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10.3.09
CHAPTER 16: The Risks Of Turning The Corner
“I had always heard that your entire life flashes in front of your eyes the second before you die. First of all, that second isn’t a second at all, it stretches on forever, like an ocean of time.”
-- Lester Burnham, in American Beauty
*****
I thought I'd surprise you, again, she said nonchalantly or perhaps ironically, with a smirk of expectation twisting at the corners of her mouth as she approached the table and registered the look of complete shock that enveloped my face.
I could only stare back at her face with incomprehension, a dream materialised before my eyes. A good dream? A nightmare? Who knows? I mean the initial shock didn’t allow anything else to flow past into the brain, to register any feelings or thoughts on the matter. Like when you’re cut and that split second when the cut is white before the blood suddenly starts rushing.
I wasn't sure how to introduce her to every body. My girlfriend, my muse, this
chick I know? I looked over at Albert for a clue but Albert appeared to be as dumbstruck as I was. Anastasia of course, revelled in the moment of indecision, the powerful effect her appearance was always bound to have. Hi everyone, she said to those gathered around us, those whose curiosity was piqued by her appearance and my reaction, the blood draining from my face. I’m Anastasia, a friend of Witold and Albert, she introduced finally in our silence. And before we could supplement, deny or agree with the introduction, everyone was enthusiastically returning the introductions and no one had any idea that they were in the presence of a woman who possessed the most beautiful voice they might hear during the entire festival. If, of course, she was going to sing.
It's funny, in that sick, twisted way that life’s curveballs come at you before dropping off the table and you to your knees, how you can think about someone so often and with such yearning that sometimes it's difficult to conjure up an image of them. You don’t visualise their eyes or sense the tactile softness of their flesh. It’s as though as they’ve existed only in a textbook somewhere in your student past and the words you were forced to memorise and recite still stick in your mind, randomly, yet you aren’t sure why.
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,
Not to mention the fact you were already fully aware of the hours and days and sometimes weeks of painful correspondence, the gaiety and nonchalance grudgingly carved out, the drinking bouts inducing both passion and forgetfulness.
But unlike the first time she appeared unannounced in Utrecht, I
didn't accept this arrival without question, I didn’t embrace her without reservation, grateful for the opportunity. No, you know yourself if when you put your hand over a flame, closer and closer until suddenly the burning sensation becomes unbearable, unless you have mental instabilities or a masochistic streak of curiosity, you don’t put your hand back over that flame again any time soon..
No, as we drank each other in carefully, (the others had since gone back to their conversations and it was as though we occupied an invisible bubble amid them) she perhaps assessing my capacity for pain, trying to read into my eyes forgiveness or joy or anger, said nothing but put her right hand against my arm, gently. And I of course, stunned into silence, was running through a catalogue of emotions not unlike watching those varieties of fruit spinning in the slot machine waiting for the spinning to stop and the conclusion to make its presence known. Was there anything to forgive? I didn’t even know. Yes, my heart did pirouette a moment or two but then as though a hamstring pulled in mid movement, the joy was tempered by the pain.
Of course I had some stern questions for her. Well, I had them in my mind but was still incapable of speaking them. I assessed as much as possible in those tiny moments; how did I really feel about her being here? Fuck, of course, I was elated. And each time I allowed that recognition to creep in, bam! The shadow of her disappearance re-emerged and the questions were blew back in my face in order: Why did she leave Utrecht so suddenly, without even speaking to me, leaving me some stupid fucking letter in her wake? How did she even discover that I’d be in this little village on this particular weekend? How had she gotten her and most importantly, why in the hell was she 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 she carried on talking with perhaps a practiced nonchalance as if it were perfectly naturally for her have left with a letter and then just as suddenly and unexpectedly reappeared here, materialised out of nothing in front of me, carried on talking as did those around us and she succeeded pulling me into this vortex, the initial introductions worn off and suddenly it was just the two of us, among them and I stood in my glorious numbness 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.
Perhaps it was the shock of seeing her or the space which had grown between us but as she was no longer simply a dream, a figment of my imagination, as she stood there real enough in flesh and blood I could almost perceive her in that moment as a person, a flawed person, not an icon, not an image, not a memory.
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 later. Too many people had been told in advance, to many were waiting what these two weird American guys were going to do. There will be time, there will be time. As distraction, whilst she spoke I tried to think of the other lines that followed in that Prufrock poem by Eliot, knowing I’d once memorised them and hearing them in the back of my mind whilst I deliberated and debated my next move, our next move, for certainly we couldn’t simply stand here in the hall drinking beer and pretend nothing had happened, that her sudden appearance was as normal and ordinary as her sudden disappearance.
And so it was with ignoring the lines of the Prufrock poem I was trying to remember as a distraction or indeed, as a guide, that I finally lost my desperate grip on patience.
So, I interrupted suddenly, as casual as possible, Are you here to play with us again, then? I managed to ask with what I presumed formulated on my face a teasing smile but playfulness, I knew was not a strength of mine, not with so many raw emotions on the line and so perhaps it simply sounded bitter and cynical, it was hard to tell.
She didn't say anything for a moment as perhaps she was as uncertain of the basis and intent behind my query as I was.
Why don't I have a glass of wine while I consider she asked, snuggling unexpectedly into my arms and smiling, as though postponement, diversion and hinting at what I was certain to want was a sufficient tactic.
It's been a long journey, she clarified.
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. Not that I really understood what they were saying in any event but I’d grown accustomed, listening as I did daily to a language I could only understand in tiny snatches, to perceive rather than actually understand what people were talking about. Facial expressions, circumstances, tone, all useful aids. In the instant case, that they were hungry, perhaps drunk and definitely excited was sufficient to glean. We had privacy even among this crowd.
I suppose your wondering, among other things, how I found you here, she began after a sip of wine, her tongue perched momentarily on the wine stain of her lip as she peered into my eyes attempting to read what registered inside them.
I'd actually intended on surprising you in Prague, Witold. It‘s been so long and your letters have been a great comfort but as always, they aren‘t the same as seeing you. It‘s been crazy touring, you wouldn‘t believe it. Anyway, I just haven‘t had time before now to come up to Prague to see you and even now it was only because 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.
(Of course, in my mind, even whilst I digested her words, the initial instincts I thought to myself but not aloud, was why didn’t she just ask me to join her somewhere if she was so busy, surely she’d known I’d have come straight away and then the bit about no way to forgive herself, well, fuck, I tried to stifle an ironic laugh, how the fuck did she forgive herself for dropping me without the grace of doing so face to face but by a sneaky little letter under the cover of the night?)
I mean you know, a few times when I was close, I tried to drop a postcard to you but even then, most cities I go to, I’m not there for very long and since you don’t really have a telephone or any way to really get in touch with you, well, it’s been difficult. Especially since I don’t always know the next stop on the tour. It’s all been happening so fast.
So anyway, when I got to Prague, in transit to Krakow, I just took a cab and went to that pub you mention so much, Shot Out Eye? I even had a hard time getting a cab to find it because I didn’t have the address or even the name in Czech. Anyway, I figured you mention it so much in your letters, you were more likely to be there than your own flat. She gave a short giggle. Funny, isn’t that, Witold? Left with the choice I figured I’d be more likely to find you in a pub than your flat…anyway, 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 just for the chance to feel you 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.
Already she’d spilled more to me about herself, about her feelings, about her inner workings and thoughts in this short flurry of words than in all the times we’d spent together combined. For the tiniest of instances of self-recognition, I was dismayed to think I’d spent so much time pining after someone I knew so little about. Perhaps that dream was a common one after all, a tiny sliver of sanity. Perhaps that was the purpose all along.
I didn’t bother saying anything for awhile and neither did she. Her eyes searched mine for a faint hint of recognition but despite myself, despite the inner joy I felt at what she’d said, with the introduction of the idea that this, all these months of infatuation had simply been a diversion for not just me but both of us, I questioned the authenticity of any of the feelings I thought I’d had. Still, you don’t suffocate an infatuation as powerful as mine for her with a few words. Especially not when her words, if I chose to interpret them in such a way, were actually an acknowledgement that she too cared, that there was the thinnest hope of moving this beyond a simple sliver of sanity.
I took another sip of courage, finally moving, flinching, and cleared my throat.
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 obliquely and took a larger sip of wine, large enough to finish off the glass. How about another glass of wine while I think about that a moment, she cooed as the tension in our nerves screamed out for a respite.
I searched for the waiter who, busy as he was, had managed to spy the emptying of the glass and was quickly on the job, bringing another two glasses to the table obediently, ticking our drink slip and disappearing again.
Armed with another 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 that 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 Albert 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. Not of course, because we were going to go on stage together for the first time ever, the three of us, but because she was here at all and not only that she was here at all but that we’d actually held a discussion about our future together. The future. Well, it was not a definitive future by any measure but it was a hell of a lot more that I had to go on than I’d had a few hours before.
Without little further preamble, I took her by the hand and we
walked back out into the hall to the table where 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.
*****
With Anastasia joining us we were suddenly a trio again, Anastasia’s arrival was a punctuation of our performance. It wouldn’t be about us, we whispered, but her. Even Albert seemed a little unnaturally giddy as he slurped his beer and explained various tactics for masking our insufficient talent with Anastasia’s sweet voice. Our own music was of no consequence, he elaborated. We would just tried to play as quietly in the
background as possible.
The others were naturally quite interested in these new developments. We all kept fairly low key about Anastasia’s talents; yes, she sang, no, she didn’t play any instruments, yes, we’d played together before, no we hadn’t been expecting that she’d show, no we were quite happy to have her join us and yes, they were all going to be in for a little treat, no doubt.
We were buoyed by her arrival, naturally. Suddenly we felt like we had a little credibility. Not credibility based upon the stories Mikhail had dreamed up to sell us to the promoters and get us on the bill but real credibility, a real chanteuse. And after all these months, after the false start of that club in Amsterdam, after those hours rehearsing in Utrecht, most all of which was now out the window it’d been so long ago.
When she excused herself at one point to freshen up, Albert leaned in conspiratorially. So what’s the deal then? I shrugged. No deal. I mean, well, I dunno, she kind of implied that she’s got a few things to sort through, the gigs for one, I dunno personal shit I guess, but that in essence, if I’m willing to continue waiting for her, well, it might be worth my while in the end.
Well I’ve got to hand it to you Witold, you’ve been persistent, I’ll give you that. I’d have never kept at it like you did. Not after the way she left. But what the hell, she’s here, I mean, this is great. Now we can avoid a long afternoon and evening of humiliation and embarrassment.
Eventually we were summoned to the front side of the stage and backstage and as the act on stage was tapering off, received instructions on set up; the sound check was going to be as brief as possible, they were running a little behind on time, Mikhail, who had come along as a translator, explained to us. And then, just like that, the band on stage was off.
We ordered a quick shot of slivovice for bravado and good
luck when suddenly the canned music faded and someone got on the PA
to announce, the infamously awkward, Damy a panove, Stalin’s Mother.
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
dozen beers that proceeded him.
I held the sax in front of me, too much adrenaline flowing through me to stand very steadily, gathered a deep breath and staring at a fixed point above the
heads of the crowd because I was terrified suddenly, gasping for
water.
But then 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 of the hall 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 had fallen absolutely silent.
The crowd, every face I could discern from my vantage point, bartenders and waiters and kitchen help and doormen all stood there, transfixed by Anastasia's voice. I wouldn’t have described it as being something more beautiful than they’d ever heard but you have to understand, the majority of the afternoon had been filled with mostly booming male voices, raucous blues and very little jazz. Especially jazz sung by a diminutive woman with a powerful song which seemed larger than her own lung capacity, her own body could have produced.
All those times we’d rehearsed back in Utrecht, what we could remember anyway, gradually began to filter back in because you don’t forget things like that - Albert and I didn’t anyway because we’d had really pretty much nothing to compare it to or replace it with in the interim.
But whatever we’d rehearsed, as we’d always played only for ourselves in that flat, had been rehearsed without an audience so there was no way of knowing what to expect. Yes, she’s sung hundreds of times for audiences and knew precisely what she was doing, how she was doing it, how she would draw them in and exhale them back out gently into their seats, how goose bumps would appear on their flesh. She knew the reactions and was prepared for them. She knew how good she was in essence, what she expected from herself and what she expected from her audience and knew from the very start, even with the two of us clanging around in the background, this was going to be her audience and she was going to make sure they remembered that.
And even though I thought I was concentrating on playing, in essence, even as I played ever so gently, I was listening to her like one of the audience myself and I was also noticing how silent and motionless the audience had become. I’d never seen an audience transfixed by anything Albert and I had ever done together. At best we were background noise with the risk of becoming annoying. But that was just the two of us. With Anastasia on stage, we were transformed. And out there, into that blackness the stage lights were blinding us from, there was 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.
4:29 AM
9.3.09
CHAPTER 15: Holešice Jazz Festival
“Jazz is an intensified feeling of nonchalance”
- Francoise Sagan
Mikhail was a little droopy eyed as he stared at me over the chess
board. We were hunkered down in the smoke clouds inside The Shot Out Eye, 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 and blues 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.
Shortly after we’d met him he’d invited us to come and open for the band he’d strewn together for a night in a local cabaret. He’d heard us that night in the Shot Out Eye and although he didn’t approve entirely of our music, he thought enough of us as novelties to try and lend a hand in promoting us.
Typically, Albert and I had spent the afternoon warming up in a our flat drinking beer and rehearsing. By the hour we were to step up on stage we couldn’t remember even how we’d gotten there. Our playing was atrocious, so we thought. Absolute shit. And yet, as we swayed, post gig, complete and random strangers approached us, eager to practice English by praising our playing.
It’d been a success but for Albert dropping his bass case on a knee-level glass table around which sat a handful of Russian mafia-types and upon which had sat several bottles and glasses of expensive champagne. When the case hit the table. Needless to say, glass and expensive booze went flying everywhere, including the clothes of the Russian mafia-types, who only moments before had been laughing and seeming to enjoy themselves and their slender female escorts.
Somehow, Mikhail was able to rescue us from certain death, hauled us out quickly, pleading with the furious Russian mafia-types who were ready to cut our throats to forget all about it, handing over handfuls of Czech 1000 crown notes he took from Albert and I as he was simultaneously pulling us away.
About a month later we'd tried a quintet that failed miserably. It failed mainly because, quite frankly, Albert and I proved to be rubbish at playing blues standards. Don’t ask me why, the music itself wasn’t difficult. It was perhaps the difficulty at maintain discipline or perhaps it because by comparison to the three other musicians, Mikhail, a drummer and a keyboard player, Albert and I weren’t really very good. No one really said it, they excused it politely by saying blues might not really be our bag since clearly we were talented jazz improvisational musicians and perhaps making the leap from one to the other was too much to ask too soon, etc. They really were quite nice about, thanks but no thanks and felt bad enough afterwards they took us out and bought us drinks most of the night to make up for it.
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 looked at me deeper with those
droopy eyes and shrugged. There is nothing for me here. he comments,
finishing off his glass and standing up. Why don't you two boys 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
conspiratorially with a little snicker
**********
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 Pavel about it and he is convinced we can
promote you as some sort of expatriate 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 sickly 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 to
Illusion back to reality again. 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.
The music hall was already crowded before the first band had even started, heaving with musicians, friends, family, neighbours, supporters who were from early on, already allowing the beer to flow freely.
The first few acts came on as we were gathered around the table continuing our banter both in Czech and English (for our benefit and when one could be arsed to include us in.) They were in fact, quite talented acts, local kids who had formed in some instances, heavy metal screeching and in other instances, seminal blues bands.
Mikhail and his wife, along with his mates and hers were all sat at the table length and took turns switching seats to sit next to us, ask us questions about America, about our music, American music generally along the “have you heard of…” lines.
As the first hour or two had passed we were simply indifferent to the idea of playing at all ourselves. We were thoroughly entertained simply by the acts that were already on and the company, conversation and beer that flowed all around us in liberal portions.
In the midst of hearing about one girl’s experience as an exchange student in the suburbs of Cleveland, out of the corner of my eye, I could discern a movement in the crowd that had gathered around us. A subtle movement but one which I intuitively became aware of. Although I couldn’t see over the top of heads, a wave of sorts was moving the crowd back and sideways and eventually, as it reached the very front of where we were sat, I could hear no more of the conversation around me, as if I’d gone suddenly deaf. Actually it seemed as if everyone around me had stopped moving, stopped talking, the band had stopped playing and the beer was all gone. As the very front of that crowd parted, much to my shock and simultaneous excitement arrived the very diminutive figure of Anastasia.
1:54 AM
CHAPTER 14: Breaking The New Dawn, Piece By Piece
I know some day you’ll have a beautiful life
I know you’ll be a sun
In someone else’s sky
But why
Why
Why can’t it be
Why can’t it be mine?
Pearl Jam, Black
(from the Diaries of Witold Kazersamski, cahier 2, page 173)
.
..there is 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 has 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 keeps even the Shot Out Eye
out of walking distance for several days in a row. Sometimes we hire this kid, this little Czech entrepreneur named Jiri to take our pitcher and run up to the corner pub for a fill.
Jiri is 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.
In addition to the spell of unbearably shitty weather we'd outspent
our monthly allotment in one week and were stuck for three more living on only the barest of essentials.
Yeah, I suppose we could have dipped into the following month’s budget. It was an arbitrary, artificial sum in any event but it had been maintained
rather religiously leading up to then so we didn’t want to set the precedent of failing to meet our budget.
That’s how the fucking Soviets used to fuck it up all the time, Albert warned one night when we were sitting around playing cards listening to BBC World on the transistor and I was moaning about being bored and considering blowing the monthly budget off.
Remember all those five year plans they’d go on about achieving? Sure, they’d allege to meet them, but it was all bureaucracy, all about meeting targets, targets that were never met of course and everyone just fudged the numbers or cheated outright so they wouldn’t end up in some fucking gulag playing dominoes with frozen fingers and digging ditches all the time. Of course, those plans were based on productivity and our plan is based on well, diminishing resources with no planned productivity but nonetheless, the point is if the five year plans had been realistic to being with and in theory if everyone had fulfilled their end of the bargain, their quotes, their targets, whatever, the system might have worked. And so might ours. I’m trying to stay unemployed in case you hadn’t noticed, Witold. I’m not interested in having to go out and find work. But if I piss away my monthly budget, eventually it’s going to catch up to me and eventually, I’m going to be fucked. penniless. Looking for work. So there you go. Besides, it builds character, going without!
So that’s basically why and how we imposed these draconian measures. Because of Albert’s thoughts on the flaws on the Soviet Five Year Plan and because we were building character.
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 master to come
home then a ten minute walk or another plateful of the same smoked sausage with the same jar of horseradish.
I realised then how much time we were spending drinking. Sure, there were rehearsals and occasionally gigs, paying or otherwise, but usually non-paying. There was busking in the streets out of the eye of the police which was sometimes rather difficult considering the best places to busk were where all the tourists were which is of course where all the police were. And also considering with Albert’s double bass we weren’t exactly speedy in our attempts to escape.
But in the absence of having the money to simply drink as much as we could handle or spend as much time in the pubs and cafes as we felt like seemingly without consequences, we became acutely aware of how little we actually did.
One night out in Akropolis, after we’d gone two days subsisting on little bread rolls and the shittiest, cheapest canned beer we could find from the local market just so we could save enough of our remaining budget money to have the opportunity to spend a night of fairly free drinking where we weren’t pinching every heller and worrying over the prohibitive cost of every sip we took, I spied a pair of young women sitting by themselves casually drinking a bottle of Moravian wine.
Now, it certainly wasn’t difficult meeting or chatting up the local girls. By and large they were pretty interested in Americans, maybe they represented a ticket out, maybe because the mini invasion of Prague had piqued their curiosity, maybe, who knows.
But of course, I was far too preoccupied thinking about Anastasia to bother chatting them up or responding positively to any efforts they made inroad to holding a conversation and Albert was, well, older than most of the other Americans who were living in Prague or hanging out. It didn’t disqualify him but it meant he was forcing himself to learn a little more patience than he’d demonstrated when he was frequenting whores in Utrecht.
In any event, we were both pretty drunk at one point, not much of an accomplishment considering we’d been eating a minimalist diet of bread rolls and radishes for the last two days and the usual non verbal banter, eye-play started going on between our two tables. Eventually, Albert decided we should amble over with our beers and have a go at speaking to them. I dunno why exactly. It’s not like we weren’t accustomed to being drunk and it wasn’t like we were particularly desperate, it was just one of those things, you know, things fall together a certain way and well, you just follow.
We got around to chatting them up, sitting down at their table and ordering more beer. We were talking about how it sometimes felt like there was nothing going on in Prague other than hanging out in pubs and sleeping or riding trams and shopping. We were well aware there was plenty of going on, but it all seemed realated in some way to tourist shit. Did the Czechs ever go to these operas or plays or recitals in the old town or was it all just for show, just creative little things to keep the tourists busy?
Needless to say the two girls were a bit put off by our ignorance. That we slurred our words and laughed hysterically at our own jokes probably didn’t aid our cause either. But to the credit of these girls, they were troupers of sorts, not easily scared off or annoyed, willing to endure us on the premise that we might say something interesting eventually. One of them mentioned having seen us near the Charles Bridge busking, remarking casually that she recalled it in particular because she thought only the old Czech men played jazz. Most of the other buskers played acoustic guitars and sang cover songs.
If you’re bored all the time, or tired of wasting all your time in pubs, why don’t you do something else, one of them volunteered. Albert just harrumphed and waved the waiter down for another round. Something else that doesn’t involve beer, the other continued like a tag-team nag all of the sudden. Like what, have a nap in the National Museum? Albert wasn’t in the mood for discussing non-drinking activities.
Have you ever even BEEN to the National Museum, the other ventured, leaning in toward Albert and pointing a finger accusatorily.
The National Museum? He laughed. Why the fuck would I want to go there?
It’s unbelievable, really, they muttered to each other. People like you come here and get fucked off your head like there’s nothing else going on in this country, like this is just some cheap drinking society you come to for hedonistic lust. I don’t know why, but for some reason, I find something appealing beneath this phoney nihilistic façade of yours. Enough so I’d say that I’d see you again, Albert, if you were to say, meet me at the National Museum in two days around noon and if you were to say, show up sober and stay that way for let’s say six hours.
The other girl looked somewhat astonished and then looked over at me, terrified that I might anticipate a similar such offer. I shook my head. My heart was still pickled in the bitterness of missing out on Anastasia.
Albert on the other hand, managed to find it all quite amusing in an incredulous sort of way, as if it were happening to someone else or he were watching it in a movie, impassively from his seat.
What is this, some kind of dare?
Take it however you like, Albert. The thing is, people like you make me a little sick, the way you treat my city, my country. If you’re going to live here and drink here for crissakes, at least take some time to learn about where you are. Look at you, you don’t speak a word of Czech, you know nothing about the literature, probably very little about the music despite professing some sort of affinity for both literature and music, and you spend most of your time either drunk or recovering from being drunk. This isn’t a country called Cheap Beer Land, she chastised. It’s called the Czech Republic!
And with that, she took her friend’s elbow and the two of them stood up, not even bothering putting on their coats before leaving.
So do you think she was serious about meeting at the National Museum in two days at noon? Albert asked suddenly, somewhat sincere.
Ha, what do you care?
I might just show up and see what happens.
*****
Perhaps it was an indication of how bored he truly was but two mornings later, Albert was up early making a large cup of instant coffee from the hot water tap, smiling smugly when he saw me emerge eventually from sleep and fog.
Bear in mind that other than that fling with the singing whore in Utrecht, I’d not only seen Albert with another girl before, I hadn’t even heard him talk about anyone. I mean most people, even stoic friends, might let slip after all these beery evenings together, the name of one or two former flames. Maybe recount some maudlin tale about some love gone awry. Something. Hell, even though I spent most of my time prior to meeting Albert by myself, I’d still managed to work up a brief infatuation or two. Sure, I’d never actually screwed up the courage to talk to them let alone have a relationship with them, but at least I’d had a history that I’d divulged of showing some interest.
So you know what today is, he smirked, handing me a cup for myself.
Yeah, today’s the day you’re supposed to meet that girl in front of the national Museum at noon. Sober.
His face fell a little. Well, er, yes, that too. But never mind about that for a minute. In two days it will be first of the month! Meaning of course, our little budgetary crisis is over and we can go back to eating like humans instead of dogs or homeless people and most importantly, we have plenty of reserves to see ourselves through several nights of the Shot out Eye!
Oh, I get it. It’s nothing to do with this girl at all then is it? Just the first of the month and carefree times again? Pshaw. Admit it, you’re excited about meeting her again, aren’t you?
Ah fuck, I dunno, Witold, he told me with sudden candor.
You know I don’t have much use for women. I mean yeah, I like women. I like having sex with them, it’s just that I’m not particularly fond of all the chit chat I have to endure leading up to the good stuff. You know how I feel. But yeah, I’ll admit I was a little intrigued by her. I like a woman who’s not full of shit, who gets right to the point. And besides, who knows, maybe she’s got a good singing voice….
*****
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. The girl never showed for the National Museum. After all that subliminal foreplay by Albert, (I knew he’d had high expectations despite the transparency of his denials) he showed up at the appointed hour with the appropriate sobriety, under the influence of nothing but belief, and she hadn’t bothered to get there.
I figured as much, Albert confided. I mean my real intention, since she’d made such a big deal about being sober and checking out this cultural nonsense, was to try and convince her to have a drink at a café before we even went inside. I was going to impress her with the knowledge the museum was built on the sight of what used to be a horse market, just to show her I wasn’t just some drunken cultural ignoramus.
But I stood out there and stood out there until I couldn’t look casual standing there any more. So I figured fuck it. I’ll go have a drink. I know the budget’s fucked but I figured after that kind of humiliation, the least I could do would be to treat myself to a drink, right?
So I decide to go to Café Louvre, you know that snobbish sort of place on the main drag, Narodni, near the museum? So I’m sitting there, the waiter’s just brought the beer over and who shows up but this girl, can you imagine? I’m like where the fuck were you? You know what she says to me? She says, “I knew it. I knew you couldn’t go six hours without a drink.”
I’m like how the fuck do you know when the last time was I had a drink and how did you know I was in here having a beer? So she tells me, simple. She waited from a distance - she’d been there all along, see. She’d been there all along getting some kind of weird, sadistic pleasure out of watching me wait. Or seeing how long I’d wait before I’d give up. And then when I’d given up, how long before I had a drink.
So, I was pretty fucking shocked as you can imagine but I was still thinking on my feet so to speak so I asked her, what would you have done if I’d just walked away, just turned around and walked back to my flat and didn’t stop anywhere for a drink?
Oh, that’s easy she says, I’d have rung your doorbell and apologised for being late for the meeting, say that I got your address from someone at the Shot Out Eye since you told me you frequent that place and we’d probably have had a really good time. I usually sleep with men I fancy on the first date too. So there you go, she says, getting up from the table. I hope you enjoy your beer. That’s it, Albert nearly shouts hysterically over the Sonny Rollins live at the Village Vanguard CD I’d been enjoying. That’s all she said, hope you enjoy your beer. Can you imagine? I mean, what the fuck kind of mental case is she anyway?
Well Albert, maybe you’re right after all. Maybe you should just stick to whores. Cruel injustice, I know, I cooed afterwards. On the other hand, at least you weren’t in love with her. At least she didn’t come to visit you personally, fill your head with all sorts of off key ideas about emotions, fill you with some sort of hope about your music playing, fill your mate with some sort of rubbish about upcoming gigs and then just disappear leaving only a brief note in her wake.
Noted, he muttered, pretending to read a book in Czech, upside down as he ripped open a can of cheap beer and tried to relax.
*****
And so we returned to our rituals 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 pained 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 Kazimir, one of the owners of the Shot Out Eye 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 at one time or another at a gig or two or had even seen us busking 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 Kazimir felt assured that our playing wouldn't spawn a mass withdrawal from the pub, he was willing to let
us try and entertain.
So that following Saturday it seemed quite natural to show up at 1:00 when Kazimir opened the doors to the pub. Albert dragged the bass onto the bus and we rode down as soon as we woke up, flush with cash now that the new month and new budget had begun.
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 Kazimir 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 last week or two of having little money for other activities had
afforded us an unexpected sum of free time to practice and so some of the pieces whilst a little more polished musically, had developed lyrically or verbally, disproportionately enough so we ran the risk of giving away the fact we had no talent.
So, conscious of having drawn out several bits far too far, 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, I tried to coerce was forsaken and we found ourselves in the odd position of being forced to play more and talk less.
This led to 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. Kazimir slapped us on the back and handed us
another shot of Slivovice.
I'm relieved my friends, he confided. 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 tourist 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 bored 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 servant culture of what they deemed to be lesser races
over and over again. These kinds of people needed variety. Fresh faces to sneer at.
They believed their cultural and racial snobbery was applicable everywhere yet imagining them struggling as waiters in Chicago or New York, fumbling with English, dropping this façade of feigned cool, I realised they were nothing outside of their own bourgeois prisons Unimaginative, barbaric. Rich within their community or their country yet impoverished by their minisculity outside of it.
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 print shop? 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.
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: Křižíkova 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 Zličín, 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 you were marooned somewhere or stuck in a perpetual smoke-free sort of Disneyland 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.
*****
(from the Diaries of Witold Kazmirsky, pg 42, book 3)
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 day 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 interlude, 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.
1:53 AM
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