loping one. It goes from minor thirds to fourths, kind of a lop-sided pattern
in contrast to moving strictly in fourths or in half-steps."
-John Coltrane
Needless to say we were fairly feted once we left the stage after surviving
five songs. To wild acclaim, Anastasia returned from the wings of the
stage after our weirdly syncopated abstract jazz piece, No Place Like
Home, which was commenced under the premise of Dorothy tapping her
heels together three times and rather than making it home, finding herself
over and over again in the same place.
We rolled through three more numbers after that; a boisterous cover of
Mack the Knife, a howling, burning version of Wild is the Wind and then
another abstract piece that Anastasia surprised us both by when, with a
shrug and a shy smile she began a slow recitation in French of random Edith Piaf lyrics.
By the time we were finished the crowd was enamoured. Not with us,
of course, but with Anastasia.
We rejoined our table to fascination. Mikhail, the only one out of
Everybody who’d ever heard Albert and I together, was particularly
astounded. Everyone was taken by Anastasia, as if her voice had cast a
spell over them. But by then it wasn’t only her voice that captivated. By
the time we’d returned to our table it was her mere presence, as though the table was occupied by some sort of royalty once she sat down at it.
She was impeccably modest. She never once mentioned to any of them that she had broken a date of her tour to come and join us, perhaps out of nothing more than pity. She didn’t hint at having to leave again shortly for Krakow
or point out that her performances normally required paid admission. Yes,
she accepted the accolades gratefully but throughout there was a deference
to Albert and I, as though it was only through us that she was transformed
rather than the other way around. Only Albert and I and perhaps Mikhail
knew it was a load of bullocks but we allowed the audience to believe whatever they wanted to believe both with and without Anastasia’s
assistance. Praise for our music had been a long time coming and
irrespective of whether or not it was merited, we decided to revel in it.
As long as politely possible, she maintained her demeanour as one of the group but eventually other realities involved in the situation became unavoidable. As another round of celebratory beers appeared she leaned in
to me and whispered, I hate to be killing this wonderful moment Witold but
I really can’t stay here much longer. I’ve got to sort out my things, make arrangements for my train. As it is, I’ve got a good 10 hour or so journey ahead of me and I’m due on stage in Krakow at 9 tomorrow night which means I really should leave tonight rather than tomorrow morning.
Listen, I’ll come with you, I began….
I’m sorry Witold, not this time, not yet anyway. You’re going to want to spend time here enjoying this, being with your friends. There’s no need to disturb you. As I said before, I’ve come here to see you. We’ve had a little discussion, we’ll have another as soon as time allows. I’ve sung with you
and Albert, maybe even made up for running out on you two before. Aren’t you happy?
My guts churned. Of course I’m happy, I began, wanting to describe the deliciousness of a moment that I knew was destined to leave me with painful indigestion afterwards. And of course I understand you’ve got to go in
order to make to Krakow with enough time to relax before your show but
well, aren’t you going through Prague anyway? I mean, I could….
She put her finger to my lips, leaning over and gently kissing the side of my face.
Yes, you could and some day, you will. Some day I’m sure you’ll see
enough of me you’ll be sick of me. But for now, just let me go, freely. I
need time to think about everything as well, Witold. This isn’t just a
simple matter for me. There are a lot of effects to consider. Can we
follow this idea, this agreement? Patience?
Reluctantly, yes. I nodded like a rebuked child. I guess you’re right. I
guess you’ve got more involved in all this to think about than I do. I
know how I feel, you know how I feel, it’s just a matter of….
Time, she finished for me, smiling. I nodded, taking a deep sip of beer,
not even hearing the band that was playing.
So listen Witold, I don’t want to make a long process of goodbyes with everyone. Will you do me a favour? Just say my goodbyes for me, explain I’ve got to be in Krakow in the afternoon and I’ll just slip off out of here,
ok?
What about me? Will I have a good bye?
There’s no need for one, Witold. I will be in touch with you soon, very shortly. Just give me a few days. I think after Warsaw and a few other
Polish cities, I’m due to be back in Budapest so, well, I’ll make certain that
I go via Prague and we can see each other again, talk some more. Ok?
So long as you know that I’m agreeing to this under duress, protest, yes, ok,
I understand. Go on your way, flutter away little butterfly, disappear into
the void of the night as suddenly as you appeared…
And within minutes, I was sitting there, trying to focus on the band, the
only one knowing she wasn’t coming back, my head already a little fogged
by drink and the experience in general, unfocused and believing perhaps it
had all been a simple process of the imagination while everyone else was focused on enjoying themselves, the music, the mood, the shared
friendship and fun. Her presence, once retracted, had that effect on me,
making me acutely aware of how alone I really was.
Even I could tell by then it wasn’t healthy, that placing myself in the
hands of the whim of a woman like Anastasia was a recipe for pain, a
clear, undulated certainty that I had already placed myself in harm’s way
by allowing myself to feel such extremes in the first place.
*****
The following day, with the festival concluded and wanting to leave Mikhail and his wife to revel in their rare reunion in privacy, Albert and I packed up our musical kits and announced we were heading back on the trainto Prague.
This time, left to ourselves, we stared out at the passing through the window, silent for long periods of time. We hadn’t spoken much since the
performance primarily due to getting carried away in our celebrations and
the night generally being a bit of a fog. Or perhaps neither of wanted to
spoil the memory by speaking about it, as though in doing so, the reality
that it hadn’t really happened would overwhelm us.
So was that true, what you told the others about Anastasia, Albert asked, smoking absently, a real sight with his hung over visage and dishevelled appearance in the window seat and the double bass propped in the seat beside him. Did she really have a gig to go off to or was she blowing you off?
Yeah, she’s really got a gig in Krakow. At least well, yeah. She’s really
got a gig in Krakow. As far as I know anyway.
And how long is the gig for?
One night I think, maybe two. A few more gigs somewhere in Poland and then at some point, down to Budapest.
And what happens then? Albert was a patient little digger, putting the cigarette to his mouth, thinking a moment, exhaling and asking another question. A subtle, smoking inquisition, or so I might have imagined in
my hypersensitive state on the subject.
I dunno.
He let me sit there in peace awhile, a new tactic. Eventually, after I began to become somewhat fidgety with information, I continued:
Apparently, I began reluctantly, a hint of exasperation escaping into my
voice as the conductor checked our tickets and looked us over, she’s interested, I suppose you’d say, for lack of a better description. Albert’s eyebrows raised.
Interested? In what, you? In singing with us?
I dunno Albert, I said, increasingly cranky. In me, I think. It’s on hold, I dunno, we’ll see, ok? I don’t know. What difference does it make, it’s
not like we’ve got a Spring of festivals and gigs lined up, is it? If she
sings with us once in a while, great, we might have a little credibility but
if not, fuck it, we’re moving along anyway.
Albert hacked into his hand then stood up, pushed down the window and spat out it. The prelude to another coughing spasm.
Well you have to admit Witold, if she’s singing with us, it makes a helluva difference. I mean, sure, we can get the odd gig here and there and continue fucking around as we have been indefinitely. But if she’s singing with us regularly well, that changes everything of course, I mean she’s on tour for crissakes. Obviously if she’s singing with the pair of us, we’re going to have
a lot more success than we’ve got a chance for with just the pair of us. But
to ease your mind, Witold, no, I’m not that concerned about our gigging schedule. We’ve fucked around this long it doesn’t really matter, obviously.
I was asking more about her and you, you know? Anything happening there
or am I going to be rooming with somebody on suicide watch for the next
few months?
He laughed to illustrate he was taking the piss and the laugh turned into a minor little red-faced coughing spasm.
I waited this out patiently.
Hey, I’ve got a carton of free cigarettes for you here….
Fuck off.
******
We sat silently through several small villages, stopping at each, waiting for
the one or two people who boarded or got off and then went on our way
again. We both stared idly out the window.
Do you ever miss being back home? I asked suddenly, as the question had been nagging at me since the festival, listening to all those people making
the same envious remarks over and over again about New York and about America.
He reluctantly removed his line of sight from an undistinguished point out
the window in the distance, deep in thought or simply, head buzzing,
flittering from one random thought to another, and turned to look at me, a
vague look of distaste or incomprehension in his eyes.
Finally, after staring me down a moment to try and discern if I was serious,
he shrugged and shook another cigarette from the pack.
Not particularly. I miss my flat, my books, my cds. I miss that certain
comfort and familiarity of having all my shit in one place rather than in two
or carting it around from one place to another. But do I miss the city generally? No. It was always filled with too many people with too many personal agendas as far as I’m concerned. You know me. I can’t stand
those fuckers. And people forget, in their romanticisations of what you
might consider to be “home”, the daily realities; the stench, the crowded
subways, the queues, the phoniness and predictability of so much of it…
I find it more interesting here but only because of the novelty. If I lived
here for a year or two I’m sure these fuckers would start getting on my
nerves as well. Sure, they like drinking beer and having a good time but
there aren’t many people I spend time with that I want to spend MORE
time with, if you see what I’m saying. Why?
It’s just that I feel like I’m supposed to miss it more than I do. Like it’s some fantastic experience that shouldn’t be missed. But it doesn’t feel that way. It just feels like a place I lived. Just like I feel like I’m supposed to miss my father or my mother more than I do, that the implication of not missing these places, these people, these memories, is that I’m somehow not sufficiently human, that my emotions are weak and underdeveloped.
Albert watched me through narrowed eyes, perhaps trying to calculate how soft I had grown since Anastasia’s sudden appearance before taking a deep
hit from his cigarette and exhaling the smoke into a haze in front of me as
he spoke.
You’re sufficiently human Witold, believe me. You’re just not a masochist. Or you’re not sufficiently masochistic to suit the others who think that you can’t do one thing without missing the other. You’re a realist, Witold. Like me. Your father and mother, wherever they are, are gone. They’ve never returned and they never will. You know that and logically you figure why bother worrying about it. Yeah, you could mope around more, act as if the suffering were more tragic, if only to appease the moral sensitivities of the herd. But I like to think that like me, you see the futility in all of it. You aren’t in New York, by choice, I might add, so why would you miss it? If
you missed it, you would go back. You aren’t being forced here. Listen,
people like to think about places where they aren’t. It’s their natural
disinclination to happiness. Deep down, they want to be miserable because
it makes them feel more alive than being happy, so they invent this shit to compensate for it. They like to plan for futures or live in their pasts instead
of living in the present. Just because you and I reject the future and aren’t
satisfied wallowing in the past doesn’t make you or I any less human.
I nodded, silent.
So when the fuck are you going to tell me what Anastasia said? Is that what this is all about, this sudden awareness of your lack of sensitivity to your past? Did she say something to you about it?
No, she didn’t say anything about that. She gave me hope that I’m not pining away for her for nothing. She confirmed her feelings. Sort of. But it’s complicated.
Albert laughed smugly to himself.
Complicated? The only thing that’s complicated is how she’s managed to string you along for so long without giving you much in return, Witold. Unless you count running out on you and the gig back in Utrecht some sort
of cosmic love sign.
Look, I said, somewhat heatedly, defensive. She cancelled a gig to come
up and see me, to see us, to sing with us, to fucking help us out, throw us a
bone, ok? We’d have floundered miserably if it weren’t for her, you know
that as well as I do. So don’t go getting all preachy on me. She isn’t
stringing me along. It’s a little more complex than a suck and fuck with a
whore for thirty minutes, ok?
Stung perhaps by my outburst, Albert turned back to staring out the window the rest of the trip.
*****
Back in Prague, I tried to occupy my mind with as much non-Anastasia thoughts as possible. It wan’t easy you know. I went to the school, taught
my class, smoked my cigarettes, drank beer during lunch, chatted with
students and faculty about anything they wanted to chat about to distract me,
and then walked back to the flat rather than take the tram simply because the movement, walking, allowed me to wallow in the fantasies of an alternative world, somewhere where Anastasia and I were already together. Where we would share meals and films and lie in bed together.
By the time I reached the flat, I’d coached myself thoroughly. Throughout the
walk home I would straddle a fine line between fantasising about whatever
possible future would be imaginable and telling myself like a DJ trance 4/4 time signature beat to be ever reminded that the likelihood was slim, best to put it out of mind. And so the walk home became a sort of Dzogchen meditation exercise loop wherein I thought about a future yet simultaneously ignored the possibility of a future at all, of a postcard or of an Anastasia
sitting atop her suitcase in front of that run down old Communist building
our flat was in.
And then of course, inevitably, I would reach the flat and the anxiety would begin anew. Would there be a postcard waiting for me? Would she be there, waiting for me when I arrived? Every day I laboured through this ritual as I either climbed the three flights of stairs to the flat or simply road the lift up and every day, I opened the door, walked into the flat and there was Albert sitting there in his cloud of cigarette smoke, music on, eyes closed, silently sipping his beer. His eyes would open on my arrival, if he wasn’t wearing
his headphones and entirely unaware of the world around him, and he’d
simply shake his head no, knowing all along what my first question would be.
Anxiety could distill into disappointment and further still into anger. I could wage this degeneration within me progressing with each day that passed without a word, without a visit, without hell, without anything. In time it
was as though she’d never appeared at the festival to begin with, as though
we hadn’t had any stunted conversation about our future, as if she hadn’t
said she would stop in Prague on her way to Budapest.
When the adrenaline of anger inevitably burned off; the process would take a few different forms, all of which inevitably involved drinking, sometimes
with Albert, sometimes just going off on my own for a further walk to some anonymous neighbouring pub where I would sit silently, namelessly and
brood, complacent in my ignorance of the language so that nothing that
anyone said around me could possibly be a distraction, the anger would
slowly fade into a kind of abject misery, a sense of doom, worthlessness.
You see, I wasn’t very accustomed to this kind of emotional rollercoaster
and it was quite unnerving. All my life to that point seemed to have been spent balancing the edge on an even keel, never letting myself get too high
or too low. Sure, alcohol would bring me there - insane highs in some ways,
euphoric stupidity of incalculable heights. But the lows, well, they were
physical and could be managed by a series of caffeine-based remedies and
aspirin or at the very least, more sleep.
But having opened this Pandora’s box, the creaking hinges of the heart,
having turned my head and looked away when feelings were clandestinely
sneaking past the guards in the dark of the night ready to perform some
incalculable sabotage, I was unprepared for the ramifications of the down, the misery, uselessness, panic and doom that accompanied the slow realisation that perhaps even though my heart had been opened, it wasn’t necessarily going to be filled with happy, mindless pop melodies and little song birds chirping like sentinels, the arrival of Spring.
No, too late I realised that it was equally possible, hell, probable, that opening it was only going to expose it to lies, misperceptions, all the black, cancerous bile of the world would come wafting in like a radioactive breeze and by then of course, too late to close it back up, the toxicity sealed, it would all simply permeate me, infect me, give me the greyish, sunken hue of the miserable bastards who had been walking anonymously around me my entire life.
And so with each day that passed, the shell hardened, the gates to the heart shut tighter, yes, the toxicity was still inside, but no more was getting in. I pretended to forget all about her. But then I would wake some mornings
and I would be greeted by a ball of pain wrapped around my stomach. That
too would pass, inure me for the day ahead when I would stand in front of
students and talk, almost unaware of my words, when I would make small
talk with the staff over bitter coffee heavily laden with sugar, talking about
the weather or politics or listening to some cow-bored story about some triviality in someone else’s life with feigned interest because outwardly, I
was normal, I was fine, I was well-adjusted and happy. Inside, that didn’t matter, no one else could see it and I wasn’t about to show it off like an
amputee on a street corner begging for spare change.
As a sort of punishment, I suppose, I stopped writing to her altogether. Yes,
I told myself the idea of punishing her for not communicating with me, for
not coming to visit or at least letting me know what was happening was
absurd. I was hurt and wanted to hurt back but all that was bullshit, I would
realise sitting in one of those smoke-filled working class pivnices peopled
with old men playing cards that I wasn’t punishing her at all. It was a joke.
If she cared at all, she’d have contacted me thus, she didn’t care. And if she
didn’t care then certainly my not writing to her wasn’t going to make a
difference. If anything, she’d be relieved.
No, it was clear, I wasn’t trying to punish her, this was some sort of clarion, a call, muted as it were, to her. I suppose in the back of my delusional mind I thought if I stopped writing those letters to her every day she’d realise perhaps that she’d forgotten about me or perhaps that she’d been wrong from the beginning to ignore me. It was as though by not writing, I could conjure her image to my side all the quicker.
So I had a lot of free time on my hands in the absence of writing all those letters to Anastasia. I’d never realised exactly how much time I’d spent every day writing those letters, as though spending time sitting with her or walking hand in hand, a luxury. Suddenly I had all the time in the world. Suddenly time was like some multiplying, mutating disease whose cells I couldn’t kill off fast enough.
There were times of course when in lieu of simply drinking, Albert and I would actually rehearse whilst drinking. We tried a variety of methods
toward self-discipline, rehearsing when we’d say we were going to rehearse
and we’d get started and invariably, some irritated bastard would bang on the
wall or the ceiling and we’d be left with nothing but going off to the Shot Out
Eye or whatever neighbouring pub struck our fancy on the way to the Shot
Out Eye.
It didn’t really occur to us to find a studio to rehearse in. No, that was for proper musicians, which we didn’t consider ourselves of course, simply blighted, staggering musicians who occasionally hit an interesting note.
So instead, we drank. We drank talking about music. We drank discussing specific song theories, conceptual albums, tonal variations. We talked about what so and so did in such and such album and what cafés or pubs we could
try and get gigs in. There was no end to our beery conversations about the
kind of music we were going to play, the heights we could reach…all a
prolonged dry heave of inactivity, accomplishing nothing but the daily ritual
of drinking and finding something to talk about while we did so that
appealed to us.
As often happened, primarily because when we’d be drinking and talking
we’d be getting louder and louder, more and more full of ourselves and our potentials, more and more certain of our celebrity, even if it was entirely within our own heads, that someone would come around to our table,
someone who spoke English, enough to have understood us, and we would
then be properly engaged.
On one particular afternoon as we stumbled from pub to pub, far too easy
to do in our neighbourhood, a guy named Andrzej came around. We’d seen
him around before in the Shot Out Eye, a gypsy with a charming demeanour,
a fellow drunk who was always smiling, always swinging his arms around
you and nuzzling his face in close to you conspiratorially.
Most Czechs we met were virulent about the Roma, as they called them, the
gypsies, looked down at them as lower than pigs, vermin, yet in the Shot Out
Eye, Andrzej was somewhat of a local fixture and even as some of his friends
or children joined us with him at our table that afternoon asking us if we
wanted to buy cigarettes or lighters or cheap booze, we didn’t mind; an
adoptable, charming group of petty thieves, we giggled, understanding
nothing of the pidgin English they were speaking and just trying to make
sure nothing was stolen whilst we drank. As it turned out, in our wandering, we happened to have stumbled into his local.
You music, no? You music? Andrzej was slobbering drunk, perhaps more than usual that afternoon, poking us, prodding us, tugging at our shirts and all the while these kids banging on in our ears, Mister, mister, mister!
Albert lit up a cigarette and sat back, gently pushing away the hands poking at him but clearly growing irritated. Yes, we play music, he shouted about the din. What music? Andrzej shouted back. Bass, saxophone, jazz.
For some reason, this was far too complex for anyone to grasp. Too many
words or too much booze, the mood was insane. Andrzej .poked at us
tomorrow. Zitra, he shouted, pointing his finger up at the ceiling, down at
the floor, poking us in the chest to make sure he had our attention. Yes,
tomorrow, we recited dutifully, what? Music, music! You music! Come!
After we’d left, strolling in the cold streets heading for home for more booze or perhaps for some food, we still hadn’t decided, we were still trying to decipher what it was Andrzej was trying to get across. We should play or someone else was playing? Who the fuck knows, Albert muttered, sticking
the key in the door. But who cares, these people aren’t going to care. Let’s
just bring our shit there and play. And if they don’t kick us out, we’ve got ourselves a rehearsal space.
And from there it grew.
Well, imperceptively really.
We started off the following day, up at around noon, a breakfast of instant coffee and a few bread rolls left over from the day before, a half dozen
smokes and we were off, Albert, his porkpie hat turned down at and angle
so that you couldn’t see into his bloodshot eyes, lugging his bass with his
usual lack of dexterity and gruesome effort, cursing and mumbling as we
walked to the tram stop and me with the sax tucked the little gig bag,
nimble, almost dainty by comparison, a rolled cigarette hanging off my lip.
And then usual commotion and jostle as Albert lugged the bass on board the tram ignoring the dirty looks of passengers who all were screaming silently
in their heads about fucking tourists and the inconsideration of others
meanwhile ignoring lifelong penchants of their own, historically, for
looking out for themselves and screwing others over at every opportunity.
It wasn’t until we were on the tram and moving that we began to consider whether or not we even remembered where Andrzej’s little local was even situated. My concentration, with head still in a thick soup worthy of any respectable grandmother’s kitchen, were frequently interrupted by outbursts
of protests whenever a potential route was suggested, (fuck no, that’s too
fucking far to lug this fucking thing from Albert, for example,) stares from
flabbergasted onlookers who didn’t need to speak a word of English to
grasp the sentiment of the outburst, until finally, we discovered ourselves
just a short, walkable distance away from the locale that looked vaguely
familiar.
Naturally when we arrived in our bustle, although there were several people there already in various states of intoxication, not unlike a typical attendance in one of the local non-stop bars, Andrzej was nowhere to be found. We had nothing to lose although Albert and his struggles with the bass would have begged to differ, the journey alone required at least two or three beers reward before the heart would begin to settle down, a few more cigarettes to calm the nerves and remarkable, reduce the blood pressure. So we just set our instruments down beside our corner table without a word and waited for the barman to slide over and start bringing the beers.
The ritual of course, was firmly ingrained into our DNA by now. I remarked, with some wonder, how far we’d come since that first day since arrival, our tentative steps in Prague, even that first pub, having no idea how to order,
how the beer would taste, how cheap it would be and how incessantly and
speedily it was served. Albert made some comment about how remarkable
it was to still be alive at this stage, several months into what he coined a “hedonistic freefall”.
And before we knew it, sure enough Andrzej showed up, remembering virtually nothing of our conversation, if in fact it had been a conversation at all. Drunken shouting or even drunken mumbling, in a language you know only a small handful of words in to begin with is difficult to remember.
Throw in years of alcohol abuse, diminishing brain cells and the general
neurological decay that sets in and it was no surprise not only that he didn’t
remember us, didn’t remember speaking to us, didn’t even see us those first
fifteen minutes or so he engaged himself with catching up with his mates in
large swallows.
But then after some time, as his distraction and boredom set in, his gaze
turned to us and as we watched with amusement, a little light seemed to
click on, his eyes brightened with the discovery of a piece to the puzzle and
he immediately made his way over to us, slobbering over us reeking of
halusky and garlic, body odours nearly overwhelming, overpowering even
the smell of stale alcohol and cigarette smoke.
Music, music, he greeted, sitting down at our table, slapping our backs and pointing to our instruments like a chimp encouraged by its first sign language mannerisms rewarded with a treat. We smiled back at him, as enthusiastically as possible. We play? I asked, reducing my own English to its most basic form to assist while trying to determine the limits of his capacity to conjugate the verb itself. We play? I asked again, motioning to our instruments.
And again, that glorious light of recognition flashed in his eyes. Yes, yes! And then he shouted unintelligibly to the barman, the barman shouted something equally unintelligible back and, there you have it. Andrzej
grinned, head bowed, one hand on Albert’s back, one hand on mine.
Music! He suddenly shouted, standing up and clapping his hands together.
Oddly enough, as it turned out, once we got all set up and got going, the interest of the neighbourhood had been alerted and we’d accumulated what was probably our biggest audience other than the festival since we’d arrived.
Andrzej was not only enthusiastic to our playing but had taken to banging on the table beside us as a sort of percussion accompaniment, banging away first with his hands only and then as time went on, with a pair of halved broom sticks. People all around us shouted and clapped rhythmically, encouraging us to play faster, encouraging with their hands a certain beat until we reached the syncopation they were craving and proper Roma dancing to quick
melodies which we struggled at first to imitate, began in earnest.
We went on like this for hours. All around us people were drinking wine, clapping, stamping, snapping their fingers to a beat they wanted us to imitate, frequently interrupting us to instruct and then standing back as we attempted
to imitate either joyous with our success, or grim-faced with our failure,
coming back to us again, teaching us the beat they craved and wanted to
share.
Can you fucking believe this, Albert grinned, slurping a beer, sweating profusely but for the first time I could really remember, genuinely happy
and excited.
After several hours we were exhausted. We begged off any further playing and made motions like yawning, putting our hands together and bending our heads downwards just over those hands to mime sleeping. It was still only
late afternoon but the exertion and the beer had taken its toll.
We weren’t paid of course. We’d been playing for their amusement but it
was just as much of benefit to us as to them if not more so. We certainly
didn’t care. House band or rehearsal studio, it was all the same to us if we
had the space to play and practice. So, as we paid up our bill, we gestured
to Andrzej before leaving. Zitra, tomorrow, we asked gesturing to our
instruments. Yes yes yes! He shouted enthusiastically, pounding us on the
back and shouting out to the others who approached us one by one, the
males all in various states of heavy intoxication, embracing us, tapping us
on our back or shoulders, all mumbling incoherent words to us and only
half listening to our replies in English, our smiles sufficient, everyone
drunk and happy and more to come the following day.
This went on for several weeks. We were getting quite adept at the Roma music, especially the ballads which they hummed to us at first, awaiting
our imitations and then, as we neared approximation successfully, and then sang out loud, to the others, ballads whose words we could not understand
but for which we laboured with our instruments intent of doing those
unintelligible words justice.
For those several weeks Prague had finally become our little piece of heaven.
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