Indelible stamp on the brain (USA / Czech Republic / UK)

I heard last week that a friend who’d lost her husband recently still hears his Parkinson’s-induced shuffling footsteps around the house, nearly two months after his demise.

    This reminds me of my own experiences of the brain retaining sounds after the event.

    I was visiting an American friend who was living in Hartford, Connecticut, at the time.  During my fortnight-long stay there, I’d hear police car sirens frequently throughout the day and night.  

    After my return, I’d continue to hear those sirens for a while.  I lived in a cul-de-sac in a residential part of Highbury (a suburb in Zone 2 of London), therefore not exposed to traffic sounds, not even police car sirens.  Also, this was 1983, with British police car sirens having a different pitch from American ones.

    I went to Prague at Easter 1992, staying three nights at a Brit’s flat in Dejvická, a residential area of Prague that has a tramline a few hundred yards from the flat.  I could hear the keklunk-keklunk of the tram at night.

    Back in Highbury, where there isn’t a tram line, that same keklunk-keklunk that I’d heard over only three nights would play in my head night after night for a while after my return.

(USA, 1983 / Czech Republic, 1992 / UK, 2025)

The two Italians in Prague (Czech Republic)

A sudden thunderstorm in Prague had me and Hattie diving into the nearest café.  It was tiny, with only room for about three tables.  We took the four-seater one, as the others were occupied.  

Two Italian men then approached, and one of them asked, in Italian, if they could take the other two seats.  I said prego.  

He then asked, in Italian, if I could speak Italian.  I said no.  

He hesitated slightly, trying to process the logic of this (as I obviously understood his question both times), then sat down with his friend and started chatting. 

At some point, I heard them talking about me and Hattie, commenting on the disparity in our sizes and heights.  Instinctively, my head jerked up in their direction.  The speaker stopped mid-sentence, then said to his friend, in Italian, “She says she doesn’t know Italian, but I don’t believe her.”  They totally clammed up for the rest of the thunderstorm and just sat there, not daring to speak. 

When the rain stopped, they got up to leave.  As they walked past us, I said a cheery, “Ciao!”  The man convulsed as if I’d pinched him in the bottom.

PS:  I couldn’t resist the last line because my second sister’s friend, Sufei, had toured Europe in the late ’60s en route to the UK for her accountancy course.  She’d sent postcards from all over Europe, and said Italian men were the most notorious as they pinched women’s bottoms.

(Czech Republic, 1993)