Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights

by Mary Ellen Courtney

  Our lunches were delivered in tiffin boxes, but we ate dinner around a huge bonfire. Besides a few lanterns and a bare bulb in the communal washroom, it was the only light in the middle of the desert. A group of hill people came down and played music around the fire and smoked herbs, then melted back into the hills. It was melancholy and reminded me of Hawaii. I even danced with one of the women; it wasn’t that different from the hula. Women all over the world pop their hips while men watch. She came back one night and painted the backs of my hands with swirling and intricate patterns in henna. Next time I would do a better job on Mom’s hands, if she needed a reminder.

  A group of local camel drivers arrived early with a mad assortment of camels in different camel outfits. I added some glitter and gold to their regalia, but basically they were good to go. Each had a heavy net blanket that served as ladder and stirrup. The saddles were wood and let me tell you, not easy on a girl. Going downhill on a wood saddle was the first time I’d thought of Steve in months, and not fondly. My camel was named Juli. She was polite, no spitting. Margaret and Ed went with the Director by car out to the lake where we were shooting. I rode Juli. We stopped for lunch in the middle of nowhere while the camels rested in the shade; I could imagine the place as unchanged.

  Our Director was no nonsense. She seemed to sense the flagging energy in the crew, though she seemed as fresh as day one. She could bark orders with the best of them, but mostly she was quiet and everyone still worked hard to please her.

  I watched Margaret and Ed walk down the dusty road we had come in on, hand in hand. She had tied on a big straw hat with a scarf, her baggy white pants and shoulder scarf flapped gently in the breeze. He wore a straw hat with his man pajamas and dusty feet in sandals. They looked more British interloper than Indian. They looked the most settled together that I could remember.

  We went back and forth to the location every day. Ed was making chapati by hand by the end of day three. After all the dusty army movement, wooden saddles, and sleeping in stifling hot cottages smelling of hay and horse manure, we only had one skirmish left to knock off before we were done.

  We got our last shot in that golden hour as the sun was setting. Fortunately the Director was satisfied. The sun only sets once a day. There’s nothing like waiting for sunsets and weather to push a crew to the edge. It’s right behind trying to get animals to perform. Which is right behind working with children. I thought of Jon trying to get people fed in peace with peeing and puking children and a refrigerator banging crew. He’d fit right in on location. He might even think it was easier. Too bad Chana hadn’t ratted us out; he could work with me.

  We packed up our debris and made our way back to camp in the darkness under a sky bowl of stars. My sure-footed Juli knew her way in the dark.

  It was quite a shock to wander out of the desert to the news that a massive earthquake had hit Los Angeles while we were lounging by an oasis. There was very little news, but it had been big. Not Japan big, but the biggest so far, a long hard shaker. Those of us who lived in Los Angeles knew the stories would be wildly confused and inflated in the first days. We were all worried beyond speaking for our beloveds.

  I had no way of reaching Karin. She was home alone with the kids while Oscar was in New Orleans on a picture. We counted hours on our fingers and toes, trying to figure out what we had been doing while they were going through the terrifying shaking when the earth reminds you it’s still a work in progress. It had happened on a Friday night about 9:00 p.m. I hoped everyone was home together and not sitting in a movie theater in panic with collapsing plaster and falling fixtures. I knew my place was okay; I was on bedrock. During the last big quake it had hardly moved while refrigerators flipped over in Studio City, just down the hill. Karin’s neighborhood was on pretty solid ground. I sent up a prayer for those three.

  They decided to move everyone back to Udaipur that night. No one could stand the idea of being so far removed from information. We had only flashlights and headlights to pack up under the stars. The motor homes made their noisy exit. Margaret and Ed went back with the Director.

  The rest of us waited for the cars in near silence, under the same moon that would go look in on our loved ones in just a few hours. The cars finally came. It took an hour to get back to town and another half hour to get back to our base. Communication lines were jammed. We would get more information from CNN India than we would if we were home.

  Ed and Margaret were watching on an old black and white set in the owner’s apartment. They were holding hands. Their children and grandchildren lived in L.A.

  The news was pure chaos. CNN was repeating itself like an old piece of film slapping at the end of a reel. Natural gas pipelines had exploded in a line of flames the length of the Sierras to the north. People were in the street milling in some areas; in others it looked like nothing had happened. They showed the same fire hydrants spouting like geysers; the same collapsed overpasses, and the same phone videos of shelves emptying in the same grocery stores. They showed the same people over and over. They didn’t show anyone we loved. No one had been able to get through yet, forget the internet. We would simply have to wait. Like waiting for news from any disaster, even in wired in times, the people in Los Angeles were cut off and on their own.

  “Let’s go to bed,” said Ed. “We can try to sleep. We’re going to need our energy tomorrow.”

  I stopped in the kitchen and got a pot of chai. I soaked in a hot bath to loosen the dirt ground into every nook and cranny after a week of desert camping.

  Ed and Margaret were on the terrace having tea when I got up the next morning. They’d been to the production office and had managed to reach their children. All was not well. Their daughter had been in bed reading when an armoire flipped over onto her. Her nose was broken, and the old mirror in the door had shattered cutting her face very badly. She had a concussion. They would not release her from the hospital, even though she had to sleep in the hall because it was so over-crowded. Her husband had been reaching for her and had gotten slammed in the shoulder by the same armoire. It dislocated his shoulder and broke his arm in two places. The doctors said he’d saved his wife’s life by being there to take the hit first. It had prevented the armoire from shoving her nose into her brain.

  Their two children were staying with neighbors while their parents were in the hospital. Their son and his family had gotten through without harm, but they lived hours of buckled roads away and hadn’t been able to get up to get the kids, or to help out. Margaret and Ed’s house was intact. They had already decided that Ed would fly home as soon as he could get a flight out. He would take care of their daughter and family.

  I took a tuk-tuk over to the production office and waited for my turn. I got through to Karin on the third try; they were all fine. They’d been home playing Hangman with a young girl in Bulgaria. She offered to help Ed and Margaret’s family until Ed got home. Her production was shut down until further notice.

  She said the guys renting my place had called to see if I had been in touch. A tingle of worry ran up my spine, I hoped the glass doors had survived.

  “What did they have to say?” I said. “I bet the pool was like one of those wave machines.”

  “The pool is there,” she said. “They were having a pool party. A real bacchanal I gather; they were all naked. The waves actually tossed a few of the guys out, but the house blew up.”

  “The house blew up?”

  Every eyeball in the room bulged wildly at me. The guys had a fire going, the stove pulled away from the wall, the gas line broke and the whole thing blew. The big prow roof toppled into the pool and looked like a sunken ship. My god. I couldn’t call up what I’d lost. At least I’d brought my pearls with me, no idea why. In India, if it’s not gold it doesn’t count.

  “My home is gone?” I said. “How can that be? It was on bedrock.”

  “Gas doesn’t care about bedrock,” she said. “Sparky is gone too, the fence caught fire and took her with it. I though
t you were moving to Hawaii.”

  “Well yeah, but I was counting on my place in L.A. if I’m going to work.”

  “You’re going to live apart?”

  “I don’t know yet. We haven’t made a plan.”

  “Good relationships run on serendipity, I quote our counselor. You have to be in the same place for that.”

  “Then why is Oscar still in New Orleans?”

  “Because he’s under contract. I wish he were here today. Is there anything you want me to do at this end? It sounds like it was a total wipe-out; the guys had to borrow clothes from the neighbors.”

  I guessed there was an insurance claim to file for Sparky if nothing else. Poor Sparky, incinerated. What a way to go. There was no way to put a value on a tee shirt full of holes or a homemade box. I needed to call Jon.

  He answered before it even rang, “I didn’t think I’d ever say I’m glad you’re in India.”

  “My house blew up, even my car burned up. I’m homeless. I didn’t see this coming.”

  I told him the story, and that Karin and family were okay, but that Ed was heading back.

  “You’re not homeless, Hannah.”

  “I thought I’d have that place for work.”

  “I know you loved it, but there are other places. I’m sorry you lost your things.”

  “They can’t be replaced. All I kept was what couldn’t be replaced. All my memories.”

  “I know H.”

  “I can’t stay on. There’s a line out the door waiting to make a call. I don’t like the feeling that the earth could take you away from me just like that. That I’m so far away from you.”

  “It could do it with you right next to me. We both know that. Get some rest, I’m not going anywhere.”

  I stopped at the internet cafe to email my family, but there was no way I’d get on a machine. Margaret and Ed were waiting for me when I came up the stairs. They were just glad that I hadn’t been home in bed when it happened. They said the rest of it didn’t matter. I realized I was whining about some old things while their daughter was badly injured. Ed was leaving in an hour. Margaret and I would go ahead and make the move to Varanasi. We already had train tickets and there was no reason to sit around watching the same cans fall off the same shelves.

  We were up early the next day. Dilip and Chahel loaded our bags. Ed had taken care of giving each person at the hotel an envelope of money. Knowing Ed, they’d all gotten a year’s income of $600. The train station was packed with people. Huge family groups in colorful fabrics sat on piles of luggage lashed together with rough rope; carts loaded with boxes that looked like they were leftover from 1850 were being pushed by the bent backs of sinewy men. Kiosks selling veggie cutlets and drinks, chips, cigarettes, and tobacco for bidis marched at intervals down the way.

  Men carrying our bags on their heads pushed ahead of us with Chahel and Dilip directing movement. We would be traveling through the night. We found our first class sleeping berths; bench seats that would be our beds too. Each section on our side of the car was curtained off with four berths to a section; across the aisle they were single stacked berths with their own curtain. We had extra room with Ed’s berth empty. Dilip and Chahel were across the way in single berths. They had never had such luxurious accommodations on a train. It was not luxury by any Western standard. They stored our luggage under the berths and locked them to sturdy hooks with bicycle locks. It felt like more of the same old British world.

  Margaret and I sat across from each other on our bunks, knees touching, and looked out the window as we left the station. The screens on the windows were so filthy it made the white turbans and sharp brown profiles that passed close by outside look like grainy film from a different time.

  “Ed would enjoy this,” she said.

  “I’m still finding it impossible to describe this place to Jon.”

  “There will be a lot of that over the years. There’s never enough time to debrief. Can’t really. How can you describe the smells and noise? What do you plan to do about work and life with Jon?”

  “I imagine we’ll do what you and Ed have done. I don’t know what Jon thinks. We haven’t talked about it beyond this picture. Except that we need some time before I go away again like this. He says he doesn’t want to raise kids alone.”

  She looked at me for a second and then out the window again. “Have the conversation. Keep an open mind.”

  We made our way to the dining car where we all crammed around a small table and had thali plates and chai. It was time for bed.

  It was remarkably quiet considering the way we were packed in separated only by curtains. I fell asleep under a rough wool blanket and dripping air conditioner, swaying to the clickety clack of train on tracks. It reminded me of the palm fronds outside our window in Honolulu.

  SEVENTEEN

  We awoke on the outskirts of Varanasi. Piles of trash were banked up against crumbling walls with dogs and monkeys, and naked trash-picking children. India can be hard to process.

  Dilip went for a car while Chahel got porters and counted pieces of luggage. Water was up to the running boards in a torrential rain as we drove through 8th century streets that we shared with donkey carts, cars, teams of water buffalo, bicycle rickshaws, and wildly decorated buses with “Horn Please” painted on the backs. They looked like they were on a magical mystery tour from my parents’ youth.

  We played chicken through intersections made dicier by the addition of more skinny white cows lying in the middle of the road. Everyone had it timed out to the nanosecond. I had quit squealing and saying “Oh shit” after the first few days. Police officers blew whistles to no effect. It was incredible how fast everyone could drive, and right at each other, without crashing. We made a roundabout. In the center sat a small brightly painted yellow shrine. A goddess sat inside, huge red lips and voluptuous breasts impassive behind swirls of incense with marigolds at her feet.

  We drove down to a dead-end street. The goddess Ganges slid by in front of us. She cleanses all. We pulled into a dirt lot lined on one side with cows in a makeshift pen. Across from the pens was a multi-storied white adobe building with a security gate that opened onto a small courtyard.

  A short flight of stairs led to an entry area. A big room had tables shoved together to create one large table. Doors lined the perimeter of the room. One opened into a large kitchen, one into a small booth with a phone. The phone was huge; it looked more like a small 1960s computer than a simple telephone. Another small room had a computer with a listing chair. Our rooms were on the top floor and opened onto another tiled terrace.

  My corner room was a monk’s cell. It was just big enough for a single bed, another pallet with blanket and flat pillow. A small desk and chair under the window overlooked the terrace and river beyond. Shelves carved into the wall over the bed would serve as my dresser.

  The bathroom was two steps up with a small lip at the door. I quickly saw why; there was no tub or shower. There were simply hot and cold water spigots coming out of the wall about two feet off the floor. A ten-gallon bucket and a small plastic measuring cup sat underneath. A drain was in the middle of the floor. The lip was to keep water from running like a waterfall down the stairs and into the bedroom. There was a traditional squat toilet made of institutional green enamel dropped into the corner of the floor.

  The main room had windows on both walls. I could look down on a family going about the business of living to one side and onto a Buddhist center in front. There was no painting on the walls. It was all white. I liked it, an oasis of simplicity in what Jon had taken to calling the busy busy of India.

  One of the workers brought a small stack of thin towels. He bowed hello and asked me how I like India. I told him I love it. He beamed.

  Margaret came up behind him and peered over his shoulder at my room.

  “Oops, I didn’t imagine temple hotel meant anything so basic.” She addressed the nice man. “Are there other rooms available?”

  He did a
head bobble and explained that all the rooms were spoken for over the next few weeks, but he’d see what he could do.

  I swept my arms around the small space, “I’m fine. I like it. It seems perfect after having my house blow up.”

  He was confused by that and made a quick exit. Margaret came in and checked out the bathroom, then sat on the bed.

  “This is a little rough around the edges for two months,” she said. “My room is more like a room. I have a shower you can use.”

  “I’m fine here. It feels like a retreat cell. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll move in a couple of weeks.”

  She sat on the cot, “Well, Ed wanted to be right down where the action is.”

  It turned out it really was a temple; Ed wouldn’t have been cooking with onions or garlic. Dilip and Chahel were staying with us again.

  “Let’s go up to the roof for tea,” she said.

  We went up the last flight of stairs to the rooftop. There were tables and chairs along the railing at the edge. Sheets were hung on lines in the breeze to soften the sun. They were already dry from the earlier rain. We were catching the tail end of the monsoon season. We would be working through daily downpours and gusty wind for at least a month. The producers had decided to use the weather as a dramatic element as our characters’ stormy lives came to a climax. It would be powerful on film, but it would require a lot of plastic sheeting and tie-downs to make it happen. We’d heard that each day was getting a bit milder than the last.

  The river was starting to recede. We were high enough to see down the riverbank until it disappeared into a haze. The bank of the river was lined with fantastic buildings built between the broad flights of stairs, or ghats, that ran from the street right down under the river water. Prime real estate on the flanks of the goddess.

  I stopped downstairs to email Jon our new location. I told him about dancing in the desert and that I wanted him to do the hula at our wedding. I was trying to sound more upbeat despite feeling weary.