Šárka (pronounced Sharka) was a petite Czech blonde
girl with an oval face and big green-grey eyes that I met at Radost one Sunday
night. Radost was a
café-lounge-club that I was cooking at and on this night, I was sitting at the
bar after a shift with Igor, our dishwasher from Macedonia. We were having some drinks to unwind before
going our separate ways. Šárka was sitting at the couch closest to the bar with
a couple other girls. She was
really cute and held herself with a reserved demeanor and an air of elegance,
which immediately caught my attention.
After a little while our eyes met, we both smiled and she then looked
away.
I then noticed her stealing glances my way and
after locking eyes a couple more times, I decided to go over and introduce
myself. I told Igor what had been
unfolding and invited him to come over with me. He immediately turned around in a very blatant way and
stared right at the girls. He then
turned back to me and said that he wasn’t interested and that it would only
bring him trouble. He was dating
one of the servers and if he came over, even in the innocent role of a
supporting wingman, it would lead to unnecessary trouble with his
girlfriend. He wished me luck; I
grabbed my drink and wandered over to the couch.
“Hi.”
I said as I stood in front of her.
This was my usual pick-up line.
“Hello.” She answered in an embarrassed kind of
way.
“My name is Michael. Mind if I join you for a drink?”
“Ok,” She started sliding over to make some room
for me on the couch before adding and holding out her hand, “My name is Šárka.”
We shook hands. “Šárka - really? That’s my favorite Czech name. I really love it.” This wasn’t a joke or false flattery- ever
since I first heard that Šárka was an actual name in the Czech Republic, I was
enamored by it. For some reason, it
really appealed to me then and still does today.
“Šárka is your favorite name?” She was smiling skeptically
now, as I settled down next to her.
“Seriously, I think you- I mean it’s beautiful- really
beautiful!”
“Well, in that case, Michael is my favorite
boy’s name.”
We laughed.
It was a golden beginning. We started talking, or I should
probably say, I started blabbering away.
You see, I have this tendency, especially when talking to a girl for the
first time, to throw, almost non-stop, lots of random information out there. It’s what I call the chum line
approach. In an effort to stumble
upon something that interests the person, I go into overdrive disseminating candid
facts and stories. With Šárka, it
didn’t take much, as she was interested from the get-go. I explained that I was an American who
had recently moved to Prague and started cooking at Radost to pay my rent, but despite
the job my life plan was to write fiction. I also told her how excited I was to be in her country. She was a student studying music.
Shortly after the conversation got rolling, her
friends interrupted and said they were going downstairs to the club, which held
poetry jams on Sundays. Šárka said
she would meet them down there and we continued getting to know each other. I liked the fact that she was there for
the poetry. I also liked that she
studied music. It was clear we had
a lot in common.
I bought us another round, and another round
after that, and before I knew it, it was going on midnight and Šárka said she
had to leave to catch the last metro. We had spoken effortlessly with much laughter for hours and I
was certain we had a special connection.
I asked if I could walk her to the metro.
“Yes.”
She said almost blushing.
As we approached the entrance to the metro, she
mentioned some concert she had gone to recently and asked if I had seen any
music since I arrived in Prague.
“Not yet, but I want to. I love classical music. We should go to the philharmonic
sometime---would you like to do that?”
“You want to take me to the philharmonic?” There was her skepticism again, but her smile remained fixed while she looked straight into my eyes.
“Yes, I haven’t been and want to go. Would you like to go with me?”
“You want to take me to the philharmonic.” She repeated, but it was a statement,
not a question this time, and there was a hint of something akin to positive disbelief
in her voice.
“Yes, let’s do it, but first, let’s meet again
for dinner or something. This has
been an amazing night. I’m so
happy we met.”
We agreed to meet again in a few days. Since this was before the age of cell
phones and email, we decided on a time and place and when we said goodbye I
hugged her and then, as we separated, kissed her. We stood there in front of the entrance to the metro and kissed
for a few minutes and then she went down to catch the train. It was indeed an amazing night.
We met as planned and the night followed a
similar script. It was a romance
of kindred spirits- free flowing, enthusiastic and carefree. After a few fun dates with her, I
invited Šárka out with my friends.
They were dying to meet this girl who I couldn’t stop talking about. We
all met for drinks at a bar I hung out in called Chapeau Rogue and afterwards
we decided to walk up to Radost to hit the club.
Things seemed to be going fine, but Šárka wasn’t
as talkative or outgoing as usual.
I chalked it up to being around a small group of Americans that she
didn’t know. Also, the
conversation was heavy in philosophical and intellectual topics, as all of us
were riding the exuberance of seizing the day by spontaneously throwing our
lives to the wind to chase creative dreams as expats in mid-90s Prague.
As we were walking by the Stavovske Divadlo (Estates
Theatre), where Mozart premiered Don Giovanni for the first time, my buddy from
the States was saying something about the nature of true reality when Šárka pulled
away from me and started jumping up and down while screaming at the top of her
lungs in a piercing wail –“I WISH IT WOULD RAIN!!!! I WANT IT TO RAAAAIIIIN!!! AHHHRRRRAAAHHH!!!!”
This obviously cut into the conversation and
everyone stopped and stared at her in shock. After the screaming tirade ended, she looked battered with
wet eyes and started stumbling away toward the back of the theatre. Everyone then turned and stared at me. I was just as confused by this display
as they were. Up until this time, I had never heard her raise her voice above a
conversational tone. I shrugged my
shoulders and said, “I told you she has a lot of spunk.” The joke didn’t lighten the mood and
Šárka kept wobbling away with her back to the group. “Go ahead without us, we’ll meet you at Radost,” I told
them.
The guys started off and I went to Šárka. She was now sitting on the street with
her back to the theatre and her head down between her legs. She was shaking and crying. While she let me sit and hold her, she
wouldn’t answer any of my questions about what was going on or what had just happened.
So, I just held her, as minutes
passed. I was confused and felt helpless.
After a while, she pulled herself together, but still
wouldn’t tell me what was going on or what the screaming was about. We started walking again. She didn’t want to meet up with my
friends, or go anywhere else for that matter. I suggested we call it an early night and go back to my
place. She agreed. This would be the first time she would come
back and spend the night with me.
We hopped on a tram and then picked up a bottle
of wine at the mini-market by my apartment. Even at my apartment she was still shook up, so we pretty
much drank the wine in silence, while smoking cigarettes and a couple
joints. When the bottle was
finished, I tried kissing her, but she wasn’t into it. We went to sleep.
In the morning, her mood was better and we
fooled around a little bit as we lay in bed, but she kept pulling back before it
became anything serious. Since we
started going out all we did was mostly kiss, which we did a lot, but I
couldn’t figure out why she kept putting the brakes on after so many great dates
together.
After a little while, she said she had to go. I was frustrated, but didn’t say
anything. I walked her to the
door, we said goodbye and that we would talk soon and I went back to bed. I was let down that she wouldn’t tell me
what was happening with her and felt that she was purposely keeping distance
between us. I didn’t understand it
and figured that she probably wasn’t as into me as I was into her.
After this, we soon lost touch. She knew where to find me and where I
worked, but never came by again.
We had exchanged flat numbers, but she never called mine and when I
called hers, no one ever answered. After a couple weeks of trying, I gave up and moved on.
About a year later I was having some drinks with
a friend at Sports Bar Prague (an early Prague institution now defunct). After a while, he said, “Hey, you see
that girl at the end of the bar with Aussie Bill? She stayed over at his place the other night when they were on
an ecstasy binge and said she would give his apartment a “haircut” and then
went around cutting up the lampshades, posters on the walls and other things…she’s
nuts.” Aussie Bill was the resident drug dealer at Sport Bar and you could find
him just about every night at the end of the bar by the pool tables.
I looked down the bar to Aussie Bill’s usual
perch and was floored to see Šárka sitting next to him having a conversation. She looked different- older, pale, burnt
out. I was about to react and tell
the story of our dating when my friend added. “I guess you can’t blame her. She’s HIV-positive.”
And with that, everything I thought I knew, and
my entire world along with it, came crashing down like a torrential rain.
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Want to read another tale of lost romance in Eastern Europe? If so, click the link below to read about Gouzelle, a beautiful Chechen I met in Moscow that was also not meant to be:
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