Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  Of course I finally got around to turning on the TV and I was flipping through all the channels, which had everything from Disney movies to blue movies to New Delhi news, sports and weather, except for channel three. Channel three was the interesting channel, this time around. The first face I saw on channel three was Patrick’s and the next face was Charole’s. Behind them Suzie Kelly Pete, riding on an elephant. And when the camera or Dave’s eyes or my eyes however you want to think of it, swung to the left, there’s Dana’s face looking in at me with kind of a worried expression and she’s saying, here, try these, and the camera swings down and the speakers boom out my voice, yeah, sure, the voice sounding weird as ever, just like the last time, weirder than it sounds on cassette, recorded, and I pick up the Trans Am, ask Dave how my mouth felt he says he didn’t feel anything at all, no uncomfortable sensation, but he’ll be a neurosurgeon in the thirty-fifth century and so he was able to call upon those talents in advance, he did some neuron splicing and snipping in crucial areas of the gum that connected to the brain and he said he was able to function to such an extent that he managed, he said, to do a pretty fair acting job, although he stopped smoking, which raised a few eyebrows. He said he always found it sad the way I sucked all those carcinogenic fumes into my system not to mention the damage I did with alcohol and other drugs. I said bullshit, he stopped smoking because Dana told me in Kabul that she didn’t like kissing my smoky mouth, it made her want to start smoking again and it took her too long to quit, it was too hard to do, she didn’t want to go through it again and she shouldn’t have had that cigarette, the one I gave her in Herat. But that comment about my smoky mouth is one of the reasons I said thanks but no thanks the last time Dana tried to have sex with me, because Kelly said she liked my smoky mouth, she said it was like she was a witch kissing a particularly delicious devil.

  But what I want to know is what those pills were Dana gave him. Dave says Benzedrine. From her father’s medical supply. She had quite a few of them. Dave says Dana was a pill junkie. He says he would’ve refused them, knowing what they can do to the system, but he made this decision to stay as much in character as possible which is why, after the elephant ride was through and they were sitting on this lawn in front of an old raj’s palace that had been turned into a hotel because of high taxes, according to Pete, this was in the Pink City of Jaipur, some raj had told everybody to paint their houses pink his favourite colour or it was off with the noggin, they were watching monkeys climb trees, Dave and Dana, I mean, and Dana asked him if he’d like to share a room with her, she could ask Pete about it, he said well, does a duck love pancakes? Though it was Dana, and I give her credit for this, who said maybe Dave should talk to Kelly. Eyes swung around and there was Kelly, about fifty feet away, talking to an old East Indian in a dhoti,* guy claimed to be a psychic, and Dave said yeah, you’re right. When Kelly was done talking to the East Indian, Dave wandered over. Asked Kelly what the East Indian had to say. Kelly gave Dave a cold look. Said he said she was about to get her heart broken, but not to worry, it’s only a temporary setback, I’d come to my senses in a few days time. He said she should be understanding and that she should go walk the Firewalk, she’d have no trouble doing it all, and he said he saw her living out many of her days in an ashram high in the Himalayas and that, she said, was just about it, though Dave says what she didn’t tell him was that she was pregnant and the kid was mine, and he tells her this. Kelly said you never cease to surprise me, Mick, and for a moment she looked real sad. She said Dana’s waiting for you. And then she walked away. Then Dana’s on the screen. Sitting cross-legged. She was wearing a long muslin dress that was almost see-through. Dave holds out his hand. How’d she take it? she asks. Very philosophically, says Dave. I don’t think she really likes me, she looked a little relieved, glad to get rid of me. Dana smiled. You’re a real bullshitter, Mick, took his hand, and they walked inside the old raj’s palace where they took a bath in an old claw-foot tub and then made love. Yeah, that sounded like quite a night, Dave. Too bad Dana wasn’t like Kelly and into candles. All I got to hear was the sounds, which was sheets rustling mainly and Dana saying between moans that she was sorry she laughed at me when I took that dive

  *A white cloth garment worn by South Indian males. — D. W.

  377

  into Lake Dal, Dave saying it’s alright, it was probably a funny sight, and then it got quiet, too quiet, made for boring TV, and so I flipped over to Johnny Carson, which was a mistake, according to Dave, he claims I missed some interesting pillow talk. I ask like what? Just Dana’s favourite sexual fantasies and the kinkiest things she’s done, in and out of bed. I say so tell me about them. The world wants to know, Dave. He says even on the seventh plane, especially on the seventh plane—Dave claims all souls are first born on the seventh plane, which is actually a planet in a solar system in the constellation of the Seven Sisters, Cassiopeia, and it’s where he’s hanging out whenever I get a busy signal—he claims there are certain scruples on the seventh plane and Dana will read this some day. It will be enough of a surprise for her, finding out that she was making love to me, not you, so let’s skip that, he says, move on to Agra.

  I say just a minute. I say are you going to explain to me now why you didn’t warn me about that dentist?

  He says the dentist was all part of his strategy, that’s all, and then he hangs up.

  Good ol’ Dave. Up front and to the point.

  INDIA Jaipur—Agra

  Day 62

  Departure: 9:00 a.m.

  Route: Kosi—Vrindaban—Mathura—Agra.

  Hotel: Jaiwal, tel.: 45823.

  Points: 1. What else? The Taj, of course. Make sure everyone is stocked up on film, people tend to take more pictures of this than they intend to, for some reason. Make sure they get to see it at sunset and sunrise and noon, and under the moon, preferably full, if there’s clear skies. Feel free to build up to this, if you like. This is the city in Uttar Pradesh province where brother killed brother for a throne. This is the city where Shah Jahan wooed and courted his young bride, Mumtaz Mahal, only twenty-one on the day they wed, after he’d waged a prolonged guerrilla war against his father. When they met, he was still being hunted like your basic garden-variety criminal. He ran through the briars and he ran through the bushes. But he made peace with the old man when his brother died under mysterious circumstances—rumour has it that it was something in his tea—and as emperor, sweet little Mumtaz became his favourite wife, and his most trusted adviser as well, until Mumtaz died in premature childbirth and broke Shah Jahan’s heart. He made a public promise that he would build a monument memorial to her that people, for centuries, would travel to see, and so the world’s most beautiful and sublime building was conceived, so to speak, on the banks of the sacred river Yamuna.

  2. Everything else in Agra ranks a distant thirty-ninth, but there is, not too far from the Pearl Mosque, the “Moti Masjid,” the elegant tomb of Itmad-ud-Daula, and five miles northwest of Agra is the burial place of Akbar. Anyplace else, these places would draw crowds and make lots of money for lots of people.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Dec. 12

  Tonight we saw the Taj Mahal. On the way there, a language lesson from our carriage-cyclist. Nahin means no, & that’s what we should say to all the people who will want to take our money for shoddy merchandise at the Taj. We should wait & visit his brother’s shop in the morning. Pat., of course, did not heed these instructions. He bought me a yellow silk scarf just outside the fortress walls. Inside the walls, the Taj floated like a white dream, just beyond the canal waters that held the full moon’s reflection. This was definitely, said Pat., worth the journey, as he took off his lens cap. I looked to the skies, looking for Geminid meteorites. None. That would be something, I said to myself, to see a star fall above the Taj. We walked up to it, inside it, around it. Pat. offered the speculation that perhaps we were souls descended from Shah Jahan and his bride. Then we necked in the garden & he asked for a hand j
ob. I almost balked, but didn’t. The silk scarf came into play, can’t see myself ever wearing it. So Pat. has left some of his essence behind in the Taj Mahal gardens. I should’ve said nahin. At the dais in the middle of the canal, he rolled a hash & tobacco joint. M & D. were holding hands, gazing at the Taj. The evening had turned cold, dreary. Maybe that’s why when Pat. tapped my shoulder, offered the joint, I turned around. The Goddess does work in mysterious ways.

  Mick

  Last night I had this dream, the old man was in it, looking down at me, shaking his head in disgust, and I floated away from him, straight into this brawl with some guys that looked like the aliens in that Star Wars bar. Rockstar joined in and kicked the shit out of me with steel-toed boots. Iranian busboys took a butcher knife to me and sliced me up. When I woke up I phoned Dave. He says there really is a hell out there on the astral plane and I should avoid it in the future.

  I will.

  Anyway it was like Dave ran the programming on this little TV I had. Which he did, he just told me, and I was watching A Star is Bom on channel ten when the channel selector clicked over to channel three and all of a sudden I’m looking at this old geezer’s face and he’s saying that I shouldn’t pay any attention to any of the thieves at the Taj who would try to sell me things and cheat me. Dana’s beside Dave in this cart behind a bicycle, Kelly and Patrick across from us. All real comfy. Dark out. Dark houses rolling past. Then money changing hands, Dana’s face real close. Eventually get the idea that Dave and Dana and Charole and Kelly and Patrick and Pete and Suzie are outside the Taj Mahal’s walls, because after the old geezer tells them that he’ll wait for them and he crawls back on board his buggy, they start walking and they’re not saying a thing. The only sound is Patrick winding film. They walk up to this gate and make a left and there it is, the Taj Mahal, the biggest, spookiest chunk of marble I’ve ever seen on TV just kind of sitting there and shimmering in the moonlight. Charole lets out an ooh and Patrick lets out an ahh. Kelly says, “It looks like it has a soul.” Dave says, “Or several souls.” Dana says, “Yeah, several,” and smiles at Dave, or me, and then everyone seems to walk slowly up to the Taj, along this skinny canal with trees beside it, the moon waving hello from the water. Patrick’s clicking away, his flash going off and kind of spoiling the reception. It must’ve been great seeing it in person. I travel all the way there and only get to see it on TV. I gave Dave shit for that but he wasn’t too sympathetic. He said the Taj only looks good from a distance, it’s got lots of cracks up close, he said, and it’s got bats inside.

  I think he missed my point.

  Him and Dana walked around the Taj and afterwards they walked back to this little dais halfway down the canal where Kelly and Charole and Patrick were sitting. Patrick looking like he’d swallowed a whole cage full of canaries. Had just finished rolling up a joint. He lit it and passed it around. They were the only tourists in sight. It was a slow night at the Taj. And it seemed like everybody just got into their own headspace. Just sat there staring at the Taj. And Kelly was sitting on the steps in front, with her chin in her hands. She’d said no to the reefer first time around. The reefer was down to a roach when Patrick passed it to Dave and he took a small toke, it seemed, and then passed it back and Patrick asked Kelly if she would like one teeny little toke, just to expand the consciousness ever so slightly, and Kelly twisted around and looked at him and then looked at the roach that he had stretched out towards her, and she kind of shrugged and reached up for it, I could see it just at the end of the screen, Dave was looking at the Taj, and then there was this little flash of light, a streak across the sky, and that was when Charole let out another one of her oohs and Patrick gasped, and Kelly twisted herself around but she was way too slow.

  “What was it?” she said, but she probably knew what it was.

  “A falling star,” said Charole.

  “Right above the Taj,” said Dana. And there was something in her tone of voice. Almost a chuckle. Women can sure be cruel to each other, like I maybe said before. I notice that more and more, the older I get. Even Soon, I heard her get into a real jangle with the night nurse the other day because she wants to get switched to night duty. But she got what she wanted. Her first night shift’s tonight and I’m looking forward to it.

  Soon says she’s going to bring me some Ko Samui mushrooms. I’ve been bugging her some, told her I wanted to try some before I died, that’s why I came here.

  Kelly didn’t say anything for a while. She just stared at the Taj while everyone raved about seeing the falling star. Patrick just let the roach drop from his fingers where it sizzled and died, kind of like that falling star.

  It really would’ve been nice to see that live.

  But at least I saw it. Which is more than I can say for Kelly.

  She finally said that’s it, no more drugs, ever again, got up and started walking back to the gate.

  “Where you going, Kelly?” said Charole.

  “Back to the hotel,” said Kelly. There was a little tear at the edge of her voice.

  Charole waited a minute or two and then she followed after her. And then Patrick went, which left Dave and Dana by themselves, and they were necking, which meant that the screen was black because Dave necks with his eyes closed, and so I switched back to A Star is Born just in time to catch the credits.

  Sitting there watching those credits, I couldn’t pretend this was a dream. Not that I thought it was. Kelly walking away like that, I felt sorry for her. So I picked up the Trans Am and dialled D-A-V-E. He let it ring for a long time and when he answered he said what, and it didn’t really sound like the Dave I’d gotten used to. I asked him how the gum felt. He said it felt fine. I said in that case maybe I should take over. He said it didn’t feel that fine.

  Now I don’t really blame Dave. He had to watch me go through all the joy and pain of childhood, puberty and good old adolescence. Makes me feel in need of a sponge bath, to think of all the things he maybe watched. And now he had his chance behind the wheel.

  I said to him, well, do you want to go talk to Kelly when you get back, where are you anyway, the screen was still black. Told him to tell her the falling star was no big deal. Then I thought better of that, said no, say, and I couldn’t think what to say, so I said just say you’re sorry she missed it.

  He didn’t answer me right away. Finally he said he might and hung up.

  I think Dave was pissed off at me for suggesting it. Suddenly there was nothing on the TV. Except for an old eight-by-ten photograph of my parents at their wedding. Black and white. Just there all of a sudden. Looking young and smiling.

  I asked Dave about that, what was he trying to get at, and he said, nothing much, just the way things start, and the way things end.

  But that was later. I started getting a bit antsy. So I went to the door. It was locked before. But now it opened and what I got in the face was a blast of sand and wind.

  I closed it quick.

  But this is why I won’t let Dave take over again. I can finish this book. There ain’t much left to tell. I don’t need his help. Soon just brought the mushrooms. They’re all nice little capsules. Fifty of them, tonight’s supper. She made a deal with the doctor. You see, Soon needs another hospital room, there’s people waiting for this one. So she says. They really don’t want to kick me out. But I have no money. No baht. So they’re giving me these. You can understand where they’re coming from. We’re both happy. Since my first suicide attempt, I knew I wanted to be really high when I went to meet my maker. So we’re both getting what we want, in a way, and I’m no fool, I can hear that fat lady gargling, I can hear her letting the snaps on that corset rip.

  Dec. 13

  The trip is improving, and in the mick [sic] of time. Last night we saw the Taj Mahal by moonlight. Who was it that said, “Neither words nor pencil could convey .the slightest idea of it,” or words to that effect. Well, I do hate to disagree. Patrick said it’s beyond poetry and Chinese math. I think that pretty well capture
s it. And most of us got to see a star fall above it. That has to be the single best moment of the trip, which maybe isn’t saying much but just the same. Our buggy driver also clued us in on where to find silk at bargain-basement prices, which was nice of him. And Pete was nice enough to even stop at the place this morning, after another view of the Taj.

  It’s a nice rosy pink in sunlight. It probably would have looked a lot nicer if my stomach wasn’t busy trying to digest the waterbuffalo milk they served us at breakfast, which would have been nicer if Pete could’ve told us that before we had it with our cereal. Speaking of water buffalo, it was quite a sight to see women milking the hairy beast on our way out of town. Other women carrying huge bales of hay on their shoulders.

  No one can say that India hasn’t been liberated. The big news of the day is that after our morning visit to the Taj, and after that to yet another Red Fort, and yet another tomb, this one belonging to someone named Akbar, Patrick is all out of film. Those women milking the buffaloes did it. All afternoon his shutter finger’s had jerking spasms. It’s called going cold Kodak. And what’s next on our agenda? Pete says it’s the erotic temples of Kharjaho. Don’t worry, Patrick. Pete says I there’s a 50-50 chance the motel there will have film. It would be a 100% chance, he said, but it is the end of the tourist season.

  Mick

  I didn’t think too much was going to happen the rest of that night, so I switched channels. Ended up watching Woody Allen’s What’s Up, Tiger Lily?