by Greg Baxter
Saskia takes her gloves and hat off. I pull the collar of my coat down and pull my winter hat off. She looks at me and says, I don’t think I’m ever getting off this bus. Saskia has a dark complexion. Her eyes look very tired, and the circles under them are blue sometimes, in certain light. I used to have trouble sleeping. It wasn’t anything in particular, just a fear that I ought to be doing something, that something needed being done, or that something was wrong. I had bad dreams. The dreams were often about showing up to places unprepared, or being asked to do something that I didn’t know how to do. And other times I just lay there, twisting and rearranging pillows, or got up for a glass of water and then stood by the window for a while. But I sleep now. I’ve never slept like I sleep here. I never believed this kind of sleep was possible. I am forty-one years old. I don’t drink as much as I used to. I hardly drink at all here. I like to be awake in the mornings, and thinking clearly. My alarm goes off at seven and I lie in bed for a while. I feel rested. I feel like I’ve been asleep for ten years. I smoke cigarettes and listen to the street. I read a book. The book I’m reading now is something Saskia gave me, an old book of sights to see in the city, with some historical information. The print is tiny and the translation is bad. It says things like, You are pleasing to see the statue. I’m going to learn the language and buy some novels soon. I want to read very long and old ones. They don’t have to be great. I’m going to buy a chair that’s comfortable, and when it’s cold I’m going to set it by the window, and when it’s warm I’m going to pull the chair onto my balcony, if I have one, and read outside in the sunshine, and listen to birds. I am also going to listen to the radio, and I hope my balcony will look over some trees and a street, one where people honk their horns at each other.
When is the last time you slept? I ask her. She doesn’t know. Weeks, she guesses, maybe never. She pauses. I don’t mean never, she says, just that it feels like never. She yawns. You’re making me tired now, she says. Can I see the newspaper? I ask. She hands it to me. It’s damp. I peruse the ads she has circled. I realize my mistake and hand the paper back to her. Saskia could have telephoned these places from my hotel room, or she could call them now, but she doesn’t. It’s the whole experience she wants. We shall sit in a café and have some coffee or tea and she’ll make calls there, then plan our route. I like that we’re not rushing anything, that everything is pointlessly ritualized. The bus is beginning to fill now. Bodies begin to push backward, and a man with a backpack bumps Saskia on the head. She rolls her eyes. That was nice of him, I say. The man turns around and gives me a dirty look, a look that says, Where am I supposed to go? So I give him a look that says, You could at least remove your backpack. Saskia, realizing I’ve become perturbed, says, to me, You must be used to lots of space. The guy mumbles something. I ignore it. I can’t speak the language. I’d look like a fool if I tried to start an argument, and anyway it might be the wrong argument. The man turns back around and Saskia gets hit by the backpack again, so she quickly and quietly unzips its small back pocket. Revenge, she whispers. The reason the bus is getting crowded on a Saturday morning is that everyone is going into the centre to shop, and to visit Christmas markets and drink and have cakes. The economy is bad, but there is only this weekend and the next before Christmas. The streak I wiped in the glass beside me has fogged up again, so I wipe it again. I realize we are moving fast now – we must be in a bus lane. This is a nice time of year, says Saskia, if you don’t mind crowds. I say, Sometimes I like crowds. Good, she says, because it’s going to be crowded. We cross a large suspension bridge, and the sound of the tyres on the road changes considerably. The change nearly creates the sensation of floating. My ears pop. Saskia leans across me to wipe a larger streak in the glass. A long way below is the river, wide and black. The surface of the river is choppy, and snow is falling everywhere, in many directions.
We reach the other side, after a long minute, and the sound of the tyres on the road changes back, and we are in the immediate outskirts of the centre now. The buildings here are all the same. You walk along one street, turn a corner, and you are on the same street. This is what the foreigner tells himself. The longer I stay here, though, the more I notice imperfections in the repetition. I notice a laneway here or there that is small and winding, a shortcut. Or an alley that leads to a street that it seemingly shouldn’t, which tells you that your inner compass has failed. Or you notice a little gateway that leads to a square. Or there’s an old monastery. Or a man who always sweeps the sidewalk outside his shop. You begin to notice that no two buildings are really alike. You begin to see that what you suspected was perfect repetition in an orderly grid is apparent repetition in an imperfect grid, and after a while you learn that what you once considered monolithic is infinitely intricate. And from here you begin to understand the vastness of the place.
The bus stops at a hub for streetcars, trains and buses that come in from the west, across the bridge. Is this us? I ask. Saskia is yawning again. The bus is really warm now. Everyone has been breathing, and creating heat. No, she says, we have a few more stops. The doors open and the bus almost empties. The heat is released with the people who alight. It is sucked immediately into the morning, and what’s left in the bus is cold and refreshing space. Where are we going? I ask. Saskia says, A café with lots of students. It’s … and she pauses, seemingly searching for the correct English word. It’s the first time since I met her that she has paused for a word, and this makes me momentarily wonder at how impressive it is that she speaks English so well. Her accent sounds a bit British. Did you live in England? I asked her once. No, she said. But we study English here for a long time. I studied Spanish in high school and college, I said. Habla español? she asked. Not a word, I answered. She taught herself Latin, so she could read Virgil in the original. She is now reading Dante in Italian, and hopes to learn Japanese next. This is a girl who also spends half her life at parties.
I wipe the window again to see where we are. The closer we get to the centre, the more Christmaslike the city gets. I don’t mind too much about spending Christmas in a hotel. But I would like a little more space. As much as I like Mr and Mrs Pyz, I’d like to have a life where people don’t monitor my movements, even accidentally. I’d like to have my own pots and pans. I’d like a table to place a bowl of fruit on. I have an idea of myself walking around markets where butchers and grocers shout prices over the crowds, and where I’ll carefully and slowly choose vegetables and meat, and come home to cook myself meals. I’d like to have breakfast without having to get dressed. I’d like to wander in and out of rooms and take a bath with the door open. And I don’t want to look out the window of a little room and wonder where, in the city, I’ll end up. The most essential quality of hotel life is the thing I want least: a presumption of departure.
Saskia peers forward and hits the button on the rail. There’s a pleasing ding, and a light illuminates near the driver that says the bus is going to stop. This is us, says Saskia. She puts her hat and gloves back on and stands. The bus pulls over into the grey slop that snow ploughs and traffic have driven toward the kerb and comes to a halt. The door opens. Saskia hops out and I follow. I put my hat on and zip up my coat and put my hands back in my pockets. The unlit Christmas lights stretched above the street are rocking in the wind. They could easily light them – it is dark enough. Are you hungry? I ask. Not really, she says, are you? I am, I say. I think I ought to eat something straight away. Are we far from the café? Ten or fifteen minutes, she says. Okay, I say, then let me just get a quick snack. Right beside us there’s a stand that serves fish fingers and fish sandwiches. These stands are everywhere, and they’re not bad. They load the sandwiches up with mayonnaise and lime juice and fresh coriander, and the bread is always nice. I’d never heard of anything like fish sandwiches from street vendors before I came here, and for that reason I eat them all the time.
I eat while we walk. Saskia suggests we stop so I don’t get a stomach ache, but I know she’s only bein
g nice. It’s too cold to stand still. I eat the whole thing in four bites, so that I can put my hands back in my pockets. The first three bites are small, but I take the whole last half of the sandwich with the fourth, and have to cover my face with my hands. You eat like an animal, she says. I chew and chew and hold my finger up, indicating that I’m chewing. I always used to eat quickly, but lately I have been sitting at dinner tables in restaurants and cafés, and after I swallow a bite I put my fork and knife or spoon down and allow a thought to rise to the surface – one that is purely philosophical, that is in no way actionable, and that relaxes the mind.
The fish sandwich makes me feel better immediately. I throw the packaging into a bin, wipe my mouth and hands with a napkin and throw that into the bin. Then I take a drink of water. Okay, I say. Okay, says Saskia. She leads us to the left, onto a short, narrow street with a lot of closed-down old shops. The foot or two of sidewalk separating the buildings from the road is not wide enough for both of us, or either of us, in fact, so we walk on the road, which is white and soft and thick with snow. I used to live near here, and take this street to the café, says Saskia; we’re very near the university. At that moment a car appears behind us and honks. It’s a polite honk, a short honk, just to let us know it’s there. And that’s when I first realize that the wind is howling. You cannot even hear cars that are a few feet behind you. Saskia steps out of the way and I file behind her. The car goes by, an old silver Mercedes driven by a man with huge silver hair. My face is wet and feels hard because it’s so numb. I move alongside Saskia again. She has her arms crossed and walks with her head pointed down. The road is ascending. The Mercedes, ahead of us, is sliding all over the place.
I was thinking about taking some language courses, I say. Saskia contemplates this by looking up, lifting her chin. This is what she does when she contemplates something. That’s a good idea, she says. Would you like me to help you find one? I say, Hmm, and I nod my head, because I cannot say no without feeling rude and I cannot say yes without embarrassment. I’m embarrassed that she’s doing all the favours and I offer nothing in return. I sense this doesn’t bother her, and she knows I have nothing to offer. Nothing in the way of assistance, anyway. Nothing in the way of information, or a practicality. I alleviate a kind of loneliness in her, perhaps. I give her somebody else to fret about. Or she is simply being hospitable. Or all of these things.
She stops to examine a building. For a moment she says nothing. Her arms stay crossed. She blinks a lot, because snowflakes are getting into her eyes. This place, she says, used to be famous. Yes? I say. I examine it with her. Its windows are boarded up. The stone façade is rain-stained, but that makes it like every other building on the street. Maybe it’s another one, says Saskia. She scans up and down the street, looking slightly bewildered. There used to be a famous little book press on this street, she says. They published lots of anarchist novels. The publisher was jailed. But that was a hundred years ago. Then it became a famous bookshop. Sort of famous. It was where people went when they wanted to pretend to be anarchists. When did it close? I ask. When I was very young, she says. Not enough people wanted to pretend to be anarchists. We stand for ten seconds longer, and then she says, But I can’t remember which building it was.
We continue up the hill, walking side-by-side. The road leads to a stairway that zigzags up a ridge, then opens onto a wide platform with a sculpture on it, something abstract and large, two curved shapes, one stacked on top of the other. What’s it supposed to be? I ask. It is a memorial for massacred Jews, she says. That is a mother embracing the corpse of a child. After about thirty seconds, during which we kneel to get a look at the child, we continue onward. There’s another short stairway at the other end of the platform. It’s not far now, she says. At the top of the stairway we find ourselves on another small grey street. The street is empty of vehicles or people. There’s a light in a window not far from us. A door opens, and suddenly there is a lot of noise, and an orange light. A couple steps out, the door closes behind them and the sound dissolves and the light disappears. And now I can hear the couple speaking, but I don’t understand what they’re saying. The woman is catching the snow in her mittens. That’s the café, says Saskia. She looks both ways and starts to cross the street. The surface is slippery, and Saskia throws her arms out for balance when she nearly slips. I take her arm and we help each other cross. The street is so narrow that the surface probably never sees direct sunlight in winter. I don’t recognize the street. It seems strange that I have walked so many hours in this city and still don’t recognize places. I tend to begin my walks in places I know – I never fling myself completely into unfamiliarity – and move outward slowly, turning this way and that, and try to find my way back. I almost always do. Then I find a new point of origin and do it all over again. I also like shortcuts, so I test tiny alleyways that wind away from bigger streets. I open gates. I crawl under small archways that appear to lead nowhere, but often take you to interesting spots. I walk through sleepy private gardens and grounds. The stairs and the memorial and now the café – I get a lot of pleasure out of the secrecy of this city. This is something Saskia and I have in common.
She opens the door for me. We are met by the sound of voices and the smell of coffee. The café is warm and stretches back a long way, through an archway into a second room. The walls are covered with posters – scenes of city life and reproductions of old masterpieces. There is one of a nude man, covering his genitals with his hands, wearing a donkey mask. The booths are red velvet. The tables and chairs are dark brown wood. There are immense chandeliers, and the waiters are dressed in tuxedos. There aren’t any free tables in the front room. Saskia tells me to wait while she checks the back. She takes off her hat and gloves and unbuttons her coat. She stuffs her gloves and hat into her coat pocket and, on the way to the back room, hangs the coat on a rack. I unzip my coat and take off my hat. I wait where Saskia told me to wait. She disappears into the second room. Through the archway I see that the second room, the back room, is much larger than the front, but not as nice. The tables are fold-out tables, covered in oilcloth, and the chairs are cheap. It looks just as packed as the front room. A minute passes, maybe more. A waiter begs my pardon, not apologetically but as a warning that I could be trampled, as he goes to a table with drinks and again on the way back, with an armful of plates. I am in his way.
I put my hat in my coat pocket and take my coat off and hang it on the coat rack, then I walk through the archway. Saskia is standing by a table, talking to a guy. He looks about her age around the eyes, but he has a huge scruffy beard that makes him seem older. He sees me looking at Saskia, and she turns and waves me over. I don’t really like the idea of having to meet somebody, especially a young man with an old beard, but she seems happy to see him. I walk over, she introduces me to him – his name is Janos – and we shake hands. American? he says. That’s right, I say. Where in America? he asks. Delaware, I say. That’s what I say to everybody. He nods. Saskia asks if I mind joining him while we phone around for apartments. Not at all, I say. Janos gets the attention of the waiter. Saskia orders a tea and a bun. I order a coffee and a piece of cake. You learn to say some things quickly in a foreign language. You learn what to call your favourite types of food. You learn to say please and thank you. You learn to place orders – that is, you learn to say, I would like instead of I want. Janos is small, with round, drooping shoulders, but handsome eyes and nose. He is having a small beer and some soup. He takes a drink and froth gets stuck in his moustache. There’s some soup in the bottom of his beard. Saskia speaks to Janos in English, but he doesn’t answer her in English. She’s telling him about the apartment. Then he says something, something obviously about her relationship to me. I can see immediately this is a kind of jealousy that is based on national propriety rather than love. I say, So, Janos, what’s happening? He looks at Saskia. I say, What are you doing today? Shopping for Christmas presents, he says. That’s nice, I say. Then he says something to
Saskia. She answers sharply, and then there is silence.
I’d prefer, if such a thing were possible, or perhaps I mean if I were patient enough, to teach myself the language: get some books, go read them in dark, quiet libraries, listen to some CDs, eavesdrop on streetcars, in cafés, and so on. I’d prefer to stay out of classrooms, avoid learning by exercises, chapters, and tests. But I need to make haste. I create an alarming foreignness wherever I go. In a year I’d like to be invisible. I’d like to sit down at tables with strangers and not be an interruption, or a curiosity. I want to walk into a barbershop and get a haircut and speak two or three sentences about the weather and pay and leave, and be so inconspicuous that the barber immediately forgets I was there. For this I will need not only language but accent, so I am studying the sounds of people, even if I don’t understand what they’re saying, and on my walks I repeat them to myself. If I know I am completely alone, I say them out loud. You are looking for a place to live? asks Janos. That’s right, I say. For how long? he asks. I don’t know, I say. Probably for a while. Saskia puts the newspaper in front of Janos so he can read the ads she has circled. He looks them over. He shakes his head at some, but is impressed by the look of others. You must be rich, he says. I’ve saved, I say. What did you do? he asks. I was in the Navy, I say, partly because I figure Saskia may already have told him, and I don’t want to be caught in a lie, and partly because I want to obliterate the possibility that Janos and I will become friends. He smiles because he thinks I am joking. Then he stops smiling. It’s too early for cake, he says. I say nothing. I never had a taste for sweet things before, but now I do. Now I really like to eat rich, sweet, fruity, creamy cakes, and it doesn’t matter what time of day it is. Janos finishes his soup and takes another drink of his beer. He wants to say something. I can see it in his eyes. He leans forward. He almost speaks. Then he leans back.
