STARTING FROM NORMAL–BASIL ROSA
It’s about 7 a.m. as I step outside of our hotel room on Theresianumgasse, sunrise over
Vienna a weak smear spilling luminous ashes behind a screen of low dense clouds. It’s one of
those windless settled-in skies colored with a furry blue that suggests snow. Just looking at it, I
feel a heaviness in my legs.
I don’t mind. For the past year I’d been working alone for the US State Department
visiting smaller cities in Russia, many of them in Siberia or east of it, that few Westerners have
seen or know about. I’m dressed in layers and find it warm for early March.
Church bells start to toll. At other times, I might not have noticed such pleasing
intonations, but each gonging I hear stirs what I deem a welcome return of familiar and lost
landscapes within. Thinking of them as essential spiritual bodies that need to be aroused from
time to time, I must stop, hands at my side, just to listen and observe my white breath and feel
glad to be alive.
I’m not in the States, and I may never go back there. As much as I enjoyed Russia with
all its joys and challenges – and I’m a lucky man because I had such so rich a year I haven’t yet
begun to sort out memories – I don’t feel a need to be hyper-aware of my presence on the street, ready to avoid potentially confrontational interactions. There’s no one around. No one watching me. I give myself permission to release the constraints I put on my behavior during the past year.
Though my spoken Russian wasn’t half bad and I conversed with many a stranger on all
topics other than political ones, I didn’t celebrate Christmas in my usual fashion. I swapped it out for a visit to an Eastern Orthodox version, standing up the whole time. Along with this, I
experienced a much grander more nationalized New Year’s feast. However, I did hear church
bells in various cities. Russia’s not the frigid dystopia some make it out to be.
As a wind kicks up and carries the church bell echoes, I think of the holiday season. To
do so is to remember my mother, dead now two years. To say she had a passion for all things
Christmas would be an understatement. I think of my New England childhood, another lost
landscape, what the English Catholic poet John Betjeman describes as “crumbling walls and
echoing lanes.”
These memories swarm at once to arouse a hunger in me for Betjeman’s “steps to truth
made by sculptured stone, stained glass and vestments, holy-water…incense and crossings of
myself…all the inessentials of the Faith.”
Yes, faith. In haunts, humanity, or myself? The answer lies hidden between all three I
suppose as a blush rises in me and the day starts to feel like it’s mine. I’m in the West again.
Some elements of Russia are European, no question of it, but where I was based, always a
stone’s throw from the Amur River and northeastern China and the ghost of benevolent Dersu
Uzala, I’d felt as if a guest in quite an exotic land. I’ll never again reside in a place so cold and
yet so bright with winter sun.
Nearly all the trees I see are still naked, their branches sharp against the sky. My wife is
still in our room, having asked me to let her sleep and enjoy needed rest. Not a problem, since
I’m still in a phase of insomnia due to adjusting to the time differential. Besides, I’m eager for an insouciant jaunt with map, phone and camera in hand. I’ve chosen to skip breakfast and foray out alone, no destination in mind. I want to swing my arms free of the worries that came with being employed by the US Government in a small industrial city where in the summer sun set after ten p.m. I labored there fighting the expectation that I be not a person but a sales representative, subsuming opinions or misgivings I might have regarding my homeland’s military activities. Those who disliked me most were blue-pill types who believed a proxy war in the Ukraine against Putin was inevitable and should be supported. I thought it lunacy and though I tried to keep that opinion to myself, the government types could smell it on my breath. It was a blessing that Moscow and my supervisor were a seven-hour flight away, and the Consul Office in Vladivostok, which was much closer, showed no interest in me. My contract had initially been for two years, but US-Russia relations in 2014 were shaky, at best, and so Mr. Putin reduced me to a one-year work visa.
Still, I made some friends. I tried to build some bridges. I took the money and ran. Most
important of all, I learned first-hand how spoiled, self-involved, narcissistic and cynical
government employees tend to be. My father’s description of the government as a “country club” had come to life for me.
I don’t want that. I want the Vienna I remember one Russian colleague describing as an
open-air museum. I’ll gawk shamelessly and take photos as I drift along ferried by the ringing of sonorous clappers which after snooping about I see emanate from the tower at Saint Elizabeth’s, a Catholic church with its own school at a high neighborhood point at the south end of Argentinierstrasse.
I like this. Argentina Street. Vienna just teems with internationalism. Unfortunately, the
high iron gates to the school grounds are closed, and the church looks sealed up despite its bells. I assume it’s too early, but I don’t really know. Nor do I dismiss the bells as a message or an omen. I accept them as a gift ringing for me as I absorb the steaming breath and the faint scent of dampness that I sense from the church’s stone and brick until I’m full of invigorating vapors and ready to move on.
Downhill then and I don’t get too far before pausing at the Romany Culture Center where
I read a plaque commemorating Jose De San Marti. I’ve heard of this man, but I don’t know
anything about his life. I tell myself I must learn more. I’m always learning. It keeps me feeling
young. The plaque is yet another exhibit in my Vienna museum. The world is my oyster.
Dawdling on, shooting photos of graffiti on walls, I pass the Akzent Theatre before I find
myself in the shadow of venerable Karlskirche at Number 10 Karlsplatz. Later in the evening,
my wife and I will hear Mozart’s Requiem performed in this famous church by a full chorus
along with the Orchestra 1756 on period instruments.
Drifting about the Karlsplatz, Vienna comes back to me as a much different place and
I’m different too, and in many ways still a child in the winter of 1980, broke, 18, backpacking
alone. During that winter visit, I knew little about the city’s history, its art movements, classical
music, architecture, aristocracy, and its occupation during the World War II. Though I tell myself much has evolved in me over the past 42 years, I don’t really believe it. This is because I’m still a child. I need stimulation, proof I’m growing up and might contribute something of value. Perhaps this will be the day I find it.
My wife and mother-in-law like to label me as a dreamer, an adventurer and I don’t mind.
I’m swept away on the waves rendered in Arte Nouveau of the trembling and wind-teased and
massive branches of the trees in a park when a pony-tailed cyclist in wool suit jacket and tie, his matching stylish trousers cinched tightly around each ankle, speeds down the sloped path where I’m standing and shouts in English “Wake up” while zipping past. Too slow and unaware,
having been caught in my dream state yet again, I’m sent sprawling on to wet grass.
My first thoughts are the cyclist could have slowed down, could have been kinder, but
these are quickly replaced by the suspicion that the cyclist has seen too many of us tourists and decided to teach me a lesson. I should find this ironic in a city with an economy that relies on tourism, but what I feel is bewildered. Shouldn’t I be accustomed, by now, to less than model behavior from strangers? Either I’m a dolt or he’s rudely entitled.
Yet I was standing in the center of the bike lane. I deserve what I got. As I stand and wipe
dew and soil off my trousers, I tell myself it’s not worth dwelling on. Nothing to be embarrassed about. We all make mistakes. We all overreact sometimes. Happens to the best of us.
I resume my stroll, more aware now and cautious to avoid bike lanes. I begin to inventory
some acts of public cruelty I’ve experienced. There are so many to recall. The puniest ones,
oddly, echo the most hurt, but I’m not sure what they’ve taught me other than to act as reminders of how meager my life has become, and how low my expectations of people. It seems, like everyone else, I’m now part of what some are labeling hyperbolically a new paradigm. But it’s not new. It’s really old. Stocks on public squares, hangings, lynchings, torture chambers, guillotines – c’mon, there’s no need to panic or scream in outage. Vulgar incivility defines the present era in ways similar to if not milder than the eras that preceded it.
I have to laugh. If I feel insulted or wronged, it’s because I’m the entitled one who’s just
pitying himself. One must slow down and breathe and recalibrate, as always. As I do so, I
remember that learning any form of education is born out of loss and some pain.
Wouldn’t it be nice if every corner was a safe haven? If we were all winners? God, the
nonsense they taught me in school. What I really learned there was how to absorb and accept
selfish thoughtless and cruel behavior in others. What I’m also still learning is how to choose my battles wisely. Walking on, I keep laughing at myself, convinced that by stepping out of my skin and viewing myself from afar I’ve made the wisest, the only choice.
Much later that long winter day, after dark, I’m back at Karlsplatz with my wife. I won’t
refer to her by her given name, since she’s asked me not to. Like the fictional judge Rumpole
when speaking of his wife as She Who Must Be Obeyed, I will refer instead to my beloved as
She Who Adores Apple Strudel And Knows Much More Than I When It Comes To The
Secessionist Art Movement And The Biography Of Empress Elisabeth.
I’ll call her Edy. Like the ice cream brand. Sweet and creamy. I adore her. So, Edie and I
are waiting in a queue outside of Karlskirche. It’ll be a long time in the cold and Edy, knowing
this, her eyes shining under her black wool cap and her neck wrapped in a matching ebony
muffler, thanks me for having the foresight to purchase our tickets in advance. This will
guarantee entry and since it’s open seating and we’re toward the front of the line, we’ll find a
pair of seats to occupy. This comes as a welcome assumption after the amount of walking we’ve been up to all day. I met Edy for a hearty late breakfast and since ten a.m. we’ve been hopping on and off buses non-stop.
Though I’ve never been inside the Karlskirche, I can judge by the amount of people
waiting that an unlucky few will be standing in the back throughout the concert. While craning
my neck to get a count of those assembled behind us, I’m approached by a young sandy-haired woman in a tatty green scarf and a knit cap. She looks friendly, with gimlet eyes and northern European features that lengthen her narrow pink face. In cute accented English she starts explaining that she and her husband can’t attend the concert because they need to help her sick mother.
I’m a bit thrown by this woman’s sudden arrival and her gushing explanation, but she
appears at first glance trustworthy. I look at Edy and together we listen as the attractive young
woman goes on to say this is unfortunate because she just loves Mozart, as does her husband,
they both really do, but her mother’s health is more important.
“Don’t you think so?” she asks us.
“Oh, we do, we do,” says Edy with a smile.
“So could you please, could you help?” The woman looks at me, not Edy. “Please?”
Edy looks at me too. I look away. I’m not buying it. Call it a knee-jerk instinct, but I’ve
experienced a rapid and jarring somersault in my stomach that has forced me to turn away from this woman. Her tale of woe is too tragic to be true.
Then again, it could just be healthy skepticism. It got a thorough work-out in Russia as I
took advice from many Russian colleagues when it came to choosing not to be too hasty with
trusting anyone.
My provincial Boston-Irish juices start to stir. I remember my mother, as I had when
hearing the church bells. What would she suggest?
Withering a little inside, missing Mom, I turn to face the strange woman. Who is she?
Why should I trust her? She seems charitable, but she may be a pro pulling a con. Should I tell
Edy? I look at her and try to make it clear I have serious doubts, but Edy doesn’t appear to be
getting my signals.
The tickets are thrust into my hand. In the dim light, the hour around half-past seven,
with everyone’s breath steaming, I see that I’m supposed to accept these, but as I look more
closely at them, I find the print difficult to read. Something is fishy. What should I say?
Remaining quiet, I compare them to the tickets I’ve already bought. The woman, seeing this,
frowns. Aha! I’m on to her game. Her look then changes to one of slight scorn, but she doesn’t
linger or press me. She understands that I’m on to her game. I offer a sincere but aloof, “Sorry,
but we’re all set. No thanks.”
Edy then gashes me with a glance that asks how I could be so heartless. I stand my
ground seeing that Edy is about to say something and I silence her by raising one finger. Lips
sealed, I shake my head no. Thinking I’ve ended it and have treated Edy and the woman fairly, I coax Edy to watch with me as the woman approaches one of the middle-aged couples in line
ahead of us. She relates the same lament in the same charming feckless almost Dickensian way.
We’ve met this couple. Like us, they’re tourists with American passports. They look fit,
ruddily so, dressed in jeans and Timberland boots and other brand name outdoorsy winter
apparel that gives them what I think of as a Yankee look, one I haven’t seen much of during the past year. Strangely enough, the longer I live away from Americans the easier it is to spot them on foreign soil.
These two aren’t ugly, not at all, and my immediate assumption when we’d first made
small talk had been they were both college-educated, their children grown up, and they were
staying in a hotel that Edy and I couldn’t afford. During a brief chit-chat, most of it driven by
Edy, we’d learned they hailed from Normal, Illinois, didn’t have tickets, and this was their last
night in the city and would be their only chance to hear classical music performed live.
I still don’t know their names. I watch as the wife tells the strange woman, who has
shoved the tickets into the husband’s gloved hands (just as she’d done with me), how much they love Vienna and are thrilled to be offered the tickets. The wife, with a feline quality and moist hazel eyes, her hair silver like her husband’s, takes out a smaller purse from her larger one and pays the woman in crisp Euro notes. The sum is three times higher than what I paid for my tickets.
I should say something. They’ve paid way too much. Perhaps the woman in the green
scarf has sensed I’m about to speak, because she wastes no time pocketing those Euro notes
before vanishing without a word into the night.
I start shaking my head and Edy asks, “What? What is it?”
I keep my voice low. I feel a burning in the pit of my stomach. “I’ll tell you later.”
Twenty minutes on, after we’ve arrived at the box office, Edy and I see that the couple
from Normal are turned away. Their tickets aren’t valid. The dates, smudged, are for the
performance which occurred the night before. Someone marred them enough so that in darkness they’d be difficult to read.
It was small comfort that I hadn’t been fooled by trickery, but I felt sweat crawling up my
back as I chastised myself for not having warned that couple. Such cons only work if the
perpetrator can act with sly impunity. I’m as complicit as the con artist is.
Standing there, stewing, regretting my inaction, I note the faces of the people waiting in
line behind us. It strikes me that more than a few of them might be Austrians, though not locals, who likely had suspected what was going on and due to reasonable apprehensions lacked the stomach, the interest or the compassion to speak up about it. They’re complicit too. Worse, we’re all cowards. Naturally, the woman in the green scarf had counted on this. Like the bicycle rider who’d knocked me over, she’d seen one too many tourists in her museum of a city.
Standing room only. Not one seat remains. I’m next to Edy, resting my feet, and I look
over my shoulder to see the couple from Normal are the last to enter, getting just as the church doors are being closed. I stand to get a better look, assuming the ticket clerk assured the couple that credit cards are always accepted. Doubtful that clerk had time to hear explanations from the couple concerning how they’d been conned.
More complicity. More irony. This is a requiem being performed. What has died? Well,
and here’s the irony of it, though I’m speaking for myself, let’s call it a large dose of faith in the
benevolence of the human spirit. Standing there, I have this odd thought that to be from a place called Normal, and to be normal (in one iteration of what that elusive word can mean) is to embrace the paranoiac notion that someone is always out to exploit you.
The husband looks despondent and baffled standing next to the drafty entrance with his
back against the wall. Paying with his credit card, he swallowed his pride in order to avoid
confrontation and make the best of a final holiday night by purchasing four expensive tickets,
two of them worthless. Is he really such a fan of Mozart? I doubt it. Will the requiem honor the
death of faith in him as I expect it will do in me? I hope so. Why else stand in the back, his pride injured, against a cold wall throughout the entirety of what will be a long performance?
I see his wife looks weary and dazed. Long gone is her perky smile. She’s not a stupid
woman and she must know this about herself just as she knows none of us deserve to be taken for fools. Yet what good will my pity do them now?
Still standing, I gawk at them blatantly and they see me and offer a half-hearted
despondent wave. I wave back and I work up a grin. I demand this moment impress itself on my memory as a reminder I never want Edy and me to be that couple.
Yet we already are. The lady thief, after all, approached me first, not them.
For a second, I consider wending my way out to the aisle and approaching them,
drumming up some words of comfort and solace, but before I can speak I’m told to sit by one of the ushers. He’s just doing his job, and though I don’t understand what he tells me in German, I get the gist that the performance is about to start.
Once seated, I try to forget the couple and all notions of complicity and faith and
normalcy. I try to forget my useless self-loathing and pity. Yes, I could have spoken up and done something, but I didn’t. I’d failed that couple and I’d failed myself. This will not be an episode they’ll share with the kids and neighbors back home. Who, if anyone, and how will they tell this story? I can’t Google it and I’ll never know.
***
Basil Rosa also writes as John Michael Flynn. His most recent book of essays, How The Quiet Breathes, is available from New Meridian Arts. Find him at jmfbr1@blogspot.com