Gringos know no boundaries

Here’s something to know if you’re going to Prague: the city is divided into several numbered districts.  Prague 2 is adjacent to Prague 10, which is tucked between Prague(s?) 3 and 4.  If memory serves, Prague 5 is across the river from Prague 2-3.  If this seems confusing and disorienting, don’t worry: there are two completely different numerical systems in place that make about as much sense as the one described above and are also still in use, and in practice it is often difficult for a foreigner to tell which system is in play in a given context.  So you should pretty much not rely on that stuff anyway.  Also, most houses have two numbers on them: a red one, which has to do with the order in which the buildings were constructed within that district, and a blue one that’s the postal address.  Also, blue numbers ascend or descend along a street depending on which end of the street is closer to a river.  So there’s another valuable navigational nugget to put under your cap.  

In short, Prague is perfectly easy to navigate if you are a riparian historian.

I should have known we were in trouble when we stepped off the train, exchanged some money and found our way to the vending machine for subway tickets.  There were at least seven different possibilities according to the fare structure, which appeared to depend on who you were, what numbered zone of the city you were traveling to, and how long you figured it would take you to get there.  Which is great, as long as you know where the hell you are, where the hell you’re going, and what the hell distance separates the two.  As you have perhaps intuited by now, we did not.  In fact, as I would later learn, I had somehow managed to print not one but two Google maps that, in each case, were just zoomed-in enough to cut off the subway station nearest to our destination in the city.  This meant that we approached everything – on foot and with luggage in tow – from the second-nearest subway station instead.  We showed one such Google map to a person who looked young enough to have studied English, and he helped us buy our first subway ticket in Prague – the cheapest one.  That ought to do it, he said.  (He was right, by the way – I realize I might have just created some incidental suspense, but in fact much of the ensuing debacle could have been avoided if only we could have hired that riparian historian to follow us around for the rest of the day).

Having left Berlin at 6 a.m. and made a beeline for our tango lesson (to which we arrived only ten or so minutes late, miraculously enough), at 3 p.m. we hadn’t yet touched base with our hostess.  We thought we’d find her house, ring the bell and hope for the chance to plunk down our suitcases before scoring some late and much-deserved lunch. So, we dutifully approached the second house on the right from the corner, number 28, and looked for the red button at the top of the right-hand column of buzzers that her very descriptive directions had mentioned. 

“Maybe the sun has faded it,” I said hopefully, after carefully checking each buzzer and finding them all equally dark brown.  The hubs shrugged.  I tried the street door.  It gave, opening into the cool of the apartment stairwell, so we went inside. 

The building was non-descript and indeterminately old, in the way European apartment buildings are indeterminately old, and on the ground floor were Apartments 8, 26 and 14; a panel of glossy black mailboxes; and, dead ahead of us, the elevator.  It was sleek and gleaming, made of glass and steel painted racecar red, and it had obviously been imported from the future.  Since we were looking for Apartment 11 and had exhausted the possibilities of the ground floor, we climbed inside with our three bags and pressed the button.  Nothing happened for a while.  Then, just as the hubs – a patient man – was poised to hit the button for a third time, the doors closed with an irritable little sigh and we shot off to the second floor at the speed of an old-world elevator. 

Floor two revealed Apartments 4, 18, 6, and 21, and I believe Floor 3 contained all the apartments that were prime numbers between 3 and 19 (except, of course, 11).  By this time I felt tired, sore, hot, hungry, unusually culturally intolerant and more than a bit cranky with the Czech notion of mathematics.  At least by the time we were approaching Floor 4 we got wise to the sluggish elevator door and devised a plan to leave all the suitcases on board, hit the button, and each scout out in one direction for Apartment 11.  A quick glance was enough to tell us that Floor 4 consisted of apartments 1, 2, 22 and 15, but by this time our elevator had somehow finally figured out what we were after and zoomed off toward Floors 5 and 6 with our bags, expending all the haste it had saved up during our trips from floors 1-3.

Fortunately, the building was not that tall, and Floor 6 finally coughed up Apartments 9, 23, 16 and, yes, 11.  I rang the bell.  Nothing happened for a while.  Then, just as I was turning to go, a tiny voice called out what I can only imagine was Czech for “Helloooooo?” 

“Hello,” I said.  Nothing happened for a while.  Then, just as I was getting ready to ring the bell again, the tiny voice called out again.  “Hello,” I said again.  Eventually the door opened, and a woman who was the age of all the apartment numbers added together blinked blearily at us, clearly not expecting two sweaty Americans who were pretty sure they had a reservation.  I showed her our overly-zoomed-in Google map and the address we were looking for.  She shook her head and told us something that lasted about 8-10 seconds and was, I like to think, intended to be helpful, and then shuffled back inside #11 and closed the door.

I crumpled on her doorstep, but the hubs pointed out that that wasn’t a very considerate place to lose my mind, so we took the elevator from the future back to the ground floor and I crumpled down there instead.  The hubs headed back to the street and retraced our steps against the instructions we had been provided, only to find that a. we had followed them to the letter, and b. there was a third number, etched in the glass pane above the door we had just passed through: 1701, which was neither red nor blue and had nothing to do with anything.

As I waited for my hubs to return, I examined the bank of glossy black mailboxes more closely and found that it corresponded neither to any system of counting I was familiar with, nor to the actual distribution of apartments in the building.  It was at this time – marveling at the valor of Czech mail carriers and trying to look purposeful and casual while lurking, hot and grouchy, in the foyer of a foreign apartment building – that I realized the relevance of the red/blue number system to our current predicament.  When the hubs came back, we picked up all of our luggage and walked down the block to the other #28 and rang the conspicuously red doorbell.  

Our Czech hostess was out, but eventually came home.  After showing us our room, she fixed us an espresso as we recounted our adventures.   “Didn’t you follow my instructions?” she asked, incredulous.  When I remarked the numbering system over at 1701, she said, “Ah.  Probably the apartments were numbered in a spiral, starting on the fourth floor and then going up and around.”

I still have no idea whether she was joking.

why I'll never go native

Yesterday a golondrina flew into my classroom. A golondrina is a swallow; as so often happens with birds its name is much more lyrical in Spanish and better fits a tiny, airborne feathered thing. I had only ever seen them soaring and swooping, the sun glinting blue-black off their sleek backs, a flash of red belly during a particularly daring dive. I used to go to a bridge over the dwindling river to watch them flit back and forth whenever I felt homesick.

In Mexico it’s good luck to have a golondrina. People plant nests for them hoping they will fill them, and the birds will roost, then disappear, then return again and again. The golondrina, in Mexican folklore anyway, is thus a precious, restless little creature who, despite its wanderlust, never forgets its home.

(Perhaps you begin to understand why I have one tattooed on my arm.)

This one I didn’t recognize at first. Cowering on the floor of a dark room, its feathers dulled to gray. It seemed injured or paralyzed by fear, far from evoking the lyrical acrobatics I associate with the word -- and the bird -- golondrina. I stood dumb, not knowing what to do but unable to leave the little bird trapped in a corner under a table.

Luisa, one of the student assistants, came in. O, she said, una golondrina. Pobrecita, está atrapada. Levántala. Pick her up. It won’t bite me? I said. Luisa glanced at me, quizzically but too kindly to say anything, and stooped. She cradled the tiny bird in her hands and carried it out to the terrace, where she knelt down and opened her palms.

The bird rested there, closing its eyes, stretching over these two shiny black seeds a pale gray veil of the most delicate tissue. At that moment I wanted nothing more than to take it in my own hands and feel its diminutive heart palpitating against my fingers. For several seconds it seemed lulled by the fresh air and light. No vuela, Luisa said, disappointed. No, I said, it can fly. Gently I stroked its belly and it shuddered awake, took two tentative steps across Luisa’s hand and traced a graceful arc over the lip of the terrace and across the courtyard out of sight.

This morning on the bus, while I was abstracted and thinking about the golondrina, a tiny person perched on the seat next to mine. I couldn’t tell at first whether it was a man or a woman; he, or she, wore a black stocking cap and a white fleece jacket several sizes too big, in spite of the heat that already pressed in on us at nine in the morning. Out of the corner of my eye I could see a brown and leathery face, cured by sun and wind, and the broad, angular nose that betrays the indigenous here. After a moment this person spoke to me in a quiet tenor that further failed to resolve itself into male or female. ¿No hace como friyito? the voice said. No, I replied, I didn’t feel cold. Other passengers turned to look, perhaps wondering why someone would confide in me, a stranger, a foreigner. I mentally checked the location of my passport, my backpack, my camera, my wallet.

It was when a tiny, icy hand rested on top of mine where they lay in my lap that I realized she was a woman. I looked up into her face. Why are you so cold? I asked her. I don’t know, she said. Sometimes I think I don’t have any blood anymore. You must have some, otherwise you wouldn’t be here, I said and smiled, not really knowing what else to say.

She regarded me blankly. I studied her back. A life spent smiling had carved crow’s feet around her eyes, but they were ringed with a watery film as if she had recently been crying or indeed very ill. She told me she supposed it was natural for her to have no blood, since they took hers little by little each day in a hospital, four o’clock in the afternoon, four o’clock in the morning. I wasn’t sure to have understood her, so I made some general sympathetic comment and fell back into silence. A moment later, she announced bueno, aquí me bajo and shambled out of her seat. When she turned her back to walk down the aisle of the bus I realized the stocking cap concealed a bald head, and out of the top of the fleece jacket protruded the bones of an undernourished spine. Cancer, I thought. And she had tried to tell me, had given me chances to ask, and I had failed to hear.

I felt ashamed. How hard would it have been for me to trust such a small and defenseless person? How hard would it have been for me to take those cold, misshapen little hands and hold them in my warm ones for the duration of a bus ride? How hard could a tiny golondrina have bitten me before I set it free? What is it in me that flees this contact, this encounter? I know what to do and I yearn to do it, so why do I mistrust when I should love, and only realize it after?

My hands on my keyboard feel scalding hot, cursed. They are full of warmth and life if I could figure out how to share them.