Walking Backwards. Mark Frutkin

      To Sarah, Kathleen, Christopher, and Joshua:

       the world is your oyster

      I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.— Oscar Wilde

      Acknowledgements

      Alba first appeared in the Ottawa Citizen.

      Portions of Paris first appeared in Ottawa Magazine.

      The section in Paris on sighting Samuel Beckett first appeared in Quill & Quire in a somewhat different form.

      Venice first appeared in Descant Magazine also in a slightly different version.

      My deepest gratitude and profound thanks to the many people who had editorial involvement in developing this manuscript: Nicola Vulpe; Tom Henighan; my brother, Bud Frutkin; and my sister-in-law, Ann Frutkin; and most importantly, my most patient and understanding wife, Faith Seltzer. Special thanks to Vince Pietropaolo, as well as Bill Bhaneja. Any errors or omissions are my fault alone.

      Thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for a Writers’ Reserve grant to help support the writing of this book.

      (Note: While this is a work of nonfiction, in some cases, names have been changed.)

      Preface

      Walking Backwards Through

      Ten Cities Around the Globe

      Tradition has it that the first city was founded by Cain, a murderer.

      Throughout history, cities have been given a bad rap. Shelley said “Hell is a city much like London” and, at times, it’s hard to disagree with Jean-Jacques Rousseau who stated, “Cities are the abyss of the human species.” Still today, every city has its dark underside.

      Yet cities are where civilization blossoms. Great cities are filled with great museums, concert halls, publishing houses, jazz cafés, and trend-setting restaurants. Tomorrow’s art is cooked up in a garret in Soho, a tenement in Osaka, or a bistro kitchen in Montreal. The next Ulysses is written in downtown Toronto, Shanghai, or Amsterdam. Artists of all sorts gravitate to cities to consort with their peers and be inspired. Cities are like Nietszche’s universal tree — if its branches reach into heaven, its roots must reach into hell.

      Walking Backwards is a look back at ten cities (more or less) and what happened there, for a city, above all, is where things happen. The journey includes cities large and small, from Paris and Delhi to Alba and Boulder, and covers a time period of over forty years.

      Book One

      Walking Backwards

      1

      Istanbul,

      1968

      Istanbul, ancient Byzantium, fabled Constantinople, Gateway to the Orient. We have arrived at last in the city of multiple names. But why is it snowing?

      I stand in line in the vast echoing space of the main train station of Istanbul with the two Michaels: one of Irish descent, the other Lebanese, and like me (at that time), both American citizens. It’s January and, outside, a wet, heavy snow settles on the city. All three of us wear backpacks in which we each carry, along with our own clothing, a bolt of new cloth — fine English wool — that a young, engaging Jordanian we met on the train has asked us to carry through Turkish customs for him.

      “You are Americans; I am sure they will not bother to check you,” Ahmed had pointed out with confidence, soon after ingratiating himself with us by pulling out and passing around the train compartment an expensive bottle of Johnnie Walker Scotch.

      As soon as we had arrived and disembarked in the station, Ahmed had disappeared.

      The slow stuttering line in which we stand consists of several thousand travellers, and extends for half a kilometre through the station. No sign now of our new Jordanian friend with his preternaturally wrinkled face and his wide, generous smile. His gentle charisma dovetailed perfectly with our trusting natures and, innocents that we were, it took little to convince us to carry his three bolts of cloth. Each bolt was about thirty inches long, twelve inches wide, two inches thick, and we had stuffed them into our packs without hesitation.

      From my place in line, I figure that Ahmed has been swallowed by the crowd, a chaotic mix of poor families, old men and women, young children hanging off their mothers, soldiers, and gypsies. We are the only obvious North Americans in the station, surrounded by a sea of Turks, Bulgarians, Yugoslavs, Jordanians, Syrians, and other Middle Easterners. Few Western tourists come to Istanbul in January. As I wait, I begin to wonder where Ahmed has disappeared to. As an uneasy feeling uncoils in the pit of my stomach, I try to control my mounting panic.

      The line inches forward, approaching half a dozen long wooden tables that stretch across the room. The customs officials stand behind these tables, appearing stern and serious in their too-tight uniforms. As we wait, we notice that they are scrupulously examining everything. They empty cheap suitcases and sacks, demanding to see the contents of every parcel and package. We notice that one customs official has uncapped a tube of toothpaste, which he is squeezing, scrutinizing the paste as it oozes out.

      “What could they be looking for?” we ask each other. “No one smuggles drugs into Turkey. Jewels? Diamonds? Gold? What?” We give each other uncomprehending, worried looks.

      The line lurches forward again in fits and starts and still there is no sign of Ahmed. Now we are swivelling our heads back and forth, looking for the Jordanian to come join us at the last minute. Why has he disappeared? I’m sure he’ll find us, I think, with an entirely unjustified faith. At the last minute, I’m sure he’ll come running up and go through customs with us. Where the hell is he?

      The family of four in front of us is called to the customs table. The three of us wait, clutching our American passports like drowning men holding to bits of grey-green flotsam. We are next in line. There is no sign of Ahmed.

      In 1968, the two Michaels and I were students at Loyola University in Chicago and had decided to take the third-year abroad program at the school’s overseas campus in Rome. We flew to Italy in September and settled in to learning Italian, how to drink wine, and how to roll spaghetti on a fork. Since we had a full month off over Christmas, we had decided to head to Istanbul by way of Vienna.

      Since we were travelling to different destinations in the few days immediately after Christmas, we decided that we would meet together in Vienna after New Year’s and travel to Istanbul for the remainder of our generous month-long vacation. I had spent Christmas Day at the school in Rome, then headed to Munich with my friend, Albert, a tall, gangly Chicagoan with a mind for science and an eye for the ladies. We spent New Year’s Eve celebrating in the jazz clubs of Munich and got gustily drunk on German beer, finishing our late evening over a bowl of goulash suppe at a garishly lit restaurant crowded with bleary-eyed revellers like ourselves.

      The next morning I awoke in our cheap hotel room with my skull feeling two feet thick. Hearing Albert stumbling about packing, I mumbled a farewell as he headed out to catch a train for Paris. Several hours later — my eyes still filled with sand and my mouth feeling like dry, crinkly, yellowed newspaper at the bottom of a bird cage — I had to force myself from bed in order to catch my own train for Salzburg. I would spend a day in Salzburg and then hitchhike to Vienna to meet the two Mikes.

      I made