Hippie

40

Back at the hotel, Mirthe had grabbed a brochure about the bazaar, founded in 1455 by a sultan who’d managed to wrest Constantinople from the hands of the pope. In an era when the Ottoman Empire ruled the world, the bazaar was the place people brought their wares, and it grew and grew to such an extent that the ceiling structures had to be expanded several times.

Even after having read this, the group was far from ready for what they would find—thousands of people walking through packed corridors, fountains, restaurants, prayer spots, coffee, rugs—everything, absolutely everything you could find in France’s best department store: finely wrought gold jewelry, clothes in all styles and colors, shoes, rugs of all kinds, working artisans indifferent to those around them.

One of the merchants wanted to know if they were interested in antiques—the fact that they were tourists was written on their foreheads; it was clear from the way they looked around them.

“How many stores are there?” Jacques asked the merchant.

“Three thousand. Two mosques. Several fountains, an enormous number of places where you can have the best Turkish food. But I have some religious statuary you won’t find anywhere else.”

Jacques thanked him, said he’d be back soon—the merchant knew it was a lie and briefly redoubled his efforts but soon saw it was useless and wished them all a good day.

“Did you know Mark Twain was here?” asked Mirthe, who at this point was covered in sweat and somewhat frightened by what she was seeing. What if there was a fire, how would they get out? Where was the door, the tiny little door they’d used to come in? How would they keep the group together when everyone wanted to see something different?

“And what did Mark Twain have to say?”

“He said it was impossible to describe what he saw, but that it had been a much more powerful, more important experience than his visit to the city. He spoke of the colors, the immense variety of visual tones, the rugs, people conversing, the apparent chaos that nonetheless seemed to follow an order he was unable to explain. ‘If I want to buy shoes,’ he wrote, ‘I don’t need to go from store to store along the street, comparing prices and models, but simply find the aisle of shoemakers, lined up one after another, without there being any sort of competition or annoyance between them; it all depends on who is the better salesman.”

Mirthe didn’t care to mention that the bazaar had already been through four fires and an earthquake—it wasn’t known how many had died because the hotel brochure said only this and glossed over any talk of body counts.

Karla noticed that Marie’s eyes were glued to the ceiling, its curved beams and its arches, and she’d begun to smile as if she could say nothing beyond “incredible, absolutely incredible.”

They walked at about a mile per hour. When one person stopped, the rest did, too. Karla needed some privacy.

“At this rate, we won’t even make it to the corner of the next aisle. Why don’t we split up and meet back at the hotel? Unfortunately—I repeat, unfortunately—we’ll be leaving this place tomorrow, so we have to make the most of this last day.”

The idea was greeted with enthusiasm, and Jacques turned to his daughter to take her with him, but Karla stopped him.

“I can’t stay here on my own. Let the two of us discover this universe of wonders together.”

Jacques noticed that his daughter didn’t so much as glance at him, she merely repeated “incredible!” as she stared at the ceiling. Had someone offered her hashish when they entered the bazaar? Had she accepted? She was old enough to take care of herself—he left her with Karla, that girl who was always ahead of her time and always trying to show how much smarter and more sophisticated she was than all the rest, though she’d toned it down a bit—only a bit—during the last two days in Istanbul.

He went his way and disappeared amid the multitude. Karla grabbed Marie by the arm.

“Let’s get out of here right now.”

“But everything is so beautiful. Look at the colors: absolutely incredible!”

Karla wasn’t asking, she was giving orders, and began to gently tug Marie toward the exit.

The exit?

Where was the exit? “Incredible!” Marie was growing increasingly intoxicated with what she saw, and completely inert, while Karla asked several people the best way out and received several different answers. She started to get nervous; that itself was as disorienting as an LSD trip, and she wasn’t sure where the combination of the two would leave Marie.

Her more aggressive, more dominating manner returned; she walked first in one direction then another, but she could not find the door through which they’d entered. It didn’t matter if they returned the way they’d come, but each second now was precious—the air had grown heavy, people were full of sweat, no one paid attention to anything except what they were buying, selling, or bargaining over.

Finally, an idea came to her. Instead of looking for the exit, she ought to walk in a straight line, in a single direction, and sooner or later she’d find the wall that separated the largest temple to consumerism she’d ever seen from the outside world. She charted a straight path, begging God (God?) that it also be the shortest. As they walked in the direction they’d chosen, she was interrupted a thousand times by people trying to sell their wares. She pushed past them without so much as an “excuse me” and without considering they could well push back.

Along the way she came upon a young boy, his mustache just coming in, who must have been entering the bazaar. He seemed to be looking for something. She decided to use all her charm, her seduction, her persuasiveness, and asked him to take her to the exit because her sister was suffering an attack of delirium.

The boy looked at her sister and saw that, in fact, she wasn’t really there but off in some distant place. He tried making conversation, telling her that an uncle of his who worked nearby could help, but Karla begged him, saying she knew the symptoms, that all her sister needed now was a bit of fresh air, nothing more.

Rather against his will, and regretting that he was about to lose sight forever of these two interesting girls, he took them to one of the exits—less than sixty feet from where they’d been standing.

At the moment she stepped outside the bazaar, Marie came to the solemn decision to abandon her revolutionary dreams. She would never again say she was a Communist fighting to free oppressed workers from their bosses.

Yes, she’d started dressing like a hippie because now and then it was good to be in style. Yes, she’d understood her father had become a bit worried about this and had begun to furiously research what all of it might mean. Yes, they were going to Nepal, but not to meditate in caves or visit temples; their goal was to meet up with the Maoists who were preparing a large-scale rebellion against what they judged to be an outdated and tyrannical monarchy under the rule of a king indifferent to his people’s suffering.

She’d been able to make contact through a self-exiled Maoist at her university who’d traveled to France to call attention to the few dozen guerrilla soldiers being massacred there.

None of that was important anymore. She walked with her Dutch companion along an absolutely unremarkable street and everything seemed to have a greater meaning that went beyond the peeling walls and people walking with heads lowered, barely glancing up.

“Do you think people are noticing something?”

“No, nothing, beyond the bright smile across your face. It’s not a drug that was made to call others’ attention.”

Marie, meanwhile, had noticed something: her companion was nervous. She didn’t sense this from the tone of Karla’s voice—she didn’t need to hear her say anything, but could attribute it to the “vibration” coming from her. She’d always hated the word “vibration,” she didn’t believe in such things—but at that moment she could see they were real.

“Why did we leave the temple we were in?”

Karla shot her a strange look.

“I know we weren’t in any temple, it’s just a figure of speech. I know my name, your name, our final destination, the city we’re in—Istanbul—but everything looks so different, as though…”

It took her a few seconds as she searched for words.

“…as though we’d walked through a door and left the entire known world behind, including our worries, our despairs, our doubts. Life seems simpler and at the same time richer, happier. I’m free.”

Karla began to relax a bit.

“I can see colors I’ve never seen before, the sky looks alive, the clouds are forming shapes I can’t understand yet, but I’m certain they’re scrawling messages for me, to guide me from this point on. I’m at peace with myself and I don’t view the world from the outside: I am the world. I carry with me the wisdom of those who’ve come before me and left their mark in my genes. I am my dreams.”

They passed in front of a café, identical to the hundred others in that area. Marie continued murmuring “incredible!” and Karla asked her to stop because this time they really were about to enter a place relatively forbidden to them—only men went there.

“They know we’re tourists and I hope they don’t do anything, like kick us out. But, please, behave yourself.”

And that’s exactly what happened. They walked in and chose a corner table. Everyone looked at them in surprise, took a few minutes to realize the two girls weren’t familiar with local customs, and went back to their conversations. Karla ordered a mint tea with lots of sugar—legend had it that sugar helped to diminish hallucinations.

But Marie was having wild hallucinations. She spoke about bright auras around people, claimed she could manipulate time and had in fact just spoken with the ghost of a Christian who’d died in battle there, in the exact spot where the café stood. The Christian soldier had found absolute peace in heaven, and was pleased at having been able to communicate again with someone on Earth. He was about to ask her to give a message to his mother, but when he understood that centuries had passed since his death—Marie had informed him—he gave up and thanked her, then vanished immediately.

Marie drank the tea as though for the first time in her life. She wanted to show with gestures and sighs how delicious it was, but Karla again asked her to control herself. Once more, Marie felt the “vibration” surrounding her companion, whose aura now revealed several radiant holes. Was this a bad sign? No. It looked as if the holes were old wounds that were now rapidly scarring over. She tried to calm her down—that she could do, starting a conversation in the middle of her trance.

“Do you have a thing for the Brazilian guy?”

Karla didn’t answer. One of her light-filled holes seemed to shrink a bit, and Marie changed the subject.

“Who invented this stuff? And why don’t they hand it out for free to everyone seeking to be one with the invisible, seeing how it’s absolutely essential to changing our perception of the world?”

Karla told her that LSD had been discovered by chance, in the most unexpected place in the world: Switzerland.

“Switzerland? Where they only know about banks, watches, cows, and chocolate?”

“And laboratories,” Karla added. LSD was originally discovered to cure some disease whose name she couldn’t remember at the moment. Until its synthesizer—or inventor, as we’d say—decided, years later, to try a bit of the product that was already making millions for pharmaceutical companies around the world. He ingested a tiny amount and decided to ride home on his bike (the country was in the midst of a war, and even in a neutral Switzerland of chocolates, watches, and cows, gasoline was rationed), when he noticed everything looked different.

Karla noticed a change in Marie. She needed to get on with her story.

“Well then, this Swiss man—you’re probably asking how I know this whole story, but the truth is there was a long article on this recently in a magazine I read at the library—noticed that he couldn’t mount his bike…He asked one of his assistants to take him home, but then he thought perhaps it was better he go to a hospital instead; he must be having a heart attack. Then suddenly, and I’m using his words, or close to them, I can’t remember them exactly: ‘I began seeing colors I’d never seen, shapes I’d never noticed which wouldn’t disappear even after I closed my eyes. It was like standing before a giant kaleidoscope opening and closing in circles and spirals, bursting into colorful fountains, flowing as though rivers of joy.’

“Are you paying attention?”

“More or less. I’m not sure I’m taking it all in, there’s a lot of information: Switzerland, bicycles, the war, a kaleidoscope—could you simplify a bit?”

Red flag. Karla ordered more tea.

“Try to concentrate. Look at me and listen to what I’m telling you. Concentrate. This awful feeling will be gone soon. I need to make a confession: I only gave you half the dose I used to take when I used LSD.”

That seemed to relieve Marie. The waiter brought the tea Karla had ordered. She made her companion drink it, paid the bill, and they went out once again into the cold air.

“And what about the Swiss man?”

It was a good sign that Marie remembered where they’d left off. Karla asked herself if she’d be able to buy a sedative if the situation got worse—if the gates of hell replaced the gates of heaven.

“The drug you took was sold openly and freely at pharmacies in the United States for more than fifteen years, and you know that there they’re strict about these things. It even made the cover of Time magazine for its benefits in treating psychiatric patients and alcoholism. Then it was made illegal because every now and then it had unexpected side effects.”

“Such as…”

“We’ll talk about those later. Now, try to move away from the gates of hell in front of you and open the door to heaven. Enjoy it. Don’t be afraid, I’m right here and I know what I’m talking about. You should only feel like this for about another two hours at the most.”

“I will close the gates of hell, I will open the gates of heaven,” Marie said. “But I know that, even if I can control my fear, you can’t control yours. I can see your aura. I can read your thoughts.”

“You’re right. But then you must also have read that you don’t run the least risk of dying from this, unless you decide to climb some building and see if, finally, you’re able to fly.”

“I understand. Besides, I think it’s begun to wear off.”

And, knowing she wouldn’t die and that the girl at her side would never take her to the top of some building, Marie’s speeding heart slowed a bit, and she decided to enjoy the two hours she had left.

All of her senses—touch, sight, hearing smell, taste—became one, as if she were capable of experiencing everything at the same time. The lights outside began to lose their intensity, but even so she could still see the auras of other people. She knew who was suffering, who had found happiness, who would die shortly.

Everything was new. Not only because she was in Istanbul, but because she was in the presence of a Marie she did not know, much more intense and much older than the Marie she had become accustomed to living with for all those years.

The clouds in the sky were growing heavier, warning of a possible storm, and little by little their shapes began to lose the meaning that earlier had been so clear. But she knew that clouds have their own code for speaking with humans, and if she kept an eye on the heavens in the coming days, she would end up learning what they were trying to tell her.

She wondered whether or not to tell her father why she’d chosen to go to Nepal, but it would be silly not to continue on after they’d made it this far. They would discover things that later, with the limitations that came with age, would be more difficult.

How did she know so little about herself? Some unpleasant childhood experiences came back to her, and they now no longer seemed so unpleasant, merely experiences. She had given so much importance to them for so long—why?

But ultimately she didn’t need an answer, she could feel these things were resolving themselves. Every now and then, as she looked at what appeared to be spirits circling around her, the gateway to hell passed before her, but she was intent on not opening it.

At that moment, she basked in a world without questions or answers. Without doubts or convictions. She basked in a world that was one with her. She basked in a world without time, where past and future were merely the present, nothing more. At times, her spirit showed itself to be very old; at other times it seemed like a child, making the most of all that was new, looking at her fingers and noticing how they were separate and the way they moved. She watched the girl at her side, happy that she was now much calmer, her light had returned, she really was in love. The question she’d asked earlier made absolutely no sense, we always know when we’re in love.

When they came to the door of their hotel, after nearly two hours walking, she knew the Dutch girl had decided they would wander the city so the effects of the drug could pass before they met up with the others. Marie heard the first peal of thunder. She knew that God was talking to her, telling her to come back to the world now, there was much work to be done. She ought to help her father, who dreamed of being a writer but had never committed a single word to paper that wasn’t part of a presentation, or a study, or an article.

She needed to help her father as he’d helped her—that was his request. He had many years ahead of him. And one day she would marry, something that had never crossed her mind, and that now she considered the final step in a life without rules or limits.

One day she would marry and her father would need to be content with his own life, doing something he liked to do. She loved her mother very much and didn’t blame her for the divorce, but she sincerely wanted her father to find someone with whom to share the steps we all take on this sacred earth.

At that moment, she understood why the drug had been outlawed; the world could only work without it. If it were legal, people would only retreat deeper into themselves, as though they were billions of monks meditating all at the same time in their interior caves, indifferent to the agony and glory of others. Cars would stop working. Planes would never again take off. There would be no seed or harvest—only awe and ecstasy. In no time, humanity would be swept from the earth by that which in principle could be a purifying breeze but had instead become a gale of collective annihilation.

She was in the world, she belonged to it, and she ought to follow the order God had given her with his thunderous voice—work, help her father, fight against the wrongs she witnessed, engage with others in the daily battles they were fighting.

This was her mission. And she would see it through. She had had her first and last LSD trip, and she was glad it was over.