Dublin Noir: The Celtic Tiger vs. The Ugly American (Akashic Noir) by Ken Bruen

Author:Ken Bruen [ed]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Mystery, Anthologies
ISBN: 9781888451924
Publisher: Akashic Books
Published: 2006-03-01T11:00:00+00:00

THE PISS-STAINED CZECH

BY OLEN STEINHAUER

This was back in ’94, in the middle of a planned three-month stay in Prague. I thought that by soaking up a little Bohemia and wading through Joyce’s Ulysses, I’d become a writer. But that was a joke, largely because I spent each night drinking with Toman, a six-foot shaved-bald Czech who passed his days in the gym. He liked buying drinks for a writer, and I liked having drinks bought for me.

“You come to Dublin on this weekend.”

“I don’t know. I’ve got to work.”

“A writer’s work,” he said, puffing out his chest like a Cossack, “is to living. Only one night. Weekend. You come.”

“I’m broke, Toman.”

He slapped my back. “We stay with Toman’s friend, Sean. The plane—Toman will pay.”

“You have a friend in Dublin?”

“Toman, he has friend all over world!”

He liked referring to himself in the third person. Toman must to pee, or Toman must get to work. I never knew what his work was, but he had enough money to keep me in drinks, which was all that mattered.

We landed at Dublin International on January 22, a Saturday, then took a taxi to a posh southern neighborhood called Ballsbridge—a name that got a giggle out of me—where the bay winds blew down a narrow street of matching brick Victorian houses. It was very fucking cold. The door Toman knocked on was opened by a skinny Irishman with a beard that made me think of the drunks lingering in the corners of pubs in Ulysses—everything I knew about Dublin came from that book.

“Shite. Toman.”

“Toman and his American writer friend are here for until tomorrow. You have a floor?”

I was embarrassed, because we clearly weren’t expected. All I could do was introduce myself as Sean reluctantly led us inside.

“How is our Linda?” asked Toman.

“Gave her the boot. You know.” Sean took a green bottle of Becherovka, the Czech national liquor, from a cabinet. It was the last thing I expected to drink in Dublin. He handed me a shot. “Whaddaya write?”

“Trying to write like Joyce.”

He raised an eyebrow, his expression not unlike scorn.

So I said, “How do you know Toman?”

Sean lipped his glass, then poured it down and wiped his mouth. “Real estate investments. In Prague. Toman, he helps me out. He’s the go-between.”

“Toman helps,” said Toman, “so my good friend Sean can buy all of Prague for his friends.”

“What friends?” I asked.

But the Irishman didn’t hear me. “A pint, lads?”

A pint, it turned out, meant ten pints in three pubs—the Paddy Cullens hidden in the embassy area; Crowes a few doors down; and by 11:00 I was dizzy in Bellamy’s, where at this hour all the surfaces were sticky and rugby boys were singing to each other and businessmen at the bar swapped jokes over Guinness. Toman and Sean drained their Harps and roared over jokes about Linda-who’d-gotten-the-boot (“Och, ochón,” said Sean, “she had an ass onner!”) and others whose names I couldn’t keep track of. They liked my Zagreb drinking stories from five years

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