Worlds

35. Diary of a Lover (excerpts)

13 January. Jeff spent only a little more than an hour at Interpol. He said they had traced Benny—as they routinely do when somebody has his identity changed without taking the elementary precaution of bribing everyone in sight. He had gone to a farm in South Carolina, with the identity of Sheldon Geary.

As to James’s bunch, he had only been told “not to worry.” He said this probably meant that they were well infiltrated.

I’m glad Benny got away but wish that nobody knew where he was. Jeff didn’t know whether the FBI was going to pick him up for questioning. He had broken federal law in being accessory to the forgery of his documents, but the agency rarely bothered to arrest people for that. It was more useful simply to keep an eye on them. …

Geneva isn’t as pretty as Lausanne, but it’s more impressive. All very neatly laid out and meticulously maintained. The weather field keeps it warm enough to walk around with just a light jacket, and the avenues are lined with green growing things. We went down by the lake and sat on the grass there, enjoying our picnic while a blizzard howled a few meters away. Swiss chocolate is remarkable. …

I’m trying to taper off the Klonexine. Less tension so less medicine. Violet taught me a trick. Open the capsule and divide the powder into two piles; refill each half-capsule and plug the end with a bit of bread. So I’m still taking them with each meal, but at half dosage.

Jeff has become very tender and solicitous since I dropped all my problems on him. I think he has a stronger mothering instinct than I do. Yet he has the most violent legitimate occupation in the world, and to stay alive must have a killing instinct equally strong. He’s full of paradox, keeps surprising me.

(14 January-18 January: Berlin, Munich, Bonn, Rome)

19 January. Pompeii is the most interesting place we’ve visited, in terms of history. I guess because of the ordinariness of it—old monuments are interesting, but they are monuments, culturally self-conscious, built for the ages. Pompeii was just an ordinary city, and what’s preserved here are ordinary houses, shops, pubs, brothels. Walking down the streets is a mundane trip through time.

The Italian government had Pompeii thoroughly restored by the turn of the century, and they had the good sense to cover the city with a plastic dome, to protect it against the weather and the pollution that drifts down from the industry around Naples. So it looks just like a city of 2000 years ago, only slightly worn.

In the museum outside the city, they have plaster casts of people, animals, and vegetation, preserved when they were entombed by the swift fall of ash from Vesuvius. The eeriest is of a dog, fighting to free himself from his chain. The human figures are pathetic, sometimes gruesome, preserved with their expressions at the moment of death.

(Violet was fascinated by that, of course. She mentioned yesterday that she’d started school with a major in thanotics, studying to be a “death counselor.” Sort of like a hypochondriac getting a job as a druggist.)

Back in our stuffy room in Naples, Jeff and I lay together in the dark for a long time, talking about death. He is matter-of-fact about it, and I think honestly not afraid. Just suddenly not-being. He was brought up in American Taoism, though he rejected it in his teens, and admits that the passive fatalism of that religion probably still affects him, or infects him. We were tired and made slow love with our hands.

(20 January-26 January: Athens, Salonika, Dubrovnik, Belgrade)

27 January. They wanted us to go through Maghrib before the Alexandrian Dominion because Maghrib is so much more modern and familiar. At least women can show their faces. They don’t execute criminals in the public square.

It is still the most alien place we’ve been. We spent late morning to early afternoon in Tangier, which used to be a major port. Now its main industry is wringing money from European tourists, being picturesque.

The foreignness is enthusiastic and unrelenting but it’s not fake. At least not in the Casbah, the native quarter. At midday, with eight or nine people in our group, we felt isolated, alien, in danger. Sinister-looking people stared at us, scowling, measuring. Beggars showed us their sores and stumps. In the open-air market, meat was hanging in the warm sun, crawling with flies. A small mob formed when one of our people resisted paying a man after taking his picture. He paid.

The tourist part of town is all white beaches, colorful fluttering flags, music and dancing, high prices. For lunch I bought couscous, which had been so delightful in Paris, but here was an indigestible lump of yellow starch. Cheapest thing on the menu, though.

The train to Marrakesh was a fascinating antique. Polished wood and brass and agonizingly slow. We saw lots of desert and some camels, and herds of goats invariably tended by small boys who looked like they would rather be doing something else.

We came in at sundown (the agent probably planned that) and Marrakesh was heartstopping beautiful. It’s an oasis, lush green after hours of desert, with the Atlas mountains behind it dramatic with snow, and all the buildings are red clay, more red in the setting sun. When we got off the train we could hear muezzins chanting from towers all over the city, calling faithful Muslims to prayer. There were evidently no faithful Muslims at the railway station.

The hotel was rundown but fairly Western, sit-down toilets. When Jeff and I tried to register together we were coldly asked to show proof of marriage. So I spent a quiet night with Violet, reading. We were advised that there was no inexpensive nightlife in the parts of Marrakesh where you could safely go at night.

The four of us set out early in the morning and, dutiful tourists, admired the Koutoubya mosque and the thousand-year-old walls that once protected the city from nomad invaders. Then we went to the Djemaa El Fna, which is the largest and most colorful market in Maghrib.

In front of the actual market was a large packed-earth square full of exotic entertainment—snake-charmers, acrobats, mimes, musicians. The musical instruments were mostly strings, types unfamiliar to me, and they weren’t playing in anything like a diatonic scale. Or maybe some were and some weren’t, which would account for the weird discords they seemed to hit on every note. But it wasn’t unpleasant.

Violet and I got tired of having every man we passed stare us in the crotch—Maghrib women don’t wear pants—so we went into the first clothing stall and bought loose kaftans. We bargained for five minutes, passing numbers back and forth on a tablet, since the man didn’t speak either English or French. We worked him down from 5000 dirhams to 2500, though we had to walk out of the shop twice to get the last 500 (a technique Violet had learned from a guidebook). Then we put the kaftans on over our western clothes and undressed underneath, the sight of which nearly gave the poor bugeyed man a stroke.

We met Jeff and Manny at the weapons shop next door, where Jeff was still arguing over the price of an intricately carved cane that concealed a sword. When we left with them, the merchant ran after us, waving the cane in a theatrical way, and agreed to meet Jeff’s last price. Jeff paid him, but later wished he had cut the price again, to see what would happen. Manny said he thought it might be smart to do your experiments in bargaining etiquette at some place other than a weapons shop.

We didn’t buy much else. We had been warned not to change too much money into dirhams, since you couldn’t take them out of the country and it was illegal to change them into foreign currency.

It was more relaxed than Tangier’s Casbah, and a little cleaner, but there were several times I was glad to have two meters of husky armed policeman as an escort. Violet and I got accustomed to the “Maghrib handshake.” In a crowd, men were constantly gliding their hands across your buttocks, to make sure you had two. Violet was amused by it, but I thought it was a little disgusting. Once a man sidled up behind and touched me with something other than a hand; he got an elbow in the ribs for his effort. He growled something in Arabic but Jeff stared him down.

Most of the afternoon was delightful, though. We went past the shops into the part of town where people lived and worked, normally out of the sight of tourists. I was particularly fascinated by a man who was running a wood lathe by foot power rolling the soles of his feet rapidly over a wooden axle (the feet had nearly a centimeter of translucent callus), the power transmitted by squeaking pulleys to the thing he was working on, a cane like Jeff’s. He worked close to the wood, thick spectacles protecting his eyes. He never noticed us watching him.

There were tanners and dyers and weavers and copper-smiths and blacksmiths, most of them working in ways that hadn’t changed for centuries. We stumbled on to one electronics/cybernetics dealer, which was jarring.

… had a long sleepy bath and then at 10:30, as prearranged, tiptoed down the hall and traded places with Manny.

… but it was so sweet just to be with him. I’m afraid I’ve fallen in love again. My only consistent talent.

(28 January-3 February: Fez/Meknes, Casablanca, Kisangani, Dar es Salaam)

4 February. The Alexandrian Dominion comes as a cold shock after the friendliness and modernity of Black Africa.

At the Cairo customs station, all women were required to buy a chador, a shapeless robe that covers you from head to foot. Only your eyes are allowed to show. We would have to wear that whenever we were anyplace a man might see us.

On our way to the hotel, we passed a large public square, fountains and beautifully tended flowers beds and topiary. On the fence around the square were impaled rotting heads and hands from recently punished criminals. For some reason they didn’t look real.

Over the hotel desk there was a sign in several languages. I’ll copy it down:THIS IS A HOTEL NOT A HOUSE OF PROSTITUTION. ADULTERERS WILL BE PUNISHED ACCORDING TO ISLAMIC LAW: IF UNMARRIED, ONE HUNDRED LASHES. IF MARRIED, DEATH BY STONING. FOREIGNERS BE ADVISED. THIS LAW IS STRICTLY ENFORCED.

Six days of this. Oh, well, I always wanted to see the Pyramids….

(5 February-9 February: Alexandria, Mecca, Baghdad, Damascus, Ankara, Jerusalem)

10 February. So good to be rid of that damned chador, and to see women’s faces and bodies again. Three cheers for Krishna.

Delhi is the most crowded place I’ve ever seen, but the people are calm and good-natured….

… bed was squeaky so we moved onto the floor. The rug seemed soft to me but it took the skin off Jeff’s knees, large price to pay for not disturbing the sleep of our neighbors. So I got to be on top for the second round, doubly nice after a week of being debased for being a woman.

11 February. We spent the afternoon in Khajuaho, at the famous Devi Jagadambi Temple, mostly. Thousands of delightful erotic sculptures, showing every possible way, and some impossible ones (Hindi demigods evidently could bend in ways that humans can’t; they also had pretty impressive sex organs). Jeff said he was taking mental notes about the positions that didn’t involve kneeling.

Several Muslim women were waiting outside the temple, while their husbands, or husband, enjoyed the sculptures. At least they can show their faces in Bharat, though they do have to wear a modified chador. Most of the men and women wear European-style clothes.

At a bookstall by the temple Jeff bought a copy of the Kama Sutra, illustrated with pictures of the temple figures.

I decided I’d better get some sleep on the way back to the hotel…

13 February. … but our final impression of Bharat was marred by the incredible squalor of Calcutta. Our guide said it had never been worse, with some twenty million refugees fleeing starvation in Bangladesh….

14 February. Vietnam is America’s only real ally in Southeast Asia, and wherever we go, we’re treated with anxious friendliness. Not surprising, since they’re surrounded by SSU countries, and only American military might keeps them from being overrun—especially by China, who’s been trying to absorb them for thousands of years.

(I decided not to take a side trip into the SSU, since the transportation is so expensive it would eat up half my remaining travel money. Violet went into Kampuchea to see Angkor Wat, and will join up with us in Ho Chi Minh City.)

Hanoi is a tidy, earnest place….

(15-17 February: Hue, Pleiku, Banmethuot)

18 February. The Kampucheans were not very friendly to Violet. She was even spat upon. It wasn’t simply racism, she found out. Many people believe that the independence of Nevada (and Ketchikan) is a hoax, and that visitors are spies….

(19-22 February: Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, Hiroshima)

23 February. Two days’ rest before we go on to the last leg of our travels. Nothing to do on Guam but lie on the beach, swim in the warm water, enjoy each other.

And some time to try to straighten out my feelings about Jeff. I love him, all right, but it’s not the kind of love I have for Daniel. In a way it’s a more juvenile thing, like it was with Charlie, more hormones than brain cells. We both know it can’t be permanent, and that makes it sort of romantic and wistful.

It brings me up short to realize that I’ve known him longer than I’ve known Daniel, in terms of together-time, and I probably know him better than I know Daniel.

I’ve never said anything about love to him. Who am I protecting?

(25 February-6 March: Manila, Papua, Darwin, Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Anchorage, Fairbanks, Ketchikan, Guadalajara, Mexico D.F., Acapulco)