Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  Mick

  Maybe I shouldn’t say this, well, maybe I won’t then, but I will say, well, I guess Kelly took her cue from Patrick when she pushed my hand like that, but it didn’t take her long to recover her senses and tell me she’d feel a lot better about this if we waited for the new moon. Fine with me. I’m a real easy guy to get along with, and I didn’t mind proving that to Kelly. And that’s all I’ll say about it.

  Pete was in a pissed-off mood that morning. Maybe because the bus was a mess. There were all kinds of orange peelings and peanut shells under the tables and seats. He’d just had Patrick and Jenkins clean up the bus the day before. Or maybe it had something to do with his sex life. Maybe somebody pissed in his corn flakes. Whatever it was, he got on the bus and picked up the mike and said, “Now I don’t want anybody to think I’m in a bad mood, but there’s a few things I’d like to get off my chest, if you people don’t mind, and I’m sorry I have to say this, but in all my years of driving a bus I’ve never come across a worse bunch of pikers than you people. Most people I’ve driven on this trip have been able to get along with each other reasonably well. I think you people might as well realize that from here on in it’s going to be them and us. There ain’t any friends waiting for us up the road. We’re going to be running into diesel trucks that like to play chicken with tour buses and we’re going to be going through villages where little kids wait all day just to throw bricks at anything that comes along. The friendly part of the trip is over. We’re getting into territory where the people have turned sort of ugly since the Yanks started putting on economic pressure to get them to shut down Rockstar’s favourite cash crop and so I’d appreciate it if you people would try to pull together here if you don’t mind, and if by some chance you just happen to see some kids in any of these towns up ahead who look suspicious, like they’ve got their hands hiding something behind their backs, maybe just smile and wave at them. It probably won’t help much but it don’t hurt to try. Don’t worry about it or anything, I’ve got another method that usually works. Another thing. I got on the bus this morning and I couldn’t believe it, it was like a pigsty. Unless you people shape up and start cleaning up after yourselves I’m going to ban eating on the bus for a week, so consider yourselves warned. Now as for today’s drive, we’re looking at six or seven hours, depending on the traffic. I hear there’s a diesel strike in Iran so it shouldn’t be too bad. We’ll be going through the Gulak-Bogazici Pass and the Goreme Valley, so get your cameras loaded. And I want you to think about what I said. Let’s try to pull together here.” Then he hung up the mike.

  That was exactly what he said. Dave ran his little speech across my eardrum real slow so I could get it down just right.

  It took about five towns before we found out what Pete’s method for dealing with the kids with the bricks was.

  It was a small town, and we were halfway down the main drag and I was listening to Suzie tell Rockstar that he was going to get cut off unless he wrote something in the daybook when Patrick all of a sudden let out with a yell, “Mayday,

  delinquent urchins at two o’clock!”

  Sure enough, there they were. Four of them. Every one of them with their hands behind their backs. Pete gave his horn a couple blasts and when he got within range of them, he yanked the wheel to the right and steered straight for them. Three of the kids tossed their bricks, they went way wide, and ran for it, but one kid stood his ground till the very last minute and then winged his brick and beetled behind a lamp post, which Pete must’ve missed by two or three inches at most. The brick was dead on. Kid could play for the Red Sox. Brick hit the windshield in front of Pete and fractured it into a huge network of cracks. A mass of squares about a quarter-inch thick.

  Pete didn’t even bother stopping. There wasn’t anything he could do about it.

  Teach almost had a heart attack, I think. And the bus was quiet, real quiet, the rest of the morning.

  Kelly was sleeping on the back seat and I was sitting in front of her, doodling on Lucille, when the diesel semi played chicken with us, just like Pete promised. All of a sudden I hear this small shriek from Teach. Her and Tim sat in the front seat, day in, day out, kept their eyes glued to the road and the countryside. And I look up just in time to see this semi coming straight at us on our side of the road. It swerved away at the last minute, only missed us by a foot or two. As it flashed past, I got a glimpse of a face from hell, mouth stretched open in a hideous laugh.

  Kelly slept through it all. I went back to doodling on Lucille. Up at the front of the bus, things didn’t stop buzzing for an hour or so.

  Yeah, we were all getting a taste of what the rest of the trip was going to be like.

  Later on in the afternoon we stopped at an underground city that some Christians had carved out of rock to hide from the Moslems and around about four we stopped for a pici-stop in the Goreme Valley. The Goreme Valley was great. It was like another planet. It was like something out of a malaria nightmare.

  There were all these boulders on top of cones of rock. They looked like giant cocks. Pete called them chimney rocks. I’ve never seen anything like them. Made me wish I had a camera.

  Patrick had bought himself another camera, a little Canon, back in Istanbul I guess it was, but this was maybe only the second time I’d seen it. I think I saw it back in Troy. Don’t think he was happy about having to buy a new camera and I think taking pictures with the Canon maybe brought back bad memories of Dubrovnik. But he got back into the swing of things in the Goreme Valley. Because this was around sunset and the rocks did have a certain rosy glow that was oh so appropriate, as Patrick put it.

  He must’ve clicked off a whole roll of film on those giant stone cocks. That’s what Rockstar labelled them on the one picture he took. Giant stoan cox.

  And Charole must’ve figured Kelly wouldn’t want to miss them so she woke her up. She was still rubbing her eyes when she stepped off the bus. Then when she took a look she caught my eye and smiled.

  “As the day begins,” she said, “so it ends.”

  Well, maybe, I almost said, if I’m lucky. But decided against it.

  I wonder what might’ve happened if I had said that.

  Pete gave the horn a honk and about half an hour later we were driving into Urgiip.

  I remember Urgiip real well. Urgtip’s where my tooth began to hurt.

  (postcard)

  Urgiip, Turkey Nov. 10

  Dear Mom,

  Hi. Just got all 5 of your letters & the care package. The shampoo is especially prized. So far the trip’s been great, worth every cent, except for a smattering of rain. All the people are interesting, upbeat types, & we’re healthy. Scenery’s spectacular, so consistently so that it’s sometimes boring. & you should get out more. As I’ve told you before. Walk in the park. Meet a wealthy widower. Go to the movies. Be happy. Please. Will write more later. The pace is hectic. Never

  enough time to relax. I love you & miss you, & think of you often, Κ.16

  Mick

  Urgup was bigger than all those dinky little beach towns we’d camped beside since Istanbul. It had a few tall buildings even. On its east side was a high cliff full of caves, and on top of the cliff was a crooked TV antenna, which gave me high hopes. Maybe I could catch a Muppets show.

  On the way down the main drag Pete pointed out some of the safer bets for eats. One was a pizza joint, another a pie and chai shop. Down one side street me and Patrick noticed a sign that said Harem Disco and that was worth a laugh. We should check that out, Mr. McPherson, said Patrick, and as it turned out we did.

  When we pulled up in front of the Buyuk Hotel, Pete read out the room list, which was exacdy the same as with the tents, which was too bad, and then he said that if anybody was interested in a free glass of wine they should go to the hotel lounge.

  As soon as I stashed my suitcase in me and Rockstar’s room I cruised on down, and it was an okay lounge, as far as lounges go. Persian carpets on the floor and walls, pillows to sit o
n, and this suit of armour with an axe in one corner. Me and Patrick and Kelly and Jenkins sat in front of the suit of armour, and while we drank the free rotgut, we talked about where we were going to go after we got to Kathmandu. I mentioned the fact that I was going to spend about three months on Ko Samui, just sitting on a beach, knocking back Mai Tais and Patrick said he was going to spend a month or so on Bali and Kelly said her and Charole were going to take their time travelling south through India and get down to Sri Lanka in time for this Firewalk thing she’d mentioned to me once before. Jenkins wanted to know all about it. He said, gee, that’d be an interesting thing to see, but Kelly didn’t bother to pick up on that. Then Suzie walks in and says, “Has anyone heard the latest?”

  Dana, who’s at the bar talking to Charole, says, no, and Suzie says, ‘ ‘A tour bus has just been burned in Esfahan and a van full of German tourists has been dynamited near Tabriz.”

  Patrick said, “Oh, my goodness gracious.”

  You’d have almost thought it was good news, the way Patrick said it. I guess for him this was maybe like being in his own little play. All this drama and stuff. Which is maybe why he decided to stay on the bus after Rockstar hung him over that wall. I had this impression that Patrick walked through life like he was on stage all the time and he was the star. He was the hero. The dumpy little pot-bellied hero with the glasses and the receding hairline. I think maybe he’d seen Annie Hall too many times.

  Anyway, Suzie’s news got quite a stir going and when Pete walked in, he got bombarded with questions. He just leaned against the bar and sucked on a can of Heineken through this sick smile and after everyone ran out of breath, he said, “What we’re going to do is we’re going to sit tight here for a couple of days and see what happens. I’m in touch with HQ back in London and they’re keeping me informed and what it looks like now is that most of the trouble is in the south and so what we might do is hightail it across the north. And if we do that, we won’t be stopping at too many restaurants, and so what I

  suggest you people do is pig out while you can____ The food

  here in the hotel is fairly safe.” He told us where the dining room was and then he took off with Charole.

  In touch with HQ. I liked that. Hightailing it across the north. I think Pete was relishing this too. If you have to shepherd a bunch of mealy-mouthed, pantywaist tourists around, you can use a good revolution every now and then to liven things up.

  “Well I’m up for pizza,” said Kelly. “Anyone else?” She didn’t look at me. She looked at Patrick and Jenkins. They said yeah, and Jenkins said to me and Dana, “you guys coming along?” and we said yeah and then Suzie walked over, she’d been busy putting more make-up on, and nobody invited her along, but she came along anyway. And when Patrick asked her what she thought of the news, she said, “We’re going to have to turn back. I don’t want to get bloody killed.”

  “For once I agree with you,” said Dana.

  “Come on, ladies,” said Patrick. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

  “I lost that when I lost my cherry, mate,” said Suzie.

  “Oh,” said Patrick. “That long ago?”

  “Shove it,” said Suzie.

  “Alas,” said Patrick. “I haven’t had much opportunity to do that of late.”

  “No bloody wonder,” said Suzie.

  By the time we got to the pizza joint, the two of them were into a full-scale brawl with Patrick accusing Suzie of giving him the dose and Suzie saying no bloody way, she’s bloody careful when it comes to germs, and I could’ve settled the argument just by piping up and saying that yeah, Suzie, you did give it to him, ’cause you gave it to me too, back in Bruges. But I decided to let it pass.

  The pizza joint was a low-class dive but it had a fireplace where we could see our pizzas cooking and that was kind of nice. Too bad the pizza was burnt and had too many black olives and onions.

  Kelly finally got Patrick and Suzie to shut up, and we were back to talking about Iran over our Turkish coffees when this Turk comes over to our table and asks Kelly if she knows how to speak French. Kelly says some. He asks her if she’d mind doing a favour for him. Kelly says maybe. It’s for a friend of his, he says, and he smiles at her, and I can tell right away that the guy’s got a love-on for Kelly. He’s one of these slick, Omar Sharif types that ooze out charm instead of sweat. He tells Kelly that his friend has got a girl friend in Paris who he’d met when she came through on a tour bus and he was going to leave next week to marry her but the army just conscripted him and so he couldn’t, but he doesn’t write French and he needs to write her a letter. It sounds like a phony come-on story to me, but Kelly goes for it. She writes the letter and when she comes back, she asks us if we’d be interested in going to the Harem Disco and Patrick says perhaps and so these Turks offer to give us a ride there in the back of their tomato truck.

  I don’t think it was their idea to have all of us come along.

  When I slide in next to the driver I get a gearshift in the crotch.

  It turns out these two Turks own the Harem Disco. It ain’t quite open for business yet. Inside there’s still sawhorses and hammers and bags of nails all over the place, but there’s a stage built and a tile space for the dance floor and one lonely strobe light hanging from the ceiling.

  “Nice place,” I say. “What’s the cover charge?”

  No one laughs.

  The Turks lead us to a little room at the back that has animal skin rugs and a waterbed and stereo equipment. On one wall there’s that poster of Farrah Fawcett-Majors in her one-piece swimsuit. Kelly asks the one Turk, whose name is Emil, if he’s got any Bob Marley and he says sure, and while he’s looking for Bob, the other Turk, whose name I never did catch, he fills up a pipe with hash and passes it to Kelly about the time that the needle drops down on “No Woman, No Cry.” Kelly takes a big lungful, which surprised me, and leans back against a wall. She lets out the smoke and smiles at Emil.

  “This is great,” she says, passing the pipe to Dana. “We’ve all been on the bus too long.”

  And yeah, it is okay. The hash is great and it mellows us all out. Jenkins and Dana get into a heavy conversation about law school and Suzie gets into petting this grey Persian cat that wandered in and I pick up this five-string guitar, the low G string missing, and me and Patrick spend an hour or so making up stupid songs about tourists trapped in the middle of an Islamic civil war.

  And then Emil passes around a bowl full of Turkish candies. Some of them are rainbow-striped toffee squares and I try one of those. It has a nice sweet peppermint taste and I’m chewing away on it for maybe six seconds tops when suddenly this small jolt of pain shoots through my tooth.

  I take the toffee gob out of my mouth and throw it at Farrah and it hits an inch above her right nipple and sticks.

  “Mick’s a reactionary feminist male,” Kelly explains to Emil, who’s staring at me. “He can’t stand the idea of women being treated as sex objects.”

  Emil nods his head and grins at her. “Me too,” he says.

  “What’s the matter, Mick?” Dana asks me.

  It’s nice that somebody cares. Kelly, I notice, is too busy flirting with Emil to be concerned.

  “Nothing much,” I say. The pain ebbs a little when I stick my tongue in the hole.

  “It’s your tooth, right?” says Jenkins.

  “Right,” I say.

  And it kind of knocks me out of the party mood.

  I end up wanting to leave before the rest, and Dana says she does too, and so the two of us walk back to the Biiyuk.

  “I had a toothache once,” she says, “when I was at a summer camp in Newfoundland. Miles from nowhere in the middle of all this forest. It was horrible. I wanted to die.”

  “I look forward to that,” I say.

  She laughs. “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  It’s nice to hear her laugh. I’d never really heard her laugh before. I really like women who can laugh.

  When we get to the
Biiyuk, she goes up to her room and gets me some of her aspirin and 292s.

  “You don’t need ’em?” I say.

  She just shrugs. “Not as much as I used to. Don’t worry, I’ve still got some.”

  We’re kind of standing there, wondering what to do next, and then she gives me this funny look, and she says, “Could I cadge a cigarette off you, Mick?”

  “Yeah, sure,” I say, and I fish out a couple Marleys. “Didn’t know you smoked.”

  “I quit about a year ago,” she says. “Boy friend made me.”

  While she’s putting the cigarette in her mouth, the lights in the hotel suddenly flicker, flicker some more, and finally go out, leaving us in darkness.

  “Oh, isn’t this nice?” says Dana. Which was kind of a funny thing to say. Especially the way she said it. As though she meant it.

  “Yeah, ain’t it?” I says and I flick my Bic. Dana leans toward the flame and I notice the way the shadows play across her cheekbones.

  I put the Bic away and then it’s just the two of us standing there in that hallway, smoking our Marleys. We don’t say anything for a minute or two. The hotel’s real quiet. We can hear each other breathing.

  “I suppose I should hit the sack,” I whisper.

  “Well finish your cigarette first,” she says in a low voice.

  She kind ot laughs. “I don’t like to smoke alone.”

  “Yeah?” I say, sounding real stupid. “How does it taste after all this time?”