Salki

by Wojciech Nowicki

  Years later I saw a couple similarly lost in themselves, as if the entire world was left behind an imaginary boundary line of darkness. They were in a bar, the name of which I can’t recall—I’m not certain it even had a name. It was in Kishinev, next to the main market and by the stonemason’s workshop. On the fence outside the workshop was a slab of stone portraying the face of a man, maybe around sixty; the slab was cracked in the middle from top to bottom. An advertisement of sorts. Local graves, which are typical for this part of the world, usually consist of a black gravestone with a white etching—a perfectly accurate portrait of the deceased with all the necessary details: golden chains, rings, and, if need be, guns so that everybody will know whether or not the deceased was rich. So they can know if he was a man of deed or some lousy paper pusher, the kind you can find in Gogol and Chekhov, only contemporary.

  And yet there is a bar next to the stone mason’s shop. It’s hard to notice during the day because it disappears among the other storefronts. I remember I went to that strip to buy some spices—at the time we lived in Kishinev and had to organize something resembling a home for ourselves, and I remember all the sausages and all the spices smelled damp, the counter ladies were rude in that peculiar Russian way, and I left with nothing. Behind one of the grocery stores there was a mechanic’s workshop, but when it closed in the evening the customers would start making themselves comfortable around the half-disassembled, half-painted cars. A plump woman in a red dress would serve, and the cloth of her dress was so tight you could even read the tag on her panties. She walked around with a blue plastic pitcher of wine. Nobody cared that it was filthy, or that it wasn’t really made to serve wine. So we drank wine from one of the mechanic’s uncle’s winery as the owner himself sat there counting money; in real life, as he claimed, he was a poet, an artist. He would hand out pictures that showed him reciting or writing poetry, always with his sad drooping mustache and a ponytail; always in the embrace of the woman in the red dress. In the entryway to the locale, though it wasn’t much of a locale anyway, was a pathetic bathroom on the left and something like a train-station ticket booth on the right, a glass counter and some shelves with beer . . . So, at the counter stood a man with an open shirt, playing a synthesizer, and singing. Of course, he had a golden chain around his neck. In front of the bar was a woman dancing with her two-year-old child. The child laughed and she laughed too, fatigued but still young. She whirled like a dervish that night and she was happy. Her man slumped off the bench and she was soon to follow, but for now she held on and her and her child’s laughter echoed around the place. Others danced in all different manners. I was kidnapped by a fat bartender lady: a tray in one hand, me in the other one, two or three spins, and she let go of me because she had to go behind the counter to grab a couple more bottles.

  A few moves, a few steps and I was left on the side again. Journeys are just like that, you spend several moments together and then you’re on your way somewhere else with a feeling of longing to stay just a moment longer, just enough for one more spin. I saw people dancing in Kosovo as well. We stopped in a village one time, a place that had nothing except for a bus depot the size of an airport, and completely empty. Weeds grew from between the concrete slabs that paved the depot’s area. I saw all of that and I knew, I didn’t suspect but I knew, with absolute certainty, that all of it would turn into dust one day. It would disappear just like the rest of the country—that’s how it looked. The bus station was enormous, but not a single bus was stationed there. There was a phone booth at its perimeter, but the telephone was ripped off. There was also a shopping center, but the kind you’d find in a small town—not the kind we’re used to. It was like a two-story concrete box divided into smaller cubicles: a copy shop, a barber, and a tanning salon. There was a flowerpot in the stairwell and a sports bookie’s office on the first floor with a fluorescent light and papers all over the floor. There were also boutiques with clothing, but not from our parts of the world. Rumbling echoed through the corridors and from one of the spaces emerged a group of high school kids. They were gasping, smoking, and kissing. They rested for a moment and then disappeared behind another door. I opened it—it was completely dark inside. Light fought to get through the black coverings on the windows. It smelled of sweat and cold smoke that was being reheated. The room was filled with a packed, swaying crowd. In the middle there was something else, something that organized the crowd around it. There, in the middle, was a spinning circle of people, and within that circle was another circle, spinning in the opposite direction, and then a third circle inside that composed of only three people, spinning again in the opposite direction. It looked like a huge sex party. Hormones were evaporating into the air and dripping to the floor with sweat. Girls had their glistening shoulders exposed, and the boys were in an exited stupor, resting leaned against the walls. This small room on the first floor of a small-town shopping center, between an internet café and a barber, was a mass orgy in the darkness, humid, full of peculiar smells, and in the atmosphere of mystery. But those people forming the circles, young men and women, all equally ready for action, touched each other through white handkerchiefs. And if somebody didn’t have a tissue, they would use a paper napkin. “It’s not the right time of day,” I thought, “they should come here at night.” But they just kept spinning and spinning without paying attention to anything else, without alcohol, soda, or water. It lasted until the clock struck a certain hour—I don’t know which—and suddenly they all just disappeared. Time is irrelevant when you’re traveling. Someone opened the door and they were all gone. They boarded buses in front of the building and went back to their villages. No one came into the mechanic’s shop bar after that. The smell of teenage sweat was all that was left.

  The most difficult part to understand was the fierceness with which they spun. It looked like something completely natural, a determination of people who don’t need great art. They didn’t take any classes, didn’t practice tango in pubs and bars like people in my own town, who gather after dark and dance close to perfection, but resent each other for every misstep. There are fights over false moves like over poor card game play in my family, always painfully commented. The art of their dancing, those young students from an agriculture vocation high school in a small town in Kosovo, was natural and alive. They dance whenever the opportunity presents itself. Of course, there are better and worse dancers among them because strength, speed, and natural talent all matter. But they dance regardless of age, in groups, and I’ve seen this happen in other villages as well. There is always music at the center. There are two or three guys around a giant drum, giant because the rhythm has to be strong and pronounced. The drum is always accompanied by a tired and dented brass section that’s on its last legs. They go from village to village, from dance to dance. But why would anyone replace the brass instruments when the players themselves are all in their eighties? There will be no second life, and the instruments they already have designated for the first one will do. They play loudly, and if it’s coming along nicely, every now and then, one of the dancers will come along and drop a banknote to show his approval, and that he can afford it. That’s important too. And so they keep on playing and the banknotes keep falling out of their stuffed pockets, from behind their belts. Men and women keep rewarding them as if they were not elderly musicians, but girls pole dancing. They reward them for beauty and bravado, and generously too. People dance divided into several circles, which sometimes connect. They interlock their arms and dance to one side, left leg following the right, kick, step, and repeat. They’re celebrating Đurđevdan, also known as Ederlezi. It’s been raining all day, but they just keep exchanging glances, pairing up, and dancing.

  I could get out at each train station like that. I sleep all day long and at night I stare at the road beyond the window. I count mileposts, or the stations we pass without stopping. I get out whenever I have to and I see people dancing, whirling. They have nothing better to do, or maybe that’s their only
idea of fun. I feel as if I’m standing motionless in one place and they are the ones on a journey. That’s one of the numbing effects of travel. Not only does the concept of time become confused, but both countries and space seem homogenous. It feels as if I were a giant statue of Buddha and the entire world was spinning around me. As if I was truly one of my own clan; a clan eternally sitting in one place. I am calcified, and the world is spinning.

  It’s been like that since I can remember. In the dark corners of Tangier I encountered male couples, blasé queers sitting around without hope for a sober romance. Sitting all day, slowly sipping their drinks. They waited for the night to come to start dancing. Dusk was the universal hour of shamelessness. As if a curfew had been lifted. At that point, alcohol would take over even in bars with official licences. A few glasses of wine from Meknes, always in complete darkness, and that was enough. Elderly homosexuals held each other gently and danced without music, only to the rhythm of the news of the world because the bar had a TV set. In a bar for the hetero drunks everyone beelined for the only woman there: a dame in her sixties wearing a seductive outfit. They would buy her wine she didn’t drink; the bartender would give her half of the drink money and the men would take her to the dance floor. She stood there, like a sleepwalker, stepping in place while they swayed. Maybe they hoped for something and maybe they didn’t. They repeated the ancient gestures, the necessary gestures, for their imaginations to come true. Bars buzzed and boiled, and drinking and desire were always kindling for dancing and whirling. Officially frowned upon, desire was separated from the prudish streets by a mere curtain, yet visible and obvious to everyone. I remember, years before, it was like that in the bistros along Saint-Denis in Paris, which were dominated by glassy-eyed blacks, drunk every night. They’d drink every day, and dancing was an added and free pleasure. Wherever I go, motionless, I see people longing for fun. I see dancing stages set up in parks in Ukraine’s fallen cities, and I see people dancing in the winter to the sounds of music played through giant megaphones. I see people from Kolkata ready to win the cricket cup, people dancing with a tinfoil goblet imitation all night long.

  “That’s what I travel for,” I kept telling myself. I have never seen girls dancing lazily, as if drugged with sadness, or a mating dance with white handkerchiefs like the one I witnessed on the first floor of a shopping center. I’ve never seen whirling so full of life in a bistro on some dark street, with music overpowered by screeching of a tram. I have never seen anything like that before. That’s why I travel. I need to travel in order to see.

  Nothing happens here. We’ve been driving since dusk and for several hours now. There’s nothing interesting along the way, only empty villages. We hit a dog in the morning. It just ran out in front of the car. We drive for hours thinking what went wrong, then we curse the dog for lunging out into the road. We see bars in the villages, but most of them are closed. After all, who’s going to visit them anyway? They don’t have money. If someone decides to splurge, they usually buy a golden lion on a concrete post to put by their front gate, sometimes even before the house is finished. Finally, we find a bar that is open. It’s called Rendezvous; the tables are covered with plastic, red-and-white checkered tablecloths scattered with cigarette burns. The holes are lined up next to each other at the very edge of the cloth. That’s because when people want to free their hands they lay their cigarettes at the edge of the table and forget about them, immersed in discussion. The entire surface is speckled with tiny holes from cigarettes dropped or forgotten. Now, the only clients are a grandma with her grandson, sitting at an empty table. They haven’t ordered anything, but the bartender lets them stay. They’re neighbors after all. They stare silently at a black and white TV, also silent. A lion hunts for a gazelle somewhere in Africa. It’s incredible how much room for speculation there is when there’s no commentary. There’s a plastic, gold-colored clock above the bar. It’s around 9 P.M., but the clock shows 3 P.M. and runs backward.

  We are driving through a forest in the mountains. I recall other forests just like it around the Srebrna Kopa in the Czech Republic. I used to go there, too, always in that indeterminate moment between late autumn and early spring, when it’s easy to get a lot of wind, the trees are still bare, and people are bundled up. But right now I’m in Serbia, close to Bor. We’re driving between mining complexes, through a forest filled with smoke from wood being burnt on the side of the road to produce charcoal. And it’s been thirty, maybe thirty-five years since I went to the Czech Republic.

  It’s unknown where boredom comes from. It catches you at the train station when your connection is delayed, or in a hotel along with a high fever and a weird swelling of your limbs. Long hours, but not really meaningful. It’s worse when they turn into days. I fill them with trifles. Your companions meticulously consume their meals, elegantly wiping up the remaining sauce with bread. You can watch the spectacle carefully once your outrage over their lack of manners finally passes. A naked beggar sweeps the street with a broom made of twigs and sticks his arm out. His doing it naked to show everyone: “I’m a maggot, my name is Job.” There’s no real activity, but there’s always this minimal something, these micro-movements. Merchants carry out their rituals; you can see from your hostel room if anything outside has changed, or you can try to scare away boredom with a newspaper. It doesn’t go so easily with a book. Books don’t usually work on a trip, they don’t move you one way or the other. They don’t concern the here and the now.

  There are books that can derail you, lull you, and then you wake up at the wrong stop, hours too far. The best books, and I’m speaking only for myself, are the ones in foreign languages. They keep you tense just by virtue of their sheer linguistic barrier, by need of a more attentive reading. I’ve seen people with the Bible or the Communist Manifesto, but the most commonly read book is a Lonely Planet guide. You can buy them everywhere, usually slightly used. When you’re leaving a place it’s good to leave the guidebook behind you, it would be a dead weight anyway.

  Each era has its own guidebooks, the echoes of which can be found in literature. Petrarch claims in his letters that he crossed the Ardennes Forest alone. He writes: “It was known to me through writings of other authors, but looked dark and menacing.” It’s a kind of proof that this first modern tourist who traveled—as observed by the astonished Hungarian writer Sándor Márai—for the sheer pleasure of wandering and looking through the guidebooks available to him at the time. But there is another motive to Petrarch’s journeys: a need for a moral lesson and transformation of travel into literature. Márai continues his short history of travel literature: “Numerous traces of it remain in naïve, kind letters written while traveling, up until the end of Renaissance. These were the times when the goal of an escapade was not to change one’s location, and the goal of a letter written from the road was not to become literature. Behind all of these stood the desire for experience. That’s what disappeared from traveling when people started moving around for practical reasons, and went searching for new worlds or because of strong feelings felt for somebody else. From that point on, the goal of a traveler was no longer to learn about Rome, but to learn about himself. Later on, at the end of the eighteenth century, travel turned into an elegant sport for intellectuals. Then the steam locomotive appeared, and after that Lindbergh, followed by a booking agent waiving a large poster and yelling ‘Around the world in thirty days!’”

  There were others who came after Lindbergh; Márai lived to see the Concorde take off and experience times of truly fast travel. But he didn’t want to last in those particular times, and took his own life.

  A guidebook can be useful. I use one to calm myself down, usually on my way to metropolises on other continents because they seem so clear and transparent on the pages of a book. Nothing in there signals endless, narrow alleyways, a spider web of streets impossible to tame, and medina quarters still not fully explored. I read about the monuments; that’s just my way, I need to know a little bit. I read a
novel or a memoir based in that place. I try to compliment the various Baedekers with other books found on the spot, often published on lower quality paper. And there are books you take with you to kill time.

  There’s only one novel that has accompanied me throughout the years on almost every extended trip. It’s George Perec’s Life A User’s Manual. Ever since I read that book for the first time, back in the day, it has stayed with me. I have two editions of it. One with a canvas cover, perfect to be read at home, and one pocket edition, lighter and much more handy. It’s a couple hundred pages of a walk through the corridors of human termitary. I like to remind myself that the termitary is the creation of a protein computer, Perec’s brain, a hothead with wild hair, a madman with a seaman’s beard and a charming smile. It’s charming until you learn he had rotten teeth, yellow like a mammoth’s tusk, from smoking Gitanes cigarettes. I don’t think Gitanes took away his charm, although the corroded smile maybe a little bit. Under this crazy hair, under the cat sitting forever on his shoulder (there is a picture of him with the cat like that), Perce is a cold-hearted analyst, an engineer of the worlds, and one of those who either becomes one of the greats or ends up at the hospital of the Holy Ghost for observation, then treatment or maybe off to Kulparkowo for good. I take all of Perec’s attributes with me on the road and I think about his teeth more than I probably should. I think about his imperfect smile. Maybe if he had a better smile he would’ve written worse? I carry his book in French because that’s how I protect my own French speaking skills, the last bastion of my weirdness. I hide it away, as if in some fancy little jewelry box: lay there my love, my intimate language understood by nobody, lingua franca of olden days, slowly dying away. But there are books by Perec, I notice it only now, that I’ve read only in Polish, but I’m okay with that. Life is the only Perec novel, I believe, that is worth being dragged on a long trip, when there is a lot of emptiness to be filled, numerous layovers. It’s worth taking on passages counted in days, not hours, or when there is a sickness that confines you to a hotel bed, striking you with fever and dehydration, and you pray for all of this to end one way or another.