if it's good enough for Van Gogh....
a vision of yellow
My second day in London was my last. The next morning I would take another plane five hours to an island off the coast of West Africa. I crammed as much as I could into the time remaining after the Pope's Memorial Mass at Westminster Cathedral - visited the crown jewels and took a ride on the London Eye and made faces at the Buckingham Palace Guards and I think I even spotted Rowan Atkinson browsing the housewares department at Harrods. I tried to snap his photo from behind a natty mannequin but managed to get only his left leg. I told my boys it was Mr. Bean, anyway, and of all the adventures I had in my thirteen days this one tickled them the most. All the magnificent postcards I brought home lay forgotten on the kitchen counter, but the photo I printed out of that poor man's leg is already taped to their bedroom door.
Early evening found me tired of sightseeing, my mind a colored whir of the sunflowers and saints of the National Gallery. I was tired of the smoke, too, the unyielding scent of cigarettes that carpeted the city in rusty lung shag. I walked to clear my nose, to clear my head, past Trafalgar Square, endless rows of shops and flats, parks and people, couldn't keep track of it, stopped looking at my map, just kept putting one foot down, then the other, past St. Paul's Cathedral, until I saw a strange corner pub the shape of a triangle and jammed against the Blackfriars rail line. "The Black Friar" spelled in mosaic tiles along the wall, and a marble laughing friar peered down from the ledge over the door. Oh cool, I thought, a weird pub. I need a good drink. I opened the door.
A ruckus of talk and fizz greeted me, and for a moment it looked as if the walls themselves spoke, as they were covered with illustrations of merry monks.
Above the fireplace, a large bas-relief bronze depicted frolicking friars singing carols and playing instruments. Three low arches lead into a smaller bar, almost a chapel of booze under an arched mosaic ceiling dotted with mottos of wisdom, such as, 'finery is foolery' and 'don't advertise, tell a gossip'. The detail here was amazing, even the light fittings were carved wooden monks carrying yolks on their shoulders, from which the lights hung. And every square inch of floor held feet - men's feet, women's feet, all standing and attached to drinking, talking, smoking Brits.
I stood by the door for a moment, watched a middle-aged bartender with a friar's bald spot pour draft after draft next to the twenty-odd folks crowding the bar. The room held a few tables, most taken by groups of friends downing pint after pint. All but one table. The corner table, dark, away from the mess as if it sat on the other side of this reality, in some quiet forgotten alley. An old man sat alone, an empty glass to his right. A waiter carried a tray to the old man, and I stared as he set down his tray, placed a new glass filled with a pale green liquid front and center upon the table, and lifted a strange slotted spoon over the glass. With his other hand he placed what looked like a sugar cube in the spoon, then slowly - drip by drip - poured a clear liquid over the sugar cube. It desolved between the slotted gaps and spilled into the green below. I couldn't stop staring, my eyes glued to the green glass turning milky white, and as the waiter continued the ritual, the old man caught me staring and motioned the vacant chair.
"Missus, fancy a seat?" His voice wasn't like the other Brits I met in my travels. It was cultured, unusual, a strange and expensive accent.
"Oh yes, thank you so much." I dropped my humongous purse on the floor at my feet and sat, continued to stare at the waiter's hand, the spoon, the very end of the sugar. With a decorative flourish, the waiter dropped the spoon into the glass, now filled with milky white liquid, and gave it a good stir. He nodded, picked up his tray, began to leave me with the old man and the odd drink.
"Oh hey! Wait a second!" I grabbed the waiter by the back of his vest, and pointed to the old man's glass. "I have no idea what that is, but man, I want one of those too. Can you bring me one? Please? Thanks!" The waiter didn't say a word, just smirked, disappeared as he walked through the crowd.
The old man took small sips of his drink, watched me through drooping lids, and I thanked him again for his table kindness.
"Thanks again for letting me sit at your table. Do you come here often?" I noticed his hands were covered in small specks of paint. I wondered if he were painting a picture or a house wall.
"Most every evening. Charles knows what I like." He sipped his drink carefully, reverently, almost making love to his glass.
"What the heck is this drink, anyway? It's weird how it changes from green to white. How does it do that?" I was ready to ask one more question about the paint on his hands, but the waiter interrupted us, began the odd ritual again, glass and spoon and sugar and what I learned was cold water.
I never learned anything about my drinking companion. He kept silent, let me sip the licorice liquid, let me feel it warm bones then mind, open my mind, open my mind, open my mind, never felt like this before, not on alcohol, not the one time I smoked a joint with my best friend Patrick, open my mind. Absinthe. That's what it was. Absinthe. Drink of Van Gogh and Poe and countless other writers and painters and artists of mystery. Absinthe.
Hell, it's illegal to buy and import in the United States. But I smuggled a nice big bottle in my hand luggage, got it through customs by playing the mother of five Avon Lady fool. Tonight I will open the bottle, use my small tea strainer to melt the sugar, make my own ritual, remember that old man who must be a great painter or the ghost of Van Gogh himself.
7:19:10 PM 
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