Gigantic.46

City of Coal Smoke

My friend Rick hadn’t moved to Slovenia yet, but he’d already done recon and shared valuable intelligence. He made me repeat the following phrase several times to make sure I had it right:

“Gospod, steklenica prosim.”

(Sir, a bottle, please.)

The Iron Curtain had fallen almost ten years earlier but, having grown up definitively west of it, it still existed strongly in my imagination. Other than passing Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin, Ljubljana was my first real foray into what had once been “the other side.”

When we checked into our hotel, my room door had a peephole looking out into the hallway. Did hotels in the States have peepholes? I couldn’t remember. It was somehow evocative of tradecraft.

While not completely spared by Allied bombing raids, Ljubljana had emerged from World War II still looking like old world Europe. Steep, gable roofs everywhere, very medieval.

It was winter, cold but not freezing, a little snow here and there. As I walked the city, I noticed many of the buildings had sticks propped up against them with some sort of handwritten notes, in Slovenian of course, but that didn’t keep me from leaning in and trying to decipher.

What I finally figured out, not from language but from placement, was that each stick warned of a perilous icicle dangling from the eaves directly above, and that only an idiot, like me, would stand there with his head in the line of fire, squinting at the warning signs.

On a high bluff was some sort of church or castle looking out over the city. I resolved to work my way up there. After a few false starts, I found a slender cobblestone alleyway with an upward incline, it seemed to be winding in that direction. I passed an old man who was heading up too. We smiled at each other and shared a few words that neither understood exactly, but the exchange was clear:

“Keep going, buddy!”

The path followed curves around a radio tower and a few private courtyards, then here it was, the castle. Unique combination of architecture. Ancient unhewn rock supporting an 800-year-old wall with contemporary daubs of cement here and there.

There was a guard who eyed me but didn’t stop me, so I went inside and found…a bar. I heard American voices and found Jack, Jeff, and Jay, they’d taken a different route and beaten me up here. I was going to wait for refreshment till I got back down to street level, but you couldn’t beat the view.

After two-and-a-half years of sobriety, I’d recently developed a newfound capability for moderation (usually) so I had a pivo (beer) with my bandmates, then made my own way through additional cobblestone streets, across ancient bridges, and back to the espionage-tinged hotel.

An hour or so later we all met in the lobby. Paddy brought two friends who graciously volunteered to lead us to supper.

The building looked like a fine townhouse, set back from the street, with candles in the windows. You’d never know there was a restaurant in there. As we walked up a creaky flight of wooden stairs, both Caron and Jonathan separately said to me, “Adam, this is your kind of place.”

They were so right. I’d always had a secret fantasy about mixing with Soviet intellectuals, or some such thing. The Pen Klub dated back to the 60s with a storied bohemian history. It was still hopping with archetypes who fit the bill.

When the waiter came, it was the moment Rick had trained me for.

“Gospod, steklenica…” etc. etc.

I didn’t know what I’d ordered, exactly, but apparently the waiter did. The evening’s drinking had begun.

I was sitting next to Paddy and his friends who’d brought us here, Ivan and his girlfriend, Tanya. Mercury Rev had a clannish habit of ignoring newcomers, I tended to go the other direction out of courtesy and natural curiosity, plus Ivan seemed pretty interesting.

Ivan told me how the Pen Klub was home to many writers over the years, an important meeting spot during the communist era for dissidents. When he was ten years old he tried to sneak in here, they literally bounced him out on his ear.

He had a few passing conversations with people bumping past our table, and pointed out several politicians around the room, one of whom he and Tanya were laughing about.

“He just won Best Dressed,” Ivan said, in some glossy magazine.

“Why is that so funny?”

“He’s head of the communist party,” he said.

I marveled that he seemed to know so many politicians, he told me:

“When you live in a small country, you can’t afford to avoid politics.”

Around this point in our conversation, it came out that Ivan was in Laibach, only one of the coolest bands ever to come out of Slovenia. So, he wasn’t sitting at our table, we were sitting at his, but no one in my band knew this besides Paddy and me.

The food was fantastic. I tried some kind of fish salad, a bean soup, and a “traditional” dish which was beef mixed with kraut and potatoes.

After supper, Ivan offered me a cigarette he’d brought back from Russia, he was surprised I knew how to smoke it (someone else had given me one once, the tobacco is compacted at one end, there’s a cardboard tube that you pinch slightly so it acts as a sort of filter.)

Ivan and Tanya and Paddy had made plans for the evening. Ivan took one last glance at the band that had basically ignored him for all of dinner and turned to me.

“You wanna ditch these guys?”

I didn’t have to think twice. We drove maybe five or so blocks and walked from there.

What was that smell in the air? As night descended, I realized it was coal smoke, everywhere. It felt for a moment like a different time period. We were in a city where people still heated their homes by burning coal.

Our first stop was an opening night party at a new club appropriately called Na Zdravje (Cheers!) The outside bar was entirely cut from a giant slab of ice. There were candles all along it and free wine.

Next stop was a rock club, also packed (it was Friday.) Here we drank something like hot toddies, then scotch.

From there we went to a techno club where EVERYONE was dancing. Not posturing, just really going for it, enjoying themselves to the max completely unselfconsciously. It was a joy to be in the middle of it.

“How do you cope with techno?” Ivan asked.

I wasn’t sure where he was going with this. Maybe I said something about how rhythms exist in nature, but they vary, like the ocean, or the heart, which was one reason I didn’t always like music with rigid beats.

He said this was a good argument, told me that he didn’t necessarily like techno himself, then went on to convince me of its importance.

In this time period, he explained, people live by the clock, by machines. “Techno is the music of the machines. This is why it is a relevant expression of our time,” he said.

We all went to the chill-out room and drank some more scotch (I hadn’t drank this much in years) then returned to the main part of the club to get jostled around some more. But it wasn’t all techno. They worked in The Clash and some traditional Balkan music. It was a really good mix.

The night had grown colder. Ivan had to scrape ice off both the outside and inside of his windshield, then drove madly through the tiny streets.

In New York, you stop for a slice on nights like this. In Ljubljana, you stop for a burek and yogurt. The burek was greasy filo dough filled with cheese, I knew what to do with it. I didn’t know what to do with the yogurt.

“You drink it, it’s good to have!” Ivan said.

Okay, bottoms up.

Back at my Soviet-era espionage hotel, no one had rifled through my stuff, or planted a bug in the desk lamp, as far as I could tell. I guess I wasn’t in a John le Carré novel after all.

I got five and a half hours sleep, then needed to shower and get ready to go to the station. We were going to be on Slovenian national television that night and would be at the studio pretty much all day.

I needed some more relevant Slovenian to jumpstart my day. If only Rick were around.

Kako se reče “hangover” po Slovesnsko?

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Post Script:

My friend Rick Harsch, author of The Driftless Zone and many other excellent novels, did eventually move to Slovenia. If you like thinking-person’s noir, Rick’s your guy. If you’re already a fan or friend, here’s a gofundme page to help Rick with serious health issues he’s bravely dealing with at the moment:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/Help-Rick-Harsch-With-His-Recovery

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