Full circle

I woke up to challange the watery roads and drive to the half built houses out of town, study them and learn all I could learn of them, one after another, then ride to the center, be confident, brave and communicative and talk a lot, then ride straight out of town again to the village where I'd wait for the distant wedding to be brought towards its logical ending. The waiters walk to and fro, their white shirts reflect the electric light as they go outside and take a short breath and smoke. A young man trotts down the stairs and smiles earnestly before embracing me: "you've became skinny, good man! Come inside, the audience was boring at the start, they're all right now. Please, come in."

The moment I walk in the illuminated tent with loud music I know I shouldn't be here. "Have a headache eh?" I mutter some words and walk back into the chilly darkness with mosquitos by the black river. The showman yells on top of his lungs, I inhale the night air. There's so much of the empty space above the water and it is so quiet, and dark, and calm. If we measure it with the wedding tents it's quite possible it'll take fifty or sixty tents. A woman cries out and I'm not sure if it's a cry for help or a battleshout of joy. A glass breakes. The music is cut out, only the dishes rattle, and everybody walks in and out, tired, thoughtless and drunk. We load the car with sound gear, I open the door for the entertainer who says a quiet "thank you" and I start the engine. All goes well at first, the roads are wide and empty, we roam far into the night, but something is wrong in the intrails of my car and the wheel kicks and shakes, we slow down.

"I'll fix her, I think, but I need the tools that you never carry in your car." said the engineer and smiled at me - my friend the young man. We drove in silence in the yellow town lights. My friend the engineer is also a musician and a singer, also a desperate fighter. He plays for weddings and the only wedding he allowed himself to fight at, was mine. Once he had three men (one of them with a knife) against him. The good man socked the first, received a blade in the shoulder from the second before slamming his enemy's forehead into the asphalt, shoo'd the third off, only to find the blade has stuck in the sleeve of his coat missing his skin by an inch. He pulled the knife from his shoulder, threw it after the runner, missed, picked his beer and the police drove from behind the corner. The musician retreated, flew over a three meters high wall and hid himself in the snow; waited for the police to loose him, stood up, picked his beer and walked home to listen to Mozart's opera. So when my car broke down he was only too excited to fix it. We carried on along the side of the road, other cars overtaking us like missles. We spent the night on a bridge, the showman slept on the backseat, the good musician - elbow deep in machinery - told me all about the old german cars and I tried to be helpful and passed him the tools on request. The night above us moved like an ocean and I seriously doubted its finiteness. An hour before dawn we were at the repair shop and the stars were pale already. We chopped the wires and in half an hour I was on my way towards the new day, and the fresh wind from the country hailed at me.