Impossible Vacation

by Spalding Gray

  Raymond answered matter-of-factly that it was the household shrine, and asked if we wanted to see it. Meg and I both nodded at once and he led the way into a room that was as spectacular as the sky above it. In contrast to those other bare rooms, this one was an ornate jewel and at the same time splendid in its simplicity. There were two simple hand-carved wooden benches facing a little royal-red Buddhist altar with bells, paintings of Tibetan gods, and a small photo of some smiling lama in a handmade silver frame.

  Raymond told us this was the altar to which they prayed every morning, and I realized in a sad flash that they had something going there I had never encountered before: an in-house, all-purpose, connected, working religion, complete and without doubt. No TV or telephone on snowbound winter days, but infinite connection of mind instead. No one worshiped in that room alone. They worshiped with all of the snowbound Ladakhans scattered in their mud abodes. It was a giant connection through ritual and prayer, and this is when I had my first big dose of loneliness, as I looked back on America and saw that we were only interconnected by machines now.

  After a dinner of rice and potatoes, we went to sleep on the straw mats. But some time close to dawn, which felt like the middle of the night, I woke up to the voice of a man calling from below. I staggered to our slit of a window to see Jun-yang, our driver, waving up at me. He had been able to fix the fuel pump.

  We were off again, with no breakfast. We were off, driving farther up into that landscape, and once again our eyes were so filled with the beauty of that place, we hardly noticed our empty stomachs. There was nothing to make us feel the lack of anything, just complete empty space and a delicious poverty of objects; no road stands, no billboards, no diners, no mileage signs to tell us how far we were from Leh, only spectacular mountains and deep ravines. Only landscape without stories.

  It was as though some gods had planned special effects of nature as we entered the capital of Ladakh. We were now on the highest plateau of the desert, and we could see the snow-capped Himalayas all around us. Dark clouds whipped up and broke and gave way to glorious shafts of sunlight. Then out of nowhere it was hailing. Great golf balls were beating on the hood of our jeep. And when the hailstorm passed, it left a spectacular rainbow arched over the entrance to Leh, as though the city was a long-sought-after pot of gold.

  “Is that it? Is that Leh?” I called out to Jun-yang, and he nodded and said, “Leh.”

  Entering Leh was like driving onto a movie set for an American western, only the town was filled with what looked like American Indians instead of cowboys. Leh was one dirt main street with little rickety shops and stores on either side. There were no movie theaters, opium dens, or strip joints. Yet there were soldiers everywhere. Most of the architecture was that British Colonial stuff we’d seen down in Kashmir: houses made of old wood and some brick. There were a few jeeps on Main Street, no cars, and all these incredibly gentle, handsome people walking hand in hand. Even the Indian soldiers, who had been sent up to guard the border, were walking hand in hand.

  Jun-yang took us to a rooming house, where they boiled up some water so we could take the traditional bath, pouring water from buckets all over each other. The two of us were feeling like little naked kids again, having a cleansing water fight. After our bath, I was able to procure a bottle of the local brew, a milky, bitter Tibetan beer called Chang. That did the trick. Two sips of Chang and I felt complete again. Buddhists everywhere say that the essence of all reality is dukhka, which translates as “suffering through incompletion”—the idea that nothing is ever enough. I experience dukhka most acutely when I smoke hashish or marijuana; but when I drink liquor, particularly at that elevation, it seems to eliminate all the dukhka for a while.

  I’m not going to go into a whole lot of detail about what Meg and I did up there in Ladakh or what we said to each other. I don’t remember much of that anyway. What I do remember, though, is that I was suffering from scopophilia: I was caught in my eyes, looking and looking, looking at all these happy people everywhere, and I was getting very lonely because I knew that I was not one of them. Every morning all these happy people greeted me in the streets with their gold-tooth smiles, crying, “Julay!” They were not trying to hustle or sell me anything. They were just smiling, and they seemed to want nothing more than a smile in return. I think it would have been easier to give them money, the way we did in India. As they came at me that first morning, their simple beauty and innocence was almost too much to bear. Their hearty bodies were dressed in black, embroidered with beautiful reds and turquoises, framed by splashing clear snow water that played around them like liquid silver. They were coming at me out of the cobblestone street with their gold-tooth-spangled smiles, the glitter of snow water rushing by them, down ragged stone gutters, as they cried, “Julay! Julay!”

  And all the time I had this dizzy vertigo feeling, like a kid on top of a giant globe about to teeter and fall. I had the feeling that we climbed to the top of the world just in order to slide down, to get enough momentum to roll all the way home, and because of this I was impatient to begin our return trip. That water rushing down at full speed out of the Himalayas was pulling me down with it; all that happiness in the people’s faces was driving me away. The deprivation of the lowlands had made me feel fortunate, but the absolute abundance of joy here made me feel deprived.

  When I wasn’t out walking alone and feeding my scopophilia until my eyes felt full to the point of bursting, Meg and I would take tours to the various Tibetan monasteries in the area. They looked like the buildings in all the old photographs of Tibet. It wasn’t entirely clear how the Buddhist monks felt about guided tours interrupting their services, but I wanted to sit in the middle of one and try to be a part of it.

  Once we got past the wild dogs at the monastery gate, one of the head lamas would always lead us right through the service and into the back of the monastery to see some sacred icons or special gold Buddhas or intricate, dazzling wall paintings, but I really wanted to be with the monks while they were chanting. Meg was much better at dealing with what I call the museum factor, and she was fascinated by the wall paintings. At last, in the Tiksi monastery we got to sit and vibrate with the deep chants of the monks as they rolled off endless sutras and prayers from their prayer wheels. They would blow their long Tibetan horns and wink at us as they blew and then wink again between crashes of crazy cymbals. That was the best part—just sitting there vibrating with them. But the tourist guide moved us on to the next monastery and more savage dogs and another gold Buddha, and ancient leather-bound books in little libraries with the most incredible views that stopped time again. Everywhere we went, there were those gold-tooth smiles coming out at me from the glitter of snow water and that dizzy feeling would come over me again, of a child about to fall; and when this feeling came I would talk to Meg again about making plans for our descent. We had to set a date in order to get a seat on the bus, which left twice a week for Kashmir, and I knew that once I left Ladakh I would try to roll all the way down to New York City without getting caught up in any more diversions or temptations. You see, I had the feeling that in order to be happy anywhere I had to get back to America, to figure out what went wrong and why I couldn’t smile in the streets of New York and say “Good day, good day” to all the people passing by there. Let the people in Ladakh carry on in their own happiness without me. I knew it was impossible to ever be a part of them.

  At the time I had no idea that I would have to go through so much stupid confusion before I’d even begin to get to the other side; and in all of this confusion, water, without my knowing it, was really the ruling force. I wanted now to flow down with it, follow it down the mountain all the way to New York. I had no idea where it was leading me until I at last found myself at the bottom of the earth, lying naked in a cool stream. I had no idea about the long, dark, confusing route that would lead at last to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Had I known ahead of time, I doubt that I would have gotten on that bus in Ladakh at all. But on
e day in late June, Meg and I got on the bus and we started down. We started home.

  We were the only Westerners on that bus, and we sat in separate seats. Meg sat in the center and I sat in the back next to the emergency door, so I could jump if the bus started to go over a cliff. The only problem, as I saw it, and I saw it most vividly, was that my side of the bus was the side that was always toward the edge of those giant precipices, and if I were to open the door and jump, I would simply be falling independent of the bus and without Meg. And to make things worse, the bus was filled with Ladakhans—all those smiling people again, who, because of their belief in reincarnation, had little fear of dying. They looked like adults, but they acted like children in a jolly kindergarten. They were singing and laughing all the time, and calling out to the driver the whole trip as we followed that rushing silver snow water. Down, down, down we bounced and careened like we were part of some ridiculous children’s storybook—like The Little Engine That Could, or Couldn’t, or The Little Bus That Flew. Down, down we went, with those child-men who kept opening their windows to grab handfuls of fresh snow from the melting snow banks on the right side of the creeping bus. They’d make snowballs and throw them around the bus, laughing all the time, their gold teeth flashing. I crouched in the back, an uptight curmudgeon, saying over and over again to myself, “This too will pass.” Then I will be sad and miss it, I thought.

  As we went down, the melting snow banks turned into banks of green grass with the most spectacular profusion of spring wildflowers growing out of them. Down, down, down we went until at last we reached Kashmir, where Meg and I took the flight to Delhi, to the truly unbearably hot and humid flatlands, where the dark, moist clouds of the encroaching monsoon season gathered.

  The heat of Delhi was impossible to deal with. It was 110 degrees and 100 percent humidity when we landed, so we went right to the air-conditioned Lodhi Hotel. I drank Indian whiskey and Indian beer, trying to calm myself and get ready for the big flight home, while all the time that old dark, vacillating dukhka part of me began to think maybe I should go up to Nepal since I was so close. But when I’d think about it I’d get afraid that Nepal would be too depressingly corrupt after that pure experience in Ladakh.

  Meg wanted to stay for a while in Delhi and take a yoga class. I was incredulous. I couldn’t imagine how Meg could do yoga in that heat, but she was disappointed that she’d come all this way to India and never once got to take any lessons in yoga. All she did was buy rugs. Until then I had been thinking of myself as the spiritual quester and Meg as the merchant, now that was changing.

  So we were busy getting organized, Meg dealing with getting the rugs shipped out and trying to find the right yoga class and me trying to get a flight out to New York. I had no idea what I would do when I got there except try to figure out how to be happy. I was rolling down from the top of the world and running blindly for home base and couldn’t stop until I got there. I wanted to be able just to stand still in some familiar place, like a New York City cocktail party, and say things like, “Well, I’ve been to India. Yes, I’ve seen the Taj.”

  I didn’t know what Meg wanted. I didn’t know what held us together anymore except that we were companions in motion. She was still a bright beacon counteracting my gloomy pessimism. I had no idea what I gave back to her.

  I just wanted to get on that plane and fly alone to New York, to prove to myself that I could travel without Meg as my guide. I was shaking all over when we said goodbye at the Delhi airport. I felt like I would never see her again.

  I NEVER STOPPED looking down onto that clear, clear day. It was as though a whole part of the earth had been swept free of clouds just for my view. I saw it all: the mountains of Pakistan; sweeping, endless desert; and then we were suddenly over the Pyramids. There they were! The pilot didn’t even announce them. I could say I’d seen the Pyramids and I hadn’t even been in Egypt. I craned my neck even more as my breath fogged up the window. Then we were over the Greek Islands. All of them! I was amazed at how barren they were, like scattered fragments of moon rock, broken and strewn in azure. As soon as I saw the islands, I wanted to go there. I wanted to be there. As soon as the plane lands, I thought, I will vacation in the Greek Islands. But before I could dwell on that, we were over the Swiss Alps, and then the lush plains of Belgium, and then slowly coming in low over the flatlands of Holland, and then bump, bump, and we were down. We had landed at the Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. I didn’t want the flight to be over. Six hours had gone by like six minutes. That dizzy feeling of too much freedom came over me again, the feeling that I was no one and everyone everywhere, and that I could do anything I wanted, except there was hardly any “I” left to operate out of. Then, pulling away from the window, I realized that my head was locked to the right from having stared out that way for six hours.

  I strolled into the almost empty Amsterdam airport with my head locked to the right, walked right past Dutch immigration officials, who all looked like stoned-out hippies in uniform, and it occurred to me that I could have been bringing in pounds of hashish and opium and it wouldn’t have mattered to them.

  Yes, Amsterdam felt like a little paradise of freedom, and all my plans to get on the next flight to New York City began to dissolve and crumble. “Why not spend one night in Amsterdam?” the little gremlin voice was saying in my ear. “Just one night.” After all, what was the rush to get back to New York City in summer?

  So I called Hans and Sonia and said, “Hi, it’s Brewster. I’m just in from India and I’d love to come over and see you.” It felt so exciting to be able to say “just in from India.” Never in my life did I think I’d be able to utter a phrase quite as jet-setty as that.

  “But of course,” Sonia crackled in her thick Dutch accent. “What a surprise!”

  I caught a cab and was off, sitting in the back trying to force my head to the left, overwhelmed by the large, hypertrophied prosperity of all I saw out the window. The wealth of that city! Never did I think Amsterdam would look so luxurious. The people in the streets were like great blown-up sex giants, strapping male towheads and butter-and-peach-cream-skinned women, coming and going on black Mary Poppins bicycles, their spines gloriously erect, their eyes straight ahead with the great purpose of life.

  As my Mercedes cab wound through the narrow Dutch streets, I could see flashes of bright-colored, overflowing vegetable stands. After India, all the vegetables in Holland looked as though they had been blown up by bicycle pumps. That’s about the time the fever came on me, just as I was looking at some particularly plump cauliflower. It was a cool, wet, beautiful Nordic day in June and everything was so fresh, but all at once I felt a chill creeping into my bones. I saw all the people again, all those Dutch people, and the realization crept into me, like the chill, that all of this had been going on without me: Amsterdam had been going on all this time, all this time that I was in India, all my life, and now I was just peeking in on it. Yes, all of Amsterdam—not to mention Frankfurt, Paris, Brussels, or London—had been going on without me. And no one cared whether I came or went, no one cared what I did or felt; so my newfound freedom was turning into a horror. No one even knew I was in that cab or who I was, much less how I perceived the cauliflower or the upright Dutch women on their black Mary Poppins bikes. No wonder so many people craved fame, I thought. It allowed you the grand illusion that you were someone. No wonder people need to pretend that God is watching them all the time. Any illusion would be better than this loneliness, this awareness of infinitesimal existence, this horrible disappearing. Thank God for Hans and Sonia, I thought. At least they’ll recognize me.

  By the time I got to Hans and Soma’s apartment I was shaking and sweating with fever and sure now that I’d come down with some exotic Indian disease. I couldn’t believe how fast it had come over me, since I’d stepped off that damned plane.

  Well, there they were, Sonia and Hans and Sonia’s new baby, wee little Willie Winkie. And there I was with all my bags, wanting to collapse and not
deal with anything. I had all my dirty laundry in a bag flung over my shoulder. I was suddenly very sick and needy, flinging my fevered body and laundry on their cozy Dutch hospitality.

  “Come in, come in!” Sonia and Hans cried in their broken English.

  “Stay away, stay away!” I cried back. “I think I’m very, very sick!” I said with my head still stuck ridiculously to the right, staring at the wall as I went up the stairs. “Just give me a bed to recuperate in. That’s all I ask for.” Then, seeing little Willie, I said, “Oh, what a lovely baby—but don’t let me get close to him.” The truth was that the baby, after what I’d seen in India, looked like he, too, had been blown up with a bicycle pump.

  Hans took my fevered condition seriously and immediately showed me to the attic room above their apartment at the end of a very ancient winding stairway. The room was like a monk’s chamber, just perfect for me, with a single bed, a little dresser, and one gabled window that looked down into three or four old Dutch backyards. I lay down, fully dressed, and Hans covered me over with layers of old grandmother quilts and the eiderdown. I fell fast into sweaty delirium, only to come to, wet and wasted, days later. Between the jet lag and this Indian fever, I was quite out of it, and thought I was back in bed as a child, with Mom, not Sonia, downstairs preparing vegetable soup.

  At last I was back in the familiar land of the cool; and I realized that the great blessing of any illness like the one I had just gone through is that it leaves no room for neurosis, no room for regret, no room for the things I slowly began to feel upon waking. What I felt while in that fever I can only describe as spiritual, and this was a surprise to me, because I had expected to feel spiritual in India, not while suffering from a fever in Amsterdam. There in that attic looking out over cool, damp, green Holland in June, I felt a great renewal, combined with a melancholy that belonged to some other, lame, romantic time. I lay all damp and crusty under a pile of quilts, emptied out for the first time in a long time, and it was such a splendid feeling that I was even reluctant to open the door, lest I get filled again with the ten thousand things. I didn’t want to have it all come in on me again. I even avoided going downstairs to the toilet by keeping an old Mason jar by my bed. I would empty it slowly, pouring it out over the slate roof that led to the ancient rusty gutter that carried my urine down to the garden far below. And as I poured, I looked out on all those Dutch backyards with their fresh laundry on the lines.