by Greg Baxter
Saskia makes her first phone call. She holds her thumb, which is, here, the same as crossing one’s fingers. She waits, and waits, and waits, and frowns, then leaves a message. Then she draws a star by the ad. Our food comes. Saskia dials another number. She waits. And waits. She frowns again, and shakes her head at me when she gets to voicemail. She leaves a short message. She draws a star by the ad and says, It’s December, it’s the worst time to look. She dials the next number on the list and someone answers. Excitedly, she grabs my arm. She speaks. She is, perhaps, trying to explain the situation, who I am, that I am an American – I hear the word American. Her telephone voice is not like her regular voice. It is severe, professional, and lacks empathy, and I find it totally incongruous with the fact that her hand is on my arm, that she is excited. Then she’s cut off in the middle of a sentence, or what seems like the middle of a sentence. She frowns and says goodbye. It’s gone already, she says. She draws a line through the ad. Pity, she says. It had a balcony. Maybe you should not tell landlords I’m American, I say. Saskia dismisses this.
She pauses to eat and drink. This is exciting, she says. I’m excited, too, I say. And we all eat and drink for a bit. It is true that I’m excited, but I also feel relief that we may not find an apartment, that I can go on living in a hotel for a month or two, that I can continue to eat all my meals in restaurants and cafés, and sleep on a tiny bed in a small room with nothing at all by way of decoration, except the one painting. I’m ashamed of this feeling that I might be quite content in the shallow, purgatorial waters of hotel life. My cake is full of warm raspberries and warm blackberries and is covered in cream. Janos eyes it suspiciously, as do other diners around us. I’m wearing my boots, jeans, a black belt, a blue T-shirt, and a dark brown, button-down shirt with long sleeves. I bought the brown shirt here, and a few others just like it, because all my shirts made me feel conspicuously American. I’m also letting my hair grow. My US passport photo shows me with neat, clean and well-groomed hair, tapered above the ears and around the neck from the lower natural hairline upward at least three-fourths of an inch and outward not greater than three-fourths of an inch to blend with hairstyle, etcetera. The photo was taken just after I left the Navy. I look at it sometimes, while lying in bed, and it’s like I am staring at a picture of a dead brother. I didn’t really know him, but I know he had hopes. I know he was a well-behaved young boy once, and that he was smart, a straight-A student who never had to study, but studied constantly, and dreamed of being a leader. But he is dead now. He died unexpectedly.
When Saskia has finished half her bun, she wipes her hands, pours herself another cup of tea from the pot, and picks up the phone again. How many are left? I ask. There are plenty, but not too many in the centre. That doesn’t matter much to me, I say. It does, she says, you want to live in the centre. Janos says, Saskia wants a friend who lives in the centre. Saskia says, Everybody wants a friend who lives in the centre. Okay, I say, I don’t mind. She makes another call. There’s no answer. She leaves a message and draws a star by the ad. Well, I say, what now? She tells me she’s tried all the best places. Maybe they’ll call back, I say. I doubt it, says Janos, that’s the Thursday paper. Is there a paper from today we can check? I ask. There is, Saskia says, but the list of apartments will be very small – the Thursday paper is the one to buy. But only if you go looking on Thursday, says Janos. I got my flat on a Saturday, says Saskia. Janos nods, because she has proved his point: Your flat is small and full of mice, he says. It’s not full of mice! says Saskia. Well, the stairwell is full of mice, says Janos. Saskia gets up. Where are you going? I ask. To get today’s paper, she says. I’ll go with you, I say. She doesn’t want me to. She puts her hand out as though she is a policewoman and I am traffic, and she apologizes for having an old paper. She’s upset about it. I don’t mind, I say. What’s the difference between getting an apartment now and getting an apartment in January? It’s my fault for waiting so late in the first place. She sits down. It’s ridiculous that they print the ads on a Thursday, when everyone has to work, she says. We could telephone some of the places that are outside the centre? No, I say, let’s just wait. Maybe they’ll call back.
She goes to the bathroom and I am left on my own with Janos. He watches her weave between the tables, so I turn and watch her as well. In the image of this pretty, well-dressed girl, who is an economist, and whom I met just weeks ago, walking through a crowd of chairs and tables and artists in a loud, warm, and smoke-filled café in a cold city I never considered visiting until I moved here forever, having no concept of the meaning of forever anyway, I attain a state of weightlessness, as though I am in deep space. This happens many times a day here, and I try to clear my mind of the desire to wonder why it arrives, and what it means, or if it means anything at all. In the mornings, in my tiny bed, in my small, undecorated room, I lie very still, and I replace the naked scenery of that room with the memories of my new unfamiliarity. I lie there and ponder these memories for a long time, and even though it is cold and blowing outside, my room is warm. There is a hot radiator just below the window. When I come back from the shower, I open up the window to freshen the room, and I wait for it to get cold again, and then I close the window and dress.
You should not tell anyone that you were in the Navy, says Janos. I turn around and see him sitting in an aggressive but also embarrassed posture over his empty beer. There is still foam on his moustache and soup in his beard. People don’t like Americans in the first place, he says. I say, That’s true. Did you fight? What do you mean? I mean in a war, he says. Iraq, I say. Iraq? Yes, I say. You must tell no one that, he says. It’s behind me, I say. I never think about it. Tell no one, he repeats. The waiter walks by, so I tell him I’d like to pay – this too you learn quickly, how to say you’d like to pay. He does not register that he has heard me, but they usually don’t. They move like stone chess pieces through fog. It shows a lack of refinement to initiate contact with waiters in cafés like this one, where the whole point of being here is to prove that you are not in a hurry. You must learn to wear an attitude of being ready to pay, or wanting another drink, or being ready to order, and they simply come to you. There’s a degree of mysticism about it. But I haven’t learned the secret, so I just hold up my hand and say the words as they pass. They usually come back a few minutes later and tally up the prices of the things I’ve ordered – this is done on paper – and tell me the total, and when they realize I have not understood, they place their sums in front of me and I give them some cash. I leave a tip on the table, even though you are supposed to include it when you pay. I do this because I do not know how to tell them to take extra for a tip. I watch the way people around me handle the transaction, with as little conversation as possible. I say nothing else to Janos, and he decides to check his phone for messages, and a few minutes pass. I look around the room and watch other people talking. The volume of the place has gone up, or maybe it’s just that I’m paying attention to the noise. A few more minutes pass. Saskia comes out of the door to the toilets. We are looking at each other before we realize we are looking at each other. I turn around. She’s back, I say to Janos. He lifts his head up from his phone. Saskia pulls out her chair and sits down as the waiter returns. He adds up the cost and tells me a number, and I give him a note that is easily large enough to cover it. Saskia tries to give me some money. You pay next time, I say. Fine, she says. In America, a person who says fine is pissed off with you, but here it expresses something like great, or cool. The waiter counts out change, and Janos asks him for another beer. There is no response, but Janos doesn’t need one. I hate shopping, he says. Maybe I’ll just stay here for the day.
Saskia and I stand at the same time. I’m happy we’re going to be on our own again. I’m happy we’re going to be walking again. Maybe we’ll see you later? Saskia says to Janos. Perhaps, says Janos. Good luck finding an apartment, he says. Thanks, I say. Goodbye. Goodbye, he says. Goodbye, says Saskia. Saskia motions for me to go first. She hold
s her arm out as though she is an usher directing me to my seat in a theatre. She is always doing this, always escorting me through places, opening doors for me, or paying for drinks. I also open doors for her, and I help her put her coat on, sometimes. I see lots of men doing this here, so I do it. I like doing it. Here, in this city, intense joy and intense sorrow are extinct. The place is too old for that kind of naivety. Everyone here responds to these extinctions by opening doors for each other, or making room at tables – they are generous and polite. I admire this – to celebrate the extinction of hope with ritual and composure. To place coats on the shoulders of women. There isn’t a thought left. There isn’t a sentence. There isn’t a human being. Janos has a beard because it is the embodiment of the hope that he is not recycled matter, that he has thoughts that are his own. He will wake up one day, maybe a year from now, or five, and shave it. I take Saskia’s coat off the rack and she walks toward me and turns around, and puts her arms into the sleeves, and we leave the warm orange light of the café and return to the purple and white darkness of the street.
Janos is always unhappy, she says. It makes him happy to be unhappy. It must take so much effort to find unhappiness in everything. You’re not unhappy? I ask. Oh, she says, I’m not stupid, but I don’t make an effort to be unhappy.
The cold gets right into my lungs and refreshes me. The snow is coming down a little heavier than before. We turn right, into the wind and snow. We’ll get a newspaper and check it for apartments, she says, and make our way into the centre. She crosses her arms and I stick my hands in my pockets, and we walk very close together, so close that we bump into each other. I open a hole with my arm and she slots her arm through. If I were looking for an apartment, she says, I would like one with high ceilings and a big bathtub, and large windows facing a park. What about the kitchen? I ask. She contemplates this – again she lifts her head, like a philosopher. I don’t cook well, she says. Do you? I like to cook, I say, and I’d like to have a nice kitchen. I have a small kitchen, she says. I hardly ever eat at home. My kitchen depresses me. I don’t want a kitchen that depresses me, I say. The streets around here are sombre and pretty. We begin to encounter other people. The road curves and widens. There are shops and cafés and a bank. And then there is a small intersection, and a bit of traffic. Saskia and I go inside a shop and she buys a newspaper. She tries to open the paper inside the shop, but it’s a small space, tiny, and other people come in, so we have to leave.
We return to the cold and Saskia says there is something worth seeing nearby. It’s something she’s been wanting to show me since we met, but keeps forgetting. And now we are extremely close to it, so we must have a look. She links her arm in mine again, and walks a little more swiftly. I can’t believe I keep forgetting this, she says. We turn onto another road that is narrow, and that hooks sharply, and ascends. From here to the centre, there is nothing but a slow ascent. This street is full of people just standing around. Someone is playing a trumpet, slowly and plaintively. We turn the corner and arrive at a small Christmas market in a square. There are brown huts full of Christmas ornaments, wooden children’s toys, and jewellery. There is a stage where the man playing the trumpet stands. He’s warming up. People are eating pretzels and doughnut balls covered in icing sugar. They are drinking mulled wine. Parents have brought little children out in strollers. All you can see are little sleeping faces in beds of fur. Green turf has been laid all over the ground, but you see the green only where feet have stomped the snow into muddy slush. It is just like every other Christmas market I’ve come across, with minor differences. Is this what you wanted to show me? I ask. No, she says, this is. There’s a small fountain in the middle of the square. In it, there’s a statue of a man in a gown, with a halo over his head. Who’s that supposed to be? I ask. That’s a saint, says Saskia. Saint Nicolas – the saint of seafarers. She points to a brown Romanesque church that stands at one end of the square. That’s the church he’s buried in, in a catacomb, she says. We walk right up to the fountain, which is dry and full of soft snow. Around the feet of the saint, and leaping toward the edge, with their mouths open, are strange sea creatures. What do those look like? she asks. I think they look like a cross between a fish and a dragon, but I don’t say it. They have stubby whiskers and massive fins. They have spikes on their tails like dinosaurs. They have huge round mouths with fangs. I say, I suppose they are mythological. Saskia shakes her head. I give them another look. They look to me like something a boy would draw – the scariest fish he could ever imagine. I try to imagine them a hundred times larger, and swimming in the ocean. I imagine the swell they create on the surface as they approach old ships full of terrified sailors. I give up, I say. They are dolphins, she says. Those aren’t dolphins, I say. Well, they are supposed to be dolphins, she says, but the artist had never seen one. Are you sure that’s true? It’s true, she says. That’s funny, I say. The fountain has a name, but everyone calls it the dolphin fountain. So did everyone go around hundreds of years ago thinking these were dolphins? I guess, says Saskia, or perhaps they immediately realized the artist was a fool. I nod. Saskia then says, What kind of boats were you on? In the Navy? I ask. Yes, she says, if you don’t mind me asking. Submarines, I say.
The man playing the trumpet finally begins a Christmas song. It’s quick and happy. I feel really glad to have happened upon this place. It always seems a degree or two warmer inside Christmas markets. There are space heaters in huts and crowds generating heat. Saskia joins a line outside the hut for drinks. She looks back at me. I have a funny feeling she has brought me here in order to place me in this shot – the sailor under the statue of the saint of seafarers, and the demonic dolphins. She smiles, then turns back to the hut and waits. I squat down to see the dolphins eye-to-eye. I don’t think the sculpture really holds up as a work of art, but then again it is still here, and people are still, obviously, coming to look at it, not for the saint, I’d bet, but to marvel at the little dolphins, which are not dolphins at all, but examinations of the fantastic reality of human fear. Insofar as the statue is that, it’s nice to look at.
Saskia returns with two mugs of hot wine. We light cigarettes. Do you think this is art? I ask. She says, Of course, why not? Well, I say, I guess I don’t know. I never ask if anything is art, she says. If someone says something is art, I agree. She says this without changing the tone of her voice, as coolly as you could imagine. I don’t know how to have a conversation about art, because nobody I have ever met, until Saskia, considered it worthy of serious discussion. I have thought about art but I have not tested my thoughts. Well, what if you think it’s terrible? I ask. What does it matter if I think it’s terrible? she says. I take a sip of my wine. She says, Bad artists trade on people’s refusal to accept their work as art. I accept their work as art, so that there is nothing for their art to hide behind. That makes sense, I say.
The wine at Christmas markets can be way too sweet, and it can make you feel sick, but this wine is pretty much perfect. The snow blows all around Saskia, and around the huts, and up in the sky above the church. I switch my mug from one hand to the other, which has been warm and in my pocket, so I can put my cold hand in my pocket. The wine goes cold quickly, so you sip it for a bit, until you finish half, but then you must gulp the rest. Another? Saskia asks. No, I say, better not. I switch hands again with the mug. You need some gloves, she says, and takes the mug, so I can put both hands in my pockets. We leave the fountain and find a table under the large awning of one of the huts, and she takes the newspaper out. Okay, she says, and flattens out the page in front of us. See how much smaller the apartments section is on Saturdays? It’s true. There are only two columns that run down half a page, whereas on Thursdays there are four full pages of ads. She runs her index finger down the columns as she reads. Here’s one, she says. It’s in the centre. I try to read it but I can’t understand it. Looks good, I say. She takes her phone out and pulls off her glove. She dials the number, holds the phone to her ear and unbuttons th
e top of her coat. It’s a grey wool coat with a thick collar and large buttons, and it falls just below her knees. It makes me want a new coat. Soon after I arrived, I walked into a disconsolate little shop by the train station, just a white room with coats on rolling racks, and a fat guy with a moustache started throwing coats at me, piling them in my arms. I didn’t like anything. I tried to leave but he wouldn’t let me. He kept dropping his price. He spoke English. He was an Arab. He’d made me as an American, and was telling me he wanted to get to America and see the West. There is nothing to see in the West, I said, except sky and dirt, though everybody there seems to be satisfied with that. People will tell you it’s beautiful, and I suppose it must be, if it is to them. I told him I’d rather look around some more, that nothing in his shop was exactly what I wanted, and he grabbed me by the arm and told me I was making a mistake, that there was a coat for me there. He stood between me and the door, still with a creepy smile on his face, and I knew I would have to really assert myself to get away without buying something. I let him win. From now on, I am going to let everyone win. I picked up the most boring coat in the place and gave him his final offer. I put the coat on, zipped it up, and walked out the door, and the next day I walked by and the shop no longer existed. Mr Pyz explained that this is common – these guys are just traders who sell out of spaces they use illegally for a day, or even a few hours. There are a lot of Arabs in the city, and a lot of Africans, and a lot of Roma, and everyone here seems to think they fill the place with stink and depravity – even Mr and Mrs Pyz, who are nice and decent people. Nobody in rich countries wants to face responsibility for the lives of people in poor countries. They just want cheap groceries. But now I am going on about something I don’t want to think about. Everything human beings can imagine has been thrown at injustice, and injustice just absorbs it, and enlarges. Saskia is still on the phone. I stop thinking and watch her. She winks at me. The news must be good. The man on the trumpet finishes and there is soft and sustained applause. I look over at him. He takes off his hat as a salute. A good musician treats a small audience the same way he treats a large one, with humility and grace. A good musician does not play for glory. He plays to thank fortune for his ability. He plays to honour his predecessors. Saskia hangs up. Good news, she says. We can see it at two. She checks the time on her phone. We have a few hours, she says. I’ve decided I’d like to get a coat, I say. She likes this idea, and for the first time I understand that she doesn’t like the coat I’m wearing, not at all. There are some department stores on the way to the apartment, she says.
