UnCommon Bodies: A Collection of Oddities, Survivors, and Other Impossibilities (UnCommon Anthologies Book 1)

by Michael Harris Cohen

  In those days, I was compelled to keep moving and I'd planned to drift in for a day, maybe two, see the renaissance sights, then journey back to the vitality of Prague, but my meanderings through the village's maze of worn cobblestone streets were darkened by cloud clusters and a relentless rain that failed to cease that day or the next. Within a week, the rising waters brought on by the endless downpour were being called the hundred-year flood, and I was riding out the storm in the shadow of a cupcake castle, in a hostel with the coincidental name of U Vodnika–the Water Troll's House–watching the Vltava river rage by, while Tom Waits sang of inebriated pianos.

  At that time, the backpacker drunkards that Europassed station to station through Western Europe in their beer hall quest seldom navigated the complex train bus connection required to travel southern Bohemia, so the storied thirteenth century town of Cesky Krumlov remained a secret to true seekers. Appropriately and predictably, my fellow confined guests in the Troll's House were a cadre of eclectics, professionals on personal pilgrimages, overachieving entrepreneurs in search of themselves and spiritual adventure, dedicated trekkers and globe trotting travelers, those more interested in the history of the castle's gypsy caretakers, the enchanted baroque and rococo gardens, the mystic ley lines, and the stories of alchemists and the local Rosicrucian Enlightenment than merely drinking away their Grand Tour.

  But, even self described new Bohemians can succumb to monotony. Adrift in the doldrums, the high-minded opt for high and we were as lost at sea as any motley crew. The spliffs floating around the hostel may've been many or one eternally lit, it was hard to tell and it mattered not because the gray U Vodnika days had become indistinguishable, repetitive cycles of journals, sketchbooks, and board games by the open window.

  So it was that we entertained where we could.

  I had plenty of LSD, which I was happy to share, but doses had to be spaced a few nights apart at best for full effect.

  It was on one of those tripping nights, amidst of the worst of the rain, when the dark day before hadn't even lightened to gray and the sky had gone absolutely electric, that Kiwi Dave stumbled into U Vodnika, parka pouring water, a wide grin on his face, and a twinkle in his eye as if he was finishing a garden stroll rather than seeking shelter from the storm of the century.

  Kiwi Dave, as his name suggested, was from New Zealand. He was Caucasian but he assured us that even though he went by the name Kiwi Dave, his ancestry was Maori. Nobody questioned, the travelers in the hostel weren't the questioning type. He was a naturally upbeat, high-energy fellow, constantly on the move, doing yoga, running errands into town for the group, and within days actually climbing U Vodnika's walls. To do this he would scoot up between the sides of the hallway and rest for hours compressed between them, and other times he would suspend himself from the high wooden beams of the common area for the entirety of the afternoon. He'd even strung his climbing hammock up there so he could sleep suspended.

  Quiet times in the Troll's House were punctuated by tales of travel—the outrageous and mundane—such as how long it took to secure a visa, who had to secure a visa, how lucky the Kiwi was that he could travel anywhere without one. Kiwi Dave seemingly had visited most everywhere and had the best stories of checkpoints and corruption, most consisting of a border guard and an empty bottle of vodka.

  And then there were ugly tales of refugees from the Serbian waged wars and what we'd heard was still going on there—murder, neighbor against neighbor. Nancy, a girl from Johannesburg, spoke of modern Joy Divisions, girls rounded up from the local towns to be forced into the sex trade for the soldiers in the once busy ski resorts that peppered the Bosnian slopes.

  Gray conversation for gray days.

  But it was Kiwi Dave and one of those former conversations of the mundane variety that led me to Budapest, and her, the de-fingered woman.

  He was up in his hammock when Peter, a twenty something Afrikaan of mysterious background and means, shared an article he was reading. There were stacks of travel magazines lining the wall and we'd all taken our turn flipping through the tattered pages, yet somehow Peter discovered an unread feature of particular interest within a National Geographic.

  "Unbelievable," Peter said.

  "What's that?" Rahm asked. Rahm was a modern hippie in a Henley. He'd confided in me that his parents were upscale holistic healers in Woodstock, an interesting fella to be locked in with. He and I were playing one of the countless games of Go by the window. We'd moved the black and white pebbles around each other for hours, sipping honey tea until it grew cold and then adding more hot to keep the small glasses full. At one point in the day the honey tea would become grog, but we'd yet to add the rum.

  Peter continued. I guess he decided we'd be most interested since everyone else had huddled into a bunk with a book or a partner–there was a lot of that during the rain too. "It says here that the Aboriginal fishing women in New South Wales tie coarse twine around their pinkies until the upper joints die from blood loss and fall off. After the finger dies from the twine tourniquet, they row out to sea and throw it into the ocean to be eaten by fish. Can you believe that?"

  That is where Dave cut in. "The twine is made of spider web."

  "No way," Rahm said.

  "Big spiders," Dave said.

  "That's what it says," Peter said. "They wind the spider thread to make a twine. How'd you know?"

  "I visited a tribe. Not in New South Wales, but close. Same custom."

  The three of us shrugged matter-of-factly.

  Dave sat up in his hammock, bowing his head below the ceiling, "They believe there's a link between the finger and the hand it came from." He wiggled his pinky. "They figure the finger wants to get back to the hand, and if it's in the fish, that fish will come with it."

  Peter walked over to share the photos. "Yeah, they're all missing a finger."

  As he described, the women in the picture held up their nets with one hand and their pinky-less hands palm open for the camera to see.

  "They're highly revered," Dave said.

  Rahm nodded, "Yeah, I've heard of that. The finger stump is a symbol of social standing." He axed his right hand down across his left pinky. "They're held in high regard because the same magic that brings the fish goes into every fishing line they make. The more digits the better."

  I watched him, disturbed, as he continued to land his flesh axe first on the outer joint and then on the inner, as if deciding which he would cut.

  "It's true. I've seen it," Dave said. "The fishing line is strong as all hell." His eyes went wide. "I've got some."

  "You don't say," I said.

  "I'll show you." In a single fluid motion, Dave slipped from his hammock, swung from a beam, then down to the floor.

  "I get it," I said as he dug at his pack. "The devotion to the craft." I dropped a black pebble on the Go board grid and Rahm quickly placed a white one next to it to eat it away. "I mean, they must've realized long ago that the pinky was in the way of making the fishing lines and the nets. That's devotion. It's like Zorba in that Kazantzakis book."

  "What book?" Peter asked.

  "Nikos Kazantzakis wrote this book, Zorba the Greek."

  "I've read it," Dave chimed. "It's good."

  "Yeah, well, it's kind of a trope where the simple guy teaches the smart guy. Anyway, Zorba tells the narrator all of these stories, and one of them is that when he wanted to become a potter but every time he sat down at the potter's wheel, his thumb ended up in the way, destroying the clay." I wiggled my thumb in an odd fashion. "So his solution was to cut off his thumb."

  Peter's face became a mix of dislike and disgust.

  Dave returned to the table with a small coil of red, waxy line. "I know someone who really did that," he said.

  "Did what?" I asked, examining the sinewy line. "Cut off their thumb for the potter's wheel?"

  "Cut off their finger for art and magic."

  "Yeah right," Rahm said.

  "Check this out," Dave said.
He pulled up the thin scrap of a blue tee he had on.

  Now, Dave could support his own weight by his fingertips. He was fit, muscular, and toned. His six-pack belly was cut in high definition, as was his chest. He was a man in his prime. But what drew our attention was the fresh, mesmerizing ink, raised plump above rose red flesh.

  It was a tattoo unlike any I'd ever seen before.

  Perfectly set into the contours of his chest was a fist sized black disc, and stemming from the center, directly above his heart, the coiled tip of a silver fern that draped down across his midriff to his waist. I'd seen plenty of tattoos before, as well as what was new in the studios–ash rubbed carvings, silicone injected words and designs, hard plastic implants in the shape of sheep horns. I'd even seen the newest battery operated electric displays that slid beneath the skin and lit up any neon color you'd like. But I'd never seen metallic silver ink before, nor had I ever put eyes upon a tattoo that appeared to hover above the flesh and ripple with his breath. This wasn't a mere image–this ink was alive.

  "That's amazing," I said. "Where'd you get that?"

  "Thanks," Dave said. "This was inked freehand, no pattern, by an artist in Budapest. She had to cut two fingers off to get that type of precision."

  "Like Zorba," I said.

  "More than that," Dave said. "Like the Aborigines, this Tattoo Artist has a magical connection to her work."

  Rahm's expression was one of not giving in, "That's an incredible tattoo. I mean out of this world. But magical?"

  I wanted to disagree. The tip of the silver fern, the coil, appeared to spin, drilling into Dave's chest.

  "The artist said she drew it out from the inside. It's like a shield, as magic as that fishing line." Dave bit his lip in what I guessed was a flash of thought. "I'll tell you what," he said, "let's go toss that line in the river and see how long it takes to catch a fish."

  A fool's errand down to the rushing Vltava was far from my mind. "Why don't we boil some water and break out the rum first," I said. "I want to hear more about this Budapest artist."

  Ruminations of Dave's tattoo and the mysterious de-fingered artist who had inked him became an obsession. I found myself shadowing the Kiwi around the hostel, absently glaring at his sleeveless tee, as if to pierce through it, and if by chance I did catch a glimpse, even a small portion of the rippling silver or black, a wave of euphoria would wash over me and all else in the room would fade until only I and that mark were alone in a void. More than once someone snapped me from the trance with a mention of my name. A joke would be made of the LSD or the walls closing in and we'd have a laugh. But that wasn't the cause of my daze; it was the ink, it was her.

  The more I dwelled, the more anxious I became. The tattoo began to appear everywhere. The seductive ink manifested in the shadows beneath the bunks and the unlit rooms, in the grains of the old hostel's thick wooden beams, and through the open window I saw the swirling silver fern in the torrents of the rain.

  I volunteered to run the market errands, to escape the confines of the hostel. She was there, past the corner of my eye. The image would come quickly, shimmering like the Kiwi's tattoo, a dancer in the rain, a gypsy perhaps, her long swirling skirt and her wide flung arms flowing up, leaving a trail echoing behind. My heart would beat fast and I'd spin to look, never catching the woman unseen. The visions had infected me and festered so deeply that there was no place in my waking state where they didn't appear, and when the time came to sleep, they were worse. Night upon night I'd wake to lightning and thunder, my knapsack soaked, hair matted with sweat.

  One night I awoke standing on the bank of the Vltava, having walked into the storm and down the stony path in my sleep. Rivulets ran from my forehead to my cheeks, down my warm wet body, and the boxer shorts I wore, my sole clothing, hung drenched from my waist.

  I was staring off to the southeastern horizon and must've been for some time because my bare feet were seated deeply into the mud. That's when the yearning to journey back on the road began. Not the wanderlust that'd first brought me to the Austrian border, and not the cabin fever of being held up in the Water Troll's House. No, this was something different. Somewhere out on that horizon the living ink called to me.

  Two infinite weeks of fever dream delusion passed before the cerulean skies returned. I lusted to leave but the damage brought on by weeks of rain was far worse than I'd imagined. The nearby Austrians, those with access to what was happening across Central Europe, shared the new word for the storm, Jahrtausendflut: the Millennium Flood. I guess after the Poles and Bohemians tolled the death and destruction, they felt the need to up the Hundred-Year Flood by a factor of ten.

  With the bus and rail lines yet to be clear, the picturesque village was destined to be my prison for a few days more.

  But the ink continued to call.

  To curb my anxiety, I ventured to the castle that'd loomed above us for the past month and, in the lush rococo gardens, gifted myself with a double dose of LSD. I strode out into the rolling hills, expecting the young nun Maria to come running across, singing of her life and the sound of music, and I gazed out over the red roofed town as murmurations of starlings formed atomic symbols, whirling dancers, silver ferns, and de-fingered hands.

  The thought of her would not leave, and, back at the hostel, my distraction with the Kiwi continued.

  If in all this time Dave noticed, he was kind enough not to say. But of course, he knew. And the morning of my departure, he sat beside me at the table and drew the map that would take me to her. He was calmer than I'd seen him before, almost somber. And I realized he was about to pass along a piece of information intended for me alone.

  The map was simple.

  Scrawled down the middle, a wavy line—the Danube—Buda and the citadel were to the west of the river, and Pest, the inner city, to the right.

  As Dave filled in the tiny landmarks, he softly spoke. "These are the medieval Rudas Baths. You have to go here before you see her."

  "There will be plenty of time for sightseeing after I see her," I said.

  Dave gave me a stern look. "It's your opportunity to cleanse your spirit. The bath's thermal waters have medicinal and magical properties. If you don't go there first, she'll send you there."

  I almost questioned his mention of the magical but swallowed back my words.

  The novice in me must've shown through because Dave dropped the harsh glare. He traced his pencil over the bridge, "Take the trolley up the main avenue two city blocks in. Then go north." He scribbled an address in the corner. "You'll find her here."

  "Will I need an appointment?" I asked.

  "No. She doesn't work that way. She'll see you or she won't."

  "Who do I ask for?"

  "Her name is Anika. But you'll know her when you see her." Dave hesitated. "It's not just her fingers."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You'll see." He drew a thin rectangle back by the river. "Go here to the Marriot when you're finished."

  "What happens there?"

  "They have a fantastic view of Buda and the Danube and the best cheesecake I've ever had, excellent with brandy."

  Before the storm, the ink, the visions, Prague was one of the few places I'd lived where each morning was a miracle and every time I set foot outside my flat I was astounded by my surroundings. The onion domes, sherbet facades, and Kafka's castle overlooking it all—the mother of cities was the new Left Bank and she never disappointed. Jazz horns played, absinthe poured, and love was free. But upon my arrival from the south, the golden city–newly washed and shimmering from the rains–was a pale, bland, monochrome town, and though my many friends were surely wondering what happened when my weekend foray became extended by the weeks long flood, the rapid beat of my heart compelled me to catch the first train Budapest bound. As it was, that train didn't depart until four in the morning.

  Rather than be chased down twisted alleys and across wide squares by shadows only I could see, I found the only private space readily availab
le, a slab of cold unoccupied cement in a stairwell of the Prague train station, and closed my eyes to muster what sleep I could until it was time to embark.

  My cabin was compact, my seat a mere bench. The next six hours were a blur of industrial Slovakia, stark Hungarian fields, Aborigine fishing women, and their self-mutilated hands reaching for me.

  When the train rolled into Keleti station, I was little more rested than when I'd left Prague. I hefted my pack onto a mustard yellow Buda bound trolley and the guesthouse I'd arranged. I arrived too early for my bed and was sent to wait in the backyard of the hostel on a carpet covered dais the guests used for meditation. I succumbed to the large incense infused pillows and collapsed until the evening. The dais may've been my first and only haven for the past weeks, for when I woke to eat and move into my readied bed I was met with more wakeful dreams of the de-fingered hand and living ink.

  The next day, I followed Dave's instructions, went to the Rudas Baths, and did my best to lose myself in the spa. I donned a loincloth, let the heated sulphur smelling water of the octagon pool soak into me as I gazed up into the patterns of the ancient Turkish dome. But there was no losing myself. All the while, my mind was with the mysterious Anika. Phantom fog formations confronted me as I wandered through the depths of the blazing steam rooms, each one hotter than the last. The seething mineral gases seeped deep into my lungs, scalded my core, yet I pushed further, until I could stand the heat no more.

  I never reached a point I was sure I was as cleansed but when my skin had soaked in all of the medicinal waters it could, I dressed and boarded a trolley to Pest.

  I got off the trolley at the stop past the bridge and followed the Kiwi's map to the small arcade mall where he'd said I'd find Anika's studio. Like many European arcades, the enclosed first floor mall was an empty strip of glass facades. I'd seen the same layout in Madrid, Barcelona, and Prague. Some developer saw the future, threw a pot full of money into a build-it-they-will-come dream that never panned—the location was too hidden and tucked away for the vision to ever be real.