Trafika Europe 1 - Northern Idyll

On the waterfront, cold and hoarse, familiar to everyone in the city (having seen him so many times), playing his accordion, his fingers mechanical, the music as numb as his ashen, bristly cheek, but making a living (it was a good site with plenty of people, handfuls of change tossed into his bag like trash). Children crowding by the railings – interspersed with parents – gleefully bumping into each other, crumbling bread for ducks (by the crossing under the bridge). The ducks swam up to the riverbank, clambered out on to the embankment faced with rock, rats scurrying among them to nobody’s surprise; a swan shoved its head down into the water, looking like a big snowy mound. Really he was Alik (“Albert” in his passport), but friends called him El. Having two names is good, at least I like it. A girl asked (in all seriousness) “Is El short for Daniel?” and her innocence was so delightful and plausible that for a time, while they were together, he was Daniel for me and for that Vika. Later, when he dumped her, or rather, just left her, exiled her from his presence, Daniel was forgotten and fell away. I don’t think El could really love women, he didn’t know how to do it. He loved the situations, the eventfulness of love, the motivation and seriousness of it, but he was just not that bothered about girls: their eyes or their lips, their waists or shoulders, their temperament, their souls, what actually made them them, they were not events (just material), Alik had no opinion of them at all, and it was not

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