My First Massage Outside of Asia: Lake Palić,
March 2012
Normally I’d sigh and grunt like a sow once a deft hand
finds the right spot – of which there must be thousands from the frontal bone
to my big toe. This time round there is none of it.
Instead I have to concentrate on the small talk, both of us
intent on squeezing out a firsthand info from the other. Me, I ask about the
life of ordinary folks in the northernmost part of Serbia
as he probes into a life of an expat earning his breadcrumbs in the Far East.
I learn electricity bills are the local top vexation, so
much so that even a pair of wealthy returnees living in a pretentious villa near
Palić, keep only one room heated in winter. I learn my masseur juggles two
other jobs, a nighttime watchman and a security guard in a primary school. I
learn how one of his clients was a Japanese man light as a feather, who was to
marry a local Hungarian girl the following day; how a certain German prick
asked him to work on his left foot for an entire hour and left him no tip; how
he massaged some famous people none of whom talked much. I tell him that Serbs
in Japan are as rare as hen’s teeth, that I’d sometimes kill for a hearty
Pannonian dish, that I miss the hugs and the open bitterness and how I wish I
could chew the cud with my Chinese masseuse sometimes, who charges me five
times he does. Which in itself calls for a hearty tip.
The sun sets at lake Palic
