by Ted Simon
The violence was so great, so terrifying and unexpected, that I only knew afterwards what had happened. At the time I had the impression of whirling in hell and being hit. It seemed to go on for a long time, and I was sure I would die. Carol had the same recollection. I was thrown from the car on to my head, Carol fell into the back of the car. Fortunately the car did a complete roll in the air, for if it had fallen upside down she would have been crushed. It fell with its front wheels hooked over a big boulder some ten feet below the road. The boulder held, otherwise it might have bounced and rolled a long way down the mountainside. Carol escaped with a bruised arm. I was drenched in blood from a scalp wound.
The only possible explanation was that a gust of wind had filled the car from behind, through the open back, and whisked it away like a parachute. The strength of the wind that would be capable of lifting a car four feet in the air was beyond my ability to compute. It had an element of the supernatural about it, of course.
There was one other strange coincidence. The Indian rug was never found. Many people searched for it, but it had disappeared.
A week later Carol flew back to the ranch, and I went to work. Things improved, gradually, and my confidence returned. The memories flooded back, and the book was written. It is now the winter of 1978. The prospects for prosperity in 1979 seem quite good. I have a letter from Carol saying that she is thinking of getting married. Franziska, the policewoman in Fortaleza, has qualified as a lawyer and is working in Brasilia. Bruno is a buyer for the French tobacco monopoly, and travels to tobacco auctions all over the world. Tan, the old man at the Choong Thean Hotel, has sought refuge with The Little Sisters of the Poor. The family on the farm near Lusaka have been violently overrun, after all, by Mr N'Komo's Freedom Fighters, and driven out. And I have read that the Black Mountain Inn in Rhodesia is now a ruin of broken brick walls and naked rafters. There is no news of the Van den Berghs.
The Triumph 500 c.c. model T100-P, serial number DH 31414, also known as XRW 964M, is in the Alfred Herbert Museum in Coventry, and remains unwashed since Istanbul. Some day soon I plan to visit it.
Meanwhile I dream a lot. Often I dream of riding over the hard red floor of a great forest, beneath a high canopy of translucent green, spreading on and on. An enchanted forest, perhaps, where men may still sometimes play at being gods.
