After the ambulances go
Is Cinderella sweeping up
On Desolation Row”
-Bob Dylan, Desolation Row
Odd, what a difference a woman can make.
With each rail mile I put between Paris and myself the greater the
impression became that I’d just spent two weeks as the unwitting target
of an elaborate hoax or a prolonged hallucination.
I tried to coax myself into believing that regardless of the outcome the
time had been well spent, irrevocably memorable. But you know how it
is when you attempt to delude yourself with one voice in your head only
to be shouted down by the other voice; the one preaching an unrelenting
version of a different reality: eventually you tire and surrender to the lesser
reality, the one you are accustomed to accepting without question.
So as Paris faded away and gradually became Brussels, as I put my body
through the motions of train changing, distracted my brain with it departure
schedules and track locations, I found temporary relief in realising that
I was after all, heading back to a somewhat more familiar destination in
Utrecht, although not quite the familiar domesticity of home at least a
place with familiar faces, a place with the distraction of Albert, of music
of working and drinking.
Yet once again on the train and settled in my seat I took to staring out
the window as the Belgian countryside brushed by like a series of strangers
on a familiar street, lost in reliving every memory I could manage to
piece together as though this were a simple exercise, a reminiscence of
every note played in a show.
*****
Was it so long ago pulling into the Utrecht Central Station with
Albert, eyes brimming raw with excitement and now, one woman later,
every kilometre left behind on the tracks was a deeper surge of the
incommunicable pain racing through the veins, numbing yet
simultaneously heightening the pain.
There was little to do in Utrecht but pine away, stuff two week's
worth of memories into every day to be replayed over and over, hour
by hour like a television sitcom you've seen so many times you find
yourself mouthing the dialogue in sync with the characters.
It's not like we ever had that much to do to distract ourselves with
in the beginning.
Considering our cramped quarters, it was a relief to pick up black
work through Arjen, a friend of Cees who had his own small building
company engaged in the demolition and renovation of apartments, if
only to get out, focus on something other than memories and clear some
space in the head.
My father’s sudden disappearance had interrupted my apprenticeship
at his job sites as an electrician and carpenter but I had retained
enough familiarity to be able to make my way around Arjen's work
sites dabbling in small building jobs and so passed most days working
off the steam of infatuation with my hands.
At first it was more than sufficient as a distraction. Day over, I
would gather myself back to the flat, filthy from head to toe and
exhausted. If he wasn't already in a pub or café, Albert would be
drinking steadily in the flat, chain smoking and listening to music
through the flea market stereo he bought the first week we'd moved
in.
The flat, as I refamiliarised myself with it after two weeks away,
was still above that Somali takeaway on Amsterdamsestraatweg,
one flight above the kitchen where food was prepared we shared the
bathroom and shower facilities with the cook and her staff and then
another flight above it, the top floor of the building which opened
from a kitchenette into a 10 x 15 metre bare wood floor flat.
We'd partitioned the space as best as possible but it was a small
space for two people no matter how you tried to allocate it. A large
kitchen table never used for eating on, just dumping stuff on – books,
papers, empty beer bottles, clothes, rags and whatever else found it's way
into the flat but no further – the kitchen table like a border guard, was
off to the right clearing a vague path into what we determined to be a
combination of a front parlour and makeshift bedroom made up of a
futon which I slept on although usually only it's sofa form, rarely
bothering to even pull it out, avoiding the trouble of having to push it
all back in the following morning. Just before entering the parlour
there was a small ladder leading to a small crawl space within which
Albert had tossed a mattress and a few small drawers. It wasn't of
such a height that he could stand up straight in it but in most
cases he didn't seem to care as it was enough work to crawl up into
the space and onto the mattress to snooze away the hours.
We had no television – like freaks without societal connections, our
only method of newsgathering was via innuendo and gossip in
Marktzicht and even then, limited. The familiar faces that took the
favoured places in the café gathered there every day as if following
through on a daily reservation, other workers coming in from a long
day with plenty to complain about, observe and contemplate, all
within the half pint amsterdametjes that were poured down their
thirsty gullets.
It was odd to consider that in every café the uniqueness of its regular
patrons would render the innuendo and gossip individualised and that
this went on in cafes and pubs not just here but every city in Holland,
in every country of the world, precisely until the multiplications of
humans, squeezing out the bitterness and complaints of the day as they refuelled with alcohol would have seemed mind-boggling, the chatter overwhelming and unique or not, predictable.
Everything had a method in the day of a worker. Following work there
was the obligatory shower although some either too lazy or too
impatient for drink would go directly to the café and start in. In
either situation, by 6, the café was flush with workers sat around
tables, depending on the weather in or out of doors, drinking beers
and gossiping, filling the air with themselves, their voices, their
laughter.
And then as though deflating, they would one by one, get up and head
home for dinner content that they were sufficiently buzzed to make
it through dinner, an hour or two of blank stare television and then
bed.
The first night out with Albert I attempted explaining the meaning
of Anastasia without knowing myself what that meaning had been
other than two weeks of pleasure, two weeks filling a unique hole in my
soul that I‘d never previously contemplated filling. In fact, although
intoxication and distractions had blocked recalling doing so, I'd actually managed a few cryptic postcards to him that I wasn't coming back
straight away but beyond that, I hadn't mentioned anything. Now I was
a faucet that couldn't be turned off.
In time it was up to Albert to shut me up. Although at first he’d seemed
quite keen on absorbing the details, in time, the redundancy of the story
itself began to gnaw away at him like a festering sore.
Nothing's more annoying than listening to someone prattle on about
some girl, he explained, some infatuation, some inability to shut one's
mouth for a moment long enough to allow the other to get a word in
edgewise.
So you see, he continued, delighted in the break of my unrelenting
story to infuse his own version of reality, there is nothing more boring.
We have an entire world here to talk about, gigs to rehearse for, side
streets to explore, people to meet. I can't stomach the idea of spending
the next few weeks listening to you prattle on about some girl you just
met as though you'd already had five kids with her and you were reliving
your memories on a deathbed fifty years later. Enough already. I get the picture. You’re infatuated. I've got every detail stored away in my head.
Now seeing as how the situation won't be changing any time soon, might
I suggest we go back about our business and end this incessant warbling
about love and women?
He was right, of course. At this rate I would drive away every friend
we'd made since we’d arrived so I directed this passion and enthusiasm
to writing letters to her instead. Fucking encyclopaedias they were, devotionals, hymns, scraps of poetry, lyrics, new Dutch words I'd
learned, things I saw in a given day that reminded of her in every blade
of grass, every shift in the wind, changing of the sky, dawn to dusk as
though there was not a droplet of a single second I wished to pass without
her having knowledge of it.
Anyone can tell you such obsession is not only unhealthy, but bound
by its very nature to disappoint, he went on, perhaps feeling a tinge of
guilt for his recriminations. Unless of course, you can imagine a
reciprocal relationship where the emotions of one are equal to the
emotions of another, in depth and intensity – puppy love, if you will,
which is not bound to last. For every pair of high school sweethearts there, rolled out like a line of custom-made Rolls Royces, there are five times as many crap cars manufactured whose shells you will see littering
streetscapes – just like these false senses of love and harmony. We aren't meant to spend our time wallowing in love with one another; we aren't
wired for it because it's too self-destructive. What would man ever
accomplish if he spent all his time trying to fall in love rather than merely trying to get laid?
Albert was one to often preach about the utility of whores – lamenting the
simplicity with which man's second most difficult labour after the
effort to acquire power, the effort to get laid, could have been made if
the world had merely embraced prostitution rather than try to sweep it
under the carpets of morality. Can you imagine, he would struggle
breathlessly with the potential of this fantasy of his, can you imagine
if everywhere in the world were like Holland, if getting laid was merely
a matter of walking around the corner with 100 euros and a hard on
in your pocket? Can you imagine all the broken hearts that would have
been saved, all the fucking time and trouble we men could have been
spared all these years? Fuck. You think man has progressed and advanced
so far in this space of time and yet you wonder what he might have been
able to do, far greater heights in far less a period of time had he not been consumed with constructing methods and schemes for getting laid….
But Albert, I argued with that flutter of infatuation in my heart now
enlarged by the beer, a light-headedness that distorted reality into a
pleasant sensation. Certainly you can't imagine all of those women
being merely enterprising young capitalists who don't mind exchanging
a series of sucks and fucks over a period of several years in exchange
for financial security? Surely you recognise that the majority are there
against their will, or against their nature, forced by circumstances into a
half life of prostitution. Surely you can understand how unsavoury it must
be for them, day in and day out to take men into their bodies, no matter
how clinical the method is with which they deal with these bodies who
have little or no personalities, just hard little dicks to compel them. I mean,
do you imagine them all merely nymphomaniacs who found a sound
financial mechanism through which to express their nymphomania?
Albert scoffed. It is volunteer work, he muttered into his beer.
Sure, maybe the idea of servicing a dozen disgusting men a day isn't
so appealing but I'll tell you what IS appealing…the money they make
afterwards. I've spoken to them in great detail about this because
I'm fascinated by their lifestyles. Do you realise that here, out into the light
of freedom rather than the dark shadows of some moralistic insanity
that forces prostitutes into true servitude; pimps, beatings, rapes, the
whole nine yards, here, it is a simple matter of paying your rent for a
room for the night or for the afternoon. You pay the rent and the rest is
yours, the decision on how much you make, how many you are willing
to fuck, how industrious you choose to be is entirely your own. It's free
enterprise, he stated, poking his finger in my chest. Let's say, and
I know from having asked, that a room costs a girl the equivalent of
200 bucks or less a night. In an eight hour shift, and, ironically, EU
human rights labour laws play a role in this, a woman can take, on average
eight to sixteen men at let's say a going rate of 50 dollars a pop.
Do you realise the money involved? Hell, if I were a woman, I'd do
it. I wouldn't care. Keep your eyes closed, let your mind wander, what's
the difference? After awhile it’s merely reflex and professionalism and
at the end of the night you've got a fat bankroll of cash to keep you
company.
You're going to absurd lengths to justify visiting whores instead of
trying to meet the local girls, I pointed out.
Bah, he spat. Meet the local girls. What for? So I can waste hours of
my time trying to impress them? So I can spend my own money on
them, to treat them like royalty, let them think their own shit doesn't
smell, say anything just to impress, just to convince them that at I
should be allowed between her legs? Why the stultifying
conversations alone make that a withering proposition. I don't want
to talk to women. It's been my experience that women, once they
believe they have you in their clutches and no longer have to be
interesting, will immediately fall back on the old clichés of
shopping and nagging, nagging and shopping, planning the nest,
blablabla. The whole thing makes me sick to contemplate. And for
what? Just to get laid? I don't want to have any children. Do I look
like husband or father material, he asked with a laugh, standing
back, holding out his arms so that I could regard his full character.
No, of course not. And so what am I left with? Lies. Acting. Convincing myself that wasting a several hours of my time in a bar with a complete stranger is somehow worth it all just because on the periphery of it all
lingers the faintest hope that perhaps this stranger will be convinced or
perhaps this stranger will become drunk enough that she no longer
requires any further lubrication and there we go. Just the possibility.
Now what kind of investment is that?
He took another long gulp of beer, wiped his lips with his shirt
sleeved and let a low, subtle belch escape him. On the other hand,
he whispered conspiratorially, I can pay her fee and cut right to
the chase. God, I love it here, he emphasised again. Suck and fuck
they say, right down to business. Can you imagine if we could all be
that honest? I want a suck and fuck, how much?
But it's crass, Albert. These aren't cattle or pigs or machine parts we're
discussing, they're human beings. There's a certain finesse required
when dealing with our equals. You couldn't by that same token, walk
into a bar and point out a few burly men and say, hey, let's go – there's
a farm house up the road I've had my eye on and I need a few men to
help storm it. And think about this, Albert – if all that was ever required
for sex was a few Euros in your wallet, wouldn't the lustre erode over
time? Sure, the novelty here of the concept here, for you at this moment
is enthralling, more so than I can really comprehend frankly, but that's
beside the point. Once the novelty of a world of whores wears off, what
are you left with? Wouldn't you then go out in pursuit of pure women,
virgins even, who are yet untainted by the experience of other men?
Wouldn't you then, sated with sex on demand, begin to ask yourself what
love is?
Bah, he waved his hand at me dismissively. You're love sick, that's all.
That's all you think about, the girl. It's unhealthy to put all of your
emotions into one sack like that which she could just as easily drop off
the side of the Pont Neuf and never see again. Who needs it, he murmured.
*****
Fortunately, between the black work day labour, cleaning off and
passing the rest of the night drinking somewhere or rehearsing in the flat,
there managed to be some time spent other than devout letter writing in
an abundance of unanswered correspondence which would be piling up through the mail slot while she was away in an incessant effort of
connecting myself with her even when she was nowhere to be found.
There were times in the first few weeks when I toyed with the idea
of returning to Paris, even for a weekend, as though to be within
its borders would be near enough to her but invariably, Friday nights
after working would become night-long debaucheries which culminated
in the early hours of Saturday morning and an entire afternoon sleeping
with the shades drawn, the window slammed shut to try and block out
the sound of traffic, white noise CDs playing all afternoon at low volume.
By mid or sometimes late afternoon once of us would begin to clatter
around and by then it had snuck into the subconscious that the early
trains to Paris had been missed long ago and there was no sense in
just getting up there with enough time to turn around and come back
in time for work on Monday. I was too broke for that. I earned a
decent wage working black but most of it, ninety nine percent of it
anyway, was poured back into the pubs and cafés of town, consumed in
late-night halal meat takeaways and crates of Grolsch brought up the
stairs at some point nearly every day.
Money doesn't last long in drinking binges which is to say nothing
of the effort involved following a cold shower, of clearing your
head of enough of the molasses to be able to pedal a bike around the
streets in and out of traffic, around pedestrians and other cyclists,
every potential obstacle in your furry state of mind a disaster waiting
to happen.
Yet I kept on feeding it to myself in a rapid cycle to burn the
hours I would have otherwise haemorrhaged through, bleeding
internally thinking about her, wondering what she was doing, whether
or not she was giving me any thought.
*****
But the more I thought about sneaking off to Paris the more I realised
there was no possible good outcome. If she was there, she obviously
wouldn't have wanted my communication. If she wasn't there, what was
there for me? A city of memories? A city to mope around in reminded at
every turn of Anastasia?
It was almost too much merely being in Utrecht because even in its
own stunted way, Utrecht was reminding me of Anastasia, reminding me
of the euphoria upon my triumphant return – the train station
arrival over a month ago imagining how one afternoon she would be
here and we would be walking along Amsterdamsestraatweg out for a
stroll from the flat, stopping in for a small beer or a glass of
wine.
So if there was no clean slate, at least I could avoid what reminded
me of her. Great lengths I'd go. For example, every time I passed
the Smakkelaarsveld just outside the station I'd think of the first
time seeing it in my return back to Utrecht from Paris.
As the bitterness and disappointment festered day after day without
reply I couldn't bear the sight of it any longer so I'd take an
elaborate route to escape the view, taking the back way out by the
bus station, down Moreelsepark, across the Catharine Baan along
Mariaplaats then wander back to Weerdzijde, Oudegracht overlooking
the cafes bursting with tourists and locals relaxing over lunches
and drinks, all the way down to Kaatstraat before turning onto
Oudenoord, Stroomstraat to Kerkweg then left on Blokstraat until I
hit Amsterdamsestraatweg near our flat, a feat which took a good
thirty minutes longer than simply walking straight across to the
Amsterdamsestraatweg and having to see the field – stupid, I know,
especially since we hadn't actually spent any time there, but
indicative nonetheless, of the fruitlessness of trying to venture to
Paris without her.
*****
I developed elaborate rituals in her stead. Some nights after work, after
showering, after grabbing a quick meal, I'd head off by myself to
Willemstraat and a pub decorated with local regulars, presuming
as such as they greeted one another like family, played cards around
large tables or sat quietly reading newspapers. It was here I could
normally find a good sized table to myself because other than
regulars, not many others came in and although the regulars numbered
quite a few at times, there was always sufficient space, if you could
drown out the slot machine and the Dutch folk music playing in
the background, to sit down and compose my letters to Anastasia.
And there I would order my beer, set it down on a fading Leffe
coaster which existed even though the Leffe didn't, and from my
pack take out the French/English dictionary, the pad of paper, set the
pen down, all an elaborate ritual as if preparing the table she would
soon be joining me at although instead it was merely my obsessive
thoughts of her and the paper and pen.
Sometimes it would be snatches of lyrics or poems, but more often
than not, it was a breakdown of the minutia of the day, what the
weather was like, what the work that day had been, conversations
with the builders, the lunch, perhaps a few glasses of wheat beer at
the Ledig Erf after we knocked off work, snatches of local politics
I'd gleaned from listening to conversations…it was all quite boring
I'd imagined, sprinkled with memories of Paris, excerpts of
historical passages I'd read.
And when I wanted to wander further, I'd wander back behind the
train station again, moving westward along the Moroccan and Turkish
shops of Kanaalstraat through the residential yet occasionally seedy
public housing Lombok neighbourhood, down Coenstraat past the
Molenpark and the big windmill, left on the Leidsekade along the
Leidsche Rijn past the boathouses until I reached Kanaalzicht, a
café pub set across from an ugly factory complex which was equally
spacious though somewhat louder but with a bigger outdoor café area
to write.
*****
` From the Diaries of Witold Kasmersky, cahier 2, p 331.
It's now that I begin to devour the history of Paris trying to pry
little figs of information through obtuse channels I flick through
trying to find images of Anastasia. I'm not sure what the siege of
Paris from September 1870 to January 1871 in the Franco-Prussian
war had to do with it other than September is fast approaching and I
could see myself laying siege to Paris myself. But the intrepid men
using hot-air balloons to take messages in and out of the surrounded
city certainly intrigued me in the absence of a word from her.
Or perhaps this was the Paris of August and September of 1914, when
the second German attempt to take the city was stopped by Gen.
Joseph Gallieni –a prostate cancer-ridden, retired officer who saved
the city by staying and fighting when he responded "Nowhere" to the
question of where the line of retreat would be in case they were
overwhelmed. Instead, 600 red Renault taxi ferried troops to the
spot in the front of the German line where a gap had been left and
each taxi making two round-trips a day until the enemy was stopped.
It takes ingenuity to overcome a sort of crisis.
*****
After three weeks we had finally managed to convince ourselves to
make another go at an open podium performance. The last one had been
so underwhelming that the crowd's distaste for our style had been politely palatable. Not one came up to us afterwards to offer any encouragement
as though by their collective silence, they might will us out of their recollection of the evening.
This time we weren't giddy and flush from the success of a surprisingly
well-received gig. We were humbled and even though the majority of our
free time was spent drinking there were moments of coherency well
groomed enough to have managed three new songs to perform.
I tried to conjure up Anastasia to give me confidence but it merely
unsettled me more as instead I had been busy calculating how much
longer before she would return and would knowingly begin to doubt
with each day nearer, that she would arrive in Utrecht at all – it
was certainly a distraction from pre-gig butterflies and the gloomy
uncertainty of how these three songs would be received, but it was
merely a replacement gloom, a heavy gloom, a heart-wrenching worse
than any potential embarrassment on stage.
Thinking of Coltrane's solo in Walkin with Miles Davis on the same
stage was no better encouragement. I was a little ant in comparison
and a little ant that wondered what the hell he had planned going on
a stage in public and playing. It boggled the mind, overwhelmed,
suffocated. Who was I kidding?
This time we'd invited a few friends for morale support figuring
that if we'd already been able to uncover a few souls who were
unafraid, willing even, to accept us, certainly, if we hit the right
songs, we could enlist a few more.
I spotted a few of them through the smoke of the club as the MC
clattered on unintelligibly in Dutch before we finally heard ….De
Deadbeat Conspiracy….a smattering of applause before Albert began
plucking out the first few chords and I began a memorised preamble
of the obituary of a Dutch politician, in Dutch for several
sentences before emphasising notes that peaked at the wrong moments
of the sentiment of the phrase as though driving us all backwards
before pulling us forwards again. Albert punctuated these swings and
the room was silenced as we went on, confused as to our direction
yet drawn in by a vague familiarity.
It was a dark cavern we were leading them through. Albert's thumbing
bass notes were the stalactical tears to the wails I hit with the
saxophone, raising my torso against it in effort as the sounds
bounced off these imaginary, slippery walls in a damp cavern the
crowd followed us through.
As usual, we didn't know precisely where we leading them.
Rehearsals were merely familiarisations with where would begin and
end but for the playing in between, we were on our own, one off the
other and back again as though our hands were holding a rope instead
of an instrument and the rope was what was holding us both in the
same line, the same line that the others were clinging to as we wandered
further into some low and slow flow melodies, tiny hints of melodies
really, suggestions as to directions which invariably led down dead
ends to turn around and head back from.
And when it was over there was the familiar silence as though they
were all expecting it to begin back up again until several seconds
hung between us and the realisation that it had ended, unexpectedly
– and just then, in that split second as they began to realise it,
as though we were too afraid to wait to find out if the silence
would last or melt into applause, we were already pulling them back
forward again.
*****
I woke up two Saturdays later wondering what it was I should be
expecting. For over a week the realisation that Anastasia was to have
returned, at least to Paris, was a constant cloud hanging over me but for
the hours I pined away drinking with Albert and friends and I could
quell it for a time only to have it punch me again in the stomach without
the slightest bit of forewarning.
There was no word from her.
Not that it had been all that well planned out. She taken down my
address but did I really imagine in hindsight that the minute she
got back to her flat in Paris after a month on the road she would
repack her bags and set on the first train headed out to Utrecht?
In fact, when I went over it in my mind, it was hard to ignore the
realisation that she hadn't pinned herself down to coming
immediately. She had merely said she'd come, not when she'd come.
I found myself analysing key words. After I come back, she'd said.
Not how long after, not soon after or years after. I'd been so over the
moon when she'd said she'd come I hadn't bother to read the fine
print – WHEN?
I seemed to take quite a lot of pleasure out of kicking myself over
that one. I was pinned down with just my King clinging to a corner,
three moves from mate. I resolved to pretend the month hadn't passed
at all or alternatively, that I had imagined or dreamt the entire
experience, that there was no Anastasia to begin with, I'd spent too
many hours in a coffee shop, had smoked myself into a stupor.
But every morning I woke up again there was a thick knot of nausea
in my stomach as though it weren't the overindulgences and late
meals that was doing it but some shattered dream that had collected
itself in pieces all around me waiting to be picked up.
Every morning I made the coffee, sat in silence at the kitchen table
after clearing a mound of clutter and rolled a cigarette so I could
sit back and smoke whilst staring out the window down into the
courtyard wondering how long I would manage to hold out before
writing again or worse still, taking a train to Paris and paying an
unexpected and unrequested visit.
Every morning, after the cigarette was stubbed out on the bottom of
my boot I drained the remainders of the coffee in one long gulp and
headed outside, unlocked the bike, got on and rode to the job,
another afternoon of filing dirt and assorted particles underneath
my fingernails, carrying wood from a pile, hammer nails into wood,
measuring, cutting, hammering, stopping for a coffee break with the
others at 10:30 and then lunch at noon seated on overturned plaster
buckets eating sandwiches with filthy hands, washing them down with
cold milk that offset the soot of destruction and construction
combined with the stale taste of every cigarette break until finally
we'd pack it all up again, get back on our bikes and ride off in
different directions to different homes, different pubs, different
understandings of the day.
I arrived home to the familiar strains of something bleak and evil
leaking out of Albert's headphones at full volume, sipping a bottle
of Grolsch with hand, alternating with the Winston in the other, the
smoke trailing from it like a plane that had been hit and was on its
way to smouldering ruins on the ground.
When he managed to notice me, somehow the feel of the room must be
different when all other senses are completely absorbed in the holy
trinity of music in the ears, beer in the hand, cigarette to the
mouth – there must be some perceivable alteration in space when I
entered because no amount of noise I made could have penetrated that
veil – but he noticed something changed in the balance of the room
and so turned to see me.
He removed the headphones which for a split second before he also
turned down the volume were as loud as the speakers might have been
without the headphones plugged in, took a swig of beer and nodded in
my direction. Good day?
I brushed off more dust and held up my hands. The day of a labourer,
I lamented before leaning over the crate and plucking out a beer to
pop open.
Oh yeah, Albert mentioned as casually as possible. Letter for you
today.
*****
You know what the simultaneous experience of elation and dread feels
like? As if two boxers, when clenching up between each other in the
middle of the ring covered in sweat and pain, suddenly begin to kiss
and I mean a deep, probing and soulful mashing of the tongues
against each others', held long enough for the passion to mount
before one of the boxers reaches behind and delivers a razor sharp
punch to the kidneys of the other.
I drained the beer whilst simultaneously hovering over the contents
of the kitchen table, bottle opener, overflowing ashtray, Dutch
advertisements for high tech electronics at low tech prices, empty
packages of Drum, empty packages of Winstons, empty wine bottles
with candles stuck in the tops like corks and melted wax hardened on
their sides, yellowing copies of Metro and De Volkskrant, pliers,
electrical wire, odds and ends of emptied pockets, lighters awaiting
refills, and finally, there it was emanating like magic atop a
musician's magazine and a flyer for free pizza delivery –
undoubtedly the letter, undeniably, the fate.
Of course, I couldn't open the letter yet. After all these days and
weeks accumulated waiting there would be at least one night's
festivities with a least part of the harness of doubt loosened –
there I was, my name in her antiquarian script on an envelope, proof
enough that I hadn't merely hallucinated a few weeks of time.
Evidence that I must have crossed her mind at least once in crossing
the gulf between us. Enough for heel-kicking and a shower and a
night out to celebrate the fate, whatever it was for at least for
the moment, I was going to live…
*****
What should I have expected such a letter to say? After all, she'd
promised to visit, not write. I could imagine nothing but a dark
foreboding, her left handed scrawl conducting apologies and excuses
simultaneously and between the lines, the truth that it had all been
sort of memorable but unremarkable mirage of events which had
transpired indeed, but had perhaps been blown out of proportion.
Surely by now my daily letters had reached her, my unhealthy
obsessiveness and oblique paranois apparent like some filthy secret
I'd unburdened to her.
But even looking at the postmark I could tell it wasn't from France
at all, but Italy and as I tore open the envelope and read hungrily,
I was overwhelmed with the realisation that the letter was only a
partial answer – if she wasn't in Paris it explained in part why she
wasn't here (logically, because she'd not yet returned) – but it
didn't explain more than some place where she was, the gig extended,
a brief confessional of an exhaustive battle with mental demons.
In the end, her words were almost as nostalgic as the thousands I'd
composed in all those letters but no regret other than her personal
trials. So in the one sense, I could afford to feel elated – I
wasn't being rejected, I was being put off for a time, postponed.
The gig was actually a big hit, she'd been singing in places
throughout Italy it turned out, Milan, Rome, Napoli, Firenze – all
over and as her status had grown, so had the demand for her, hardly
surprising, I supposed, but disappointing nonetheless because what
it all boiled down to was that she wasn't coming back straight away
and couldn't even say really, when she'd be back at all, although
promising definitely to be back and as soon as she was back, she
hadn't forgotten she was coming to visit in Utrecht.
Of course it was equally disturbing her casual questions like, have
you thought of me at all, I don't even know if you remember me any
more, perhaps I was just a fling for you, killing time in Paris –
(when all the while I'd thought it might have been the other way
around,) and the uncertainty of when this string of gigs would
finally end – she thought there might even be a small recording deal
in the offering. All things I felt proud of, that she was that
talented but also that amid all this excitement she thought of me,
wondered how things were working out in Utrecht, wondered if I
thought of her at all and imagined how much she missed our moment.
What it all spelled out in the end was that we wouldn't see each
other any time soon on the one hand, but that my hopes hadn't been
in vain, not necessarily, on the other hand. Just enough hope to be
maddening.
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