- Francoise Sagan
Mikhail was a little droopy eyed as he stared at me over the chess board.
We were hunkered down amid the smoke clouds inside The Shot Out Eye, racing through half litre glasses of Mestan beer that arrived and were
swallowed with more frequency than the chess moves themselves. For
the moment chess was the secondary adventure to the drinking. It was one
of those nights. One of those many nights.
Mirek and Miroslav, two members of a popular and historic local rock
band, were trying to interrupt our already wobbly match by out-shouting
each other with nonsensical slogans about Kafka and black humour
over and over again in different accents. Their band 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. It sounded heavy, but by
2001, the fervour of revolution had subsided. They were almost main
stream.
Mikhail, on the other hand, was a jazz and blues guitarist who worked part
time in a musical instrument shop near the city centre. As far as we knew
he spent his free time rehearsing in the basement of that shop with a
variety of local musicians trying, with varying degrees of success, to
organise them into bands and when the bands were organised, to find gigs
for them to play in.
Shortly after we’d met him for the first time at the Shot Out Eye, months
before, he’d invited Albert and I to come and open for the band he’d strewn together for a night in a local cabaret. He’d overheard us talking
our usual stream-of-conscious gibberish hyperventilating into musical
theory and although he didn’t particularly agree with what little of we
were saying that he understood about our haphazard music, he thought
it might be interesting enough, our novelty sufficiently eccentric to try
and lend a hand in promoting us by letting us open for one of his gigs.
Typically, Albert and I had spent the afternoon warming up in a our flat drinking beer and pretending to rehearse. The enthusiasm we’d once
shown in Utrecht and Amsterdam was nearly completely gone by then,
replaced by a listless and generalised malaise that came with the standard
lack of direction. Much like in Utrecht, once in Prague we‘d established
a pattern and were not likely to break out of it any time soon.
By the hour we were to step up on stage we couldn’t remember even how
we’d gotten there. Our playing was atrocious to our ears, disjointed,
inflexible and perhaps overall, sad, so we thought. The essence of
failure. And yet, as we swayed, post gig, complete and random strangers approached us, eager to practice English by praising our playing.
It’d would have 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 several bottles and glasses of expensive champagne stood. When the case hit the table, glass and expensive booze went flying everywhere, including on the clothes of the Russian mafia-types, who only moments before had been laughing and seeming to enjoy themselves and
their slender yet curvy female escorts.
The mood turned sour with frightening alacrity. We thought for a split
second we envisioned our lives flashing before our eyes. Somehow,
Mikhail was able to rescue us from certain death, quickly pleading with
the furious Russian mafia-types who seemed quite prepared to cut our
throats, to forget all about it, handing over handfuls of Czech thousand
crown notes he took from Albert and I as he was simultaneously pulling
us away.
And then only the night before 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 along with
an exceptional drummer and a keyboard player, Albert and I simply
weren’t really very good.
No one really came right out and 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. Still, it
was a discouraging step backwards and that night our faith in our
musical talent was at its nadir.
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.
A better chess player than blues musician, no doubt. Check mate, under
the influence of less Mestan, would have probably been less than three
moves away but under the circumstances, it might have taken all night.
Mikhail pushed his finger out at his pieces and knocked the king over. Are
you quitting? I demanded 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. I still feel bad for you about that disastrous blue session but I
think there’s hope for you yet. Why don't you two boys come with me to
the Holešice Jazz festival next weekend? It’s my home town, I am already playing there and since I know the promoter, maybe I can convince them to squeeze you in somewhere, on an alternative stage somewhere... He raised
his eyebrows. Somewhere they won't notice you, he whispered conspiratorially with a little snicker. You both can sleep at my place there.
**********
And so the following Friday Mikhail, Albert and I found ourselves
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 were waiting with us. For nearly
a week Albert and I had managed to try and pull ourselves together,
convinced, much as we’d been in anticipation of the gig Anastasia had
arranged for us in Amsterdam, that just a little rehearsal was all we
needed to sound like we knew what were doing. If only the random
note sequences were contrived rather than actually random we might
have been more convincing.
So did you hear more about our performance? Albert grumbled, lighting a
no filter Start cigarette, coughing, red-faced and veins popping up
in his forehead and looking expectantly at Mikhail.
Absolutely! he nearly shouted, relieved to have a topic of good news to
break the soul-dragging silence hanging over us. The old ladies and the
school teacher looked 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
subliminal importance. He likes your new name, Stalin's Mother, it
sounds more interesting than The 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.
Now of course, you might wonder why we’d changed the name of our
band like that, surely the handful of followers, if they even numbered
that many, would be disappointed. The truth is, not only was the name
The Deadbeat Conspiracy getting us nowhere, it was also tainted by
the memory of Anastasia, who I hadn’t heard from since that mysterious
postcard from Budapest.
So one day, maundering through the titles while paying Marshall a
visit in the American Business College library, I came across a Stalin
biography with photos. Thumbing through the old photographs, I
naturally thought of Anastasia and her collection of anonymous photos
but then my thoughts were jolted by a photograph of an older woman
who, according to the caption underneath, was Stalin’s mother.
The idea floored me. Stalin had a mother? Why of course he would
have but to contemplate this brutal dictator’s mother, whatever she
must have done to him as a child to turn him into what he became, why
it must have been repulsive. And so, I thought, while Stalin was a
nasty bit of work, you can only imagine how bad the mother must
have been.
I came home that afternoon to find Albert in his usual mid-afternoon state
of gradually working up to being drunk and announced it was time for a change in the band’s name to Stalin’s Mother, as in, if you think Stalin
was bad, you should have seen his mother.
For a few days anyway, it was inspirational. We managed more
productive rehearsals in those few days than in the last month and a half
combined. But then we were seized by the predictable inertia and
before long, we’d fallen back into routine again. Another false step.
Well, it's a relief that I didn't lug this fucking bass with me for nothing,
Albert growled, giving the ungainly bass carrier beside him an unfriendly jostle and staring down the old ladies beside him. He'd pissed and moaned about that bass ever since he woken up that morning.
This is going to be one heavy fucking thing to drag around with me all weekend, he began warming his whinge to the right pitch 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 provoked 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 near the bus station where he bought several large bottles of beer
for himself. 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 most if not all 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 unique jazz experience, 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.
Yet rather than feel pleased and excited we felt more like circus freaks inevitably. Come, look at the foreigners who will play at our little
weekend festival, regale us with instrumental magic and wonder. In fact,
I was quite pleased with it all, quite prepared to wallow in the special
attention and milk it for all it was worth. Before we’d even played a note
we had them right where we wanted them.
But Albert was brining me down, unnerving me by making noises about wanting to go to Mikhail's place only a half hour or so after we‘d arrived,
moaning like a rheumatic in deep joint agony. He wanted to unload his
gear and wash up from the ride in. Mikhail and I were somewhat stunned
by this mysterious character makeover. Albert, not in the mood to drink?
Free beer?
Nonetheless, we were the guests and so after a final round Mikhail finally stood and announced, much to the disappointment of the crowd gathered
to stare at us, announced without further preamble that the bill had been
sorted and we would now proceed 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 delight our palates and offer desultory conversation.
Upon arrival we met and greeted Elena who we were naturally curious to
discover more about, this suddenly-revealed spouse of German/Bohemian
origin, who in all our nights of chess or music playing or drinking Mikhail
had never sought fit to mention. It was strange to observe this vaguely domesticated version of Mikhail, a subtle, reassuring touch on her elbow,
a secret peck of affection when he thought we weren’t looking.
As we’d trudged the steep uphill distance to his house from the village
centre he‘d begun filling us in. As a profusely sweating and swearing
Albert followed behind at a distance Mikhail filled me in on the logistics
of his past, revealing one breathless layer after another:
First the marriage and child at 20 then the death of the child three years
later under circumstances Mikhail steered well clear of. The marriage
itself he confided, hanging by a thread over remorse and unspoken accusations until Mikhail had taken the decision, spurred on by the news
that a flat of a friend had become available in Prague, to move to Prague
part-time to give his spouse and the marriage the space he thought they
needed. Then before long, finding the job he'd in the music shop, the
stepping stone he'd hoped for a career in Prague as a studio musician or
a promoter or leading a blues band, new dreams to paper over the old
ones.
He filled me in on the subsequent years of drinking and playing music
whilst the distance between himself and Elena, supplemented only by
once-monthly visits back home, gradually narrowed and how slowly
their original love regained a second, tougher skin. He conceded, in
this quickly-unravelled history that while 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 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 the delicacy of relationships, the depths below the surfaces
people often choose not to reveal. 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, not even the time Albert and I had known each other had
revealed much 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 purpose 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 after I’d filled
him in and 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 the 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
Only 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
acoustics 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 thought 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 by 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 remained.
The following morning, how we got back, I don’t know. 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.
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