The Piano Has Been Drinking

The Piano Has Been Drinking – Tom Waits

'So whaddya think about the war?' the guy sitting on my right suddenly comes out of left field. It’s ten fifteen on a Tuesday night, in a wine bar around the corner from where we live. The place is about as empty as the dark side of the moon. That’s unusual, even for a school night. It might have something to do with the New York Yankees making it to the World Series for the first time in nine years, and this being one of the rare bars in our neighborhood without any flat or other screens. (‘World Series’ being the rather megalomaniac definition for what is in fact an all-American event in baseball.)
The man sitting next to me is drunk, very drunk. He is the type of guy who, when abroad, will stubbornly stick to English; should the local bartender/hotel manager/masseuse not understand what he wants, he will just repeat himself in a louder voice, confident that the key to conquering any language barrier is merely a matter of volume. We have been talking politics – or rather, the guy has been giving me his two cents on the current state of affairs that is threatening the American Way. He has been saying things like, 'Goddam Democrats are gonna kill this country!', and, 'I’m not paying no goddam health insurance for no goddam slackers!' He is the type of guy who would mistrust a sunset. 'Too goddam red, if you ask me.' For the past fifteen minutes, however, he has been gazing infinitely into space; I figured he had forgotten we were talking. But no.

'WHAT! DO! YOU! THINK! ABOUT! THE! WAR!' the guy says again, thundering this time. He spills his beer as he hoists himself up from the bar stool to turn and look at me, making an effort to redistribute his weight and keep his balance. What war? I think. Ask any Dutch person to talk about ‘the war’, and they’ll either dish out a heroic resistance saga involving their grandfather in World War Two (which, as far as the Dutch are concerned, can be neatly summed up as five days of bicycle-throwing before being run over by German efficiency) or mutter a vague unpleasantry about the Dutch contribution to the war in former Yugoslavia (which, as far as the Dutch are concerned, can be neatly summed up as a pretty dark day for military bureaucracy).
Our mandatory military service was discarded in 1997; every soldier deployed in international crises after Yugoslavia has been a professional combatant who voluntarily joined the army. Unless Prince Woof from Belgium decides it is time to reclaim The Netherlands, no 19-year old Dutch boy will ever be drafted again.

My nation’s war history is a puny one, compared to that of the US. No less than 47 wars have been declared by the US since the British settlers fought out the American Revolutionary War or War of Independence among themselves. Only 2 of those 47 wars involved a foreign nation trespassing on what was considered US soil: the War of 1812 against the British Empire, and the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848. Save for a first excursion into Korea in 1871, the other 25 wars of the 18th century were all civil: from the actual Civil War to the whole lot of wars against Native Americans. However, not a single one of the 19 wars the US has been part of since the beginning of the 20th century has been settled on American soil. That’s 110 years of fighting in other people’s countries, for other people’s freedom.

'You know, our boys in Ahf-gha-ni-stahn?' the man clarifies. What do I think about that? I tell the man I really don’t know anything about war. 'Dam right you don’t', he says. 'If it weren’t for us, you’d all still be talkin’ goddam German.' Although I am sure it has been a while since anyone actually said this to anyone, out loud, I still want to assure the man that Europe, The Netherlands, and myself for that matter, are very grateful indeed for the Americans saving us from the linguistic claws of Nazi Germany. I married a Canadian for Christ sake! I want to tell him. How’s that for gratitude! But the man has slouched back onto his stool, and is staring pensively into his beer. 'My nephew’s there right now', he says finally. 'Fightin’ for goddam peace.'
With 19 independent wars over the past 100 years, all battled out on foreign territory, the US spits out a war veteran pretty much every five years – that’s not taking into account that most wars go on for years, needing fresh soldiers to fuel every new tour of duty. The list is endless. This guy’s grandfather might have fought in World War Two; his dad could have been in Korea, an uncle or two in Vietnam; he looks like he could have been drafted for the Contra-War in El Salvador in the early ‘80s. His younger brother might have been sent out to play a part in the Gulf War; his son may have fought in Somalia or Yugoslavia, and now his nephew is being alternately bored and terrified to death in the War On Terror. Somehow the 'My grandpa used to hide his pigs from the Germans' I had in mind as a counter seems to fall short, as would a light-hearted 'Well, whaddya know! Us Dutch sent some boys to Afghanistan, too!'

I think about how hard it must be to deal with, to grow up in a country whose war veterans stay 19 forever, what with them being yearly renewed. How do you memorialize war when war is ongoing, and how do you commemorate dead soldiers that keep on dying? Then again, America has its own peculiar way of paying respect to fatalities of war: to honor the victims of 911 they built a war ship forged from steel salvaged from the ashes of the World Trade Center. 'On September 2001, our nation’s enemies brought their fight to New York… The USS New York will now bring the fight to our nation’s enemies well into the future', the website promises happily. I tell the man this. I am not even sure what I mean by all of it, but he definitely takes it the wrong way. 'Goddam!' He shouts, his voice wobbly. 'Goddam! If you don’t like it here, why don’t you just go back to your own goddam country!' He slams his drink on the bar. Tom Waits without the poetry.
What does that have to do with anything? I want to say to him. And, Yeah mister, that’ll really hold up in six-year-old court. But all that I can muster is a rather lame 'Well, that’s not a very nice thing to say.'
The man throws me a look, the startled, helpless look of a drunk who nodded off smoking and is just now waking up to find his hair is on fire. 'I––I’m sorry man, I didn’t mean to be rude', he says, his bloodshot eyes slowly filling with water. It’s time to go home.