterless numbs fighting off
the cold, the memory of a day that had already filtered through
their subconscious in repetition.
I would order a coffee, find a metal chair and open up a small
notebook, scribbling incoherent lines, hunched over like a cripple,
pen in one hand, page held down with the other, small plastic cup of
coffee steaming in front of me, dreaming lucidly of Anastasia as
though she were sitting there across from me, wilting in the deep
stench of the train station, patiently waiting for my return.
*****
When we weren't mired in our own reckless hedonism, stretched out on
the floor or sofa too exhausted to move, when we weren't out
drinking ourselves numb and acting like animals, we were actually
able to find our pieces of peace during day long periods doing
nothing.
Of course even nothing ended up being something. We lacked the
creature comforts; the internet, cable television, books or female
companionship thus we lived in a time warp of sorts. You can well
imagine it shouldn't be difficult for the average person to get
through the day without drinking, but take away their sacred cable
television, take away the children to distract and annoy them, take
away hobbies to simultaneously dull and amuse their senses, take
away the youthful indulgences of going on the prowl in search of
mating partners and there really wasn't a hell of a lot left.
I tried in earnest to kill time more quickly. I don't even know why,
really. Why did I want to kill time? I was in the prime of my life
so to speak, expatriated and out in a thrilling city, musically
untalented but still able to cobble together enough gigs to maintain
a semblance of respectability, reasonably secure in a professorial
sort of sense at the American Business School, and most of all, most
daunting and destabilising – free. There is nothing worse than free
time and I had too much of it. Oh sure, some swear they can use more
of it, tons more of it – how can someone say they have too much free
time? But it was true. Because free time was wasted on me. Idle time
was just another excuse to wallow in misery. That's how it is when
you're all knotted up in unquenchable infatuation waiting for those
few moments in between all those hours and months when on an
off-hand chance you just might run into Anastasia again. That was
me.
Albert had no answer for me. He wasn't infatuated. He often appeared
to have no feelings at all. Fuck it and Who Cares, were his two pet
phrases. You could throw the world of worries on his shoulders and
he'd shrug it off and let it fall to the ground, fall to eternity.
He was no Sisyphus. You'd never catch him pushing a rock up a
mountain over and over again. He'd have never bothered. He'd light a
Winston and look around for the nearest beer.
Take his beers and Winstons away from him however and I daresay
you'd have a different person altogether.
Why would I want to go without smoking and drinking, he asked
incredulously when I brought the subject up one day of what he'd do
without them. Let's just say, I said. Let's just say they weren't
available, for whatever reason or other and you had to go without
for a few weeks. What would you do then?
He shrugged, exhaling a long thin bluish stream of smoke as Lester
Young's Sometimes I'm Happy, a live recording, was blasting in the
background to the dismay of the upstairs neighbour who occasionally
pounded his floor, our ceiling with disgruntled futility. I'd go
without drinking and smoking, he said simply. I mean after all, if
it isn't around, it isn't around. I'd find another diversion. Take
up knitting or play cards or go for a jog around the block.
Ha! You go for a jog? You'd collapse of a heart attack after the
first half block!
He shrugged again. Then my problem of no cigarettes and no beer
would be over.
*****
The other night I headed out to make my way for the Sunday evening
open mic night at a different gathering. Albert, usually in tow for
these sorts of outings, was again nursing an ailment of sorts, the
kind of ailment that was striking with more and more frequency over
the months. But neither of us worried. The burden of a
chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, slob, he shrugged. Fuck it.
This night it was a poetry reading but consisting primarily of local
Czechs, few if any of the dreaded expatriate blood spilling silly
lines about drunken nights swimming in the Vltava or some secret
romance with a Czech girl in short skirts of questionable legal age.
I had spent the afternoon reading an essay written by Havel for the
underground cultural journal Jednou nohu wherein he describes people
under the Communist regime as "nervous, anxious, irritated, or else
they are apathetic."
This was, he described, the stress of people living under the
constant threat of Communism, people dealing with absurdity and
nothingness brought on by totalitarianism.
And yet where was anyone different at any moment now? The foreigners
were still the relaxed crowd, those unharried by the thought of
waiting for someone to turn you in for an overheard conversation or
an act of sabotage – the Czechs were eased in some quarters but the
reality is that it is a hard yolk to shrug off, those years of
history that never really officially existed. And how did that go on
to explain my own certainly stressed-out face, my own preoccupation,
not with a totalitarian regime, far from it, but the regime in my
mind, the mind rotten without stories, simply filled with
obsessions, destroying any semblance of peace waiting for the next
postcard or another to pass without one.
That night before the reading I stopped off in a blue collar bar, a
run down place populated by Gypsies and Slovakians living in Prague
for the higher wages. They were all dirt and grunge, instruments of
trade. I knocked back a few beers and surveyed the scene around me:
filthy alcoholics miserable for another crown, drinking away the
little pay they'd earned, those dream destinations of saving for
home sewn into their livers like embroidered histories of failure.
It isn't at all unusual to find a foreigner furloughed out to Prague
who speaks barely any Czech. But I was unusual for the locale simply
because tourists didn't stray into pits like this, they remained the
denizen of forgotten dark and dirty souls squelching tiny peeps of
forgiveness as they drank away not their sorrows but the memories of
the sorrows which ironically only led back up the same path back to
the sorrows again. Some of them spoke broken English. Some of them
spoke enough to ask me to buy them a beer knowing as they would
immediately that I wasn't one of them. But I wanted to protest that
I was and couldn't. Yes, my soul was ragged, yes, my stomach filled
with drink, yes, misery and fatigue were also my companions but the
difference that no time or place could overcome was that I was there
by choice. It was no courage to summon up a few tales of infatuation
hitting sour notes. It meant nothing to piss and moan my salary was
barely enough to scratch out a living. I was there by choice, they
by a destiny far deeper than mine. After all, what the hell would I
be crying about, playing at the destitution of others, standing
there pretending my heart sick was equal to their life sick that I
had a chance and threw it out whilst they could only stand and
watch, chanceless all along.
I bought beers for everyone to make up for it. Guilt, yes. I destroy
myself for fun and what would these characters have given for half
the chance to throw away? I held court via broken conversations of
gibberish, half-English, half-Czech, with a little Dutch and German
tossed in like kindling to a bonfire.
Gradually I was drawn in by Antonín, a man with a wife and two kids
lost somewhere in the paradigm of time in a village called Vlkolinec
where his father's house had been burned down by Nazis in 1944. So
he said. Why would he lie? And what was he doing here? Labour. Hard
labour, dirty labour, honest labour for dishonest pay tossed away
into the coffers of parasitical bar owners preying on the suffering
of others. The pure misery of loneliness. I suppose that's what
attracted me to him, the filthy fingernails, unwashed hair,
haphazard, cheap and dirty clothing and above all the eyes of
misery, clouding from time to time with tears recounting how much he
missed his family, how much he missed his village, how much he hated
Prague, the slave chasing a dream he was drinking away even as he
spoke.
Why should I feel sorry? For example, you come here to make a
living, send the money home to the family and eventually, as the
dream goes, return home a wealthier man or at least wait it out
until another factory reopens. He hates the Czechs yet wanted his
own country. Thus the split between the Czechs and the Slovaks. The
haves and the have nots. And imagine the irony. Here is your freedom
without even the consideration of making it a revolutionary
struggle. Here you go, you Slovaks. Have your freedom and we'll own
the factories anyway, those that don't get closed down and you'll be
stuck, thumbing your way to Prague looking for work, crying in your
beer about the family you've lost never thinking for a moment that
by overcoming misery you might find your future.
More disgusting still, where was my misery to match his? Missing
parents who had the foresight at least to leave me a flat and enough
money for rent to allow me to piss away an existence and drop out of
school, lounge my afternoons in libraries pretending I wasn't
bourgeois, pretending my indifference was cool? What did I have to
compare, as I matched him beer for beer in a hallucinogenic blur? An
infatuation gone sour? What could I possibly offer by comparison as
an excuse to piss it all away? Nothing, that's what. Nothing and so
I drank all the faster and bought him a beer along each time to
match me. Goddamnit. One of us was going to be miserable and both of
us were going to be happy.
Several hours later we were standing in each other's arms singing
songs neither of us could remember, generations apart, lifetimes
away, just two disgusting drunks consoling each other on the way to
finding our own particular paths through the misery, real or
imagined, actual or artificial.
Somehow I struggled to leave and make it to the reading. I was
already quite late and when I entered, in the middle of a fragmented
paean to the banning of Romanies from bathing in the local reservoir
of a neighbouring village, everyone looked up from their false
reveries as I loudly requested another beer and slumped in the seat
in the back. Why was I even here? This cultural yen for discovering
the undiscoverable? Who were these poseurs anyway? Were they more
valid in another language? Weren't they all struggling with the same
tiny yarn they pulled and pulled at obsessively seeking answers they
had no questions for or else pretending they were pulling at the
same tiny yarn that like me, might make them feel as though they
were really suffering, really and truly suffering rather than
standing up there in front of a bunch of put-ons waiting to give
their little golf-claps of appreciation in the hopes that someone
would recognize their genius, their suffering their uniqueness.
When there was an interim, some snotty intellectual with a robust
opinion of himself meandered toward me in a non aggressive way and
asked me politely why I was there, reeking of beer and cigarettes
with nothing to say save for audible titters of ridicule dispensed
like cheap critiques in slanderous sidebars.
I'm here to hear your suffering chirping out of your orifices, I
mentioned casually, lighting another cigarette. This was followed by
an uncomfortable grimace on this fellow's face as though I had just
loudly farted. I mean really, I stated, standing up, gaining steam.
What is this charade; I demanded waving my arm in the direction of
everyone and unintentionally slapping him on the side of the head.
Then it all erupted. People jumped from their seats to squelch the
vagabond I imagined myself having morphed into when in reality they
all saw me for what I was: a drunk and cheap tourist taking
advantage, killing their excuses, giving them reason to pity or
disdain. A human goitre waiting to erupt. They all took turns
grabbing at me, shoving me roughly over and over again until I
reached the door and they shoved one last time, dumping me onto the
sidewalk.
******
Holešice Jazz festival, cahier 2, from the Diaries of Witold
Kazersamski October-November
Mikhail was a little droopy eyed as he stared at me over the chess
board. We were hunkered down in the smoke clouds inside U
Vystrelenyho oka, racing through .51 glasses of Mestan beer that
kept coming and coming interrupted only on occasion by a shot of
Absinthe. Mirek and Miroslav, from a popular and historic local rock
band, were trying to interrupt our already wobbly match by shouting
about Kafka and black humour over and over again in different
accents. Their band, I'd already been assured, had formed in 1985 in
defiance of the Communist regime when they played music that was
considered antisocial by the government, and for more than four
years they performed in the Czech underground. Mikhail, on the other
hand, was a jazz guitarist who worked in a music store part time and
played around town with a variety of people who adhered to him and
then fell away. Only the month before, we'd tried a quintet that
failed miserably. Mikhail was really the only studied musician of
the bunch. That's why he played around so often. Attracted hacks
left and right then shedding them like a winter cold.
Mikhail kept staring at the chess board as if the longer he stared
the longer the possibility would exist that the pieces might somehow
rearrange themselves to his advantage. His crew-cut drenched with
the sweat of nausea. His face was mangled by a vague vertigo. He was
no Zbynek Hrácek, for sure. I was up two pawns, a rook and a bishop.
Check mate, under the influence of less Mestan, would have probably
been less than three moves away. My brain was lost, veering off the
fox chase and running for the hills and I'd be lucky if mate was
discovered at all. Mikhail pushed his finger out at his pieces and
knocked the king over. Are you quitting? I demand about the
speculative king down resignation. He looks at me deeper with those
droopy eyes and shrugs. There is nothing for me here. he comments,
finishing off his glass and standing up. Why don't you come with me
to the Holešice Jazz festival? I am already playing and maybe there
will be time for you on an alternative stage somewhere... He raises
his eyebrows. somewhere where they won't notice you He whispers
clandestinely.
**********
A few days later Mikhail, Albert and I are sitting on cold benches
with a few bottles of beer at a suburban bus depot waiting for a
ride to Holešice. A few old ladies and a school teacher going home
for the weekend are waiting with us. The isolation is deafening. So
did you hear more about our performance? Albert grumbles, lighting a
no filter Start cigarette, coughing, red-faced and veins popping up
in his forehead and looks expectantly at Mikhail. Absolutely! he
nearly shouts, relieved to have a topic of good news to break the
soul dragging silence hanging over us. The old ladies and the school
teacher look over at us, accessing the level of our intoxication or
insanity. I've spoken with Jiri about it and he is convinced we can
promote you as some sort of expatriot avant garde jazz duo of
blinding importance. He likes your new name, Stalin's Mother, it
sounds more interesting than Deadbeat Conspiracy. He thinks it will
draw people at least through the duration of a beer, no matter how
horrible you sound. Mikhail says this matter-of-factly as though our
ineptitude is so understood that even we should be convinced of it.
Well, it's a relief that I didn't lug this fucking bass with me for
nothing Albert growled, giving the 6'5 tall bass carrier beside him
an unfriendly jostle. He'd pissed and moaned about it ever since he
woke up that morning. This is going to be one heavy fucking thing to
drag around with me all weekend. he began while the coffee was
brewing. Jesus christ, this thing is heavy! he exclaimed when we'd
gotten on to the street and were headed for the tram. Getting it
onto the train at rush hour brought even more frustrated fury, angry
stares, bitching and complaining and cursing in languages no one was
going to bother to try and understand. His only consolation was the
kiosk where he bought several large bottles of beer. What a
nightmare he sighed finally, gratefully gulping his first mouthful.
************
We got into Holešice as the sun was setting. The first matter of
order of course, was to stop at the first pub we found, instruments
and all, and kill some time with the locals. Mikhail, as this was
his village after all, knew a lot if not most of the people ambling
in for their typical Friday night-return-to-the-village-by-train
beers before heading back off to their respective homes for dinner.
And as they came in Mikhail would call them over, introducing us as
a puzzling jazz duo, a once in a lifetime chance to see jazz taken
to its furthest, perhaps strangest parameters. We were in short,
musical geniuses. People would nod appreciatively looking at us and
our instruments, looking us up and down as though they wanted to
touch us, these two masses of American flesh with the strange
talents. Touch us to see not if we were real but to see if some of
this magical aura of American might rub off on them for better or
worse. We were after all, far from the raucous path of Prague
overflowing like backed up toilets with expatriates and tourists. We
were in this village anyway, a novelty.
But we felt more like circus freaks inevitably. Come, look at the
foreigners who will play at our little weekend festival, perform for
us like circus bears. It was unnerving enough that Albert was making
noises about wanting to go to Mikhail's place, unload his gear and
wash up from the ride in. After an hour or two of this benevolent
but eccentric treatment Mikhail, perhaps sensing Albert's
uncharacteristic reluctance at drinking a seemingly incessant supply
of beer, finally stood and announced without further preamble that
the bill had been sorted and we would now go back to his house where
his wife Elena, who had spent the better part of the afternoon
brushing up on her English and preparing a vast array of rustic
specialty Czech cuisine, would regale our palates and offer
desultory conversation.
Upon arrival we met and greeted Elena, a stocky blonde of
German/Bohemian origin naturally curious to discover this suddenly
revealed spouse we'd never, in all our nights of chess and drinking
together, heard mention of previously. It was strange to observe
this vaguely domesticated version of Mikhail, who along the uphill
march to his house, with a profusely sweating and swearing Albert
slowing our march with his bass, had filled us in on the logistics
of his past, revealing one breathless layer after another: the
marriage and child at 20, the death of the child three years later
under circumstances Mikhail did well to steer clear of, the
marriage, hanging by a thread over remorse and unspoken accusations
until Mikhail had taken the decision, spurred on by the news of a
flat of a friend which had become available in Prague when the
friend had moved in with his girlfriend, to move to Prague and then
the subsequent job he'd found in the music shop, the stepping stone
he'd hoped for a career in Prague as either a studio musician or
leading a blues band. The subsequent years of drinking and playing
music whilst the distance between himself and Elena, supplemented by
once-monthly visits back home, narrowed and slowly their original
love regained a second, tougher skin and whilst they were not
considering living together on a full time basis, they had at least
repaired, strand by strand, the initial emotions that had once
brought them together in the first place.
It's not been an easy several years, Mikhail intoned philosophically
and reluctantly having let us in to his present by bringing us up to
speed on his past as we stood on the crest of the hill overlooking
the lights of the village below and smoking reflectively waiting as
Albert trudged upward to reach us, huffing and puffing and cursing
again our lack of transportation. But I think we've overcome the
most difficult period we have been presented with and perhaps in a
way these experiences have strengthened our relationship.
I looked at his face, imprecisely lit by the cherry of his
cigarette, wondering at how different or rather how much more depth
people have beneath their surfaces when they chose to let you peer
down into the caverns of their histories and reveal to you their
pasts, their losses and their fears. I got the impression he'd been
withholding this information from us all these months not because he
hadn't trusted us but because matters of this nature were simply not
relevant to our encounters and that now, having invited us there was
really no way around it. Sure, he could have just revealed he was
married and left it at that – perhaps we'd have wondered about the
lack of children or why they lived in two different places, but
these questions would have remained unanswered had he not taken the
opportunity to reveal them voluntarily because it is certain we
wouldn't have thought to ask about them ourselves.
For that matter, all the years Albert and I had known each other had
revealed very little about Albert's past. Perhaps I wasn't curious
enough and had I bothered trying to reach beyond the stoic present I
might have found within him as well, troubled pasts from roads
beyond which led him to his current personality. We all were in
fact, hiding from things or hiding things, information - not
intentionally mind you, but all for the same reasons. Unless there
was a reason to bring up pain it was better having left it unsaid in
the first place. Perhaps that's what friends are supposed to be for
rather than simply revelling in the present but even for myself, the
past wasn't an issue that came up in the mind very often unless
prompted. The present was all there was and the past had grown more
distant, more obscure, perhaps even less believable as time moved
on.
And now as we entered his home there was little we might have
discerned about the past from the present. Elena greeted us with a
kiss on each cheek, smiling radiantly with anticipation as our noses
were filled with the unfamiliar scents of domesticity coming home;
Tchaikovsky in the background, meats and dumplings bubbling in
spices filling the air around us. Mikhail took us to the room Albert
and I were to share, unspoken that this was once the room of the son
who had not made it, the empty bunk beds in the corner a morbid
reminder of what could have been. After showing off his collection
of electric guitars, a Gibson in three of the four corners of the
room and a framed Zappa poster from the Freak Out album with The
Mothers of Invention, he left us to ourselves awhile, to clean up
and unwind as he caught up with his wife and sorted out the
evening's plans.
This whole thing creeps me out, Albert confessed sotto voce as he
leaned his bass against the bare wall, his cigarette-choked breath
coming in gasps from the exertion and slowly found consolation on
the lower bunk, his long legs stretching out over the edge of the
bed. I didn't say anything. Grunting non committally as I took the
time to roll a cigarette and digest not just the journey and the
history revealed but allowing a certain sudden angst of performing
to swim over me.
First in that bar with all those people coming up to us like we were
either lepers or gods and then all this business about Mikhail's
wife, the dead kid and shit, look at this, I'm probably lying on his
bed. He didn't move from the mattress in any event, rubbing his eyes
and continued muttering, more to himself than to me.
It isn't such a big deal, I exhaled, looking for an ashtray before
realising I probably wouldn't find one in the room of a dead child.
I opened the window and ashed in the garden below. Besides, I'm
starving and that food smelled like heaven.
No, it's not a big deal, Witold. I'm just creeped out thinking about
all that family planning going awry and sleeping in the bunk of a
dead kid I never knew existed. Not to mention the triathlon of
hiking up the fucking hill to this house, carrying that bass and
trying to smoke all at the same time. Is it just me or does it feel
to you like this weekend is going to be a disaster? I mean this
festival is going to be packed with talented musicians and who are
we? Two vagabonds with no talent trying to assimilate? What if we're
booed off stage?
I laughed to myself. What's this emanating from the mouth of the
great stoic, a smidgeon of pre show jitters? A dash of apprehension?
Don't go getting all human and sticky with emotions on me, Albert.
It's just a festival. Everyone will be drunk. We've played in
festivals before. We won't be booed off stage. The ghost of
Mikhail's child is not going to come haunting you tonight. This is
supposed to be fun. We're going to meet a lot of people, play music,
listen to even better music, drink a lot of beer and just outside
that door there's a rustic Czech feast awaiting us. The way I see
it, we're doing just fine.
Albert grunted, hitting his head on the upper bunk as he moved to
sit up, cursing and rubbing his head whilst reflexively reaching for
his pack of Winstons, tapping out a cigarette and popping it between
his lips. He got up gingerly, like an auld man in a nursing home and
stood up finally to his full height, lighting his cigarette and
joining me by the window. Yeah, I know Witold, I know. It's no
crisis. Just a passing fancy. You know, like once in awhile I want
to know what it's like to feel the illusion of being human. He
laughed to himself which induced a brief coughing spasm, spat out a
back throat full of bile and put his pork pie hat back atop his
head. Then again, such visits are necessarily brief.
The meal was as good as advertised through the nostrils. By the time
we'd entered the kitchen Mikhail was already sipping a beer and
quickly poured out two large bottles into steins for us to join him.
Elena proudly informed us we were about to engage in a typical Czech
meal which, after months of a diet consisting primarily of fried
cheese with chips from the Shot Out Eye, crunchy street stand
sausages and brown bread hunks, had our mouths watering before we'd
even settled over our plates. First came the tangy meat broth
flavoured with garlic followed by a sirloin of beef, which she
explained as she filled our plates, was mixed with fried, cut
vegetables with the sirloin interlarded with bacon, seasoned with
pepper, a bay leaf, thyme, vinegar and a cranberry compote then
baked before adding the fresh cream. She served this with dumplings
and when it was all over, a combination of fresh berries and apple
tart with powdered sugar.
Whilst eating we discussed our rationales for being in the Czech
Republic in the first place, how we were finding life in Prague,
what life in New York City had been like, and a further wide array
of discourse on blues and literature wherein it was revealed by
Elena that in addition to working as a physiotherapist, she had also
been compiling a translation of Tom Waits lyrics into Czech which
she had yet to complete but had already found a publisher for.
Although you could sense the anticipation in the air it was not
until we were sated and sat around the table in the kitchen puffing
cigarettes and sipping her grandfather's plum brandy with our belts
loosened that she allowed herself the luxury of explaining her
desire to go through particularly difficult passages of Tom Waits
lyrics which she couldn't possibly fathom a translation for.
Nor could we for that matter. Some phrases were simply
untranslatable and even attempting to explain their meaning in
English was virtually unthinkable. Imagine explaining the following,
for example:
kick me up mt. baldy
throw me out in the fog
tear a hole in the jack pot
drive a stake through his heart
do a 100 on the grapevine
do a jump on the start
hang on st. christopher now don't let me go.
Oh sure, we could explain the context of St Christopher but even
that she herself knew. Those little eyeball kick phrases however
were simply too much. To counter, I suggested perhaps as difficult
as making sense of some of Dylan Thomas' more elusive phrasings. We
felt guilty of course. Perhaps this was the entirety of our worth,
an ability to transpose the incoherence of scattershot lyrics into a
more palatable English but we were incapable and the plum brandy
made it no easier.
All night long on the broken glass
livin in a medicine chest
mediteromanian hotel back
sprawled across a roll top desk
the monkey rode the blade on an
overhead fan
they paint the donkey blue if you pay
Eventually sensing the effort of milking information out of us was
more trouble than it was worth, through a secret sign of
understanding between even an estranged husband and wife, Mikhail
announced that as soon as we finished our glasses we would go out
for the evening to meet some of his friends, his fellow musicians, a
cacophony of locals in a village suddenly flush with musicians from
all over the region.
We trudged along the dark road back into town following Mikhail and
Elena blindly relying upon their expertise to guide us through what
we supposed would be yet another sullying night of debauchery. Since
the meal, Albert had become much more animated as though his brain
and mouth had taken that much longer to catch up with the arrival of
his body and the inspiration of the food had been the facilitator.
Or perhaps it was solely because the walk back to the village was
all downhill, it was hard to say but I wasn't going to interrupt it
with questions.
The owner of the pub we went to was a giant of a man who went by the
name of Karel. And I mean, literally a giant. He must have been
nearly seven feet tall and easily weighed well over 300 pounds. The
pub had been his grandfather's, passed to his father, neither of
whom stood over six feet five but Karel had continued to grow and
once he'd decided to continue the family line of pub ownership he
had the roof removed and the ceiling raised higher to facilitate
movement. Otherwise, he stammered in broken English, I'd keep
hitting my head and the bumps were growing too big. So as we entered
to the right following introductions where Karel had saved us a
long, thick wooden table and several of Mikhail's mates were already
supping their pilsners, we could appreciate the rationale behind the
height of the ceiling, the addition of the second fire place to add
extra heat to the room. In older times the ceilings were necessarily
lower both because people were generally shorter five or ten
generations before but also because the low ceilings allowed the
rooms to heat more quickly and easily as there was less space to
heat. Of course another advantage to the higher ceilings was that
the room would be less smoky and considering the fastidiousness with
which the patrons were chain smoking, this was a good thing indeed.
Pavel, Miroslav and Tomas were waiting along with their girlfriends
and/or wives who sat gamely in expectation of meeting the new
foreigners and to reunite with Mikhail and Elena who, she had
confessed on the way down to the village, rarely went out save for
the nights when Mikhail returned. Most of them spoke a smattering of
English and when required, Mikhail and Elena could be counted upon
to relay enquiries and comments from one language to another but in
any event, Albert and I spent large amounts of time just taking the
scene in of this homespun beer hall and the chaos of clattering beer
mugs, waiters running back and forth adding and subtracting glasses,
foreign laughter punctuated by loud expressions we couldn't decipher
and the smell of burning wood and burning tobacco hanging in the
air.
As the night wore on it was decided, perhaps silently or perhaps
simply in a language Albert and I didn't understand, that then women
were all going to head back to their respective homes whilst the men
were to continue on through the evening. We were going to a club
where several of the festival musicians would be gathering to meet
and greet and get drunk with abandon once loosed from the strangle
holds of feminine parameters on intoxication and moderation, to
obliviate and obscure, wind up and down, spin and crash.
By then my mind was already a flip switch remote control, reality
and illusion. The beers had gone on holiday to the head, the others,
I dunno, I didn't know, I was aware of the others but aware vaguely
so. There were too many carnival attractions in the imagination, too
much effort in walking without stumbling, taking in the darkness
without any adjustment of the eyes.
And before I knew it we were entering a club, the club; a heaving
scene of music and people planted and re-earthed from emerging
villages, Slovakian and Bohemian cities, heaven and earth, clouds
and graves and instead of settling in slowly taking in the madness,
instead of flowing along with the river of new entrants through the
front door, rather than holding hands with those that brought me
there so as not to end up a simple toast of human flotsam, I made a
beeline for a table filled with a mixture of young but grizzled men
and leggy, laughter flowing women who radiated, vibrated, seemed
itchy for my company.
Certainly this was an optical illusion, a trick of the mind, a
boring requiem of the drunken ego singing louder than the internal
accoustics would allow but this did not matter in this auto-focused
intoxication mind, not infused as it was with the hyperventilation
of the new, the congo of the coming festival banging in the mind,
the kaleidoscope of unfamiliar faces plump and waiting to be picked
from the bough.
Without realising, for that one out of body minute I had finally
allowed myself to become disentangled from my near constant
preoccupation with Anastasia and figuring perhaps that I owed
nothing, I was in essence, free to explore. After all, exploring, as
Albert often preached, meant exploring the native women as much as
the native beer and perhaps there was particular girl who'd caught
my eye but in any case, I'd broken off from the group, oblivious to
where they were headed and made myself comfortable at the lone empty
chair at this table where sat a particularly stunning brunette whose
eye I'd caught and predictably, filled with drink, enflamed by a
mixture of excitement and ego, swaying with anticipation, I
immediately and perhaps stupidly decided to try out the smattering
of Czech I'd learned to try and impress her.
Naturally she had no idea what I was talking about. I suppose I
didn't either. Something about the weather is fine, I'll have
another beer would you care to join me, or perhaps something that
sounded far more vulgar, I've no idea. Suffice it to say that
whatever it was, the manner in which I was addressing her
immediately set off alarms in the wolf of the pack who wasted no
time in leaping across the table, knocking beer mugs to the floor
and grabbing me around the throat, his momentum carrying us both to
the floor. I tried to bite at his arms, get a hold of a piece of
flesh to ward off the sudden attack and wriggling beneath him I
howled curses of incomprehension loudly in English, phrases I'd
never uttered myself before but had heard many times on the streets
of home.
I could feel my air being cut off regardless of how I struggled or
perhaps more so because I did as the grip this guy had around my
throat only tightened. And then just as suddenly as this attack had
begun, my attacker was pulled off of me from above and it wasn't
until he was fully in the air that his grip around my neck finally
loosened and was released and with incomprehension, I looked up to
see Karel holding the attacker up by the throat and the attacker
babbling apologies as Karel growled in Czech things I had no idea
of. I slowly stood to my feet with the assistance of Mikhail and
Albert whilst the attacker's apologies moved from Czech to Karel to
English to me.
I had no idea you were American, he effused. I thought you were some
drunk trying to break into our table, a threat to us….let me buy you
a beer, I'm sorry I attacked you, you must understand…
Relieved to no longer being choked, I shrugged, glancing out of the
corner of my eye to the girl who had for a second anyway, been the
object of my attention and slapped him lightly on the arm. No
problem, I said calmly, cracking my neck with a sudden movement of
my head from left to right. I'm sorry for interrupting the table
like that without an introduction.
I don't know what Karel had said to him but perhaps it was merely
the shock of being hoisted up by the neck by the village's infamous
giant that calmed him, in any event, we all settled back to our
tables and when I went back a half an hour or so later to buy my
round, my attacker arrived at my side whilst I stood waiting at the
bar, apologising again. He too was a musician, he confided. He would
also be playing at this festival and he didn't want me to get the
wrong idea, see. He'd thought I was just some leering drunk causing
trouble, you know how they are. I shrugged. You probably weren't too
far off the mark anyway, I confessed. In any event, let's drink to
the brotherhood of musicians. And the rest of the evening when our
paths crossed we'd make our mutual apologies, confer about music,
exchange favourite songs and generally attempt to remove whatever
lingering memories of ugliness.
The following morning, how we got back, I dunno. I recall going back
to Karel's pub before dawn and having a few more beers before
falling asleep with my head on the table and had no recollection
whatsoever of Mikhail and Albert having to drag me back up the hill
to the house, their laughter ringing in my dulled background ears at
the attack on the American musician, sure to make all the local
papers and fill the town with gossip for the weekend.
And I heard all about the following day as well after we'd had a
little coffee, showered and headed back into town to the concert
hall. Everyone who passed us seem to know me, waving a greeting or
making a joke much to my chagrin. So it goes in a small village
filled with strangers where news travels fast. Apparently nearly
every performing musician had been in that club last night and every
one of them had seen what had happened.
Nonetheless the excitement was tangible as we entered the empty hall
with our instruments joining those already on stage, those
performing in the early sets were already beginning to tune up,
performing sound checks, sipping beer or coffee randomly.
*****
I thought I'd surprise you, she said nonchalantly with a smirk of
expectation twisting at the corners of her mouth and what she was
wearing, I have no idea – I could only stare at her face with
incomprehension, a dream materialised before my eyes. I wasn't sure
how to introduce her to every body. My girlfriend, my muse, this
chick I know? Hey everybody, I said clearing my throat to get their
attention but also to attempt to mask the quaver in my
simultaneously uncertain yet tentatively ecstatic voice which had
appeared without warning like a stutter. This is Anastasia.
It's funny, you think about someone so often and with such yearning
that sometimes it's difficult to conjure up an image of them.
Sometimes it takes a moment of not thinking about them to remember
their face, for example, not confuse them with someone else. I can't
tell you how often and how longingly I'd thought about her because
it would be both boring and encyclopaedic to consider in full depth,
but unlike the first time she appeared unannounced in Utrecht, I
didn't accept this arrival without question and unflinchingly. There
were too many unanswered questions like what had happened to her in
Utrecht that went beyond that stupid letter, how she'd discovered
that I'd be in this little village on this weekend, how she'd gotten
here and most importantly, why she was here to begin with.
But these questions were to go unanswered for the moment. I can't
say that I didn't care, I most certainly did, but there are
questions you sometimes don't necessarily want to know the answers
to and rather than spoil the surprise of her appearance immediately
I preferred to push those questions to the back of my mind and
accept her as instinctively I'd know she wanted to me to accept her
– without question, without precondition and without asking for
more, which is precisely how I played it. As I carried on talking,
listening to her escapades in Torino, Budapest, Zagreb and Vienna,
to name a few, I tried to imagine a selfless self that could simply
wallow in her being here – to be grateful. She wanted to be treated
as a crowd would treat her - appreciative for her appearance,
mesmerised by her presence, tangled in her web. She preferred to be
loved rather than possessed, I could see that plainly for the first
time and the stage was the safest place from where to do it. I tried
to imagine that if this was going to be the only time I would see
her then I wanted it to be a memorable rather than a desperate or
confused experience. Notwithstanding the notion that the last thing
she'd come all this way and come to all this trouble for would be to
listen to a puny man with his puerile notions of possession react in
a vain and disdainful fashion instead of simple appreciation.
I wanted desperately to grab at her and caress her simultaneously
and yet I felt oddly torn between loyalty and fear in addition to
the uncertainty of how I should treat her, not just when we were
alone but more importantly, in this public venue. And these thoughts
allowed me to consider further the full implications of why she had
chosen to appear when she had, here in a public place, a safe place
where I wouldn't intend on mauling her with my selfish, hungry hands
or with my probing accusative questions.
I was swaying slightly both from the beer and excitement. I couldn't
very well leave the venue with our appearance due up in a short
matter of time. Yes, there would be time later on to discuss things
privately but for the moment, neither of us could go anywhere. So,
are you here to play with us again, then? I finally managed to ask
with a teasing smile but also with a hint of hope. I could tell
those around us had been absorbing the entire expressionless
encounter as though they'd known as much about us as Albert did and
yet as impossible as it was, they too sensed something magical about
this appearance. Not just the nature of surprise but the air of
expectation.
She didn't say anything for a moment. Why don't I have a glass of
wine while I consider she asked, snuggling unexpectedly into my arms
and smiling at the others. It's been a long journey, she explained.
And so we finally had a few private moments over drink, clearing a
table for ourselves in the front of the hall where others were
hungrily wolfing down goulash and dumplings, slurping their beers
and either revelling in the previous performance or talking
excitedly about the one to follow.
In answer to how I knew you were here, I'd actually intended on
surprising you in Prague. You see I'm on my way to a performance in
Krakow, or I was at any rate. I'd taken the train from Paris and
believe me, there wasn't going to be a lot of time to prepare but
once I was on the train I knew there was no way I could forgive
myself if I didn't stop in to see you. So I went to that place you
mention being in so much, figuring you were more likely to be there
than your own flat. I made a few enquiries about you two and it was
then I found out that you would be here at this festival. This
morning I woke up and decided to come, even though it's out of my
way and yes, even though it meant cancelling, much to the anger of
my manager, the show which was scheduled for this evening. I still
have to leave first thing for a show tomorrow night but I thought at
least we'd have a little time together. I've missed you terribly
Witold. I try to make it to Paris once a week just so I can go back
to my flat and find all your letters waiting there and as soon as I
pick them up, I get back on the train and go wherever the next
performance is scheduled for with those letters bundled up to keep
me comfort in all those days and nights in between. I've dreamt so
often of being with you again that I can hardly believe it myself.
Why else would I go to this much trouble to see you even knowing you
are going to be preoccupied with the festival to properly relax in
my arms and tell me more of all those wonderful things you write
about in your letters.
But…if you miss me as much as you say, and not that I'm doubting it,
Christ knows how often I've dreamt of hearing you tell me these
exact things, still I can't help but wonder, knowing as you do how
willing I would be to drop everything and follow you, why you don't
just allow me to follow you on tour? That way we could see each
other all the time. That way…
She held up her right hand, touching my wrist gently with her left.
I could tell you a lot of stories, Witold. I could make up excuses,
the strain it would put on me for my performances, the difficulty of
the logistics, and yes, I would like nothing better than to have you
at my beck and call, but the truth is, I'm far too afraid to allow
you to accompany me. Afraid of what? You name it. Afraid of getting
hurt, afraid of hurting you, afraid of disappointment, afraid of
losing this incredible feeling I have reading your letters, knowing
that every day you are somewhere out there thinking of me, dreaming
of me. Do you have any idea what a comfort that is to me?
But why would you prefer it to the actual thing?
Quite simply because nothing, no one, not at the moment anyway,
could live up to what you've created. I certainly am not the person
you've imagined me to be, god knows, no one is really. I don't want
to discourage such infatuation but there are truths about me that
might ruin your illusion of me and to be honest, I'd be crushed to
find out that your illusion of me has been shattered. You see, it's
your dream of me that allows me to consider that I might just be
worthy of such a dream. It's what has allowed me to enjoy myself all
these months in between. The knowledge that someone out there anyway
thinks of me in the way you write about me, in a way no one has ever
treated or considered me before. It isn't your heart or my heart I'm
afraid of breaking. It is that dream, yours and the one that yours
allows me to hold on to. A tiny sliver of sanity.
Not that I need a definitive answer to this today, or even this
month or any time in the near future but just to satisfy my
curiosity, do you ever envision a time when you would allow yourself
to reveal those things about yourself to me that you think would
destroy the purity of my thoughts of you or has this illusion
carried me as far as I'm ever going to be able to travel with it?
She smiled crookedly and took a sip of wine, her eyes never leaving
mine. Her hand touched mine again. I'm glad you don't ask that as a
definitive question because if it were, I'm afraid I would have to
tell you that it has carried you as far as it can but neither of us
really wants to believe it and so why should we concern ourselves
with killing it off before we've ever given it a chance? Are you in
that much of a hurry to get on with your life? You see, this
vagabond life you and your friend are living seems to fit so
perfectly with my own. Had you been a young man on a career path
looking for a wife to settle down and have kids with, had you been a
man who knew what he wanted and wanted to take it without waiting,
had you been childish and demanding, I'd have viewed you as an
entirely different entity. But you aren't. Time appears to be
something you have plenty of and I would only ask, perhaps beg of
you your patience, your recognition that you do in fact have plenty
of time to allow this relationship to find its appropriate path
rather than pushing it along ahead of schedule out of necessity or
impatience. Can we agree on that for both our sakes? Patience?
I felt myself swelling with emotion – love, infatuation, illusion
whatever it was I might choose to call it – I felt my hands
quivering with joy and requited expectation. This was no ending,
just a beginning. And yes, a strange beginning to be sure, but
clearly a beginning and a promise. I squeezed her tiny hand as hard
as I dared and kissed each knuckle on that hand gently, feeling that
joy in every one sending us both quivering. Of course we can agree
that, Anastasia. I will wait for you for as long as it takes.
Her face eased. She held her stare a moment longer before searching
out my pack of tobacco and began rolling herself a cigarette. In
that case, she said smiling, looking down and then looking back up
at me and smiling again, I'd be happy to sing with you two today.
*****
Oh shit, I wanted to get up and dance and sing and hug and kiss
every single face around me. I was losing my mind with rapture.
Without little further preamble, I took her by the hand and we
walked back out into the hall to the table Albert, Mikhail and the
rest were sitting watching the performance. We sat down in the space
created by several sliding over, hunched over the table in
conference with Albert and began discussing the songs we would
perform.
*****
A woman falls in love with her heart first, she told me, lighting a
cigarette and sliding back in her seat further. Her head catches up
with her heart eventually and then she is fully in love. But when
she falls out of love, the opposite happens. Her head tells her
first and then it is followed swiftly by the heart. One of women's
many mysterious and here I've deciphered it for you simply. The
truth is, and I know this is going to sound much worse than it
really is, yes, you are right. I have been sleeping with my manager.
I have been, more precisely, my manager's mistress. This manager
discovered me, deflowered me and promised me the moon if only I
would keep sleeping with him and you know, even though I didn't
really believe him, I slept with him anyway because I thought why
not take a chance? Sure, he'll probably forget any one of the
hundred promises he made along the way and I'd end up feeling used
and with nothing but a night or two of lousy sex but if I didn't
take the chance at least well…
In any case, he actually followed through with his promise. You know
I thought all along, foolishly, that because he was married with
children he was safe in a way. It would be a business sort of
relationship with feckless sex thrown in as part of the deal. But he
followed through with his promise not because he'd promised it but
because he'd fallen in love with me. And each week he'd have new
gigs for me, new excuses to follow me on the road, this is why, you
see, that I couldn't have you coming along on these tours with me –
if you had that'd have been the end of it all. I had to carry on the
illusion that he was the only one in my life, even if it made no
sense logically, simply because he wanted to believe it himself. And
then when I met you, this casual arrangement became more of an
entanglement. It was almost as though he could sense my heart was in
it even less than it had been before. I purposely wrote those
postcards with not enough time for you to catch up to me not because
I wanted to torture you but because I couldn't allow you to arrive
while I was still there, otherwise the gig would have been up. The
manager would have know what he suspected all along, that I was in
love with someone else and certainly in a fit of jealousy he would
have cancelled all the rest of the performances. But I still wanted
you to know I was thinking about you. I wanted you to know it
desperately and yet I knew I couldn't tell you the truth any more
than I could tell him the truth. Do you see what a position I was
trapped in? He was livid when I'd phoned him from Prague telling him
I'd had to get off the train because I was feeling so poorly and had
to take a day or two off. He was insane with jealousy. He wanted to
come down on the first train and accompany me the rest of the way.
But…if you were good enough to perform in all of these places with
him why couldn't you have just gotten these gigs without him?
Ask yourself, Witold, where I was before I met him. Singing night
after night after in the same beat up old places, getting older,
going nowhere. I can't kid myself. I'm not motivated just like that.
I have a lot of insecurities about my singing, no matter what people
tell me about my voice I can never bring myself to believe them. I
simply don't have the confidence to go out and seek my own venues
and not enough motivation to seek out a proper agent or a proper
manager. This one you see, just sort of fell into my lap so to
speak. I know it's a cliché to say that I only kept it from you
because I didn't want to hurt you but that in part, was the reason
why. Sure, it was selfish on my part as well but I hadn't planned on
meeting you, had I? And I certainly hadn't planned on falling in
love with you.
Falling in love with me, I hissed with incomprehension. You fall in
love with me to go on tour fucking someone else? Is that how people
fall in love these days?
Unfortunately, that's how adults fall in love when they're already
with someone else. Someone is always getting hurt in love, let's not
pretend that isn't the case. It's just a matter of who gets hurt
first.
Billie Holiday- Ill be seeing you.
**********************************************************************************
The dictum from Nietszche goes along the lines of what doe not kill
me makes me stronger. Under that premise, I've been growing stronger
every day of my life since, to date, nothing has killed me yet. On
the other hand, there have been plenty of moments when, placed in
situations which seemed to at least hint at death, no strength was
gained at all. The event would barely register, other than in the
cosmic realm of possible outcomes, where one death resulted
somewhere else for your having escaped.
There are times when the dying seems to be a gradually progressive
motion as you could, if the mood fit, allow yourself a prolonged
battle against the armies of depression. Those are the times when
being alone feels the same as being around people because the people
are just objects you cling to keep away the dread and panic and
little to nothing of what they are saying is registering with you.
When Albert finally demurred, when he'd had enough, grown ill from
the constant drinking and home sickness, it took him only a few
moments upon reaching that realization, to decide he was going back.
At first, I was secretly elated. After all, Albert had become like a
sore that wouldn't heal. When he wasn't complaining, he was sleeping
and when he wasn't sleeping, he was drinking, which, of course, led
to the bitching and then to the sleeping. Traveling with him had
become such an endeavor that we'd been rooted in Prague for several
months solely in order to avoid relocating, uprooting, starting all
over again. It was an easy city to lose track of time in. Hours
became weeks and as one month passed into the next, it felt as
though we'd only been awake for a few days at a time.
Without having made a conscious decision about it, I realized that
even as Albert was planning his departure, I knew there wasn't going
to be much left for me in Prague either. There wasn't going to be
much of a future for The Deadbeat Conspiracy with just my beer
coaster lyrics and lousy saxophone playing. So the question was,
failing the excuse of touring around Europe playing music, what the
hell was I going to be doing there?
Naturally, it was only a few days after Albert's departure that my
descent into the daily dying began in earnest. It was only a matter
of time before cash supplies dwindled and being stranded would be a
fact of life instead of a romantic luxery. You can worry about money
to no end when there is still a little left but once it begins
dwindling down to nothing, the concerns seem to evaporate. What
difference does it make? You are ready to surrender anyway. You are
ready to sit motionless for days eating nothing, getting no
visitors, falling asleep with every attempt to read or think.
Suppose… I spoke slowly, choosing my words with care, all of a
sudden, just like that, and I snapped my fingers, we quit drinking?
I can pour what's left of that little bottle down the drain and we
can start from there. We make a resolution and stick to it, see,
stay sober from now on, make a fresh start.
Albert stretched, stifling a yawn before placing the lip of the pint
to his lips.
We want to glorify war - the only cure for the world - militarism,
patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful
ideas which kill, and contempt for woman Albert noted briefly,
replacing the pint between his gnarled fingers with a cigarette.
Anastasia chimes, perhaps disgruntled: We want to demolish museums
and libraries, fight morality, feminism and all opportunist and
utilitarian cowardice.
I'm appalled: Why wont we sing of the great crowds agitated by work,
pleasure and revolt? Why wont we note the nocturnal vibrations of
our wanderlust through drinks and despair?
*****
Different city, different street.
Otherwise, with half of my mortal coil still sitting in a bus depot
in
Los Sueños begging spare change from vending machines, I'll applaud
from
the distance.
--From The Diaries of Witold Kazmersky, notebook four, page 113.

When you travel enough, spinning through a vortex of languages which
have secretly imbedded their meanings in your subconscious there are
times when you awake with a start in complete confusion about what
it is you're waking from.
I walk to a window overlooking a street viewed through a prism of
rain, half-lit by street lamps, watching a man attempting to walk
with a speedy nonchalance, newspaper folded over the top of his
head, one arm up to hold the newspaper in place, the other swinging
back and forth in desperate propulsion.
And only this morning I'd freed an insect of some sort from a
spider's web just under the bathroom sink wondering if I was doing
the humane thing by rescuing it from it's struggles and the slow,
inevitable end to its existence or if I'd only been interfering like
the spider's little nosey neighbour, jobbing up the mechanisms of
nature and the balance of the insect world.
I watched the man and his rain-spattered arm-swinging until he was
gradually swallowed back up into the night further down the street.
Three days I'd been in this hotel in Bratislava on the mere rumour
that Anastasia had been headed this way. And don't think for a
minute I didn't have to hear an earful from Albert – the old,
haven't you learned your lesson yet speech he brought out every time
one of her postcards arrived. She probably doesn't even send them
herself, he'd mused back in our grim and smoky flat on Husitská.
Certain enough, I wouldn't find her sitting in this hotel room with
its drab curtains and filthy carpets. Three days I'd been here
already and having left only once since I'd arrived, gathering the
strength to face her again, chain-smoking and staring at stains in
the wallpaper, I had a good idea the courage was never going to come
from anywhere other than a half dozen pints in the nearest pub. Then
again, that wouldn't have been courage, that'd have been drunken
bravado, devil-may-care, feigned nonchalance as in oh, fancy running
into you here in Bratislava, Anastasia.
There wasn't any postcard. I dutifully informed Albert. The
postcards came sporadically from different towns and cities, little
clues and cryptic messages. At first, I'd drop everything and go
looking for her, seized with some sudden and inexplicable
desperation of knowing that if it wasn't now, it wouldn't ever be
and how could I throw away that last chance without trying?
But the last chances never evolved, never materialised, never a
trace of her. And a lot of these places were villages small enough
that the locals would have immediately known who it was I was
looking for if she'd been looking to be found or had in fact, been
in the town at all to begin with. That's why Albert had embraced his
pet theory that it was all a colossal mind fuck of some kind, some
sort of sadistic little game wherein she'd conspired with others,
travellers perhaps who she knew would be going through that village
or town who could write out these little postcards on her behalf,
just to keep the game going.
It might have been a sound theory but for the fact that it was
certainly her handwriting on those postcards and how does one after
all, buy a tourist postcard from a village or town, write a message
on it and post it all without ever having been there in the first
place?
So that's the way it had gone for the last six month, getting these
postcards, rushing off to the village or town it came from, hanging
around in public places, markets, squares, pubs, news agents, all in
the vain hope of timing it just right. Maddening.
You get off the train with a burst of energy but after the first few
hours turn up nothing the energy wears away and slowly it sinks in
that the chance had been missed again. How could I be expected to
stay one step ahead of her, to know instinctively where she would
pop up next?
For a few weeks in August I thought I could detect a pattern in the
postcards, or perhaps it was merely delusional, still, you have to
try. Did the names of the villages and towns fall in alphabetical
order, some geographic sequence, some cleverly disguised yet still
breakable code? Not in any of the instances. One week it was
Hungary, another it was Austria. The following month Slovenia, the
month after that, Poland.
I was growing weary of the game, frustrated by my lack of success
and then, when I'd overheard a conversation between two Czech
Dixieland jazz musicians on the Charles Bridge talking about the
little French girl with the beautiful voice having stopped by only a
fortnight ago to sing with them, I crudely demanded to know what
they were talking about.
After their initial huff at my intrusion they reluctantly shared a
few tidbits with me about a little bird with a beautiful song in her
voice stopping in for a few songs on her way to the train station
for Bratislava.
Surely that couldn't have been a plant. I never hung around the
Charles Bridge any more, rarely even crossed it, so she'd not have
left this clue for me here. No, it was certainly unintentional,
coincidental, a twisting of fate I was meant to overhear and meant
to act on.
But the moment I got off the train in Bratislava had come the
crushing realisation that the situation was hopeless, the idea had
been hare-brained. What if it hadn't been her? Oh, certainly I
grilled those two musicians on the Charles Bridge but good for
details to try and ascertain with certainty that it was in fact her,
but they didn't know her name and who knew anyway, she might be
using any name by then.
Even if it had been her, what was she doing in Prague at all anyway?
And if she had been going to Bratislava in the first place, who's to
say she'd still be there at all. And if she was in Bratislava, where
in the hell was I going to find her?
Nowhere, I thought to myself sitting on the edge of the creaking bed
and rolling another cigarette. Not sat indoors never having left the
hotel room paralysed by inertia or fear or the knowing futility of
it all.
The only logical place to begin looking was music venues. Bars or
cafes or pubs which had live music where she might be singing or
might be looking for someone to sing with. A bird with a voice like
hers had to sing, after all, craved the public attention, yearned
for the recognition. It never should have been hard to begin with
yet in all the little music venues he'd stormed into expectantly in
all the little villages and towns, he had yet to overturn a single
worm beneath the rock, had yet, not only to find her but to even
find a trace of her having been there at all to begin with.
*************************************************************************************
SCENE AT THEIR MINOR CONCERT DESCRIBED BY AN INTERESTED ONLOOKER

No matter how thoughtful or inspired much of modern jazz is it is
increasingly difficult to find musicians who don't take themselves
too seriously – the weight of history and the pressures of constant
innovation fighting the fun at every step. One might do well to scan
the horizon: the humor apparent in European jazz – Han Bennink
tossing wooden kitchen spoons Misha Mengelberg's way – has been well
documented for some time, whether Americans have chosen to listen or
not. No such fussy stuff here then, either, as Deadbeat Conspiracy a
strange trio with meaty chops rips through a blistering set of
high-octane, solo-intensive jazz; the muscular breadth of ideas
matched only by the unadulterated exuberance of their execution.
Anastasia X and crew have little truck with the spate of style wars
currently fashionable, relying instead on the untested yet euphoric
water of spontaneity. Often with a capital S.
Thankfully, then, it is with a certain audaciousness that Deadbeat
Conspiracy comes out of the gate with fists raised, tempo topped
out, tone tightened to an off-kilter acidity, and tongue-tying
technical intricacies wrapped in the folds of every phrase. If not
the most subtle approach, it is rare to find an opener with as much
instant adrenaline delivery as Señor Dada, pistons pumping with
sheer verbose force. In a sense, it is reminiscent of a bebop
aesthetic in which flat-out fluency had to be proved first before
one was given credence on a bandstand; in another very real sense,
however, Anastasia X is a consummate enough singer to avoid the
pitfalls such bop-based flurries inspired: the mindless,
mile-a-minute mechanics of too many straight ahead discs on the
market today If Witold comes out of a lineage anchored by Coltrane's
emotional urgency, it is motivated by the revolutions of Jackie
McLean's harmonic keening and tempered by the florid eloquence of
Benny Carter's supple resolutions. On the song Señor Dada,, Carpal
Tunnel Syndrome, and most of all on Mussolini – the most startling
virtuosic displays of the day – Witold is tethered around a pole of
high tension, clearly inspired by his material and musical
companions, playing the game of statement and substitution with such
alacrity that the smile is nearly visible spreading across his
breathless mouth.

Witold also acquits himself nicely, if less joyfully, on the slower
numbers that add pacing to the show. Flanked by Anastasia X and
Albert aan de Baas, Witold is able to surrender to a variety of
moods, adding a much needed respite from the all-out assault
launched during the disc's most inspired moments.
Deadbeat Conspiracy of sympathetic soldiers is no exception to the
club, offering challenging compositions attacked with a
straightforward ingenuity, openness and outright joy. If not the
most starling release of the year, it ranks among the most
enjoyable, proof positive that stern-faced, bulky jazz music can
snap to smiling, svelte shape in the hands of the right
practitioner.

Wireless Mothers of Jesus
In other words, they only listen if
they've finished talking,
authoritative claptraps, saliva lips,
causing droopy eyes,
changing channels make believe
if they're
outside all day in cafes, sitting
sculpted into leather beneath
the sun, the old Madonnas
on cellphones, cellulite sweating
into the vast universe of important rules
they ignore in all their chatter.
and see something else to pinch himself awake again.
Anastasia was sick of road tours. I've been on the road for six
months and only just arrived in Prague a few weeks ago. I just want
to settle down for a few months, collect my wits, find some sense
From the Diaries of Witold Kazersamski, cahier 1.3
The truth of the matter is, since we invested so little time in
practicing, not wanting to ruin the momentum, the blossoming fraud
of our performances, both on the stage, on the Charles Bridge, in
alleyways, hiding from the local police, we had plenty of time to
polish our drinking skills. In many ways, it was a test of wills for
both of us. What joy we took in watching the waiters scurrying
around with handfuls of beer glasses, four handles of four glasses
in each hand like two fists of beer punching out towards us whenever
our glasses began to take on the image of running low. And certainly
we didn't care at all as he marked more little slashes across our
scorecard that served as an indication of our bill. Everyone got
these little slips of paper and you could always tell, by a glance
at the slip of paper of another, just how far along they were in
their journey to intoxication by noting how many little slashes they
had scratched onto their slips of paper.
Everywhere we went, we drank until the pub closed. There were times,
of course, when the pubs didn't close at all. The bartender would
doze off sometime after four or five in the morning and we would
still be seated, blathering away, drinking the beers, refilling them
for ourselves when the need arose. How many Prague mornings we
watched sailing over the top of the Vlatava River as we drank our
beers, unconcerned, all but oblivious.
You might wonder what purpose it all served: we would have laughed
long if you'd have asked us. Purpose? But then again, we might have
settled down and told you that we were constantly embarking on an
effort to forestall the future. Our days didn't operate like the
majority of the people around us. We had nothing to do. No place in
particular to go. We were working up a beery theory of the
meaningless of time around us. We were burning hours like a pyro
lights matches one after another, just for the sheer pleasure of it.
We wouldn't be provoked by watches, by history, by futures. We were
languishing in a sort of beer o'clock time frame in a hedonist city
filled with well-meaning, yet futile drunks. The hand we were dealt.
We weren't partaking in the pissing and moaning of life. We weren't
comsumed with grocery lists, petty fears about dirty laundry, or
wondering where our last meal went. Regardless of the question, the
answer was always concise: beer.
The 24 Hour Party
There aren't any alarm bells that go off when the body's had enough.
We could abuse ourselves five days and nights out of seven and a two
day holiday of sofa camping, automotonic television, radio blaring
simultaneously, stains accumulating, plates and pans piling up over
the kitchen landscape like the blemishes of a skin rash on smooth
skin, would be enough, ultimately, to recharge.
When enough's enough, the signs are subtle yet persistent. The taste
of tobacco goes bad and each consecutive roll up perpetuates, in a
cycle interwoven of masochistic nihilism, the sense that each roll
up is in and of itself a death sentence. It isn't, of course. But
the taste buds need a break. More salt and grease to scratch out the
nicotine grime of the palate, like spraying twelve hour oven cleaner
in your mouth and letting the foamy particles to do their work
And if it isn't the tobacco, it's the vague fatigue of the mind.
Sluggish and feeling decades older within days is the way your
thoughts shuffle along through the hours. Disjointed and yet feeling
collective at the same time. Conversations we'd throw out into the
middle of the front room, talking around the empty Chinese takeaway
cartons and newspapers, would fold up and blow away before they'd
been answered.
I'd go outside and marvel that society was still going on around me.
Within the flat, one entombed world existed, punctuated by bouts of
another reality going on outside the windows, television news,
sirens down the road, the tram's bell and the grinding of metal on
metal as it executed its left turn on to STREET IN ZIZKOV.
Once outside the flat, it came at me in multi dimensions; the
odours, the pattern of pedestrian footwork dancing around each
other, sotto voce conversations briefly revealed in the brief
seconds of passing them. You could be aware of yourself and hope at
the same time you were blending in as anonymously as passersby. Who
were all these people anyway? From whose wombs did they spring and
why?
Usually the premise for leaving the flat was replenishment. Food
stuffs, drinkable liquid, toilet paper. Walk past a few pubs and
restaurants hoping none of the usual drunks saw you and climbed down
from their stools or got up from their tables to chase you down the
street inviting you to join them.
You can only mask alcoholism with social drinking for so long.
Gradually, the drinking hours lengthen and deepen. And one by one,
your compatriots drop off, to eat, to sleep, to coax sexual
performances out of their partners, sometimes just to get away, and
as these compatriots peel off like dead skin, the pool of drinkers
grows smaller until it is merely a puddle of drunks who will carry
the task on enthusiastically past dawn.
It is surreal to still be awake and drinking, a survivor of the
night before, as workers scurry through their early mornings. If you
happen to be trapped on the street, moving from one after hours dive
to another, when these commuters let themselves from their houses
and head off to the collective misery, it is like being trapped in a
maze of somnambulists. Try talking to these people as they march on
to their destinations: not a single one will give you the time of
day. They are all either disgusted or envious when you confront them
with beery breath, dressed in last night's clothes, as though you
were a temporary hallucination of theirs they wanted desperately to
avoid facing, shake them from their heads and refill the
subconscious with the inner nattering of daily preoccupations.
*****
Typically, on the nights no class was scheduled, I'd leave the
office in the afternoon, take the tram back to Zizkov, always
keeping a watchful eye out for the tram ticket warden, jump off and
head immediately for a café. There was no dinner scheduled. There
were no household items to purchase. There would be the paperback or
a notebook for company. Set up camp at a table and then, watch the
marks on the paper tab scratched off, one by one, beer after beer.
The café itself was of no consequence. I never spoke to the patrons.
I never looked around except to stare out the window. I would drink
the beer, chased with cigarettes, taking notes, writing letters,
occasionally reading from whatever booked I'd nicked out of the
school library that afternoon. But for the most part, I'd compose
novella length letters to Anastasia, recording the minute details of
the day, forcing the obligatory, devotional ramblings out of my pen
as though they were written with my own blood through an eye
dropper.
And when those events had been exhausted, a few more pints to round
it off and then back to the flat. Albert would already be there most
afternoons. He worked sporadically, picking up odd jobs around the
neighbourhood. Moving and lifting, a scrape and paint job,
renovation work that entailed moving rubble, brick and mortar in a
wheelbarrow from the inside of a gutted frame to the dumpster in the
street.
When he worked, he'd be sat there in the front room, still covered
in whatever combination of dust, dirt, grease and paint that had
clung to him during the course of the day. The headphones would be
on, a small litter of beers would already be on the coffee table and
floor and the room would be heavy with the haze of his smoke.
Depending on what he was listening to, he'd either completely ignore
my entrance as though it were just part of the hypnotic trance of
the music that was banging into his eardrums, or take the headphones
off and click the speakers back on so we'd both be covered in the
music.
My days aren't tough. Academic life, even the poor excuse for it at
the College, was a phantom life in a physical world. Albert's
existence, the fact that he'd been out in the real world,
shovelling, hauling, getting down and dirty, merely underscored the
ghost-like existence I felt at the College. The only dirt I carried
home with me from work was in my head, the filthy thoughts about
Croatian co-eds in short skirts and long legs. There was no sense of
self-respect in teaching there. It was like whoring in a cheap
brothel. You got what you paid for. We weren't paid much and in
turn, we weren't very astute teachers. There were no standards as
there were in the physical world Albert pushed himself through for
half the pay.
Albert knew it as well. It was a great theme for his pontificating
whenever he'd get foamy-mouthed about the state of the world. Look
at you, he'd say as I came through the doorway, my fingernails still
reasonably clean, my clothes still reasonably fresh. How do you know
you've even been working today? You look the same coming in as you
did going out. Your shirt isn't even wrinkled. Didn't you sweat all
day? Wasn't there even a moment of intellectual anxiety enough to
leave furrows of philosophic thought in your brow? You've taught
future bureaucrats and landowners how to maintain their claw-hold on
the throats of the working public, how to bleed them of their pay,
how to tax them, how to feel slightly cultured while doing it.
You've spent the day perpetuating a sick lie.
*****
I'm playing a chess match against Mikhail on the picnic table
outside the Shot out Eye and the table is getting beerier as the
hours go on. First one to win four matches wins and we've already
been through eight matches without conclusion. It's almost dark
outside and the board is lit by candles around us. A few stand there
in earnest, holding their beers, staring down at the table like gods
overseeing a battlefield massacre.
POSTCARD SNAPSHOTS OF PRAGUE:
1. Our first public performance at the open mic night in the
basement of Radost-FX. What about it? The room was painted with
hangovers. We'd sat in on these Sunday sessions a few times already
to get the feel for the place, see whether or not music was
welcomed. Musical acts didn't happen often and when they did, they
were usually solo acoustic guitar numbers and usually not very
pleasant to listen to so we had no reasonable expectation that our
reception would be any worse.
As it turned out, it was met with stunned silence. As usual, no one
knew whether they'd just heard something awful or incredible.
2. The crunchy sausages with mustard with a diamond-shaped napkin
and a chunk of brown bread, eaten on the main boulevard with the hum
of late night intoxicated sexuality dripping in the streets from the
gutters and the eaves of clouded minds.
3. Sitting in the park near the hostel on a bench smoking a joint
and staring up at the night sky.
4. Local pub we joined in late, four Czechs, one playing the guitar
at the table as we sang Beatles songs wearing sun glasses and
pounding our beer mugs on the table top like barbarians singing
songs of mythology the night before pillaging the neighbouring
village.
5.
*****
Most of these events won't register as memory. Either they're fed
through a haze and don't have any durable qualities or they become
enlarged, poster-sized in the subconscious. They don't stick for
very long as they aren't really memories at all, just events. Not
unlike the walls of a construction site that get covered in concert
announcement and new released music advertisements, glued up and
then covered over, ripped down, graffiti'd on, spat at. No one
remembers what poster was up two weeks ago. And similarly, I can't
remember what happened to myself two weeks ago. It's not like we sit
around a table reminiscing constantly like, remember this, remember
that? No one cares because whatever it was, chances are it will be
repeated in some form or another later in the day or that week or
perhaps the next month and for a moment, a tiny light of recognition
might go off and sputter out.
The tendency is to filter events so that they become almost
unrecognisable save for those tiny moments. There is no filing
system in our memories. It's all scattered around on the inside like
a hotel room that keeps having new guests without a maid to come in
and clean up afterwards so that one person's layer of existence left
behind is quickly covered by the next and so on.
Is this how royalty greets the well-wishers that come, one by one,
for a handshake and a few words? Imagine all the people who have the
highlight of their life, I've met the King and here is the
photo-moment to prove it, hung on the wall of their front rooms for
all guests to ooh and aah over whilst the King has absolutely no
recollection at all of having ever met them.
You hang out with your core, the regulars who join you at the table
and the conversations begin again as though they'd never left off in
the first place.
*****
After all those months of unreturned letters, there was bound to be
an answer eventually. I hadn't expected to just run into her outside
the flat though, I have to admit.
Yet there she was, seated regally atop one of her bags of luggage,
casually smoking a cigarette and watching me with amusement as I
neared and my eyes roared to life from a dull and listless stare.
I was away on holiday, she explained. I was gone three months,
staying with some friends near St Etienne and when I finally
returned to Paris, your letters were sitting there waiting for me,
like an unfinished novel. For two straight days I read them all,
word for word, stopping only to cat nap a few hours here and there.
Your presence coursed through me like a hot shower. I decided to
take the train here immediately.
*****
Albert wasn't pleased with the addition of a new flat mate. We've
barely any room in here as it is, he cringed, waiving his paw around
the smoke-filled air of the studio.
But she can cook and she can sing, I rationalised.
Well, I don't like this at all, he growled. Not at all. This is a
fucking disaster.
*****
For several days, it was a lot of walking on eggshells. After all,
Albert had found the flat and flats weren't all that easy to come
by. Especially not a cheap one like this. If he deemed the breach
severe enough, he might just threaten us with having to find our own
place and considering that despite work, the disposable income I
disposed of so quickly came in large part from Albert's personal
injury account, this wouldn't have been a good development at all.
How to pacify Albert was our theme for days. Anastasia suggested
sleeping with him but the looming love triangle might prove even
more daunting than finding our own flat.
In the end, it was several nights later, after Anastasia had joined
us on stage for the first time, that Albert was convinced. The
tension eased. Yeah, what the fuck, he explained. She's a good cook
and she even does the dishes afterwards.
*****
At the Shot out Eye, it was a bit of an event when Anastasia
arrived. Not only was her presence a little breathtaking in the
background of our norm, but her conversations never flowed with any
of the others previous. It was like someone riding a bicycle in the
middle of a tank parade. For weeks, we had complete strangers trying
to join our table, lining up for the opportunity hours in advance,
sometimes merely to get a glimpse of Anastasia.
After the first night she'd joined our performance performing the
vocals, word spread quickly. Within weeks, we'd had offers for gigs
all around Prague, and from as far away as Bratislava and Budapest.
*****
So what are we going to do with all these offers?
The three of us were sat in the train station café just outside the
Anglo-American College and the vote was split.
Albert was sick of Prague, he insisted. After so many months, it
should be time to move on. Prague was like quicksand and we were
sinking rapidly. He had to get out of foundation, even it is just
temporary.
My vote was a necessary abstention. I couldn't side with Albert for
risk of driving the newly arrived Anastasia away and I couldn't side
with Anastasia because my poverty level salary at the College
wouldn't afford the two of us our own flat without Albert's personal
injury fund to sustain us.
If I side with staying in Prague, I asked Albert, what would you do?
If you are sick of Prague and merely want out, where would you go?
He puffed on his cigarette for several moments in silence. I can
stay another month, but that's it. Either we hit the road together
or I hit the road alone.
*****
We didn't need a doctoral thesis to validate it. No one understood
anything we said anyway, and we didn't understand them either. It
was the perfect relationship.
Of course, when Anastasia would tire of whoring in Amsterdam, she
inevitably made her way back to Prague to stay with us and that, I
submit, was the only time Albert or I had to defend ourselves or our
theories.
You guys look like you haven't left this place since I left she
would comment like a disapproving den mother over a scout troop.
Is that supposed to pass as dialogue? Albert would ask. Then
Anastasia would make a big show of ordering a bottlr of Moravian
wine in a hideous castration of the Czech language, the waiter would
look at her blankly, trying to decipher a translation, to what the
fuck is she talking about? Albert had mastered the beer vocabulary.
He'd even taken the trouble to learn grammatical agreement,
depending on how many beers he was ordering, but beyond that, he
knew nothing of the language and never bothered to try. But, like
all linguistic dilemmas, it was easily solved when he would bring
her a beer instead. They're all out of Moravian wine, I'd explain.
From the Diaries of Witold Kazersamski, cahier 3.2,
...Is it ever possible? Were we merely illusionists with a
talentlessness so relentless that it almost became convincing. What
else could explain our presence on these stages, night after night,
noisy pub after noisy pub? Was it stunned silence at something so
horribly awry, they synapses misfired over and over, convincingly?
We certainly couldn't believe it ourselves. And by some strange
psychological victory, we'd been able to convince the others. Or
confused them beyond healthy criticism. We began to accompany
ourselves with three foot high inflatable chess pieces and had two
volunteers play out famous matches on a 5 x 5 bedsheet painted as a
chessboard. More confusion. The lyrics continued lifted out of
foreign language obituary pages and stories of local interest
plagerized as stanzas in a bizarre, low key baritone that sounded
like scratching sandpaper with a two euro coin. Most importantly,
the sax and the bass continued to play as basic and few chords as
possible, applying repetition and sometimes extremely slow tempos to
cover our lack of skill.
But a style that began with extremely minimalist tendancies slowly
began to emerge as a spectacle large enough to divert attention from
our increasingly frantic fear that eventually we would be found out.
When Anastasia joined us with her compositions, her overbearing
bossiness and clarinet, we responded with the chess matches
recreated on stage, a few interpretive dancers we'd lifted from
their classes with promises of popular relevancy, and a harp player.

May Day Besides the already mentioned beer and grilled bratwursts
Czechs have a tradition a very much liked. Every girl and woman
should be kissed under a bloomed cherry tree (but nowadays any
bloomed tree whatsoever goes, too) so that she would not wither up
during the year.
Most people don't belong together, she exhaled patiently. People ARE
together because they have to be with somebody, one way or
another...too lonely to accept solitude with a warm embrace like a
lover coming home from the war...no, these people around us, and
here she gesticulated wildly in an arc encompassing, one imagined
the whole of humanity, not just the stray passerby who happened to
be strolling within that imaginary arc they aren't comfortable being
alone. They've seen too much television telling them in too many
subtle ways, through sitcoms and chat shows and deodorant
commercials, that it is their moral obligation in this society to be
with someone, anyone - they've had it drummed into their skulls from
the beginning...they won't accept anything less and when they wake
up one morning wondering what they've done with their lives, who
this person lying next to them is, who they get ready for work in
the morning with, who they eat a silent dinner over the telly with
is, by then, it's all too late. They realised too late...
She wasn't even talking to me, really, talking through me.
She got like that when the sores of society would bubble on her, get
in her eyes, underneath her fingernails. There was always another
tirade down the road, with Anastacia, you could predict that much,
measure your time in the days between rants.
And it was always a sign that she was getting antsy, that she was
preparing herself to start travelling again. Snip, snip, cut the
ties.
I sat back silently as though savouring the wine, watching the smoke
rings I blew upwards; my head tilted back slightly as I watched them
slowly carry themselves upwards toward the ceiling and dissipate, my
eyes focusing gradually on the present rather than a visionary's
distance.
*****
It was May Day in Prague. Albert and I had a bet on to see who could
stay off the piss the longest. Albert made it til ten o'clock that
night.
Fuck it, he announced, standing up from the chair and away from the
game of solitaire he'd been conducting silently for nearly two
hours. You win. I'll buy the first beer.
There weren't many nights we weren't out, frankly. Prague is like
that, a vortex drawing in the alcoholics and pretend poets and the
blue collar Czechs from Zizkov. We were all there, nearly every
night, playing cards, chess, music, holding conversations we
imagined we were having only to realise that we were, flirting with
drunker foreigners, chain smoking, enjoying the evening with the
kind of pre-future nostalgia that made it seem like that evening was
our last.
*****
Can I tell you a secret? she asked out of the blue as we were lying
in bed, still clothed, the candles burning and the pot smoke hanging
above us in a haze. I sat up for a moment, rubbing my eyes as though
it were just morning and I'd had a good night's sleep. Sure, I
answered non committally.
I want to leave. She didn't move as she spoke, just staring up at
the ceiling. I want to leave tomorrow, get on a train and just end
up somewhere else.
I hadn't been kidding myself too seriously. I knew this would
ultimately be the natural score at the end of this match. She was
too edgy to relax, pacing the room sometimes (no mean feat in such
small quarters), drinking heavily as if to transport herself
somewhere else, always somewhere else.
I can't say I didn't understand it although in my case it was more a
case of inertia than any true longing to remain in one place for
very long. Even Albert had talked aloud to himself about getting the
fuck outta here... a few nights this month.
And I want you to come with me. she concluded, grabbing my hand.
*****
So the following morning, just after dawn and before we'd even had a
coffee, we were walking down towards Hlavni Nadrazi to catch a
train. Albert was annoyed that he wasn't invited but in the end,
decided to go back to sleep anyway.
The gypsies were all out in force having slept off whatever they
were on the night before that had them singing and dancing and
holding their hungry babies in front of your face with one hand
whilst the other hand was either upturned, palmward, or trying to
reach into your pockets.
The funny thing is on the way down, we didn't spend a second talking
about it. It was as though we were heading down to snatch a few
klobasa and a beer first thing in the morning, as though this was
yesterday or the day before.
We walked silently inside the station and Anastacia picked a window,
mumbled things I couldn't hear from behind, pulled out a wad of
unexpected cash and stepped back with two tickets.
So, where are we going? I hint,
Someplace you've never been. she replies with an excitement I
imagined she would normally reserve for finding a hidden stash of
catnip.
Awww, but I've been there already, like a hundred times! I exclaim
just to throw her off guard for a moment and take away her
suspicious, ruling hand.
I grab at the tickets and have a look. Low whistle.
Rome.
*****
The very first time the three of us were on stage simultaneously was
at Jazz Club
Železná.
After the first few times, Albert and I didn't get nervous anymore.
We had butterflies and vomited often beforehand, but we weren't
nervous.
With Anastasia joining us we were suddenly a trio, Albert and I had
another aspect to overwhelm us with. But she had a sweet voice. Our
music didn't even matter. We just tried to play as quietly in the
background as possible.
And that first night we were all having a shot of slivovice for good
luck when suddenly the canned music faded and someone got on the PA
to announce, the infamously awkward, Deadbeat Conspiracy.
Muffled, half-hearted applause. Golf claps, really.
Albert stood there holding his bass, leaning backwards as though
that bear of a bass would knock him over from the weight and the
fourteen cans of beer that proceeded him. (He was done at thirteen
but I told him it was unlucky, so he had another.)
I held the sax in front of me, staring at a fixed point above the
heads of the crowd because I was terrified suddenly, gasping for
water.
But Anastasia stepped out there with the dusty spotlight in front of
her and she had her back to me: so when she began to sing, and if
you could describe a voice as velvet and chocolate wrapped around a
cherry you would have hers, slow and velvet caress, her voice
bounced back from the walls past her and to Albert and I.
It wasn't hard to follow at all. I'd hit a low note every ten
seconds or so, Albert plucked here and there when it seemed
appropriate and before we knew it the place was absolutely silent.
The bartenders and waiters and kitchen help and doormen all stood
there, transfixed by Anastasia's voice.
We'd rehearsed all week at the walls in that little flat and had not
even smelled a hint of the reaction. No fumbling with glasses and
silverware, no more idle conversations breaking ice over and over,
no more bottles opening or glasses slid across the wooden bar
counter. Just Anastasia's voice, like lying down on your back in the
grass, closing your eyes to the sun.
When she was finished she just stood there as though waiting for us
to start the next song. But before we'd even considered what next,
the crowd had suddenly woken themselves, hooting and whistling,
shouting, holding up their drinks. She brought the mic stand over in
front of me.
Your turn. she announced, turning on her heel and taking a seat off
to side of the stage.

ROME AND IN PURSUIT
page 116, cahier 3, from the Diaries of Witold Kazersamski:
I arrived at Rome Stazioni Termini as dawn was breaking. Outside,
the neighborhood sweltered with pickpockets and gangs of thieving
children. Signore Antonio Pignatelli was supposed to meet me here
and was nowhere to be found. A typical scene. I pulled out my
tobacco and was just beginning to roll a cigarette when an English
speaking cretin stepped toward me, calling my name gently. In his
hand was a small cardboard sign that bore my name. He attempted to
shake my hand, claiming he was Chuck, sent by Mr. Pignatelli to pick
me up since Mr. Pignatelli had been delayed. Chuck appeared to be in
his early thirties, sporting an unhealthy complexion, puny frame,
round shoulders and a surprisingly prominent paunch. His hair, which
looked as though it has been cropped by a pair of blunt shears, was
very greasy. I could have filled a mason jar with the grease in his
hair. His clothes were total grunge. A dirty nylon rucksack was
crumpled at his feet like an abadoned baby. I wondered out loud why
Antonio Pignatelli had sent such a seedy and slovenly looking guy to
meet me. I'm the only guy he could find on such short notice who
speaks English as my native tongue. he explained as he picked up the
rucksack and led me by the elbow toward a cafe where we could sit
for an espresso and some bread while we waited for Antonio to
arrive.
As we sat there, another broken-English-speaker, who must have
overheard our conversation, scuttled in from off the street toward
us like a cockroach toward a pile of bread crusts and sugar. 'Allo,
my name is Jirko he stammers and then asks us if either can spare a
few euros for some paintings of his. He asks us both but of course,
he is speaking only to me. Chuck doesn't look like he has any money.
He looks like he'd be as likely as Jirko to be panhandling, perhaps
more so. Jirko's lustreless hair matted in some kind of grease, or
perhaps it is turpentine, judging from the smell. His fingers are
paint-stained, the nails long and filthy. He too has a rucksack and
from this one, he pulls out a few vague, almost hallucinatory
charcol etchings, explaining all the while that he lives in a
squalid condominium on the slummy eastern fringes of the city where
he rents a small, damp room in the basement; broken down into the
submission of poverty teaching haphazard english classes, giving
black market tours of Rome to wary english language tourists
charging 2 euros for an hour per. I wave him off, spitting to the
side of his shoes and looking out for the waiter or someone to chase
away these vagrants. Others are beginning to take notice, their
vagrant, gypsy antennae picking up the scent of money in the
neighborhood at this early hour.
Finally, Chuck loses his apathetic demeanor and waves the butter
knife in the direction of Jirko and a few other slowly approaching
vagrants. Get away fuckers! Liberty is not a release from all law,
from all restraint! Crawl back into your sewers and gutters! Stay
away I warn you or this distinguished gentleman with me will be
forced to brandish his fire arm and fire it at you indiscriminantly!
He flops down next to me, smiling but a little sweaty. The sidewalks
have cleared. One thing I've learned he begins, lighting a cigarette
and flagging down the waiter impatiently, is that the consumerist
impulse, even in junkies, drives us all toward personal
satisfactions that we never quite experience without a solipsistic
sense of loneliness hounding us. We may need love and self-opening
in order to achieve genuine intimacy and commitment with even a few
others.
The waiter arrives glancing at us and having heard the shouting,
relieved but curious as to where the vagrants disappeared to. Chuck
smiles, You see? he demands of the waiter, lighting a cigarette and
coughing heavily. John Stuart Mill's harm principle, that no one has
a right to interfere with me for my own good, but only to prevent
harm to others is now generally accepted. The streets are clear of
riff raff. So bring us a pair of espressos, a bottle of Pernod and
perhaps a few chunks of bread, rapidamente! senza ritardo!
Chuck continues, puffing on his cigarette proudly like a pimp.
Signore Pignatelli has been looking forward to your visit. I don't
expect this delay should be long. He's had some difficulties lately
with potentially destructive ideals but frankly, I think the worst
is over. If he hasn't arrived within the half hour, I'll take you to
a fine pensione I know of only a few blocks from here.
What exactly are these 'difficulties' you speak of? I ask with only
a vague sense of curiosity. The espresso has arrived and it's aroma
overtakes me, overtakes the smell of pigeons and unwashed sidewalks.
Train station neighborhoods always smell the same. Like poverty and
ammonia mixed with illicit sex and stale urine.
Well, I'm no shrink, but I think he has to stop looking for
salvation to come to him from somewhere else, from above. Instead, I
suggested to him only yesterday, he should seek to reconcile with
reality. After all, there is no external measure of the
meaningfulness of our lives and practices. He wallows in his
insignificance, the meaningless of his life, and it paralyses him at
times with terrible fits of depression. I slipped him a mild
amphetamine sulphate. I'm sure he'll be ok in a little while. Then
he'll come to pick you up and everything will continue on as
planned. Chuck stared at his fingernails awhile as I thought about
how Mr. Pignatelli's affliction might affect his ability to help me
locate some leads about Anastasia. It didn't look good. I cursed
loudly to myself, much to Chuck's surprise, who took up a defensive
Yang Tai Chi position on the other end of the table.
Sorry about that. I'm just a little annoyed at having come all the
way from Kaunas and a meeting with the pianist Vyacheslav Ganelin
regarding a concert to be performed in the Siberian city of
Sverdlovsk, only to find out now that Mr. Pignatelli is suffering
from some sort of dysthymia or bipolar disorder. I was urgently
counting on his assistance.
Don't worry about it. Chuck assured, picking up his rucksack and
rifling through it for a few scraps of paper which he handed over to
me. These are the remains of the records of his therapeutic foster
home stay. It suggests only a minor depressive disorder brought on
by the ill-advised use of estrogen which he'd hoped would improve
the somatic and mild depressive symptoms but in the end, only seemed
to fuck up his system worse. He should be completely recovered in a
matter of days, perhaps weeks, but for the time being, so long as
he's jacked up with a little Japanese shabu or alot of caffeine,
he's fine for long periods of time. Whatever he's supposed to help
you with, I'm certain he'll be functional for long enough periods of
time to assist you. Believe me, if he couldn't, he wouldn't have
invited you here.
Just then there was a jaunty horn honking from the street as a
dioxazine purple Alfa Romeo 156 GTA pulled up to the curb with
Antonio's delicate hand waving out the driver's side window. He lept
from the car, the engine still idling, and shouted out greetings to
both of us. Witold! Chuck! What great fortune that I've finally
found you! I was caught up in an accident with a chestnut roaster
and got caught up in the irrisistable, musky fragrants of the
chestuts on Via Nazionale and then stopped for a few moments of
reflection where Mussolini used to harangue the crowds from the
balcony of the Palazzo Venezia. I feel like a tourist again! What a
morning!
He quickly grabbed my bags and tossed them into the trunk of the
Alfa Romeo and motioned me into the passenger's seat. Chuck! he
screeched. Meet us at the New Mississippi Jazz Club on Borgo
Angelico tonight around 10! Bring Adriana and Camelia with you! As I
carefully folded my legs in the passenger seat, Antonio fell in
behind the steering wheel, yanked the car into gear and floored it,
yanking me backwards. We were on our way to what Antonio told me in
very speedy explanation was his September home in Rome. First, a
quick bite to eat, a few bottles of wine, a nap and then we would
get down to business...
random page sifting, cahier 2, from the Diaries of Witold
Kazersamski:
I knew the 19 hour ride on the EuroNight car from Roma Termini to
Budapest-Deli station was going to be an exercise of endurance, a
tag team of piecemeal and useless conversations with peripatetic
strangers wandering through the hallways of the cars at all hours
having nothing in their own lack of imagination better to converse
about than the weather we were unable to experience and an
international goulash of political expostulations and petty griping.
When I was able to elude the strangers, I'd stare into the blackness
of what seemed an endless, dispassionate tenebrosity Emilia-Romagna
countryside staring back at me. For hours I did nothing but chain
smoke and cleanse my palate with warm cola. There was, of course,
the Buescher Aristocrat, but the moment I'd touch the reed to my
lips and begin even the faintest alternations of strident and mellow
tones the neighboring passengers erupted into immediate and
obdurate, brick wall protests of noiselessness and sleep.
Having anticipated this, especially for those long hours with
nothing but the chain smoking and the warm beer preventing me from
sleeping, I'd brought along a bookbag gorged with internet cafe
printouts on subjects ranging from the Mandelbaum translations of
Dante's Purgatorio to obscure American government statistical
guidebooks. Nevertheless, the journey was doomed to bring with it an
unendearing sense of time and layers of peeling consciousness,
through the cosmos and back again all the while fraught with the
bristling chaos of the Anastasia restrospective slipping in and out
of my vision which could not be escaped.
By the time we'd pulled into Bologna Centrale for a long layover, as
a diversion, I'd already begun a laborious, ball-breaking study in
thought about time travel and how it could, in some instances,
mirror regular, geographic travel. I still had the internet printout
of the U.S. Department of Labor Handbook of Labor Statistics
measuring the value of money back then using the consumer price
index calculated by some strange index of prices paid by Vermont
farmers for family living (2002 Price = 1850 Price x (2002 CPI /
1850 CPI).
Taking that equation, I spent many bouncy hours on the rails
calculating things like how my 10 cents in 1833 would be worth
around $2.00 today until my head hurt. Why 1833, I'm not sure. It
seemed to hold some symmetry for me which couldn't be rehearsed. By
dawn, as we crept toward the Austrian border, energized by a few
swigs of grappa from the flask inside my rucksack, I'd figured that
if I take $200 of today's money and travel in time to 1833, I'd have
the today's equivalent of about $4,000 to work with.
I wasn't sure where this line of thinking was going to take me.
Wishful thinking for four grand was one thing but wondering what I
reason I'd have to be on a train a place that wasn't even yet called
Budapest yet in 1833, disquisitive about what the hell would be
going in 1833 and what my role in it would be. Slowly, wishing I'd
printed out deeper history of the breadbasket of the Habsburg
Empire, the weaving and rolling had its somnolent effect and it
wasn't long before I'd fallen asleep to the lullaby rocking of the
train as we moved through the Kärnten province.
Either waking from a dream, or thrust into the middle of it,
(difficult to discern through the haze of the morning fog), it
seemed Balzac was seated next to me, smirking noiselessly, but
staring openly.
Good morning I muttered unsteadily. He looked a little dishevelled
himself, a little pudgier than the Louis Boulanger portrait,
wild-haired and determined, staring me down his little moustache
twitching like the whiskers of a rodent. It was as though I'd
interrupted him in mid-conversation with himself as he continued
pointing out that while he wasn't deep, he was very wide and how he
would create a new style of realism by portraying the present.
Thinking quickly, I remind him that Georg Lukács was to say that
he'd passed from the portrayal of past history to the portrayal of
the present as history, and christ, Lukás wasn't even born until 52
years later.
Balzac barely paid me any attention. He went on, giving elegies on
the irreparable decay of good society and his idea of linking
together his old novels so that they would comprehend the whole
society in a series of books.
He gives me a copy of Le médecin de campagne, which he said he would
publish that year in Paris. I thumb through it quickly about a
doctor who has given up his mistress and then learns that she died
giving birth to his son and then decides to devote his life to
working with the poor. Geez, I tell him, shaking my head, why are
you guys in 19th century France always portraying the peasants as
degenerates and cretins? What kind of predictable sociopathological
discourse is this?
Balzac stares at me a moment, a vague disgust in his eyes as he
speaks: An idiocy of rural life. The rural population was helpless.
They needed rational authority which they did not themselves
possess, to improve their situation. They were like children. They
were hopelessly backwards and required massive state intervention to
bring them up to the modern age. he clears his throat and continues:
Besides the plot, regard how l am interested in the lives of
typical, every day people, like an anthropologist. I don't care
about these common histories of nations and political and public
figures the world scribbles on about without definition and
contrast...Do not all these solve the difficult literary problem
which consists in making a virtuous person interesting?
*********
1833 was also the building of the Petõfi Bridge and when Strauss'
father was taking his first concert trip to Budapest.

How many Forints would four grand be? How much pörkölt and gulyás?

It didn't matter. I was going solely for Jazz Days, headed in
September for Debrecen where they held Hungary's top jazz festival.
Of course, I was hoping Anastasia would change her mind and meet me
there. It was a daft hope, devoid of reality.
Czech – Jarmila and Karel.
Pigeon hole Karel Hynek Macha as imitator of Byron.
Macha: Czech girls, pale as an amaranth, withered in the spring
GM Hopkins wrote a good deal of spiritual, sensual poems?
Not until 30 years after his death his poems were published. (1918)
no appreciation for the ordinary individual
Czech is the fifth European vernacular language after French,
Italian, Catalan and Dutch into which the Bible was translated.
philosophical amazement at undestructability of existence in nature.
Hopkins saw the whole world as barbarous in beauty to him,
everything was charged with the grandeur of god.



















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4:31 AM