I couldn’t take my eyes off it. After all the summers I had spent on the coasts of Montenegro, Dalmatia, Greece, Spain, soaked and choked with the coconut smell of sunscreen and postcard villages, I suddenly realized I craved grey seas, dramatic skies, and imposing ocean liners.
Strange: I expected that peace would be in order. I expected to be drawn by a monastery, a vow of silence, strings of words handwritten on parchment, and here I was, struck by this rage and thunder. It was law and anarchy in one, beauty and horror, salvation and danger. This was not a lascivious, senseless, naked sea. This was a partner, a philosopher. This was life.
I sat there thinking, wouldn’t it be great to sail this ocean? To remove myself from the stolid solid ground, and go where everything floats, and rises, and falls, go where the wind makes the streets and sharks mark the numbers?
Now those streets are between us. Now I am on that ocean and, look, everything floats.
I could not call you directly, you do understand that. Boris probably has told you everything about my being at war, so you must have known that they would tap your phone, trying to get me. For the same reason, I could not call him. Instead, I contacted my old drummer, and dictated a letter for you and one for Boris. I hoped that at least one of the letters would find its destination, and that you would come to Budapest. My drummer told me you never picked up your phone, that he was certain you had moved. He also told me that he left a message in Boris’s mailbox. Boris must have read it. I told him I would be in the Mátyás Hotel after two o’clock on March 7. I was there from ten in the morning. Instead of flying in that day, I could not wait, came to Budapest by train the night before, and took a room near the station, usually rented for short loves and long regrets.
It was a chilly day, with fog that cloaked the morning and made it very secretive. It was not Budapest anymore, it was Casablanca—then again, every city with the sounds of war in the distance is Casablanca, my dear Ilsa. When coming to Budapest I was daydreaming on the train. I saw you and me alone on a deserted street, back to back, the two of us against everyone. After all that had happened, I was certain that you would be the one to understand, that you would be on my side no matter what. The more people I met on my journey, the more I loved you. As the sea of ugliness expanded, you became a taller island.
Around two, the fog cleared. Around two you were married to my best friend.
There is nothing I can do now, except send you this letter. You have chosen, and you’ve chosen well. I knew that Boris was in love with you. He never told me that, but I knew the way we know it’s going to snow by the way the air smells.
That there was a woman with me in the apartment when I came to pick up my stuff and run, you probably know by now. She saved my life, I saved hers, and then we went our separate ways. I don’t have an explanation. There is always something you can say to defend yourself, but I stand naked before you. There was a war, there were people dying, there was death waiting for me as it waited for all of us there, but still I am not saying that death explains everything. Fear is an umbrella, fear is collapsible.
After I played that concert that you and Boris organized, in the Square of the Republic, my life became a heap of twisted metal. I was still inside, sitting among blood and rust and sharp edges, trying not to make a move. Then I realized I was dead anyway, and decided to get out. I was not sure what to do, except try to talk to you.
I did not belong in that room by the station. A long love and not a single regret.
Love often flies like that, imperceptibly over the evening and into the night.
I wish the spring in your heart to remain alive. I wish you to succeed without me.
Sara and Boris celebrated New Year’s with the Fridians and two other couples at Lila and Nenad’s house south of the Danforth. All was fine. They watched Das Neujahrskonzert from Vienna on January I, as always. All was fine. Sara flew away from Toronto the next day on a plane to Amsterdam. Boris was still asleep when she locked the door behind her. On the table in the living room, she left a copy of the letter her mother had forwarded.
SILENT MOVIES. January 3, 1999
Sara’s mother had tracked down the hospital through the inspector who had given her the letter. As soon as Sara’s train arrived in the heart of Amsterdam, she took a cab there. The driver, a man with a turban, kept talking quietly in a foreign language through the headset plugged into his mobile phone, and she was grateful for his lack of curiosity. She had been to Amsterdam a long time ago, travelling with her friends on an InterRail ticket, and she had good memories of the city. She watched the crowded streets while the driver fought to get to the ring road. When he sped up she leaned back.
What would she say when she saw him? She did not think about it during her eight-hour flight. Before boarding the plane she took a sleeping pill, and she did not even remember takeoff. They woke her twice, once for dinner and once for an early breakfast, and then they landed. Still sleepy, she had an espresso in an airport bar with tropical palms, but it wasn’t enough to wake her up. Never mind, she loved this strange state of consciousness, between dreams and reality, behind worries, ahead of sorrow.
When they stopped, the driver did not disrupt his telephone conversation. He pointed his finger at the number on the meter and she gave him a bill.
The winter day in Amsterdam was a joke compared to what she had left in Toronto. She flew out of minus twenty-seven Celsius and landed in a balmy plus four. She pulled her suitcase behind her through the hospital entrance.
“I’m here to visit your patient Johnny Novak,” she said at the reception desk. “He has recently been moved from intensive care. You might have him as Milan Novak.”
“Are you related to him in any way?” asked the nurse.
“I am his girlfriend,” Sara said, and quickly added, “If it’s him.”
The nurse looked at her. “He’s in 1013, that’s ward 10 West. Follow the yellow signs. If you recognize him, you can confirm his name, okay?”
Sara nodded. The woman took the details from Sara’s passport and showed her the way to the elevator.
The door to room 1013 stood open. Sara paused in front of it, brushed the hair from her face, and entered. The room was in semi-darkness. The blinds were drawn, and the Amsterdam sky was gloomy. She leaned her suitcase against the wall by the door and waited for her eyes to adjust. She did not dare look straight at the man’s face. The whole installation around the bed made her shiver. Wires and tubes hooked into different parts of the body: a puppet. The strings around the figure lying motionless will go live any moment and the being will sit up. The Mistress of Solitude clenched her fists and slowly went towards the bed.
His skin was colourless. His eyes had shadows around them. The stubble on his chin made him look helpless. His hair was still long. She reached out and touched his hand lying on the blanket.
“What are you to him?” said a quiet voice from the door.
Sara flinched. “His girlfriend. I used to be, that is,” she whispered back.
“So you know who he is?” the man asked.
“Yes. His name is Milan Novak, but everyone knows him by his nickname—”
“Johnny. Finally. I told them who he was, but they didn’t believe me.” The man came into the room. He wore a nurse’s uniform. “My name is Tomo,” he said.
“How is he?”
“He’s better than he looks,” Tomo said. “But let’s talk outside. He won’t be waking up soon. They are still stuffing him with medicine.”
“There is nothing about him that interests us, other than the missing persons part,” the inspector said. “His name is not in our database. There seem to be no suspicious circumstances related to his injury, so we’re closing the case. In short, he’s not a criminal, and this was not a case of revenge.”
“Can you tell me what you did find out?” the doctor asked. “Maybe it could help with his recovery.”
“Novak entered the Netherlands in February 1993. He came from Germany
, where he applied in our embassy for refugee status. He didn’t have his passport at the time. He said he had to enter Germany illegally, because he was a deserter. A temporary visa was issued to him—at that time the expedited procedure was in place for such cases—so he was legit when he came. He went through the usual stuff: learned the language, was given an apartment, and then he started working at the Film Institute. They gave him a job classifying old reels. His colleagues told us he was always nice to them, was always punctual and efficient, never caused any trouble. He kept to himself, but nothing suspicious.”
The doctor shifted in his chair. “For two days he spoke Italian only. Now he doesn’t understand it. Is there anything related to Italy in your notes?”
“Nothing.”
“Are there any names? Any particular friends or significant others?”
“Novak was good to everyone and close to no one. If you ask me, another immigrant story. Not yet adjusted. I mean, we could give you the names of his colleagues, but I don’t think you will find a name that would help any more than the others.”
“With these things one never knows.”
“I’ll tell my men to fax you the details.”
The inspector closed his notebook and stood up to leave.
“Inspector?”
The policeman raised his eyebrows.
“We have a man here who claims our patient was a rock star in his old country, very well known …” the doctor said.
“We checked with his colleagues here. Nobody ever heard Novak play or sing. He never showed any interest in music.” The inspector flipped a few pages in his notebook. “Ah, yes, this is sweet: he mostly worked on silent movies.”
——
“Nothing.”
“Not a single memory?”
Johnny remained silent for a while, looking at the ceiling. His eyes turned back towards her.
“I can’t find anything. Your name means something, but I can’t relate your face to the name. The name is in a good place, but I don’t know if it belongs to you or to someone else with the same name.”
“I’ve told my mother to send me some photos of us together. She has a few.”
He thought for a while. His face got cloudy. “This must be painful for you. I’m causing pain for the people who knew me. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry about others, Johnny, just work on yourself now.”
“Sara?”
“Yes?”
“Is it worth remembering? People tend to think they had an interesting life even when it wasn’t. Pain, love, lust—it happens to everyone. I mean, maybe I’d be better off not remembering. Apparently, I am in some sort of a new life. Should I leave it at that?”
Was it selfish of her to remind him that she used to be his girlfriend?
“I don’t know that anyone ever perceived the loss of memory as a blessing, Johnny. But that’s not the answer to your question. I can only give you my version. Was it an interesting life? Very. Were you creative and respected for it? You were. Were you hurt? Who wasn’t? We came from a country at war. There are no untouched people there.”
He was leaning against the pillows, his long fingers slowly drawing an invisible map on the sheets. Many curves. He was not looking at her.
“I remember my childhood. The movies I watched, the books I read. The friends I had. I remember Caspar Hauser, and the term ‘feral children.’ But there is no you, or that other guy you mentioned—Boris?—and there is nothing about the war, and I don’t know how to play the guitar. I don’t remember the music you say is mine. Tomo played some songs for me. They sound like something I could have written, I suppose, because they obviously talk about my childhood, but they’re a little too light for my taste. And the music sounds odd.”
“That’s not so strange. You would probably write those songs differently today.”
“That’s not the point. Why are you not in that picture? Or that friend of mine?”
“Johnny, there’s a letter you wrote to me, but you never sent. They found it with you when they brought you here, and I got it a few days ago. In that letter, you mentioned that Boris had heard the whole story about the war. From you. We can call him.”
THE PIGEON. February 12, 1999
However much she wanted to see Johnny’s apartment, there was fear, too. What if he—among other memories he had lost—had forgotten that there was a significant other? He could have been married, maybe there was a child. Maybe his family was on Mauritius and would be coming back in a month. She took the tram to the Spui square and sat inside the Café Luxembourg, drinking double espressos and mineral water, for an hour and a half. She might have ordered another round had she not become so jumpy from caffeine.
When Johnny’s doctor told her it might be good to bring something from Johnny’s apartment and show it to him, something that might be significant, she agreed, provided, of course, that he was fine with it. They went together to 1013, and the doctor repeated his idea to the patient. Johnny said okay, but there was a moment of hesitation, a pause long enough for Sara to notice.
She remembered that pause as she tried his keys in the lock of the narrow house off Spuistraat. A dark secret? Something she should not see? There were several keys, very similar to one another, and she tried them one by one.
“What are you doing?” said a man’s voice behind her.
She jumped. “Isn’t it obvious?”
“Well, yes,” the man said, “but I don’t see why someone would risk breaking into my apartment in broad daylight.”
She stared at him for a few seconds, opened her mouth, closed it, looked at the number on the wall, and started stuttering apologies. The man laughed. He was blond, with freckles on his face, in jeans and a sweater that hung on his bony shoulders. He held a supermarket bag in his hand.
“I should have kept my mouth shut,” he said. “It would have been nice to come home and find you there.”
His switching to a different mode somehow angered Sara, as if his role was limited to comic relief and he had overstepped his boundaries. She did not answer, but turned away and walked next door.
“Are you going to Novak’s place?” the man called after her. “I haven’t seen him in a while. Where is he?”
“He’s in the hospital,” she said. “Are you his friend?”
He scratched his head. “I don’t know, ask him,” he said.
“But we had a couple of beers together. Nice guy. Are you his sister?”
“Girlfriend.”
“He found you in a hospital? Which hospital is that?”
She smiled.
“Seriously, what happened to him?” The man came closer.
“He was hit by a car, and was in a coma.”
The man whistled through his teeth.
“But he’s okay now, except that he has memory loss.” She remembered something. “Have you ever been in his apartment?” she asked.
“Once, for a few minutes.”
He wouldn’t know if there was a particularly important object. “Did he live alone?”
“You mean, did he cheat on you? I never saw anyone else going in. He was always very quiet. I’ve never even heard music from there. Do you need help?”
Well, at least that. “No, thanks.” She fumbled with the keys again. Finally, the right one. She turned it twice.
“Nice meeting you. Tell him Kees wishes him well.”
“Thanks, I will.”
She locked the door behind her and climbed a steep, narrow staircase. At the top she entered his living room. Then she realized it was the whole apartment, except for a small bathroom in the corner. A tall window without a curtain looked out at the house across the street, and underneath it was a large old writing desk. A small monitor sat on the desk and next to it the skeleton of a computer, an open structure full of wires that connected different boxes. Although it was apparently an old machine, probably found on the street, Johnny had it covered with transparent plastic. A small hotel towel lay over so
mething on the desk, very likely the keyboard, and some wires led to a small plastic synthesizer on a stand next to the desk. A narrow foam mattress on the floor in the corner. The walls were densely covered with pieces of paper of different colours and shapes, all containing drawings and words. With strange, sharp lines on them, they resembled parts of a large map of an unknown city. There was no single picture pinned anywhere. The kitchenette was basic. A dirty cup in the sink, the coffee remains in it dry and cracked.
The apartment contained only essential stuff, except for the computer and the instrument next to it, and even they were humble. It felt monastic.
She crossed the room, opened the window, and looked outside. She could see a canal on the right at the end of the narrow street.
She returned to the desk and lifted the cover. Yes, a keyboard. She pressed the switch on the front of the computer and the machine started waking up. That synthesizer meant that he was making music, after all. While the computer was starting, she opened the closet. She recognized only an old jacket. Several shirts on each hanger, layered like onionskins, and underneath them, folded jeans. She smiled—still the same—and with a jolt she recognized the real reasons behind her fear of coming here: she had a key to Johnny’s apartment again.
The cards on the wall were not what she had hoped they would be—some sort of a scrapbook—and for a moment she felt disappointed. She started reading some of the inscriptions, and they looked like snippets of a movie script. The drawings on some of the cards were a storyboard. Johnny had no talent for drawing, but she could still recognize silhouettes and street scenes.
The desktop on the computer finally came on. She sat down and looked at the screen. There were several program icons, and several video links. She clicked on one of them, named “immigrant bird.”
It must have been a very early reel, as the picture was slightly jerky, with noticeable scratches, and all the movements on the screen were a bit faster than normal. The silent movie opened with a wide shot of a promenade, somewhere on the French Riviera, it seemed. The men were mostly in light-coloured jackets, almost all of them wearing straw boaters. The women, strolling with light parasols, wore elaborate hats and long white dresses. People were friendly to one another, frequently stopping to exchange pleasantries. An automobile would pass from time to time. Seagulls were scattered here and there, frightened of people, landing hurriedly to pick up a chunk of something looking like food and immediately flying back to one of the boats or towards the sea. Oddly, there were no pigeons in sight. Except for one, close to the camera, that was doing the senseless things that pigeons do: walking around, taking a shit, picking in the dust. Suddenly, the voice of a narrator came on, as if it were the inner voice of the bird.
Diary of Interrupted Days Page 17