Tags
Amsterdam, Anne Frank House, Canal, Jerusalem, Netherlands, North Holland, Red-light district, Siberia
Early summer, in June: it’s the time of the counting of Omer, and those Jews who continue zealously to observe the ancient traditions don’t shave; that’s how it should be, they say.
Baruch scratches at his beard as he thoughtfully studies the map of Amsterdam: to get from the central train station to the old synagogue, he needs to walk along the side of the canal for a while. He sets off with a series of landmarks in mind by which to make his way, cutting up the city’s throng with his black boots. He needs to leave behind the post office, the Christian Orthodox Church and the flea market – which seems out of place and disarrayed situated across the street from the church – offering to the passerby its charms and abundance of cheap kitsch. He then needed to cross a busy roundabout and, after passing the Jewish museum to the right and the tram stop to the left – he would show up exactly where he was impatiently expected.
They were supposed to wait for him at the airport, but something has happened. Dressed like a 19th century Polish landowner in a long black overcoat he has had to take the underground, to the surprise of his sojourners, a couple of local junkies and an illegal immigrant. Baruch avoided raising his head, he didn’t want his eyes to accidentally meet with the eyes of the people he travelled with, thus making an opening for their destinies to intertwine; he, the chosen one, didn’t have anything in common with them.
Baruch, chosen once upon a time to be “Or la goyim”, light unto the nations, and his sojourners from the underground – were different in their diet, in the way they established friendships and ran business – it could be said they were as different as the earth from the sky.
Truth is, Baruch didn’t exactly engage in business, aside from the utterly demanding deal his ancestors made with the Almighty, the other side in this oldest of the joint ventures. Since then to nowadays, very little has changed for Baruch and his people – he lived in Jerusalem, near the Kothel, got up at dawn to join the minyan and spent hours per day in prayer – his schedule was agreed upon long time ago and Baruch stuck to it firmly.
The need for our man in Amsterdam occurred quite unexpectedly and Baruch was told to embark on the journey – why it was he who was selected he didn’t know – but he was supposed to represent the community over there in the foreign land. The Light works in mysterious ways and Baruch didn’t question the choice made by the rav – he started packing; the preparations included saying the additional blessings that he knew would ensure him safe travel, a meaningful stay and prompt return back home.
Olyechka stands semi-naked in the glass window facing the canal; her long eight-hour shift has just started. Some would maybe dispute the legitimacy of prostitution as a profession, but Olyechka has been keeping the books accurately – keeping the track of the rent, the payments and similar, she was paying her taxes and from the point of view of the city administration she was a regular taxpayer; personally, she didn’t care about anything else.
Yesterday, she was lucky; some English tourist paid her hundred and fifty Euros to tape her while she was kneeling in front of his unzipped pants. Olyecka presumed he would upload this video of ephemeral vice online, but she didn’t care – her native village was in the isolated depths of the Russian countryside.
Baruch never thought there was such a quarter where everything, even love, is on sale – and that inexpensively. What he felt when his eyes met with Olyechka’s, when he sank in the depth of her blue eyes, was like a strong dizziness. He felt the long established centre of his equilibrium shatter, shaken by some dark force and pushed down the abyss of an overpowering excitement of a kind he had never tasted before.
Olyechka gazed at the cumbersome man in the black kaftan – the clothes he wore reminded her of the family pictures long hidden from the world, for fear of being expelled to Siberia, even further into the depths from where the family already lived. She felt something like shame and covered her bare breast.
That night, in her rented room, Olyechka will cry, weeping into the plumage of her feather pillow.
I don’t know why I happened to be there, in Amsterdam, where someone else’s dreams interlaced with the dreams from which I hadn’t yet awoken. Walking by the canals, I accidentally stepped on a shadow of an untold story: having pierced it with my heel, I became an unwilling witness of an unlived love. Lop-sided facades of nearby houses wrinkled in the murky mirror of the canal; a sensual semi-naked woman, standing in the window of a public house, shifted her weight from one leg to another. A hunched man, dressed as a Polish landowner from the end of nineteen century, hurried her way and the clutter of his steps broke the calm of dust.
Having arrived at the ephemeral roundabout in between dreams and reality, from the very intersection of this and some other actuality, the gothic facades began energetically dancing as I watched them: a Montenegrin national dance, prancing themselves and climbing each other’s shoulders yelling “Oyah!”
There, where there never were bridges, ad hoc an old bridge grew between two worlds and it pranced like a playful, purebred Vranac. Baruch, with a freshly shaved beard and Olyechka, her head covered with a black scarf, ran to the right and hid in Rembrandt’s house, beside the diamond factory…
Skilfully handling the rudder, the demonic ram’s headed boatman, who transports unbelievers to their eternal house, turned left; and some former me, from some former dimension in between dreams and reality, waved to the renegade lovers while holding tightly in my hand a white tissue soaked in blood.
from my third book “Devil, an unauthorized biography”, published by OKF, Cetinje ©2011 All Rights Reserved
translated to English by Steve Mangan
note: the photograph is of the Sephardic Synagogue – one of the many i took while in Amsterdam
Well that pulled me right in, and that switch in perspective was very effective. Thank you for posting that! Very enjoyable read it was!
Thank you, Kathryn! I was totally enchanted by Amsterdam, its really one of a kind city… not too big (even according to our standards – and i am from a teeny weeny country myself ; ) but all there – art and vice and ancient religions, all in range of 15 minutes on foot… Oh, and the tulips, omg, the tulips! For the record – the only thing i ever smuggled across a border – is the very tulip heads; we don’t have black tulips and my mother dreamed of growing them; now Dutch are ok with that, but on Serbian border, as the flight was via Belgrade, its a no-no… lol, i must say that my law-abiding best friend with whom i stayed there was tormented at the thought, but – oops, i did it 😉
Well tulips do make people go a bit mad, I used to grow them when I lived on the east coast. Even worked with a man who had a tulip named after him, I brought some with me but they wouldn’t grow here. Black tulips are pretty cool, especially when paired with white ones. I love the contrast. There are so many places I would like to go visit, Prague and Amsterdam are on that list. Someday.
You will, for sure! And those two are close – and not that expensive; my best friend from US first stayed with me here for a week and than traveled for another three weeks in Europe – she managed to see all she planned!
Once I get this issue of gainful employment squared away, I should take a trip out. Every year I say “I’m taking a trip!” and everytime something comes up and I have to cancel. It was hard with Maisie being so sick, I was afraid to leave her. Thanks for the help with the blogroll, I looked for a tutorial before but didn’t find it, that link you gave me was just what I needed!
Kathryn, where is your natal Saturn? Mine is so placed that i waited for 10y to go Amsterdam, it was always something… And its always for good, this ‘belated experiences’, they always come in perfect time – whenever it is and as long as the waiting might seem. 😉
Taurus, I’m drawing a blank on what house it falls in. I’m thinking things should improve for me once Saturn moves out of Libra, not only is that my house of partnership, it’s my midheaven too.
I hear you, my natal Saturn is 7th house 😉 You meet the partner then as i get it, but as difficult as these periods are all astrologers i know swear of them in terms of spiritual growth. A wise, yet funny one told me to think of it like this: some souls (mine and yours obviously) are ‘nerdy’ so they choose a lot of homework to do in certain periods of time… speak of being ambitious! 😀
Yeah, I remember the moment I found out that Saturn had been camped out in Libra for the past 30 years, “Well that explains alot.” I pulled up my chart and my natal saturn is in the 6th house, along with mars.
What a story! Not meeting someone’s eyes, dreams intersecting … I really like this!
Blessings,
Bonnie
Thank you, dear Bonnie! Your encouragement means the world to me!
This is very well done.. Your writing has the ability to take me to places I have never bee…, see/feel things I have never before seen or felt , your words are as paintings to explore,full of light and full of shadows both juxtaposed with a unique balance that dances gracefully upon the page drawing the reader in with a perspective that goes with barely discernable subtelness leading to the ‘aha.
Dear Jim, i just translated what you wrote for my mother, she was speechless for a while and then asked me to give you her best regards… what you write of my wording – is word per word true of yours too; through meeting you and other friends from Tarot community, i was gifted freedom of thought and wording that i would have never known where i was born and raised. The system of believe/religion into which i was partially born and which i partially choose (my mother being nominally Jewish, but communist to the core of her bones) teaches that the meaning of life is attaining and keeping one’s freedom – in all its manifestation; freedom from fear, freedom from hate, freedom from making idols of money and status and whatnot. And yet living on the other side of the Iron Curtain – my father being a diplomat in career and serving in (rather hostile to us) Eastern Block, i grew up in one of the possibly most restrictive and fearful environments ever. The very culture in which i am raised is patriarchal, the school i attended was a part of Soviet Embassy and included all the stemming from it brainwashing; the artists were not free – nothing and nobody was free, and even the proverbial birds, you would pay a fine where i lived in Prague if you fed them and they gathered on your balcony (hence made the facade look nasty)… even the birds were not free.
That’s why i held on to Tarot for my life – and later on to you, wonderful people whom Tarot brought me – because its only through you and this deck of cards that i could see the bigger picture, beyond inborn the curtain which blinded me.
Thank you for that.
Dear Lena:
Please say hello to your Mum from me, and that I wish her the very best always.
The reply you gave about your Mum and Dad is something that I know is real, though without stories/essays like yours, to me would only be a seperate reality’s, still in the same world but not within the confines of my perception. Never will I try to substitute my perceptions of reality with my imagination.No, I will read literary works like yours instead.
Your reply to my ramblings has both touched me deeply and made me very happy.
Jim, thank you so much for taking the time to read my writings. As its been said – there are way more good writers, than good readers… thank you.