Mongolia, New York, Prague, Krakow
Matthew Salesses
1. You do not know me, never will, but I am your dad. For one night, your mom thought I was exotic. Now you are inside her and I am in Prague. Do not accuse me—you have your family. I am not a part of it. I was something different. You were a matter of luck.
You will grow up and think your dad is someone else.
2. If you are a boy, I hope you are not like me. I was a boy once, the youngest eagle-hunter in Mongolia. My grandfather raised me. We were out in the Steppes, desert everywhere. My only friend was my eagle. My parents were dead.
Later my grandfather gave me my inheritance. I was fifteen then, supposed to get an education, leave my eagle behind. I went to school in New York. Go, my grandfather said, do not turn around. I never turned around.
3. I wish you could see Prague. Here the Charles Bridge, the ruins of Vysehrad, the Castle. No desert. No sand.
I move people up and down the river. I work for this ferry company, One World, speaking Chinese to summer tourists. I talk about things which really are, and which are not, and which always have been. By rule, I am supposed to stick to history—my study in New York.
I have some advice for you, when you become a student. Learn everything. Get answers to the questions you pretend you do not ask.
4. My grandfather taught me how to get an eagle. I got one in a net. I was nine. We watched it swooping down as it swooped down like the wind. The bait was there on the end of the line. The eagle was hungry—those were the eagles that fell for traps, so many starving eagles in the desert. When it got the bait, I was ready with the net.
The eagles could get tangled in the nets easily. My first time, the eagle I caught cried. My grandfather gave me a metal hat for its eyes. I put the hat on its head. It went blind and calm. Then we wrapped it inside a black blanket, extra careful of its wings. I carried the eagle back to my grandfather's house. She screamed at us. She fought hard. My grandfather put a long tube down into her throat. I spit water inside. The water went down the tube. She drank my spit. She was thirsty.
5. I have been in Prague six months. You have been inside your mom. Now I need someone new. Do not get upset—I am alone. One day, you will understand. This is my first date with a Czech girl, Zuzka:
I meet her in the King's Gardens, outside the Castle. She is the one who almost looks Hungarian. Black hair, raven bones, smile of a scarecrow. Her black eyelashes flutter suddenly, like the expression, “bats.” We speak English. She says she has never visited the castle for five years. I say I visit everyday. I am walking and thinking about Kafka the writer, I tell her. I think this is the perfect time to show her what she could be like as a tourist in her own city.
I pay for everything: all the buildings on one ticket. The cathedral looks like it shouldn't fit. Like the castle walls are too skinny and it is too big. I imagine you inside your mom. Flying buttresses, the half-arches are called, and gargoyles, the creatures with long beaks and claws. You can see them some places in New York. Here they stick out everywhere, looking dangerous. Zuzka's people had a murdering age, long ago. Prague was the center of an empire.
We go inside St. Vitus Cathedral. A man who could be any man prowls around. He checks tickets for photograph permission. People look up and lose their eyes in the beauty of the ceiling. Then they lurch around when they see their friends or family have moved on. A woman wears her past on her sleeve, like the idiom. She stops people with hats. She touches her head.
I am not religious—and neither is Zuzka, she says—but we are silent like we are religious. We do not talk to each other for a long time. We are inside the cathedral. We are free from the outside world. Her skin brushes mine.
Finally we exit. At the Powder Tower, we make out, gunpowder under our feet. We find room for our tongues. I have not lied much the entire date, only about Kafka the writer. The truth is, I do not read him. Maybe I should.
6. Today, my grandfather is probably dead. Eagle hunting is probably dead. The sandstorms are probably hitting the Steppes, desert everywhere, as always. I was born in Mongolia, am some part American, am in the Czech Republic now. Not where I belong.
When your mom told me you were inside her, I think I became in love with her right then. Now, someone else is talking to you through her skin. Someone else is resting his ear against her belly.
7. The first time I fed my eagle, it was tiny strips of meat floating in a bowl of water. She had to take it slow. My grandfather said if she was too hungry, she might eat until her stomach exploded. She looked so proud, maybe too proud for food, but here was the only meat for a hundred kilometers around.
I watched her. She gobbled it down. She tilted her head back and it disappeared. It looked beautiful going into her mouth—like it was going home. I promised I would never let her be hungry again.
8. In truth, I met Zuzka yesterday because I got this email from home. Daniel. He pretends we are still college roommates pretending nothing matters. He says the world is so small he saw your mom in the Korean market below his loft in the Village. What was she doing there? Why was she shopping for vegetables so many blocks down from your home on the Upper West Side? You must be big now. Daniel says your mom waddled in and picked up a tomato.
He writes this too easily, like she is not carrying a part of me, like you are not mine. A tomato, he writes, like I did not fail to make her leave her husband. He says he will visit me in Prague, he already got the ticket—is the city really cheap? He has heard the girls are pretty.
The coffee server passes behind me and sees the English on my computer screen. Who am I, she wonders. My brown skin and my foreign foreign language. She does not ask do I want a drink. She ignores that I am there. Maybe she is embarrassed. Maybe she thinks I should leave. I imagine her future life—with fire, and very visible (but painless) burns.