Indians on Vacation

by Thomas King

  “We went to Stromovka.”

  “The park? But you have parks in Canada?”

  I tell Oz that we do.

  “And they are different than Stromovka?”

  “No.”

  “That is the sadness of travel. Everything is much the same.”

  “We were almost robbed.”

  Oz’s face fills up with concern. “A robbery?”

  “Almost.”

  I tell Oz how I got sick in the park. How two young men pretended to be police. How Mimi had saved the day.

  “Wonderful,” says Oz when I’ve finished. “A thrilling story. You will tell this story when you go back to Canada?”

  “Probably.”

  “Of course, probably. And these young men had a badge?”

  “The one guy had drawn it on a piece of cardboard. It was pretty good.”

  Oz leans in. “In many places, criminals buy police uniforms on the Internet for this exact purpose. In other places, the police themselves rob you.”

  “They were just kids.”

  “In the United States,” says Oz, “the police are the new army of the powerful. This has always been true in Russia and China, but now is also true in Germany and France. Spain as well. South Africa. Did you go to the zoo? It is very near Stromovka. There you will find honest animals.”

  “I’m not crazy about zoos.”

  Oz smiles sadly. “And yet we live in one.”

  I look at the buffet. I should be hungry, but I’m not. “Where will you go?” I ask. “When you leave Prague?”

  “Ah,” says Oz, “that is the question. There are few safe places left in the world. Copenhagen. Stockholm. Perhaps Amsterdam.”

  I remember Mimi’s concerns about New York.

  “At one time, New Zealand was a possibility,” says Oz, “but now it is not.”

  “Don’t go to the US.”

  “Of course not.” Oz frowns. “Yet you were born in California. And now you are Canadian. How did this happen? Do you find that Canada is safe?”

  “You should talk to Mimi,” I tell Oz. “She likes to tell that story.”

  Oz taps the envelope. “This is for you,” he says. “And for your Mimi.”

  The envelope is thick and heavy, the kind of envelope that you see in movies when blackmail or bribery is involved.

  “Here is the story of Uncle Leroy. I have typed it, so you do not have to argue with my handwriting.”

  “The story you made up? The one about Uncle Leroy and his Czech family in the town with the hot springs?”

  “Karlovy Vary,” says Oz. “Yes. I’ve added a few extra possibilities that you can keep or take out.”

  I leave the envelope in the middle of the table.

  “Your uncle Leroy. Dead, but now brought back to life through postcards and travel. Such a resurrection.”

  I’m not sure I want to encourage Oz in his inventions and philosophizing, so I turn my mind to remembering the names of the seven dwarfs.

  “Story and memory. Memory and story.” Oz rubs one eye. “Together they are history.”

  I get six of the names right away but can’t think of the last one.

  “There is the story of a young man during the time of the Russians coming to Prague.”

  Oz pauses for a moment, as though he’s trying to recall the details.

  “This young man was angry that his country had been invaded, so he picked up a piece of charcoal and found a wall. Here was his opportunity to write something that might stop the slaughter, something that might push back the tanks and change what was to happen.”

  Doc, Sneezy, Bashful, Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy . . .

  “But because his task seemed so monumental, so impossible, he wrote nothing.”

  Grumpy, Sneezy, Dopey, Doc, Sleepy, Bashful . . .

  “But your uncle Leroy,” says Oz. “Look what he is able to do with a bucket of shit and a brush.”

  Happy. I always forget Happy.

  “When you look for him,” says Oz, “do you ever find yourself?”

  I can see where Oz could be annoying.

  “What about the game?”

  “Game?”

  “The Bees and the Bears.”

  “Ah,” says Oz, and he taps the side of his head. “No, the game is dead. The trials, they were disappointing. Such a shame.”

  I wasn’t sure that it was much of a game in the first place, but I don’t tell Oz this.

  “A good idea,” says Oz. “But there is a fatal flaw.”

  “Too complicated?”

  “No. It is a simple game.” Oz shrugs and makes a sad gesture with his mouth. “But it seems no one wants to be a Bee. Everyone wants to be the Bear.”

  I glance at the clock. I can see that Mimi is going to be late again.

  “I will miss you, my friend.” Oz reaches over and pats my hand. “Such wonderful conversations. Cowboys and Indians. Robbers in the park. Lost relatives and injured enthusiasms. Did you know that many tourists who come to Prague attempt suicide?”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, a great many jump off the Charles Bridge.”

  “Doesn’t look high enough.”

  “Perhaps that is the point. Sometimes a failure is a success.” Oz extends his arms and holds his wrists out. “Which one?”

  Somehow the conversation has taken a left turn when I wasn’t looking.

  “Watch,” says Oz. “I wish to give you one of these watches.”

  “I don’t want your watch.”

  “You pick. A gift.”

  “I still can’t take it.”

  “Ah,” says Oz, “you are worried that you will pick the expensive one.”

  “I don’t need a watch.”

  “No one needs a watch.” Oz slips the watch with the emerald-green face off his wrist. “What we need is time.”

  Oz sets the watch on top of the envelope. “So, we will not see each other tomorrow.”

  “What will you do in Amsterdam?”

  “What does anyone do in Amsterdam?” Oz pushes the chair back and stands up. “But what about you?”

  “Me?”

  “Will you finish that article? The one with the three parts?” Oz straightens his jacket. “Or have you run out of hope and happy endings?”

  LOIS PAUL HAD BEEN a single mother in Saskatchewan, working a minimum-wage job, when her six children were taken from her and put up for adoption.

  I interviewed Elsie Tolmar, one of Paul’s children, for a three-part story on social services.

  The Adopt Indians and Métis Program.

  Tolmar had been adopted by a Norwegian couple who didn’t tell her she had been adopted until she forced the question.

  “I was probably in my late twenties when I figured it out,” Tolmar told me. “I mean, look at me. You going to mistake me for a Norwegian?”

  I WANDER TO THE buffet and put food on my plate. I’m still not hungry, but I know that I need to eat. I figure that Mimi will come rushing into the breakfast room at the last minute.

  But she doesn’t.

  I sit at the table until the buffet has been cleared away and the staff begins looking at me sideways. This is not the first meal that Mimi has missed, and as I climb the stairs, I find that I’m somewhat irritated.

  After all, we paid for these meals.

  Mimi is sitting in the chair in her bra and underpants, her feet propped up on the window ledge. She has her sketch pad out and is working on another drawing.

  “I wasn’t hungry,” she says without looking up, “so I thought I’d do some work.”

  “You missed breakfast, again.”

  “We’ll have an early lunch.”

  “And you missed Oz.”

  “Your imaginary breakfast buddy.”

  “He’s not imaginary. He’s going to Amsterdam.”

  “We went to Amsterdam,” says Mimi. “You remember?”

  The sketch is similar to the other one Mimi had drawn. A solitary figure walking on the Charles Bridge. She�
��s laid in a dark background that is cut with the lights from the ornate standards set on the stone walls. It appears that the figure is carrying something.

  “Uncle Leroy?”

  “Maybe,” says Mimi. “I haven’t decided.”

  “It’s moody.”

  “It could be you.”

  “Is that supposed to be a bundle?”

  Mimi darkens a shadow next to one of the statues. “I could put Eugene and the Other Demons in right about here.”

  “Or a bucket and a brush.”

  “Then it wouldn’t be you.”

  I lie on the bed, my hands on my chest. I could probably stay here all day. My eyes feel normal. My legs aren’t threatening to cramp. My stomach is still a little tender from the day before but seems mostly settled.

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” says Mimi. “As soon as I finish this, I’ll want to find food.”

  I TOOK A PHOTOGRAPH of Tolmar, and then I took a photograph of Tolmar and her three children.

  “Mom and Dad are dead now, so it doesn’t matter.”

  Tolmar had all the information on the adoption and a copy of her mother’s file.

  “You know why they took us away from her?”

  I said that I would have to guess it had something to do with alcohol or drugs. Tolmar showed me a copy of the social-services form, pointed to the bottom of the page.

  In a section marked “Reason for Apprehension,” someone had scrawled a short note in a clumsy cursive that simply said Single Indian mother, unable to care for children.

  MIMI AND I COME out of the hotel and get as far as the steps up to the Charles Bridge.

  “I think we should split up.”

  “Split up?”

  “For the day.” Mimi adjusts her backpack. “I want to wander around and do some sketching.”

  “Okay.”

  “But I’d like to wander on my own.”

  I don’t have to look. I know Eugene and Kitty are standing right behind me.

  “You haven’t had breakfast.”

  “I’ll find a place. Is that a problem?”

  “No. It’s fine.”

  “You’ll be okay?”

  “Sure.”

  “You could find a café and work on the book.”

  “Sure.”

  “I better get going, or I’ll lose the light.”

  There’s a shout from the bridge. A young man has climbed one of the statues and is leaning out over the water. He holds on to the saint’s crown with one hand and flails his free arm around over his head, as though he’s just come out of a chute on a bull.

  Mimi steps inside my arms and gives me a hug. I watch the young man on the bridge. He’s taken off his shirt and is waving it in circles. In the distance, two policemen are working their way through the tourists.

  “So, you’re going to be gone the entire day.”

  “Don’t read anything into it.”

  “Maybe I’ll go to the Sex Machines Museum.”

  Mimi gives me a quick kiss. “That’s the spirit.”

  I watch Mimi head off across the bridge and disappear into the crush of tourists. Splitting up isn’t anything unusual. Mimi and I have done this many times before. Both of us going off on our own.

  But it doesn’t feel the same in Prague, and now I’m faced with the prospect of spending the day with Eugene and the Other Demons.

  Which I have no intention of doing.

  So I start walking. I figure that I’ll walk the day away, stop for coffee every so often, see some of the lesser-known sights on the fly, grab a quick meal, and keep walking.

  If nothing else, the exercise will do me good.

  So, says Eugene as he trots by my side, what’s the plan?

  Stay in the hotel room, says Kitty. Where it’s safe.

  We should stand in the sunshine, says Didi.

  Sunshine makes us happy, says Desi.

  Sports bar, says Chip. I vote for a sports bar.

  Maybe you want to hang off a statue, says Eugene, and howl at the sky.

  Someone who didn’t know any better might think that Eugene and I were close, that he was a good friend.

  But if you’re going to try to kill yourself, says Eugene as we cross the Charles Bridge on our way to Old Town, we get to watch.

  The Sex Machines Museum is very near the astronomical clock. I stop in the square for a moment to see if they’ve got the clock working yet. There’s a large crowd of tourists with their cellphones and iPads at the ready, and a feeling of high enthusiasm in the air.

  I check the time. The watch Oz gave me says that it is a couple of minutes to the hour, so I decide to wait to see what might happen. When I look at the watch, I can’t help but wonder if this is the expensive watch or the cheap one. It doesn’t matter, but I am curious.

  You think he’s going to give you an expensive watch? says Eugene.

  It’s probably stolen, says Kitty. And you know what happens then.

  The hour comes and goes. The clock doesn’t move, and neither does the crowd. It’s as though the people are fixed in place. The clock is a major tourist attraction, one of the reasons to come to Prague, so it stands to reason that it has to work.

  Even if it doesn’t.

  The enthusiasm turns to annoyance and disappointment.

  “What a rip-off.”

  “I could have watched the video at home.”

  “So, this is the famous clock?”

  A woman carrying a purse the size of a steamer trunk swings around and cuts a game trail through the crowd.

  “If it was in Trenton,” she says as she tramps past me, dragging two teenagers along behind her, single file, “the thing would sure as hell work.”

  The Sex Machines Museum is just down a narrow street. I stand at the entrance and look at the lipstick-red banners. I don’t mean to, but I begin to keep track of the people who go in.

  All couples.

  I probably stand at the entrance for a good twenty minutes, and the only people who go into the Sex Machines Museum are couples.

  Go ahead, says Eugene. Single guy in a sex museum? What’s the worst they can think?

  What happens if they raid the place? says Kitty.

  That you’re pathetic? Eugene tips his hat back. No secret there.

  I vote we go in, says Chip.

  I’ll stay outside with the twins, says Kitty.

  I take a step towards the entrance, money in hand, when an older couple comes out. The woman is checking her camera. The man is leaning over her shoulder, watching the screen.

  “Are you sure,” he says, “you deleted the one of me and the giant wood dildo?”

  I make a graceful turn and walk away.

  Chip is slow to leave the doorway to the museum. How come we never do what I want to do?

  TOLMAR HAD A PHOTOCOPY of an old social-services poster. A dark-haired child posed against a white backdrop.

  “That’s me,” she said. “I was two. When they put us up for adoption, they made up posters with our pictures. You know, the kind of thing people do for lost animals.”

  How did you justify that kind of racism? Tolmar had wanted to know. How did you explain that kind of hate?

  I was tempted to tell Tolmar that at the time, social services made up the same kind of posters for White kids as well.

  “I’m a single mother,” Tolmar told me. “I’m Native. My husband died of cancer last year. So now are they going to take my kids?”

  THE WALK TURNS into an aimless stroll with stops in front of store windows filled with glassware and clothing, puppets and pastries. I wander up and down streets and narrow lanes, through small squares with statuary and water features, into the shadow of old churches and the golden arches of McDonald’s.

  Wenceslas Square, says Kitty as we break out onto a broad boulevard with a wide centre median. At the far end is where Jan Palach burned himself alive.

  Protest against the Soviet invasion, says Eugene. Now there’s someone who lived his principl
es.

  For all the good it did him, says Chip.

  Why are there so many people? ask the twins. Big crowds make us nervous.

  The twins are right. There are more people in Wenceslas Square than I would have expected. The closer I get to the top of the boulevard, the denser the crowd becomes.

  Maybe it’s a celebration, says Didi. We like celebrations.

  Like a circus, says Desi. We like circuses.

  Celebrations and circuses make us happy, says Didi.

  A group of men are putting up a wooden structure of some sort. I don’t recognize it right away.

  And then I do.

  Is that a gallows? says Kitty. Are they going to execute someone?

  Hey, Birdman. Eugene makes a hanging gesture with his hand. Maybe they heard you were in town.

  I back up against the side of a Burger King and let a squad of grim-faced men and women push their way through. They wear helmets and carry placards. One of the men has a bullhorn. Several have brought Czech Republic flags that they wave over their heads.

  Kitty squeezes up against me. Everyone stay together and watch for white panel trucks.

  I’ve never seen this many people in one spot. In Barcelona, we stumbled upon a Catalan independence march that filled one of the wide avenues of that city, but this crowd looks to be even larger.

  Up ahead, a shout goes up and the crowd erupts. Someone steps on my foot. I try to push away, when something flashes across my face and the world explodes. I don’t remember what happens next, until I find myself on the ground.

  “Blackbird Mavrias,” says a familiar voice. “Such a surprise.”

  I’m dizzy, and my nose hurts like hell.

  I feel hands assist me to my feet, and I imagine that it’s Eugene and the Other Demons trying to help for a change.

  But it’s not.

  It takes a moment for me to focus. “Oz?”

  “Your nose is bleeding,” says Oz. “But it is not serious.”

  “What happened?”

  “Some pushing,” says Oz. “Some shoving. A large man and his elbow. Such a crowd is not gentle.”

  I can feel something warm run down the side of my face.

  “You will have to soak the shirt in cold water.” Oz hands me a handkerchief. “Come,” he says, “we will sit down so you can recover.”