the North Sea

I'm in an orange jumpsuit on a deck suspended twenty meters above water, except this water is like no water I have ever seen; this is not Aegean ultramarine, this stuff is a menacing grey, shifty, jittery, surfacy. This stuff smells of dead bird and old rags, this is the stuff that comes out of the pipe when the plumber unscrews, bent down under the sink. And it's everywhere because this place has no corners, it has no angles, it has no place to hide. It's a space-water dictatorship too vast to be earthly and too full of stuff you cannot see to be comfortable for a guy like me.

I’m on the bridge now, in Arie’s field of vision – that’s Captain Arie. You won’t believe me if I tell you he looks like Popeye, but he does. Tattoos, big forearms, a disappearing lip. Maybe his wife is spindly. I’d believe it, I believe almost anything out here. I believe Roman too when he tells me of all his women. Roman is Latvian. I drink in his stories looking down at the water, my head over the railing, my hands tucked in gloves (no mittens onboard). We are shoulder to shoulder, me and Roman. There're only five things you can do out here: sleep, eat, smoke, look at water and talk. We’re doing three, the last three. Like I said, Roman tells me of his women in Riga. My ten year old cousin Popic speaks more advanced English than him, except for a few words like vulva and pubic hair which Roman uses as fluently as hardhat and stainless steel. Word has it Roman’s the best welder onboard. Word has it Latvians are the best welders period. But don’t quote me on that; there are so many words floating around here. Put fifty guys in a confined space and that’s what you get. Dutch, Russian, Hindi, French, English, Latvian. Ta mère, j’la baise – wat een paarde lul – her vulva was quite good, and so on and so forth.

I smoke Rome’s ciggies like an amateur; the smoke is so strong it’s like salt in my eyes, but I insist. It’s one of the five things and four is just too little. After Rome has run through his women, there are no more words for a while and my cigarette’s dead, so we drop two and do only one of the five: we look at the water, and we wait.

Way down, past the light, past the falling debris and sinking fish, past the point beyond which there is no point going unless you are Jacques Cousteau or Ed Harris in The Abyss… way down there, a thinking creature with night-vision eyes is looking at a cigarette butt drifting down slowly, a crooked thing discarded by a thinking creature above, that would be me...

...but I am interrupted in my thought by Captain Arie over the intercom – All to muster point. Abandon ship exercise. All to muster point.

On my way to muster I think of the thinking creature, Arie’s disappearing lip, Roman’s loves in Riga, and me on this strange surfacy space that smells of dead bird and rags.

At Abandon-Ship there is no more thinking involved: fifty heavyweights – that would be us – padded-out in fluorescent floaters crowd into an orange capsule in the middle of the night. Under real, life-threatening circumstances this capsule would drop at the pull of a lever and plunge – with fifty hairy men strapped to seats inside – plunge ten, twenty, thirty meters down into the grey waters, past the light, past the falling fish, past the thinking creature. Would it believe its night-vision eyes? An orange capsule dropping down out of nowhere, fifty men with heavy jaws looking out through portholes: Captain Arie, a Latvian foul-mouth, the Indian brothers, the French bargemaster, the Dutch paardenlullen crew, and me, like Ed Harris in The Abyss, looking out into endless water…

But it was merely an exercise. We did not plunge this time. Not really.

heavy lift in Ålborg

Think of something – anything – think of it like it’s really there, like you’re about to grab it and pull it to your chest, like you own it – you feel that? You feel that!

***

I’ve been working on a construction yard lugging around objects with Serbs, crew-cut Poles and Danes from Jutland. Equipment, piping, stuff thirty times your size trolleyed around like toys. This week: steel-tube cathedrals for the sea hoisted whole into a massive Danish sky.

Me, I’m by the workers’ huts mostly, with my clipboard, my collar up, fjord-wind on my cheeks, hardhat and steel-cap boots. I note the angles when the cathedral rises, when it hangs and when it rests in the waters. It blows me away every time.

After the hoist, the Danes smoke amongst themselves and speak Danish – oodsk’de gansk’eurjeh’ twiege larsk – to my ear, sing-songs played in reverse, but I know it’s all crap, shit, fucker, whore, curses on Albania for the draw in the world cup qualifier the other night, the night we went out – the whole yard – forty-man strong strolling into Ålborg. I felt like a Viking conqueror. But Christ do these Danes drink! Holy mother of God! If the human spirit can be dissolved, these Danes know how.

In the yard, I stick with the Poles, and mostly with a painter called Vaichek, from Krakow. Paint-gun, gas mask and white pressure-suit. On his chest is a patch that reads VAICHEK that I keep reading every time we speak – VAICHEK VAICHEK VAICHEK – but underneath the gear, in his heart and mind, he’s a linguist – a scholar. Ai paint for de money, he says, producing seven fingers, seven times de money. I called him a sell-out once for fun, but he swung his gun around and debated me in seven languages. Vaichek, put it down, put down the gun, I didn’t mean it.

The first night, in the workers’ hut, I tried to think of something; I tried to think of it like it was really there, like I could own it, but nothing showed. So instead I reached for the money in my pocket and pulled it to my chest. Fresh money. Kroners. Call me greedy, but the first night it worked. The first night only. After that, I was left to my own devices, and had to conjure that stuff up all on my own, like those sparks out of JK’s boxes.

The trick is - I figured it out - the trick is you start with something small, a thing (people are hard; you do that later).

Tomorrow, another cathedral hoist. I’ll take angles again and talk to the Serbs – translate (that’s why I was hired) – I’ll tell them to get on with it, to get the hell on with it (foreman’s words), the whole day with my clipboard, my Bic, the sun poking me in the eye, fjord-wind on my cheeks and that something special, that something almost real – first a thing, then a person – close to my chest.

like so...

ode to disproportionate people

None of you have ever seen me. You don’t know how I look, what I do at what hour, with whom or “whoms”. If you have no fallen space matter in your backyard, no Turkish thugs in your midst, then we are not neighbors. But says that something? (as my Dutch friends say). No it says nothing. I have been sitting still a lot these days – this is true– but I move whenever I can, right, left, down the center, across the Earth’s crust, and up and down sometimes too. So – thugs or no thugs – I could be in your midst anyway. As we speak.

But that's just space – coordinates – and that's mostly irrelevant. The point is – what I mean is, I like people – persons – so I could potentially like you very much too. In short, I’m not fond of breathy-voices and I don’t like perms too much on girls (much less on guys) but I trust you have neither. For the rest I like all kinds: people with hair-lips and the giggles, funny toes and foibles; bouncy girls with bright eyes and guys with pat phrases – I kid you not. I like waving at small boats with off-board motors, and talking politics with Bren (we’re being jacked Labas, dicked in the rear by a dozen dudes in suits, I kid you not). What else? I like touching elbows with redheads at bus stops and terminals. I like… boy… so much in people that I like. So many people that I like. I could go on, I could go on... and yet, ultimately, it breaks down like this: there are people that I like – just like – and there are people that I LIKE, really and inexplicably, like bigman, for whom I have a fondness that is out of measure, doubly, triply, quadruply. These are the disproportionate people, arithmetically irresolute, bottomless fuel-tanks unto themselves – stand next to them and you refuel with that substance I traverse the globe to get my fill of. Like my sister Bee – another of the disproportionate – a fount of surplus and giver of free-Bees (sorry again for the head scar sissy, I was too young to know that a spade is a spade). These are the people I was thinking of flying over the Danish fjords two nights ago (in an aeroplane –yes– I have not yet Drago’s space-folding skills). These people mean something beyond what they mean. Don’t do the maths on them because they won’t add up (2+2=78.41); these people, they have axes going into the unknown, funny angles and blind-spots all over them. They’re special. They’re disproportionate. They don’t compute. Don’t bother. Just do what I do… just…. well, watch,

Hi bigman. Everything good? Boy, it sure is nice out this evening … Mind if I stand next to you for a while?

Thanks, bigman.

That’s it. Life-fuel. And – I swear to god – if I have any left in me at any time, I’ll give you what I’ve got. All of it. I’ll try to be disproportionate. I'll do it. And maybe – if you’re a redhead and we're at a terminal or something – we’ll touch elbows too.

the freedoms of land animals

JK rolled his Brontosaurus across his living room most of last night – I think he rides it – consequence is that I hardly slept. Instead I kept watch for tomfoolery on my block: Turks, junkies, riffraff and other land animals. Bigman didn’t show. I suspect he was in town resting against walls again, scratching his arms, kicking up his foot and dusting sand off his large body – the usual. He does this at different locations at different times of the night. We all have to keep busy one way or the other.

Then – very late; like at three – two Japanese girls strolled by. I was squatted in my doorway with a box of cookies. They giggled and walked bowlegged in an arc around me. Why the giggles, I thought, what is it? My “reptile” slippers? My y-fronts? or was it just the shadow of JKs prehistoric beast as it swayed past us on the sidewalk. Anyway, I gestured hello and they greeted back – like they do out east – nodding. Between us, on the ground, a pair of critters-with-teeth picked at the crumbs from the cookies I was eating earlier on. And across the street two Turks showed up from the Grillroom; older, mustachioed Turks with tea in tiny glasses, and cigarette smoke coming out of their nostrils almost non-stop. So there we were, the eight of us: the toothy critters, the girls, the turks, the roving bronto, and me. Land animals all. I made a mental note of this zoo, thankful to JK for keeping me up to bear witness.

Yeah, I was glad for all you land animals – glad to see you, I mean. I scratched my ribs like bigman and smiled. I was glad because my mind has been a watery thing of late, a vast, shifting sea: dark rolling waves; gale winds whipping up froth, salt-sting and wetness.

My work at the Plasma Center has been – mmmm… well.... the square of Delft in the window, the L-shaped desks bolted to the walls, the paper squiggles of Plasma Physics, the fire(meat)balls for lunch (one more fireball for Mr. Labas?) Enough! I’m done. I'm really done.

Crunching another cookie, I thought the obvious to myself, what are two Japanese girls doing here in the middle of the night? Kindly land animals from the East. The Turks too were puzzled I could tell. But then instantly in response I though, what the heck Lui, what about you? Caught in moon beams in the middle of the North Sea, salty spray on your Balkan nose, and sea stars in abundance overhead. Pretty unlikely too, but pretty soon that’s where you’re going be. You, land animal extraodinaire, hoarder-of-gravity and taker-of-ground-oaths. You... Lui... at sea.

practical mathematics

1) A swimming pool lies 10m off the foot of a high rise downtown Zagreb. On the roof, 100m* up, a desperate man stands in suit and tie, trembling, crying, shouting abuse in Serbo-Croatian, the foam of death on his lips. In his hands is a picture of a woman with blond hair, (probably peroxide) and breasts that look – how shall I say – well, fake. Anyway - irrelevant – the point is – the question is: what is the maximum speed he must stay under when leaping off the high rise to ensure his safe passage to the underworld i.e. the guy wants to die, not go for a swim. Note1: assume a perfect parabola and no air friction. Note2: We’re on Earth, so gravity – except around Labas’ meteorite – is approximately constant. Hints:

a) Drago Stanic – that’s his name; remember him? he called me from his yacht on the Aegean – is not a stuntman, nor does he wish to be one.

b) Drago and I used to play Mikado and number games in my yard after school. He was always good with numbers, then he got really good and turned criminal. Casinos and whatnot. He loved puzzles and food. Was he fat? Yes. But this is of no practical significance since air friction is zero.

2) Once desperate, now disembodied and strangely lighthearted, Drago must travel from the concrete at the foot of the high rise to a giant rock belt on the rim of the galaxy 300 light-years away. His punishment for whacking Serbs, beating Tania and stealing money is mild: he will run a hotdog stand for the Americans he so disliked on Earth, i.e. he will languish for the rest of eternity outside a football stadium, i.e. American football. Now, if Drago can travel at 30 times the speed of light (he's disembodied, immaterial, ectoplasmic – call it what you want – so he can do this now) how long will it take Drago to get there? Note1: disregard Special Relativity. Note2: ...and General Relativity. Note3: in fact, ignore all physics post 1916. Note4: Assume a straight line and no pit stops. Note5 Assume Drago hits no obstruction and has a working knowledge of blackholes. Note6: Even though Drago – as I remember him – is notoriously “distractable”, assume that for once in his godforsaken, fucked-up life he is going to concentrate on the task at hand and not wander around full of schemes to make a quick Dinar. No dollars or dinars in space Drago! Hints:

a.Drago and Tania – lady Peroxide – enjoyed a short but intense relationship. Tania cheated, but this is just for your information and of no practical significance.

b A light-year – like a relationship – is a distance traveled, not a duration.

3) This is a two part question. If regret is a wave that spreads out through space like a ripple in water, lighting up the disembodied as it encounters them (1) how fast would this wave have to travel if it left the bosom of the regreter downtown Rotterdam to touch Drago just before he reaches the rock-belt stadium? And (2) how long would it take for Drago to appear as a shooting star for this Earthlings to behold. Note1: light must travel back the distance before it can be perceived. Note2: When he called me from his yacht - despite the jokes and tomfoolery - underneath it was a plea for help. Come to Zagreb, my friend, please come! But this is just for your information and of no practical significance

Extra credit (for smart asses and cookies): What hemisphere would see Drago if he jumped…now!

Note: Use pen & pad. You may test waves of your own and look at the sky at any time. That’s not cheating, it’s encouraged.

(RIP Drago!)

*source: Snezana Eugenia Birckenwald-Lekic IV (Snezi)

back in Amsterdam

It was time to go to Amsterdam again. I hadn’t been back since before Buenos Aires. I missed the junkies, the tourists and the trip-me cobbles. And – truth be told – I missed Brendan a whole lot too.

First I went to see Julien near Westerpark. I smelled weed and heard Jacques Brel. First thing he did when I arrived was hand me one of his freshly printed business cards: Juste Julien – legal counsel with a French touche (typo or style?). I was curious what “French touch” meant in legal terms. He has a law degree – I think – but the only law Julien has ever known was being busted at the Belgian border with a pound of weed . With confidence he pronounced: I weel bee lawyur for expat wis mush monay. He seemed determined so we left it at that. Then we moved to the balcony with some Pastise to discuss his latest attempts to exercise his French touche on the opposite sex. In the background, Jacques Brel thundered Je t’aime, oui, je t’aaaaime. The sun shined down upon us. It was a fine day.

After that it was off to Brendan's. He came back from the gym when I arrived. In the kitchen he beat an eggy protein drink with a fork and downed it, keeping me laser-locked in the corner of his eye. Clearly, he had something in mind.

Lui, you look pale. You need to get laid.

This worried me.

You need action, Lui. Pronto!

Bren, you have egg on your lip.

It worried me because this guy doesn’t understand strategy. Bren knows only trial and error. He's the Thomas Edison of womanizers – he'll try every damn bulb filament known to man, every trick in the book, and one will light up. He’s about statistics, not stealth. Needless to say, I knew ahead of time that in my case the accent would be overwhelmingly on error.

Give me your hand, he said.

Wha - ?

Give me your hand! I handed it to him and he grabed it like a doorknob.

You and me, right here, we make a pact, a fucking covenant, yeah. You don’t leave ‘til we get you some action. We shake on it.

Bren, that’s bad idea. That’s a baaaaa – ouw, OOOOUW!.. ok ok ok!

It’s a deal then.

The American touch. A little coercion never hurt anyone.

An hour later I was at the Waldorf café with a drink in my injured hand. The humiliation began. Six drunk Brits from Sheffield shuffled in (every alloy known to man), enough fat on them for six more. A hen night. All morals left at the chicken coop.

Ladies, ladies, introductions, introductions. Meet my friend Lui. A lightweight, yes, but quality equipment. A Bang & Olufsen for your Samsungs ladies, he said pointing to the guys, right and left. With Bang he winked and nudged. I cringed.

Then two polish girls,

Polish!? that’s a amazing, what a coincidence, my friend here is also Balkan

(Oh god)

Lui, speak Balkan, go on. Speak it.

I cringed.

And so on and so forth…

Finally, near closing time, Sofia von Spitzenwald showed up with her Brazilian friend. Remember them from the Switcheroo. Bren suddenly simmered down. Turns out he and Sofia “know” each other; “benchpressed” her many a time, but still this Autro-Hungarian blue-blood has a hold on him it seems.

Sofia, good to see you, ravishing. What brings you here? Have a seat. And your friend too. Drink?

Brazil sat next to me. Chats went smooth: You’re pretty tall, aren’t you? I opened. This is relative, she said, you are a small man. And so on, but good. Smart cookie, Brazil. I bought her a drink for free and we drank from our respective altitudes knowing there was no danger here; we would never “know” each other.

In the morning I snuck out like a thief, in contravention of the pact, the fucking covenant. Still pale and unlaid, but sated nevertheless. Amsterdam had delivered! My headache and gut testified. It was all good, the trialing – even the erroring – so good that on the train back a haiku emerged unannounced:

Canal ladies in tights

Street-vomit on cobbles

Drunk dog barking at dawn

I was inspired.

government

"Men are so simple and so much inclined to obey immediate needs that a deceiver will never lack victims for his deceptions."

We like Machiavelli where I come from – Niccolo Machiavelli – we like him because he’s smart, because he can screw you, bamboozle you, rip you off and smile all the while. He’s an artist in the manner of the great illusionists. With sleight of hand and deflection, Lookee-here, this bird in my hand, he says and then he cleans you out. He can do this because he never actually does it himself. The best scam artists in Serbia (the best are Serbian not Croatian) have someone else do it for them. Once robbed and stripped down to your underpants, Niccolo sidles up (fully clothed of course) my friend, he says, you have been robbed, I will help you. So you follow Nico to his home – what else can you do? – and you live under his roof, under his care. He serves you plum schnapps and lets you watch cable. Soon you forget that you once had your own house, your own land, and clothes on your back. And soon it becomes normal to walk in underpants – everyone should be in underpants! For years you do little else but drink schnapps and watch cable. But one day Nico tells you you must earn your keep. You see that man over there with the jacket and the hat, he says. Here’s a bird, go! Take everything he’s got and bring it back.

Now you are working for Nico, and soon there are more and more people in underpants and fewer and fewer hats and garments. There are hand-birds all over the place, and all you can find is schnapps and cable.

Then one day you start to think to yourself, shits, holy mother of god, I’m in my underpants, my liver is busted, my eyes shot, winter lies in wait, all I have is this hand-bird. How can this be? So you talk to other people in underpants and you find that they think the same.

What the heck! You say to the men in hats, this didn’t pan out, did it? This didn't work.

My friend, things are better, don’t worry. Things are better.

Stop calling me friend. All I see is hand-birds and underpants. What’s better, tell me?

Now Belgrade is astir. More and more people in underpants speak up. Hand-birds are let free into the skies. Thousands are on the streets. Thousands.

Three are home sick.

But that is enough. A few men in hats address the assembled underpants :

People! Listen all. You have let your hand-birds free. Now there is an illness in our airs and lungs. Soon Belgrade will be like Genova during the black plague. Listen carefully. Stay inside. Your life depends on it. We will help you!

pairs make wholes

First day at the Plasma-Center, Antun and I got on famously: chitchat; news of Zagreb; pork and sarma; the evils of the Ottoman empire. On the same page, right across the board. Oh, fellow countryman, what a delight. Then off he went to his fireballs, and left me a pile of papers with squiggles and footnotes, but no instructions.

He had hired me for what purpose exactly? My Croat tongue alone? The firm clasp of my handshake? My pyrotechnic heart?

I sit in a bunker of filing cabinets on the third floor, five by five by three, on a plastic-swivel, on oatmeal-colored carpet squares. There’s a window in the corner and a piece of Delft sky. I can smell cow and printer-breath from the machines in the hall.

Across from me sits Karla Sliedrecht. Dutch down to her fingernails. Her blood is the blood of the Dutch who ruled the high seas and worked the land with oxen. Blond, bovine, butter thighs – think Vermeer, ladies in petticoats, milk cans and frosty horizons. Even her soul that glimpses past the geraniums in her eyes is Dutch, Dutch, Dutch : you’re not really from here are you?

I am Lui, I volunteered. (Ik ben Lui).

Lewie?

No, l’wee. One syllable. L’WEE LA-BA.

Then in rapid succession she cross-examined: sister, brother, mother, father, hobbies and so forth. But my concentration was shot. I couldn’t get my eyes off the fuzz on her face, a film of hair beyond velvet, down her neck, across her collar bone. My mind raced - raced: I saw creatures scaling mountain fronts, large footprints, long hairs in the snow, I saw –

I think we should move our desks, Lui.

wha - why?

So we don’t stare at each other, she said in Dutch

I’m not staring.

You’re staring.

I’m not.

I was, but I was thinking too. I was thinking of bigman - lonely bigman - my subterranean friend. He too is fuzzy. YES! Put two and two together. Karla and bigman, romantic comedies and light drinks under the brickwork. There is order in this chaos Earth. There are pairs that make wholes. Bring all these pairs together, all of them, and this chaos consumes itself - wooooooooshshshshshshshshsh – until there is nothing but a hole -

Lewie!

Yes.

Help me move the tables.

Yes. Of course. Yes.

And so we slid tables over carpet squares in silence, our eyes inside our heads. Hers in hers; mine in mine.

fireballs

The sun can’t get through today. The sky is cloud-paper. A few white scribbles here and there; a black doodle in the distance like a long-legged bird or a heli with a stuntman on a rope. There’s plenty going on though: the air is thick with electromagnetics from mobiles, from radios and from the Poles, North and South. They come from far these waves just to be here above my head: Zagreb, Sebastopol, Luxemburg, you name it. Meanwhile, down low at ground level, woodlice gnaw, Bigman sleeps, and way down in the darkness, at the bottom of the sea, eyeless fish scavenge for carcasses.

Hello?... Lui, are you there?

Further still, thousands of miles below the crust, a big sweltering, raging goulash of energy -

Lui, you're breaking up.

I'm here.

This line is bad. I’m going to call you back.

Click.

...big sweltering, raging goulash of energy -

Ring.

Hello.

It's me again.

Hi.

This is better. Lui, I'm calling about that job.

What job?

The one I told you about, at the plasma-physics lab in Delft.

Tell me.

The head-guy is a Croat. Dr. Antun Dragoslav. He needs an assistant.

I'm not qualified.

You're not going to do any physics. You just run the office. You file stuff, you photocopy, etc. You speak Serbo-whatsit, right?

Croatian. Yes.

Then you're qualified.

What's plasma?

It's like a gas - super hot - but it's not a gas, and they suspend it magnetically in a vacuum -

What!?

It's a fireball, Lui.

"scrotum" in Turkish

The party was last night. Pavlov Pop banged through their repertoire, people danced, hop-scotched over Meteor, and sat snug and kissy on the collapsed wall of my kitchen. I haven't had the stomach to clean up yet. Jk's butts, Brendan's crushed liter-cans and all the confetti from birthday-girl Bijou. It was a party!

When the cops showed at four, five Turks gathered on my stoop to back me up in case of beef. It was good of them, a kind gesture, but I managed despite Brendan's mooning from my backyard. Butt cheeks and I SMELL PIG doesn't help with law enforcement, he should know that. Anyway, we were told what we knew already: too much brass, too loud, too late at night, and after that, people started leaving. The Doobie Brothers could not revive the spirit the Pavlovs had conjured up.

The Turks were still there when everyone had left, so I invited them in, all five of them, Izimir (from Izmir, on the Aegean), his cousin from Istanbul and three other guys. We sat with the Pavlovs under a crescent moon - ten of us - doing word-swaps, Turkish to Russian to Serbo-Croatian. This is how I discovered the fastest way to get your testicles cut off in Istanbul. Call a guy ibne, pronounced eeb-Né (pansy, push-over, gaylord but worse, ten times), and by syllable two your pants will be down to your ankles and the scimitar at your scrotum. The Pavlovs chimed in with the Russian equivalent and we all laughed – fun stuff – my balls safe on my cooling meteorite. After that we did scrotum, head-butt and Zinedine Zidane (they call him something else in Turkey).

This is when I remembered Switchblade from the 'Ol Switcheroo, with his ten thousand head of cattle, the swirling cognac in his fingers, and the nymphs on either side to rest his Ottoman paws. And I thought, what is it with these Turks, they're all tough-guys.

You know this dude called Switchblade? I asked, I was curious.

No response.

I tried again: şviçblüd. You know şviçblüd? He's from Amsterdam. Big guy, drinks cognac?

Wow, Bang! Full Pavlov-reaction from the Turks – jerky-heads, jaw-muscle contractions, the works – What did I say!?Fuck. Suddenly I feared for my teeth and my soft Balkan features. Quickly I moved on,

Gentlemen, mint-tea? Yes? and vanished into the kitchen.

After a while they simmered down again and we carried on as before, down the tri-lingual lexicon: neck brace, goulash, side-arm, hemorrhage and so on and so forth until dawn.

listening in

I'm stretched in trunks across the back of my cooling meteorite. The sun drags across the Northern Hemisphere like the tongue of a dog, drippy with clouds and humidity. I ignore what I can now, the chiseling at JK's above and my own whistly nostrils – hay fevered and cold. Instead, I try to imagine this rock as a cliff-hung outcrop above the Adriatic, somewhere off Split or Dubrovnik, this beautiful rock that only some days ago was zipping past lunarscapes through showers of cosmic rays... to land here in my backyard, into this perfect crater. Perfect and parabolic, like a dish, a huge receptor –

What's that! Shshshshshshshsththth – the beginning of that Beatles song? – no, no the unsheathing blade of a cut-throat in Baluchistan, yes; And that there, – plick pluck plick pluck – Chinese fingers, a thousand or more netting rackets in Guangzhou. And there – allez, allez, on y va mon vieux, allez – the Port of Marseille, an old man and his dog. And when I shift my ear a little like this, I can hear Thriller in LA; And like this, sixteen Sunni rebels in a trailer, insurgents and their English speaking overlord – What? What's that? SAY IT AGAIN! – but I can't hear it now over the cling-clanging of Brendan's dumbbells 40 miles north in Amsterdam. Interference. I turn my head to focus, but now I hear fires rage, voices cry, guns crackle, and from afar, the keystrokes of a bureaucrat and the dim bleeps of his algorithms. But now a ringing rips through everything, an incessant intrusive ringing, I can't hear –

Wait, that's me, my front door!

Quick I thrown pants on over my Y-front trunks.

The man at the door is bearded and massive like a bear. The sun is eclipsed. He does not greet, does not introduce himself, but clenches his fists and then utters his message of information:

Are you Mr. Labas?

Yes.

Mr. Labas, you are not to listen.

I'm just sitting on my rock, sir.

Again, Mr. Labas, do not listen. You can sit, lie, talk, do as you please, but don't listen. If I have to come here again...

His jaw opens and closes. The sun appears briefly behind his ear, and then he leaves.

I go back to my rock, and try in vain to blot out what I can. But now I wonder about this man who looks so much like Chuck Norris (was it Chuck Norris?). And I think, should I be scared of this guy? I mean – fuck – after all, if I can hear all of you, then surely, well, you can hear me too, right?... No?

fête terrestre

I thought about giving a party at my house, so I made some phone calls, how are you, what’s going on, this and that, and soon I had a handful of people good to go. I spoke to bigman on the stoop last night too, but he just nodded and said neither yes nor no. He shook some sand off his arm and went for a walk downtown Rotterdam. Brendan raved, of course, and immediately made a list of people: Joyce, Julie, Emerald, Bijou (see a pattern?) until I reminded him that this was a quiet kind of thing. A quiet party? What's the matter with you. That’s oxymoronic, Lui? I didn't know Bren knew that word (a burst of intelligence under pressure). JK agreed to come too, and promised to bring one of his BOXES, but I told him no, no BOXES, JK, and no animals, please. It’s a party. Bring food or something, and he looked at me kind of funny. Food, JK, real stuff, yes? He was startled, but he agreed.

Finally, when I had everything set up – who, what, when, where – it struck me across the face like an swoopy albatross: MUSIC! No furniture, is one thing, but no music! A body without spirit; a ground-hugging, invertebrate thing. What've I got? So I went through my records: Doobie Brothers, yes, lots of Doobie Brother’s. What else?... fuck! I made a desperate call to friends: guys! please, I need your help. Can you play next week? ... um, Can you come for free? I beg you. And thus was arranged live entertainment for my little soirée, a quartet of brass: tuba, trombone, and French horns, all pop repertoire, classics from Beat it to Labamba, whatever you like, Balkan stuff too. Pavlov Pop they're called – they're Russian friends. I got excited just thinking about it and made some more calls to Fer, Switch, and my sister Bee. None of them will make it, I know that, but I wanted to tell them, come, please come! My yard is all busted brick and interstellar rubble, my kitchen, a gaping wound, but no matter, no matter!! there'll be lots of space, foreign food for finger and fork, there'll be tubas, trombones, french horns and classy people..

meteor

Late last night something hard and incandescent plunged down from the sky, ripped off the back wall of my kitchen and lodged itself five feet deep into my backyard. My window was shattered. Everything shook. The world was dust and broken glass, and for a moment I wondered whether I should get up at all. For a moment I thought it might be best to just sleep through this and wake up in whatever other universe I had been transported to. Not think, not look, ignore. But there was knocking at my front door, it was bigman, and eventually I got out of bed. He didn't ask to come in, he just came in. We still hadn't said a word to each other, I still didn’t know anything about him, how he lived under the brickwork, but there he was and I was grateful for it. He stood for a while, all sandy and shaky, scratching his chin at this strange rock in the ground. Then he touched it, but it was still too hot from its descent through the atmosphere. So we just stood there, side by side, me and bigman, gazing at this beautiful, amazing meteorite from the sky. And I was happy somehow, in all this wreckage, that it had come to my universe, to my backyard, to me.

bigman

I’m in a bar on the Coolsingel with Bren. I haven’t slept in three days. I entered a dark hole from which I have yet to emerge.

Man, check her out, Lui, check her out! Bren elbows me in ribs. She's yours, Lui. Your name's written all over her. Step up.

Maybe later Bren.

Don’t be a pansy. Do it, man! Do it!

Three nights ago I felt quivers coming from underground. I imagined a Bangkok of rats coming and going from eatery to fornication nest. The sound strapped me to my space-cube as if gearing me up for a journey vast and interstellar. But the quivering was something else, something quite different. A large figure, man-like, but darker and taller, rose up from the brickwork outside. He dusted sand off his fuzzy body and looked around absentmindedly. Ten feet of head, chest and limb. Not a Turk, not a phantom, not a famished beast, crazed and rabid. Bigman kicked his foot up against the back wall of Ankara Grillroom and looked around the street calmly, as if he owned the place. I watched him through the blinds.

Do it, Lui.

Bren, please! I grab a handful of peanuts strewn with urine-microbes and I eat before I say something I'll regret.

Bigman... like one of JK’s contraptions morphed from cork to flesh; indeed, the sound of wood-creak and the tinkering of JK's little gas-stove have been on around-the-clock for weeks.

You’re a gaylord Lui. It’s official. You’re a disgrace to the race. Eventually we're gonna go extinct with people like you. I mean it. Look at her, man!

A redhead with pearls and colored nails. But it makes no difference. I order a tonic. Off goes Bren in my stead. Redhead ignores. Redhead stiffens. Bren flexes. Sleeves tighten. Hand on the bar. Then Bren speaks. Colored nails do the wave. Hair-flick and bracelet-pinch. Then she smiles, there it is. She’s screwed. Entry n+1.

I drink from my tonic and start thinking - I don’t know why, but I think maybe bigman is a friend. The way he was standing there, is just the way I would stand there. And the way he kicked up his foot. I do that! What are you doing underground, my friend. Come have a cup of coffee. A glass of milk. My kitchen is small but I can accommodate. Mi casa su casa. Dust of the sand and I’ll make you a sandwich. Pastrami? I have.

Bren swings around the bar: Lui, listen – big favor, huge favor – I need the mattress. I’ll make it up to you.

Bren – fuck – where the hell am I going to sleep.

You're skinny, you can sleep on my bench, no problem. I’ll make it up to you, man, I swear.

Bren!

Come on.

Alright... I won’t be sleeping anyway.

time is money

Drago Stanic, my buddy from grade school, called me from his boat on the Adriatic. You must come, my friend. I have too many dollars – you cannot understand. I am shitting money. It is coming out from my backside, yes. You listen [a huddle of girls giggle in the background] you hear? You must come to Zagreb for party Lui. And you must bring your women, yes, [giggle] good women [giggle], and your wife [giggle]

Drago, how did you get my number?

Your mother.

What!? How’d you get her number?

No more questions, Lui.

Earlier that night I was on a ‘business date’ with Ietje van Velzen: medium length hair, brown nondescript; bowlegged but brisk; dentures and hairnet. She’s 75 years old. My first venture into free enterprise.

I ate Chinese and conversed for money. It was easy. I know the angles: Is that lavender Ietje?... Let me get that for you... and so on and so forth.

But let’s face it, at twenty euros an hour it was a miserable start. I made more xeroxing in servitude back in Amsterdam. I could raise my price, yes, but I’m investing. Gratitude pays greater dividends. And don’t let the hairnet and orthopedics fool you. She’s the Drago Stanic of her class. She used to own van Velzen Vliegpapier – you may know it – that’s flypaper, but not those scrolls of grim adhesive; think pastel, gauze, potpourri and scenes from Aix-en-Provence. Bowlegs never stopped her from getting places. Her factory in Slovenia employed two hundred men. She’s a killer.

Halfway through dinner Brendan called in distress. For two weeks now he’s been haunted, he says, by “poltergeists” from his little black book. Girls. What else.

They’re ganging up on me Lui. I’m telling you, it’s a fucking campaign. This one chick locked me out of my house. MY OWN HOUSE. I need a break, man. I’m coming to your place.

Now?!

Yes, right now. You mind if I bring my bench.

A bench? I have a couch, Bren. Good couch.

My bench press, man!

Now Ietje was getting offended. She rapped her knuckles on the table and lanced tofu with her chopsticks. I hung up.

An hour later I put her on the bus and headed home. That’s when Drago called (...I am shitting money... it is coming from out my...) I took a detour west and watched some geese paddle in a pond for a bit. And that’s when it hit me – fuck-a-duck – That’s what I’m going to sell (why didn’t I think of it before): TIME. Plain and simple. Lui-Labas-time. By the second, by the minute, as you wish. It starts and stops at your command. It doesn’t weigh a thing. Comes in a JK-BOX, special design. Put it in your pocket. Twenty euros an hour; a hundred for six. Order while there’s stock!

JK and the Turks

There was a fight on the corner last night. Ten Turkish guys went head to head on the pavement. As I understand there were no bodies, but blood was spilt.

When it happened I was at my upstairs neighbor’s, Johan-Karl – JK, from Charleroi – I was there to ask him (for fuck’s sake!) to please stop chucking his butts and cans over his balcony onto my square-meter of yard. I have thyme growing down there for my bouillabaisse and whatnot when I have visitors. Listen friend, I said, keep your waste-things out of my yard, cappice, yes?! Then I made a fist or a finger, but he didn’t respond. He left the door open and I went in after him with more shit to deliver, but once inside, my mouth dropped.

Do not fear friends! He is much older, yes, his suits are oatmeal-beige and he’s from Flanders – it all stacks up – but he’s not a pedophile. Johan-Karl is an installation artist. He makes wood and plaster contraptions; he builds animals, current and prehistoric. e.g. a full-scale, cork-built brontosaurus split in two: the rump is near the kitchen, the other half by his bed. The other thing he makes is BOXES... yes (I don’t know how else to say this except to italicize and capitalize). I was inside one when the shit hit the fan with the Turks. Six cubic meter of darkness, the highest grade, I couldn’t see my hands, there were no grooves, no fissures, the whole thing was totally hermetic. I could hear stuff, though, the Turks shouting abuse and JK rattling ice cubes in his glass. In my head – still annoyed – I was thinking of my bouillabaisse and my thyme-bush strew with Phillip Morris.

Eventually though, mmmmmmmm, I realized where I was,

Thank you Johan-Karl. Fascinating. Thank you, yes. Now, let me out.... you’re a true artist... Thank you... Johan... Johan-Karl?

I spoke Dutch. The Flemish are pesky with language, and what with the Turks dismembering each other on the block, I took precautions.

Johan-Karl... sir!

But then – Holy mother of God – something appeared out of nowhere, an electrostatic ball that sparked sporadically and danced in suspension – WFT! – an unearthly Teslian experiment, and I was caught, riveted, like the summer in Split under the pier when Nataša Franolić showed me hers and I mine and I was catapulted like a spitball into the ether (cops - sirens - ruckus - Turks caught in hand-to-hand combat) and briefly I was glued in space.

Dear employment officer, wealthy heiress or man-with-cash

I am seeking employment in all fields. My skills are varied in discipline and quality, i.e. I am better with people than pneumatic drills, but I invite and encourage suggestions from far and wide: masonry, diplomacy, fashion. There is nothing I would not do – unabashed, I confess to my cramped circumstances – nothing, except:

One. people trafficking, any and all.

Two. pimping, any and all, (however, note: I was offered an attractive position in such capacity just last week in Stuttgart. Conclusion: I am an asset in all worlds, under- nether- etc.)

Three. I will not sell my body – hold that, in a limited sense perhaps, yes, I would escort heiresses, doyennes, elderly estate-holders and suchlike, all expenses paid, plus pocket money. I know nice restaurants and dainty eateries downtown Rotterdam (note: finger food is a winner, an icebreaker for all types). My conversation is outstanding: give me a topic and I will discuss, freewheel, extemporize or just listen with bated breath. Plus, I am not averse to elderly ladies – conversationally! I insist – I was raised by my grandmother outside Dudrovnik for three years; the place was crawling with old people. I know old ladies like the back of my hand, I know their foibles, their appetites, their sweet tooth – teeth, some have several, prosthetic or real that cannot, must not be ignored. Note: I have neither car nor license, so restrict searches to: able-bodied-elderly-female. Thank you.

There’s more. Tap my entrepreneurial core and you will get the unexpected. Did I mention I was asked to partake in a commercial venture to import Davidoff Slims over the Danube into Western Europe – contraband! you will argue but that’s not the point: The point is I was singled out on the force of my commercial skills and unalloyed loyalty, both so manifest they were evident after only a five minute conversation! Five minutes! I’m sorry to toot my own horn, but such is the nature of application letters. My contact for the Slims deal is currently in St-Louis, Senegal, selling canned goods. If you are interested I can put you in touch with him... for a commission of course.

In short, and to conclude: I am a highly employable individual, a linguist, diplomatic in temperament and unassuming in posture. I have brown eyes and my hair is usually short, it’s just that these days...anyway, what else?

Best call me. I am mostly available, but better after 10.

Kind regards,

Lui Labas

ps- we can also speak face to face; I usually have a coffee around eleven at the Turkish place across the street. Don’t mind the big guys at the door, they’re Kurdish, but they’re harmless.

four by four by four

I took off to Stuttgart the other day. Just like that? – yeah, just like that; I had to go see someone. I spent two hours on the side of the road with a cardboard sign in my hands. S-T-U-T-T-G-A-R-T, it said in calligraphy – I have a pen-set from way back and plenty of time to kill – I even did some medieval shit on the first letter, some coils and frills and whatnot which I figured would attract the more enlightened drivers. But waving it around, it occurred to me that this much skill could attract the wrong kind of dude. It was getting on ten o’clock and suddenly I had this frightful image of a moustache-lipped Bavarian with leather gloves, leather cap, leather... I started heading back, but a car stopped – a Fiesta – and I got in.

(What the fu— Labas! You just got back, man.)

(Yeah, so?)

(Don’t you have stuff to do?)

(I have stuff to do, yeah... in Stuttgart.)

(Ha ha ha, very funny, ha ha ha. What do you have to do in Belgium you can’t do here?)

(It’s in Germany Brendan. Stuttgart’s in Germany.)

I love Bren – God bless him.

The Fiesta was tiny and dark. A large primate was at the wheel. Big, tattooed, bald, Aryan stock – think sauerkraut and Autobahn – I didn’t say Nazi, I said Aryan – that’s still a legitimate word last I checked – anyway, not to worry, I don’t think this guy’s history or sense of himself goes back much further than the 2006 Fussball Weltmeisterschaft and the trauma of Germany’s defeat on home ground. Everything before that is unknowable or beer-soaked beyond recognition.

My name is Lui – Lui Labas.

I’m Jürg!

I know, I said.

That was stupid. The tiny car suddenly swerved way out as Jürg’s heavy Aryan head swung towards me. Woher wissen sie das?! How do you know?!

It says on your arm, Jürg. Take it easy, It’s written on your arm.

Ah, Ach zo, Ja. Das ist correct. Ja, ja. And the Fiesta settled back into its lane.

All the rest of his tattoos were basically doodles, scattered and incoherent, but his name – JURG – was written in clean, Gothic letters – you guessed it, calligraphy. And like my S, his J was a clutter of coils, frills and illumination, a beautiful piece of work, unexpected on such an undignified arm.

Eventually we got to talking,

...I wurk in nightlife, ja.

At the bar or something?

Nein. Nightlife-security, ja. Und also ze administration, ja, ze treasury.

The what?

Ze treasury.

Jürg has a lot of flaccid muscle he probably doesn’t use much but which I’m sure is integral to his services for “ze treasury”. I didn’t know what he was talking about and I didn’t want to ask. He said nightlife another twenty times before he finally mentioned the word girls: Ze treasury, is depending on how many girls are on ze floor, ja. Jürg shifted into fifth gear. What girls, Jürg, what floor? Then Jürg showed me his teeth and lifted his big hand – like some German, multi-grained loaf off the top shelf – to remind me once more – stupid Croat that I am – that he works in NIGHTLIFE. Yes, yes, yes, I got it Jürg, but something doesn’t square, man. We’re sitting in a Ford Fiesta, a diesel; we’re barely breaking 110 kph, we’re sputtering forth. What kind of joint do you run? Donations from your clientele to The Treasury must be very ungenerous. Where’s the Merc 600SL? In my hometown Zagreb, among contraband runners and pimps, you would be a disgrace, Jürg, a laughing stock. What treasury is this!? But I kept quiet, and finally he changed the subject

Und you, why you going to Stuttgart, ja?

For work.

Ach zo. Wat wurk?

um... mostly manual.

Mechanisch, ja?

Yes, mechanical , yes,

ja, ja, sehr gut.

What the hell. I’m a liar.

I was stumped. I've lost the concept of work. My work these days is purely internal: a beating heart, the limbs on my body that, by necessity, I move from A to B; my work is the flurry of ideas that batter my brain; channeling them and filing them is work; my work... um... my work was getting to Stuttgart... and maybe Jürg was about to offer me a job at ze treasury or – fuck-a-duck – running the floor! Imagine that. I thought of his multigrain-hand giving directions, the eruption of tattoos across his arms, I thought of calling him boss from behind the bar, but then my mind slipped and for the next ten seconds all I could think of was my new cube of space in Rotterdam, my new home – four by four by four – now rid of rats, spacious and grand, and right then – caught in Jürg’s Fiesta – I felt like an emperor and the think-space in my mind filled the cube to perfection, fully, every patch of space – four by four by four – in length, in width, in height, and finally, in the last seconds, in an other dimension too.

rats

...these fuckers, they weigh a few pounds – did you know – they’re too heavy to truly scuttle like their smaller cousins; even fear-drenched, they still have this ugly swagger when they trespass across your living room, leaving shits as they go. In India they have rat-mercenaries, barefoot street-folk with makeshift lances who bring evil unto the Kingdom of Rats. I would invite such a man into my home – my new home – I would pay him generously, not per kilo of tail, like his employers in Mumbai, but for the whole Goddam operation. Contract and all: Please sign here sir. And would you like a new stick for that lance. The Chinese have the Year of the Rat, the most fortuitous on their calendar – wtf! – vermin that bring famine, disarray and stink. It must be the symbolism. Tell me.

To begin, it is a fact that there is nothing more gruesome than a rat’s tail. It is a juicy, inorganic looking thing, like a piece of cable, and I would go so far as to theorize – listen up evolutionary biologists – that they’re actually fake! Those things are plug-ins, enlargements of some kind rats got on the cheap a few eons back when it was fashionable. They’re fake. I dare you to check!

I don’t hate rats, I just find them completely lacking in anything dignified! Even a dung-beetle has that fancy gloss on his back he can be proud of, but a rat.... I am a lowly thing, he says – just check his body language – I have nothing going for me. I would trade with a pigeon, or even one of those screechy baboons with a snout and a scorched back-end. I would trade today!

Alas, Rat, such is life! Without that tail you could have masqueraded as a guinea pig, but you blew it! You had to get pimped-up, and look where you are now, forever the prey of barefoot mercenaries with lances and nothing to lose. I pity you Rat.

Now, existentially – this is a point in their favor... maybe – existentially they do better than many of us (why do I feel blah blah when I do blah with blah). Rats have come to terms with themselves. Simply: I eat therefore I am. Cardboard, teabags, socks, dirt, poop, and even – when the going gets tough – a fellow rat. In the end, only their tails remain because these are synthetic and indigestible.

Jesus, Labas, what are you on about? You're getting obsessive. No one wants to read about this crap. No one gives a rat’s ass!

Well they would if they nearly shared a flat with three of them, X Y and Z; all more than a pound in weight; distinguishable only by the intensity of their fright and the size of their rodent-turds. But I ask you: Where did they come from and how did they enter my home? It’s a mystery. My space is darker than most, but I do not live underground, and every nook and cranny is exposed. I suspect otherworldliness and Faustian arrangements. Is this the Year of Rat? Are these creatures back in favor, strutting the streets, eyeing new prosthetics? I shudder...

Enough. Anyway, who I am to judge! Maybe, if it came down to it, a rat would trade with all of God’s creatures EXCEPT Man: gangly, two-legged, hairless like the back-end of those baboons. Man: Noisy, forever stomping around, disrupting the peace, planting poison right and left, killing, maiming, usurping, duping, excavating grounds unannounced, dislocating families. Man!

Would a rat do such a thing?

hard edges

Voice-man, Office-man... I call him Grind-man.

Grind-man is a fat man with diabetes, a pug-nose and a spirit like a sack of gravel. Grind-man sits for hours moving numbers across a screen, always fearful this task will be taken from him, fearful his life will fold up before his eyes, leaving him to stare into the abyss.

I feel for Grind-man. He drinks coffee and sucks on Werther’s Originals. He has a flat-screen tv and a leather couch at home, but now he sits in the back of a crowded, computer-strewn work-space amid a populace of youngsters who do not know his name.

When I got off the plane at Schiphol my phone rang –my Dutch phone! How could this be? I thought. But thus it transpired that Grind-man was my first connection, my first link to land, and life ahead.

Blah blah blah blah... Lui Labas?

Yes.

Meneer Labas, u heeft achterstallige betalingen...

Payments overdue – I put Grind-man on hold while I pulled my bags off the conveyor belt. I paused, then put him back on. I could hear the Werther’s Original knocking against a molar in the back his mouth, and I could see him in my mind: Grind-man at his desk, his stomach squeezed, his pen against the screen, his headset like a pincer around his fat face. Looking closely, I could practically count the open pores on his nose. Look, Mr. Grind-man, I said, I just got back from Buenos Aires. I did not sleep, sir – do you hear – eight weeks I did not sleep. I’ve come practically from another world, do you understand, I don’t even live here Mr.Grind-man, I have no address – permanent or otherwise. Comprendo? So this can’t be. There must be some kind of mistake. Payments for WHAT anyway? I don’t even exist; I own nothing. This is Kafkaesque Mr.Grind-man. For all you know I could be on a boat in international waters, beyond the reach of any bureaucracy, yours included. You understand?

It’s about your phone Meneer Labas. You do own something. The bills are for your phone.

Life has molded Grind-man out the papier-mâché of chance: man meets woman; they beget a child who fattens over fifty years and stumbles from this into that...

Meneer Labas?

Yes, Grind-man?

It’s the phone in your hand Meneer Labas! And why are you calling me Grind-man. Who is Grind-man? Who the hell do you think you are? My name is Oldenbrecht. Ronald Oldenbrecht. Exactly as I introduced myself. Do YOU understand?!

Fuck.

For a second all of Schiphol froze. And there it stood, in all its solidity, staring me in the face.

...Meneer Labas?

Hard edges, solid glass and steel, and my feet planted on the ground.

...Meneer Labas?

I would have spoken, I would have said something – I’m sorry Mr. Oldenbrecht. I’m sorry, I’m just not with it. I don’t know a thing about you. I just haven’t slept very much...

But I was speechless with shame

lifeline

For eight weeks money had come out of a wall on Santa Fe, generously and without question, a thousand pesos at a time. But now, out of nowhere, the mouth spoketh nay.

I practically ran the twenty-two blocks south east, across slums and train tracks, to find my friend - my British friend (remember her, the bowels, the diarrhea). Just fifteen hours before my flight back I was stone broke; I couldn’t even pay for a cab. I love Buenos Aires, I love media lunas, I love the sun, the beautiful portenas, the warm nights, the bus rides through the labyrinth-grid, but to be stuck here without a cent…

I found her on Plaza Dorrego dancing folklore with the assembled gypsies and riffraff. She was drunk or exuberant, or both, on the brink of something in any case, her arms up in a fire of pride in a way thoroughly un-British. When she saw me she shouted my name and pushed aside a crew of skinny Che Guevaras. I told her about the mouth, my empty pockets and my flight back. She didn’t hesitate.Take, she said, please, take, and she pushed a wad of money into my hands. Then she dragged me onto the cobbles, into the melee of arms and legs…

What do I do?
Just dance, Lui
I don’t know this stuff
Just follow me, just dance.

So I did. I tried. I tripped. I jostled for space. I cursed my feet and apologized right and left, but no one cared. Twenty-two Argentines turned circles around me, and I danced - in my own way - with elbows and knees, my arms splayed, my head turned this way and that way, while my heels thudded a Balkan beat. This was zamba, but who cares: the stars shimmered down, there was money in my pocket and my feet did as they pleased! I was happy. I was so happy I nearly forgot everything again. I would have stayed longer with this rowdy gang, but now, in my last hours, I had one more thing to do.

As I walked back across rail and slum I spoke to myself for the first time in a while: Listen to me, Lui, listen carefully. I’m only going to say this once, and then I proceeded to repeat it a dozen times, as if to convince this man crossing rail and slum that he was finally going in the right direction – and not just tonight – that earth and stars were aligned in his favor, that life would extend to him its fruits from now on. But this man was hard to convince, and the monologue continued the twenty blocks into Villa Crespo.

When I arrived the stage was set.

The stars still shimmered and all was quiet. I threw a pebble. Then another, and a third, until a dog barked and a light went on, and the shadow of Adriana appeared in the grooves of the closed shutters.

Adriana,
Shshshshs
Adriana, is that you?
Shshshshs, be quiet.
It’s me. It's Lui. Open the shutters.
I can’t.
Why not?
They’re stuck. They don’t work.
Come down then.
I can’t.
Why not? … Adriana?

She never did come down, but I saw her shadow roam and a small light in her room go on and off in a Morse code that said everything.

Finally, I walked away, fifteen blocks down Colonel Diaz. Home.

***

Now it’s 6 AM; another time; another place. Now I’m a ghostly figure at Madrid airport. I'm a guy sprawled across two seats. I'm a guy who hasn't slept in fourty-eight hours - maybe more. I look up at the beams holding the wavy roof of the terminal, the way they break down into a spectrum of color over hundreds of meters. I’m in the reds - the oranges. The blues are far down in the distance. The whole hall is virtually empty and everywhere there are stars of light, real and artificial, fizzing and blinking... and there's a hum, a light hum, like inside a spaceship, a vast machine, alive and uncontralable, ready to go...

dangerous ties

She said she was thirty, but I didn’t buy it. To keep it real – the gap between us – I told her I was eighteen, dieciocho, but she didn’t believe me either: My unshaven cheeks, my Balkan charisma, my language skills, something gave me away. I started in Spanish, but quickly lapsed into French. She told me to take the toothpick out of my mouth, but even then she only got every fifth word, maybe less. Anyway, who cares, it wasn’t about that. At first, it wasn’t about anything at all. I told her about my father’s tie collection – his hundreds of ties – and mimed the procedure, tightening an invisible thing around my neck. I remembered E=mc² and Einstein’s hallow of hair dangling over the mashed potatoes as my father reached for the salt across the table. He had many such prints and I began to enumerate, but she seemed uninterested or just preoccupied. She pressed her finger on the red of my sunburnt nose and made an ouw-face with her eyes and lips. Then our steaks arrived and conversation stopped. I ate like an animal. I tore at my bife de choriso and downed water like an ox. Meanwhile she cut her meat in strips and sipped wine after each bite. I don’t think she was making a point – maybe she was, but I was hungry, for several days I’d been hungry. I’ve been eating, that’s not it. Sometimes hunger is more comprehensive. Sometimes you stay hungry for a while.

I dropped her off in Villa Crespo and told moustache-man at the wheel to keep driving. Where to? he asked. Just take me for a ride senior. This he understood. The meter ticked and my eyes shot up out of the open window. The sky was clear and at ten thousand feet above the city I asked him to stop. I got out and I walked the rest of Rivadavia thinking of my father and his funny ties. I was happy that such things could be so important to him, especially after what she told me. For her father this was not possible. His ties were dangerous. He disappeared in 1981, or – as they say in this country – he was disappeared. They could do that in Argentina back then. Disappear a man. Tuck him into a space-fold. Drop him down a chute into a void. Dispatch him at the speed of light. But where to, how, why? She didn’t want to talk about it and instead she pressed the red of my sunburnt nose… once, twice… Adriana, stop!

On Rivadavia I took in large gasps of air looking down the width and breath of Buenos Aires. Dogs barked and the street stank of their offerings. I looked. I focused. I hoped. Maybe I could find this man – the man with the dangerous ties – maybe I could. Nothing would make her happier. Ten years would vanish instantly from her face. She would be thirty again and I twenty eight. There would be no more gap between us, and – this is a fact – my hunger too would disappear.

slow down Lui

I out-run buses, I out-scuttle roaches, I am a spirit on legs, my brain now at a virtual standstill. LUI LABAS SHUTTLES BODY FROM VILLA CRESPO TO SAN TELMO BACK TO RECOLETA. All is meet-you-speaky-go, quick glances and dirty pesos. I feed on media lunas noon and night – mornings now nonexistent. I do face-prints and name-swaps. I am like cat rubbing tail with other cats. And I speak like local-man, no Serbo-Croatian, no finicky French, no hammer-blow Dutch, just bare bones meet me in door, I wait you, yes. And as I wait I never stand idle, I smoke cigarettes and make face-prints with my brain.

Accelerations down Sante Fe; about-turns on Pueyrredon. This body loves Buenos Aires – the racetrack Buenos Aires – even if my heart still beats in Zagreb, and my mind still strolls down Hundertwasser Promenade. But tonight Lui sleeps. This body sleeps, do you hear. I re-inhabit Lui. I curl up paws and tail and enter private domain where I am mayor, magistrate and high priest; where I rule over cabs and passengers, friends and foes, to’s-and-fro’s. Sleep will come, Lui Labas. Believe me. Even orchestrations of dog and coughings of old man early morning will not wake you. Your realm is impenetrable – mayor, magistrate, and high priest – and, as my friend wrote to me the other day, you will sleep like big mountain on edge of stars until soon be new man...

rhythmsong

A thought came to me through the air. It was mine when it reached me, but maybe not before. Not a thought, in fact, but a song, a rhythm that pushed my feet – tip tap – this way and that way, like those seven league boots – what are they called? – but smaller, smaller steps, many steps across town, hopscotch over the sprawled limbs of a junky underground, out into the open air, around a leashed Pekinese pressing out a turd on Peña, this way that way, this song – dada dada dum – on the corner one peso for a starveling, three for Fabian at the kiosk – excuso, perdonne – I go, I go, my feet – tip tap – the warm sun on my back, not an Argentine bone in my body, but I go those seven leagues unhindered here in busy busy Buenos Aires.

no use hands

No, Luis!… use chest for make move lady, yes. And for make stop her, no use hands… Intenshion, Lui, intenshion.

I despaired. Only Uri Geller, I thought, could get one of these (abstract) “ladies” gracefully around a dance floor. This was meant to be fun, not an exercise in psychokinesis.

My class was in Constitucion, in a windowless room lit with six compact fluorescents. I was dancing inside a fly-zapper to music… how shall I say, the music was like an old carousel – creaky, violins on one end, bandoneons on the other – turning in circles of sadness and suffering. I’m a Croat; we do not get together as a nation and bare our souls; we cry in private.

The compacts flickered. My mind flickered and then my attention drifted and I squashed his foot with my heel. Dagostino! he cried in my ear. First, I thought how inefficient these Argentines, four syllables to say, ouw! But then it occurred to me that, like their music, these people are just comprehensive in their suffering. I apologized with many syllables of my own, but he interrupted – No, no, dé music, Lui. Thees music are D’Agostino. Angel D’Agostino.

I understood and we carried on walking… yes, walking; this all we did in this dance class, we walked. We did laps inside the fly-zapper, no faster than the carousel, no slower than the carousel. And as I walked these crude circles with his hands on my chest – for make move lady – I thought of spoons bending and women – porteñas – melting in mi abrazo, my embrace: curious, Croatian, unlike the hairy-armed bracket of machos here, soft yet dangerous – yes – like the Aegean, like –

Luis, no use hands… wi’ dé chest… intenshion.

Yes, yes, intention, of course. But after so many more laps, he began to explain that tango is as much about standing still as it is about moving (unbend that spoon, Uri, can you do that?). Listen, he said pointing to Dagostino in my ear. Listen, yes…NOW!

Now what?

No move, Lui.

A violin cried, the singer waned and we stood still.

Briefly, finally, I was myself again, at ease, my mind in its habitual cadence: I thought of my backyard in Zagreb, the old shrub in the corner and the dead cat under the vines my friend Drago used to disinter every year on a specific day; he’d bring his own spade from his house and –

Now, Luis, walk… Luis!

… Luis!

LUIS!

Doblogango

I am rushing diarrhea pills across town to a friend in need. A British friend with British bowels (custard and marmalade). I am underground of course – I am so often underground these days I am starting to feel strangely unmammalian – but the air is no worse here than above, so…

wait… wait…

…he’s here!

Yesterday he sold mirrors, the kind with two sides: one for your face; one for blackheads that hide, and hairs you cannot see. Today it’s permanent markers. He drops them on your lap, walks away and returns moments later with a pitch in espagnol. “Everything you write with this marker is permanent,” he says of his permanent markers.

…but none of this is the point: The point is he’s got my hair, my teeth, my nose, my FACE. He even swings his arms like me. And in his voice there is that scratchiness – you know what I’m taking about – that scratchiness that is mine. Mine!

A bastard-brother in the southern hemisphere? A genetic experiment? A figment of my imagination??

…there he comes. Shorts, flip-flops, a nervous tick in his lip and a tongue that rolls a rickety R. I give him five, he gives me change. And with my own graceless gait he shuffles out at Bolivar.

Wait! Attend! Wacht! I say. But language fails me (not enough poly in that polyglot, Labas).

I skip Serbo-Croatian and go for broke – a gringo in a wagon full of porteños – I shout my name, LUI! – I shout it loud – LUI LABAS! And again, until he turns on his heels, the markers drop to the ground and he stands before me, my mirror image on the platform.

***

I have pressed my hand against this city, grimed my lungs with its air, missed its buses, digested its food, listened to its people, its traffic, its dogs… and now,

I’VE ARRIVED.

I write this in big letter – ARRIVED – permanent letters that go right through the page. Twice, therefore, I write it. Twice…

Once for him; once for me.

Porteñas

The city is quiet. The Boca Juniors are playing in Boca Stadium. All men are inside. All men.

On the corner of Callao and Juncal I’m breathing in a mixture of humid air and exhaust fumes, probably peculiar to Buenos Aires. I’m breathing unevenly, not from exhaustion, for I do very little these days, but from amazement. With a grin on my face I recall the streets of Zagreb and my eatery on Makarska, where I used to sit for hours sometimes to see a single beauty (and usually she was Serbian). But here, before me – it is breathtaking – not one, not two, but an endless procession of splendours, each one more beautiful than then next. And note, please: I have not sought out some special observation post to bear witness, like a red-faced Brit with binoculars gazing at gazelle in Kenya. This is an utterly ordinary corner, such as you will find in Boca, San Telmo, or San Cristobal. Simply, they are everywhere: green-eyed, hair raven-black, legs lustrous and tan, like a rare breed from an age-old, mysterious gene pool, as unDarwinian as the peacock, designed only to dazzle.

They are – and do not forget it or they will hate you for it! – the Porteñas.

On the corner of Callao and Juncal I take in humid air and exhaust, and my eye wonders… until

…there… she strolls like a ballerina, her sun-bronzed arms, like pendula mark the rhythm of this city. She does not see me. I do not exist. I am a pigeon. Less, part of the pavement below her feet. I follow her caramel toes.

… it is said these women could commit suicide by jumping off their ego. If it is true, this is OK. I will catch them at the bottom – maybe – and if feel like it, take them out for a coffee and a media luna… that’s a croissant.

Me llamo Luis Labas, y tu?

Buenos Aires

I landed here a few days ago. I dropped out of the sky of the southern hemisphere, fully dressed, in full possession of my senses, but far from my cot in Recoleta and without the language skills – polyglot though I am! – to negotiate an elegant arrival: I lost my bags, busted my phone and stammered and strained through this vast, enormous grid that is Buenos Aires.

PLUS, it appears I have picked a strange time to come (although this, I can say, is out of my capable hands): It hasn’t stopped raining now for three days. THREE DAYS! And it’s been Biblical. Buckets. Sheets. Cats. Dogs (As Bee would say, strangé*). Yet, perhaps, this has been my only advantage here: in matters of rain I am a professional, I come from the place where it was invented. Holland is not a country, but a rain-scape, a delta caught in perpetual drizzle (at the very least). So in that respect – and only in that respect – I have the upper hand here over these crafty portenos (locals) as they sludge through puddles in waterlogged sneakers and look up stunned at the sky as though the Amazon has come to Argentina. Me, I am whizzing all over the place in my rain suit, in and out of the subte (subway), zigzagging through the city by foot and bus… umm… that is, when I am able to figure out the f!@$%ing bus route, which in Buenos Aires is something like solving a Sudoku puzzle spread over several pages, with instructions in a foreign language… and of course, in the rain.

In the meantime though, I have become adept at hand gestures and on occasion I have been able to make myself understood by corkscrewing my French into what must sound like an ancient dialect to people around here, no more Spanish than Friesian is Dutch, but it works (sometimes) and it has earned me, if not respect, at least some compassion amongst the kiosk owners and the bus drivers of this city.

Finally, I want to register a formal complaint: It has not been unusual for me to go to bed extremely late these days. EXTREMELY LATE. There is no print big enough, no font bold enough to stress this. At hours previously unknown to me, so late into the night that – when arriving home – morning sits at the end of my bed greeting me with a middle finger. That late. Now, I do not expect all the world’s activities to cease and all man woman and child to hush while Lui Labas sleeps, but for God’s sake – the rain-God, if it is he you believe in – please, silence your dogs!

Adios,
Lui
or, (in Buenos Aires), Luis

ps- if you are wondering what it is I am doing here, I will tell you…
…as soon as I know.

*(pronounced: stranjay)