ANDREW CHINICH
UNDER A FOREIGN SKY
Frank Serpico taught me how to eat moo shu. I’d never heard of it before. Chinese food, unknown ingredients wrapped up in a pancake. That was about it. I really liked Frank though I didn’t know too much about him except we were making his movie and he took a bullet in the face for blowing the whistle on a city full of corrupt cops.
Anyway, this isn’t about Frank Serpico, it’s about Grazyna (Gra-zy-na) who I met in Warsaw. I can’t recall much about those days now; the details are just smoke drifted up into the wind.
The observant reader will now ask oneself: What has any of this to do with Frank Serpico? Not much.
Except that fateful moo-shu pancake lesson proved to be the catylist for finding myself on a train heading east across Europe by myself. I mentioned to him that I was considering attending film school in Warsaw and without dropping one Chinese vegetable out of his pancake, he invited me to crash at his hide-out in Switzerland. He laughed, “If I ever made it over”. I don’t think he ever thought I’d actually show up. But I did. How could I not? Life at twenty was just a blank canvas that needed a few cans of paint thrown at it. So off I went.
When I crossed the border into Switzerland and finally gazed out at Lake Lucerne, the snowcapped Alps mirrored in the icy still water, I was shocked by the sheer beauty of that world crashing up against the dangerous mean streets of New York that Frank had reluctantly left behind. Where he took that bullet in his face. Two days later he dropped me in town, bid me good luck, and then I headed East.
An olive-drab train eventually dumped me at the Central Station in Warsaw. Aimless, hapless, and lost, I literally bumped into Grazyna on a busy avenue. I asked for directions to a hotel. She pointed over her shoulder to a sprawling, bleak tenement block. Which turned out to be her flat. Warsaw was just emerging from the dark shadows of Soviet Bloc syndrome, and I wasn’t sure the authorities wouldn’t frown upon a foreigner sharing her bed, even after the departure of the communist controlled government. But I was only too happy to find out. I needed a place to stay. She was gorgeous. With an accent that slayed me. That was that.
One of the best things about not speaking a foreign tongue is that you learn to keep quiet and not really give a damn what everyone else is saying. You quickly realize most talk is just small talk, with little effect upon anything really. There’s a beauty to it. Silence is the foreplay of language’s meaningless banter. Communicating was a challenge but we managed. Barely.
In bed one night I told Grazyna that Chip Taylor was going to be a guest speaker at the film school I was going to attend. I explained that he had written one of the greatest rock songs ever, ‘Wild Thing’ (“you make my heart sing...”). Grazyna, puzzled, looked up at me with those big, grey eyes and asked “why do you need a cheap tailor?”
So that was pretty much how it would go. An endless series of miscommunications and crossed explanations on both our parts. But we also knew none of it mattered much. Instead we’d happily embrace the quiet hours that night ushers in and watch the moon slowly meander across Grazyna’s cracked window panes, content in the universal language of silence.
The observant reader will now ask: what does any of this have to do with Frank Serpico?
Not much.
Andrew Chinich, writer, recording and performing artist, has written fiction & non-fiction stories pretty much all his life. His piece, “Under A Foreign Sky” is creative non-fiction.