Rachael Weiss - The Thing About Prague ...: How I Gave It All Up For a New Life In Europes Most Eccentric City

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In 2005, I took a year out of my life to live in romantic Prague and write a novel of literary genius. I returned to Sydney after my year was up with a manila folder full of scribbled notes and half-formed ideas, no nearer to joining Kafka in the literary canon, but at least having produced a light travelogue about my year abroad. I resumed my ordinary life, fully expecting to simply pick up where I had left off. Life did return to its normal rhythm but something was not sitting rightI was restless. I was forty-one, still unmarried and childless. I made my living as a mid-level administratorI had a nice boss and engaging work managing a team of personal assistants. Its not a bad life, being an administrator, but its not the most exciting life either.

It was a visit to my doctor that decided me. I was there for my annual check-up.

Are you exercising? she asked, her eyes on the blood pressure valve.

Yes, I replied.

What do you do?

Yoga twice a week and I walk to work. I felt like I used to at school when Id done my homeworkproud, and relieved that I could give the right answer.

Thats good, she said, still gazing at the valve and twitching her hand on the pump. A regular exercise routine is important in middle age. Sets you up for a good old age.

There was a stunned silence. At least, I was stunned. The doctor seemed to think nothing had happened. Did she just call me middle-aged? Did she just say old age?! So Im middle-aged, with old age just around the corner?

In the office bathroom the next day, somewhat hungover, I noticed in the mirror that my eyelashes were holding up my eyelids. I put a thumb under my eyebrows and lifted. The lids lifted too. I slowly let the pressure off. The lids dropped back, exhausted, onto my lashes.

Up to then I had thought my years stay in Prague had been the same as my years anywhere else, just surrounded by castles. But as I poked fruitlessly at my eyebrows, thinking, aging is just one daily indignity after another, isnt it? it occurred to me that if I had to cope with varicose veins, with crease lines from my pillow staying on my cheek until mid-morning, with mysteriously swelling feet (I dont even want to think what thats all about), with, in fact, middle age, Id rather do it somewhere with romantic cobbled streets, midnight-blue evenings, snowflakes and cheap beer. Not in a dreary office block in Sydney. I felt that if I stayed here I might just as well choose a plot at Rookwood Cemetery and get it over with.

Id like to say that my decision to move to Prague permanently was based on something grand and noblea desire to trace my roots, a sense of adventure, my literary heart yearning to burst into flower in the sweet soil of Old Europebut I cant. The truth is that I had nothing better to do. If anyone asked me why I was going (and everyone did), I said airily, Oh, you know, to cast my bread upon the waters and see what happensdo something different. Giving them the impression that I was brave and adventurous beyond words when in fact I was simply rudderless beyond words and frightened of getting old.

The decision, once made, brought with it a raft of other decisions. What should I take? What would I do when I got there? Should I tell my mother, or wait until I landed and then give her a phone call? All of them too difficult to contemplate.

I looked around at my belongings. My sister, who had once spent a year in London, had had a garage saleI made a thousand dollars, just like that! A thousand dollars would come in handy. Mind you, my sister had had a house full of interesting artefacts from Africa, top quality china, vases, silver spoons and childrens toys. I had a few bookshelves made of particle board held together with the red paint Id used on them fifteen years ago when I picked them up off the street, plus some aluminium pots and pans, an unused Mixmaster Id won in a trivia quiz, a couple of pot plants and a cat.

Id picked up Thelma along with the bookshelves and what to do with her was quite a problem. I loved that little cat. She and I had been together for most of my adult life and all of hers. Shed been a tiny scrap no bigger than the palm of my hand when I found her and had started purring the instant I stroked her little ears.

Thelma had been abandoned, poor little mite, so I took her in and loved her. I read somewhere that feral animals become domestic after five generations of being bred as domestic. My little Thelma took one. She was a cat who loved to snuggle up by the fireside, snooze through Saturday morning on my bed, and eat. A lap only had to form in the house and Thelma was on it.

She had a special affection for men, the little minx. The only people she wouldnt sit on were people who adored cats and wanted nothing more than for Thelma to sit on them their entire stay.

What to do with Thelma was my first problem. I really didnt feel I could take her with me, as much as I wanted to. She was fifteen years old and I worried that the trip would kill her. Also, I didnt know where I was going to live when I got there and I didnt want her having to change locations too many times. Wed moved a lot when she was little but in her old age wed stayed put, mainly because I noticed she was finding it harder and harder to orient herself when we moved. Shed stay at home for weeks before she ventured out and, even when she did, she didnt go very far.

I had vowed I wouldnt move her again. I could see her getting happier and happier as the months passed and she made the territory her own. What would she do in an entirely new country? And what about the snow? Thelma thought the heater should go on as soon as she saw a cloud in the sky. If she was like that in Sydney, how would she cope in a Czech winter? No, Thelma would have to stay.

She had boarded at her Aunt Cynthias place when I went to Prague the first time. Thelmas Aunt Cynthia had two other cats, both of whom lived like kings. They had their own baskets with a special electric warming pad each, and Cynthia, who worked from home, spent her days moving their baskets around the verandah, the cats sitting superbly within, following the sun.

I told myself that sending Thelma to live there was like putting her in a luxury retirement home. I took her over, put her in her special basket, stayed and chatted for a bit, then stood up to leave.

Never will I forget that moment. I opened the front door and walked out. Thelma came pounding up the hall and Cynthia quickly shut the screen door. Thelma scrabbled at the mesh frantically, panic stricken. As she saw me move away, saying goodbye, not coming back to rescue her, she stayed at the door, her front paws pressed against the mesh, her eyes huge and glued to mebetrayed.

For the first time it occurred to me that the decision I will move countries had unforeseen consequences. To this day Im haunted by that look on Thelmas face. Shed never panicked like that when I left her with her Aunt Cynthia for holidays. I dont know how she knew that we wouldnt be living together again, but she did. My heart still stops with missing her.

As for my possessions, I decided to set them free. I contemplated selling them on eBay but my brother-in-law pointed out that they were worthless. I thought you could sell anything on eBay, but apparently thats just propaganda. The neighbourhood Thelma and I had washed up in was a down-at-heel, inner-city suburb, full of drug addicts and council houses and single mothers with screaming kids. It was also full of first-time immigrants, scraping together money from laundry and corner-store businesses to send their kids to university so that the kids would not have to live in this suburb as adults.