by Cleo Odzer
His stern face almost smiled as he handed me a packet of pills. Within an hour, I felt fine.
Arriving in Delhi, we headed for the seedy section of Old Delhi, looking for a cheap hotel. None of us had much money left. Julian and I found a minuscule, windowless room on a balcony surrounding a courtyard. Beds lined the balcony itself, and a napping Indian raised the handkerchief covering his face to watch us pass. That night, when we returned from dinner, we had a crisis. Julian was missing a five-pound note.
"Did you take it?" he asked, looking at me suspiciously.
"No! I did not take it." How could he ask such a question? He thought I stole his money? I crossed my arms and moved to a corner of the room.
"Are you sure?"
"Search me." I tossed my purse on the bed.
"It's okay if you took it. Just tell me."
He poked through my things. How could he! I grabbed my bag and dumped it inside out. A hairbrush slid across the floor. I kicked away a chair to retrieve it.
"I did not take your money," I stated again and hurled the brush at him. It clanged against the metal bedpost.
"I know I had it yesterday, and it's gone. Where could it go?"
He finished looking through everything, but his face was not convinced.
"Well, do you believe me?" I asked.
"Then what happened to it?"
He didn't believe me! I slammed my possessions back in my purse and rolled up the sleeping bag.
"Where are you going?" he asked.
I didn't answer as I wrenched my belongings past him furiously. "What are they doing? Don't go."
The door crashed against the wall as I marched out. Julian followed me to the balcony and down the stair.
"Listen, it's okay," he said. "You can tell me if you took it. I won't be angry."
I kept walking. Through the lobby'. Past a fish tank. Out to the street.
"Look, forget it. Let's forget the whole thing. You don't have to go."
I threw myself into a three-wheeled rickshaw and sat in the middle of the seat so there'd be no room for Julian. "GO!" I yelled to the driver. He kick-started the motorcycle engine.
Julian leaned into the open side of the little vehicle. Hanging fringes draped over his forehead. "Don't go," he said. "Come back. Talk."
"CELLO! CELLO! JELDI!" (GO! GO! HURRY!) I screamed at the driver, gesturing wildly. We drove off, leaving Julian behind. The driver looked back expectantly for directions.
The passenger part of the rickshaw consisted of a narrow main seat. Every pothole heaved me inches into the air. I had to hold my arms over my chest since I didn't wear a bra. How could Julian accuse me of such a thing? Five pounds! What do I do now? "You know cheap hotel?" I asked the driver. "Cheap, cheap?"
"Hotel?"
"Cheap hotel. No money."
"Okay. I take."
A few minutes later we jolted into a flowered compound. At a desk on the porch sat a lady with a kind face. She smiled at me. "You alone, honey?"
That did it. Her friendly face unleashed my tears. "I had a . . . (sob) . . . fight with my boyfriend. Do you have a cheap room?"
"There, there. Don't cry. We'll take care of you." She stood and came around the desk. "Is that your rickshaw?" She ordered a young Indian sitting on the floor to collect my bag. "Hush, don't cry."
I paid the driver and followed the lady to a room with six beds. Young Western travellers jumped up at my entrance.
"What's the matter? Are you alright?" somebody asked.
"She’ll be fine," said the motherly proprietor, who then left us.
Two women sat on my bed; one put her arm around my shoulder. A guy came over, and everyone introduced themselves. People waved at me from across the room.
"My boyfriend accused me of stealing his money," I managed to tell them between crying, sobbing, gulping for air, and sniffling.
"The creep. Forget him. You don't need him."
"How could he . . . (sob). . . think I stole . . . (gulp). . . his money?"
"Forget him. You're with us now. We were just going out—want to come?"
I nodded.
"Hey, want some opium?"
"Oh, yes!"
One of the women went to a nearby bed and unearthed brown putty in crinkly paper. She broke off a greasy ball and handed it to me.
Someone else brought me water, and I swallowed it.
"I hope I don't . . . (sniff) . . . get nauseous." I started to hiccough.
"Last time I took opium . . . (hic) . . . I wanted to die." To be on the safe side, I took one of the pills I still had from the Taj pharmacist in Bombay.
I soon felt peachy. We left to explore Delhi, and by the time we returned I was giggling along with them.
In the morning, Julian appeared.
"How did you find me?" I asked.
"I've been to every guest house in Delhi."
"Go away."
"Listen, I'm sorry. Please come back. I found the money."
"You found it? Where?"
"In my wallet, behind a flap. I thought I'd looked there. Please forgive me. Please?"
I forgave him. I said goodbye to everybody, thanked the kind lady, paid the bill, and Julian and I went back to Old Delhi.
*
The morning of the day Tom and Julian were to begin their trip back to Europe, Julian accompanied me to the train station. Close to my last rupee, I bought the cheapest ticket, and we went in search of the Bombay train. The platform was jammed with people, suitcases, babies, coolies, and vendors selling vegetable patties and Coca-Cola.
"Well, I guess this is it," I said, docking a fast-moving coolie whose forehead veins bulged from the weight of a suitcase.
"Yeah, I guess so."
I stepped around a basket of bananas and closed the space between us. My hand grasped the front of Julian's T-shirt. "I'm going to miss you."
His eyes were round and sad and moist. "Will I ever see you again?"
Quickly he threw his arms around me and dog his chin into my neck. "You never know. Write me?"
"Oh, yes. Will you write me back?"
"Yes."
There was a shout, and we broke apart in time to avoid being run over by a speeding pushcart loaded with baggage. I tripped over a street dog and stepped on someone's mat. The woman sitting on it muttered at me and pressed her sleeping child closer to her breast.
"I'd better get on the train."
"I guess so."
"Have a nice trip back to Amsterdam."
"You be careful."
"Goodbye."
I took my sleeping bag from him and boarded the train. "Bye." He kissed into the air.
After one last look I entered the car. Oh, my god. A nightmare. The wooden benches were packed tight with bodies. More people squatted on the floor, with not a speck of space left anywhere.
"This is not possible. Where am I supposed to sit?" I grumbled aloud, trudging through the Indians on the floor. My bulky bag banged into shoulders, but I didn't care. "Oh, excuse me. Shit! EXCUSE me."
"I here. Missy. You can sit here." A fat man squeezed closer to his neighbor, making six inches of room for me. I eased backwards onto the hard wood. Squashed. This would never do. I would never survive the twenty-five hours to Bombay like this.
"This is unbearable," I complained. "This is for animals. I can't take this."
"You ask conductor. Maybe he find you room in the Lathes’ Compartment. You ask."
I tripped back over people, swatting them again with my sleeping bag, and found the conductor. For a little baksheesh (free money) and the extra fare, he ushered me to the ladies' compartment.
Consisting of two benches facing each other, it was chock-full of women and children. Two women and one toddler sat on the floor. A teenager moved her leg and offered me a triangle of space on the seat. Another one wiped snot from her baby's nose with the end of her sari and tittered at me. Well, it was better, but still not good. With hand gestures, they explained that the seats became beds and t
hat two more beds-unfold-ed from the wall at night. Near the ceiling hung luggage racks. I had an idea.
Stepping on a seat, my other foot on the window ledge, I moved baggage from one rack to the other and then climbed into the empty one. It was suffocating hot up there, and I didn't have room to sit up; but I could he in peace without touching another human being, and after what I'd just experienced, it was heaven.
Through the open window, I bought a Fanta orange drink and swallowed a bit of the opium I'd bought when Tom, Julian, and I made a visit to a Delhi den. Still afraid of throwing up, I took another nausea pill. Stoned and sing in the luggage rack, eighteen inches from the ceiling, I slept most of the trip.
In Bombay I went to the Rex Hotel, a Freak place I'd heard about. I was shown to an airless back room after promising I'd pay the money in advance within a few hours. Then I checked the card of the man who had my portfolio. Indian Airlines, it said, near Churchgate Station. With my last five-rupee bill, I taxied to his office.
I'd completely forgotten what he looked like, but he remembered me. Dressed in suit and tie, sweating in the airless room, he beamed at me and shook my hand. "How was your holiday in Goa?" he asked.
"Great. I'm going right back, I just came to get money. Can I have my portfolio?"
When he fetched it from an inner office, I opened it and looked for my remaining two hundred dollars in traveller’s checks hidden behind a picture. I couldn't find them!
"I can't find my traveller’s checks!"
"Traveller’s checks? You did not tell me there were traveller’s checks inside." He frowned.
"Oh. No. They're gone! I have absolutely no money. What am I going to do?"
The corners of his mouth wrinkled downward. "I know nothing about traveller’s checks. You said only pictures. I would not have taken your case with money inside. Are you sure they were indeed there?"
I searched again from cover to cover, looking behind every photo. "Oh, no. I'm dead. I have only three rupees left. What am I going to do?"
"I am sorry. I know nothing of traveller’s checks. The briefcase has been in my locker all the time." He stood up, now looking as if he couldn't wait to get rid of me. There was no mention of the tour of Bombay he'd hoped to take me on. My money was gone. My life was ruined.
"Well . . . anyway thanks for keeping my pictures, I guess."
Slowly, I stood and walked out to the street. What to do now? I had no money. The hotel would evict me if I didn't pay in advance for the room. I knew nobody in Bombay. I couldn't go to American Express to report my loss because I didn't have the receipt numbers—I'd said them to Momsy for safekeeping. I'd been told to keep the receipt numbers separate from the traveller’s checks. So how was I to report lost checks? I'd never recorded the checks I'd cashed, so the receipts would probably be useless anyway.
I had no idea which way I was walking. I plodded through the streets, past thin women in saris with braids hanging down their backs, past men in light-coloured pyjamas, past beggars who followed me, calling, "Paisa, paisa." I came to a waterfront. What to do? No brainstorm descended on me.
Eventually, I asked for directions to the hotel and plodded back.
"Cleo, man. Shambo."
The voice startled me as I climbed, dejectedly, up the front steps of the Rex. And there he was, standing in the doorway—I couldn't believe it—a friend! It was Kadir, the Algerian I'd met at Dayid and Ashley's party.
"KADIR!" I yelled. He kissed my cheek. "Oh, Kadir. I've just lost my traveller’s checks. I have three rupees to my name. The hotel is going to throw me out. I don't know a soul in Bombay. I'm so glad to see a friendly face. I don't know what to do."
"Don't worry about it, man. Come to my room. Know who’s here? Ashley and Norwegian Monica."
I followed him to an elevator that clunked and clanked us upstairs.
"But, Kadir, I have no money. The hotel is not going to let me stay."
"I told you, man, don't worry. You're with friends now. I might even have a job for you. Tell you later."
His room was bigger and sunnier than mine. A lovely terrace overlooked the street. Outside, their blonde hair glimmering in the sunlight, sat Norwegian Monica and Ashley. Friends!
"Hey, man, look who I found."
"Hoo, boy! Cleo!"
They greeted me with big smiles. Maybe my life wasn't over after all.
As usual, Ashley wore a slinky silk gown, this one yellow and covered to its flouncy hem in pearls. Around one ankle hung a pearl-skidded gold chain. She rearranged her pearly fringe shawl and handed me a mirror covered with coke. Monica brought me a chair. I snorted a few lines and told them my sad tale.
"Have another line," said Ashley, her pearl bracelet tinkling as she offered the mirror again. "It'll make you feel better. Are you hungry? Kadir, let's order lunch. Where's the menu?"
We ordered strawberry juice and a tray of snacks. Coked-out as we were, nobody ate much, but we nibbled, and I felt safe, saved from catastrophe. Tinkling, Ashley handed me four hundred rupees.
"Are you sure?" I asked. "I don't know when I'll be able to pay you back."
She gave me another two hundred.
"She can work for me, man," said Kadir. "I can use another girl."
"Really? Doing what?" I asked, overwhelmed with gratitude and relief.
Kadir took me inside the room for privacy from the other terraces. We settled on the bed, and, chopping cocaine, he explained. "You will go to Canada. I have suitcases." He snorted the fly-away coke off his fingers. "Expertly made, man, wait till you see them. They're excellent, and this is a new scam, so nobody's used this type yet. Two matching cases that hold eight kilos of hash built into the leather."
Eight kilos of hash?
He wanted me to smuggle hash?
Aha! That's how the Goa Freaks made their money! So here was the chance to become a real Goa Freak. But—smuggling? Could I do that? Part of me was terribly excited, and part a little scared. I had to think about this.
"You think it over, man, there's time," he said. "I'm sending someone else first. She'll be here tonight, you can meet her."
I snorted another line. I hadn't been to America in three years. I'd be able to see my old friends. "How much would I make?" I asked.
"Eight thousand dollars. Canadian."
Eight thousand dollars! I'd existed on practically nothing since I'd left the States—sleeping in my car in Switzerland, panhandling on the Hedseplein in Amsterdam, living on people's floors in Denmark. Yes, I'd modelled in southern Europe, but the money I made went into the car or supported me to the next country or the next adventure. I couldn't remember the last time I'd bought a new dress. Wow—with eight thousand dollars I could have new clothes, find a house in Anjuna and fix it up, buy my own coke . . .
"You'll stay at the best hotel in Montreal, man, the Hilton," Kadir continued. "Dayid is there now. You know Dayid, my partner. He will take the suitcases and pay you."
Dayid! Magnificent Dayid. Yes, I remembered him. My thoughts went back to a beach party. I wasn't sure how it had come about—if he'd been there that night without Ashley or what—but somehow, Dayid and I strolled down the beach, and in the moonlight, with the sound of waves mingling with the distant rock beat, we fucked on the sand. Quick, sandy, and satisfying. Mmmmm, Dayid.
"I have to go now and do things," Kadir said, breaking my reverie. "You can stay here with Monica and Ashley. Or else come back tonight and meet the other girl. Alright, man?"
Later, alone in my tiny room, staring at the cracked plaster on the wall, I thought of what I could do with eight thousand Canadian dollars. My own permanent house in Anjuna Beach. Like Dayid and Ashley's. No more sleeping on people's floors, or eating the cheapest item on the menu, or scrounging drugs off friends. The scene in Goa differed from the hippie one in Europe. The Goa Freaks were money oriented. All that coke and jewellery and parties. I wanted to settle there, didn't I? Goa was to be my home, right? Well, this was the way to become a rich Goa Freak.
The gritty bedspread beneath me smelled old and cruddy. I'd he able to stay in a better hotel room, like Kadir's. Hallelujah!
*
That night I told Kadir I was eager for the trip. He introduced me to the other woman. Also a newcomer to India, this would be her first trip too. She'd leave at the end of the week, and I'd go two weeks later, as soon as a set of new cases were made. We sniffed coke and discussed details.
"Let me see your passport," said Kadir. He flipped through it briefly and shook his head. "This is no good, man. You'll have to get a new one."
"What do you mean no good?" I asked. "What's wrong with it?"
"Too many stamps. Look at this, it's filled up. Iran. Afghanistan. No, man, it won't do. They'll get suspicious. The Immigration people see you've been travelling to these countries, and they'll wonder what you do for money. They'll ask questions, man."
"So what do I do?"
"You must go to the consulate and apply for a fresh one."
"Won't immigration question me anyway?"
"No, man. Canada is easy," Kadir assured me. "I promise you'll have no problem. You won't even have to go through Customs. When you get to the Immigration desk, they'll give you a coloured card. There are two kinds. One says you pass through—just pick up your bags and walk out. If you get the other card, you must stop at the Customs counter."
"I thought everyone had to go through Customs."
"No, man, only Canadians. Since you're a U.S. citizen, you won't have to unless the immigration man gets suspicious, in which case he'll give you the Customs card. But you'll be spiffy. You must buy a classy dress, a handbag—I'll give you money—fix your hair. You'll look straight, so he'll let you pass. Anyway, man, even if they did check you, they'd find nothing. Tomorrow take you to see the cases. They are excellent. No one will suspect a thing."
"What about dogs? Don't they train dogs to smell hash and marijuana?"
He shook his arm dismissively. "That's nothing. They have one or two dogs that can only work two or three hours a week. The animals go back and forth from Montreal to the Toronto airport. Forget the dogs, man. They only use them for cargo, anyway, not luggage."