“Tell me what to talk about,” I said as we walked up the narrow, curved staircase towards our seats.
“Speak about the tour?” Connor replied, attaching the iPhone to a matte black gimbal. “Eastern Europe, double-decker trains, ultra?”
“You want me to talk about ultra?”
“Sure. Repeat that?” Connor said, the iPhone now directed towards me.
“Which part?”
“All of it,” Connor replied, grinning.
I first became aware of Connor some years ago when Luis referred to a tetchy online exchange he had experienced with someone called ‘Connor Stone: English journalist living in Cardiff.’ It was minor, and Luis and I agreed that Connor seemed funny and cocky.
Connor and I met in person, a year or two later, at the childhood home of Dylan Thomas. I had been invited to read as part of a festival celebrating Thomas’ life, or death, or maybe life, death, and seemingly relentless afterlife - and Connor was there with his friend, Dom, who was also reading that evening. As we, the three of us, and also Amy, my wife, stood together in Thomas’s downstairs hallway, Connor joked that Dom was a terrible person once you get to know him; this made me laugh at the time, and then again, eventually, a long way down the line. Connor, a funny and cocky young man in person as well as online, wearing the tailored check suit that I would from that point onwards always picture him wearing whenever I thought of him, which was sometimes, and then as time went on, often.
Weeks, months, a period of eighteen months to two years, we began communicating more frequently, then, ultimately, daily, sometimes as early as dawn, Connor by now living in York, me still in Cardiff, and now on a train together, somewhere in the German countryside.
Our train, or so it seemed to me, made a loud acceleration noise. I tried and failed to understand Connor as he spoke; something, I think, about our stopover in Munich. I walked up and then down the stairs between the train’s first and second floors for a fifth, maybe sixth, time, each new ‘take’ feeling both more and less wooden in my movement. Connor seemed to find my discomfort amusing, but I was okay with it either way, mainly unmoved, only slightly preoccupied with the notion of when or if I would relax, happy for now to be given directional instructions to follow.
Connor continued to speak, and I continued to not understand him, until we finished filming on the stairs and returned to our seats.
Connor Stone: English documentarian travelling to Serbia.
Me: Cymro ghost on a train, somewhere in Germany, then later Serbia, with other countries in between.
As we took our seats, Connor passed me a small can of generic lager and a Naked bar that tasted really pretty good. As we had eaten nearly all of the nut bars, I, briefly and failing miserably, attempted to ‘make it last.’
“‘Despised present day Malick aesthetic’”, Connor said, looking back at footage on his iPhone, touching the screen and grinning.
“I love it,” I said. “Show me some money!”
“Jeremy Maguire: Malick cut”, Connor replied, touching his can against my can.
“Help me, Robert, help you, Connor,” I said to Connor.
“You, Robert, had me, Connor, at hello,” Connor said to me.
I caught the eyes of a middle-aged woman and her teenage daughter sitting at the table opposite, both appearing to have been listening to us, for how long I have no idea, each seeming equally amused and puzzled.
Somewhere close to the French German border, the sun was setting. Preoccupied, nervous about reading from my book for the first time in at least eighteen months, increasingly stressed about my new novel, money, health, other-
“Will we survive this tour,” I said.
“The tour never ends, Robert,” Connor replied, holding the iPhone at hip height, tilting it upwards towards the mother and daughter, both now apparently focused on their Kindles.
The journey continued. I spoke about a variety of topics relating to my book, answering Connor’s questions fairly naturally before bringing the conversation to a halt as I struggled to recall the reason I had previously given for the two inch scar on my forehead, maybe eight weeks old, the swelling gone but the jagged creek still a deep red.
“Tour scar,” I said. “Committing to the aesthetic.”
“We can say…,” Connor replied, opening a can and handing it to me before opening one himself. “Tell me how you got that scar.”
I looked over at the mother and daughter opposite us, both doing the ‘concentrating on my Kindle’ facial expression, their bodies frozen in mannequin poses, eyebrows crinkled, ears pricked on high alert.
“Don’t worry too much about telling the truth,” Connor continued, carefully placing two fingers on the iPhone screen, pinching them together, expanding them out again, aiming towards me, beyond me, both.
“Behind you,” Connor continued, “Golden Hour is here.”
**
During a three hour changeover in Munich we queued to buy some beers at a sparse, strip-lit newsagent inside the station; I can’t recall the name of the lager I picked out, but the raised illustration of a mischievous, moderately aggressively imperial eagle on the blue and yellow cans felt appealing to me at the time.
The lighting seemed excessively bright, and I asked whether we should buy some water. Connor nodded and walked back over to the drinks aisle as I kept our place in the line until he returned with a four pack of what appeared to be two litre bottles of water. I felt grateful, tired, other-
**
Inside the two-person sleeper cabin, the train loudly, slowly pulling out of Munich station, Connor opened his MacBook and played an Action Bronson track he had mentioned to me some weeks ago (‘doing bumps’, Elaine Benes dancing (making me think of Laura), something to do with grand theft auto), then the opening four tracks from Watch The Throne (big brother and little brother hard at work, tension?, ultras), then more music that I can’t recall.
As the music played, the train briefly slowing down before building the acceleration again, I looked out of the window as we passed through what appeared to be, in the brief glimpse that I had, an abandoned and unlit station. Dark outside, sensorially a familiar time of the night maybe, I wondered about cocaine in Belgrade, feeling a degree of, I think, excitement or interest in the prospect.
Coke will help…, I thought, …the documentary, hahahaha-
The iPhone no longer filming, I think(?), and a pressing, overbearing desire to sober up, I began to talk, for the first time with Connor, about how for the past twelve months I had been using cocaine moderately frequently, enjoying and, to my mind, seemingly benefiting from this. Connor, in response, was keen to tell me his opinions on this explosive revelation, and I, in turn, was ecstatic to receive them.
This would be good on the doc, I thought.
I got up from the bed, stepped out of the cabin, and walked towards the toilet. A few doors down, the ticket inspector had the door to his cabin open. Lying on his bed, still in uniform and eating from a pack of German Pringles, our eyes met briefly before he continued to push his hand deeper inside the Pringles tube, at which point I noticed that there were three different-coloured, half eaten tubes on the floor by his bed. I put my head down and continued towards the toilet, feeling a degree of surprise that the corridor floor appeared to be carpeted in a way that felt so remarkably and incongruously luxurious.
Feel the bounce, I thought. Now please stay tuned for more Taboo Pringles Tales-
I returned from the toilet and found Connor transferring footage from the iPhone onto his laptop.
“The conductor said he can get us some coke,” I said.
Connor laughed and turned his laptop to show me a clip of some footage from Paris.
“We can say-,” Connor said.
“Thank you for serving me so hard just now,” I replied. “The footage, it all looks so beautiful.”
The heating in the cabin seemed to turn off, a welcome and timely relief. Drinking water instead of cans, we discussed American Honey, Don Jon, Cape Fear, Song to Song, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, and, I believe, the filming of Justice League.
I contemplated saying Goodnight, Connor in Bale Batman-voice, then in Hardy Bane-voice, but instead said it in my normal voice. Connor said Goodnight, Robert, in his normal voice, typing a message to Holly as I climbed the bunk ladder and got into bed underneath the rough, heavy blanket, and underneath that a thin white sheet.
I closed my eyes and thought of nothing, then fell asleep and dreamt of nothing.
**
We both seemed to wake up at the same time, it soon becoming apparent that as we slept the train had stopped and then remained stationary for a prolonged, somewhat unknowable period of time. I thought about the messages we had been receiving, with increasing regularity, from Dušan, the co-founder of the Serbian publishing house, and how he seemed so excited about my arrival, disbelieving almost that I was making the journey via train.
As Connor and I ate a slice of toast each, I detached the straw from the side of a small carton of orange juice, pierced the silver foil circle and sipped the drink until it was finished.
We spent the rest of the journey discussing a Ben Lerner-Tao Lin (or possibly Tao Lin-Ben Lerner) interview from 2016, Robert Popper’s Timewaster Letters, Laura, Celyn, Michael Mann’s ‘digital era’, Sooty and Sweep (and Sue), Fitzgerald’s Pat Hobby stories, art level, ultra, other-
**
Budapest to Belgrade, early evening and already pitch-black outside, I sat on the compartment floor, surrounded by 300ml bottles of lager, somehow neither of us remotely drunk, and posed for a photo in what felt like a momentous, triumphant moment.
I am alive, I thought. ‘Thank God’-
We had paid two bribes on the journey, one to the Hungarian ticket collector, then another to his Serbian equivalent as we crossed the border. The result of this was that our ‘cheap fare’ had come in at a couple of Euros more than a legitimate ticket. I thought about this as I handed over some money to the barman on the food and beverage carriage; he looked at the money and said thank you, then waited, silently and expressionlessly, for me to take the drinks and Serbian Pringles.
I thanked the barman, looked over towards Connor, considered the people waiting for us in Belgrade, the blackness beyond the window, other ideas, other moments-
**
backstreet, 127 hours later
We travelled to Kikinda, a city maybe two hours outside of Belgrade, for a reading in an attic room of the public library, an interview with local television, food at a restaurant, drinks at a bar. Everything had gone smoothly with the reading and the interview. I felt comfortable, happily on autopilot walking the uniform streets that connected us from one place to the next, quiet, wide, and dark, from the carpark to the library to the restaurant, and then from the restaurant to the outdoor carpark that was framed on all sides by bars, artist studios, and, I think, rehearsal spaces and a juice bar called Fruity Republic. Along the way, there were solo photos and group photos, and as we walked through a subway and up towards a small Irish pub, a street orchestra that played the Family Of The Year song Hero from the Richard Linklater film Boyhood and also the speakers inside Miloje’s car.
Standing near the bar in the Irish pub, I spoke to Katrina, Zvonimir, Christian, who I had met at the reading that night, and Dano, who I had met at an earlier reading in another town but lived and worked in Kikinda.
I walked into the bathroom and locked the door behind me. The graffiti on the wall above the toilet was mostly written in English and I thought of the student from Belgrade University who asked several questions, the final one being How do you know what to remember?, and I couldn’t recall the answer I gave, only that on my way out of the Q&A I was asked in Serbian for directions to the student advice centre, my response being to look at Matea and, calmly grinning, wait for her to answer on my behalf.
On the return journey to Belgrade, and at the end of an hour-long diversion to drop Vladimir off at his apartment, now sitting in the back seat of Miloje’s Serbian Peugeot 205, I watched as Dušan and Miloje unpacked some books from the boot and walked towards the large cast iron gates at the front of the building, maybe five stories high, rectangular, part brutalist, part gothic, its nuances lit remarkably well by the practically inadequate street lighting.
“I didn’t expect his place to look like this,” I said to Connor. “What time is it?”
I turned and looked ahead towards the motorway, watching as one car after another hurtled past, each one briefly illuminating the darkness.
“Robert,” Connor said. “There is a Range Rover parked at the traffic light across the road, behind us, half a block down. A man has just got out of the passenger side, walked round to the boot, pulled out… and… is now holding-”
I watched as Miloje helped Dušan with the last of the books before then walking back towards the car. I looked towards the motorway and waited for some cars to pass by, imagining Tron bikes, specifically the neon ‘trails’ they left behind them, trying to recall how they sounded, or whether they made any noise at all.
“Robert, the man, he is holding in his hands…” Connor said. “He is holding an automatic rifle.”
I watched as Miloje opened the car door, sat down on the sunken foam of the driver’s seat and fiddled with his keys, dropping them in the footwell, then seemingly struggle to place them in the ignition.
“We can s-” Connor said.
Total silence, or so it seemed, at maybe 2:45AM - specific time unimportant, a backstreet somewhere outside Belgrade. A moment of calm feelings, reflections, cigars after dinner, fifty students: so focused in their questions, the one who looked like Djokovic, the one who looked like Audrina, Siniša talking about two hour commutes listening to Exodus at maximum volume, more TV appearances, a real-deal Neo Nazi, Maria, no food, no sleep, only water, Matea my translator, Zvonimir, Katja, Dano, Miloje’s cat, Miloje’s dog, Miloje’s life and times, the alchemy and precision of All of the Lights: in its entirety but particularly the orchestral interlude bookending with the maximal, densely layered outro, and now the Balkan Boy holding an automatic rifle in the space behind us. What would I see if I turned around? Would he be aiming towards us, someone else, himself, the ground? Or maybe just up at the sky, kind of aimlessly, kind of not.
I won a short fiction prize for this non-fiction piece.
A ‘sequel’ to this piece based on my recent (October, 2022) visit to Podgorica, Montenegro will follow shortly.
Some things same, many things different.
Who Is This Connor? He Sounds Like A Real Douchbag.
Too many bars