M Train by Patti Smith

Author:Patti Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2015-10-05T16:00:00+00:00

Frida Kahlo’s crutches, Casa Azul

Credit 8.3

Dress, Casa Azul

Credit 9.1

How I Lost the Wind-Up Bird

I GOT A MESSAGE from Zak. His beach café was open. All the free coffee I wanted. I was happy for him but hesitated to go anywhere, as it was Memorial Day weekend. The city was deserted, just the way I like it, and there was a new episode of The Killing on Sunday. I decided to visit Zak’s café on Monday and spend the weekend in the city with Detectives Linden and Holder. My room was in a state of complete disarray and I was more unkempt than usual, ready to be comrade to their mute misery, swilling cold coffee in a battered car during a bleak stakeout coming out equally cold. I filled my thermos at the Korean deli, deposited it next to my bed for later, chose a book, and walked over to Bedford Street.

Café ’Ino was empty, so I happily sat and read The Confusions of Young Törless, a novel by Robert Musil. I reflected on the opening line: It was a small station on the long railroad to Russia, fascinated by the power of an ordinary sentence that leads the reader unwittingly through interminable fields of wheat opening onto a path leading to the lair of a sadistic predator contemplating the murder of an unblemished boy.

I read through the afternoon, on the whole doing nothing. The cook was roasting garlic and singing a song in Spanish.

—What is the song about? I asked.

—Death, he answered with a laugh. But don’t worry, nobody dies, it is the death of love.

—

On Memorial Day I woke early, straightened my room, and filled a sack with what I needed—dark glasses, alkaline water, a bran muffin, and my Wind-Up Bird. At the West Fourth Street Station I got the A train to Broad Channel and made my connection; it took fifty-five minutes. Zak’s was the only café in the lone concession area on the long stretch of boardwalk along Rockaway Beach. Zak was glad to see me and introduced me to everyone. Then as promised he served me coffee free of charge. I stood drinking it, black, watching the people. There was a happy, relaxed atmosphere with an amiable mix of laid-back surfers and working-class families. I was surprised to see my friend Klaus coming toward me on a bicycle. He was wearing a shirt and tie.

—I was in Berlin visiting my father, he said. I just came from the airport.

—Yeah, JFK is very close, I laughed, watching a low-flying plane coming in for a landing.

We sat on a bench watching small children negotiate the waves.

—The main surfer beach is just five blocks down by the jetty.

—You seem to know this area pretty well.

Klaus was suddenly serious.

—You won’t believe this, but I have just bought an old Victorian house here, by the bay. It has a very big yard and I’m planting a huge garden. Something I never could do in Berlin or Manhattan.

We walked across the boardwalk and Klaus got coffee.

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