He knew what he was doing, all right. Everyone calmed down. We edged closer.
“Betty,” Blacky’s tone was official and cool, “I want you to turn over, come on.”
“No,” Betty ground her teeth, “I’m better this way.”
“Find me something cleaner than that rag!” Blacky threw the thing at me.
Isolde found a relatively clean towel aside the rusty basin and together we slipped it under Betty’s taut body so as to cover the filthy sleeping bags.
“Turn over!” Blacky charged.
“No way!” Betty cried.
“Oh, let her be if she wants,” I suggested.
“Shut up,” he said and flipped the swollen girl right on her tail before she even realized what he was up to. She groaned and bit her lip.
“When I say go,” instructed Blacky, “I want you to press down on her legs when she presses, like this, see? C’mon, Claire, don’t stand there like an onion. Come round the other side so she’s got both of you at the same level.”
Charles and the others had stopped their chanting. Things were progressing swiftly, suddenly, and all of us became a unit following Blacky’s every word.
“Now push!” he barked.
The whole room pushed. Even Charles and the boys grunted heartily in the background. Blacky sweated with the pressure. Betty kept her eyes on his. He held an impressive-sized needle up in the air and a squirt of liquid sprang out. The prayer wheel down below clanged and whirred. A group of curious Westerners had gathered downstairs.
Harry came in with a kerosene lamp but nobody moved. Everyone breathed with Betty. Blacky pierced her with a needle and she cried out, leaving nail marks like little new moons in four spots over my hand.
Then, before she saw what he was doing, he made a small, clean slice aside the canal, giving the baby’s head room.
Birth gathers such profound momentum: one minute all the attention lies on the mother, then suddenly a gunky, wet top of a miniature head makes its way and in the ensuing, mysteriously elusive moments that follow, the wonder of life comes forth and every eye and heart in the room cling to it.
The room became narrow. You could hear the clock tick.
Betty gave her last mighty shove.
Pflopp, and out the baby came, soft and sloppy as a rubber seashell. All hearts leapt. The room was still. The suffocating silence waited. No sound came out to break it off. Something was wrong.
The old woman began to weep.
With deft and rapid movements, Blacky untangled the umbilical chord that was strangling the infant. The rest of us stood riveted and refrained from breathing. Betty’s neck was craned to see and the sinews stood out like severed tendons.
Blacky thrust the tiny body from hot to cold water and then back again. Nothing.
“Oh, my God,” Isolde said.
The prayer wheel rattled like a carousel throughout the room. I wanted to scream. The prayers from outside became louder and louder in an almost insane procession of sound.
“God, oh, God!” Betty shrieked. “Don’t do it!”
Blacky held the newborn up by its feet. He slammed the infant with such force that if it wasn’t dead yet, it surely was now.
Then, small and wonderful, a voice that never was before rose slowly from a pale, wet gurgle to a lusty howl.
The frozen room let go its breath and breathed again, and I cried out loud like a little kid. At last. All the tears I’d jammed up out of worry and frustration came tumbling out.
“A daughter, Betty,” announced a victorious Blacky, “a beautiful daughter!”
The suck of everyone’s astonished breath accentuated the fact that no one had, in those endless first moments, even pondered the until now all important sex.
Charles scurried over, every inch the beaming dad, and counted fingers and toes. Park stood up and announced the exact moment of birth and Mr. Auto fastidiously wrote it down.
Out came the violet-colored afterbirth. We all gaped at this astonishing sphere and Blacky nodded his head in approval. “All in one piece,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”
Betty, two bright patches of red on her cheeks, apologized for having been so noisy. A chorus of voices shushed her down and she continued to explore the baby.
“C’est une fille!” Chartreuse shouted out the window. “It’s a girl!”
Blacky’s hair hung damp and disheveled down over his eyes. He caught my glance and laughed happily. Isolde, no doubt recalling similar moments in her own life, sobbed, “I want to go home. Now I really want to go home!”
I turned in time to see Wolfgang capping his lens, then protecting the camera with his arm as he made his way down the makeshift ladder he’d leaned on the window frame.
We all went outside to give the family some privacy. The moon was up in the day sky while the sun still shone. I loved that. It felt important and meaningful. I wiped my eyes and took the sky’s picture. And it’s funny how you can laugh and cry like that in the same day. For a short while we’d really forgotten our own pain. Everyone smoked a beedie in celebration. I’d pretty much given up smoking by now but the occasion seemed to warrant it. I fished around for a match. Tupelo’s hair lay like a mouse in my pocket. It made me shiver. I thought I wouldn’t smoke after all.
When Blacky and I at last climbed, aching and cold, into the van, I imagined we would find comfort in each other’s arms. I should have known we were both too exhausted to behave decently. A part of me did know it, but I went ahead anyway, caressing his shoulders, attempting to arouse him with my touch.
He said coolly, “Do you know, Claire, you have absolutely no sense of propriety.”
“You’re right,” I agreed.
He turned away and presented me with his handsome back.
chapter twenty-one
The very next day Betty was at Hula’s with her perfect little baby. Hula came and laid a bowl of fragrant noodles on the table. Isolde passed around the bowls. Her emerald ring glittered in the lamplight. Suddenly Charles turned to me and said, “And what do you do in your real life, Claire?”
I was taken aback. “I, uh, I’m a model. Or I was.”
“A model?” He looked me up and down. “Really! Aren’t you especially short?”
“Well, yes.”
There seemed no going on from there.
But Charles pressed on. “And why did you leave America?”
I thought this over. “I think I left because I couldn’t face staying.”
“Ah,” he said. “That’s why you condescend to be with the likes of us. Because you cannot hold your own with your own kind. That’s why. You want to be looked up to. Admired! Adored!”
Blacky looked up from his book but it didn’t seem to bother him that Charles was picking on me.
“No, I don’t,” I said, insulted. But then I thought maybe that was true. “At least I’ll never be the pot calling the kettle black.”
“It’s interesting,” Charles said, shifting his attention to Blacky. “One seems to come across two types of traveler. There’s the philosopher, the searcher of truth. And then there’s the runaway. Those who’ve gone and left an inconsequential life behind. The addictive personality, the follower, the …”
“Model?” I inquired.
“Well.” He let the word stand there alone.
I looked to Blacky.
“Oh, Claire,” Blacky gave me a sanctimonious little pat on the head, “nobody means you. There are subtleties you’ll never understand. Just don’t try.”
I was outraged. “Ah, yes,” I said, “being American and all that. I know you’re all so well brought up. Still. With all my family’s and my education’s shortcomings, I’m the only one of all of you who really believes in loyalty and truth. And dreams. I am—” I cringe now to think I had my hands on my hips at that point. “Maybe I left home because I couldn’t face the reality of my being less than I should. Maybe the people around me were so worthwhile, I felt inferior beside them. And the place I come f
rom—which would certainly be beneath the likes of you,” I could hear my voice growing louder, and I glared at Reiner, “what with our graffiti and our Van Wyck Expressway, it still holds the most sincere people in the world. The salt of the earth. People with dreams. Those dreams may not be to score a … a … a first in the Berlin Film Festival, but to get a home and education for their kids.” I stood up. “But that’s too corny for you all. Why, you’re all a bunch of cynics. That’s all your fancy educations taught you.” I looked at Charles. “And if I’ve worn my spirituality as an ornament, at least I don’t try to sell it.”
“Oh, but you would have.” Wolfgang sneered.
“Oh, but I didn’t,” I replied.
“Hear, hear!” said Harry.
“No sense taking it out on poor Charles here,” Blacky reprimanded me.
I was furious that he wouldn’t take my side. He just never did. I totally lost it. “And I’m surprised at you, Blacky. You know, everyone says about you that you’re always there for them when the going gets tough. What was it? ‘Wenn es dir dreckig geht, der Blacky ist ja immer da’, gell? Isn’t that it? But when things are fine, it’s like you turn your back! What are you, bored?”
He placed one foot lazily up on the rung of the chair beside him. “You mean like, ‘Vanilla, vanilla, vanilla’?”
I grabbed my side. The pain of what he said shot through me. “All right, Blacky! At last the truth,” I panted, deaf to who could hear us. “Come out and say, ‘I don’t love you.’ You loved me more when I was the patient. Admit it! When I was nondescript and anonymous!”
“I loved you more when you were quiet,” he said softly.
That’s it, I thought. I’ll never recover from this.
“Oh, calm down, Claire,” Isolde said. “Sit down.” She took her sweater off then put it right back on.
Harry said, “The more upset she becomes the more calm you become, Blacky. Do you notice that?”
“She’s obviously getting her menses,” Blacky said. “What is it, full moon? Aren’t you always on the full moon?”
Isolde sighed. “I can’t wait to leave here. I really want nothing more than a good Leberwurst and a Spaten Bier.”
“Me, too,” said Vladimir.
“Yes,” Blacky stood and stretched, “our luck seems to have run out here.”
“Where would you want to go now?” Vladimir asked Blacky.
He lit up. “You know, I did think of stopping over in Vietnam while I’m already in this part of the world. One could leave the van and fly the rest of the way. It would certainly be cheaper than buying benzene at this point.”
“What do you mean?” I said. “I thought we were driving back!”
“We can’t afford to, Claire. Haven’t you been listening?”
“We’re not all heiresses like you, you know,” Daisy sniffed.
“If only we could find somebody stupid enough to buy the vans,” Harry said. “Then we could all fly home.”
“And what about me?” I said like a dope, flaunting my pain in front of just about everyone.
“I think you want to be on your own.” Blacky looked at me sadly and waited. “Don’t you, Claire?”
“Is that an invitation?” I said.
“I don’t know. Is it the truth? You seem to so much want the truth.”
I was too stunned to answer. I’d thought we were in the midst of a regular boyfriend-girlfriend fight. I’d thought we were going to patch it up and everything would bump itself back into order. It occurred to me that our argument and his cold shoulder suited his needs very well. He’d thought it all out. When had this happened?
I couldn’t seem to pull myself together. I didn’t feel anything, just numb. I pushed open the door and ran down the road. I didn’t know where I was going. Then, I remembered what Tupelo had said, about where she’d been headed that day when she’d fallen from the cliff. Off to a holy hermit-lady’s cave. You know what, I told myself, I’m not even afraid to go there. I’m not anything.
With a dreary gray sky overhead, I set out. I passed a caravan of shady European junkies by the river. The Tibetans were such good and worthy people, there was nothing for the junkies here and so they were pulling up camp. They looked at me and I at them. Scoundrels. It half occurred to me I should have mentioned to the others where I was off to but I didn’t. I wanted them to worry. I think part of me didn’t care anymore. I guess I wanted to get into trouble. I thought to myself, What could happen that hasn’t already? I was in such a cacophony of rage that I thought if I did die, that would show him! The worst part was that I really was getting my period in a few days and to have my injured feelings so trivialized by this concession was too much to bear!
I began the steep climb. The path was a seasonally dry mountain stream of flint boulders. I clattered up through the hedges and over the town. The stones gave way the minute you put two feet on them. I was forced to stop and catch my breath every ten minutes. I’d imagined an unusual experience but I was ill prepared for the mystical atmosphere that surrounded me, the giant bodhi trees, the foliage alive with wild peacocks.
Alone, I was as lithe and simple as the animals who watched me. I thought of Tupelo and how she’d tried to come this very way. I let my body drop and slither to the edge and through the high wet grass as excellently as a snake.
McLeod Ganj was a jewel from above. The waterfall and stream were like a zipper through its middle. I watched the solemn parade of monks’ shaved heads leaving temple and on their way to quarters. The dear ragged flags in the wind. Farmers on the lower hill bent down in rice paddies that checkered the distance in varying shades of jade and moss and all the greens of India. I felt so close to Tupelo up here. It was almost as though she were with me.
I sat there for a long time, thinking of everything. I pulled out my letter from home that I hadn’t finished reading. It was all of the things I feared. Heartache. Responsibility. Familiarity. Nothing sophisticated at all. And blame. Every time I looked at it I felt like a child. I opened the flimsy blue pages and at last read it through.
Dear Claire,
What the hell do you think you’re doing traveling around the goddamn world when I’m stuck here like this, divorced, with mommy and daddy? What are you thinking? And Zinnie says when she graduates she’s going into the police academy! That’s your fault, too! Mommy’s turned Michael’s room into her knitting room. But his stuff is still stuffed in the closet. Really she just goes in there and smells his clothes. It’s horrible. Zinnie put your and her stuff in the back room, looking over the trestle. She went to the mall and bought snazzy quilts for the beds with her own money. Blue. Dark blue with bright red poppies all over. She says when you come back you’ll want the window view so she sleeps up against the wall. Like she really believes you’ll come home. I always thought it would be me on a trip around the world. I’m impulsive, you’re the nerd, remember? Hope you’re having a ball. It stinks here.
Carmela
I put the letter down with a heavy heart. And yet, she’d brought me right back home with her reprimanding words. It was almost as though I’d gone there. Imagine little Zinnie going out and buying quilts! And all with the hope that—I was touched, and I was also oddly soothed. I folded the letter carefully and returned it to my backpack.
I stood up and brushed myself off and continued to climb. I had the eerie sense of being watched. And then I saw why. In the clearing to my east, there were furry, beige apes as tall as small men. They were slender, beautiful—the glamorous blond color of Afghan dogs. There seemed to be a community of them. Their fur looked well cared for, as though it had been brushed. They blinked and scratched and gathered their children but never ventured toward me. If they had, I would have headed downstream immediately. But they kept their distance. These weren’t like the monkeys in the temple. These were well-behaved villagers. I’d stumbled across a village! The village elder—standing there with his staff—looked at me and I at him. I made the decision not to take a picture. S
ome decision was made on his part, too, because he did nothing. Flocks of green parrots shot from treetop to treetop and high overhead, wondrous eagles—the most magnificent birds imaginable in flight—swooped in broad sovereign arcs. Misty clouds floated beneath me and covered the path I’d already consumed. I began to wish I’d brought a canteen—and to fear I was lost—but having come so far already, trekked on.
Suddenly a nearby growl reached my ears. Not knowing which way to turn, I climbed to the top of a huge granite boulder and stood face-to-face with the owner of the voice. A half-dog, half-wolf creature with a collar of iron spikes stood chained and guarding a grotto-like cave, the entrance of which was stopped by a gate of prison-thick bars.
Four Indian pilgrims knelt at a safe distance from the entrance. I was happy to see them. Happy? I practically sobbed in relief. I walked cautiously forward. In the dark of the cave’s interior shadow, I could just make out a vague, seemingly ash-covered body in yoga position.
The animal growled but no response came from the cave. The entrance wall was dominated by a massive cement sculpture of the dancing, tooth-protruding Heirab, the awful, ludicrous god of the ghosts. I thought instantly of Vladimir. He would love this. It wasn’t only awe-inspiring in its ferocity but good, really good in line and perspective. There was a primitive spinning wheel beside me. A voice came from within the cave. It asked in a soft natural voice who was there.
Pack Up the Moon Page 29
