Sandwiches, Wittgenstein and a Log

In the summer of 1991, James and I decided to make the last Grand Tour. He called it that, of course — I was just along for the ride. James had been reading Evelyn Waugh and carried Brideshead in his head like scripture. He dressed the part too: cream linen suit, Panama hat, the occasional tie. When the itinerary required hiking, he changed costume — plaid shirt, brown wool trousers, suddenly Tintin.

I was the contrast piece in the diorama: black pantalons billowing, Dr Martens, a Misfits skull stretched across my chest. My hoodie smelled of buses and beer halls but I had enough t-shirts to stay fresh. James had just been accepted at the LSE to read philosophy, I was about to begin art school, and together we thought ourselves terribly serious. He brought a biography of Wittgenstein; I carried Milan Kundera’s The Joke.

We weren’t like other interrailers. No beer-soaked hostels or Eurail night-carriages full of guitar-strumming Australians. Instead we planned museums, quiet suppers, city walks. We wanted culture, the authentic, the European essence. In short: we were absurd, but earnestly absurd.

In Prague we budgeted carefully, which meant lunch was twenty ham-and-cheese sandwiches, stacked like bricks in our bag. Sliced bread from the corner shop, packet cheese, packet ham — a monument to frugality. We had barely choked down the first before stumbling into the main square, where a Hare Krishna procession snaked across the cobbles. One exuberant monk, clearly a European convert, was ladling out free rice and dahl. I accepted a bowl without hesitation, abandoning our sandwiches to the rucksack. Even pretentious pilgrims need to eat.

Prague was also the city where our plans came unstuck. We arrived expecting labyrinths of mystery and revolution but quickly discovered that all the sights could be toured in a day and a half. That left us with time to kill. So we wandered up into the hills.

It was midday, but the trees made it twilight. Pine needles swallowed our footsteps; the air was muffled. We felt clever for noticing how un-touristic it was. Then the woman appeared.

She was old, stooped, scarf over her head, cardigan knitted burgundy. A fairy-tale figure. She looked at us with suspicion, then with something sharper: ownership. Because she was carrying a log.

Not dragging it, not hefting it, but carrying it cradled, like a child. She tightened her grip when we came close. I smiled my wide, unthreatening smile. James gave a faint nod, as though tipping his Panama brim. Her eyes said: stay away from my baby.

At the time, Twin Peaks was on TV. I thought immediately of the Log Lady, as though Lynch had visited Prague and planted her here, waiting for us. Later, I tried to rationalise. Perhaps it began as a weapon, a length of wood to keep away strangers. Perhaps it became too heavy to hold ready, and she learned to carry it sideways. Over time she forgot it was a weapon at all. Maternal memory overtook her body: the arms folded, the sway of a cradle.

That was my version. James, later that evening, said he thought she was mad. “The log is a prop. A symbol. Maybe even a Wittgensteinian private language — it means only what it means to her, and nothing else.” He took a gulp of his Pilsner and was pleased with himself.

But I keep circling back to that look she gave us. She didn’t look mad. She looked proprietoral. The log was hers. It made her less vulnerable, not more. She had turned a piece of dead wood into armour, into child, into identity.

And what were we carrying? James with his Panama hat, Wittgenstein, his Brideshead poses. Me with my Misfits hoodie, black pantalons, Kundera. And between us, a sack of rapidly curling ham-and-cheese sandwiches. Neither of us any less ridiculous than a woman with a log.

When I think of that trip now, I don’t see the Parthenon or the Hagia Sophia or the Berlin Wall, newly chewed away by souvenir pickaxes. I see the pine needles and the twilight, a bowl of free yellow rice, and a woman whose presence came to represent the idea that everyone carries something that makes sense only to them.