A few days in New York at a pal’s. From the second floor window, where puffs of overheated air insisted from the radiators, I watched bundled New Yorkers walking in the cold rain, hands jammed in pockets, hunched tight shoulders, heads cast down, staring at the cement sidewalks they marched across. Quick steps moving them along, they kept to themselves, never making eye contact, everyone isolated in his individual pod of pensées obscure.
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I missed a Thanksgiving party because I couldn’t find my clothes. The greatest challenge to sofa-hopping is trying to find one’s stuff. Everything of mine is between a storage unit and every square inch of my car. For one reason or another I moved nine times since November 1st.
One extra illegal night at my previous rental, cruising out at five in the morning so as not to be reported on by the neighbors. Then one night at the rooftop house, which didn’t work out on account of a giant rat. On to friend Martha, followed by a visit to the Judo pals in Miami. Back to Martha’s, then one night at Julia’s, then back to the rooftop for one night, immediately retreating to the Palms Hotel. Back to the rooftop, if only in disbelief I was losing ground to a rodent. But he won, and I made my way to the Sugarloaf Lodge after which I ended up back at Martha’s, a ridiculously luxurious setting, what with its ninety degree swimming pool, a very hard place to leave.
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I have tumbled on some good luck. A friend, a local with a thirty year foothold on this glorious island I like to call home, well he tipped me off on the sudden availability of a certain dwelling.
A cottage is how it was described, on a lane I had never heard of. It took a few passes and u-turns to even find the street. And then the little house, like a fallen diamond earring, its luster gummed from the dusty path and its brilliance obscured with tangled overgrowth, the interior dulled from years of encrustations from the previous tenant, an antisocial type, who moved home to live with his mother.
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At the window of her hotel room overlooking Ocean Drive and the waning afternoon, she daydreamed. At street level in front of the hotel a band plucked out a flamenco. Neighboring hotels competed with music of their own, so that all the sounds merged and rose to the sixth floor, in a hypnotizing stew. But it was the wind that caught her attention, bashing at the blinds, sounding like a gigantic jaw crunching on bones.
Juan was across the street, sitting on a low wall. He was waiting. He would know her when he saw her. Meanwhile she was sliding the room key into her pants pocket, and stopping in front of the hall mirror where she examined herself. “See you later,” she murmured, and walked out.
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Back to the Judo competition in Miami, this time the senior gentlemen. In the warmup room men in blue or white pajamas grappled in pairs, or sat on the mats, stretching. One man was upside down and rolling on his head. Traces of body odor coast the air, or was that the scent of controlled fear, all of it tempered by a supersonic A/C.
There were men with hunchbacks, with wiry comb-overs, mustaches were grey. Men with wounds, pink blemishes on bald heads. The oldies tussled and soon they were rosy cheeked. Some sported reading glasses on speckled hairless pates. Everywhere there were braces on legs and elbows, even heavy shin guards beneath the thick regulation pajama bottoms.
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I have Brazilian sounds on the radio. I’ve been packing for days and I’m busy with the movers, taking my furniture to my next stop, a guest room like a Polynesian hut on the roof of a friend’s new house, still something of a construction site. You have to see it to believe it.
As I pack and tape and move the boxes around, some unopened since the last move from Long Island, I’m swaying about to the Samba and the Bossa Nova, enjoying myself and ready for the next adventure, ready for a change of scenery without crossing the border of the Conch Republic.
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Fantasy Fest has come and gone. Since arriving here a year ago I have heard of this spectacle from the locals, but had yet to witness it myself.
Fantasy Fest is the entire week before Halloween when the bulk of Key West participates in a carnival of craziness. Duval Street is blocked off for pedestrians, and each night is dedicated to a theme of dress, one night all red, another night togas, and so on, the madness building to a crescendo by Saturday night with a parade of floats. This annual freak-out is when fifty-thousand out-of-towners descend upon this tiny coral island and partake in the nuttiness.
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Last year I abused my buddy Carlos, a much overworked New Yorker with a mostly uninhabited upper east side penthouse, and a Swedish car in a garage. I commandeered his guest room for a few weeks, and helped myself to the Swedish vehicle, without permission, and got caught.
So it was fitting that when he was invited to a conference in Palm Beach, he would rent a car and visit me here in groovy Key West, if only for revenge.
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I am on the brink of moving again and meditating on what to pack and what to toss out. What to do with my most prized possession?
My glorious hammock; it was originally a hot brown, with whipped cream colored pillows that lace to poles stretching it to a welcoming rectangle, a chocolate bathtub, in which to heave oneself and contemplate the meaning of life while nuzzling the sweet warm breezes.
The tropics are hard on a fabric, even one as robust as woven rope. After a full year splayed under a fire-eating sun the color has faded, even the cream pillows are blotchy and pocked with mashed sugar ants. However, the greatest damage was inflicted by the iguana who inhabits the sweet almond tree.
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Yesterday in Serbia, my mother Elizabeth Karageorgevic and her first cousin Crown Prince Alexander of Serbia welcomed the return of her parents, long since buried abroad, to the Serbian Royal crypt at Oplenac. The church of Oplenac, with its gorgeous frescos, is an important place in Serbian history where six generations of the Karageorgevic Dynasty are buried in marble tombs, including the Supreme Leader Karageorge, his son Alexander I, grandson King Peter I, and great-grandson Alexander II. And now, rightfully, my own grandfather Prince Paul and his wife, my adored grandmother Princess Olga.
In the spring of 1941, when my mother was still very small, the country then known as Yugoslavia was overthrown in a coup while her father Prince Paul presided as Regent. The family was obliged to leave, never to be allowed back, and so began a long wandering in search of a home elsewhere. In the early 1990s my mother, concealing her identity and using her new name as the wife of a Peruvian diplomat, visited her homeland. Instantly she felt a kinship and knew she had found her place on earth, and soon after, as the old strictures were relaxed, she settled in Belgrade.
Apapa, as us grandchildren called our grandfather, was a presence I remember fondly. Holiday time, along with my first cousins, was often in a large house outside Florence, Italy. In huge rooms we would try to hide from our Apapa, under piles of cushions out of which we had constructed forts, we would listen to his steady steps, the unmistakable sound of his walking cane giving him away, and we would tremble with anticipation. On approach he would bellow, “Qui que tu sois, quoi que tu fasse, tu seras puni!” (Whoever you are, whatever you’re doing, you’re going to be punished!) Apapa mostly spoke to us in French.
What my grandfather’s life had been all about were details I would not grasp until adulthood. All I knew was an old man, always impeccably and rather formally attired, with a stoop to his shoulders, and a walking stick in his hand. To me he was someone cozy, and funny, and warm, with his rumbling deep voice and ready smile. And yet he could strike a pose and make a face and become utterly terrifying, have all of us grandchildren shrieking and running for our lives.
Sasha Stankovic (Саша Станковић) left the following comment on my wall:
Prince Paul was a remarkable man who suffered a lot for his services to the Serbian people, especially in the April ’41 war situation. He is an example of royal … people conscious enough to understand [their] obligation towards [their] own nation and country are beyond daily politics. 70 years after many, many people here understand that his policy was clever and patriotic … let him rest in peace, on soil of his own.
To which I say, humbly, Thank You. Hvala. (Hvala- Serbian for thank you).