“Claire?”
“What?”
“Give me a ciggy.”
She was coughing all the time and I thought she would drown in her phlegm, but she said it like we were out in a nightclub downtown. I found a cigarette and put it between her lips. She looked so happy while I lit the match for her. She looked, one last time, like herself. She smoked the whole thing.
We told each other secrets. I told her all about my brother. I asked her to please look him up in paradise. She said she most certainly would and that she’d sleep with him, too. She noticed that I didn’t like that and so to make it up to me she told me her secret: she hadn’t been going to throw herself off the great mountain at all. She pushed herself up on her pillow and motioned for a glass of water. When I’d tipped the water into her dry lips she whispered, “I heard of this woman who lives in a cave up in the hills above McLeod Ganj. A miraculous woman, with healing powers. I was always too frightened to go on my own. Blacky said there was no such thing as miracles and she was probably a trickster.” She tried hard to swallow. “He said it was too dangerous up there. The hills are full of vagabonds and cheaters. But now I figured I was dying anyway so I might as well go. What could it hurt? But—” She stopped, holding herself from the pain, then when it was manageable again she continued. “I went just as fast as I could so nobody would stop me. I knew you would stop me. I ran and I guess I was just too weak because I got so dizzy and passed out and fell right off the cliff. Phh. So stupid. I know.” She looked up at me, and if she’d have had any tears left they’d have been in her eyes. “Don’t tell anyone, all right, Claire? I don’t want them to know I was afraid to die.”
“No,” I promised fiercely. “No, I won’t tell.”
She squashed the cigarette out in a saucer and sank back down into the pillows. “Let them think I was brave enough to kill myself.”
“Sure,” I said. “Sure.”
That was the last long conversation we had.
She wanted to die outside, so Reiner, Isolde, and I carried her out onto a makeshift bed and we took turns keeping vigil. Once I fell asleep and suddenly woke up. She was awake and looking at me. The streetlamp was behind her and she looked really pretty, soft, with her little tufts of hair lit up gold like a halo. Her face held a kind of a rapture. “Hi,” she whispered.
“Hi,” I said.
We women had been changing her but it had been so long now since she’d eaten anything, we didn’t have to worry about that. There was no terrible smell. I’d been frightened of that, but there wasn’t.
Blacky had arranged for Chartreuse to be released. He was escorted back from Lower Dharamsala to McLeod Ganj in an official car, serenading the band of police people who’d come along for the fun of it. Chartreuse, they thought, was Derek and the Dominos rolled into one. He jumped out of the car when he saw us all gathered around and he tiptoed over to where we were. When he saw Tupelo, propped up on pillows and turning yellow, he began to weep. Then he set himself up right beside her and played every song he knew. Vladimir got hold of a huge parasol from one of the monks and he put it up over her, in case it rained, so we wouldn’t have to put her in the van.
Finally she fell into a coma. Her hands and feet had turned all mottled and blue and yellow, even her toenails, and Blacky said that that was a sign. It wouldn’t be long now. She was taking breaths in gasping puffs. Then suddenly there would be no sound and we would all look up expectantly. And then it would start up again. But the intervals of silence were becoming more frequent.
I was right there next to her when it happened. I wasn’t holding her hand and later I wondered how come? But it was because of this feeling of respect and reserve. There is something so profound about death. It isn’t weird at all. It seems so natural when it’s almost there. You start praying for it to come. You’re waiting. You don’t want to leave in case you should miss it. And then, like a period at the end of a sentence, the last puff goes out and the body just stops. It’s over. You’re waiting for this big event and all it is, is over.
chapter twenty
She was the most elusive, the most appealing, the most precious creature. And now she was gone.
We all looked at one another with a thrill of realization. This was it. And then everyone started shouting and hugging.
Daisy held Tupelo’s jaw up so it wouldn’t go slack and she put coins, Swiss franc coins from Vladimir, down on her eyes so they’d stay shut.
Some of the townspeople came over. They wanted to see her. Old women—excited with the magnitude of death, prayer beads clacking, bleak with their own travails—circled the bed chanting and mumbling ancient incantations.
“They’ll have to send for someone from the consulate,” Blacky said.
“If they come,” Harry said, “they’ll take away the body. We’ll never get her back.”
Reiner just stood there. Here was this big ruddy fellow, bursting with good health and sportsmanship, tears running down his face, beefy hands balled into fists he ground like a four-year-old into his eyes, sobbing uncontrollably.
We kept her there for two hours. Anyone could come who wanted to see her.
We wrapped her up in muslin. The monks helped Blacky, Vladimir, and Reiner carry her up on a stretcher to the mountain. I was holding on to the package of hair she’d given me only two weeks ago. She’ll need this, I told myself crazily as I followed the procession up, up. We were all gasping and out of breath. Love is the killer, she’d said. But it wasn’t. Cancer was the wicked one.
We took the body out on the mountain and cremated her in the Far Eastern way. That’s what she would have wanted. Everyone came, even the children from the orphanage. The Tibetans had a sort of ceremony at the site of her death. They said prayers, the same way our priests do, with incense and piety. I saw Wolfgang pass them an envelope I assumed was a donation.
“Do you know Debussy?” I asked Chartreuse, remembering her wishes.
“No.” He shrugged.
“Well, will you play something she would have liked?”
“Mais bien sûr,” he said and picked up his guitar. He played “Imagine” by John Lennon.
“She would hate ‘Imagine,’” Blacky whispered in my ear. “She loved every last possession she could get her hands on.”
I laughed and all the others scowled at me.
I remembered those huge vultures from outside Rishikesh, and that terrible crow. I kept thinking I didn’t want any horrible beast to touch her. I picked up some stones ready to cast them away, just in case.
You think you know it all and then something like this happens. I longed to talk to Tupelo, to tell her what had happened. But she was gone. Just like that. Then, because I couldn’t disappoint her, I kept my promise and hummed “Claire de Lune.” I usually have no trouble humming that or anything else, but my voice was all reedy and thin and weak. I couldn’t get it strong. It was horrible. I can still hear me humming in that wobbly voice.
It was an eerie but moving and, I must say, after all the physicality of death, clean ceremony. Fire cleans. The cremation took longer than I thought and I was a little offended when people started opening up packed lunches. It was like that time outside Istanbul when the truck drivers ran into the herd of cattle and all the people from the area came out to watch, sitting on the hills, chewing betel nuts as though they were at an outdoor concert. But then the lunches were done and the body continued to burn, the skull a dour red, and we sat there hour after hour until I, too, started wishing I’d thought to bring food. In the end we all went back to Hula’s and she made us special food for which we were not allowed to pay.
That night I had this dream. I was in a car, a small convertible—like a cartoon car. There was a man with me but I can’t remember who. We were driving up, up the mountainside and then he said, “Watch this, we’re going so fast we’re actually flying!” And then we did, he drove the car right up into the air. I could feel my stomach lurch. I tried to hold on to the upholstery. “Put it down
!” I cried out but he wouldn’t. We were up in the air, weightless. The road was below us. I woke up perspiring, panting with fear. Blacky patted me absently and told me to go back to sleep.
The next day we gathered on the road by the main stupa. We were going back to gather the cooled ashes. Harry was always one for dream books and the I Ching and things like that. I asked him what he thought it meant. “Means you’re out on a limb,” he said right away. “Trying something you never have before.” He grunted down onto the ground beside me, resting on his haunches, his well-sewn seams straining.
“That for the ashes?” I tried to smile, touching the pretend tabernacle.
“Yes.” He wiped his forehead. Sheepishly, he muttered, “Might as well get some good use out of it, wot?”
“Come on.” I took Chartreuse’s guitar and carried it for him.
We climbed to the highest ridge, where her ashes lay in a gray heap. There were big hunks of bone and some of them still glowed orange with heat. It’s not like you think it’s going to be, all powdery and fine. Reiner, ever prepared, had come with a little hammer. I didn’t think she would have wanted him to smash her remains to pieces so I asked if I might do it.
“Why should you be the one?” Daisy said.
My wrist with the hammer went limp. “Be my guest,” I said.
But then Isolde said, “Come on. It’s not right she does it on her own.” So she and I picked up some rocks and crouched down in the ashes and smashed the pieces into smaller ones while Daisy hammered away. We were at it a long time. You’ll never tell now, I thought silently, talking to her in my heart.
“Why don’t you play something happy, Chartreuse?” Wolfgang asked him, filming from the sidelines. “To show life is a circle, you know? Sort of reincarnation stuff.”
I have to say at that point we were all so used to the camera that it didn’t even strike any of us as odd. But Chartreuse spun around in a rage. I thought he was going to hit him. Then he changed his mind and ran away down the hill.
“Barbarian!” Wolfgang shouted after him.
“I loved her!” I heard myself blurt out in front of everyone. I was pounding my chest. I sank to the ground but my eyes were dry. I couldn’t cry. Harry came over, his little eyes bright with tears. “We all loved her!” he said. He helped me up. Vladimir picked up Chartreuse’s guitar. He arranged himself into a photogenic pretzel and played exactly what Wolfgang had requested. We were all wretched and cold but we stayed up there with all that was left of Tupelo. Isolde wept while she hammered her friend’s bones into powder. I’d never seen her cry before.
I remember thinking of all of us, Isolde had gained the most from this trip. Not just Vladimir’s affections, which were to her the world, but she had grown into an amazing quietness; she’d reached from the surface down into her depth, and the desperate war she’d been in with herself was over. All she seemed to want now was peace. She’d fought for what she wanted. Really fought. And I admired her because I thought if someone treated me the way Vladimir had treated her, my pride would have interfered. I would have given up and lost. I looked at Vladimir, the ultimate artist, creativity his natural bent, unable to help his destructive outbursts. She understood. She was strong enough to weather the storms of the negative in order to be there and share in the positive. Lucky, I thought. She’s the lucky one. And then I thought of what my father always said, which had never made any sense to me: that we loved someone for his faults, not in spite of them, and I thought that must be it. That must be how she could manage to stay.
At about two o’clock another one of the sadhus from the hills came up and said some prayers. You know, one of those fellows all covered in ash with the Rastafarian hair who goes around with nothing more than a loincloth and a bowl. We hadn’t asked him to come, none of us had even thought of it. He burned incense and walked around in a circle and chanted for a good long while. It was very comforting, I have to say. Reiner tried to give him some rupees but he wouldn’t take them.
Blacky said, “Come. Let’s go back to town. You’re cold. We’re all cold.”
There was the sound of someone coming toward us.
“What is it? What’s happened?” we all said and I thought, Oh, no, what now?
Piratanzy, the local tailor, was bounding through the trees. “It’s tender Betty! She having baby!”
Reiner remarked, “Wie sagt man? How do you say it? When it rains it pours!”
Isolde flew off down the path.
“I suppose I’d better go have a look.” Blacky sighed.
“Oh, boy.” Wolfgang balled up his fists like a bunny, then went about reloading his camera.
I hate to say it but Daisy and I scooped up the rest of the ashes hurriedly and poured them into the box. We all wanted to get out of there. There was so much of Tupelo left over, though. I didn’t feel I could just leave her there. I blew some over the cliff into the wind, saying a last Hail Mary. It couldn’t hurt. The rest I funneled into my pockets.
Harry jiggled up and down, shivering. “Hurry, will you?”
Blacky coolly went about the cremation site, kicking dirt onto where Tupelo had been. “The last thing one has to do is hurry for a firstborn. And do stop yelling. Now. I’m going to walk over to the meditation center, where I’ve left some things.”
“What, now?”
“Yes, they won’t be open later and I’ll need them tonight. So. We’re all going to have to settle down or we’ll be no use to anyone. Now. Claire, you’re quick. Run ahead and tell them I’m coming. Go down to Hula’s and ask them if they’ll boil some water. Reiner, come with me. Where’s Isolde?”
“She’s gone to find the local doctor,” Harry puffed.
“Right.” Blacky was already mentally putting things carefully and slowly into his doctor’s bag.
“Please hurry,” Harry whispered urgently.
I took off. Things were happening so fast. It was such a shift for me. I flew down Sangee Road and past the Dalai Lama’s palace. It’s odd but when someone dies he’s closer than ever to you. It had been like that with my brother and now it was the same with Tupelo. I could feel her with me, her essence, accompanying me as I ran. It was easy to go down. You pulled back your shoulders and threw out your chest. It was like flying. The air was sparkling. There was one moment when you had to level off or you’d somersault straight down but I slowed enough to maneuver myself along to the Tibetan Moon. Isolde was hurrying up the road. “Did you find the doctor?” I panted.
“Yes, I found him,” her eyes were blazing, “and do you know what he told me?”
“What?” I said, my heart already sinking.
“He said doctors weren’t needed in natural things like childbirth. I said, ‘What if something goes wrong?’ Do you know what his answer was? He said then it was the natural way of things! That would be her karma.”
“He didn’t!”
“He did, too! Then I said suppose the woman was dying and they had to make a decision! What would your answer be then? He didn’t bat an eye. He said, ‘Abortion is always murder.’”
“I can’t believe it,” I said, horrified. “What if they let Betty die? Can they do that? Two deaths? No! I thought these people were enlightened. You know, that’s just the kind of thing my church would say.” I ground my teeth. “It’s funny but this place is sounding more like home every day. Well, come on. Blacky’s on his way there.”
Hula leaned out a window of the tea shop. “What that? Betty giving baby now?”
“Yes, yes,” we both said.
“Boy baby she go have!” Hula shook her fist in the air.
This was big news indeed. There was hardly a tea shop dweller in town who hadn’t laid at least a small sum on the sex of Betty’s baby.
The stairs around the back of the Tibetan Moon, steep and haphazard rickety wood on poles, led us up to the one-room dwelling, where an old biddy crouched. “Babby. Babby!” The woman grinned, gesturing toward a shredded burlap curtain someone had set up to indicate
another room. I pushed it aside, almost knocking it down, and poked my head in.
There was Betty, on all fours in doggy style, on an army cot covered with sleeping bags in front of an open window. She panted up and down with quick, breathless gasps. Charles, perched atop an old sea trunk (the loftiest position in the room), legs crossed in lotus, was leading his disciples in a Buddhist chant.
Alarmed, we crept cautiously in.
“Good thing we’ve come,” Isolde whispered. She went up to Betty and knelt beside her. Betty was huge and fully clothed in her burgundy robe. The sun made her look like an apple.
“How are you?” Isolde asked
“Great,” she said, smiling, chugging, her cheeks wet with tears.
Charles stopped chanting. “Darling,” he said, pressing his temples with long, patient fingers, “that last bout you had left me totally weak. Try not to feel so much pain, will you?”
“All right, dear,” she murmured.
Charles had some spinach crisps, the french fries of Tibet. He said, “Would anyone like tea to go with these? Yes? Oh, good. Fine. I’d love some tea myself. It would do us all a world of good. Claire? Uh, would you run and get us some tea?”
“No.”
“Oh. Well, then, who feels like going?”
But nobody wanted to go.
“I’m so sorry about your beautiful friend,” Betty said.
“Yes,” I said. “Thank you.”
Charles held both hands up in a parody of balance. “One goes, one comes,” he said with what I thought was unforgivable indiscretion.
Then Betty seemed to be overcome with pain and we all took a step back.
“I say,” Charles thought of something new, “how about a little Have Agile, dear? Just the thing, don’t you think?”
“Yes, please.” Betty writhed and sweated, trying hard.
The sun had lowered itself in the sky, turning the Himalayan peaks outside and Betty inside almost psychedelic. The three men concentrated on their intricate harmonies. “Haa vaaaa nageeela.” They started slowly then livened it up until they were singing at a breakneck frenzy. Betty moved to and fro. Even the rest of us couldn’t help undulating a bit. But then, in came Blacky with Reiner and Chartreuse behind him, lugging a great cauldron of hot water. “Stop this nonsense,” he ordered and everyone was instantly quiet. “Fill something up. I want cold water, too.” He unraveled sterile gauzes and a pack of foreboding-looking instruments. The old woman, bent as a boomerang, came in with a kettle and two pails. We women, I must say, remained frozen and good for nothing. “Claire. Isolde,” Blacky ordered without raising his voice. “Come over here now. You can both help.”
Pack Up the Moon Page 28
