Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  Rockstar didn’t say anything. He just walked down the aisle and grabbed hold of Suzie. She started yelling and kicking at him, but it didn’t faze him a bit. He hauled her off the bus and down to the beach and into the surf. Pete and Tim deLuca were nowhere in sight. Kelly gave me a look. As if to say, so what are you going to do about this? So I stuck Lucille on the back seat and me and Jenkins went out and talked Rockstar out of drowning Suzie, though he wasn’t really trying to drown her, he was just dunking her head under the water a few times, that’s all, but it made me and Jenkins look like heroes, and that’s always okay.

  On the way back to the bus, Rockstar told me, “Me mother used to talk to me like that until I turned fourteen, but then

  she stopped, because I made her stop.”

  I said, “Well, how did you do that, Rockstar?”

  He said, “I cut her bloody tongue out.”

  I said, “Way to go, Rockstar. No fooling around, huh?”

  He said, “Nope, no bloody fooling around.”

  Things were kind of quiet the rest of the day. It was a day that went real slow.

  Mary deLuca’s daybook entry

  october twenty-eighth, nineteen seventy-eight

  Jesus said it was a wise man who built his house upon a rock, last night we built our canvas houses upon sand, even while a rain like the rain that set noah building came down, we are helpless before the onslaught of nature. Jesus also spoke of the world as a field, the wheat is the children of the kingdom, but the tares are the children of the wicked one, who walks among us, in many guises, the Prophet Baha’u’llah, from where he sprang in persia in the nineteenth century, advised the world’s rulers to settle their differences and reduce their armaments, but there is an insanity in the world, and all the warnings of all the prophets fall on deaf ears, we can only watch the rain fall down and soak into the sand.

  Mick

  Dave says I shouldn’t write when I’m tired. But I’ve been tired since Turkey. And he says I should mention money more. About how I was running out of it and about how Patrick kept mentioning how he had some of his traveller’s cheques missing and how Teach kept asking to look at Pete’s books so she could see how all our money was getting spent. And Dave says I really shouldn’t say too much about what happened that night in the tent with Kelly since she is going to read this some day and I wouldn’t want to embarrass her, would I? And besides, by the time this book’s published, says Dave, there’s going to be conservative leaders in power everywhere and censorship commissions on every street corner, so just let people use their imaginations. Sex has been done to death anyway, says Dave. It’s hard to give any new slants on it. And yeah, I guess I agree with him on that point. And a few of those other ones as well. Besides, not all that much happened. It still wasn’t the new moon. Me and Kelly just talked mostly. She said the idea of getting involved with another human psyche just boggled her mind. There’s just too much, she said. She said that the problem with most people is that they wear blinders, like horses do, and when they get involved with another person, the blinders are taken off altogether. She was saying all this while giving me the best back rub of my life.

  She said that people often say we don’t use enough of our brains. Her opinion was that we use them too much and the end result was usually skewed emotions and acute depression.

  “What I’m trying to say, Mick,” she said, as she dug her thorny thumbs into my shoulder blades, “is that I’d think twice if I were you before I got involved with someone who has as many hang-ups as me.”

  I asked her if she gave this warning to everyone she was planning to sack down with, and she said, after a beat or two, “No.”

  “Well, I’ve got hang-ups too,” I said. “Why would you want to get involved with me?”

  She didn’t answer for a while. Then she said, “I’m not sure. A couple of reasons, maybe. One is that I have this feeling that time is running out. Two, I do get the feeling that you genuinely like me, though I don’t know why.”

  “I like skinny bodies,” I told her. “It doesn’t have anything to do with your mind.”

  She laughed.

  And then I turned around and kissed her. And that’s probably all I should say about that night.

  The next day we drove to the Turkish border. Kelly sat at the front, me at the back, playing Lucille. I think I played Loudon Wainwright Ill’s “Dead Skunk” about a dozen times, trying to get it right. Wish I’d had a banjo picker with me.

  I remember the Turkish border real well. That’s where Pete introduced us to Turkish Delight.

  TURKEY Kavalla—Istanbul

  Day 19

  Departure: 7:30 a.m.

  Route: Alexandroupolis—border—Ipsala—Tekirdag Points: 1. Collect all passports at the border to be stamped. Last opportunity for duty-free booze and cigs at the border, but they have to be paid for with foreign currency.

  2. Might be possible to get some fruit and vegetables at Ipsala.

  3. Give the usual warnings about security, re: Turkey. Utmost care must be taken with valuables from here on east.

  4. If there’s a long line-up at the border, it might be a good time to give them the low-down on Moslems. “Islam” means submission to the will of God. Moslems feel that Mohammed is the last of the messengers that God sent down to earth to deliver his message, the first being Adam. Their idea of God is this bearded guy who sits on a throne and all around Him are these pure, sexless beings who spend all their time praising Him. Every once in a while these eunuch angels truck down to the earth plane to help the faithful do battle with the infidel, i.e., you and me and that little troupe you’re baby-sitting through Asia. Which is maybe a good time to throw in the fact that Moslems don’t really like us too much, the way we flaunt our delicious and sexy flesh, so advise them that skimpy halter-tops and shorts are out, ankle-length dresses are in, unless someone wants a small-scale holy war on the agenda. Back to those angels: some of them are the guardian angels of mankind, others are the watchmen of hell. Moslems agree with Christians that the world was created in six days. They disagree on which day He rested. They think He took a nap on Friday. They feel that the devil fell from grace because he refused to prostrate himself before Adam at God’s command, and that he’s running around the world right now, persuading women to bare their flesh and tempt men into joining his perverse little army. Mohammed’s job as the last prophet was to warn men of imminent judgement, otherwise known as Armageddon. Good Moslems, if they pray five times a day, i.e., when the muezzin calls them to prayer, don’t have to worry about this particular day. Especially if they go through that excruciating fast they call Ramadan, which occurs every year according to the uncorrected lunar year. It lasts an entire month and demands absolute abstinence from food and drink, from sunrise to sunset, for a whole month, travelling through the seasons in turn. It’s a good idea not to travel through Islamic countries during this time because everyone goes snaky. All Moslems, at some time or other in their lives, have to make a pilgrimage to Mecca, and you can always tell a Moslem pilgrim by the way he looks: he’s the guy who hasn’t shaved or cut his nails and you can usually see him kissing a black stone.

  Mick

  There were lots of diesel semis lined up at the border, and after Pete pulled up behind one of them, he got on the blower and told us that now that we were in Moslem territory it might be a good idea if the girls stuck to wearing slacks since Moslems weren’t too keen on having a lot of gooseflesh peeking out at them. He said that we’d also better get our barter skills down to a fine art if we didn’t want to lose a lot of money. He said there was a duty-free shop across the road in case we were interested in picking up some bargains or getting some money changed.

  And he finished things off by saying, “I hope some of you have the pleasure of running into some Turkish Delight while we’re stopped here. And I hope you like it. We’re going to be running into an awful lot of it from here on east.”

  Well, that sounded interesting but
the duty-free shop sounded more interesting. To me duty-free shop meant booze and smokes and so I beetled across the road as soon as Pete hung up the blower.

  And I couldn’t believe it, the duty-free shop had Marleys. Patrick followed me in, to buy some brandy, and when he saw the look in my eye, he said, “A veritable cornucopia, is it not, Mr. McPherson? A tumbling horn of plenty. A smorgasbord of—”

  “You got it, Dr. Livingstone,” I said.

  I picked up a couple cartons of Marleys, along with a couple 26s of raki. But I had some problem changing my Canuck traveller’s cheques, since the Canuck buck was falling faster than a cheerleader’s underpants at a post-game orgy. They finally changed them though, because Patrick motor-mouthed them into it. They probably just wanted to get rid of him. Or maybe it had something to do with his Chargex bill. Either way, they likely had fun screwing me in the left ear while they were at it.

  Just the same, though, I was about as happy as a duck full of strawberry pancakes as I waited in line to have my passport checked. Marleys sure tasted good after a month of State Express.

  The guys checking passports looked like a couple extras from one of Peckinpah’s westerns. Both of them were wearing ponchos and three-day beards and scowls as dark as Darth Vader’s visor.

  Just as I was getting my passport checked, Dana walked in, looking pale, like maybe she’d just been dry-humped by a herd of camels. She told Charole she wasn’t sure but she may have just had her first taste of Turkish Delight.

  “Oh, really?” said Patrick. “How was it?”

  “I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise for you, Patrick,” said Dana. “It’s just outside and to the right.”

  Patrick took off to investigate the Turkish Delight and I figured what the hell, I might as well do the same.

  Of course, knowing Pete, I should’ve known that the Turkish Delight wasn’t a candy bar.

  After Patrick came out of it with his eyes watering, saying enjoy, Mr. McPherson, to your heart’s content, I went inside and almost died. It was like walking into a sewer, or shoving a burnt match up your nose. There were these big, groggy old barn flies the size of bees buzzing around this hole in the floor that was circled with shit. There was no toilet paper. Just a little tap at ankle level.

  I would’ve said no way, Jose. But I’m no wimp. And besides, I did have to take a crap. So I placed my feet as far from the shit as possible, which placed my line of attack on the front circling the hole, and let rip.

  I won’t go into details about using that tap. Except to say that there are more pleasant things I can think of doing with my fingers.

  The worse part about all this is that my piss kind of hesitated before it came out. I could feel it. And when it did come out,

  it sprayed in all directions.

  My first thought was fuck damn shit. My second thought was of new moons and Kelly. My third thought was whether or not they sell condoms in Turkey. My fourth thought was that Nancy Pickles had given it to me. Then I thought about Suzie and that first night in Bruges.

  So I phoned up Dave.

  First he said yeah, I did have the dose, and yeah, Suzie gave it to me, and then he said I didn’t have to worry about a thing, I could buy anything I wanted to in Turkey.

  Anyway, that’s the last time I’m going to describe a Turkish Delight. Pete was right. We did run into lots more of them. Some of them weren’t as bad. Some of them were worse. Most of them had some sad-looking old geezer sitting inside them with a can, collecting change. What a way to make a living.

  One thing travel through Asia does. It makes you appreciate a toilet. Just like it made me appreciate a Marley.

  I lit one up as soon as the sunlight hit me and a couple puffs later my sinuses were back to normal. All my little nose hairs were shaking hands with each other. They’d survived. Or most of them had.

  Rockstar came around the corner. I pointed at the door. “It’s right in there, Rockstar,” I said. And I had a nice little chuckle, watching him stumble out.

  On the bus I sat next to Kelly and asked her if she’d checked out the Turkish Delight, and she said no, but she’d heard about it and that was enough of a taste for now.

  I had a little Eric Clapton jam session on Lucille the rest of the afternoon and I was playing “Layla” when we got to Istanbul’s outskirts. It was raining again and it was almost sunset.

  I sat next to Kelly and we were staring out at all these little open-air shops that had old men in them, sucking on hookahs.

  “Here we are,” she said, “sailing to Byzantium.” I wasn’t sure what she meant by that, so I asked her, and she said something about a Yeats poem she liked. Then she said, “Have you heard the latest from the rumour mill?” She said it in a whisper because Tim deLuca and Patrick were just across the aisle from us, playing chess again. They were becoming chess buddies, which is almost as good as a bosom buddy, I guess. That’s a Dave joke, by the way.

  I said to Kelly, “Has to do with Dana, right?”

  She said right. She said Dana was going to have an abortion in Istanbul, because it would be dangerous to get it anywhere further east or in Russia.

  “She’s going to Russia?” I said.

  Kelly said yeah. For a month or so. Because her grandmother lived in Moscow. And then she said that she’s never been pregnant but that she’d never get an abortion herself. She said she’d love to have a child. It’s just too bad, she said, that you usually have to go through all this hassle of living with a man in order to have one, all of which made me just a little bit nervous, and so I called up Dave and Dave said that Kelly didn’t have to worry about it, she was going to be a mother in the near future and she wouldn’t have to live with a man to do it. But if you’re smart you’ll keep this information to yourself, he said, and then hung up.

  I didn’t say a thing. Across from us, Tim deLuca moved a rook and said to Patrick le shah est mat, and then Pete was pulling into camp, where he handed out some mail, but not near as much as he did in Athens.

  And none for me, of course.

  We ended up having to sleep in the camp kitchen that night because the campground was under water. It’d been raining in Istanbul for three straight days.

  Just before hitting the sack, I asked Kelly, “Uh, when’s this new moon going to happen, again?”

  “All Hallow’s Eve,” she said. “Just before midnight.”

  It was like I’d just asked her what the weather was like outside. I was thinking that maybe she’d changed her mind. Which is maybe what she wanted me to think.

  In a way, I hoped she had changed her mind.

  Because of course I didn’t want to give her the dose or anything, and I’ve never been a big fan of condoms.

  Though I should keep an open mind about this, I said to myself. They say travel changes you. You become a different person. You can leave your history behind when you cross an ocean, that *

  Hallowe’en, Kelly tells me, is the time of year when witches light candles in hollowed-out pumpkins, to protect the flame from the wind, and to illuminate the way for various cherished souls on their way to what is hopefully a happier vale. They are given sweets to provide energy’ for their distant astral travel. I find all that very interesting.

  I also find it interesting that I’ve developed a taste for chai and baklava. I’m not sure if there’s a connection there or not. I hope not. I’m not ready to go astral travelling yet.

  Last night was very unsettled. The downpour forced us inside, where we slept among pans and pots. The bray of Pete’s alarm clock, as it always does, woke most of us. Others managed to remain impervious.

  After Dana’s delicious breakfast of diced ham and scrambled eggs, we ventured out into the moisture to visit the Blue Mosque.

  As I write this we are stranded in the waters of three days’ anger. I pray there aren’t thirty-seven more to come.

  Mick

  One of the days on the trip I remember best is Hallowe’en. Well, parts of it anyhow.

&
nbsp; Hallowe’en was the day of Kelly’s new moon.

  The morning muezzin woke me up. I thought someone somewhere was getting murdered.

  It was still pouring rain, that morning. Pete told us to load up the gear, we’d try to find a hotel to stay in for the night.

  It poured down rain all day. In the morning we went to see the Blue Mosque which was actually grey. I stuck close to Kelly. Because I felt I had to, I guess, given what we’d agreed was going to go down that night. Wouldn’t have been right to keep my distance, even though I did feel nervous about the whole idea.

  I prefer these things to happen spontaneously, so you don’t have to think about them much beforehand.

  There’s not much that makes me more nervous than making love to some woman for the first time. It’s worse than hypodermic needles.

  We had to take our shoes off outside the Blue Mosque. Inside, some guide told us it was called the Blue Mosque because of the tile of the floor, which was blue and white, actually, and he told us some story about why there were more minarets than there were on any other mosque in the Islamic world. Some competitive thing going on between Istanbul and Mecca.

  I told Kelly the mosque would be a great place to hold a rock concert. A band like Led Zeppelin, maybe. She told me not to hold my breath waiting for Bill Graham to announce it.

  “The evangelist or the promoter?” I said, even though it was obvious which one she meant.

  “The promoter,” she said, giving me a funny look. A look that was full of second thoughts about that night, I could tell.

  I decided I was better off keeping my mouth shut.

  There were all these Turkish women rushing in out of the rain after the noon muezzin blew. I was tempted to get down on my knees like they did. Maybe pray to Allah that this little Hallowe’en tryst went off without a hitch.