February 13-16, LIONS AND TIGERS AND LEOPARDS, OH MY!

I got in late on a chilly damp Saturday and lounged for a day or so.  Unfortunately, I came with a bad cold and wasn’t up to getting to the theater, although there are quite a few plays that I wanted to see. A new coffee bar has opened about half a mile from my hotel, with the best cappuccino I’ve ever drunk in London—Tomtom’s, on the corner of Elizabeth and Ebury Streets.  One morning when I had an hour to spare I hiked over to Charing Cross Road and tried Vergnano’s, also very good, but a cold place compared to Tomtom’s

A fabulous dinner on the 15th with my English agent, David Grossman, and his wife, and then on Tuesday, Kerry Hood from Hodder took me to a wildlife preserve in Kent, dedicated to endangered big cats.  It’s a breeding preserve that works with zoos and nature parks around the world.  We got a private tour, where we were allowed to pet lions (back of the hand against the fence so as not to have a loose finger sticking through—that is definitely lunch on the foot.

One lion licked the back of my hand, the tongue incredibly rough.  I backed away instinctively and found blood on my hand—just a scrape.  The volunteer showing us around said their tongues are rough enough to strip flesh from bone. I wanted to show everyone my wound, by way of bragging that I was as tough as V I, but I hadn’t been courageous enough to hold my hand still for a real scrape—so my little nick healed way too fast.

It was quite wonderful to be so close to these animals, with just a fence separating us.  My pictures didn’t turn out too well—I hoped I would have one of the lion’s open mouth when it got fed up with—well, perhaps, not feeding on me—and began roaring in earnest.  We saw about 30 different species of cat, including the small, ultra-shy Pallas cats—the oldest known feline species, dating back about 12 million years.

Sara feeds a chicken leg to a tiger

Kerry has fed the tiger--Sara's finger wasn't fast enough on the switch to record it!

The Lion is annoyed at being denied the rest of Sara for lunch

THE TOUR BEGINS

February 17-18

The tour began with media in London, lunch with some old friends, like Barry Forshaw, and some new acquaintances, including the Guardian’s Claire Armistead, who runs their new podcast feature, and is the face behind the Guardian’s twittering.  Print journalism is as hard hit in the UK as it is in the US, but British newspapers are still putting out substantial editions every day.  However, the Guardian has 10 times the online readership as it does in print—so the paper, like so many others, is trying new new media approaches, and also, scratching its head over how to charge for content on line.

The evening of the 18th was one of the tour highlights for me—on stage at the Royal Festival Hall with Val McDermid.  Val is one of the most generous and knowledgeable crime writers around, and we had a great 90 minutes together in front of about 300 readers.

Val and Sara at the Royal Festival Hall

A TOUR DE FORCE, et de GRANDE VITESSE

February 19-25

Like every tour I’ve done for Hodder, everything was well organized and well executed.  Working closely with bookstores and libraries, Hodder was able to set up events that averaged over 100 attendees, which made it feel worth my while to go such a distance for a tour.

The English tour took place in a wide range of venues, from the Watermill Theatre in Newbury, where a theater has been built around a medieval water wheel, to a village hall near Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England, where the program had to end at two sharp so that tables could be put away and carpets laid down for the regular weekly “Carpet Bowling” tournament.

By the way, Pat Harper, who pleaded nerves a while back, was a brilliant presenter and co-conspirator at the Watermill.  And she brought chocolate, as promised.  What a trouper.

Mostly Books, a hardworking little bookstore in Abingdon, holds events at the Guildhall in the abbey close.  It’s an unapologetic tribute to Baroque architecture, with gilt paint and an ornate ceiling that kept distracting me while I read.

In Milton Keynes, a woman who used to own a bookstore in Botswana came up to say “hey.” She became good friends with some Chicago friends of mine, Jean Fishbeck and Judy Popovich, when Judy went to Botswana to help establish a school of nursing there.

At the Hexham Village Hall, the event sponsored by Cogito Books, I met a woman named Liesbeth Langford, whose Dutch father lived underground during World War II—his role in the resistance was to find homes for Jewish children living in hiding, and to  move them at a moment’s notice if neighbors were betraying them.  Cogito’s Alan Grint published the woman’s memoir of her father’s work, Written by Candlelight.  My left-hand partner told me about a French acquaintance who delivered false papers to wanted people in occupied France—she carried them in her bicycle, stuck inside groceries, and rode with great insouciance through the French countryside.  Altogether a very emotionally moving lunch.

In the Village Hall for lunch and a reading, before the weekly game of carpet bowling

In Cambridge, I got hopelessly lost and was very nearly late for my evening event—absolutely maddening, racing around the streets.  And in Newcastle, a bus would have demolished me if the driver hadn’t been more alert than I—he braked about twenty inches from my non-functioning head.

The Newcastle Public Library is six months old and a dream building, all glass, so that inside one feels the light in all the spaces designed for readers and books to get together.

At Ely, a woman asked me to inscribe a book for a friend who is seriously depressed, and then added, “V I is too tough to be likable.”  I wondered if she hopes V I’s toughness will be a rebuke or a goad to her depressed friend, but I just signed the book without comment, as one must.

In York, I met a woman from Iran who came with her daughter; they worried about what is happening in their home country, with the arrests and the clamping down again by the hardliners.  In Nottingham, on a cold wet day, Ann Giles, the Bookwitch, made the long trek from the middle of England for a brief chat before I was whisked off to Scarborough, where a heavy snowfall had put down six inches of new snow by morning.  The streets and sidewalks were too slick to make it down to the oceanfront.  And Scarborough Fair is a long time in the past, now.

Sara and the Bookwitch

The UK is holding elections in early May.  The media coverage is tame by US standards—thank heaven—but charges and counter-charges fill the air, including the role of the Conservatives’ media specialist in invading private e-mails of thousands of public figures, and allegations that the Labour Prime Minister is so vicious to his staff that they called a bullying hotline for help.

Meeting friends for drinks one night, we saw a sign in a bar that reads, “Don’t be a Tosser.”  A lovely word, tosser, meaning a kind of jerk.  I keep repeating it to myself when I feel a bout of tossiness coming on.

HALF A LEAGUE ONWARD

February 26, London-Simferopol.

I had to be up by 3:45, but the night before an early rising I don’t sleep well, so I finally got up at 3 and did my exercises.  I do at least 20 minutes every morning to keep my neck in shape, and to stretch out my legs, but I did think I was a bit strange, doing my routine so compulsively that early in the day.

I  then hopped blear-eyed into a cab to go to Heathrow.  Arriving obediently 2 hours ahead of my international flight, I instead had to wait for an hour for the terminal to open.  Sigh.  And then a long travel day, arriving ten hours later in Simferopol.

My cousin Barb, and her neighbor’s son, Serdar Seytaptiev, waited anxiously on the other side of customs while I stood in a very slow queue.  Somehow I was at its tail-end, and then, not speaking Russian, and the immigration official not speaking English, we had a long ordeal of me trying to explain why I was visiting the country at all.  It reminded me of my student days, visiting Bratislava and East Berlin at the height of the cold war—the tarmac packed with soldiers, the terminal a grim grey Stalinesque building, empty of any amenities, and only some dozen flights in and out all day, most to other old USSR destinations.

However, I finally got past all the barriers.  And there were Barb and Serdar.  A friend of the Seytaptiev family had kindly offered to drive. Cars are scarce in Crimea, where the average monthly income is $185 USD, and gas (petrol) averages $4 a gallon, so this was far more than run-of-the-mill generosity.  The roads are quite unforgiving, as many are unpaved and are pitted with deep ruts.  These turn into slippery clay at any rainfall, and the ruts themselves become arroyos.

The Seytaptiev family—Lenora, Neshet and the two children, Serdar and Safie—invited us to dinner, an amazing meal of salad, pasta with turkey and mushrooms, smoked salmon, and then plates of chocolate and cookies—which are whipped out on all occasions, as I learned during my brief stay.

Cousin Barb with the Seytaptiev family

Despite my jetlag and my long travel day, I was so enchanted with the warmth of Barb’s new neighbors that we stayed up quite late, talking.  Only Serdar speaks enough English for me to communicate, but between Barb, who works hard at her Russian, and my old dictionary, and everyone’s good will, we had a pleasant evening.

Sara and Barb with Lenora and Neshet

February 27, Simferopol

Barb took me on her favorite walk today, up into the hills above Simferopol, where we could sit on a bluff overlooking the city and all the little pockets of houses being built.

Barb lives in a Crimean Tatar quarter called Ak Mechet. In some ways, Ak Mechet is like a western pioneer town, with pitted rutted roads, garbage everywhere, houses in every state of construction or dilapidation.  Everyone just digs out a hole for a foundation and starts building on top of it.  And they build their own houses, out of stone, do all the plastering, wiring, plumbing themselves—pitching in the way American pioneers did—and coming up with quite wonderful dwellings.

The garbage is depressing, but I think of the beach where I take my dog in the summer—every morning it is absolutely plastered with bottles, plastic bags, used Pampers.  The city sends a crew around each morning to clean it, but it is disgusting that we need a crew, that people can’t pick up after themselves.  And in Chicago, we have garbage cans and a Streets and Sanitation crew to empty them—infrastructure which is lacking in a country without money.

In Simferopol's old quarter. The gas pipeline abuts the wall of the house

We had coffee with Barb’s landlady, who lives next door –literally—the two houses are about a yard apart.  Her daughter joined us.  Both women are accountants, and we had a merry time struggling in pigeon Russian and the daughter’s bits of English—but communicating amazingly well.

Encountering goats as we walk up the hill in Simferopol

The house where Barb lives was the landlady’s home until a few years ago, when she and her husband put up a newer bigger one and began renting out the old one.  Compared to many in Crimea, or perhaps New York City, Barb has a lot of room, three main rooms, a kitchen-bath, and a utility room.  The house contains five iron beds, a desk top, a dining room table, a number of plastic chairs and stools and a stove.  One of Barb’s co-workers, a Crimean Tatar, lives in one room with no running water and only a hotplate for cooking.  She’s been living there for 15 years, on a waiting list for better housing supposedly set aside for returning Crimean Tatars.

Barb contemplates one of her five beds

Sara with Maia--Barb's landlady--and Maia's daughter, Slyare

The Peace Corps wants volunteers to live in their communities, and in the same way members of the community do.  So—even if Barb could afford a car, she shouldn’t own or drive one.  And like much of Ak Mechet, she has water between 5 in the morning, when the person in charge of the subdivision’s water gets up to turn it on, and about 11 a.m.  Laundry is done by hand—so you can imagine, it’s not done often.  There is no garbage collection, but there is plentiful heat, with the ubiquitous gas pipes running above ground, since it was cheaper to build them up instead of underneath.

In the afternoon we went into the downtown, where I saw the outside of the library where Barb works three days a week.  We then went to Ukraine’s most important library, the Franco, where we were greeted with amazing warmth by   Natalia Lopanovskaya, who heads the foreign language section and dropped her own work to give her unexpected visitors a tour.  The building is only two years old and is a fine modern place.  Ms. Lopanovskaya speaks perfect English, and showed us their current exhibitions—one on French playwrights, and one on Isaac Asimov.

Sara with Natalia Lopanovskaya at the Franco Library

Outside the scene was less cheerful—we walked along the river, which also is filled with garbage, but even more depressing were the numbers of young people wandering around with the same dull hopeless faces I see in the poverty-ridden pockets of Chicago’s south side.  No jobs, no prospects for finding them, a very hard row to hoe.  And the concomitant drug and alcohol abuse that narcotizes people who feel hopeless.  Unemployment runs at around 40 percent—which, by the way, is also true on Chicago’s south and west sides.  What will we do with this generation globally, or locally?  People like Barb are on the ground helping, and maybe the rest of us can do our part, too.

Lenin's statue still stands in most Crimean cities

February 28, Bakhchisaray, Chyfyt-Kaleh

We got up bright and early and took the bus into town, where we picked up the bus to Bakhchisaray, where one of Crimea’s cave cities is carved into the mountainside.  Ever since Barb wrote about these on her blog, I’ve been hoping to see one.  I don’t know how they were built, but they are somewhat like pueblos, dwellings chiseled out of the mountains.  Over their 1200-year history, successive groups lived in them, from the Mongolian Tatars who conquered the peninsula, to a Jewish settlement, to Crimean Tatars.  I am woefully ignorant about how or why these different peoples lived there, but we spent a wonderful day exploring the caves, hiking up from our bus stop about half a mile or a mile, and then wandering through the caves.

Sara decides to retire to a cave to write--but where's the cappucino machine?

Chyfyt-Kaleh covers about a mile of ground, with a beehive of caves, some nesting inside or on top of each other.  It’s the only one of the cave cities that still has some of the surface buildings still standing—a mausoleum for the wife of one of the khans, and what looks like perhaps a synagogue.  If I follow up on my impulse to read about them, I’ll let you know what I learn.

We sat on the bluffs eating bread and cheese and looking out at the valleys.  It was utterly quiet, except for the wind.  You could hear the occasional car as it passed on a road some half mile below us, and the distant piping of a busker, but other than that, it was just us and the birds.  Barb says in the summer it’s absolutely jam-packed, so I’m glad I got to go in the winter.

Looking out through one of the cave openings

Barb pauses to see if I'm keeping up at Chyfyt-Kaleh

Memorial of the Jewish presence at Chyfyt-Kaleh

Outside Chyfyt-Kaleh an Orthodox church is built high into the rock, and Barb and I climbed up to look at it, covering our heads and going into the back of the church, where a service of some kind was in progress.  I had never been in an Orthodox church, so I joined in the bowing and crossing with the congregation—which rather flabbergasted Barb.  I can’t explain why I did it, except the desire to experience rather than observe what goes on around me.

We then went to one of Crimea’s lovely historical sites, an intact palace of the last of the great Khans to rule the peninsula.  We were rather worn out by our long hike and only wandered around the courtyard.

Back home, Barb cooked up a dinner of local groats with carrots and onions.  She does a lot with a handful of pans and only a cooktop—years of camping in the wilderness has turned her into a wizard with few supplies.  She is, by the way, an excellent cook.

We went across the street to the Seytaptievs, where we had dessert and hours of conversation.

Serdar and Barb

At one point, Serdar and I went into the family room and sat in front of the computer, talking about life and the possibility of friendship.  Can you have a real friend, he asked, which I took to mean a true friend, someone truly on your wavelength, someone who does not lie to you or use you.  He’s struggling with that right now in his life, but we all struggle with that.  I assured him that it is possible to find real friends, but you are lucky if you find three or four in the course of a life—don’t expect that you will often find them.  He reminds me so much of my own adolescent self, ardent, longing for the harmonies, in Frank Wilczek’s phrase, that being with him makes my heart turn over.

Sara with Serdar

March 1, Yalta, Crimea

Barb took me to Yalta, so I could see Livadia Palace, where Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt met in February, 1945, to carve up Europe.

Barb once again expertly navigated the confusing Crimean buses.  We  walked a mile across muddy rutted roads, through back yards, skirting the ubiquitous dogs—all running free, but all intent on their own doggy business, not curious about the humans passing among them—goats and chickens which graze along the verge, or peck in the garbage piles that dot the landscape, and came to a place where a bus appeared.

Typical street in Simferopol, with house under construction

We rode that to one of Simferopol’s four main bus stations, where we caught a bus to the Yalta main bus station, 55 miles, or an hour and forty-five minutes, from Simferopol.  We rode up and down winding mountain roads, but the fog was too thick to see the landscape, or the Black Sea when it (supposedly) appeared on the horizon.

Once in Yalta, we wandered along the main street, into little shops to find cheese, and the extremely delicious bread—a fresh-baked loaf costs less than 2 cents in US money—and fresh fruit, which you find everywhere as well.  Then Barb once again put us onto a bus and got us off at what looked like the middle of nowhere—but was in fact the top to a flight of stairs leading down to Livadia Palace.

Please don’t be imagining Greyhound buses.  These are little vans that grind up and down the hills and streets of Crimea.  They stop whenever somebody flags them down, and, when the bus is crowded, people hand money up and down the rows to the driver.  Change is always delivered to the right person–like paying for beer at an American ballpark.

(Oddly, with this scrupulous honesty on the bus, there is unpleasant corruption in other areas, most notably, university diplomas.  People recounted to me being offered the chance to buy their degree as soon as they enrolled in university, and Ukrainians say they try not to go to local doctors, because you don’t know who really studied medicine, and who bought a diploma.)

Livadia had once been the Tsar’s Black Sea vacation home.  It’s surprisingly modest in size for an Imperial residence, built on a bluff overlooking the Black Sea, with extensive gardens now rather run down.  There’s so little money in Crimea it’s hard for them to maintain public places and parks.  Even though Yalta is further north than Minneapolis, the Black Sea gives it quite a temperate climate—palm trees thrive there, and the Tsar’s gardens have gigantic rhododendrons.

Roosevelt and Churchill gave Stalin carte blanche to take over Eastern Europe after the war.  It was a painful feeling to stand looking at the terrace where the famous photograph was taken, knowing that American and European history of the last 65 years was set in motion that cold February day.  The Cold War began there.  The lines of the Iron Curtain were drawn, and five decades of suppression in eastern Europe set into motion.

The facade of Livadia Palace where Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin posed for their famous photograph

Appropriately sombre expression for the "Big Three"

At the same time, the war was still being fought inch by bitter inch in the western theater, and it may have seemed impossible to Roosevelt and Churchill to summon the human and physical resources to push further east than into Germany.  I don’t know, but the toll in human death and despair that came in the conference’s wake is difficult to think about.

The day my cousin and I  spent there was chilly and overcast.  We couldn’t see the mountains that ring the coast, and it was too chilly to enjoy walking along the esplanade.  We took refuge in a quiet coffee bar, where we drank beautiful looking cappuccinos.

Lounging over cappuccino in Yalta

Chekhov and Pushkin both spent time at Yalta; Chekhov wrote one rather amusing story called, I believe, the Esplanade, set in that place, with one of his fussy hypochondriacs taking a seaside cure.

Back in Simferopol, we had dinner with two of Barb’s young American friends, one a Peace Corps volunteer, one a Fulbright scholar, working with local schools who are trying to revive the Crimean Tatar language among the current generation of children.  We had lovely Indian curries in a nearly-empty restaurant, without much heat—another reminder of how much everyday comfort we take for granted is a luxury in a struggling economy.

And then another bus, another mile walk home, where we spent the rest of the evening with Serdar, Barb’s poetry-loving neighbor.  He touched me greatly by giving me a beautiful edition of Pasternak’s poetry, in Russian, of course, which means I must try to learn enough Russian to read some of the poems.  We sat up late talking, about life and poetry, and Ukraine, and Serdar’s longings to attend university in America.  He so idealizes America that he has studied all our presidents.  He asked me my favorite, and when I promptly said, “Lincoln,” his face brightened: his own favorite as well.

At one point my husband called us on Skype, and utterly charmed Serdar with his friendliness and his joking around.  Serdar said no Ukrainian professor—let alone one of my husband’s distinction—would talk to a young person in such a friendly way—I forbore to say that not too many Americans would, either.

March 2, Simferopol, Crimea (Ukraine)

My cousin took me to the Gasprinsky Library to meet the staff and to give a presentation on my writing.  Barb’s assignments for the Peace Corps include three days at Gasprinsky, one day at a children’s library, and one day with a group of artists who are trying to get grants to publish their work.

Among the 50 million or so people Stalin butchered were ten million in northern Ukraine—starved to death with calculated brutality.  And in the south, in Crimea, the Tatars were decimated in a forced relocation to Uzbekistan in the 1940’s.  It’s only been in the last twenty years that they’ve been allowed to return home.

The Dutch government helped restore the Crimean Tatar library in the 1990’s and it’s named for Gasprinsky, a Crimean Tatar who was important in modernizing Tatar writing and culture in the late 19th Century –he started the first Crimean Tatar newspaper, wrote books on politics and social history, advocated social equality for women.  (Crimean Tatar is both a language, closely allied to Turkish, and a people.)

We met in the Reader’s Room, a small room with a portrait of Gasprinsky—who looks a bit like Chopin—and various Tatar artifacts hung on the walls—including a beautiful antique lace head scarf.

With the staff at Gasprinsky Library. Nadje, Barb's Crimean counterpart, on far left; deputy director on my left and Arzy, the interpreter, on the far right

A young woman in the library did simultaneous translation—an astonishing act as far as I was concerned, murmuring English into my ear as the Russian speakers spoke, and turning my comments into Russian for the group.  Natalia from the Franco library surprised us by showing up, very generously bringing a beautiful hyacinth—proof that spring will come one of these days—and a bag of lovely chocolates for me to carry home and use as inspiration in my writing—she had startled and flattered me by reading my website.  She also told me that two of my books, Killing Orders and Bitter Medicine, were available in Russian—another surprise, since the Russians never let me know they were preparing a translation. (It would be crude to say they were pirated.)

Under Gasprinsky's romantic portrait at the Gasprinsky Library

We spoke of the roles of women, of our wishes for women’s lives, and we spoke of Yalta and the Yalta conference.  We spoke, too, of the great Russian poets and writers of the 19th and 20th century.  I have a passion for the poets of the 1930’s and ‘40’s, most especially Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova, and it was the first time I was in a group of people who shared my love of her work—except they had the advantage of reading her in Russian, where all the nuances that get lost in translation are available for them.  And they could quote her Requiem at length.

Afterwards the library staff entertained me to coffee and cakes—and chocolate, which, I am happy to report, is ubiquitous in Crimea.  And then it was off to the airport, and the return flight to London and Chicago—which I almost missed because of the delay at the transit desk in Istanbul in issuing my boarding pass.

Neshet, Barb’s generous neighbor, drove us to the airport.  It was hard to say goodbye to my cousin, but wonderful to be able to visualize her in her home, with her wonderful friends, and the streets and sights as she moves around Crimea.

Barb on the Black Sea

March 4, Home again.

I got home late on March 3, after spending 23 hours traveling—my body is a bit bewildered about where it is, but it’s good to be back.  At Heathrow, clearing immigration, my bags were inspected and one officer pulled out a stretch band I use with my neck exercises.  She was suspicious about what it was, but when I explained, she and her colleagues became interested, and we spent about ten minutes doing calisthenics before I boarded the final plane of my journey home.

I keep reflecting on Crimea, on the luxuries we take for granted–running water, veterinary care.  On the public crises we share and share not dealing with–high unemployment, volatile nationalism.  Above all, my cousin’s dauntless spirit, and the depth of her pleasure in the work she’s doing.

I remember when flying was exciting for all the good reasons.  When I first moved to Chicago, I had a calico cat who traveled with me.  In those halcyon days, we didn’t have security systems, and we didn’t have to strip naked, and put our clothes in bins where dirty shoes and diapers recently resided.  My cat was so mellow she used to wrap herself around my neck, like a muffler, and I’d carry her carrier with my suitcase to the gate.  Any number of times, the flight attendants would be so charmed that they’d take her into first class with them and feed her on shrimps and caviar while I sat in steerage–but in those days, steerage included a lovely little meal, nutritionally balanced.

For this trip, which includes 14 days in the UK and four in Crimea, visiting my intrepid cousin Barb who’s in the Peace Corps, I have bought a set of frilly pink undies in case we have to strip that deep.

Once I’m on the road, I know all will be well, but until then–insomnia and angst reign! Excelsior.  More anon.

Kerry Hood chaperoning Sara on the Cam

who is the Toscanini of publicity, has me covering as much of England as we can manage in a week.  I hope that I’ll see some of the UK readers who’ve been posting here along the way.

New Book

I love the titles people have been suggesting for the new book. I think I have enough to go on, and will let you know before I leave for England which one seems to work best.

James Thurber once wrote, “The Beaver is a Working Fool, Who Went to Manual Training School,” an absurd couplet that has clung to me all these years because I seem to be a working fool.  I finished the book last week, after rewriting the middle six chapters twice and the ending five times, and I am sort of in a blur right now.

I’m posting a chapter here, in which, V I is indulging in her favorite hobby, breaking & entering.  I’ve had interesting protest letters on V I’s hobby–”You think you’re so moral,” they tend to read, “and yet your character breaks the law.”  And all I can say is, “right you are.”

Chapter 34

NightWork

We drove down to Club Gouge in Petra’s Pathfinder, Tim in the front seat with my cousin, me drowsing in the back.  I’d collected my picklocks from my car’s glove compartment, and locked my handbag, with Chad’s black armor mitt, in my trunk: I planned to drive straight to the Cheviot labs in the morning.

“So, is this, like your first break-in?” Petra asked Tim.  “It’s my—I don’t know—do I count the time you broke into my apartment when I forgot my keys, Vic?”  She looked over her shoulder at me as she spoke and the Pathfinder fishtailed.

“Keep your eyes on the road: I don’t want it to be my last,” I squawked. Petra managed to straighten out just before colliding with an oncoming bus.

“Do you two gals think because I was a soldier I’m some sort of outlaw?” Tim Radke asked. “I mean, the boss here thinks I’m a hacker and you, you think I’m a break-in artist?”

“I’m the outlaw in this party,” I said, just as Petra started to say, Oh, gosh, me and my motor-mouth.  “Unless you have skills you’re keeping to yourself, I’m the one who can pick a padlock in thirty seconds, using the lip of a sardine can.  Petra, darling Petra, put your damned phone away or let Tim or me drive, okay?”

“Gosh, Vic, I was just—

Tim took the phone from her. “I didn’t survive five years in Iraq to die in a Chicago car crash.”

“Okay, okay, you two bullies.  I’ll get back at you, see if I don’t.”

Without seeing her face, I knew she was giving her exaggerated pout, the look she assumed when she knew she’d been caught in the wrong.  We were taking her car because neither my Mustang nor Tim’s old truck handled well on these slush-filled streets, but I was beginning to realize that a good car isn’t as important as a focused driver.

When we got to Club Gouge, I had Petra drive slowly past so I could see if Olympia had any security in place. The fire damage had been confined to the interior, so no boarding alerted you to the damage.  Only the empty parking lot told passersby the club was shut, that, and a message in the box by the front door used to announce upcoming acts.  Tonight it read: “Club Gouge is closed for repairs. Stay tuned for our grand re-opening next week,” which was clever, because no matter when the repairs were complete, the grand re-opening would happen next week.

No one seemed to be watching the club, either from the alley, or my own forlorn post up on the L platform.  I told Petra to park up the street and to stay in the car with Tim while I worked the lock.  “If I holler, take off and leave me on my own.”

Tim got out of the car with me.   “I learned a thing or two about keeping a lookout when I was in the Army.  If you’re going to be an outlaw to try to help Chad, at least I can keep watch.”

Petra decided that meant she should join us, as well.  She thought she needed to skulk, lurking behind L girders. then dashing to the next open space.  It was Radke who told her she was attracting attention.

“Act normal. Act like you got a right to be here,” he said.  “It’s the only way if a patrol—a cop, I mean—rides by.”

A keypad worked the front lock, but Petra had never been given the combo.  The side door, which opened onto the parking lot, had a keyhole that sat flat against the panel.  It was tricky, but not impossible—although my sore palm enhanced the challenge.

While I worked the lock, Tim disappeared into the shadows behind us.  I trusted him.  Of course I trusted him.  Even if he had a combat medal, he didn’t own expensive clothes: he wore a faded Army parka, not a “soft overcoat.”  Still, I was relieved when the tongue of the lock slipped back and he reappeared, a shadow sliding up to the door.

While I held the tongue flat, he slid a metal strip along the door edge and pried it open.  When I tried to turn on the hall lights, nothing happened. The building was bitterly cold: Olympia, or perhaps the city, had shut down the power to lessen the risk of the fire restarting, or to save money until construction started.

As we moved deeper into the dark building, the acrid stench of charring began to choke us.  Charred and frozen at the same time, what a gruesome end.  I pulled my muffler over my nose and mouth.  I didn’t want to think about what poisons the fire had released: the synthetic fabric in the curtains, the varnish on the stage floor, the polymers in the wire casings, all those must be grade-A carcinogens when they burn.  I imagined my lungs coated with some kind of black grease that would never come out.

“Not all the perfumes of Arabia.”

“Say, what, Vic?” Petra demanded.

I hadn’t realized I’d spoken aloud.  Bad sign.

I shone my flash up the corridor.  The shadows made ghastly shapes—the wires looked like the tentacles of a giant mantis.  I shuddered, but moved forward.  Petra was subdued, even clutching Tim’s arm as we edged our way to the back of the stage.

The Body Artist’s computer was still there, still attached to the web cams and the plasma screens.  I held the flashlight while Tim unhooked the connectors.  We were out of the club and back in Petra’s Pathfinder within ten minutes.

Petra turned north onto Ashland, moving at a fast clip, talking in disjoint sentences: the adrenaline rush made her higher than a fistful of speed.

“Stop!” Tim shouted.

“I’m just saying—“

He grabbed the wheel from her and shoved his foot on the brake.  We stopped inches from a silver SUV that was blocking the intersection at Carroll.  I twisted to look behind us and saw a Mercedes sedan pull up.  As I looked, Rodney began to work his bulky figure from the passenger side.

“On three, you two get out and run as fast and far as you can.  I’m getting into the front seat.  No argument, just go!”

My gun was in my left hand as I spoke.  Tim had his hand on the door handle.  On my count, he jumped from the passenger seat. I opened the rear door.  Petra sat frozen in the driver’s seat.  I yanked open the her door; Tim ran around the back and pulled her out.

Men were climbing from the SUV and heading toward us.  I fired over their heads and Tim and Petra took off down a side street, away from us.  Someone shot back at me, but I was crouching behind the Pathfinder’s open door.  I climbed into driver’s seat, put the car into gear, twisted the wheel and floored the accelerator.

The wheels spun on ice, then grabbed and I crashed into the silver SUV’s left headlight.  The impact knocked me against the steering wheel, but I backed up, gears whining.  Someone was firing at my windshield. The glass splintered but I bore down on the shooter, and he fell backwards, away from my mad driving.

I wrenched the wheel around again and managed a U away from the shooter, toward Rodney and his sedan.  I slithered around him, but just as I thought I was home free, he shot out the Pathfinder’s rear tires.  I bumped down the road on the rims.  In the rearview mirror, I saw Rodney get back into the Mercedes and come after me.

Oncoming traffic honked at me, or at the sedan blocking the right lane, but no one stopped to see what was going on.  Too much MYOB, just like Mrs. Murdstone had said at Mona’s apartment this afternoon.

I jumped from the car at Lake and sprinted toward the L steps.  I’d almost made it when a figure in black outran me and pulled me down.   I rolled over, got into a crouch, gun out, but someone else came from behind and hit me on the side of the head.

Mr. Liu’s alleged crime was the co-authoring of Charter 08, which, inter alia, advocates free speech and the end of single party rule.

The PEN website has complete details of Mr. Liu’s harassment before his arrest and the concomitant harassment of other signatories to Charter 08.

As a member of PEN, I am urging people to write on Mr. Liu’s behalf. Letters should be sent to the Chinese Ambassador to your government. For Americans, the details are:  His Excellency, Mr. Zhou Wenzhong; Ambassador of the PRC to the United States; 2201 Wisconsin Avenue, NW; Washington, DC 20007; Fax:  202.588.9760.

In England, the Ambassador is Madam Fu Ying; 49-51 Portland Place London W1B 1JL; Fax:020-7436 9178.

In Canada, the Ambassador is The Honorable Lan Lijun; 515 ST.PATRICK STREET, OTTAWA, ONTARIO, CANADA, KIN 5H3; Fax: 001-613-7891911 7891414.

My experience in writing on behalf of prisoners of conscience is that fax is the most reliable way to communicate, but if you are more comfortable with email, you can go to the embassy websites to get email information.

Daybreak by Liu Xiaobo

over the tall ashen wall, between

the sound of vegetables being chopped

daybreak’s bound, severed,

dissipated by a paralysis of spirit

what is the difference between the light and the darkness

that seems to surface through my eyes

apertures, from the seat of rust

I can’t tell if it’s the glint of chains

in the cell or the god of nature

behind the wall

daily dissidents

makes the arrogant

sun stunned to no end

daybreak a vast emptiness

you in a far place

with nights of love stored away

We’re lucky to have the talent in the community to make it a  good show, even though the stage is tiny.  Sara Stern is an exceptional actor and takes a leading role; Dr. Philip Hoffman, a senior oncologist, plays a wealthy society matron, and musicologist Noel Taylor pulls it all together in only 4 weeks of rehearsals.

It’s one of my pleasures to take part as well, and over the last five years, my character –whether an evilly scheming Morgan LaFey or a stern police officer–sings an aria that proves she has more ambition than skill.  This year, I play a fundraiser with a recalcitrant daughter and my aria, sung to the tune of Habanera, is a paean to “L’argent!” (L’argent stays true when lovers flee/when kids behave to you ungratefully…)

The show takes place in the Quadrangle Club and is open to the public; details below.

P.S.  Thanks for all the wonderful title suggestions.  I’m sifting through them as I work on rewrites!

Related event

• Date: Friday, January 29th 2010 – Saturday, January 30th 2010
• Time: 8:00pm
• City: Sara Paretskyin Chicago, IL
• Venue: Quadrangle Club, University of Chicago
• Address: 1155 E. 57th Street, Chicago, IL 60637
• Venue phone: 1.773.493.8601
• Country: US
• Admission: 30-70
• Age restrictions: All Ages/Licensed
• Box office: 1.773.493.8601
• Notes: Sara plays a diva in The Revels, an annual musical revue at the University of Chicago. On January 29 you can buy a ticket for the show only @$30; buffet dinner and show is $60. On January 30, there’s a sit-down dinner and show package for one price, $70.

THE NEW BOOK NEEDS A NAME!

My working title is Body Work, but I’m not a hundred percent happy with it.  Book names are funny.  Some come with the idea, as happened with Hardball and Bleeding Kansas.  Others come after the book is finished, like Bloodshot and Killing Orders.  Body Work–I’m not so sure.

The action of the book is about an Iraqi vet who suffers from PTSD.  He starts having violent outbursts at a nightclub, and, when a woman who also goes to this particular nightclub is shot and killed, the vet is arrested.  V I Warshawski is hired by the vet’s parents to clear his name.  At the center of the story is a performance artist whose act consists of appearing naked on stage and letting people draw on her.  She’s enigmatic, a figure of mystery.  She’s not part of the main action and yet her presence galvanizes all the disparate people who make up the book…the head of a Ukrainian organized crime syndicate…a civilian defense contractor doing business in Iraq…an immigrant family whose daughter is the person murdered at the nightclub.

With this small bit of information, try your hand at a title.  Remember, the V I titles are two words, with a double entendre.  If you come up with a title that works for the book, you will get a walk-on character named for you.

Because it’s the new year, and we all want it to be a good one, I thought I’d start with sex. Writing about it, to be more precise. We’ve all heard Elmore Leonard’s dictum about leaving out the stuff the reader skips many many times–but I almost always skip sex scenes. Yes, he/she took off her/his clothes. They got naked, they got into bed/backseat of car/faux-skin rug in front of fire/billiard table, and heaved about like demented hippopotami for a bit and then-can we get back to the story?

I also skip sex scenes as a writer. Every year, when the Bad Sex in Fiction Award is announced, I thank my writing muse for steering me clear of any chance of being publicly humiliated at the In and Out Club.

This past December, Philip Roth was shortlisted for The Humbling, in which an aging actor “converts” a lesbian to heterosexuality: “This was not soft porn. This was no longer two unclothed women caressing and kissing on a bed. There was something primitive about it now, this woman-on-woman violence, as though in the room filled with shadows, Pegeen were a magical composite of shaman, acrobat, and animal. It was as if she were wearing a mask on her genitals, a weird totem mask, that made her into what she was not and was not supposed to be. There was something dangerous about it. His heart thumped with excitement – the god Pan looking on from a distance with his spying, lascivious gaze.”

The ultimate winner was Jonathan Littell, for a passage in The Kindly Ones. “Her vulva was opposite my face. The small lips protruded slightly from the pale, domed flesh. This sex was watching at me, spying on me, like a Gorgon’s head, like a motionless Cyclops whose single eye never blinks. Little by little this silent gaze penetrated me to the marrow. My breath sped up and I stretched out my hand to hide it: I no longer saw it, but it still saw me and stripped me bare (whereas I was already naked). If only I could still get hard, I thought, I could use my prick like a stake hardened in the fire, and blind this Polyphemus…”

In writing about sex, one should ask the same question about anything one’s including. Is there a reason to have it there to begin with? Narrative flow? Plot? Character development? Fun? And if there is a reason, how do you do it well?

For my money, Joyce (or, according to some scholars, his wife, Norah) does it best in Ulysses, where Molly says, “He kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower…and I drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

On the other hand, you can’t beat Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, for brevity. “The Duke returned from the wars today and did pleasure me in his top boots.”

Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, painted by Charles Jervais

I hope 2010 is a year of health and peace for all who visit this site.

Best text messager: Andy House, who drove his $2 million Bugatti Veyron into a lagoon because he was texting at the wheel and what was left of his brain was allegedly distracted by a low-flying pelican.  The link’s headline says “$1 million,” but other sources put the price at around $1.8 million.” Although–what are a few zeroes among friends?

Best explanation of why we need to have our handguns with us AT ALL TIMES.  The gun enthusiast’s website, Frontsite goes through how to do just this. What about when you go to the bathroom? their newsletter asks.  A question that has often worried me.  And the answer is both logical and practical.

“If your gun is in a holster attached to your belt, keep it there.  When you pull up your pants, the gun will still be there.  Where you get into trouble is when you are not using a holster and set your gun aside in the bathroom. THIS is at least an embarrassment and at worst a tragedy waiting to happen. Do people leave guns in bathrooms? ALL THE TIME simply because they set their gun aside rather than keeping it in the holster or (if not wearing a holster) placing it on top of their dropped trousers between their legs…Private citizens, law enforcement, and government agents leave their guns in hotels, airports, and restaurants on a regular basis… DON’T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU.  The result of your carelessness will cost you and can be tragic.”

Or ludicrous, depending  on your sensibility.

And, while we’re on the topic, Most creative marketing plan of the year goes to beer vendors at the Washington, DC, pro football stadium.

Best book moment of the year: Amazon’s decision to remove some 57000 authors it deemed riské or offensive, from its rankings and search engine.  These included most LGBT authors, including James Baldwin. Just a computer glitch, they assured us after 18000 people signed up for a boycott.

Best politician of the year.  This is such a crowded field I wouldn’t presume to decide, especially since I’m biased in favor of my own Rod Blagojevich, who shook down a children’s hospital for campaign contributions, and wanted to put Barack’s Senate seat onto the market.

South Carolina’s Mark Sanford, flying to Argentina to see a lady friend, claimed he was hiking the Appalachian trail instead.  The state recently fined him $73000 to cover the cost of using the state plane for the flight, which seems kind of cheap, but the cost of living is lower in the south.

Jenny Sanford, who decided to divorce Mark is much duller than Patti Blagojevich, who ate tarantulas on TV–she says she did it for her family.

And then, New Jersey, which is always stealing Chicago’s corruption thunder, gave us some Brooklyn  rabbis and the mayors of Hoboken and Secaucus, involved in a money-laundering scheme so complex that V I Warshawski threw up her hands in despair over trying to unravel it.  Suffice it to say that a yeshiva’s papers were taken as part of the evidence, and that human kidney trafficking played a role.

Please let me know the many wonderful stories I missed.

Share/Save]]> http://www.saraparetsky.com/2009/12/entracte/feed/ 6 http://www.saraparetsky.com/2009/12/more-light/ http://www.saraparetsky.com/2009/12/more-light/#comments Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:55:49 +0000 paretsky http://www.saraparetsky.com/?p=1156 Chanukah begins at sundown on December 11.  It’s a child’s holiday, with candles, songs, and, in the affluent west these days, presents.  For adults, at least for me, it’s a bit more problematic–it’s a holiday that celebrates confusing things, the triumph of religion over reason, the cleansing of the Temple, the start of a theocracy not unlike current-day Iran’s.

Religion and politics in the Middle East in 167 BCE were just as complicated and deadly a combination as they’ve remained today.  As David Brooks reports in the New York Times, many 2nd century BCE Jews embraced Greek culture, including elevating the power of reason over blind faith.  Others were furious at the way in which science and art had taken the fundamentals out of that old time religion.  And the Macabees belonged to this second group.  When the Graeco-Syrian rulers took a step too far in defiling the Temple, the Macabees were able to rouse local opinion and begin a revolution against Syrian rule.

The history, with the restoration of the Temple, makes me proud, sad, appalled, breathstruck at the beauty and misery of it all.  Yes, the lights burned again in front of the Holy of Holies, the sacrificial pigs were cleansed from the sacred space.  But a century of enlightenment crashed to an end as religious rule was restored first with an iron, and then with an inept and corrupt fist.  And within another 200 years, the Diaspora ushered in 2000 years of suffering, culminating in the Shoah.  During those years, lighting Chanukah candles became a statement of courage.  You put them in  your window, even though that could invite the destruction of your home and the murder of your family, to show that you were not ashamed to be a Jew.

The parallels to American and Iranian religious fundamentalism are so pointed that I won’t dwell on them.  (No, we don’t believe in evolution!  Yes, climate change is the biggest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people! rousing statements by members of Congress, candidates for President, and ministers.)

Meanwhile, some people are trying to make political hay out of the Obamas’ invitation to a holiday party in honor of Chanukah.  The Obamas invited 50 fewer people than did the Bushes–they must be dissing the Jews.  They didn’t say “Happy Chanukah” on the invitation–unlike the Bushes, who put a Christmas tree on theirs.

This time of year exhausts me with its fights over who is holier than thou.  On the Christian side of the aisle, a member of the Tea Bag Party is trying to put a law on California’s books requiring every public school in the state to force all children to sing Christmas carols.  The proposed law includes an enforcement clause requiring the state to litigate against schools that don’t comply.  California is sinking under its budget deficit, but surely it can find room to put Christmas Carol Inspectors on the rolls.

The only way I can cope with the season is to turn away from the history of bloodshed, the warfare over holiness, and focus on the lights: the flame on the candles, the twinkling of the Christmas decorations.  More light.  More and more light.  And with it, as the US ramps up for year eight of its own Middle Eastern wars, as the desolation continues in Darfur,

in Congo, Zimbabwe, and in Gaza, may we please find some little flame of peace that we can blow on and turn into a true fire–not of zealotry, but of justice.  And may the One who makes peace in the High Places grant peace to us all.

Kaddish, by Rex Sexton