The long night crossing ended up meaning I ended up staying an extra day in Lviv, and I was determined to escape. I liked it very much, but who wants to Lviv forever? It's pretty hard to get out, but I felt like I had cracked the code with this ride-share service.
My Armenian hostess was very helpful in translating for me on the phone. I would catch an early ride with no problem. All I had to do was get to the parking lot of a grocery store in the middle of nowhere and hope a blue Citroen with someone named Ivan showed up. Piece of Orthodox Easter cake.
Cabbed it over there with my very last hryvnia and just... sat on the cement with all my bags. I looked through my notes and found some details I'd forgotten.
Lost Lviv Notes: I saw an old woman, ancient, wrapped in black scarves and a headdress, hiding from the rain under a platform on a playground. It was strange to see. Perhaps a hundred years ago, she'd had a tea party in that same spot, and now it was serving her again.
Men playing bocce ball next to a church for firemen.
The locked Wi-Fi at the apartment was called uniggazwantfreewifi
When I asked my hostess if she knew the cherry wine I'd tried, she said no, "I like, ah, wine, but not from fruit. But grape is fruit, but..that is the normal wine fruit. I like the normal wine fruit not the wine from cherry."
Everyone gave directions as if they'd never been there before but had been picturing it all their lives. This was also true in Poland. It was like someone who hasn't been to New York telling you how to get around. "Oh, there's a subway to the Empire State Building, which is nice, and then you make a left at the Statue of Liberty in Central Park."
Mozart's son lived and worked here for a long time. He was a teacher. He had to have had a rough life. How do you live up to being the son of a mega-genius? You hide out in the Ukraine is how. You're not going to see that dude in Vienna where his dad's face is on the damn chocolate.
A lot of the young men had shaved heads with, like, a tadpole of long hair streaking across their skulls. It had the effect of making them look like Charlie Brown and like awesome punk cellists at the same time.
One of the clocks on a prominent tower is permanently ahead by five minutes to commemorate the time a monk pushed the clock forward to make the bells ring early to make the guards close the gates early. He, the monk, was in the tower and saw the Tatars approaching. He had no other way to signal the guards, so he thought fast, and it worked.
I think that's it. Really great visit in a really interesting place. I never saw The High Castle, but I wouldn't have paid to go inside anyway.
My tiny burner phone blew up because my hostess was very concerned I would miss the Citroen. I told her I promised I would let her know. This wasn't good enough for her, so she somehow tracked the driver down and told them I was early and all alone in the parking lot.
Five minutes later, I was in the back seat. I thought I'd be waiting another thirty minutes. Armenian grandmas get shit done.
The email from the driver was signed "Ivan," but when he shook my hand, he said, "I am JOHN! Ivan is JOHN!" I said, "Hello, John,"
Also in the car was a mysterious dude in this 30s and a Polish couple who asked for ten extra minutes to buy vodka and cigarettes to smuggle across the border. Much cheaper in Ukraine than in Poland.
It was noon on a bright, clear day, and I was happy it had all worked out. I expected to be in Lublin in the early afternoon.
While we waited, Ivan asked me about myself.
What do you do United States? "I'm a writer." What do you write? "Mostly plays."
Politics? Political plays? "No, stories mostly. There's one about witches in prison."
What? Where is this place? "It's, I made it up." Is it like a reservation, Indian reservation?
"It's like a jail." And this is a real place, United States? "No, no. It's not real. I made it up."
(Silence)
What kind money this make? "It didn't make any money."
It is same here for writer. No money. I have book.
"What's it about?" My life. All I see. I can't finish it.
"Because you're not finished seeing things, maybe."
Maybe. I show to friends. They say is good, but I hate it. They like, say is very good, but I look at it and want to tear it up.
"That means you're a good writer."
The couple came back with three bags full of vodka. Enough for the master, the dame, and the little boy who lives down the lane. They clanked happily in the back and we were off. Ivan blasted the song I Got My Mind Set On You as we tore toward the highway. That song is terrible at any volume, but we were moving, and it was unexpected, so I was in love with the whole situation. I clapped.
Ivan-Called-John was animated in conversation, his voice frequently lifting into a Seinfeldian register. Once we were on the road, he and the Polish guy were off to the races talking about... how to clean a fish? One weird trick that makes dentists hate you? The Brexit?
The Polish girl was named Agnieszka and she spoke very good English. There were a few gaps, though.
How did you like Lviv?
"It was very nice. I loved walking around, and I read a lot of interesting old stories."
What story?
Well...
I told her the story about the Rooster King and the ox with the golden horns. From her expression, it didn't look like I had told it well enough to be understood.
She asked, "What is awks?"
Sorry?
"You said awks, King gets awks. What is this?"
Oh, it's, uh, an animal. Like, a farm animal that pulls a plow. You know plow?
"No"
John got involved and I ended up drawing a picture that made them think an ox was a bull. And since I don't actually know the difference, I went with it. In their defense, I had drawn a ring in its nose. John wanted to keep going. He had an idea that he had seen this mysterious ox creature on his travels and that it was a hybrid of a bull and an ass.
He also said that there was no time to show me one.
After about ninety minutes, we got to customs at the border. It wasn't the same one I'd walked across a few days ago. Lublin is much further east than Krakow, so you go a different way. Ivan turned the car off. "Now we wait," he said, Is not so bad... only one hundred cars.
He wasn't joking. The line in front of us was about a hundred cars. We were going to be there for a very very long time.
And so we were. The sky was beautiful with giant clouds hanging over rolling yellow fields. Hawks circled. I read a novel about Romanian politics. It was good, and eventually I had time to read the whole thing. It's rare that I get to read a book cover to cover like that.
I would get out sometimes and stretch my legs. Ivan and the Poles went for a long hike. The Mysterious Silent copilot stayed in the car the whole time and listened to a playlist of club music. Weird techno-covers of No Woman No Cry and Forever Young.
And there we sat. For two hours. Three hours. I got out of the car. The Poles came back and got in. Then they got out to smoke. Other people in other cars went to far-off regions and came back with hot dogs in pita bread. The way the dogs stuck up from the tubed bread, they looked like lipsticks.
We entered the fourth hour. I had expected to be in Lublin two hours ago. By some miracle, there was a pocket of free Wi-Fi coming from somewhere. I was able to write my host and tell him I was running late. Maybe another two hours.
But two hours later, we were still at the border. Stretching my legs, unstretching them. In the car, up a hill to pee, back in the car, finishing the book. We all started to smell. There wasn't any water. Agnieszka curled up with her boyfriend in such a way that her soft haunch rested against my thigh. To my discredit, I didn't move away.
Female soldiers marched in the distance. I hummed Nikita to myself and cracked myself up. "Oh, Nikita, you will never know..." I started a Toni Morrison book. She's a goddamn genius. I love everything I've read by her.
On the side of the road, a woman let her long black hair fly in the wind. It was like she was underwater or falling. It was like what a cuttlefish does to confuse you.
If this were a movie, they would show cow skulls and you would hear the cry of distant carrion birds.
Eventually we edged closer. Sometime late in the fifth hour. It was time to take our passports out and no one in the car had ever seen an American passport. It was fascinating to them, and they sounded out some of the words on the inside cover.
It was very difficult to help them understand what "spangled" meant. They loved all my visas and stamps from around the world. The East Asian ones were of special interest, since so colorful.
It was nice. Their passport photos were in black and white, which I didn't know.
There was some candy in the car and we shared it. I hadn't had breakfast or lunch, and I'd been awake for ten hours now. Somehow, though, I wasn't hungry. I felt very stoic about the whole ordeal. The biggest concern was that I would be inconveniencing my host in Lublin. I had lost the Wi-Fi pocket.
At last, one of the Nikitas waved us through. Over six hours. The sun was setting. Lublin was lost.
On the radio, The Scorpions sang about following the Moskva down to Gorky Park.
John made a bee's line for the nearest Polish McDonalds. I didn't want to eat there, but "When in Poland..." I hummed the theme song and even the ones who didn't speak English shouted "I'm lovin' it." A good laugh.
Had a Big Mac for the first time in decades. Tasted different. Fries were the same. Glorious. The best in the world. There was fried brie on the menu. Also McWiFi, so I was able to let the host know I hadn't been riddled with bullets.
Two hours later we were in Lublin. Hugged goodbye, shook hands goodbye, said goodbye and No Woman No Cry, and found a cab.
My hosts are a charming older married couple who love to meet new people.
They have two small dogs. It's a house with all the comforts of home. I was very happy not to be in a car anymore. My room has a giant bicycle painted on the wall.
They apologized for not having anything for me to eat and served me ham and eggs, Portuguese sausage, grapes, Turkish tea, and two slices of cake.
Juroslaw is the man's name and he told me about every dog he's ever owned. I got the whole history. Then he told me he loved the United States and had met some Navajo wind talkers in New Mexico at a museum. He disappeared and came back with an autograph book. "These are their names," he said.
He's fascinated with WWII and it was a treat for him to have met the men who had a code the Nazis never could crack. I liked how much he liked it.
He told me today was Constitution Day in Poland and that all the stores were closed. He told me they had more dream catchers in the house than just the ones I could see. He went away and came back with cheese and berries.
"I must tell you," he said, "The house is yours tonight, but there are also two French people sleeping here in another room. Will you have breakfast with them?"
I said I would. "It will be difficult," he said, "Because they say they speak a little English, but I think the word 'little' is not one of the English words they know, because they speak no English. We can't really talk with them."
I said they were as impossible to understand as the Navajo wind talkers, and he laughed and hit me on the back all the way upstairs to my bicycle room.
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