Indians on Vacation

by Thomas King

  Oz helps me through the crowd and into a building We go up an escalator and into a second-floor coffee shop.

  “Oliver’s,” says Oz. “Good coffee. A pastry. And we can watch from a safe distance.”

  We get a table at a large window that looks out over the square.

  “Here,” says Oz. “Pinch the sides of your nose with your fingers. It will stop the bleeding.”

  The mass of people on the street below moves back and forth like waves on water.

  “So good to see you again.”

  “I thought you were going to Amsterdam.”

  “I am.” Oz gestures to the rally. “But I am delayed. Did you bring your camera? Are you writing a story about Czech intolerance? Did you come to help, or do you just want to watch?”

  My head hurts as much as my nose. I take my fingers away and hope that the bleeding has stopped. Oz orders coffee for the both of us, along with a slice of chocolate cake.

  “We will share the cake,” he says. “Too much sugar can be unpleasant.”

  I nod. My nose seems to be holding its own.

  Oz looks out the window. “Here you can see the whole of history. Pro and con. Left and right. Conservative and liberal. Love and hate. Do you see the dividing line? The partition between the two camps?”

  “The median?”

  “On one side of the square are those who do not want immigrants to come into the Czech Republic.” Oz takes a breath. “On the other side are those who wish to welcome people less fortunate than themselves. On one side, apprehension and anxiety. On the other, hospitality and welcome.”

  The coffee is hot, but I can’t really taste it.

  “Sadly, it is never this simple.”

  Same with the cake.

  “Over there are flags of the Czech Republic and signs that say the Czech Republic is for Czechs only. But there are also signs concerned with employment and health care. Others with cruelty to animals.”

  Standing on a concrete flower box is a man with a sign that says “Fuck Hope, Take Action.” For a moment, I think that it’s Eugene.

  “What about the people dressed in yellow?”

  “Ah,” says Oz. “The ones carrying the flags with an image of the sun.”

  “Are they for the refugees or against?”

  “Against,” says Oz. “They are dressing up like . . . slunickar. This is difficult to translate into English. Gullible. Naive. The people dressed in yellow are saying that anyone who supports the refugees is naive.”

  At the top of the square, several men in masks are climbing onto a tiered monument. On the highest tier is a knight mounted on a horse, holding a lance.

  “It is a bit of humour, all this yellow. Still, it is also serious.”

  As I watch, two of the men reach the knight and take out a large piece of red cloth.

  “But most of the people are here because it is a sunny day, and with such gatherings, a party is always a possibility.”

  At first, I think it’s a flag of some sort. But then I see that it’s an enormous pair of red underpants.

  “Are those underpants?”

  “Yes, of course,” says Oz. “This is a protest against the president of the country.”

  “Red underpants?”

  “This is to indicate that he is in bed with the Chinese, that he is a man who is ashamed of nothing.”

  At the top of the boulevard, just past the knight on the horse, a group of men stand in a tight bunch, surrounded by a wall of police.

  “When the president supported the Russians in their harassment of the Ukraine, Czech activists pelted him with eggs.”

  Several of the men walk around in circles, their cellphones to their ears.

  “Eggs. Giant underpants. The people of the Czech Republic enjoy the drama of democracy. Everything is possible at a protest.”

  “Who are those guys?”

  Oz looks down on the square. “The men in suits with their noses pointed at the sky?”

  “The ones behind the police perimeter.”

  “Politicians,” says Oz. “Local and federal. They are sniffing the air, trying to catch the scent of popular opinion.” Oz raises his head and makes quiet snorting noises. “See how they stay away from windows.”

  “Windows?”

  “In Prague,” says Oz, “standing by a window can be dangerous. How is the cake?”

  TOLMAR MADE A POT of coffee, and we sat in her backyard in the late afternoon sun.

  “Why are you doing this?”

  The question had caught me by surprise.

  “Why talk to me?”

  I explained that the interview was part of a larger three-part story about the role of social services in the bureaucratic “scoops” that had taken Native children from their families.

  “It’s not going to give me back my mother.”

  I agreed that it wouldn’t.

  “And it’s not going to give my mother back her six children.” Tolmar had sat in the chair and waited for me to say something.

  “I don’t want another apology,” she said. “You can tell those bastards to keep their apologies in their pants.”

  I turned off my tape recorder and slipped it into my pocket.

  “Why waste your time writing about something that can’t be changed? Where is the good in that? What do you expect will happen when you publish this story?”

  That evening, I dropped the rental off at the airport and caught the red-eye back to Toronto.

  SUDDENLY, ON THE STREET below, singing breaks out, first on one side of the median and then on the other.

  Oz points his fork at the far side of the square. “The Czech national anthem.”

  Some of the politicians begin smiling and waving at the crowd.

  “And here,” says Oz. “On this side, ‘Close the Gate, Little Brother.’ Do you know the song?”

  “No.”

  “‘The wolf hungers for the lamb, brother, have you closed the door?’” Oz sings the words softly, under his breath. “Karel Kryl.”

  More songs break out, and the square is filled with a cacophony of sound, with no form other than volume and enthusiasm.

  “Wonderful,” says Oz. “Such singing is good.”

  My nose starts to bleed again, and I have to pinch it shut.

  “It is hard to kill each other when we sing together.” Oz sits up suddenly, as though he’s been hit. “But where is your Mimi?”

  “We split up. Just for the day,” I add quickly. “She wanted to go off by herself and sketch.”

  “Sketch? She is an artist?”

  “She is.”

  “And you are just . . . wandering?”

  “I am.”

  “Ah,” says Oz. “Just a Bear looking for honey.”

  The rally breaks up slowly, like winter ice on a pond. The singing stops, the banners and the flags are put away, and the people begin drifting back into the city.

  “You see,” says Oz, “like all protests. Great emotions. High spirits. Firm resolve.”

  “It was pretty impressive,” I say.

  “And in the end, little changes.”

  Oz stares out the window. There are still a great many people in the square, but all of the passion is gone.

  I scrape up the last of the chocolate cake. “I went by the Sex Machines Museum this morning.”

  Oz turns back to me and smiles. “But did you go inside?”

  “No,” I say. “I was tempted, but I came here instead.”

  “Such a shame,” says Oz. “You missed the giant wood dildo.”

  XIV

  When I come out of the building, the square is still busy, but the demonstration is over. The boulevard is littered with flyers and pamphlets, with coffee cups and plastic water bottles. Fast-food containers.

  Eugene picks up a sign with a picture of a middle-aged man. There’s a red circle around his head and a red slash across his face. Eugene rattles it in my face. Friend of yours?

  The twins pick up little flags on
sticks and wave them around as they skip along behind me.

  Kitty keeps both eyes open for trouble.

  Chip kicks at the trash in the street.

  Oz’s handkerchief is brown and crusty, and each time I press it against my nose, it hurts. I don’t mind the blood on my shirt. It’s a badge of the moment. And as I make my way through the dregs of the protest, people step aside out of respect for the hero, bloodied but unbowed.

  Hero, my ass, says Eugene. You just forgot to duck.

  White panel trucks, says Kitty. Keep watching for white panel trucks.

  We walk down the street single file, me in the lead, Eugene right behind, Chip and the twins with their flags, Kitty bringing up the rear. I don’t spend much time window shopping. It’s late afternoon now, and I want to get back to the hotel.

  How about the Sex Machines Museum? Eugene shouts at me. Still time to see the big dildo.

  We breeze through Old Town Square. There’s a crowd in front of the clock, and for all I know, it could be the same crowd as earlier in the day or from the day before, waiting patiently for the Apostles to make an appearance.

  Or for the rooster to get off its ass.

  I don’t slow down to see whether or not the clock has been fixed. Frankly, I don’t care.

  Mimi is waiting for me when I get back to the room. She’s sitting in the chair, her feet on the windowsill. Her sketch pad is open on the bed, which is her way of telling me that I am to look at the images.

  “Good day?” I ask.

  “See for yourself,” she says without changing position.

  The sketches are all of water patterns around the abutments of the Charles Bridge. One is a close-up detail of a plastic water bottle floating in the current.

  “These are great.”

  Mimi pulls her feet off the sill and comes out of the chair.

  “My god, Bird,” she says as soon as she sees me, “what happened to you?”

  I try to look as injured as I can.

  “Are you all right?”

  There are people who don’t like to be coddled. Luckily for Mimi, I’m not one of them.

  “What?”

  “Your nose. Is that blood on your shirt?”

  “Oh, that.”

  “Did you get into a fight?”

  “Not exactly.” I want to tell her about the protest and about meeting Oz, but I don’t see where there is any rush.

  “Come here, you silly puppy,” says Mimi in her soft, motherly voice that I like so much. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  “It hurts quite a bit.”

  “Good news.” Mimi rubs my head. “It’s not as bad as Venice.”

  UNCLE LEROY HAD SENT a postcard from Venice. On the back, he had written, “Pretty, but the place smells.” Mimi had always wanted to go to Venice, so tracking down a lost relative and a missing bundle had been the perfect excuse.

  “We’ll go in the winter, when the prices are better and there aren’t as many tourists.”

  “It’ll be cold.”

  “Not as cold as Guelph.”

  We took the train from Nice to Venice. It wasn’t much of a trip. Nice to Genoa, Genoa to Milan, Milan to Venice. The Rocky Mountaineer Escape Circle from Vancouver through the Canadian Rockies would have been more fun and with better scenery.

  I mentioned this to Mimi as a point of reference. “Does the Mountaineer run in the winter?”

  “No.”

  “Whereas the train to Venice does.”

  When we arrived at the Santa Lucia station, the island was shrouded in fog.

  “Now what?”

  “The vaporetto stop is right over there.” Mimi dragged her bag down the walkway to the Grand Canal. “We want number 1 or 82.”

  “Okay.”

  “Number 1 makes all the stops on the Grand Canal,” Mimi told me. “Number 82 is an express.”

  “Let’s take 82.”

  “If we take the express, we might miss something.”

  “We can’t see much in the fog.”

  “It isn’t that thick.”

  Mimi was right. The fog wasn’t that thick, but what there was gave the place a faint, hazy appearance, as though the city didn’t really exist.

  Mimi held the guidebook up so I could see the map of Venice.

  “It’s not a big place,” she said. “Not sure where they would have put a Wild West show.”

  “Maybe the show didn’t come here,” I told her. “Maybe the show was close by, in Padua or Marghera, and Leroy took a day off to see Venice and send a postcard home.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” said Mimi. “We’re here now.”

  The number 1 vaporetto wasn’t as large as I had imagined, and it did stop everywhere.

  “Tell me this isn’t great.”

  “It’s great.”

  “Look at that, Bird. Gondolas. You don’t see gondolas in Guelph.”

  “We have kayaks and canoes on the Speed.”

  “Venice is over fifteen hundred years old. Guelph hasn’t cracked the two-hundred-year mark yet.”

  “That means Guelph is in better shape.”

  I had my camera out, ready to take a picture of a crazy sculpture, a large, white hand coming out of the water and grabbing one of the buildings, when the vaporetto was hit by a wave from an enormous cruise ship that was lumbering its way out of the lagoon.

  SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE, and letting Mimi clean my nose is not as pleasant as I had imagined.

  “We have to get the crust off.”

  “No, we don’t.”

  “Hold still.”

  “Don’t disturb the scab.”

  Mimi soaks the shirt in the sink in cold water.

  “You were at a protest for the Syrian refugees, and someone hit you?”

  “It wasn’t just about the refugees. It was for a whole bunch of other stuff,” I tell her. “It was a multitasking protest.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there to protect you.”

  “Oz bought me coffee.”

  “Oz? Your breakfast buddy?”

  “We ran into each other. He was supposed to go to Amsterdam,” I say, “but he stayed for the demonstration.”

  “He hit you?”

  I explain what happened. The protest. The guy who caught me with his elbow by mistake. The second-floor coffee shop. The chocolate cake.

  “Prague is beginning to become problematic.” Mimi touches the side of my nose. “You get knocked down, and now you get knocked down again.”

  “And we both get sick.”

  “Don’t forget our two felons in the park,” says Mimi. “You see the dilemma.”

  I don’t see the dilemma, and I don’t tell Mimi that I don’t.

  “I mean we were right there with the refugees in Bupapest, and what did we do?”

  I don’t think I need to tell Mimi what we didn’t do. So I don’t do that either.

  “Nothing,” says Mimi. “We did nothing. Oh, we were sympathetic and we were outraged, but we didn’t do anything.”

  “We thought about it.”

  “And yet when we almost get robbed by a couple of juvenile delinquents, what’s our response?”

  Mimi waits. No problem. I can wait as well.

  “We give them money.” Mimi shakes her head. “Does that make any sense?”

  I look out the window. There are clouds piled up on the horizon behind the bridge. Some of them are dark, and it appears as though a storm may be on its way.

  “So, you sketched all day?” I say.

  “Most of it,” says Mimi. “I had lunch in Old Town. Did you know the Sex Machines Museum is right around the corner from the clock?”

  I go back to the bathroom to look at my nose.

  “I have to say the museum was interesting,” she says. “You’ll never guess what I saw there.”

  IN VENICE, MIMI HAD booked us a room at a small hotel tucked in behind Piazza San Marco. The Locanda Orseolo. Our room overlooked a narrow canal, and we could sit in chairs and watch small boats sl
ide past our window, loaded with supplies that they dropped off at the hotels along the waterway.

  The room was red brocade and gold trim with two high-back chairs that the owners might have borrowed from a museum.

  “Well, one thing is for sure,” said Mimi as she wandered the sitting room and the bedroom. “It beats the Holiday Inn.”

  “It’s really nice,” I agreed. “And we get a homemade breakfast.”

  “You hit that metal support pretty hard.” Mimi checked the cut on my forehead. “It’s split pretty good. Who knew riding in a vaporetto could be dangerous.”

  “Do I need stitches?”

  “The bleeding is almost stopped,” she said, “so I think you’ll live.”

  “It hurts.”

  “Of course it hurts. ‘Blackbird Mavrias versus the Vaporetto. A limited engagement.’”

  “It wasn’t my fault.”

  “No,” said Mimi, “it wasn’t.”

  “Am I going to have a scar?”

  “And a really nasty black eye.”

  SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE, and Mimi takes me to a restaurant she has found. Terasa U Zlate studne. Up by the castle.

  “This is fancy.”

  We get a table by the window and look down on the city laid out in evening light.

  Mimi turns sideways in her chair. “Look at that view.”

  “Just how expensive is this place?”

  “Tomorrow we fly home.” Mimi looks sad. “This is our last night in Prague.”

  “That expensive?” I stretch my arms out and take her hands in mine. It’s romantic moments like this that strengthen relationships.

  “You bought a watch?”

  “What?”

  I had forgotten about the watch. But there it is. On my wrist. All emerald green and sparkling gold.

  “No,” I say. “Oz gave it to me.”

  Mimi squeezes my hands. “You know, if you decided to buy a watch, you can just tell me.”

  “I told him I didn’t want it. But he insisted.”

  Mimi opens her menu. “Don’t order the black caviar.”

  “Five thousand, one hundred Czech crowns?”

  “About three hundred dollars Canadian.”

  “For fish eggs?”

  “The steak is only eighty-five.”

  Mimi gets a pumpkin soup, which we share, and orders a beetroot risotto carnaroli for her main course.