Thursday 30 April 2009

CHAPTER NINETEEN: Different city, different street

“Three days was the morning
Three lovers in three ways
We knew when she landed
Three days she’d stay
I’m a proud man anyways
Covered now by three days.“


Jane’s Addiction, Three Days


When you travel enough, spinning through a vortex of languages which
have secretly imbedded their meanings in your subconscious there are
times when you awake with a start in complete confusion about what
it is you're waking from.

I walked to a window overlooking a street viewed through a prism of
rain, half-lit by street lamps, watching a man attempting to walk
with a speedy nonchalance, newspaper folded over the top of his
head, one arm up to hold the newspaper in place, the other swinging
back and forth in desperate propulsion.

And only this morning I'd freed an insect of some sort from a
spider's web just under the bathroom sink wondering if I was doing
the humane thing by rescuing it from its struggles and the slow,
inevitable end to its existence or if I'd only been interfering like
the spider's little nosey neighbour, jobbing up the mechanisms of
nature and the balance of the insect world.

I watched the man and his rain-spattered arm swinging until he was
gradually swallowed back up into the night further down the street.

Three days I'd been in this hotel in Bratislava on the mere rumour
that Anastasia had been headed this way.

And don't think for a minute I didn't have to hear an earful from Albert –
the old, haven't you learned your lesson yet speech he brought out every
time one of her postcards arrived. She probably doesn't even send them
herself, he'd mused back in our grim and smoky flat on Husitská.

Certain enough, I wouldn't find her sitting in this hotel room with its drab
curtains and filthy carpets. Three days I'd been here already and having
left only once since I'd arrived, gathering the strength to face her again,
chain-smoking and staring at stains in the wallpaper, I had a good idea
the courage was never going to come from anywhere other than a half
dozen pints in the nearest pub. Then again, that wouldn't have been
courage, that'd have been drunken bravado, devil-may-care, feigned
nonchalance as in oh, fancy running into you here in Bratislava,
Anastasia.

There wasn’t any postcard. I dutifully informed Albert. Of course, he knew
this already. The postcards had come sporadically from different towns and
cities after our meeting at the festival, little clues and cryptic messages first
from Polish towns and then from cities in Scandinavia, a sudden unplanned
leg of a tour I hadn‘t heard anything about; Helsinki, Stockholm, Gothenburg,
Olso, Copenhagen, fuck, everywhere, even smaller cities I’d never heard of.

The postcards that filtered in did little really to explain although their mere existence made it clear what was going on - change in plans of the tour, a
new opportunity, expanded horizons. Usually only a few words or a simple sentence or two in her tight script along the lines of very busy, or hectic schedule or don’t even have time to sightsee.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the postcards. They gave me some sort of vague hope, justifiably or not. I began to feel guilty for having stopped
writing to her in the first place and imagined that when she finally made it
back to her flat in Paris she would be disappointed to find out there was no
bundle of letters from me waiting for her. I couldn’t get that image of
disappointing her out of my mind, thinking of her arriving at that little
flat, exhausted from travelling but buoyed by the thought of my letters
waiting for her and then, opening the door, not finding the usual piles
of my correspondence on the floor, slipped through the mail slot, finding
nothing but bills and junk mail instead, that look of disappointment in her
eyes at that precise moment of realisation was what I imagined most so in
the end, once we’d started having these little gigs every day with the Gypsies, I started writing to her again just to get that image of
disappointment in her face out of my mind.

But the postcards in essence, meant nothing. I wasn’t with her. Yes, she was thinking about me, great. But the touring went on forever, even well after she said it was going to, impeding us from dealing with the issue of a relationship other than this long distance, nearly wordlessly unfounded dedication.

I suppose it’s natural, to want more. Even if the wanting made me feel more like a cliché than I wanted to. But the fact remained that we were apart, we were going to be apart for the foreseeable future and perhaps I had to consider getting on with my own life, this gypsy jazz, this daily run through the intoxication training ground, this day to day effort to forget.

So it was rather suddenly and unexpectedly that I’d discovered the resolve
to head uninvited to Bratislava. Albert had long ago embraced his pet
theory that it was all a colossal mind fuck of some kind, some sort of
sadistic little game wherein she'd conspired with others, people perhaps
who she knew would be going through that village or town who could
write out these little postcards on her behalf, just to keep the game going.

It might have been a sound theory but for the fact that it was certainly her handwriting on those postcards and how does one after all, buy a tourist
postcard from a village or town, write a message on it and post it all
without ever having been there in the first place?

So that's the way it had gone for weeks, getting these postcards, getting
jerked back into thinking about her, thinking about the absence of her,
thinking about all the things I imagined we could be.

*****

I got off the train with a burst of energy but after the first few hours turned
up nothing the energy wore away and slowly it sank in that the chance
had been missed again. How could I be expected to stay one step ahead of
her, to know instinctively where she would pop up next?

For a little while I thought I could detect a pattern in the postcards, or perhaps it was merely delusional. Sill, I had to try.

Did the names of the villages and towns fall in alphabetical order, some
geographic sequence, some cleverly disguised yet still breakable code? Not
in any of the instances. After Scandinavia, one week it was Hungary, another
it was Austria. The following month Slovenia,, and after that, Poland again. Amazing, all this touring and yet one of the greatest pit stops on the circuit
was blatantly ignored. Didn’t she ever tour in Prague?

I was growing weary of the game, frustrated by my lack of success and then,
when I'd overheard a conversation between two Czech Dixieland jazz
buskers on the Charles Bridge one afternoon talking about the little French
girl with the beautiful voice having stopped by only a few nights before that to sing with them, I crudely demanded to know what they were talking about.

After their initial huff at my intrusion they reluctantly shared a few tidbits
with me about a little bird with a beautiful song in her voice stopping in
for a few songs on her way to the train station for Bratislava.

Surely that couldn't have been a plant. I never hung around the Charles
Bridge, rarely even crossed it, so she'd not have left this clue for me here.
No, it was certainly unintentional, coincidental, a twisting of fate I was
meant to overhear and meant to act on. This time, I would be the one to
turn up unannounced.

But the moment I got off the train in Bratislava had come the crushing
realisation that the situation was hopeless, the idea had been hare-brained.
What if it hadn't been her? Oh, certainly I grilled those two musicians on
the Charles Bridge but good for details to try and ascertain with certainty
that it was in fact her, but they didn't know her name and who knew
anyway, she might be using any name by then.

Even if it had been her, what had she been doing in Prague at all anyway?
And even if she had been in Prague, what shitty, terrible thing did it
portend for us that she’d been right there and had never even contacted
me? And then, if I’d just forget about that sour point for a minute, if she
had been going to Bratislava in the first place, who's to say she'd still be
there at all. And if even I forgot the sour point of being in Prague without
telling me, and ignored the possibility or probability that she would have
already departed to the next great city on this never-ending tour by the time
I’d arrived, where in the hell was I going to find her?

Nowhere, I thought to myself sitting on the edge of the creaking bed and rolling another cigarette. Not sat indoors never having left the hotel room paralysed by inertia or fear or the knowing futility of it all.

The only logical place to begin looking was music venues. Bars or cafes or pubs which had live music where she might be singing or might be looking
for someone to sing with. A bird with a voice like hers had to sing, after all, craved the public attention, yearned for the recognition. It never should have been hard to begin with yet in all the little music venues I'd stormed into expectantly in all the little villages and towns, I had yet to overturn a single
worm beneath the rock, had yet, not only to find her but to even find a trace
of her having been there at all to begin with.

I was already missing Prague. The afternoon drinking and rehearsal sessions were becoming ritual, one we looked forward to each morning when we got up, a schedule of sorts other than the class I was teaching, around which to
orbit. Overnight almost we had become guided, energised, focused.
Overnight we suddenly felt credible.

Which of course made my inability to control myself all the sadder. Common sense should have told me there was no reason to go chasing after Anastasia. Her actions should have indicated either that she was going to forever be too
elusive or that she wasn’t really all that interested, other than the idea of
us, not the practicality, or as the case may have been, the impracticality of it. So I had no business being in Bratislava trying to hunt her down like a war
criminal.

And yet there I was.

Convinced that since I was already there anyway and that she certainly wouldn’t simply show up in this hotel when she didn’t even know I was here, or for that matter, if she was even here, I headed out to explore the city, the poor man’s Prague.

******

Whilst walking it was impressed upon me how different a city looks when you’re alone in it. In fact, the old Doors tune, People Are Strange When You’re A Stranger kept popping up into my head, perhaps reflectively.

When you blow into cities, as Albert and I had, ready to take it on, begging to embrace it and be embraced back with every debauchery and hedonistic urge sated, the city becomes an almost anywhere place. Plus you deprive yourself of most sensory experience. Sure, you get the highs, the passion. Sure you talk up strangers you might never speak to sober. Sure, you go places you wouldn’t dream of entering when sober but the darker side to it is the
negation. Drunk, Albert and I would become almost impervious to charms.
We’d be quick to negate, quick to turn up our noses at people, at experiences,
in essence at life. Life was drinking, only the venues were changing.

I don’t know why I realised this when walking around Bratislava, evading the stout Austrian and German tourists in the market square examining trinkets and crafts with delight . The easiest guess is the most obvious, sobriety. But there was a sobriety that had to do with not drinking and the sobriety that had to do with chasing a girl around from city to city with no earthly idea why other than some weird obsession that completely contradicted, emotionally,
the entirety of your life up to that point.

Why was I constantly getting myself in this pickle anyway? I’d done so well to avoid relationships and emotional entanglements my entire life that it seemed strange that I would creep out of my shell now, that by virtue of a simple dream and a chance meeting, here I would find myself surrounded by foreigners with their own empty chattiness polluting my ears instead of back
in my flat in New York evading, always evading exactly this sort of millstone, chasing after a dream. A dream? Since when did I have dreams? I felt as though I’d left my life, someone else took it over for awhile and now that I’d stepped back into it I was only now beginning to survey the damage the stranger inhabiting my life had done.

And what were my feelings for Anastasia anyway? Love? How could I be capable of love? I haven’t given a thought to anyone but myself and maybe Albert for the entirety of my life, or at least the majority of it once my parents were out of it. So why now? What was I playing at? Was I simply bored? Looking for new experiences? And if it were such a scientific endeavour,
some clinical, detached survey to complete the missing elements of my life,
why did I feel such longing?

Ah, but predictable creature that I am, after wandering around aimlessly for hours, getting nothing sorted out but confusing myself more instead, I decided to enter a cellar pivnice and have a beer or two, sample the local goods, forget my troubles for awhile. So I descended the winding stairs to the bottom which opened up to a windowless room where sat an old man and a chess board.

The old man was studying moves. He had the pieces spread out, a book in his hand on Sicilian Defence and a beer to the side of the chess table. I noticed him first because he was first in my line of vision but as I went further I could hear Rammstein pounding; an odd juxtaposition, Rammstein and the old man practicing chess.

And as I entered further I encountered an incredibly bored looking girl with short blonde hair, pins in her lips, plaid skirt, Doc Martins plopped up on the bar top, reading a book as though impervious to the music which was quite loud and insistent.

I ordered a beer and headed over to the old man. A game of chess would be a nice distraction, even over the music. I motioned to the board. Would you like to play? He looked up from his book, certainly he hadn’t heard my words, the music was far too loud for conversation, but he must have felt my presence there. I pointed again to the table. You want to play? I nearly shouted, waiting for a sign of recognition from him, acknowledgement. Gradually, he appeared to grasp it, a look of mild delight crossed his face. He put down his book and nodded his head, motioning to take the chair opposite him. He said words to me that I couldn’t hear or even if I’d been able to hear them, no doubt I’d have not understood them anyway, a pensioner’s Slovakian. As I sat down, he removed a black pawn and a white pawn from the board, put his hands behind his back and then held them back out, like a magician, hands closed, motioning for me to pick, right hand or left hand.

Before long we were in the middle of a good struggle. He was probably a little better player than I was, or perhaps I simply made a few dumb mistakes early on, distracted by the Rammstein or the venue, or the bored girl with her feet up on the bar top or perhaps the pensioner himself. But we continued playing, I lost two games in a row before perhaps luckily gaining the third and by then of course, we were out of beer and I’d gone up and bought us another few rounds.

Each time I got more beer the girl would unravel herself from her position, setting her book down, whose title I couldn’t read, and would pour the beers without a word, without even really looking at me really. And oddly enough, when the Rammstein CD was over, instead of putting a new CD on, she simply hit replay and the entire CD was played again. And when it was over the second time, she did it again until it got to the point of being almost surreal. Between the pensioner, the chess, the Rammstein, the Slovakian girl and the emptiness of the pub, I no longer knew where I was or that I was even alive, that I wasn’t simply dreaming again, somewhere else.

After a few hours, I finally left, a little tipsy, like the pensioner, and headed back out into what was now the beginnings of night. I tried to find a place to have a quick meal and decided finally, whilst chewing over a few sausages and dark rolls at a street stand, washed down with a bottle of beer, that I would give up this nonsense, go back to Prague, back to rehearsals, back to life, forget about Anastasia as best I could, for my own sanity and health.

And when I went back into that very same cellar pub a few hours later the only thing that had changed was that the pensioner had left. The place was entirely empty although there was now a heavily muscled doorman at the entrance. Entirely empty and the very same Rammstein CD playing and the very same Slovakian girl sitting with her feet up on the bar top reading.

So of course I got the idea in my head to try and chat her up seeing as how we were the only people in the bar. After I ordered I tried to make some little comment passing as wit, about the CD, or lack of variety. She looked annoyed. She turned the music down for a moment. I’m sorry? Nothing, just I was curious why you’re listening to the same CD over and over again.

Because it’s good, she said as if explaining why the sky is blue to a small
child. And then she turned the volume back up and went to her book. I finished my pint quickly and left.

Bratislava is an ugly, unforgiving city. Perhaps I’d been spoiled by Prague
and its well-preserved grandeur but there was something miserably
industrial, bleak cold and grey, filthy, about it, as if the longer I stayed, the lower my shoulders would slump, the dirtier I would become, the more
permanent this nagging feeling would grow inside me like a cancer.

By morning, I had decided for certain that this was it. I was leaving. I
wouldn’t play the game any longer. I’d wash Anastasia from my mind
just as I’d washed my parents from my mind and go back to my life
in Prague with Albert and drinking and music.

It was just as I’d decided I’d had my fill, that this ridiculous charade should end finally, just as I was turning the corner back on to Michalska ulica,
returning from a morning stroll to go back and check out of the hotel that I spotted her at a café, reading something, not a book, not a newspaper but
what appeared to be sheaves of paper.

I closed my eyes a moment, stopping in my tracks, then reopened them
again to see her still seated. Her back was almost entirely to me, as though
she’d been facing as best she could away from me to conceal herself if I’d
been coming from this very direction but this of course, was preposterous
as she had no idea I was even in Bratislava and even if she did know it, she
certainly wouldn’t be trying to avoid me.

Yet I could not shake this nagging gloom, whether it was Bratislava or the
solitude or the circumstances.

You might think I’m crazy but at first I considered after all this to simply turn around, walking away as quickly as possible from where she was seated, some 50 metres or so from me, hop the next train back to Prague and pretend I’d never been here, never known her, had never allowed my heart to roam so far from home.

But although the terror rooted me for a moment, passers-by turning over their shoulders as they passed to glare at me, I knew the absurdity of turning away was unthinkable. I’d come this distance, I’d have to admit I’d come this distance on some half-baked scheme and simply hoped that her surprise and happiness at my having come across her would match my own.

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