w a soft side to my grandfather. He came into my room one evening. He had taken out his teeth, so he was toothless and mumbled when he said, his arm around me.
'Look Phil, I understand you. You love this Natasha. But you know what, we all have our Natasha's. You love them and you think they are so important, but they are not important. What is important is your family and your future and the fact that so many people love you. We all love you.'
'Thank you grandpa.' I said, and my cold heart warmed. I started to enjoy myself.
Trust me, it was only in the spirit of closing circles that I decided to go to Yugoslavia in 1981.
I decided to go by bicycle. I was developing a sense of humour. I was beginning to enjoy my anarchic, surprising life more. I wanted to take a long look at Natasha and through Natasha and to free myself of teenage angst and move on before I turned 20. It was not hope or devotion that motivated me.
I decided to go by bike and my father bought one for me and kitted me out at some cost and I set off.
In Amsterdam I met my old friend Richard Paxton, from Portland Oregon. We were students together at St Mary's School in Nairobi and he was taking a gap year before studying politics and economics.
'It was partly because of you that I decided to study politics.' he said. 'All our conversations when we were younger. But I told you that if Reagan was elected I would leave the country and so here I am.'
'When will you go back?'
'I don't know. I don't want to think about it.' He said
Reagan's victory was embarrassing. Paxton was a beloved friend, but we were both still a little bitter about other things. We were 19, now, not 15, it was the beginning of the right wing thermidor and we were both at a loss.
Milkveg, from Wikimedia commons
In Holland, I remember men with large moustaches eating whole herrings in one gulp by the side of the road. I remember the Japanese prints in the Van Gogh museum. I remember the Milkweg: a big building brimming with counter-culture. They sold marijuana from the front stalls. They danced on the ground floor. On the second floor they ran the best vegetarian restaurant outside India.
A young man and his wife took me in to their house along the way when I felt very tired and they offered me coffee. They asked me to tell them who I was and where I was going. The coffee was delicious and creamy and they both seemed pleased and amused at my story and we promised to meet up again. I believe I have an affinity for the Dutch.
I rode past war graves and tulip farms and, after crossing the border into Germany, pumped my way through the Ruhr without noticing its industrial conurbation.
I rode past Dusseldorf, past Koln, past Koblenz and along the Rhine to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I met my great aunt Tini and her boyfriend.
Tini had never married or worked. She had just had a long stream of boyfriends who had looked after her.
'People always said I was beautiful, but Tini was very pretty.' my grandmother conceded.
She was, quite. I have an image of her now in the flat above a petrol station. She is smiling and combing her long hair.
Tini couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak German, so we smiled at each other and used body language. She showed me some pictures of herself and our family. After a few hours her boyfriend came in and he suggested that he show me round Frankfurt.
He was a robust man. Simple, strong, and in his late fifties where Tini was in her late 60s. He was proud of Frankfurt, but I wondered about the fate of the Jewish community in the city.
'Yes very nice. But where are the Frankfurt Jews?'
We listened to 'the Great Peal of Bells.' in the town centre. Now I would pay more attention to the town. It's where my grandmother's family comes from.
That was the first and only time I met Tini. We said goodbye affectionately and I also thanked her boyfriend and
Now I had to get to Regensburg via Nuremberg on my way to my next stop, Munich. When I arrived in Neuremberg I couldn't see that pretty city either, I didn't want to. The name Neuremburg erased the reality of the town.
I had a scare. I locked my bike to a steel pole by a bank and couldn't find the key. I found the key and headed towards Regensburg.
The wind blew and it was cold and then it started to rain. I had a puncture and stopped to fix it. There was no shelter. I did my best. I re-inflated the tyre and set off again. After another 30K the tyre went flat. I got off again, fixed the puncture, set off. But when the wheel went flat again after another 20K I took it as a sign.
'To hell with this.'
When I got to Regensburg I locked my bike to a post.I left it there and got on a train to Munich.
Heini's wife Erna had died the previous year, at about the same time as my grandfather, and so it was his glamorous girlfriend who met me at the station, Rose.
She had a beautiful little flat in the centre of Munich and spoke perfect American English so I thought she was in fact American. But she was German and worked for Radio Liberty as a translator. Unlike my staid uncle, Rose was left-wing. This was her father's inheritance. I stayed with them for two days. Heini was busy in the Theatre.
I set off to Yugoslavia on the train, sharing a sleeping carriage with two English girls on their own European trip. The next morning the girls got off in Vienna and I carried on to Budapest.
I had a couple of hours in Budapest before the rain left to Belgrade and so wandered in the area around the station. I didn't go further because I was afraid I might get lost. The shops seemed empty. Dusty. The cafes around the station were unattractive, but the smell of the goulash, I assumed it was goulash, was delicious and there were many varieties of the stew, all different shades of deep red.
Boticelli, detail from birth of Venus
I got on the train to Belgrade and in my carriage was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her hair was russet and her face was more beautiful than that of a Botticelli angel. Hair is a woman's glory, my mother once told me after she went through chemotherapy. The girl was tall, almost as tall as me and what seemed amazing was that she seemed to like me.
We conversed a little and she told me that she lived in Germany and that she studied philosophy, but that she had come to visit her family in Belgrade. I looked into her eyes and time left the compartment. Hours passed like seconds and Belgrade approached.
Inevitably, she asked me why I was going to Belgrade. And I looked at her and I didn't want to tell her why. I had almost forgotten.
She walked with me when I got off the train, asked me to come with her in a taxi and she took me to Bulivar Lenina, Stan 7, Jezdiceva, refusing to let me pay for the taxi.
'If your friend is not in. Phone me please,' she said, 'and you can stay with me.'
'Thank you.' I said. And stepped out. Some things are more important than angels.
And so this had now become a quest and I arrived, without phoning ahead and climbed up the stairs to flat number 143 and nobody was in. I sat on the stairs and after an hour Natasha's mother and father appeared.
They were shocked. What was I doing there.
'Come in. Do you want some coffee?
'Yes please.'
'To rest?'
'Yes please.'
And so I went to sleep on Natasha's bed only to be woken up by Natasha an hour later.
She looked at me and I looked at her and we rushed into each others arms embracing hard, and then she pulled away. The first thing I noticed was that her breath smelled of cigarettes and that her hips looked broader and that her skin no longer seemed so luminescent. But it was Natasha.
'Why didn't you tell me exactly when you were coming. The situation has changed,' she said. She was angry.
'I wanted to surprise you.' I said.
'I got your letter and then that was the last thing I heard from you.' I thought you weren't coming.
After a while she went to discuss what to do with her parents.
Mlet, photo by Ludwina
The next day we went down to the beach together and she rested against me and slept in my lap and we headed down to the beach.
'I have something to tell you Phil. I am in a serious relationship so I can't really be with you and I can't really deal with this and so we're going on holiday together with my friends, but that's it.'
This was a disappointment because that is exactly what I wanted. Selfishly, I wanted to 'deal with it.' To close doors properly. Natasha refusing to talk to me was the worst thing that could have happened. She imagined I wanted to renew our relationship. I didn't. Selfishly, all I wanted to do was to understand myself. It was her ego that told her I was there for her. I was not.
The journey was beautiful. The calm rhythm of the train. It slowed down near Sarajevo and I looked out of the window and through the pine trees I saw white buildings and as the train slowed down it became very peaceful.
I thought. 'That is where my grandfather was born.' and slowly the train went past and we reached the coast and we took a boat to Natasha's island, Mlet.
By now she had stopped talking to me.
'We are going to sleep in the forest with my friends.' she said and so I met her friends.
There was Goran and Jelena and Vesna. Goran was friendly and simple and very energetic. Vesna was quiet. Jelena was wonderful. She was painfully honest, well meaning and soft. She had such a rich inner life. You wanted to be with her because you wanted to share her inner life.
Mlet is a special island. There is an island in the middle of the lake in the middle of the island. It is an island of concentric circles, a perfect mandala.The ground was soft with pine needles and the cicadas whirred and hummed and the sun woke us up and the night put us to sleep.
It was a perfect place for resolution, but Natasha fended me off with her friends and her friends were delightful. We were swimming nude in a cove at the back of the island and I tried again. On a ledge above the little bay on the hot yellow rock. She refused to engage and returned to Belgrade and left me.
Hasegawa Tohaku, 1592
Goran left, Vesna left and I was left to spend time with Jelena. I didn't fall in love with her, but with her I existed in a golden cloud. A Madonna. It was like being with a Madonna. We swam naked together in the Adriatic and I drew pictures of her in crayon. I drew a picture of her naked in orange and blue, the warm triangle between her legs too.
Why have you drawn that? she said.
Because that's what I see. I said.
Don't. she said.
I rubbed the detail of the drawing out with orange, and it stood out.
You see, what happens? I said.
Kalmegdan in Belgrade, by elgeneralo
After a few days with me she left, and it was healing. She was healing me. I waited in Belgrade for Natasha to talk to me and she didn't make time. I went to Vesna's and then to Jelena's and met Sveta, Natasha's boyfriend and finally, I left.
Nothing was resolved. I would have to work out everything on my own and disentangle myself.
Jelena and Natasha both came with me to see me off at the train station. Natasha was happy to see the back of me and that was the last time I saw her. I couldn't think of anything to say. She was a stiff as a board when I hugged her goodbye and I said something trite, emptied of meaning, and then turned to Jelena.
'What can I say to you?' I asked her.
I embraced Jelena. She was soft and I felt her longing. Not for me, but for love. I felt a great laugh burgeoning, a loving thankfulness. I wanted to thank her, how could I thank her properly?
Jelena said 'Just say to me what you said to Natasha.'
And so I did.
'Look Phil, I understand you. You love this Natasha. But you know what, we all have our Natasha's. You love them and you think they are so important, but they are not important. What is important is your family and your future and the fact that so many people love you. We all love you.'
'Thank you grandpa.' I said, and my cold heart warmed. I started to enjoy myself.
Trust me, it was only in the spirit of closing circles that I decided to go to Yugoslavia in 1981.
I decided to go by bicycle. I was developing a sense of humour. I was beginning to enjoy my anarchic, surprising life more. I wanted to take a long look at Natasha and through Natasha and to free myself of teenage angst and move on before I turned 20. It was not hope or devotion that motivated me.
I decided to go by bike and my father bought one for me and kitted me out at some cost and I set off.
In Amsterdam I met my old friend Richard Paxton, from Portland Oregon. We were students together at St Mary's School in Nairobi and he was taking a gap year before studying politics and economics.
'It was partly because of you that I decided to study politics.' he said. 'All our conversations when we were younger. But I told you that if Reagan was elected I would leave the country and so here I am.'
'When will you go back?'
'I don't know. I don't want to think about it.' He said
Reagan's victory was embarrassing. Paxton was a beloved friend, but we were both still a little bitter about other things. We were 19, now, not 15, it was the beginning of the right wing thermidor and we were both at a loss.
Milkveg, from Wikimedia commons
In Holland, I remember men with large moustaches eating whole herrings in one gulp by the side of the road. I remember the Japanese prints in the Van Gogh museum. I remember the Milkweg: a big building brimming with counter-culture. They sold marijuana from the front stalls. They danced on the ground floor. On the second floor they ran the best vegetarian restaurant outside India.
A young man and his wife took me in to their house along the way when I felt very tired and they offered me coffee. They asked me to tell them who I was and where I was going. The coffee was delicious and creamy and they both seemed pleased and amused at my story and we promised to meet up again. I believe I have an affinity for the Dutch.
I rode past war graves and tulip farms and, after crossing the border into Germany, pumped my way through the Ruhr without noticing its industrial conurbation.
I rode past Dusseldorf, past Koln, past Koblenz and along the Rhine to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt I met my great aunt Tini and her boyfriend.
Tini had never married or worked. She had just had a long stream of boyfriends who had looked after her.
'People always said I was beautiful, but Tini was very pretty.' my grandmother conceded.
She was, quite. I have an image of her now in the flat above a petrol station. She is smiling and combing her long hair.
Tini couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak German, so we smiled at each other and used body language. She showed me some pictures of herself and our family. After a few hours her boyfriend came in and he suggested that he show me round Frankfurt.
He was a robust man. Simple, strong, and in his late fifties where Tini was in her late 60s. He was proud of Frankfurt, but I wondered about the fate of the Jewish community in the city.
'Yes very nice. But where are the Frankfurt Jews?'
We listened to 'the Great Peal of Bells.' in the town centre. Now I would pay more attention to the town. It's where my grandmother's family comes from.
That was the first and only time I met Tini. We said goodbye affectionately and I also thanked her boyfriend and
Now I had to get to Regensburg via Nuremberg on my way to my next stop, Munich. When I arrived in Neuremberg I couldn't see that pretty city either, I didn't want to. The name Neuremburg erased the reality of the town.
I had a scare. I locked my bike to a steel pole by a bank and couldn't find the key. I found the key and headed towards Regensburg.
The wind blew and it was cold and then it started to rain. I had a puncture and stopped to fix it. There was no shelter. I did my best. I re-inflated the tyre and set off again. After another 30K the tyre went flat. I got off again, fixed the puncture, set off. But when the wheel went flat again after another 20K I took it as a sign.
'To hell with this.'
When I got to Regensburg I locked my bike to a post.I left it there and got on a train to Munich.
Heini's wife Erna had died the previous year, at about the same time as my grandfather, and so it was his glamorous girlfriend who met me at the station, Rose.
She had a beautiful little flat in the centre of Munich and spoke perfect American English so I thought she was in fact American. But she was German and worked for Radio Liberty as a translator. Unlike my staid uncle, Rose was left-wing. This was her father's inheritance. I stayed with them for two days. Heini was busy in the Theatre.
I set off to Yugoslavia on the train, sharing a sleeping carriage with two English girls on their own European trip. The next morning the girls got off in Vienna and I carried on to Budapest.
I had a couple of hours in Budapest before the rain left to Belgrade and so wandered in the area around the station. I didn't go further because I was afraid I might get lost. The shops seemed empty. Dusty. The cafes around the station were unattractive, but the smell of the goulash, I assumed it was goulash, was delicious and there were many varieties of the stew, all different shades of deep red.
Boticelli, detail from birth of Venus
I got on the train to Belgrade and in my carriage was the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Her hair was russet and her face was more beautiful than that of a Botticelli angel. Hair is a woman's glory, my mother once told me after she went through chemotherapy. The girl was tall, almost as tall as me and what seemed amazing was that she seemed to like me.
We conversed a little and she told me that she lived in Germany and that she studied philosophy, but that she had come to visit her family in Belgrade. I looked into her eyes and time left the compartment. Hours passed like seconds and Belgrade approached.
Inevitably, she asked me why I was going to Belgrade. And I looked at her and I didn't want to tell her why. I had almost forgotten.
She walked with me when I got off the train, asked me to come with her in a taxi and she took me to Bulivar Lenina, Stan 7, Jezdiceva, refusing to let me pay for the taxi.
'If your friend is not in. Phone me please,' she said, 'and you can stay with me.'
'Thank you.' I said. And stepped out. Some things are more important than angels.
And so this had now become a quest and I arrived, without phoning ahead and climbed up the stairs to flat number 143 and nobody was in. I sat on the stairs and after an hour Natasha's mother and father appeared.
They were shocked. What was I doing there.
'Come in. Do you want some coffee?
'Yes please.'
'To rest?'
'Yes please.'
And so I went to sleep on Natasha's bed only to be woken up by Natasha an hour later.
She looked at me and I looked at her and we rushed into each others arms embracing hard, and then she pulled away. The first thing I noticed was that her breath smelled of cigarettes and that her hips looked broader and that her skin no longer seemed so luminescent. But it was Natasha.
'Why didn't you tell me exactly when you were coming. The situation has changed,' she said. She was angry.
'I wanted to surprise you.' I said.
'I got your letter and then that was the last thing I heard from you.' I thought you weren't coming.
After a while she went to discuss what to do with her parents.
Mlet, photo by Ludwina
The next day we went down to the beach together and she rested against me and slept in my lap and we headed down to the beach.
'I have something to tell you Phil. I am in a serious relationship so I can't really be with you and I can't really deal with this and so we're going on holiday together with my friends, but that's it.'
This was a disappointment because that is exactly what I wanted. Selfishly, I wanted to 'deal with it.' To close doors properly. Natasha refusing to talk to me was the worst thing that could have happened. She imagined I wanted to renew our relationship. I didn't. Selfishly, all I wanted to do was to understand myself. It was her ego that told her I was there for her. I was not.
The journey was beautiful. The calm rhythm of the train. It slowed down near Sarajevo and I looked out of the window and through the pine trees I saw white buildings and as the train slowed down it became very peaceful.
I thought. 'That is where my grandfather was born.' and slowly the train went past and we reached the coast and we took a boat to Natasha's island, Mlet.
By now she had stopped talking to me.
'We are going to sleep in the forest with my friends.' she said and so I met her friends.
There was Goran and Jelena and Vesna. Goran was friendly and simple and very energetic. Vesna was quiet. Jelena was wonderful. She was painfully honest, well meaning and soft. She had such a rich inner life. You wanted to be with her because you wanted to share her inner life.
Mlet is a special island. There is an island in the middle of the lake in the middle of the island. It is an island of concentric circles, a perfect mandala.The ground was soft with pine needles and the cicadas whirred and hummed and the sun woke us up and the night put us to sleep.
It was a perfect place for resolution, but Natasha fended me off with her friends and her friends were delightful. We were swimming nude in a cove at the back of the island and I tried again. On a ledge above the little bay on the hot yellow rock. She refused to engage and returned to Belgrade and left me.
Hasegawa Tohaku, 1592
Goran left, Vesna left and I was left to spend time with Jelena. I didn't fall in love with her, but with her I existed in a golden cloud. A Madonna. It was like being with a Madonna. We swam naked together in the Adriatic and I drew pictures of her in crayon. I drew a picture of her naked in orange and blue, the warm triangle between her legs too.
Why have you drawn that? she said.
Because that's what I see. I said.
Don't. she said.
I rubbed the detail of the drawing out with orange, and it stood out.
You see, what happens? I said.
Kalmegdan in Belgrade, by elgeneralo
After a few days with me she left, and it was healing. She was healing me. I waited in Belgrade for Natasha to talk to me and she didn't make time. I went to Vesna's and then to Jelena's and met Sveta, Natasha's boyfriend and finally, I left.
Nothing was resolved. I would have to work out everything on my own and disentangle myself.
Jelena and Natasha both came with me to see me off at the train station. Natasha was happy to see the back of me and that was the last time I saw her. I couldn't think of anything to say. She was a stiff as a board when I hugged her goodbye and I said something trite, emptied of meaning, and then turned to Jelena.
'What can I say to you?' I asked her.
I embraced Jelena. She was soft and I felt her longing. Not for me, but for love. I felt a great laugh burgeoning, a loving thankfulness. I wanted to thank her, how could I thank her properly?
Jelena said 'Just say to me what you said to Natasha.'
And so I did.
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