This Helplessness Suits Us (315 hits)
Category: UberMadness! EntryRating: 2 on 1 review (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Mike the Scottish (View user info) at 2005-07-26 04:34:13 EDT
This post was an official UberMadness! entry. Click here to view the original matchup.
You looking at that up there? I don't blame you, it's a pretty unusual thing to see. Has a little backstory to it- concerning a couple of people I once met called Cal and Kat. Hell, I got time to waste, may as well tell you. First up, Cal and Kat- I only found out about their story after having met them, but I'll start off by telling all I know about their lives.
Cal drove cars for a local firm out by Trebnje, a mid-sized Slovenian town about 50km from the country's capital, Ljubljana. Like most of the people who worked for the firm, he wasn't quite sure why he'd ended up here. The firm specialised in providing employment to individuals who had fled their native land to move to the country, which had seen significant economic change in the late 90s. Cal came fleeing from a gang vendetta dating back to his days as a small-time hustler in Trenton, New Jersey. So it comes, so it goes- Eastern Europe was the new frontier, and to a guy like Cal, its draw was both irresistible and unfathomable.
Kat, on the other hand, was a well-bred, former head girl from Coventry, England. She had inherited all the quirks and gender expectations of her mother, and had exceeded her father's expectations by finishing a degree at Oxford University with a 2:1- and a debt roughly equivalent to that of a small African country. A promising career beckoned, and her father knew a man who had just the right placement for a young academic on her way up to the higher echelons of industry. So it comes, so it goes- Kat found herself in Cal's adopted homeland, renting a flat near her newfound job as an assistant research partner at a major crop production conglomerate in Ljubljana. In case you were wondering, Kat was modestly attractive, in a coquettish, schoolgirl kind-of way. But that's not really important.
Cal and Kat were strangers in a strange land- the loutish stranglehold English tourists held on cities like Prague was yet to extend its sovereign ring-encrusted tentacles into most of Eastern Europe. The EU was still exclusive, Tony Blair was still respected, and the Red Sox still sucked. In this conveniently located yet curiously under-populated region, all was as a status quo would dictate. Not that any of this has country-wide implications, but bear with me. Cal and Kat came to Slovenia with nothing to lose and everything to gain respectively, and left in the same manner. I suppose that's why they interested me so much- the balding, semi-illiterate chauffeur and the intelligent, pretty young graduate (I guess that's why I mentioned it earlier, you see- Kat may not have been the Prom Queen, but, compared to Cal, she was beauty incarnate). It was a romantic novelist's dream come true.
From what I gather, they met in rather businesslike circumstances, Kat hiring Cal's firm so she could take a short excursion to Venice. To Cal, who hadn't so much as seen the ocean from outside of a plane (ferrying various lowlifes from Trenton to Philly and back hardly necessitated an oceanographic detour), it was as good as a holiday. He drove solo, so I don't know much about their drive down- my apologies. Kat didn't notice him much, head lost in vividly poetic eulogies composed in the empty breaths of the industrial wastelands. Cal didn't notice her much, head seemingly lost in dodging drunken farmers weaving their rusting tractors through four lanes of highway. Their passing the Italian border was hardly an event, but it roughly marks the time when I got bored of dominos in the local bar and decided to hitch-hike down to Italy myself. In retrospect, it was a stupid move, but leaving Slovenia was my way of trying to find my personal helicon. Something bigger, at least, than what I had seen thus far.
I was sitting in a Venetian café sipping coffee a day later- as it turns out, only a few hours- maybe five or so- after Cal and Kat had arrived. I was doe-eyed with the sheer artistry and frantic human blur of the city, staring happily into my reflection in a canal, when a stranger slithered up beside me and asked me, in Italian, if I had a light. I don't even smoke- but this guy was not the sort of guy you turn down; he's had a hardened look about him, like he'd sooner stab you in the back than pat you on it. I stammer and try to apologise, shocked more than anything that the scrawny, Fagin-esque character opposite me spoke fluent, elegant Italian, with a slight Sicilian accent. But he laughed, smiled at me and held up his hands- I'm not armed, see- and apologised if he had come on a little strong. Next thing I know, we're sitting under the awning of the nearby Youth Hostel (where I was staying), watching boats sail by in eloquent, infatuated circles, their cargo of loved-up tourists and faintly bored-looking locals every bit as fascinating and detailed as the layered skies above us. The amused, perpetually alert American next to me seemed to drink it in, smoking in log, considered drags. I couldn't even make much conversation, it was that perfect a scene- perfect at any length until a booming English voice enters the scene, the owner's arms stacked with designer shopping bags, asking the American to help her load her purchases into the back of the cheap Renault the company had provided. Jobs done, they both disappear; as I learn later, to a small café overlooking a canal, where, in the process of making small talk, they shared their lives with each other, delighting in the antithesis, the opposition, the power dynamics.
I was quite alarmed that night when I smelled smoke wafting in through the hostel window, but soon my brain engaged, and I cast a look out- part of me hoping to engage the strange American in a more insightful conversational mode. You can only imagine my surprise when I saw the figure of the English graduate, sitting across the street at the same table the American and I had sat at hours previously. She looked back, seemingly unperturbed about my watching her. Thinking, even in my state of tiredness, that this was as good as an invitation, I sneaked out and joined her at the table. She asked me if I wanted a cigarette- then, introducing herself as Catherine Evans (Kat for short), she told her life story to me, in the halting, choppy yet enthusiastic Italian of one used more to listening than speaking. Everything from her childhood through to her graduation; a life lived in astute awareness. Seemingly without pause, she then told me what I know of the strange American- Cal- his history, his reasons for living in Trebnje. She told me this in the authoritative manner of a textbook. I listened- it was high drama for a kid my age, trans-continental shenanigans on an unprecedented scale. For once, Slovenia and Venice appeared as just other destinations, bit players in a global, ensnared series of coincidence. In a way, it was Kat that gave me the urge to travel that landed me here. But I digress.
In the end though, there was no essence of confession, no religious epiphany and no feeling of imminent doom in Kat's speech. It was simply an expression of desperate unhappiness, of dissatisfaction. Finding in Cal another soul whose restlessness fuelled her own. Whose very enigma was the missing piece in her life. She told me not out of duty, or friendship (I had seen her once, and I had not known her name), but as a means of clearance. I was simply there; I answered the call. Embracing her and Cal's lack of control, the floating through experiences, the flotsam and meaningless pressure of their lives. She said it suited them. She said that their inabilities would further them. She told me to take care, stubbed out her cigarette on the plastic table and walked away.
That's just about all there is to it, really. It wasn't until a few days later that people began to notice that the two expats were gone for good, and nobody saw hide nor hair of them afterwards. Not in Italy, Slovenia, the US or Britain (there was a little article in a British daily newspaper at the time, I'll try to find it later). All that I had to go from them was a hurried back story, the briefest and strangest of meetings, and a slip of paper Kat left on the table, with what you see written up there written on it. When I first saw this place, it reminded me of that little Venetian café, of the two strange travellers, so I got it carved into the entrance. Sort of like a tombstone of sorts for the guys, or at least a memorial to their previous lives. Either way, in the same way their helplessness suited them, it suited me, and I wound up moving back to Slovenia, drawn inexplicably back to my roots, to the same sort of bar I was drinking in the night I left Slovenia for the first time. So it comes, so it goes, I'm not going to pretend that I have the same courage or desire for change those guys had- I guess roots are comfortable. I guess you can't be too predetermined or too helpless, too shifty. Either way, I'm here and it's late. See you later.
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Submitted by DonkeyOnTheEdge (user info) at 2005-10-29 10:01:51 EDT (#)
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