5 The ticket

It was pleasant under the shade of trees in the park, but I was restless. I strolled to the end of Kampa and back again. I sat for a while with a beer.  I stood next to a statue of a kneeling girl while eating a sausage and listening to a large bosomed woman sing operetta to the accompaniment of the Czech Army band. There were girls in summer blouses and loose fitting T-shirts. It was mid afternoon and hot.

I took the double steps from the island up onto Charles Bridge and made my way back towards Nerudova, but this time not to Marta's apartment. Now would not be a good time to visit, unexpectedly or otherwise. Now I needed the clear spaces of the castle's precincts to insure for myself a safe and unfettered journey, eventually, on the number 24 tram.

On my first visit to Prague, a year before, I had taken a tram to the Sparta Prague football stadium, near where a woman called Hana, a school teacher, was providing me with a room, only to miss the stop. I'm normally good with maps. Show me directions once and that's normally enough, the map is logged as an image in my mind, but I expected the tram to stop by the stadium and it didn't, it continued to carry me deeper into the suburbs and I lost my bearings. I would have to get off as soon as possible and walk back. I peered through the tram's windows for memorable landmarks as we rumbled along, twisting and turning through the streets, and just when I thought, from the movement of other passengers towards the doors, that a stop was imminent and I could get off, someone tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around. Less than hour had passed since the airport bus had dropped me off in the city center. Was my visit being cut short already? By a stocky middle aged woman in a brown coat?

The woman, dressed like most others on that tram, said something briefly, curtly. I turned away to look out for the stop. The woman tapped me again on the shoulder, this time a little more firmly, and repeated what she had said before in the same deliberate, firm tones. I shrugged, reluctant to speak. This time she began to raise her voice, and I recognized the word 'policie'. I was going to be arrested by a mum, or at least be given up to the police by one.

In these years it was difficult to avoid being noticed for the westerner that you clearly might be, just from your clothes. Some time shortly before, a young man had crossed a wide boulevard in Warsaw to ask me, in Polish, where I'd found my Levi's. He was crestfallen when I replied 'Oxford Street'. Now, on the tram, whatever I was wearing made me evidently in need of a translator. A woman passenger leaned towards me and said something in German. 'Thank you, but I'm English,' I said.
'She wants ticket', replied the passenger. 'She is...official,' said the woman, trying to find the terminology.
'Inspector?'
'Yes, inspector'.

I had a ticket, but had crumpled it into one of my pockets without a thought, and had forgotten to have it punched in one of the tram's machines. I searched, conscious of the rapidly approaching stop. I rummaged, pulling out tissues and other scraps from every pocket. I had even forgotten what it looked like and began to fluster. 'My stop', I said. 'Next stop, my stop'. The official stared impassively at me. She then looked at my hand in which several old tickets from other countries lay, quite a collection, and dipped her fingers into them. She held a small green ticket up, looked straight at me, and pursing her lips, tilted her head slightly to one side.
'It's ok,' said my translator.

I managed to get off the tram just before the doors closed on me.

Now, slowly making my way through 'The Little Quarter' in the heavy warmth of a late August afternoon, I aimed to take my time and walk to Daniel K's, whose apartment I would be staying in that night before flying home. But not through any lingering fear of ticket inspectors. The young man with a green nylon jacket over his shoulder, who had bought an ice cream while I savored my cold frothy beer, wouldn't have any trouble keeping up with me at all - but I wasn't going to rush. Neither did I want a traveling companion to Daniel K's.