compliments.
Chapter 21
Slovakian?
Not a word.
I speak French, German, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, English, Swahili, Malay, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Farsi and Italian. Based on these I can roughly comprehend a wide range of locally similar languages, though comprehension is never the same as being able to reply.
Hungarian? Czech?
Not a clue.
Only a few borrowed words – toilet, TV, credit card, internet, email – that sprung up too fast and too late for the linguists of their nations to have any better idea.
I got off the train a few stops short of Bratislava.
When first I visited Slovakia it was a beautiful land of mighty rivers, great fields across fertile plains, pine tree hills rising on the horizon and the distant jingling of cattle bells from the blue-grey walls of the evening valleys. There may even have been some traditional dress – though at the time tradition was a concept yet to be romanticised into its knee-kicking glory.
Communism, as always, had not been kind to this idyll. With as much tenderness as a tank in a trench, villages of rustic stone and tiny cared-for chapels now boasted squat apartment blocks and concrete industrial zones, fallen into disrepair almost as soon as they had risen. Rivers, once running clear, now flowed sluggishly through the flatlands, their surfaces decked with thick green scum that grew back as quickly as it was cleared. The land still held much beauty, but it was spotted through with the remnants of an industrial ambition stretched too far.
I stopped in a bed and breakfast in a town with an unpronounceable name. A bus ran every three hours to Bratislava, twice a day on Sundays. One church, one school, one restaurant, and on the edge of town one supermarket, which sold, as well as cured meats and fish, garden furniture, bathroom parts and small electric cars.
The owners of the bed and breakfast were a husband and wife, and only one other room was occupied by a pair of Austrian cyclists come to pedal the gentle low roads of Europe. I waited for the building to go to bed, then let myself out into the night.
The one-church town was also a one-bar town.
The one bar was playing 1980s pop songs from one CD. On the dance floor teenagers desperate to get out, get away, writhed against each other, too horny to go home, too frightened of their companions to actually have sex.
I looked for the one person who might be interested, and found her, sitting back from the dance floor, watching in the dark. I sat down opposite her and said, you speak English?
A little, she said.
But for what she did, a little was more than enough.
I bought her a drink, which she barely touched.
Her English was better than she claimed, and her French, we eventually discovered, was superb. She said, where are you staying?
The boarding house.
That won’t do at all, she replied. If you’re interested, I know somewhere quiet.
Quiet was perfect.
Quiet was exactly what I needed.
She lived on the very edge of town. The front door locked heavy behind us, the walls were hung with photos of ancient grandmothers, their hands resting proudly on the shoulders of their sons.
Her room consisted of a bed, a desk, a couple of hand-me-down works of art put up by a tenant generations ago who hadn’t liked them enough to take them away and left hanging by a lazy landlord. Under the bed were books on economics, chemistry, mathematics. On the small crooked desk, old plates gathering mould, and pieces of foil, stained with powder. She kicked the books aside, took off her jacket and said, you ready?
The track marks in her arm were faint but visible. The thin white scars across her wrists were in neat little rows, running up to her elbow, fading and old but made worse by scratching. I said, how old are you?
She shook her head.
Are you ready?
I smiled and replied, something a little kinky?
I gave her the key before I pulled out the handcuffs. It never serves to give the wrong impression. She
Chapter 21
Slovakian?
Not a word.
I speak French, German, Russian, Mandarin, Japanese, English, Swahili, Malay, Spanish, Arabic, Turkish, Farsi and Italian. Based on these I can roughly comprehend a wide range of locally similar languages, though comprehension is never the same as being able to reply.
Hungarian? Czech?
Not a clue.
Only a few borrowed words – toilet, TV, credit card, internet, email – that sprung up too fast and too late for the linguists of their nations to have any better idea.
I got off the train a few stops short of Bratislava.
When first I visited Slovakia it was a beautiful land of mighty rivers, great fields across fertile plains, pine tree hills rising on the horizon and the distant jingling of cattle bells from the blue-grey walls of the evening valleys. There may even have been some traditional dress – though at the time tradition was a concept yet to be romanticised into its knee-kicking glory.
Communism, as always, had not been kind to this idyll. With as much tenderness as a tank in a trench, villages of rustic stone and tiny cared-for chapels now boasted squat apartment blocks and concrete industrial zones, fallen into disrepair almost as soon as they had risen. Rivers, once running clear, now flowed sluggishly through the flatlands, their surfaces decked with thick green scum that grew back as quickly as it was cleared. The land still held much beauty, but it was spotted through with the remnants of an industrial ambition stretched too far.
I stopped in a bed and breakfast in a town with an unpronounceable name. A bus ran every three hours to Bratislava, twice a day on Sundays. One church, one school, one restaurant, and on the edge of town one supermarket, which sold, as well as cured meats and fish, garden furniture, bathroom parts and small electric cars.
The owners of the bed and breakfast were a husband and wife, and only one other room was occupied by a pair of Austrian cyclists come to pedal the gentle low roads of Europe. I waited for the building to go to bed, then let myself out into the night.
The one-church town was also a one-bar town.
The one bar was playing 1980s pop songs from one CD. On the dance floor teenagers desperate to get out, get away, writhed against each other, too horny to go home, too frightened of their companions to actually have sex.
I looked for the one person who might be interested, and found her, sitting back from the dance floor, watching in the dark. I sat down opposite her and said, you speak English?
A little, she said.
But for what she did, a little was more than enough.
I bought her a drink, which she barely touched.
Her English was better than she claimed, and her French, we eventually discovered, was superb. She said, where are you staying?
The boarding house.
That won’t do at all, she replied. If you’re interested, I know somewhere quiet.
Quiet was perfect.
Quiet was exactly what I needed.
She lived on the very edge of town. The front door locked heavy behind us, the walls were hung with photos of ancient grandmothers, their hands resting proudly on the shoulders of their sons.
Her room consisted of a bed, a desk, a couple of hand-me-down works of art put up by a tenant generations ago who hadn’t liked them enough to take them away and left hanging by a lazy landlord. Under the bed were books on economics, chemistry, mathematics. On the small crooked desk, old plates gathering mould, and pieces of foil, stained with powder. She kicked the books aside, took off her jacket and said, you ready?
The track marks in her arm were faint but visible. The thin white scars across her wrists were in neat little rows, running up to her elbow, fading and old but made worse by scratching. I said, how old are you?
She shook her head.
Are you ready?
I smiled and replied, something a little kinky?
I gave her the key before I pulled out the handcuffs. It never serves to give the wrong impression. She
Similar Books
