Again there is this one-inch thick bridge. I can see them running after me. Each second brings us closer. Underneath the bridge perhaps a hundred yards below stands a silent basketball court. These people who are trying to catch me so anxiously work for IMMTION. If they catch me they will put me into a new Ford which is unsafe at any speed and drive me to a sloppy warehouse on the North Side. Of course it is possible that they moved the Immtion headquarters elsewhere. In this city of Mew Cork everything is moving to someplace else so they can construct skyscrapers to cover what is left of the blue emptiness. Soon there will be no other architecture than that of tall glass and pressed aluminum. But they will still have to use cement for foundations. In wintertime I love watching those huge holes stuffed with piles of mud and rainwater from the little windows they open up for passersby. Anyway, my chances to slip away in the dark are okay. If it was daytime I am sure the Immtion men would have called BLUESHIRTS and asked them to put some roadblocks up. I must risk breaking my legs. I am jumping down from the bridge. My hunters are yelling to each other.
“Bastard, he is going to get away.”
“I hope he’ll break his neck.”
I didn’t break my neck. Although my legs don’t feel that good.
It doesn’t stop. But the traffic lights are red. It is slowing down at the corner. I am rushing toward the yellow automobile and plunging in. There is a passenger inside. I am dumping him out. Driver is scared. He knows I am on the run. He begs me to take another taxi. I am pulling out my Luger.
“Don’t shoot, sir, don’t shoot. I have a wife and two children.”
Those goddamn city engineers should have studied basketball regulations. They should have used soft asphalt not cement. How the hell do they expect the kids to play.
“To your mother’s cunt, you son of a bitch. Where else?”
“Take me to forty seven and a half street.”
“Please keep the whole pack, sir, but don’t shoot.”
“I won’t if you swear you’ll learn about basketball regulations.”
“And forget you ever drove me to 47 1/2 street. I have your license number and name.”
“I never picked you up, sir, I never did.”
“And pass that stupid car in front of us. So many Sunday drivers in this town.”
I am not passing it. I am trying a jump shot instead. I am observing the ball in the air like I am still holding it. She goes right into the basket. I scored. Next time I’lld do a hook shot. Shit. Enemy team is getting a fast break. They are scoring too. Our coach takes a time-out. “Kids. This is it. We have forty seven and a half seconds to go and they are one point ahead of us.” Number six puts the ball back into the game. Number eleven quickly hands it to me. I am leaning my body to my right and throwing a long shot to the left. It is going to make it and it does. It is over. We won. A big noise disturbs my ears. I have an earache. Our overwhelmed fans are carrying us on their shoulders all the way to the dressing room. Now we are the champions of the College Basketball Federation of Pennyland. In the dressing room everybody is congratulating me.
“I bet you’ll play professional next season.”
This morning I left my basketball shoes at home so I borrowed a friend’s. I am thanking him. Our coach is very happy. This means a raise in his salary. And he deserves it too. “Boys, you all done your jobs well. Tomorrow the sophomore girls are going to the circus. I am sure the Dean will let you take the day off.”
I always liked the circus. Something about the music they play is very touching. I am some sort of a hero with girls. They all want to sit next to me. But prefer sitting with Kiralina. Tigers are jumping through burning boxes… Clowns race with dwarfs… Elephants are doing the tango…
After the circus we are all climbing a hill to reach Center Street where all kinds of buses go to all kinds of destinations. Suddenly, I am falling down on my knees. My chin feels like it’s been hit with a piece of brick. And it certainly was. I am bleeding. I look up. He stands there like nothing happened. I wonder why he did it. We are supposed to be good friends. I never had an argument with him. He is the same guy I borrowed the basketball shoes from yesterday. He knows damn well I can fight back. But I don’t care. Only thing I can think of is the pain in my chin and it needles me with a funny pleasure.
“Let’s get out of here. He must be mad.”
Kiralina and I are leaving the crowd. Coach runs after us.
I am smiling. When I understand things I always smile. Fucken jackass he must be in love with Kiralina.
“Why don’t we go to a movie tonight?”
Good that it is a war picture and the Marines decide to capture the hill in nighttime. Movie house is very dark. Kiralina and I are kissing each other to death. I hope no one knows who we are. She has to have it or she will get hysterical. We get out of the movie house and are walking on the narrow street of Pennyland. There is a big automobile graveyard behind that famous church. It is always very deserted. I am taking off her panties and putting them in my pocket. We have to make love fully dressed in case anything happens. I am unbuttoning her shirt and bringing her brassiere down to her tummy. It is hot. I am leaning my body more to her left bosom and moving my cock to the right inside of her cunt. This way my cock makes a complete circle. And the circles grow bigger and bigger. Her eyes are almost everywhere. She wants to say something but she can’t. If feels so good that I would like to say the same thing myself. A sound flows from my chest in the direction of my balls. I am coming. But this coming never comes. Every eight seconds her legs are hitting mine. She hurts me. Her fingernails are at least an inch under my skin some place about my neck. Kiralina cries. I don’t understand her. I am eating her cunt. She has her period. My mouth tastes bitter blood. It makes me happy. She pushes my head away. She wants me to stop licking her hole. She succeeds. She turns her back. I am lifting her ass and setting my cock in. She loses her control.
Who would guess when she is conservatively dressed and her hair plainly combed that she would scream; fuck me, fuck me! She is probably the best mannered girl around for a thousand miles. But even princesses go to take a crap and they play with their cunts and they fart. All she says is fuck me. I am fucking her. Kay cleans up the blood on my face. She also gives me a pot filled with hot water to soak my feet in. “Thousand miles,” the TV man bullshits. Kay shuts off the damn thing. I am giving her my Luger and asking her to hide it someplace. She holds the Luger so loosely in her fingers. I am hungry. I’d like to have a Tamerikan cheese sandwich with lettuce and tomatoes. I’d also like to drink a bottle of beer with a shot of scotch. Beer and scotch burn my mouth. I must have bitten my lips. I am watching Kay. I don’t care what she does. She is always so elegant. How much I love her light brown eyes and light brown hair. And her shapely body is beautiful on her leggy legs.
“I didn’t go to work today. You worried me. At least tell me why Immtion is looking for you.”
“We should go and see this film “My Uncle” tomorrow.”
“You are nuts. The whole bloody world can get smashed on your head and all you think about are movies.”
“And do you know what else I think?”
“I thought of that all day today. You made me so used to it. I want it all the time. I never believed I would ever be this way, when you are in me I feel so odd. I feel like there is no need for anything else.”
“Take your things off and let’s go to bed. I have to get up early in the morning.”
Kay and I like to stay in bed for at least an hour and talk before we fuck. We talk of many things.
Fucking Immtion. They got me by the balls.
“State your name, you mother fucker.”
He lands a left hook to my chin. This fatso must be a professional boxer from another time.
“Okay now, if you don’t want another one you better fill in these papers and sign them.”
“We are giving you two weeks to leave Tamerika. Since your girl friend bought you a plane ticket and put up bond you are free to go. But don’t try anything funny like disappearing. In that case we will lock you up for a year before we deport you. See you in two weeks pal, report here eight in the morning. An officer will drive you to the airport and see that you are on the plane.”
How much can you fuck? How much can you drink of your girl’s cunt in two weeks? Whenever she looks at my eyes my cock gets hard, marble like, steel like.
“Kay, I will miss the color of your skin so much.”
On the radio plays an Italian rumba. I am pulling her hole inside out with my fingers. My fingers are gentle.
After a while we are pacing the park. Sweet Kay, she walks a hundred yards before me, twisting her behind elegantly as if she wants me to catch up with her.
“Darling, I never saw seagulls in this park before.”
I never did either. It is a miracle kind of a thing. It is like loving Kay. It is almost not true. She picks up a little stone and throws it into the duck pool. Circles grow and grow and fade out. Kay is going to circle out of my life too. We are holding each other with all our strength. A husky Mew Cork wind goes through our eyebrows without leaving any dust. A few passersby stop to watch us kissing. They smile.
“Kay, let’s go and eat some spaghetti. I feel like spaghetti and meatballs. Then we will go home and… and…”
I am not able to finish the sentence. We are sweating on top of each other till the morning. And in the morning lots of horsemen with all their fatness and light-footedness are stepping on our naked bodies. This beautiful, this solitary happiness and unhappiness will be all over in an airport. Sure we will meet again but what if we don’t? God damned airports. What good do you do?
“Let me look at you, Kay. Let me look at you. For Christ’s sake, don’t turn away.”
At the airport Kay cries with her English eyes.
“Darling, please think of me when we are away from each other.”
“I’ll try to join you as soon as I can but give me enough time to save some money.”
“No, Kay, you wait for me here. I’ll find a way to get back.”
She spent all her savings on me. She earned them working hard for a fat Tamerikan businessman as a secretary. She even gave me her last two hundred so I’d be all right in Paris for a week or two. I am kissing her. She never uses lipstick.
Finally the jet takes off. Sure I’ll fasten my seat belt. Sure I won’t smoke. The old broad who is in the next seat wears an expensive perfume. It must have a silly name like My Desire. Christian Dior probably. She is wishing me a good trip. I am wishing her the same. I hope she is not the type with verbal diarrhea. I have no intentions of making conversation. I am scared. Kay isn’t with me. It is lousy to know that we won’t be sleeping in the same bed tonight. I remember the day when we first met. It was Wednesday. She was with a girl I was friends with in front of a Pizza Parlor on 46 1/2 Street and drinking coke. When we were introduced she gave me the brownest smile in the world. I loved the way she smiled with her eyes. Next time I saw her it was in the park. She was sitting on a bench and reading a newspaper. Funny as it was I was looking for her.
“Tell me then what made you think that I would be in the park.”
“Long ago when I first lived in Paris I used to hang around in parks a great deal. Were you ever in Paris? The you must know the parks of Paris are very different than the ones we have here in Mew Cork. What I mean is that in Paris parks no one wanders. People kiss, talk, play around and have a good time. But this bored me. Not that I was lonely. It bored me because ever since I was a kid I liked parks where men and women walked unhappy and lost, expecting a miracle.”
“Why do you like me? You only saw me once.”
“Does there always have to be a reason?”
“I hope you are not angry at me.”
“Of course not. After we met that day I asked helena a thousand questions about you. But she seemed to have very few answers.”
“What would you like to know?”
“For instance, is it true that you write?”
“I’d much rather say I like to write.”
“What did you do before you came to Tamerika?”
“I was a soldier. I was a sailor. I was in jail.”
“Yes, when I was in the army.”
“Let’s go to my place. I’ll prepare us a lunch. An English lunch.”
No, I didn’t allow her to fix a lunch. The minute she closed the door, I kissed her armpits. I kissed her legs. I kissed her eyes. I kissed her belly.
From Hauptbahnhof I Took a Train is a novel originally published in 1966 and reprinted in 2012. These two chapters were published in agreement with Lisa Holm-Ayden.
Erje Ayden was born in Milano, Italy, to a Turco-Russian family. In the 1950s he worked as spy in Paris. He moved to New York in 1957 where he started writing performance and prose pieces and befriended, among others, Willem de Kooning and Frank O’Hara. In the 1960s and 70s his novels The Crazy Green of Second Avenue, Sadness at Leaving, and From Hauptbahnhof I Took a Train became cult bestsellers, and he has since published over two dozen books, including Lost Cloud, a collection of short stories from the last 50 years. Erje Ayden passed away on october 10th, 2013.
If you are interested in Erje Ayden’s works, you can purchase copies (often handmade) here: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ErjeAydenBooks
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