The Incredible Heaviness of Being - Milan Kundera upside down.
I will call her Mimi. She is originally from Prague. I am a Czech she'd say in her imperious voice, I am from Czechoslovakia.
She owned a café, more of a small seedy bar, where all the drunks from the neighborhood gather after a long day, in the grey winter evenings, hoping to find a bit of warmth, at Mimi's.
Her café, as she liked to proudly call it, consisted of one small table and four chairs, and a long counter made of fake wood with high stools...the walls were decorated with old pictures, that resembled nothing, a bit like the regulars who visit her café...
There is something about Mimi, otherwise I would not write about her. She is difficult to "frame", and maybe this is what makes her alluring enough, enough to devote a few lines trying to capture her in words...
I don't know much about Mimi, except from bits and pieces, given in between serving the regular drunks...Mimi makes it a point to barricade herself in some aura of secret mystery...nothing is given free of charge...this I later discovered...
I don't even know her age. No one can ask Mimi such a question. One client dared once. He said to her " So Mimi, tell us, how old are you ?".
She pulled her reading specs down, and stared at him with those icy cold blue eyes of hers and said " Even if I were 20, you would not satisfy me". He laughed it off, we all did, but we retained the message...
Everyone understood that day -- Mimi was not to be asked any private questions...
There was no way of knowing much about her, apart from observing her in action...she was meticulous. Her small café was always very orderly despite the amount of alcohol that was poured out, daily...no cigarette butts, no ashes, no full ashtrays, no bits and pieces allowed to remain on the bar...she was always very quick to pick things up and wipe it all away, wipe traces away, a bit the same way she is quick to divert curious staring questions away from her...
And I could also tell she must be in her middle 60's. A full mane of chestnut colored hair, a big bosomy woman, with those icy blue eyes, who chain smokes and makes sure that her regular clients pay for her drinks...and Mimi can drink any man under the table...
She laughed, joked, and engaged clients, but there was this invisible wall with a huge sign marked "Off limits - do not trespass".
Whenever I went there to have my coffee, I always wondered what it is she never wanted any of us to find out...
The place was not really my type, I did not like her regulars whom I considered to be a bunch of lost drunkards, but I still went there, as if drawn by some enigma, some heavy secret...some heavy secret I already know, I can never crack open...
