Dead Europe (22 page)

—Suit yourself, said the fat man. His phone rang, but he ignored it. Instead he pulled an envelope from his desk drawer and threw it across the desk to Sal Mineo.

—Drinks. My place. Nine o'clock. Bring your friend.

 

We were silent for ages. As soon as we hit the street, the sea of tourists, the lazy breeze, I felt the coke buzz intensify. The gnawing hunger had dissipated. It hadn't gone away, I could feel it perched, ready, waiting deep inside my bowels, but the cocaine had muted its call. I was smiling as Sal Mineo took me along a roofless corridor. On a balcony, I saw an African woman hanging out sheets. At the end of a passageway we climbed some wooden steps which led into a small dark cavern. At the bar, moustached older men sat drinking beer and we walked all the way to the back where we sat at an empty booth. Supertramp was on the stereo again.

Sal Mineo finally spoke.

—Will this do?

—Sure. Atmosphere, authentic Prague. Italian television played silently on the screen above the bar. I looked towards the men but they averted their eyes. Sal Mineo pulled the envelope out of his pocket and counted the American currency. I watched the men, their thick moustaches, their pulpy, beefy bodies. I wanted to erase the memory of the naked boys, to erase the fantasy of the bloodied Milos. I heard Sal Mineo say something in a foreign tongue and my reverie broke. A woman in her late forties, in a tight white sweater and a short denim skirt, was asking for our orders. Her hair was dyed blonde, her skin wrinkled from too many cigarettes and drinks. She made me feel surprisingly homesick.

—What do want?

—A pot. I mean a glass of beer.

Sal Mineo gave our order.

When the woman was gone, I leaned over and whispered, So you do speak Czech?

—I can order a beer.

We drank fast and had another round. Sal Mineo was chain-smoking. The Mediterranean boyishness that made sense of his nickname had gone. His skin was flushed, rough, older. I hesitated in taking a cigarette, saw my thick thighs stretching my jeans. Too much alcohol and sedentary travel this trip. I decided to take up swimming when I got home. To give up the cigarettes. To change my life.

—How long are you going to do this?

—What?

—Work here.

—You got a problem with it?

I tried to put words to my feelings. He jumped in.

—Look, Isaac. This isn't Australia. I couldn't even get fucking social security in Italy, let alone here. It's been tough. I've begged, you know that? I've begged on the streets of Naples. King Kike pays me in American dollars so don't fucking get moralistic on me.

Stung by his words, I prissily chastised him for his racism. Sal Mineo roared his laughter.

—You think that Syd gives a fuck being called a kike? You think that Syd is anything like those faggot Jew boys we knew back at college? Syd never went to fucking college. His old man's still in jail for murdering a man. Syd's probably done a few hits himself. You got a problem with that? You got a problem with Syd? Or is it you got a problem with me?

I was about to answer that maybe it was Sal Mineo himself who had a problem with what he was doing. I was about to say, you're drinking too much, you're smoking too much, you're fucking teenagers. I was about to say that we were approaching our middle age and that I was worried for our health. But I remembered his generosity to me, I remembered
the calmness I felt when his head rested on my chest that morning.

—I don't have a problem with it.

—Fuck off, of course you do. I'm taking sex photos of kids. You've got to have a problem with it.

He looked around the bar.

—I wish your dad could have seen all this. He'd reckon he had been proved right.

—In what way?

He pointed to the men at the bar.

—They're all unemployed and drunk and their kids and grandkids are making money by selling their fucking arses.

Dad OD'd just after the Wall fell, just before the Soviet Union cracked apart.

—Dad would just want to know how much you get paid.

—What about you, Isaac?

—What about me?

—What the fuck are you doing? Why is Colin not with you? Why are you travelling with a bloody backpack at thirty-five? His questions were cruel, insistent. They came at me fast. And how's
your
work? How much are you earning? Are you still working a grade up from a checkout chick?

—I still work part-time, sure. That's how I finance my photography.

—How much are you selling for?

I was ashamed. I was ashamed to be thirty-five and to not be making a decent living. Travelling with a fucking pack on my back.

—Jesus, Sal, we never expected to make money out of our art, did we?

Sal Mineo was staring hard at me.

—So you're still hoping to subvert the racist representations of colonial iconography?

I laughed. But he wasn't laughing. His next words were vicious.

—Look around you, Isaac. Look where you are. Do you know what contempt these blokes have for you, with your headstart in capitalism and you're still fucking mouthing off about silly ideas you learnt at college. Beauty and art and fucking politics. They'd sell their fucking children for a buck. And you want to talk about fucking aesthetics and ethics.

He stopped. He took my hand and he slowly touched each of my fingers.

—You've got a child's hand, Isaac. Even the most hardened Aussie has these hands. You know that's what they call Australians here? Children. Even Milos senses that, that you're more innocent than anyone he's ever met.

He dropped my hand.

—You'll get a fuck tonight if you want it, they'll all be hanging for you. You want to fuck Milos tonight?

I lit a cigarette. The coke high was subsiding but I was back in Sal Mineo's apartment looking down at his photographs. His real photography, the photos he is not paid to take. There is clarity.

—Then why are you still taking your photographs, Sal? Why do you care to make them beautiful and real? What are you hoping to redeem? Their souls?

In a dingy dark bar in Prague, Sal Mineo punched me. The men stopped their conversations, looked over, then their eyes darted away, as one of them mocked,
puftah
, and there was laughter.

I wiped the tears from Sal Mineo's cheeks. He gently took my chin and looked at my mouth.

—It's the same word, he said to me, the word for faggot in Czech and Aussie is the same.

There was a puzzled wariness in his eyes.

—What is it?

—I split your lip, but there's no blood.

I pulled away from his touch. We finished our drinks and left.

On the way to his apartment we went past a small shrine in which a picture of the Catholic Madonna sat atop a bunch of dried yellow flowers. A small bouquet had been kicked into the gutter.

Sal Mineo stopped.

—A gypsy girl was murdered here, murdered and raped. Her family keep putting the flowers there.

There was black graffiti on the footpath, a rush of scrawled Czech.

—And what's that say?

—That's old. That's from the Velvet Revolution. That's history.

 

Sal Mineo took a siesta but I couldn't sleep. I snorted more coke, sat on the sill, and looked out on Prague. From these heavens, the city seemed tranquil and beautiful. I watched white pigeons circle the spires of the cathedral and settle on the tiled roofs. A billboard advertising washing machines—a young woman's features frozen in ecstatic gratitude—and the darting cars on the narrow streets were the only evidence of the last century.

From this height I had another hit of cocaine and sat myself on the bed with Sal Mineo's photographs. There was no evidence of the lewd grins or faggy poses of Milos on the stepladder or the bored automation of the two boys fornicating on the mattress. Instead the boys and young men gazing out at me were diffident, gentle, hard, cold, laughing, arrogant, shy, brutal, tender, handsome, ugly, thin, yawning, fat, happy, sad; and every single one of them retained, at least under Sal Mineo's scrutiny, the ease and confidence of youth. Every pore seemed visible on their skin. Scars, residue of snot in a nostril. A young man's unshaven face, his growth not quite covering his soft cheeks.

I went to my pack and rummaged inside for the camera. I sat on the sill and scrutinised my sleeping friend. His arms
were above his head, the sheet forming a diagonal across his back. I raised the camera. A cloud drifted across the sun and the room darkened. I waited, I thought I was holding my breath. The sun emerged and I snapped him. I found myself praying. Please, I implored some version of God, please let this be a photograph of friendship. Just a photograph of my mate. When I finished I took off my clothes, climbed into bed next to Sal Mineo, and whispered, I like your work. He hugged me and I fell into sleep.

Twilight was coming through the window when we awoke. Sal Mineo put on a burnt CD which jumped a few times but I didn't mind because it contained horny illegal remixes of Prince and Eminem that I'd never heard before, and with a stamp of our dancing feet the CD always righted itself. We played it over and over as we showered and got dressed. We were camp and bitchy, sarcastic and nihilistic and we fell about giggling. I found an old CD mix of Sal Mineo's titled
Totally Summer Hitz 1993
which was full of half-forgotten pop memories for us. We were dressing up, preening, getting ourselves to look our best but with a determined effort on both our parts to not only look attractive, but also laid-back and straight. Just like in the old days, when we were younger and arrogant and vain, when we'd prize ourselves on looking both masculine and heterosexual. Never too try-hard. We were having fun. We had not been friends like this for a long, long time.

—What's this dinner going to be like?

Sal Mineo offered me a beer, lined up some more coke and did not answer me. He skipped the CD to a madding and infectious fluff of pop and I turned down the volume.

—What's it going to be like?

—King Kike doesn't have dinners. There'll be lots of alcohol and rabbit food.

—
I've got the the Key, I've got the Secret.

He looked at me contemptuously.

—I can't believe you're singing to that shit.

I just sang louder. Then abruptly stopped, bored with the song myself.

—Are you with anyone? Here in Prague?

I knew that intimate questions could often annoy Sal Mineo but though he warned me with a look, he relaxed and nodded his head.

—Pano. I'm in love with a man called Pano.

I snorted the coke, my mind travelling fast. Sal Mineo never used the word love much. In fact, I'd never heard him use the word before.

—Who is he?

—Married.

—Are you sleeping together?

—Sometimes.

—How often?

—Sometimes.

—Does his wife know?

Sal Mineo had had enough. He jumped to his feet, turned off the CD and began switching off the lights.

But returning from the toilet, he had three black and white photographs in his hand. He showed me then. The man's face was scarred above the left eye and there was also a gash across his chin. He had dirty blond hair, cut close to the scalp in a military style. His mouth was big, his eyes set close together. He looked sad; the half-smile sitting on his lips did not travel to his eyes. He was staring somewhere beyond the camera. A thatch of tightly coiling hair escaped from his shirt collar. Sal Mineo put the photographs back into their clear plastic sheath and tossed them on the bed.

In the street he walked with his hands in the pockets of his denim jacket, and his gait was sure and energetic. I followed a little behind him. When he turned around he was smiling. The metro station was largely empty except for an old woman repeatedly running her fingers along her varicose
veins. Billboards for soft drink and a Hugh Grant movie were ludicrous plastered across the stark Soviet-era design of the platform. The train arrived on time.

 

We ascended into the night. In the distance I could see Prague Castle illuminated by the half-moon's feeble rays. We were in a dark boulevard flanked by imposing nineteenth-century mansions. I had no idea that such space existed in this city, that there were people who did not live in cramped squares on top of each other. We crossed the boulevard and approached one of the dark buildings. An iron gate locked us out. Sal Mineo pressed an intercom and a sharp voice in accented English asked for our names. Sal answered. There was a buzz, and the gate slowly opened.

Discreet yellow globes, a row of flickering glow-worms that jutted out from the balconies, lit the courtyard. A fountain fluttered in the middle of the square and I could hear the faint murmur of classical music.

—Who lives here? I wondered out loud.

—Once the aristocrats did, then it housed top commie bureaucrats and now rich ex-pats live here.

Sal Mineo's tone was bored as he monotonously listed the ironies of history. He rang a doorbell and it was answered by a tall young man, his hair gelled up in a ridiculous rocker quiff. Silently he waved us into the apartment.

A cavernous living space contained ottoman sofas, footstools and rugs. A large poster for Billy Wilder's
A Foreign Affair
, Marlene Dietrich looking seductively over a naked shoulder at the ruins of postwar Berlin, dominated the room. A preposterous wooden spiral staircase rose up from the far end of the room to a dome high in the ornate ceiling. The young man asked us what we wanted to drink. I said a whisky and he asked what kind. Sal Mineo chose a vodka and lime, Absolut he demanded, and my friend drinks Chivas. Make sure it's fresh lime with the vodka.

—So you made it, you ugly wop putz.

Syd's body was so large he could barely descend the staircase. He grabbed Sal by the neck and planted a wet kiss on his cheek. He then grabbed me in a bearhug. I could smell his expensive cologne, the vodka on his breath, the fierce overwhelming sweat of the man. He gripped me for a moment too long. I had to get my breath when he released me.