Helloween

Who's afraid of red, blue and green?











"This here story I'm about to unfold, well, I guess I seen somethin' every bit as stupefyin' as you'd seen in any of them other places.." Some of you might recognise this quote (made by a sasparilla drinking stranger), but it was what went to my head when I survived helloween and thought about the way I would describe the scene that I had witnessed (and it correlates with the previous entry). So it was getting cold (last Saturday night) and I found myself in the hills. I passed a house, and another one, and right when I was about to pass the third, a man waved to me from the path in between the two houses. Actually, he looked at his watch, looked up at me, checked the time once more, and started waving. I was eager to be invited (a house, no matter what the quality, is a lot warmer than a tent, no matter what the quality), so I cycled over. The usual stuff: Q: "Not cold?" A: "Yes, a little ('chut chut')." Q: "Want to sleep inside the house ('dom')?" A: "Sure, spaseba!" So I went with the man, into the house.

A little hallway, built in an S-shape, separated the kitchen from the outer wall. My cycle didn't fit through that without unpacking first. The house owner was trying to do so anyway by using a lot of force. "Wow wow wow!", I warned, but it didn't stop him. He kept on pulling at my front luggage carrier, so I told: "Stop!", and then he stopped. I started taking off my bags, and handing them to him. He piled them up in a corner of the kitchen. The cycle was slim again, and I manoeuvred it in. As it was a hassle to get in, it would also be difficult to get out.

Inside the kitchen we had the first good look at each other. The man, stocky posture, about 50 years old, had a marked face, accentuated by huge, flattened nose. It hadn't always been like that, the nose had been broken a couple of times and had healed by taking on the shape of the incoming fist. Like the biggest strawberry in the box, that has been sitting in the corner for a little too long, and with that getting weak underneath the weight of the other strawberries. He was most definitely strong and later he would explain to me that he used to be a boxer (making an uppercut in the air, a little bit to close to me for my liking).

"Kak tebya zovut?", he asked loudly.

"What? Russky nijeto."

"Kak tebya zovut?!", and this time he bashed his wrist on his chest and said: "Nurlan."

"Ah, what's my name? Koen."

"Kun?"

"Yes, Koen."

"Kun?!"

"Yes, Kun.."

"Ah, Kun", and he went for the drawer in the kitchen table, opened it and took out what once had been part of the packing of a deck of playing cards. On the inside he wrote 'к' 'у' 'н', the Cyrillic letters that form 'Kun'. "Tak.."

"Ty otkuda?"

I know that one, after having replied about 2000 times: "Gholandia."

"Gholandia?!"

"Ja, Nederland."

"Tak, Gholandia", and he reached for the paper again and wrote down the word.

Good, I thought, we've got the basics down on paper, that's a start. Nurlan then put back the scrap of paper in the drawer, closed it, and asked me: "Kak tebya zovut?!"

"What?"

"Ya, Nurlan, (you?)" he signed, by pinching me with his boxing fingers in the arm.

"You've just written it down: Kun (at this stage I wasn't going to bother about the 'oe' anymore)!"

"Ah, Kun."

These minutes of our introduction could go on forever, 'cause Nurlan's dysfunctional brain didn't remember my name, or where I was from, or that I didn't speak any Russian and he kept on asking me for it (I'm not kidding, at least thirty times). At one point I thought of writing down 'кун' on my forehead, but that would make him come even closer (to read, for his eyes weren't much better than his memory), and he smelled awful. Instead, he would go every once in a while to the drawer, to look for the paper (which he remembered, so he did realise that he left himself a note somewhere), which he would then put back ("keep it in sight you idiot!", I yelled at him inside my head).

Blows on the head wasn't the only thing that had injured his brain. Most of the destruction was self-mutilation: wodka. At first Nurlan asked me if I wanted too (by grabbing the bottle, making a slap with his index finger on the throat, and afterwards pointing at me), which I didn't (full control, was the only thing I wanted), and if I minded if he took (I did, but I didn't want to upset him and it was his place, so who am I to tell him not to drink? (My name is K-U-N!)). One after the other, straight up, sometimes followed by a cup of lukewarm tea.

With all this excellent conversation going on, you'd wonder why you would want to do anything else, but at one point Nurlan took an old paper from a corner, folded it open on a stool, and started shuffling the cards that were inside. Without asking me if I wanted to play, or if I knew the rules of the game (thanks Michael, the peace corps volunteer - they do more than playing cards, I can assure Uncle Sam if he's reading along - for having taught me the basics of 'Durak', the only card game 'free warriors' like Nurlan seem to play, for without it I would have been lost), he dealt me 6 cards and signed me to begin.

I lost the first game (strategically; keeping the madman in a good mood), won the second (I've got my pride), and got rubbish cards in the third. It's also a strange game, where you have a trump colour, but you don't have to follow suit, so you're basically stocking up on trumps until the last hand comes and the one with the highest trumps wins the game.

The evening was about to get really uncomfortable (as if this wasn't enough), when he asked me about money. (Even if people don't speak a single word of English, they always know 'money'.) I took a bill from my pocket and handed it to him. Not enough. "Hmm, let me see", and he gave it back to me. I put it back in my pocket, walked to the other room, where my bike was and indicated that I was about to leave. I actually really wanted to get out; rather pitching my tent in the freezing dark, than having to put up with this drunken loon. Then the amount appeared to be just right.

When I told Nurlan that I was going to bed (it was already eight o'clock(!) after all), he seemed a bit disappointed. No more card games. I took out my toothbrush and -paste and started brushing my teeth. At this moment, Nurlan took me by the upper arm, to feel the amount of strength I had. He then smiled, and said something that I interpreted as: "If you are thinking of doing anything to me, than think again, 'cause I'll crush you", which he illustrated by slamming down one of his fists on an imaginary Kun, and making a sound like: "Mwhurah!".

The bottle was empty, and he went fot the next. I went to bed. That night I was woken up a couple of times, sometimes because Nurlan wanted to show me to a relative that passed by, sometimes because he was messing about in the room, trying to find something. The next morning I didn't know how fast I had to pack and leave. While I was putting the luggage on my cycle, Nurlan was coughing out his guts. I told him that wodka is a killer, for which he thanked me with a little bow and a 'spaseba'.

When I got to the road, a couple of horses where staring at me. The contrast couldn't have been bigger: from the ugliness of a person in decay, to nature's innocent beauty. The cold morning air felt great.