Can Modern Bildungsroman Exist?

Based on my experiences when I first moved abroad. My attempt aims to be atmospheric and another point of data in the conversation of where the modern Bildungsroman could exist.

I've come back to this work off and on over the last couple of years, I'm not fully happy with it, but it's a reasonably honest recounting of the first few weeks I spent living overseas, in a country whose language I could hardly speak a word of. The names and conversations are all reconstructions from my imagination, but the places, people and happenings were all real and all happened between January and the thaw in March of 2005.

I’d be interested if anyone can guess the city.

I've finally been prompted to publish it thanks to seeing some discussion on how modern writers don't write these types of novels, about the crossing of the threshold from adolescence to adulthood. I don't think I've quite managed to do that here, not least because of the length but also the style I adopted here doesn’t quite work. I’m not really sure if the screen reading format offers the space and depth for this type of work, least of all because it’s hard to show the before and after, so this feels more like scenes from the “during” in the manner of a montage.

However, I always enjoy adding to a conversation here on Substack. The writers whose discussion has resulted in finally hitting the publish button on this are

https://substack.com/@alexanderhellene

and

https://substack.com/@barsoom

**Outsider** The City of Crossroads is a strange place. You might think the whole world has been there at one point. It always seems between everything. Neither east nor west, with a port, an airline and a railhead. I live there. I'm an outsider, the same as many there. We were all halfway between, just like the city. By trade, I wasn’t anything much. That's why I was there, there's good money for a man who can keep the bureaucrats happy in this mixed up town. Especially for man who can write well and has an ear for language. At least that's what they told me when I came there. This is my story. I'll tell it as I lived it, and the fact I'm telling it lets you know it's true. I lived every word of it. Remember that.

**Chapter 1. Flop House** I feel I ought to tell you the story right from the start. Trouble is, I can't figure out where it all started. I guess sometimes you're in so deep you can't see where one thing ended and another began. I can't tell myself where it started. I need to pick somewhere to start though, so how's when I moved here? I came to the city in the new year, there were still Christmas decorations about and the fresh feeling you get in January. When people are still going to the gym, not smoking or sticking to the diet. Mix that with the weather and January always makes me think of a some earnest pink faced kid. January's got the same scrubbed feeling.

I think I wasn’t so far off being that kid myself, university hadn’t been the experience it was advertised to be, and rather than someone special it just marked me out as part of the tide. No meeting of minds or coffee house discussion, it was cheap lager and jumping through hoops for a devalued diploma. I’d idled, and stalled and then I’d left.

I was still getting my bearings, I'd got the layout of the city by getting my feet on the ground. I hadn't found how the city worked though. In fact, finding a place to live and a steady wage was proving harder than all the adverts said. I was looking for both, but there's a lot of waiting. Everybody knows a guy who needs someone, but you never meet the guy. Everyone's got a friend with a room, but you can never find the friend. It's just how things went that month. Even in the little community of oddballs and exiles things didn’t go well. Every tip off turned into a cul-de-sac and I was getting nowhere. I’d even tried to move for one place where the bed was basically an armchair that unrolled, but it too fell through.

I'd decided to give it another few weeks, I remember the decision – saying to myself that the middle of February would have given me enough time to sink or swim. And without some more income it was likely to be the former. I was down, this place was meant to be a big opportunity, a chance to make it on my own. Instead, I got the feeling that any opportunity had been used up a decade ago. I had ended up in some flop house, south of the river. A mattress no thicker than a weekday paper, a bathroom that was usually ankle deep in water, and a hot plate. It was called “The Three Kings” though you'd have to be a camel short of a caravan to think anyone with a choice had ever stayed there.

You've got to start at the bottom, at least that's what I told myself. Maybe I was romantic about the whole thing. You know, rags to riches and we've all got to start somewhere. It isn't good if you buy your own bullshit though. It just leaves you deep in shit and out of pocket. If you do have to start at the bottom though, this was the right place. You certainly couldn't get much lower. And as for romantic? Searching for something a thousand miles away, nestled in the bend of a river you can barely pronounce needs that special motivation.

The other thing about the bottom is the people there. They're not failures, they're not stuck. Some of them maybe, but nearly all of them are trying to start something. They are a lot of chancers, drifters, dreamers and downright crooks. And the crooks are where the story is.

**Chapter 2. Oasis Effect** I don't know where these guys were from. I'd heard they were Romanian from some, other said Hungarian. I met them when I came down to some communal area in the morning. All 3 of them had a half bottle of vodka in hand, pouring shots and chasing them with cloves of raw garlic. They'd been there all night and looked like they'd keep drinking till they passed out or emptied the bottles. The former looked likely as there were more than a few empty bottles around.

"You drink" the oldest says, heavy accent and no idea if it's a command or question. "Vodka, Yes?" he pours a glass. I don't know why but I take the glass. It's the cheap stuff; oily and with that smell that hits your eyes.

They're so far through that they're in no hurry to drink. I pretend to sip at the vodka, thinking if I can avoid having to knock back when the times comes. Maybe if I take small enough sips I won't taste it?

"Was it a party?" I ask, hard to tell if they'd come back from somewhere.

"We drink. We must here. And because this we drink". That's the answer I get, the same guy perhaps the leader. There's some chatter in their language. I don't recognise it, I don't understand it. one of the others, younger and skinnier adds;

"We haven't papers so we waiting. Work with export. Soon papers come and we work again". Clear as mud. Can't tell if it's the broken English or enough vodka to kill a Cossack that's making it hard to understand.

Now I got to tell you something. Sometimes when you're in some-place new, you're a real outsider you get what I call the oasis effect. Like some kind of Arabian knights round a watering hole, all outsiders together in a strange place. Not friends as such, just guys in the same boat. It's kind of hard to explain, maybe you got to live it to know it. But it does explain a lot of what goes on here. **Chapter 3. Breakfast Vodka** Back to the vodka, back to the "exporters". I'm sitting with these guys, hoping that the smell coming off my shot glass means some of the alcohol's burning off. One of them, let's call him Skinny, knocks back his shot then peels a clove of garlic off a bulb. He sticks it between two saucers, twists them around and has the skin off. He picks it up and knocks the garlic back, whole, much the same way as the vodka went. My face must be a picture. "You think strange?", the older guy - I think the others called him something like Nicholas. Now, do I think vodka and raw garlic for breakfast is strange? Sure as shit I do. "No, just not for me" I answer "Yeah, we crazy" it's the third guy. He stands and lifts what's left of his bottle, maybe a quarter bottle. "Crazy, crazy" he's laughing to himself, some joke no one else is getting. "Like they say 'To bottom!'" and he drinks the rest of his bottle down in one. We do likewise and finish the shots. It's not the best breakfast I've ever head. **Chapter 4. Plans Tonight** The third guy, his name was something like Christoph. Or something like that. He's got the sort of face that'd scare the children. Like if you gave a baseball to a bulldog. And the baseball was his face. All gaps and stitches, too loose in places and too tight in others. He's still standing there, empty bottle in his mouth. Like some kind of balancing trick. You can see his Adam's apple up and downing. He moves his head down, takes the bottle out and tosses it to the floor. He's moving, back to his room. Not a word. We hear retching. "Ah. Is finish now" Nicholas is calling time on the drinks. I'm grateful. Vodka's never going to beat coffee for breakfast. He too leaves, bottles everywhere.

The third guy, Skinny, comes up to me. "You come later, nine at night" I ask him why "Party time, no worries. We pay" With no friends in the city, I say yes. "Nine at night, goodbye" He leaves, following his companions. I wonder what I've let myself in for. Hell, I can always back out. But then, as I've found ever since we're just writing our own biographies in life and sometimes it's all about collecting a good story.

**Chapter 5. Background** I'm the last in this kitchen area. The girl who cleans comes in, I've spoken to her before. You would do. She doesn't have much to do with the story but you don't often find models cleaning in a dump like this. Blonde hair past the shoulders, perfectly even features and a real in-and-out figure. Wasted as a cleaner.

I ask her if she knows about the men who'd been drinking. She tells me. "Those guys, they're funny. Sometimes I understand what they say, they stay here a week or two so I learn how they speak.”

I explain that they'd invited me out. "Maybe is OK, I think they have money. They stay here because no one checks." Not quite the detail I'd hoped for, but not terrible. They're in the same boat as a lot of people, dropping off the world in this melting pot of a city. I ask her if she knows what the guys do. "They don't say, I think something strange"

"Strange? How?"

"Maybe not legal. I hear there are gangs like them. Take things from over the border, bring them here and away. They wait for border guards to change so people don't know them." I thanked her for the information, thinking to myself that going out with them probably wasn't the best plan. I took my coat and hat and left, out into the cold morning.

**Chapter 6. Passing the Day** When you have nothing to do all day it's a wonder what you can do to fill up your time. You block out the day, an hour here, an hour there. The first block needs a solid breakfast. When it’s twenty degrees below freezing and your eyes and nose feel stiff in the air then planning distractions becomes paramount.

Liquid breakfasts don't seem to agree with me. At least, not 80 proof ones. There's an odd place in the old town. All you can eat breakfast, "Continental Style". I don't know where they got the name but they got the food from last night's left overs. Topped off with eggs and cheap bread. Still, it's cheap and warm and nobody hurries you. It's coming up to the end of breakfast as I finish, it's not the best of breakfasts but my wallet isn't in the best of health either. Out in the cold again, walking in the park. I'm ducked down into my collar, the paper said it'd hit minus twenty four tonight and we'd be in for another six inches of snow within a week. Real winter, they said.

Despite the cold there are still women pushing babies around, mostly grandmothers with their heavy boots. Parks are good for thinking, and like the beach, always a place I'm keener on in winter. I walk and think until I'm cold. Another hour down. The next hour is spent in bookshops, reading what I can until the owner's gaze becomes too uncomfortable.

**Chapter 7 A Drink Alone** There's a café on the square, I head there. It's a down and out place despite its prime location. Must be owned outright from way back. This time of year there are just a few men, scrounging beggarly types nursing beers.

A lot of them are drinking beer mixed with some kind of spirit - red and sweet and tipped into the glass. The great thing about beer is how you can stretch time. It's hard to drag a coffee to an hour. Too short and then too cold when you're on your own. No questions when the beer lasts an hour though, and even after that time it's still nearly drinkable.

You see, a man drinking alone is the opposite of a woman drinking alone. She invites attention, that's why she's there. The drink an excuse to pose, to show herself off. For a man the drink is a shield. It says 'don't talk to me' as there's no good reason a happy man drinks alone. I'm cut off, the beer glass magic keeping the world at bay.

I look over the paper. It's one of those held by a wooden baton with a picture hook on the end to hang it up above the bar. I guess the baton's to stop you stealing it, though you'd have to be pretty low to steal the paper. *No News is Good News*, the saying goes. And there's more than one way to take that too. Today, no news is good. Something about some arrests, an article about something called Vigil - some kind of private security company. I can make out maybe one word in ten, bar the sports and weather I’m mostly guessing.

I look through the sports results, always good for striking up conversation. I've not followed a team for years but I still go through the scores most days. One last story about a murder in the north of the city. Well away from here. A nothing news day. I've killed enough time for the sun to have set. I leave the café, weaving through the old town streets. I find the place again.

**Chapter 8. The Food Bar** I came here once before, it's a food bar. The kind I read about in text books, something out of its age. Set up by some well meaning politico to provide cheap hot food. Cold war throwback of cabbage and carbs.

It's one up from a soup kitchen because you have to pay, though by the clientèle and the smell you wouldn't know it. The place is busy though there's no queue. It's amazing how long you can stretch a few cents' worth of tomato soup when you can't afford the heating at home. You order at the counter, the menu's long but they're out of three quarters of what's on there. The counter lady has an accusational tone if you try to order something that's off, as if you could see into the kitchen. Mind you, if you could you'd probably not eat there.

After some toing and froing I manage to order cabbage stew with a roll. I read somewhere this stuff's responsible for the good looking women, some acid in the cabbage helps the skin. I doubt it, but it’s real food, cheap.

I sit down and wait, draping my coat over the chair back and setting my hat, brim up, on the table. It doesn't do to eat in a hat here, unless you fancy the counter lady waving her crucifix at you. "Cabbage Soup" she shouts, the second time I even understand her. I go to get my meal. A tin bowl, and a roll on a tray. The roll looks sad, it was only two days from drawing its long service pension before they served it to me. As for the stew, I try to keep thoughts about its healthfulness to the forefront of my mind, though I'm not quite hungry enough to chance the grey lumps. I don't eat well, but I eat. I might be at the bottom of the pile in the city but I'm at the top of the bottom, with a bed and a belly full.

**Chapter 9. Overheard**

As I'm spooning my cabbage stew I notice two guys to my right. Just the sort to be in here, one step up from soup lines and wearing charity drive coats. They've kept the coats on in here, even though it's hot and steamy from the kitchen. Layers of layers on, grimy at the edges. The uniform of the poor. They're talking fairly loudly, in a place where everyone else is staring into a bowl and one has a cough that's got rocks in it.

I get the odd word, police and money. The name of one of the private security companies in the city. A language too sibiliant and spiky, without enough hooks for my ear to get hold of it.

I'd finished my food and some unkempt and trollish lady had sat down besides me. Her nose had more hair than an old man's head so in order to hold onto my lunch I left. As I walked back up towards the river I was thinking. Thinking on how lucky I was to be here, just ready to take any chance that'd come my way. In the city of crossroads I was just waiting for my chance.

**Further**

In time, I found a job. At one point I actually had six of them at the same time. I stayed for the full year, leaving days before the next Christmas. I rented a flat, paid my own way, learned some language and a lot about people. I worked for gangsters and developed a taste for pickles.

I spent nine months back at home, saving and searching and the next September I learnt from my mistakes and found a better situation and a solid job. It was a new and exciting mistake, but another story.

If you ask nicely, I’ll tell you some more.