Story for performance #368
webcast from Madrid at 09:49PM, 23 Jun 06

You see we didn’t really know where we were coming to. The only sensation was the sensation of leaving. Leaving something far behind. Breaking away, tearing something. I could almost hear the sound of it as one by one the goodbyes were taken care of.

At the New Berlin Restaurant that night we all gathered, everyone, and reality was still what we knew it to be. The streets, the uneven pavement, the grey and the slight smell of fear whenever you passed a man in a uniform, dropping your voice whenever you had something to say that shouldn’t quite be said. That night I played and was giddy with excitement, because we were the undisputed centre of attention. My father had won lottery money, we were basking in one glory after another—money enough to shout everyone dinner, all at once, and then the unimaginable glory.

We were going to Australia. No one knew what that meant. But my grandmother, who had spent her life in one house feeding many many people, put on the saddest look she had cultivated and said ‘why Australia? Isn’t the food good enough for you here?’ She was right, in her way.

My other grandmother didn’t come with us. She waited on the stairs in front of our apartment, in the dark, with a lit candle. A small vigil, with a sense of foreboding. She waited to hand over all her earthly treasures—the bag full of embroidered cloths which she had made over the years. It was all she had, really. And she gave it to us, to take.

The only image I had of Australia was of a string carry bag with a dictionary in it. That was what I was going to have in my hand whenever I went out to play, so that I could speak to my friends, who had no faces yet. That was Australia.

When we were going to the airport I looked out the back window of the taxi, and watched the line of the trees rhythmically pass by. The radio was on, the sound of the moment before leaving. A kind of forever sound.

And then we left.

The sky was endless and grey. It was a strange new sky, lighter and darker at once. Beautiful, but unfriendly. Impersonal.

The sky I knew shielded me. The streets I knew shielded me. The grey walls had been uniform, and within them were all the people I knew. The grey stones of the streets I knew were higgledy piggledy, but my feet had grown into them.

I didn’t know these streets. They went on and on. They were smooth. There were no people in them. Not only no people I knew. Just no people. What’s the point of streets if there are no people in them?

And everywhere you looked there was space. And if you called out it would go on and on. Nothing would come back to you. Was there an echo here?

We moved into the biggest house I could have imagined. Everyone had a room. Everyone had a room to themselves. What is the point of having a room if there is no one else there with you? What is the point of having space if it is filled with endless corridors?

I was falling. I was falling through this newness. I was walking on smooth ground, only I wasn’t walking, I was floating. There was no squeaking of tram tracks, there was only smoothness, there was no yelling, there was only politeness and there were no faces my eyes had grown into, no pavement my feet had grown into, no air my lungs had grown into. The streets were straight and they continued all the way into the unknown.

Even the air was smooth. The light was glossy and glamorous. The shops were full of wondrous gadgets and toys. I couldn’t pronounce the names for them. I was giddy, but this time with something else.

You didn’t have to whisper here. Here even if you yelled no one would notice. The television was on, the ads were singing their catchy songs, and the corridors in our new house went on and on, half-lit and half-silent.

I didn’t know what I was until I left what I was. Unravelling, step by little step, until the particles of my feet could take the shape of this ground.

Under the Australian sky, in the wide streets of Melbourne, a little waltz began.

When you press against a wall, the wall comes back at you. It tells you what you can’t do. It stands there, impervious, historical and definite. It shields you and makes you feel small, known and comfortable. No matter how much you press the joke is on you. The world is shaped by the wall. The straight line going up and down, taller than you, and it tells you the limits of the known world. This was my Eastern Europe. Every time I went back, there was that wall, and people pressed and pressed and they got tougher and tougher and they crowded around it and they whispered and told jokes and they knew where they stood. Against the wall. They beat at it, scraped at it, tried to climb it, camped around it, chipped holes and engraved their names into it. They were never big enough.

And then down it came.

People walked the streets in free fall, dazed and euphoric, not knowing where to place their weight.

Adapted for performance by Barbara Campbell from a story by Bagryana Popov.