Dogs

The sun was blazing through the dirty windows of the old Czechoslo­vakian carriage as passengers looked out at the scenery and blew smoke. I was traveling alone, hungover and weighed down with luggage. The compartment reeked of beer and Pelinkovac liqueur, which we’d polished off the night before to celebrate my going away to film school.

The parting gift my friends surprised me with was the matching tattoo that still burned on my ribs, but made me feel brand-new, as if it had buried the innocent shy geek whose inhibitions had tortured me since first grade. I was sure of myself—my new self—soaking up the summer sun and the intimations of a bona fide life. After passing through Slovenia and Austria, the train raced across Czechoslovakia’s monotonous plains.

The landscape became flatter and flatter, the tracks older, the conductors sterner and rounder. Before I left, I was told that Czechs were friendly and not to worry about not knowing the language, since Czechs had vacationed on the Adriatic for generations and understood a few phrases in our language. And they were fond of Croatians—especially the women.

But failures in com­munication didn’t scare me. On the contrary, the thought of becoming an exotic foreigner—who smelled of the sea and cited Southern temperament as grounds for her imbalances—thrilled me. Somewhere in the vicinity of Brno, the train abruptly stopped.

For hours my head had rested against the cold window, my back twisted out of shape, my butt caved into the dusty upholstered seat. The backpack I’d filled with toiletries and makeup lunged from the luggage rack and slammed against my head. I stood up and put it back, feeling the stiffness of my entire body.

I stretched and peered out the window into the fog of an unfamiliar landscape. Police lights ate away at the featurelessness of that autumn day. In the adjoining compartment, an older red-haired woman with a tired face and caked pink lipstick stared out the window in the same posture as me, visibly alarmed.