Indians on Vacation

by Thomas King

  We stroll along with the rest of the tourists while Mimi gives me all the details.

  “The houses were originally built to quarter the castle guards.”

  “Why are there only houses on this side of the street?”

  “The other side was torn down in the nineteenth century.”

  “Why?”

  “No idea,” says Mimi. “Ottla Kafka had a house at number 22. Her brother, Franz, stayed with her and wrote some of his short stories there.”

  I can see that the place has history, but whatever Golden Lane used to be, it is now a tourist trap.

  “A famous fortune teller once lived at number 14. Madame de Thebes. She predicted the fall of the Third Reich.” Mimi shakes her head. “She was arrested and tortured by the Nazis.”

  The Kafka house is now a souvenir shop.

  “Number 12 was the home of film historian Josef Kazda. You can see a recreation of his workspace.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  At the far end of the street is a museum of sorts. Weaponry for the most part. Swords, spears, axes, pikes, along with shields and suits of armour. Everything you would need to kill people. We make our way up a narrow staircase that only has room for one person at a time.

  “Look, Bird.” Mimi points to a sign. “You can shoot an authentic crossbow.”

  “Pass.”

  “I’ll be the damsel in distress,” says Mimi, “and you can save me from the dragon.”

  “Pass.”

  “I’ll take your picture.” Mimi tries to keep the smile off her face. “Indian with crossbow.”

  So I shoot the crossbow. I get three shots. I hit the target twice.

  “Tell me that wasn’t fun.”

  “The bows weren’t full strength,” I tell Mimi. “The arrow barely stuck in the target.”

  Mimi nods. “They probably don’t want a bolt to ricochet and hit a tourist.”

  The weapons museum seems to go on forever, and it doesn’t take long for the second wave of boredom to set in. And then Mimi finds the torture room.

  “Is that what I think it is?”

  In addition to a rack designed to stretch people and tear them apart, an iron cage with spikes, and an assortment of wood stocks, pliers, manacles, and chains, there is a wooden chair covered in nails. There are nails on the seat, on the back, on the armrests, and on the neck support.

  Along with thick leather straps that can be cinched down to hold every part of you in place.

  Mimi is impressed. “What kind of sick mind would think up something like this?”

  I suggest the Department of Indian Affairs.

  “The chairs at residential schools weren’t nail chairs,” Mimi reminds me. “They were electric.”

  You might imagine that you can still hear the cries of the people who were tortured with the devices in the Golden Lane museum or that you can taste the blood and smell the bodily fluids that would have soaked the floor.

  But you can’t.

  “And during the reconciliation hearings,” Mimi says, her voice hard as flint, “school officials were adamant that the chairs were never used at full power.”

  So we’re in Prague. At the castle. We’ve just toured Golden Lane, and now we’re both cranky.

  “I have to find a bathroom.”

  “Are you going to make a fuss?” Mimi crosses her arms and looks at me sternly. “How much did the airline tickets cost us to come to Prague?”

  “Is this one of your irrelevant analogies that tries to compare the high cost of international air travel with the trivial cost of European bathrooms?”

  “Yes.”

  “The plane had free bathrooms.”

  “People make their living looking after the bathrooms. It’s probably a traditional activity.”

  “And they never give you enough toilet paper.”

  Mimi shrugs. “We can always buy a roll and carry it around with us.”

  There are no washrooms in Golden Lane, but we find one near the Supreme Burgrave’s house.

  “Any idea what a supreme burgrave is?”

  Mimi consults the guidebook. “Evidently, he looked after things when the king was away.”

  “Like the bathrooms.”

  “Bird, it’s only ten Czech crowns. About fifty cents Canadian. I think we can afford that.”

  The bathroom is not very large, and it’s on the filthy side. There’s toilet paper, but it’s thin. I arrange strips of it on the seat.

  Are you crazy? says Kitty. You’re going to sit down on that?

  I try not to move or rock back and forth.

  Home, sweet home, says Eugene.

  Chip and the twins are waiting for me when I come out of the stall. Chip is not happy.

  What a rip-off, he says as I wash my hands. You call that stuff toilet paper? They saw you coming.

  I ignore him.

  Kitty tries to look sympathetic. Now your fingers are going to stink for the rest of the day.

  I CAN UNDERSTAND MIMI’S reluctance to move to the coast. No sunshine. No friends. Having to start over again without the ignorance and enthusiasm of youth. Moves, in the abstract, might look to be wonderful adventures, but they’re really more akin to a life-threatening disease or the death of a spouse. Most people recover. But it takes at least two years to get back on your feet.

  Some of us have that kind of time. Some of us don’t.

  “I can write anywhere,” I tell her. “You can paint anywhere.”

  Whenever I bring up the possibility of moving to the coast, Mimi reminds me that when we built our house in Guelph, we were making a commitment to stay there until we died.

  I don’t remember agreeing to this, and Mimi has nothing in writing.

  The most telling argument that Mimi employs against such a move is, what happens if we move, and then I die? I have nothing to counter this, because she’s right. With my health situation, I could die. And then she would be stuck where she did not want to be, in a house that was not as nice as the one we had before we went chasing after my dream.

  You try to move to the coast, says Kitty, and she’s going to leave you.

  Which is just what you deserve, says Eugene.

  I don’t like packing, says Didi.

  We’re packing? says Desi.

  Just go, says Chip. You don’t need her.

  Moving from one place to another would be easier if you could just go to your new location, pick out an apartment or a house, hit an app on your cellphone, and presto, the next day all your belongings were somehow transported and arranged without your ever having to unpack a box or go searching for the toaster.

  In that perfect world, your bank accounts would all have been transferred, your new health card and driver’s licence waiting for you on the kitchen table. Along with the name of a good doctor and a dentist. All the utilities hooked up, cable television and Netflix ready and waiting.

  Your mail properly forwarded.

  But what if you don’t like the new location as much as you thought you would? What if the one neighbour restores motorcycles and the other is a musician? What if there are no good coffee shops or bookstores in the area? What if after all the anguish and trouble of a move, you discover that you have made a mistake?

  To her credit, Mimi always tries to find the compromise.

  “How about we go to the coast every other year or so and rent a place. You could walk the beach, get all cold and clammy, commune with the fog. I could manage without sun for a few weeks.”

  “Every year or so?”

  “Okay, every year.”

  “A few weeks?”

  “We don’t need to be prescriptive.”

  I appreciate that Mimi tries to come up with a compromise, but visiting the coast isn’t the same as living there. Sure, it can be cool and damp and grey. And, yes, some people might find it depressing. But there is also a cumulative effect that comes about over time, a calming, a slowing, a feeling of being in a soft bed with a warm lover, of being hidden away,
safe from the glare and the clank of modern life.

  MIMI IS WAITING for me when I come out of the bathroom. She gestures to the line that has formed at the entrance to Golden Lane.

  “Good thing we got here when we did.”

  “Sure,” I say. “We might have missed the nail chair.”

  The castle grounds have filled up. I retreat to the shadows of St. George’s Basilica and watch the tourists flow past us like a river in flood. Mimi stays in the sun.

  “Of the places we’ve been,” she says, “which one did you like best?”

  “They all run together.” I lean against the stone of the church. It’s surprisingly cool. “They’re sort of like malls.”

  “Amsterdam and Venice had lovely canals,” says Mimi.

  “So does Ottawa.”

  “Barcelona and Cologne had great churches.”

  “Saint Joseph’s Oratory of Mount Royal in Montreal is pretty impressive.”

  “How about the Eiffel Tower. Or the Acropolis. They were certainly memorable.”

  “As are the Rocky Mountains.”

  An athletic woman with a tour group in her wake steams past us. She holds a green umbrella high in the air, a rallying point for her small flotilla.

  “You want to follow that group around?” I ask. “Maybe it’s in English.”

  “No,” says Mimi. “I think I’d like to go back to the hotel.”

  “You okay?”

  “A little tired,” she says. “I wouldn’t mind a nap.”

  I glance at my watch. It’s only three. Way too soon for Mimi to be giving up on the day.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “You wear me out, Bird,” says Mimi. “I love you, but sometimes you wear me out.”

  We have to push against the crowds in order to get to the exit. I’m hoping that we’ll take the tram down the hill, but Mimi wants to walk. All the way back to the hotel, Mimi is silent, and I’m left with the certain knowledge that I’ve done something wrong.

  Again.

  When we get to our hotel, nothing has changed. The air conditioner is still going, our room is still hot, and the spiders are still on the ceiling. Mimi lies on the bed and pulls the blanket over her body. I sit in the chair by the window and wait.

  Outside, in the shade of the Charles Bridge, a solitary musician begins playing “Yesterday” on an unhappy sax.

  V

  I don’t remember falling asleep, but when I wake up, my neck is stiff. My mouth is dry, my head hurts, my eye feels even more swollen than before.

  And Mimi is gone.

  At first, I think she’s in the bathroom. I shift into a more comfortable position and wait. Then I think maybe she went downstairs to see if anything could be done about the spiders.

  So I stay in the chair and wait some more.

  No Mimi.

  I don’t wait too long. I get up and walk down to the front desk.

  No Mimi.

  I step outside. The musician is still standing in the shade of the bridge. Now he’s playing “If Ever I Would Leave You.”

  Chip slaps a hand on my shoulder. Don’t these assholes know anything but old show tunes?

  I wander through the food and craft stalls in Kampa Park, and then I walk back to the hotel and check the room. Just in case.

  Still no Mimi.

  I’m not worried. She has probably gone to find a market. We don’t have a refrigerator in our room, but there are lots of things that could sit out, provisions for a late-night snack. Bananas and grapes, crackers and cheese.

  Or perhaps she wanted to see a particular church. A heritage site recommended in the guidebook. “I thought I’d let you sleep,” she’ll tell me. “You don’t like churches anyway.”

  And there’s the bridge itself. She could be on the bridge. A stolen moment standing against the stone wall, watching the boats as they pass beneath her.

  I decide to start there. I take Didi and Desi by the hand, and we walk the length of the bridge. The tourists are still in numbers, and there’s the chance that we might have missed her on the first pass, so we do it again.

  As we search for Mimi, I’m reminded of those comic situations in movies where the heroine goes missing, and the hero hurries off to find her. In the meantime, the heroine returns, finds the hero missing, and goes out to find him. Back and forth they go, each time missing each other by the smallest of margins.

  With musical cues, so you know when to laugh.

  If we were home, there would be all sorts of possibilities. She could have gone to the library. She could have had a doctor’s appointment that she had forgotten to mention. She could have met friends for coffee.

  But when you travel, when you’re on the road, these possibilities vanish. No library, no doctor, no friends. No routines to fill your day. There’s just the two of you, alone in a strange city.

  I stand at the window. Every so often, I see someone who could be Mimi, but isn’t. Where would she go without me? Why would she leave without telling me? It’s been a couple of hours now. How long do I wait before I do something? And then the question will be, do what? Go to the police? Check the hospitals? Not so easy to do in a country where you don’t speak the language. It’s true that English is understood, to some degree, throughout the world, but finding a missing person is more complicated than ordering a coffee, asking directions, or buying a souvenir.

  Eugene and the Other Demons sit quietly on the bed. They know when to keep their mouths shut.

  MIMI AND I MET in San Francisco. She had come to town for an art exhibition. I had just started working for the Examiner and had been sent to cover the show, to write a piece for the Sunday edition.

  I had been able to make a hit-and-run meal out of a table awash with vegetable spears, squares of cheese, and crackers, and was standing in front of a canvas that was painted black when Mimi found me.

  “You look lost.”

  “Baffled.”

  “You an artist?” she had asked.

  “Journalist.”

  “So, you’re thinking, why would anyone paint a canvas black?”

  On the far wall were three paintings that had succeeded in capturing the surface of water. “I like those a lot better.”

  “Those are mine.”

  At first, I thought she was kidding. “Mimi Bull Shield,” she said.

  “Bull Shield?”

  “Blackfoot. You know anything about art?”

  “Nope.”

  “But they sent you to do the story.”

  “Rookie assignment.”

  “What do you normally write about?”

  “There is no ‘normal’ yet,” I told her. “I take what the editor gives me.”

  “What would you like to write about?”

  No one at the paper had ever bothered to ask me that. “Not sure,” I said.

  “Okay,” she said. “Then you can begin with me.”

  MIMI ARRIVES BACK at the hotel a little after five.

  “I lost track of time,” she shouts and dashes into the bathroom. “God, but I have to pee.”

  I sit in the chair and practise looking unconcerned and nonchalant.

  “Thirty-eight seconds,” she calls out. “Almost a new record.”

  I cross one leg over the other, and I lean a little to the right so my head touches the edge of the wingback.

  “Why didn’t you join me?”

  I hadn’t been expecting a question, and if I had been expecting a question, this wouldn’t have been it.

  Mimi frowns. “You’re upset.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are upset.” Mimi continues to frown. “Didn’t you see my note?”

  Another question I wasn’t expecting.

  “You were sleeping in the chair, and I didn’t want to disturb you, so I left a note.”

  “A note?”

  “On your lap.” Mimi shakes her head. “You thought I had left you?”

  “Never crossed my mind.”

  “Really? In P
rague?”

  I slide my hand between the arm of the chair and the cushion. I try to do this so Mimi doesn’t see me do it. But she does.

  “Is it there?”

  The note is on a small slip of paper, the perfect size to get lost.

  “And what does it say?”

  I hold the note out as though I’m examining a clue in a television mystery. “Went to Vltava beach to see swans. Join me.”

  Mimi gestures at the end table next to the chair. “I even left the guidebook so you wouldn’t get lost.”

  I hold the note a little higher.

  “And you jumped to conclusions, didn’t you.”

  Eugene and the Other Demons look at each other and shrug.

  “I was worried about you,” I say.

  Chip winks and gives me a thumbs-up.

  “And I’m just fine.” Mimi takes the note, crumples it up, and drops it in the wastebasket. “So, where do you want to eat?”

  MIMI LED ME AROUND the gallery, introduced me to the other artists. I took photographs, got several quotations about the importance of art in a materialistic world, and listened to a short talk on the giclée as a way to increase sales and exposure.

  After the show, Mimi and I went out for coffee.

  “Cherokee.” She had looked me up and down. “Mother? Father?”

  “Father.”

  “Georgia? North Carolina?”

  “Oklahoma.”

  “You ever been to Oklahoma?”

  “Once.”

  “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

  “More like a footnote.”

  “And Greece?”

  “My mother,” I told her. “Her father came from there. He always planned to return, but he never did.”

  “What about you?”

  “Go to Greece?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe. One of these days.”

  Mimi was in town for the week. We had lunch together. Then we had dinner. Then we had lunch and dinner. Somewhere in the middle, we began talking, and once we started, we didn’t stop.

  WE LEAVE THE HOTEL and head out across the Charles Bridge. Mimi takes my arm and lets her body sway back and forth as we walk. “Would you like to flaner?”