--from the Diaries of Witold Kazmirsky, cahier 11, page 18
We got into Charleroi a few weeks later on a morning train from Brussels.
Charleroi was a fetid, fleeting industrial town, devoid of anything of interest, years removed from refined humanity, a prison-like town far enough away from the main cities to hold a match between the countries whose rivalry extended beyond simple football, but historical hatred.
Perhaps it’s true that the English didn’t hate the Germans as emphatically as the Dutch did but for a football match you’d have been hard pressed to find two countries whose supporters disliked each other more. There was no geniality - the chanting was meant to be bitter and hurtful both in the context of historical humanity and of football itself. The kind of rivalry the media hyped incessantly with ridiculous absurdist abandon. In fact of any first round match, this was the one, when people saw it on the schedule, that they all pointed to. “The” match. Blood lust.
It was primarily for the English and German supporters out of the supporters of all the other countries involved that throughout Belgium that special measures had been taken to control the masses; a rare opportunity for Belgian police to exhibit whatever latent fascist tendencies they may have secretly harboured.
The riot police were out in number. Like any potentially volatile gathering anywhere in the world, the police tried to look as ominous and foreboding as possible; the head to toe black riot gear, the combative stances, the weaponry. They were accompanied in some cases by what one presumed would be attack dogs, if unleashed, yet somehow, in the context of Belgium’s historically passive military history, the effect was somewhat less convincing. These weren’t Bull Connor’s Birmingham Alabama police forces fighting civil rights demonstrators with attack dogs, after all. And only a few weeks prior to the tournament they’d been threatening to go on strike against plans to reform the service So their presence served as little deterrent. If anything their presence was incentive. If the hooligans weren’t clubbing each other, they’d be combining forces to take on the riot police.
Most of the host cities had restricted the sale of beer to watery, weak cousins of the usually strident and delicious kind Belgium was renowned for in the vain hope of controlling mass intoxication and the resultant violence which sprung from mass intoxication but such efforts were predictably and easily thwarted by sheer volume of consumption and the end result, as with the intentions of any bureaucracy, was symbolic only, hindered by the realities on the ground.
But in Charleroi unlike the rest of the host cities, taking advantage of the opportunity of thousands and thousands of drunken celebrants far outweighed any consideration of the resultant, inherent danger of allowing potentially violent people drink as much as they wanted.
Their economy was so depressed, the local proprietors didn't care about hooligans. They just knew les hooligans drank a lot of beer and would spend a lot of money doing it.
The June sun was already bearing down us heavily by early morning. As people began to arrive, the old town square, Place Charles II opened to
numerous cafes and outdoor terraces which, of course, with nothing
else of interest to do in such a dump such as Charleroi, was the first place everyone headed once out of the train station.
Supporters on both sides arrived and seemed to drink as though the world were
about to end. The Germans and the English aligned themselves on
opposite sides of the square, staking out their respective territories, content to swill trough-levels of Belgian beer in plastic cups under the Belgian sun with the football match still another 10 hours away.
Albert and I nabbed a pair of seats on the English side, the sunny
side of the square, eager to watch the unravelling as two countries
with the most notorious hooligan problems were assembled, as though
fate had requested their presence merely to watch a riot play out.
The beer consumption wasn't a gradual swell either. It began suddenly and
swiftly, as soon as the overwhelmed cafe staff had been able to
organise themselves into the sort of assembly line service required for
sudden and instant beer gratification that was demanded with the
pounding of plastic tables and empty bottles.
By the afternoon however, with the dehydrating sun enhancing the results of steady drinking, the singing began, somewhere in synch with
the level of intoxication on each side. Before long both sides were
singing and chanting with equal passion, snarling and screaming with
the sort of red-faced relish that they seemed so accustomed to under
the conditions. In the midst of this a few young girls skipped in
and out of the fountain in the square as though oblivious to the
debauchery going on around them whilst English screamed out clever
little chants like, Hitler, Hitler, what's the score? And shouting
we hate the Germans at the top of their raspy voices.
At one point, an English fan held up a German flag and set it alight before the
Belgian police stepped in to douse the fire but the damage was done. The opening salvo had been fired.
A German supporter made his way to the fountain where the girls were playing and as the parents of the girls watched, unconcerned, oblivious or transfixed as the German began making gestures toward the English side, the inevitability of an explosion was suddenly transparent.
Just as both sides began rushing forward, crowding into the fountain and ready to clash, the Belgian police stepped in, at least to rescue the girls. They weren‘t as confident about obviating the inevitable eruption and it was clear, for a few moments anyway that it was the drunken supporters rather than the riot police who were in control.
We were certain it was all going to kick off, it was simply a matter of time. We were watching the explorative jabs into each sides’ defences; not as though the football match were being performed before us rather a bizarre, barbaric ritual fuelled by passion and alcohol.
We waited, almost holding our breath in anticipation but before the confrontation reached the point of irrevocability, magically and without warning, a beautiful Belgian women materialised, juggling a football for several minutes at a time, transfixing the savages. It was surreal. One minute the air was charged with hatred and violence and drink and the next they were lulled by this woman appearing like a spectre on the battlefield.
But the lull was only temporary.
Hitler, Hitler, what's the score, the English began chanting again as the woman eventually abandoned her plot, realising the futility of entertaining beasts.
The singing only heightened the tensions and not long after, someone
tossed the first plastic chair in the direction of the other. It was
impossible to tell from whence it came since the first thing anyone
noticed was a plastic chair whistling towards and coming to rest in
the no man's land part of the square between us. It didn't matter
really. The act itself was sufficient provocation. Soon chairs were flying across the square from all directions, followed in short order by the plastic tables and the Carlsberg umbrellas. The Belgian riot police, who for hours had been poised with some degree of anxiety but also excitement at the prospect of trouble, didn't hesitate to jump into the fray with their riot clubs and mace. Following them was the water cannon.
The water cannon kind of snuck up on everyone. How that’s possible, I’m not sure but the battle was transfixing and perhaps in the heat of it, it is difficult to maintain a focus on the surroundings. I found myself staring at individuals, wondering which direction they would take, who they might punch or kick or where they might themselves receive their blow.
One minute there was chaos, with both German and English alike turning their assault on the riot police, fending off the wallops and delivering their own.
The burst of activity had come so suddenly that the best Albert and I could
do in response was to stand up, holding our beers and watching as
the water cannon aimed and unleashed its potent force, blowing
people off of the pavement, flying in the air, smashing into tables
and chairs, scraping along the ground. Despite the fact we merely
observed from the vantage point of our beers, the eye of the storm
rising around us, the riot police grabbed us as well, dragging us
away from our beers like jailors and demanding to know whether or
not we were English. Apparently, their orders had specifically been
to sort out the English. Fortunately, we were able to produce
passports proving we weren't and were released in time to have a few
more beers once everything had settled down and the realization that
the match was still to be played had settled in.
*****
It was after riding the wave of football madness that we decided to head
back to Utrecht finally, exhausted by the ordeal, running low on our
monthly stipend of cash we'd tried to strictly adhere to, ready to
return to our new flat, ready to begin the business at hand finally.
Two consecutive weeks of binge drinking, football hooligans,
nationalistic songs and chanting, two consecutive weeks of
mosquito-invested slums in Antwerp and Turk-dominated neighbourhoods in Brussels, two consecutive weeks of train-hopping, watching matches in great detail on to forget the details later in pubs throughout Brussels, Bruges and Antwerp were more than enough to calm our voracious souls for at least long enough to find a place to call our beds, hose down our clothing, shower properly and get back out into the sweltering afternoon of Utrecht.
*****
Over the next few weeks our lives began to take some semblance of
shape. That which we had subliminally craved, namely domesticity,
familiarity and most importantly, an end to the indecisiveness
brought on by living in a state of constant temporality was suddenly
before us without further preamble. We woke the first morning
without coffee, the first indication of an abject lack of planning
and the recidivist's familiarity with an apathetic future. The
showers were ice cold and following much fumbling we managed to make
it out into civilisation again to Café le Journal in the Neude
where we hunkered down over koffie verkeerd and opened newspapers
whose headlines we tried incomprehensibly to decipher.
So we've got to get a lot of stuff for that flat, Albert mentioned
off hand, flipping the pages of the Volkskrant without interest. The
odd thing is neither of us had lived with anyone other than each
other for those few months in New York in many, many years and we
weren't sure how to approach things. A female, he reminded me, would
have had the lists drawn up the night before but being two drunks
without a plan, we'll have to improvise. A female would have the
place cleaned and decorated he added for emphasis, perhaps fatigued
already with what seemed the enormity of the planning given that
we'd spent the better part of the month on the fly with the most
difficult dilemmas being which beers to order, which cities to
visit, which train to catch.
We were, it might have appeared to the outsider's eye, two
road-weary men of indiscernible age but old enough to have settled
these scores long ago, somewhat puzzled by the possibilities and
scenarios ahead. Neither of us had much facility with planning, worn
as we were by the drinking and the spontaneity of movement suddenly
coming to a halt.
There was a twofold problem based on practicality when it came to
furniture. One, transporting whatever we bought from A to B without
any form of transportation save for our legs and the local bus. And
two, once we brought it to the flat, how to negotiate those
staircases with awkwardly sized furniture.
I wonder what they'd suggest at Marktzicht, I ventured knowing it
was far too early for the first beer but knowing as well that its
patrons were often a useful source of practical informationwhich we were none too keen or capable of disseminating ourselves.
Albert grumbled incoherently. The waitress brought two more coffees and little cookies that went with them that I bit into hungrily.
For the first time since the movement had begun, now that it had temporarily ceased, I was feeling homesick.
Homesick for simplicity without practical decisions confronting me,
without having to feel like an odd couple of non-tethered people on
the brink of insanity fuelled by alcoholism and futility. At least
at home I knew where everything was and how to get it from Point A
to Point B.
By the early afternoon we'd made our way out of Café Le Journal and
had taken to wandering vacantly from one shop to another without
anything in particular in mind to purchase. What we really needed
was a pair of beds or mattresses at the very least, a sofa some
tables perhaps a chair or two and this was just the most obvious
things. The smaller details mattered less but would loom important
with time – music, books, something to play the music with and
shelves to store the books on. These were, after all, our bread and
butter but after weeks on the road we needed at least to make the
place seem bearable.
So instead of furniture we spent the morning listening to and buying
CDs. We still had nothing to play them on except the broken stereo
left by the previous tenant but at least we felt as though we were
accomplishing something by making an accumulation of something. We
needed collections to give home a feeling of home even if the
collections were arbitrary and perhaps non-representative of
anything other than the whim of the moment.
By the afternoon we were in fact back in Marktzicht having a few
beers and having convinced the barman to play Miles' Birth of Cool,
a few Shostakovich String Quartets, Joe Turner, Dexter Gordon and
Lester Young were blissfully ignorant that we’d accomplished, in typical fashion, nothing at all but the selection of a handful of Cds we wouldn't even be able to listen to at home.
There were of course, plenty of suggestions on the dilemma of the
furniture - labourers' trucks and vans could be borrowed or procured
for the price of a few beers for a few hours with the added labour
thrown in for free, a pulley system could be rigged (failing the
fact that the windows would have to be removed and then reattached as well as the absence of a pulley to begin with), and several mentioned the idea of Ikea of other similar assemble at-home furniture which would solve both the problem of transport and stairways at once.
And so by the end of a week's time we had the semblance of home
assembled.
*****
For the first time in months our lives had descended from the peaks of madness thrust upward by the ground level thirst for alcohol. It wasn’t just being in Albert’s company that made it so, Christ knows I drank enough solo before I’d ever met him and further still when he’d been off doing his time for the drunken theft and subsequent car crash but ever since he’d returned with that bum knee to New York and we’d been stuck in the same quarters together, the litany of excuses for a drink was in essence, insatiable.
And certainly upon our initial arrival to Holland, followed by the blurry chaos of a fortnight in Belgium following the football, the level of drinking had not abated one iota, in fact, grew almost disproportionate to the intake of anything else at the time.
But now, here, a blissfully domesticated pair of virtually talent-less, wandering musicians, we were finally capable of drawing a breath and exhaling, settling in quietly with relief, reduced to merely maintenance drinking and finally finding the space and the time to begin rehearsing.
Albert was content to sleep in most days, get up, buy an English paper or the USA Today or the International Herald, those innocuous rags that sopped up expat homesickness and kept those speaking only English in tune with the goings on of the world.
For a few weeks I spent my mornings as though in deep study trying to learn the language. I had a thick Dutch-English dictionary, listened to Dutch talk radio for the background noise to immerse myself in the sound and diligently set about translating articles from the Volkskrant which to the untrained eye, appeared appealing.
Gradually I began picking up phrases and attempted using them in the pubs and cafes, nearly always swept back into my own language by the English-infatuated Dutch.
And as more time went on, since I’d gotten only a cut of Albert’s settlement and wasn’t charging over the top to sublet my flat back in New York like Albert was, my concerns mounted about finances although I kept such concerns to myself.
Eventually, I decided I’d be best off, both as a means of managing my time during the lulls of the non-drinking hours and in order to augment my dwindling savings, finding some sort of work. Work where I could be paid under the table, black, as they called it, considering I had no legal right to work in the country, and at the very least earn the cost of my meagre rent and massive drinking tabs.
Through the trapeze of café to café, pub to pub, meeting locals and gaining their confidences, I eventually came across a few builders in the business of tearing up housing and redoing interiors, found a ready black market for employment and commenced getting up early mornings and setting off on my bike to a variety of work sites, performing a variety of jobs, mostly menial and low paying but income nonetheless, sufficient to keep me both busy and in beer.
Evenings were dedicated either to being out in the pub or the café embarking further delirious endeavours of intoxication, or staying in with a crate of Grolsch and Albert, working on a variety of songs we picked at like angry sores, over and over again until the irritation began to resemble in some fashion, a minor set list we could play if we were ever able to land another gig.
This went on for weeks, into the late summer, a routine that began to feel almost natural yet simultaneously foreign. There was no forgetting ever, that we weren’t a part of the scene, just shadows in the back ground although we were no doubt, there, drinking and socialising, we weren’t them, we weren’t always privy to their jokes and their culture, the conversations weren’t always, sometimes rarely about music or literature or art and in those moments even Albert and I together would occasionally feel as though we were standing on the outside looking in at the party.
*****
One night in early August I dreamt that I’d died.
In the dream I had somehow managed to find myself in what appeared to be heaven and at the entranceway I was met by a chubby Mexican woman with a silently proud Mayan face. She was my guide and she took me through each
level of this place, dead musicians from various decades on
different floors like a boarding house, just hanging around talking
and drinking; Hendrix with Benny Goodman, Beethoven struggling to listen to Lennon, Janis Joplin and Sid Vicious engaged in a drinking game, Blind Lemon Jefferson and Robert Johnson laughing and so on and in each room I passed through I searched for a sign of my father, holding his horn casually as he stood in a corner watching everyone with amusement or seeking out people like Fats Navarro and Tommy Dorsey.
This Mexican woman, who needed no name for my recognition of
her was immediate, as though she were the mother of all mothers, led
me from room to room, knowing who I was looking for but not
acknowledging whether my search was in vain.
I stopped in a room that was empty. Must be the future, I tried to
laugh. The Mexican woman was gone, the wall slid open revealing the
streets of Paris.
Now I wouldn't be any more likely than you would to just rush off to
Paris in search of my father, primarily because I'd come to believe
that he was dead. I mean, you don't hold a thought like that for so
long and then suddenly come to disbelieve it simply because of a
dream.
But just as Albert had discovered what he'd hoped were the roots of
his soul in Holland, so I allowed myself to believe that perhaps my
roots, inexplicably, were somewhere in Paris, or perhaps a hint or a
sign of them were somewhere there, waiting to be discovered. Perhaps
the image of my father in the dream was merely his way of showing me
a sign.
I suppose secretly, I didn't believe a scrap of it. But now that the
idea had planted itself, there was no reason not to just have a
look. A few days. Just a look.
Albert was sitting in his bathrobe having a coffee, smoking with a
distant look in his eyes as he stared at the wall.
I'm going to go to Paris for a few days, I announced, pouring a cup
for myself and leaning against the kitchen counter. Albert didn't
say anything at all, blowing smoke rings patiently. What's going on
in Paris?
Nothing in particular. It's just that we've been here for several
months and I feel like I should at least get out for a few days,
make an effort to see someplace else for a few days. That, and the
fact of this weird dream I had last night which seemed to summon me
to Paris.
More smoke rings.
So you had a dream about Paris and now you're going to go there?
This morning? He smiled to himself. How very faithful of you…
Well, it's not like I believe the dream or anything; it's just a
good excuse as any to go I suppose. Certainly the City of Light must
be somewhere there on that tiny agenda hidden underneath the beer
and Winstons…I mean hell, I imagined we'd be barnstorming across
Europe by now and yet I feel as though I'm only here to listen to
the ticking of the clock, drink more beer and forget I'm alive.
Well, at least the venue is different.
Indeed and so shall the venue be different again. I'd be back
before it' even registered that I'd gone.
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