Via Prague

Danny Boy lost his job at Sazka. He came into the Zaba the night it happened. I was sitting with Vick having a beer. Danny Boy was already drunk when he arrived and as he sat with us he was inconsolable, difficult.
“I fucking hate this fucking Republic!” he yelled at us, weaving back and forth in the booth, standing up and shouting other things and waving his arms, making proclamations and singing bits of songs. “Ah, you are lucky you are not from Czech Republic ,” he told us.
We tried to calm him down, but he was past that point. He got up and seized a nearby empty Coke bottle and waved it around as he attempted to make a speech. The barman, Jirka, came around and while Danny Boy was still searching for his next point to make, quietly disarmed him of the Coke bottle and we sat Danny Boy down. Then all of a sudden he seemed to come to his senses, quieted down and fell asleep, his head resting on his chest.
I asked Victor if he’d found a new job yet and he shook his head, and he didn’t want to talk about it. He had some Czech relatives in Prague who he did some odd jobs for, so that gave him some money. He also had a court appeal coming up on his drug conviction, but I didn’t ask about that. Kuba and Lenka were away at a reggae festival outside Prague, and I missed seeing them, and Ondrej just came by for a quick Coke before heading home (he said he was taking a break for a few days). A couple of the younger girls, Bara and her friends, were at the bar but they were busy talking among themselves and didn’t seem to want company. The place felt stale, as it sometimes got. I looked at Danny, his head still in his lap, while Vick rolled a joint. Why he was so upset about losing a job he even like or feel suited for I don’t know. He was living with his mother, so he wasn’t homeless, but then he probably helped with the bills. I remember when he used to work with Vick at the podatelna at Exxon. They had a manager Mrs. Zadkova, a dictator whom they both hated, but especially Danny Boy. Every day he’d come into the Zaba the first thing out of his mouth would be “Fucking Mrs. Zadkova!” When he lost that job he didn’t seem surprised, or even that upset, at least not nearly as upset as we was now that he’d lost the Sazka job.
I talked with Vick a little bit but we had to be discreet since we couldn’t tell how much Danny Boy might be listening.
“Wake up, Danny,” Vick said, then switching to Czech. “Vole!”
Danny Boy mumbled something, then in his sleep let out a “… do prdele!”
“He just needs to stop drinking so much, grow up and face things,” Vick said. He didn’t mean that in any rude or judgmental way. I understood what he meant; he might have been speaking for all of us. Anyway, we smoked a joint. I left about 10:30, and as I was leaving Danny Boy, who had just woken up, insisted on giving me a hug.

A few days later I had an interview with a school in China . It was a Skype interview and the interviewer was a young woman from Sacramento , not far from where I used to live. The China interview was, for me, a kind of desperate gamble. After talking with Karel, the attorney, I’d grown desperate, thinking I’d have to leave the country in less than 15 days. Those fifteen days had been up for some time; technically I was living in the county illegally.
Anyway, the interview went well enough, we got on, talked about teaching. The woman was cheerful and had many good things to say about China . Oh, she loved it, she said. Had been there 18 months. Beijing was great; a bit smoggy, but great.
There was one caveat; being broke, I’d hoped that upon an offer the school would advance the money for a flight ticket (that’s not unheard of, other schools have done so). No, she said unfortunately that while the school reimbursed travel costs, there were no advances. I didn’t want to go into the details about my situation in Prague , so I just told her to give me a few days to think it over. As a matter of fact, she emailed a day or two later , a short note, thanking me for my interest but unfortunately they were unable to offer me a position. “We wish you every success in your future endeavors,” it ended. Nothing about possible openings in the future. That same day I got an email from the school in Prague , an ominously brief email. Could I stop by the office in the morning? I put two and two together, and figured the school in China had been in contact, and now the school in Prague wanted to know what was up. That was exactly what I didn’t want, since I was trying to stay under the radar and out of everybody’s way.
That night I got home from the Zaba I was as drunk as Danny Boy had been a few nights before. Reeling, swirling with angry piss, I shouted through the curtain into Sugit’s room abusively. “Life is fight!” I mocked. “Every day must fight! Why can’t you say something new? Is that all the English you know? Life is fight! Every day must fight!” Sugit had been sleeping when I came home, at least think so, but now I could hear him weeping, and I shouted a bit more before I finally went to bed.
In the morning I woke up feeling destroyed, hollow, afraid. Everything seemed to be closing in around me. As long as I had Islam and the two brothers there it didn’t seem so terrible. But then, remembering the things I’d said the night before, I felt I’d cut off a last protective wall, and everything came flooding in. I got up and showered and dressed quickly because I wanted to be out of the flat before Sugit woke up. He came out just as I was finishing dressing. He didn’t look at me or say anything, but just went into the bathroom and shut the door.

Outside it was another rainy day. I went to a morning class near Strossmayerovo Namesti and then at noon had lunch at the Bohemia Bagel on Velatrzni Street . A young woman got on and sat in front of me. She had gold-colored hair, wet and tied back, and was dressed as though she’d just come from the gym. As the tram rolled along she reached back and massaged her hair to dry it. A distinct scent came off her hair, a sweet, fresh scent, and I recognized it. Her face, as though she were offering it for view, was in profile, the smooth cheek partially appearing behind her gold-colored hair; the faint ripe smile … the same! But no it couldn’t be! After nearly four years … Prague is a city of nearly two million people. I tapped her shoulder and she turned. Her eyes widened, she couldn’t believe it either. “Jak se mas?” Danya asked, smiling politely. We talked for a couple minutes was the tram crossed the river and headed for Old Town . Her English was better than I remembered. Oh, she had a teacher now. He was good. She had a new job, too, a marketing company. And she was legal, finally! Great, great! She asked how things were going. “Stene. Padesat na padesat.” The same, fifty-fifty. She always teased me for using the same Czech expressions. With you it is always stene. Padesat-padesat. This time she just smiled. “What is new for you?” she asked.
At Starometska metro station I got off, and thought about asking for her number (the number lost several mobile phones ago), but at the last second didn’t. She handed me her business card, and I put that in my wallet and got off. As I got off she smiled and offered a small wink, not sexual just a kind of nod to old times. At the crosswalk I turned and watched as the tram rolled away, and she looked back one last time and smiled again.

“What is new for you?”
Danya … you never had many conversations with her. That was your first winter in Prague . She was from Russia and had lived in Prague two years by then, doing graphic design for a tourist magazine geared toward Russian tourists in Prague . She wasn’t legal then and was having some problem with it, was worried about it. In those days I wasn’t worried about much of anything. Prague was the romantic city, all romantic then. Danya … I call her Danya, that wasn’t her name. There were actually several Danyas that first year and a few after, but they all in the end were like Danya. She didn’t speak much English and I hadn’t learned much Czech and so communication was difficult. We used to save our “serious” talks for the computer in her bedroom. She would have me type what I said into the computer and she translated it to Russian and vice versa. It was winter then and we’d go to sleep in her bed with the snow falling outside, and in the morning it would still be snowing when I dressed and hurried to a class. But some mornings if there was time, Danya would make breakfast and coffee. She didn’t like to eat breakfast herself; instead she liked to sit and watch me eat and smile that strange, wistful smile, like she was a proud mother watching a son eat all his vegetables. She had a girlfriend too, a dwarfish, evil-eyed woman (or at least evil eyed to me) who I only met once. But it wasn’t the girlfriend who broke us up, or the communication. I was just in too much a hurry and there were too many Prague nights to enjoy, beers to drink, more Danyas to meet. She always seemed to understand, on some intuitive level. Numerology was a pet hobby of hers and once she gave me a reading, based on my birth date and a few other personal numbers. “For you always must be new,” she pronounced, after reading the numbers. That’s why she always asked that, and why she smiled that smile, I think. There always had to be something new.

That evening I wrote Sugit a letter apologizing about everything and left it in the kitchen. The next morning when I awoke I noticed he’d placed the letter on my night stand. He was already up and I asked the time. He told me and there was nothing in his voice to indicate whether he was mad or not. He had to get going. I noticed he’d left his laptop at home – he usually takes it with him – and so I wondered if maybe he had to report back to the migrant camp.

That morning, Friday, the sun finally broke through the clouds. I taught in the morning and … well, I should have gone in to the school to see why they emailed me, see if there was a moment of truth or what. But I didn’t. I sent an email saying I had classes (which was true) and asked to postpone until Monday. Almost immediately a reply came saying no problem. Relieved, I decided to cut the rest of the day’s classes. I got on the No. 17 tram at Veletrzni, the same stop where Danya had got on the day before. There was the same seat she had sat, and I sat directly behind it, with the strange expectation she would get on again.
She didn’t. Almost perversely, an old woman got on and sat in her place. I wanted to throw her down the aisle. Instead I rode the tram one stop to Strossmayerovo Namesti and got off and walked to the metro station at Vltavska. It was warm and sunny and many young women and girls were wearing shorts. I looked for Danya among them, saw her in one face, another, a flash of her gold-colored hair passing along that shoulder, her neck. In that remote afternoon I saw her everywhere, but I couldn’t find her.

I found at Shakespeare and Sons a worn paperback biography of Collette. She was someone I’d always admired from a distance, through other writers, someone I felt I should admire. It rained all weekend, so I spent much of the time at home reading the book. I even brought it with me to Konspirace and Zaba. It was a very readable biography, and I could appreciate her sense of touch, of scent, of taste; her lust for life.
Monday afternoon was sunny but the city was humid, the air thick with distant rolling thunder and the sound of sirens. With a deep breath I went to the school. As it turned it was nothing really. They just wanted me to sign a payslip I’d forgotten to sign the month before. After work, feeling much relieved, I went to the Zaba but there were only a few people. Lenka and Kuba were back from the reggae festival though. Lenka hung a Jamaican flag they bought at the festival from the ceiling near the bar, and for a while I sat with them and they told me about the festival, and Kuba went to You Tube to find some of the reggae groups they’d seen. Then later they pulled down the big screen and showed everyone photos they’d taken. That was pretty common at the Zaba. People who went on holiday or to festivals came back and showed pictures – often a lot of the Zaba crowd went on excursions together – and everyone drank beer and laughed and talked about the pictures.
That evening the bar felt lonely though; Lenka and Kuba and a couple of other people talking with Jirka at the bar. So I left while it was still light out, and walked down Donska Street past the Vietnamese potraviny, where inside the daughter of the owner sat behind the cash desk, stretching with boredom.
I went down the hill to Grabovka Park, full of the impressions I’d gathered reading about Collette. I decided to check how the grapes were doing in the vineyard. It was a sort of occupation I’d picked up last summer. I’d gone in the winter, when everything was all frozen and dead, then returned at intervals throughout the spring, watching the vines begin to creep around the iron rods, exploding into bright green in mid-summer and finally at harvest time, at Tomas’ suggestion, I went to Namesti Miru, where borcak, or virgin wine; from the vineyard was served in little plastic cups, the first hint of autumn in the air.
That evening after I left the Zaba three men were still at work near the entrance to the vineyard. They were working on a new gate and wall. The wall was white plastered and run up the steps alongside the vineyard leading to the park at the top of the steps. Some sections of the vineyard had been dug up to allow for a stone pathway that wound through the vineyard, as well as a kind of raised section, where fresh vines had been planted. The rust-colored rods rose up from the soil, oddly naked, while the rest of the vineyard was in full summer bloom, the red and white grapes already hanging from the leaves. I sat on the new stone pathway up near the top of the vineyard. One of the workers saw me but he didn’t seem to mind. The pathway was crawling with ladybugs, and the air was thick and warm, but the silver chant of birds lightened the air, mingled with the drifting vine leaves (all of these of course were very “Collette-like” observations, I had the book with me and I read for awhile in the dusk). The sky over Nusle was a pensive grey, as though about to rain, but the rest of the city still basked in lazy sunlight. I felt some of the loneliness and depression I’d felt at the Zaba lift, there in my Collette vineyard, and entered a more humid, fragrant world. I thought about the summer before visiting the vineyard each day, and feeling good about the growing vines. After the borcak (which was good but too sweet, almost syrupy, red and white both), I felt a little bit sad but in a good way. My students and friends at Zaba and Konspirace said it was impossible to find truly fresh borcak since it ages within minutes, an hour at most.
I read the Collette for a while longer, then put it away and smoked a cigarette. Still, the persisted … watching the year’s harvest, from seed to glass. I wasn’t sure then if I would be around for the new harvest. It reminded me of leaves shuddering in a sudden breeze, those infant grapes, of life’s endurance and fragility; the soil, still moist from the weeks of rain, had a fecund, slightly moldy scent, the air a color of melting bronze.

Things were better with Sugit. One night his girlfriend spent the night and I met her. She was older than Sugit, in her thirties, a dark-complexioned, Asiatic woman, but but friendly. We were both shy around each other but pleasant. In the morning they left before I woke up. And a night or two later the front door got jammed somehow and Sugit and I worked together to fix it and we joked together while we worked. The next morning he had to report to the migrant camp.
He was up very early, like four a.m. I heard him getting ready but went back to sleep. When I woke up to go to work he was already an hour gone. He returned that evening with a 30-day visa. Nikash had gone to the camp a couple of weeks before. I asked if Sugit had seen Nikash and he said no.
Nikash finally returned sometime at the end of June, he’d been there about three weeks. He was outwardly buoyant and full of his smiles as always, but as always despondent about his visa and general situation. This time, like Islam before, he’d been issued a seven-day visa. He thought about going to Italy. “Here fight is finished,” Nikash said.
Actually there was one good thing going for him. His girlfriend had come around, after all. Nikash credited my advice. “You tell me no call to her and you are right!” he said, one evening. “She call me and apologize.” They were back together again, and Nikash thanked me for advising him against killing himself. Not to pat myself on the back; I don’t think he really meant it, killing himself, he just has a very dramatic personality. In the evenings the girlfriend, I just remember her as “Honey,” since she was also shy and we didn’t speak except in pleasantries, came over and sometimes cooked Thai food and sometimes she came in the afternoons and I would slip out and leave the flat to her and Nikash.
Neither of the brothers, nor I, had heard anything from Islam since he left for Italy. I thought, a little guiltily, about emailing him now and again, but I was too absorbed by my own worries. Any day now it seemed the floor of my comfortable existence could drop. The police would knock at the door, or else the school would call and say they could no longer employ me without a visa, something else. Visions of a life like Aiden Greenworth’s, scrounging, sifting trash even for a few crowns, sleeping in the park, tempted me not at all. Not that my life was much better, but at least I had a roof and a steady paycheck.
As the summer wore on the anxiety rose and fell with the heat, the rain, and passing days. Mostly I tried not to think about it. I even welcomed rainy days, cloudy days, which almost seemed to offer a place to hide from my troubles; I could hide out at places like the Bagel by day and the Zaba by night. The days were humid, almost tropical, and the trams were sweaty and crowded. I found myself looking for Danya on those trams but I didn’t see her again.
In the evenings the summer storms came back and drenched the streets. The cobblestones on Donska Street disappeared beneath torrents of water. Often we stood at the door of the Zaba and watched people running up the hill to catch the tram, or else others across the street who, also under cover, watched the rain with us. We heard there were floods in Moravia and that twelve people had died, and in the bar we watched the news, and I heard Jirka talking with Ondrej and some other people about the floods. There was a big summer festival in Slovakia too where the big tent had collapsed and some people were killed and we talked about that too and looked at pictures on the Internet.
Kuba and Lenka always made me feel better, lighter. We put on reggae music or a new favorite, Dknob, and listened to the music and sang together and sometimes Kuba bought shots. Ondrej usually came in after work and we talked at the bar for awhile. Even Danny Boy found a new job, part-time at least, but he wasn’t sure how long it would last. He said he had also been going to see a psychiatrist to try and sort out his head and emotions.
Most nights I stayed until about ten or so and then headed back to the flat, and the brothers would be cooking dinner. One evening I asked Nikash the Bangladeshe word for ‘brother’ and he said “Dhada,” and so after this sometimes I called him and Sugit “Dhada” and this amused and pleased them.
“We are the same!” Nikash proclaimed. “We must fight. Cannot get visa. We must go out!”
One evening Nikash told me about a lawyer he’d heard about, somewhere in the center, who could secure a visa “guaranteed” if you paid 25,000 crowns. He offered to take me to the lawyer. But it sounded shady to me, and besides, I didn’t have the 25,000 crowns.

I can imagine a more sanguine, resourceful reader failing to sympathize with us. Why didn’t we just leave, seek for active solutions, instead of just lingering over the same old “fight?” On my side, it was easy: I just wasn’t ready or willing to face the realities of my situation; it was easier to hide, to drift, to see myself as the romantic vagabond (reading my Collette!). The simple fact was I didn’t want to leave.
The brothers’ situation was different. Both, like Islam, had come to Prague for very practical reasons: better work, better money. Sugit had dreams of making enough money to return to Bangladesh one day and care for his parents in their old age. “In our country,” he told me, “we take care of family. I tell father, ‘You don’t worry. You take care of me when I was boy, now I take care of you. You don’t need work.”
Nikash and his girlfriend, who also had visa problems, were thinking about sticking it out long enough in Prague to get enough money somehow to one day move to Thailand, where she could be nearer her family.
So in both cases, the brothers saw staying in Prague as a means to an end, that end being family, but didn’t want to go home empty-handed. I suppose in my case, I saw Prague as home.
So there we were.