Pack Up the Moon

We left at the height of summer. Out of Bavaria, over the picturesque hills, our caravan wound its way.

Watching Munich disappear before my eyes, I loved it so much. Art galleries. Farms in the middle of town. Flowers, so abundant they traipsed across each path. Cozy bakeries and streamlined autobahns. Window boxes. Railroad stations linking everywhere with history. The soft pastel colors of stone houses. Clock towers with clocks that actually worked. For a minute I couldn’t for the life of me think why I was leaving.

But leave we did.

“Harry,” I said, for Harry and I rode those first days together, “here I am with my dream, off to the Orient, and I’ve got to tell you, I’m sad.”

“What about?” He fiddled with the radio and found us a waltz.

“I’m not exactly sure. I just feel my life so profoundly, I could cry.”

“You’re not sad, my dear, you’re happy.” He lifted himself and adjusted so the seams of his white duck pants would align, the change he always kept in there jingling. “You just don’t recognize it as you’ve never felt it before.”

“Really?” I looked into the rearview mirror to see who I was. Yes. There I was. Young. Happy. Although Tupelo, to my great disappointment and confusion, had managed to come. It wasn’t I who’d held everything up in the end, but she, whose busy schedule had had to be reshuffled. She’d moved heaven and earth to get out of a contract.

Grudgingly, I’d conceded defeat. Blacky, busy tying up loose ends at his practice, was nowhere to be found. So I’d worked through the summer. The money I would have coming from the will would take time and red tape, and the apartment and its contents would have to be disposed of. As an American it was simply less complicated for me to let the estate lawyer handle everything from Zurich. But the money would be mine to come home to. Unrequited love leaves actually quite less of a broken heart when there’s a consoling chunk of money in the picture, take it from me.

I wore Frau Zwekl’s Bohemian garnets in my ears. They glittered and swung with my every movement and each time I saw their reflection I thanked my lucky stars. Unfortunately, they’d come to me in a what-nots cardboard luxury soap box along with Frau Zwekl’s blue crystal rosary beads and her complete set of grinning false teeth. That was a shock. Still, I couldn’t throw the teeth away and kept them just as they were in the black box with roses on it she must have always kept near her on her nightstand. I felt I owed her that. I put my I Ching coins in there and the Distelfink handkerchief. I tried to give the rosary beads to the children but at the last minute, I couldn’t. I wrapped them back up in the handkerchief and returned them to their box.

I’d known already in July that my hopes for Blacky had been dashed. I knew it the moment I’d heard that his mother, the Countess von Osterwald—in my mind a sort of queen of the Black Forest—had invited Tupelo home for an early summer weekend. I could fight but I had no power against a purse-strings-toting countess mother who was in fact a besotted fan. I imagined she cared more about Tupelo than Blacky did. I told myself he was accommodating the countess.

At first I refused to look at Tupelo’s ring. Then, heartbroken, I forced myself to, as if that would get me over it. It did not. Though unrequited, I was still in love with him—so much so that I considered her affections for him nothing more than greedy self-preservation. I thought I could see right through her. After all, she’d been the instigator in our liaison. If she loved him, how could she have? Then again, I loved him and I’d participated, too. So I was just as bad as she.

I consoled myself with wondering if Blacky didn’t occasionally feel as though he’d moved too quickly. Would I have been a satisfactory lure to him with my newfound money? Or was I fantasizing, deluding myself? And what the hell was I thinking, wishing for a man whose prerequisite for love might be money!

Even I was wise—or greedy—enough to see that any feeling of love was preferable to me to no feeling at all. And I’d been hiding for so long inside a state of numbness. This feeling of “inlove-ness” enhanced my very essence of life; went along with it, like a river beside it, refreshing and, sometimes, flooding. In a way, it had nothing to do with Blacky. It was all about me. I could feel the passion, as anyone who has been in love will remember. It sentimentalized the going to bed, delighted the closing of eyes, the looking up, even—on fair blue midnights—to the canticle of stars.

That evening, just before the border, I sat checking and rechecking my purse, thick with passport, visas, and camera equipment. At that time in my life I always seemed to be grappling with the contents of one bag or another. At least that’s what Isolde said. She was quick to point out one’s faults in her charm-school-mistress way. I think I was afraid to lose what I hadn’t already received. Holding on to everything, sort of.

Everyone was a little nervous and anxious before we’d got under way. We’d gathered in a huddle like before a big game, Isolde restlessly moving from van to van, checking our inventory, hoping to remember in the nick of time some vital forgotten item. It was the early days of Clinique and we thought that without that particular soap and moisturizer, we’d be lost. We had stacks.

Isolde’s van looked very chic, all red and paisley, with voluptuous pillows and huge mirrors in frames along the walls so it actually looked really roomy. She was very proud of that van. The Abendzeitung had run a story on us and shot the interior. They had, however, shot Tupelo inside it—looking like a harem goddess in a cacophony of scarves—and run that picture on the Sunday supplement cover.

Isolde’s nose was out of joint. But Tupelo hadn’t actually said Isolde’s van had been hers. She’d simply happened to be there when the photographer arrived and, as Isolde was off somewhere, planted herself inside and let them assume what they would.

I knew it was bad-spirited of me, but I was delighted to see a crack in the veneer of Isolde’s adoration for Tupelo. Childishly, I wished for Isolde’s fondness again. I was always second now.

In Blacky’s and Tupelo’s van, sparse by comparison, sleeping bags were rolled up neatly, a refrigerator was stocked with antibiotics and Chardonna for diarrhea and so forth. Tupelo rode, head held high, beside him. I know she thought she looked like a “real” person. She’d even put orange madras plaid curtains on the windows. She probably saw herself as Nurse Nancy to his Dr. Dan. My upper lip curled into a sneer the moment I thought of her. Still, it pleased me to see there would soon be roots growing out of her “real” blond hair. And as if that all wasn’t enough, Chartreuse had found Tupelo’s green pearls in a hock shop—at least that was his story—and then presented them to her, like she was the queen.

Wolfgang, our filmmaker, had the most official-looking van. His was new and stocked with film canisters and camera equipment. He was used to taking off on trips to far-off places. He carried a clipboard and checked things off. There was, I thought, an excess of extra batteries and spare tires in every vehicle but there would come a time when I would delight in the existence of these things, too.

Harry’s van was the best. He’d hired Chartreuse to outfit it much like a yacht, and along the walls were cabinets and shelves chock-full of books and leather straps with snaps to keep them in line in case of jolting roads. He’d done it in pine and then polyurethaned it. We were all enthralled with Chartreuse’s masterpieces of deception: false-bottom drawers and cubbies. Sort of a drug dealer’s delight, I thought. But really, it was wonderful. I loved sitting in it. Harry kept a bowl of bananas on the shelf at all times, believing that this was the only food you could eat and not get sick from while traveling. He’d fastened a brass bell up in front outside the driver’s seat. The open cabinets displayed all sorts of things to stave off boredom: game boards, a chess set, even two plastic suitcases of badminton, the only sport he allowed himself. The closed cabinets were housed with items Harry assumed Far Eastern people would be interested in and would want to barter for with their small treasures. On Chartreuse’s advice, he had one section filled with nothing but short-legged jeans. Believe it or not, there was a time when jeans only came from the West.

Reiner, once again outfitted in dry-cleaned Hemingway African safari gear, his vehicle heavy with good German Überkinger bottled water and Spaten Bier, had papered and shellacked his walls artistically with a collage of German photographers’ black and white art.

Vladimir wasn’t traveling with us. He had a show of his bronze women in Zurich on the sixteenth, which might prove too lucrative to forego, and would fly out later to meet us in Istanbul along with Daisy, who would stay on with the children until they were assimilated at their grandparents’ home in the country. Daisy was enormously put out by this. She hadn’t wanted to miss anything. But it was settled. Her translating capabilities wouldn’t be needed until farther down the road.

Evidently, Isolde and Vladimir had postponed their divorce. I think neither really wanted to go on the trip at first but neither could they figure a way to afford the trip separately, nor could they bear the thought of one having so much fun without the other. Their van, secondhand, commandeered by Isolde, beautifully lit and inviting, was, in a way, a second chance. I know Isolde practically glistened with hope.

When we’d pulled away from Isolde’s earlier that evening the cobbled street was yellow with light. The plan was to race through Austria and Yugoslavia and Greece. I was disappointed not to linger awhile longer in what was then Yugoslavia. So many houses were straw-thatched, with quaint little bridges and donkeys on low green rolling hills everywhere. But I was outnumbered by my friends, who’d grown up avoiding Middle European quaintness as hopelessly behind the times.

Six colorful vans fashioned the chain of our eastbound caravan. Isolde’s van started off first. Well, you know Isolde, she always had to be first. Vladimir would ride with her, of course, after Istanbul. Reiner’s van ran second. He too, drove alone. Later, Daisy—poor thing—would be stuck riding with him. At that point we weren’t all that flexible. We had our chartered spots and for some reason felt we had to stick to them. Later, Wolfgang would insist his van take the lead because coming onto any scene would be preferable photographically as a surprise.

Harry and I drove along next. Then came Blacky and Tupelo behind; I was happy not to have to watch them before me. As it was, I often lay in the back of the van with the curtains split just a crack, watching them sitting there driving along. I waited for them to do something lewd—something that would hurt me so much I would get over my terrible affliction—but they never did.

Chartreuse’s van took up the rear.

Just before we pulled away, Reiner came over grumbling about American politics. Without waiting for a reply, he walked away shaking his head, outraged. I would never be anything but American for Reiner.

The weather, however, was perfect. Westerners with knapsacks were churned into dust for Wolfgang and his film camera perched out the window. Still, they’d wave us pleasantly on. We motored through northern Greece without a hitch—everyone in our group had been to the Greek islands on vacation many times. We wouldn’t venture south. I didn’t mind. We were all excited to get to Asia. Istanbul, intoxicating and intense, was our gateway to the East.

It takes such a while to get used to driving great distances. You don’t realize how far it is when you look at a map. You can’t understand. But days and days go by and nothing at all happens. If it is not your turn to drive, you read. And then you can’t read anymore. You spend a lot of time with Chopin. Then Pink Floyd. Elton’s “Bennie and the Jets.” The landscape rides away and comes toward you and then away again. You can almost feel them at first, the arduous miles; long and dusty and weary—so long you think you won’t be able to bear it much longer. Only after a while they raise you up like a plateau of movement and they become life itself.

Harry kept me entertained with stories of his youth. One story was about his mother keeping his hair very long, like a girl’s. “I was a regular Shirley Temple,” he confessed.

“Kind of hard to believe when all the curls you’ve got to show for it is your little cowlick there.”

“Oh, that’s a story in itself. One day I took it upon myself to cut my own hair. I remember it as though it were yesterday.” He pulled his cowlick up. “I must have been six or seven. I took this piece of hair right here and cut it off. My mother came in before I got any farther. Oh, she screamed! I was so frozen with fear by her scream and by what I had done that this piece of hair never grew after that. Never.”

“That can’t be true!”

“It is. It might look like a cowlick but it’s really a child caught in rebellion. Oh, I was punished. I thought she’d kill me! Ah, yes.”

We looked at each other and laughed. That was the good part about riding with Harry. He revealed so much.

“Claire!” he cried. “Look! We’re going to stop up ahead. You see? It’s Istanbul!”

We peered out the window. He looked at his watch. Istanbul had arrived in a sudden flurry of activity. Neither of us was prepared for such noise after four days on the road.

Already we looked very different. Appropriately bedraggled, we fell into our roles as film people with gusto. But really we knew nothing yet. We still considered it a hardship to have to wash up in public bathrooms. We didn’t realize that on the path we had chosen there would be no such things as sanitary bathrooms.

We parked at the Hippodrome across from the Pudding Shop on Divan Yolu. The Pudding Shop was an indoor/outdoor café filled with Western travelers, hippies, drug dealers, and trilingual Turks. Chartreuse had informed us that this was the only place to go. Everyone traveling to and from India met up there and we would find out all the news of the road. The Pudding Shop was a pretty place in those days, the smells of hashish and peppermint tea reaching the tables and chairs out along the curb.

Things caught you off guard. There was the peculiar smell of coal dust and the calls to prayer that flew across the minarets and Byzantine rooftops. There were entire lanes of cobblers, pairs of grown men walking together hand in hand—so many of them fair and blue-eyed. (“Ah, the Crusades,” Harry reminded me.) It was all so new, so different, we followed Chartreuse’s instructions with docile, wide-eyed cooperation. After all, he seemed to know what he was doing and we were all suddenly like children, eager to be shown what we should do. We were none of us sure of ourselves but we imagined we carried with us a certain glamour. We thought people would vie to get close to us and our theatrical aura but we were wrong. The stars here were those travelers returning from India. Their eyes were rimmed in kohl and, yes, it must be said, there was an aura about them. A few wore earrings in their noses. They looked glamorous in their soft clothing and outstretched, unwashed hair. There was something detached about them. They weren’t like the few tourists who never left the grand hotels or even like us, our crew, excited and disheveled. These weary, slender creatures gave you the feeling they’d seen it all and were at last blasé. Little did we know that most of them were holding it in for fear of some quick-conquering venomous parasite. Well, I thought, if it’s all going to be like this, it won’t be bad at all!

I was still too shy to hold my camera in front of me and I would place it on the table and take pictures without anyone aware that he or she was being shot.

On Thursday afternoon, Chartreuse and Isolde went to pick up Vladimir and Daisy at the airport. Isolde drove. She always drove. “I drive like a man,” she would boast. More like a teenage boy, I would think.

The first thing I noticed as they wheeled Daisy’s sensible Samsonite through the thick haze of cigarette smoke into the Pudding Shop was that Daisy had circles under her eyes and had lost some weight. I knew she must have had a very hard time with the children, because we would be gone for months. I didn’t dare ask about them for fear of upsetting Isolde. I needn’t have worried, though. It wouldn’t have bothered her. Isolde was free for the first time in years. She looked like a great big thundering hippie goddess, all hooked up in her chains and belts and stomping around in her Wizard of Baghdad curled-toe men’s wedding shoes (there were no women’s to fit her), ready to do anything: anything at all! She ordered lunch for us all as though she were about to pay—which certainly she would not do.

“Well,” we all wanted to know, “how was the show?” Vladimir rubbed his palms together. “Excellent,” he beamed, looking around the ceiling, not meeting our eyes. We all knew then it had been a catastrophic failure. I thought of his latest presentation. I remembered his one upside-down woman and another unfortunate sort of stuck-in-a-can woman. I supposed it wasn’t a popular time to be berating women, placing them in demeaning positions. It had occurred to me, why then not to the critics? I noticed Harry said nothing. I wondered what Vladimir would do. It was a shame, too, because the figures he’d left behind as too mundane for the show were beautiful ones, graceful and noble. I was sure they would have impressed and delighted everyone but he’d pooh-poohed this as naive. Beauty, it seemed, was not enough in this art world of his. He thought he needed shock to get the American and Japanese buyers’ attention. I couldn’t imagine why. But he’d been so knowledgeable and convincing in his scorn for the conventional.

Vladimir brushed his handsome new traveling trousers. He kept seeming to want to wipe his hands on something.

“Just wait till you get a dose of the road.” Isolde touched him lovingly on the shoulder and handed him a napkin.

“Well, sit down, for heaven’s sake,” Wolfgang said.

There was a rumpus in the small park across the street. Some American boy had staggered out of his van half asleep and peed on the statue of Atatürk. The townspeople were outraged. He was being arrested.

I stood up and tried to push my way through to see. There was a bustle of travelers at the bulletin board, searching for messages. But Wolfgang came out and motored me back to the table. He put his hand on the curve of my back in an unnervingly familiar way. “Please don’t get involved, Claire,” he warned. “The next thing we know you’ll be arguing for his rights and getting us all arrested.”

“I just want to see what they’re going to do to—” I began, but I didn’t like his closeness and I let myself be persuaded back.

Vladimir, quickly recovering and in his all-encompassing, hulking way, held up his hands and announced, “All right. Ruhe! Silence, please. I have news.”

Through the lattice I watched the police taking away the scruffy, confused American boy.

“Claire.” Reiner rapped on his clipboard. “Are you paying attention?”

“No.”

“Well, please do. And if you’re going to get upset about every American catastrophe we pass on the road you might want to turn around and fly home. Lord knows there will be enough of them. Now, that fellow made his own choice to do what he did. We all must be responsible for our decisions. Into each life some rain must fall. Ja? Or?”

Reluctantly, I sat back down. “Sure,” I muttered. “Like some days you’re the windshield and some days you’re the bug.”

“What did she say?” Reiner said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Blacky said. “Go on, Vladimir.”

Vladimir cleared his throat. Enjoying the bunch of us hanging on his every word, he flagged the fat waiter leaning against the wall. “Could I trouble you for a cup of that delicious-looking coffee? Danke. Danke.”

Daisy gave him a hefty push. “Well, go on, then! Show them!”

“All right, all right,” he said, unrolling a newspaper. It was the Münchner Abendzeitung and there, on the bottom part of the front page, was a story about us! STAR JOINS FILM CARAVAN TO HIMALAYAS, it read. There was Tupelo in a publicity photo. There was another, smaller picture of our vehicles being readied for the journey, Wolfgang and his camera at the helm.

Our audible intakes of breath capsized the room.

“I’m dashed,” said Harry.

“No!” we all cried out. “Wow!” This was the sort of news we all relished.

The waiter placed a thick white cup of foamed coffee before Vladimir, and Isolde automatically nudged a paper napkin toward him. He moved it an inch back in the other direction in a dismissive, corrective motion and I thought, Christ, he’s a pill. I was getting a little sick of his finicky arrogance toward her.

Harry, always moved by food, put in, “You must try this tziziki!”

“Look, Tupelo,” Blacky patted her shoulder, “on the next page, too. It’s you!”

“Oh! How thrilling!” Tupelo snatched the paper. We all stood around her scanning the column, each of us hoping to catch sight of his or her own name.

“But they only mention Tupelo, Wolfgang, and Vladimir,” Isolde said at last, disappointed.

“Well,” Vladimir explained, “that’s understandable. They’re only really interested in the newsworthy members. The eye-catchers. They do mention models aboard.”

“Yes, but—” Harry started to say something, then, remembering he’d long ago chosen the behind-the-scenes world, gave up.

The waiter arrived with our lunches of spicy lentils and yogurt kabobs. After days of moussaka, this was a happy change. We all sat down and settled in, passing the paper around the Pudding Shop, delighted at our own notoriety. No one seemed as impressed as we were, though, and each of us thought longingly of people we knew in Munich and what they must have thought when they saw us in print.

Then Vladimir said, in a drawling way that told me he’d been saving it up, “They tell me at the paper the readers absolutely devour anything to do with Tupelo.”

Tupelo did not move. She was hunched over her plate and now her eyes—only her eyes—followed him with catlike intent.

Vladimir leaned back in his chair. “You see, you’re the only recognizable name to the everyday reader and—well, I thought we might keep them in touch with your experiences.”

“You mean like a travelogue for the stay at home?” Blacky said in his trying to get a grip on the situation but reasonable voice.

Vladimir’s amused eyes returned to Tupelo’s. “Yes.”

“Tell-tell-tell you what,” Harry stuttered with excitement, “let’s find Tupelo some native paraphernalia and wire the shots directly to the paper.”

“Claire could shoot you,” Daisy said.

“I certainly could,” I maintained glibly.

“No,” Reiner said, “this is too important. I’ll handle this.”

I looked at Tupelo. She was looking at me. The cat had the cream.

“Well,” Isolde drawled unenthusiastically, “they’ve already done the story.” It was hot. The air was close and she leaned her head back to catch the draft from the overhead fan.

“Nonsense,” Wolfgang said. “People love to feel as though they’re along for the ride, but without the danger.”

“Not only that,” Reiner put in, “it’s automatic publicity for the film.”

“If they’re not sick to death of it by then,” Isolde said. There was a stillness to her voice.

Daisy said, “Oh, I think it’s more of a tease. Get them interested. You know. And involved.”

“It’s a good idea,” Harry admitted. “Think of the reflected glory once we get back to Munich.”

That made good sense to us all. I picked up Chartreuse’s guitar and strummed. I was useless, though. They all told me to please stop. Wolfgang leaned across and took it from me. I didn’t know what was with him. He kept looking at me with this goofy smile.

“Look, Tupelo.” Vladimir snatched the rest of Harry’s baklava and wolfed it down. “What do you say let’s trot over to the bazaar and find you some agate and funny baubles, shall we? Dress you up.”

“Oh, agate!” Tupelo jumped up. “Agate brings good luck!”

Chartreuse had been very quiet. Always one to see which way the wind blew before he staked his direction, at this proposal he stood right up. “Excellent.” He carefully wiped his mouth. “I have a cousin with one of the best shops in the old bazaar. Amber. Agate.”

“Don’t go buying all sorts of rubbish so early on in the trip,” Blacky warned Tupelo darkly. “Remember we have limited space and we’ll be wanting to utilize it later.” It was well known that Tupelo, wild for sweets, would find these confection things in the latest bazaar, then return to her van and huddle in her cushions, grinding the sugary pinks and white halvah to a brick in her body, shuddering with disgust and delight, making herself sick.

“Oh, you silly old stick in the mud! How much room will some pretty baubles take?” Tupelo made a disdaining purse of her lips and lifted one shoulder to her ear. Her loosely knitted sweater fell over the other shoulder. The fabric teetered at the beginning of one creamy and opulent breast. She put her pink tongue to the top of her teeth and mischievously peeked around the room. When she had everyone’s attention—and she certainly did—she shrugged. “Anyway, darlink, it’s for publicity.” She leaned over and took my hand in hers and put it on her breast. “Feel my heart,” she breathed. “It can’t catch up!”

An unnatural stirring slithered through me. I pulled my hand away and drained my coffee cup.

“You think everything is always about you.” Daisy narrowed her eyes.

“Everything is always about me,” Tupelo said.

“How quickly the voyage to enlightenment reverts to shallow commercialism the minute there’s a mark to be made,” Isolde remarked, sliding her elbow out on the table and fitting her chin in her hand.

“That’s a funny thing for you to say.” Vladimir signaled to the waiter. “Now if the shoe were on the other foot …”

“Hooph.” Harry laughed. “Insult to injury.”

I didn’t like that, either. I thought Vladimir had gone too far. I’d almost forgotten how nasty he could be.

“You don’t think I came along to seek enlightenment,” Vladimir admitted. “I am hoping to take in those erotic sculptures in India, though. You know, in Khajuraho. I mean, just because I’m not interested in trading all my worldly goods for a song—”

“What worldly goods?” Reiner was setting up his portable backgammon game. “I seem to remember you’ve more or less chiseled them away, too, eh?”

I was glad. I was actually happy to see Vladimir thrown a loop.

Avoiding Isolde’s dejected eyes, Vladimir took a long last draught of his coffee. He was startled by the dregs at the bottom, however, and had to spit them inelegantly into his napkin.

“Yes, indeed.” Harry stood, scraping his chair against the play of mosaics. “Public relations. All tax deductible. I’ll come along, if you don’t mind. They have something called the Sahaflar Carsisi, if you can believe it. It must be a marvelous antique books area. Do you know it, Chartreuse?”

Chartreuse tossed an inadequate coin onto the table. His eyes gleamed. “Mais bien sur. It’s just outside the Western Gate.” He turned to me. “Claire. Here’s your key. I borrowed it to put my guitar case in there.”

I hadn’t even felt it missing. I pocketed it.

He extended a benevolent arm in the air and ushered them away. “Venez, venez. I’ll take you there.”

Daisy and Reiner were already hard at a game of backgammon. I had to give it to her. She hadn’t once complained about being saddled with Reiner. She really was a good sport.

Isolde sat there pretending not to be fuming. I knew just what she was thinking. How could Vladimir come all this way and not want to spend time alone with her first thing?

“They’ll be right back,” I said cheerfully. “And Chartreuse is with them.”

She gave me a black look. “I know Vladimir,” she said. “He’ll want her to model for him.”

“Well,” I reasoned, “he’d be a fool not to. What with business not going so well.” I saw her quick look. “I mean,” I revised, “artists always have to be aware of the whim of the public, don’t they?” You had to be so careful. Isolde wanted solidarity but she also didn’t want you to notice that Vladimir might be floundering. I went on. “At least you’ll be able to keep an eye on them. Well. They can’t exactly wander off. Really. How far could they go?”

“To hell and back,” Daisy, who’d seemed so oblivious, piped up. She took a bite of a hard peach and made a disgusted face. “Tupelo makes me sick. Thinks she’s a goddess! Did you catch that shimmy-shimmy business? What a tease! She just loves to be looked at, doesn’t she!”

Actually, in my heart of hearts, I enjoyed looking at Tupelo. I liked it especially when she was being exhibitionistic and often replayed such moments at night when I was in my sleeping bag. I understood that many inexperienced women fell in love with the bad guy, were attracted to the bad guy—but here I was finding myself attracted to the bad girl! “At least they remain predictable.” Isolde fluffed her long dark hair up as though she could care less. She pulled a beaded headband down over her forehead. It didn’t suit her. As a matter of fact she looked ridiculous. I hated to see her look foolish. She was my friend. And it burned me up that Vladimir treated her so offhandedly. I leaned across the table and adjusted the band, moving it closer to her hairline.

“You are a funny little thing,” she told me. But I knew she felt better.

Blacky took me aside. “I’m off to the mosque Sofia,” he said. “The Blue Mosque. Want to come?”

I looked back at Isolde. She’d recovered enough to fall into conversation with a suspicious-looking group of travelers from Australia. One of them was letting her sample his dish of sutlac, the famous milky pudding. Boldly, he’d moved to our table.

I didn’t have to think long. “Of course!”

Our van was parked just across the road. I ran a brush through my hair and locked the van.

I flew toward him.

“You’ll need something to cover your head. They won’t let you in like that.”

“Oh.” I went back and got my bridesmaid’s hat and jeans jacket. The minaret over Sofia sounded the wailing pledge to Allah. The sun captured the galaxies of wood-smoke dust and I breathed it all in. Here. Now.

I saw my camera bag on the floor of the backseat. It was as though it saw me. I hesitated. I didn’t want to be encumbered. I wanted to fly like the wind with Blacky. On the other hand, this would be a great photo opportunity. Luckily, I am a Capricorn and duty prevails. I took the camera.

And then we were off, jostling down the cobblestoned hill to the mosque. The very walls were mosaic masterpieces of blue, glimmering with time and light. I took out my camera but was promptly ordered to put it away by the harried temple guard, pure central casting from the Kasbah.

A shock of street boys flew into us, knocking my hat off, then running away, laughing down the street.

We were told to remove our shoes before entering and I sat on the step undoing my complicated ribbons of ankle ties. My espadrilles were a good six inches high and when I took them off and stood beside Blacky, he jumped.

“Good God!” He grabbed hold of his chest. “Look how short you are!”

I scratched my neck and looked up at him. “Sorry,” I muttered and turned away.

He grabbed hold of my arm. “Claire. You’re just a bit of a thing!”

I straightened up.

He threw back his head and roared with laughter.

I felt, as usual, diminished.

“No,” he said, “don’t look like that! You’re lovely. It’s just … well, for a model …” He couldn’t help it, he laughed again. “I thought you were small before but, really, you’re very small.”

“All right, all right.” I pushed him off. “Let’s go in and have a look. They don’t like you laughing like that.”

It was true that the local men were eyeing us with hostile disapproval.

Soberly, we filed into the magnificent place and tried to be reverent but every time he looked toward me and then had to readjust his line of vision he would start to laugh. A reverent Turk looked up from his position of prayer and clicked his tongue reprovingly at us. We moved to a darker corner of the mosque.

One of the caretakers was chasing the same little gang of street urchins away from the trundle of Japanese tourists coming in.

“When I was a child,” Blacky said, catching sight and looking longingly after them, “I used to pretend I lived on the street.” He wrung his hat in his hands. “I so hated the captivity of bourgeois life.”

“Did you?”

“Oh, yes. I felt suffocated by it.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well. I just hated the hypocrisy of it. Smiling and being pleasant to people you simply couldn’t bear.”

I was thrilled to imagine him young, a small boy all alone at a party in a Black Forest castle. I’d never really had him to myself. I was so glad he was confiding in me. “Is that why you went away to Vietnam? To do something genuine with your life?”

He smiled sadly at me. “I didn’t go to save the world, if that’s what you mean. I went to have a good time.”

Feeling oddly offended, I said, “I trust you enjoyed yourself?”

“I did. It was the best time of my life.”

“Isolde told me you came home devastated.”

“I wasn’t. I was brown as a berry.”

I turned away.

“All right,” he admitted. “I was drinking half a bottle of scotch a day.” He peered through the splinter of glass in the wall. “I just wanted to be free. You’ve no idea how impossible that is with family.”

I harrumphed. “I have a family, you know.”

“Not like mine, I assure you.”

“Maybe they are. My mother would rather have me secretarying from nine to five in any midtown, fluorescent-lit security. What does she care if I drive to India? I’ll never get to Mass in India. How can I put it? My mom. It’s like she loves me too much, likes me not enough, you know? She wanted a daughter like Daisy: tidy, discerning, a girl who makes her bed. I wanted a mother like Isolde: sacrilegious, fast driver, out of town. We always feel like we fail each other, see?”

He said nothing. It pierced me that he wasn’t interested in the least about my background. Or worse, that he thought it beneath consideration. Still, wasn’t I running away from the very same thing? And hadn’t we enough time spread before us when all these things could be talked about at length?

He studied me with interest but at last I did not care. I had my own pain to contend with. I began, wholeheartedly, to weep.

“What is it, Claire?” He put a tender arm around my shoulder.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I sobbed. “It’s just, well, it’s so boring driving all day that I’ve had the chance to think of things I never wanted to face before. Do you know what I mean? To remember what it was that kept me moving farther and farther away. And—at times—to burn with regret …”

“Regret?” He gave a sob of incredulousness. “At your age?”

“Yes. Once,” I said, “just before I came to Europe, my American friends and I had chipped in and rented a cottage in Montauk. That’s like a little town on the beach. I was in my first throes of independence—I was passing myself off as a model but I hardly worked at all. I’d had a couple of jobs with Ingénue and Seventeen and so people knew who I was but there was no money in that.” My voice had calmed down as I told my tale. I wasn’t crying anymore. “Actually, I think I was working as a Jim Buck’s dog walker in Manhattan and didn’t care to be associated with anything I actually was. Anyway, my new friends and I had this house out there in the end of Long Island, in Montauk, and my twin brother, Michael, who’d just graduated from the police academy, showed up. He hadn’t paid a share and so was not officially entitled to come. Yet other boys were milling about and welcomed just because they had surfboards and wore madras plaid. Till my dying day I will see my brother’s happy face coming toward the door. He was loaded down with his chess set and sleeping bag. I barred the door with fury. ‘Michael,’ I hissed, ‘you can’t just expect to come out here and stay! This is my deal, not yours.’

“I was prepared to do battle. I reared up on my indignation. He was such a cheapskate. He thought he could just waltz in on my coattails.

“But I hadn’t had to say another word. I saw his face. Realization tapped in. He stood still for a second, uncomprehending, and then he realized I just didn’t want him there. He was stung. You could hear the big waves pounding the shore on the beach across the street, behind the East Deck Motel. He just turned and walked down the pebbled driveway to his car. Aggravated, I ran after him. He didn’t stop. He just carefully put his stuff in the trunk of his blue Duster.

“‘Listen, Michael,’ I explained, still annoyed but realizing he was leaving. ‘You just don’t get it.’

“‘So tell me,’ he said, rearranging his seven extra oil canisters he kept in there to keep the car going. ‘Get it all out.’

“‘You can’t just show up out of nowhere and expect to join in! Michael, listen to me.’

“‘I heard you, Claire.’ He removed my hand from his arm. ‘Don’t worry. You’re clear as a bell. I get it. I’m leaving.’

“Ashamed that I’d gone too far, I grumbled, ‘You don’t have to leave right away, for God’s sake. You just got here.’

“He turned and looked me square in the eye. ‘There isn’t a thing on this earth that could get me to stay,’ he said.

“‘Michael,’ I said.

“He got in the car and he drove off, after five hours there, now five hours back. That’s how he was. He wouldn’t try to horn in on my territory ever again, you see. He died four days later. Killed in a filthy hallway. He was trying to get the knife away from a junkie. He just walked up to him, you know? He thought the guy was just a little kid. See, he was just a rookie. And he was so used to little kids. He thought—” I stopped, unable to go on.

Beneath the gold-crusted dome, a guide loudly commenced the history of the mosque in French to a bevy of Arabs, returning me to the here and now. I turned away, pretending dutifully to understand every word.

Blacky could have said anything and I would have stood there. We stood there for a long time. And then, unexpectedly, a robe of eroticism swept over me. I could feel the short hairs on my neck nearest him stand up. Like a plume of smoke my scent mushroomed into the air. My skin felt lewd and exposed. I guess it was everything all coming together at once. Tupelo’s teasing, his gentle closeness, the emotion of my confession, the life force asserting itself after glimpsing death.

The tour guide kept on speaking. We stood there close enough to touch but not touching. It was so dark. Just being near to him, I found I was breathing heavily. It never occurred to me that he might be aroused as well. I only thought that he must feel my desire, so loud the throbbing of my heart and intense the heat seemed to me. And something else. I’d been so afraid my feelings for Tupelo would confine me to that side of eroticism forever. It wasn’t that I regretted but I wondered if it eliminated me from enjoying the opposite sex. Now I knew it did not. There was my happy libido, intact as ever. Gratefulness welled up inside me and I thought I was going to cry again from the sheer relief of it. But then I remembered Tupelo and Vladimir taking off like that back at the Pudding Shop and it occurred to me Blacky might be simply using me to pay her back. Of course. What an idiot I was! Standing here telling him about my private miseries. I grew cool right away. I adjusted my spine. But when I lowered my gaze to step away from him, the light touched him and I saw from the straining outline of his jeans that he, too, was aroused.

He jerked backward, though. He’d sensed my dismissal. “I’ve had enough,” he said and turned and walked away. Eagerly I followed him out. We sat together on the step and put on our shoes. “You have excellent feet,” he observed appreciatively. “High instep. You’re lucky, you know. A lot of people can’t keep up.”

I thrilled to these words. Tupelo had stubby little feet for her size, and flat. She wasn’t a walker. I was more suited to him that way. He got up, brushed himself off, and started to walk away. “Do you know what I’d love to do?”

“What?” I tripped along after him, holding my hat.

“I’d like to take a Turkish bath.” Then he seemed unsure. He said, “We’ll only be here for a day or two. We’ll never have the chance again.”

“You don’t have to convince me,” I said.

He seemed to know where he was going and I followed, up the cobblers’ hill and through backyards of grapevines to Sultan Ahmed. The wailing voice of Om Kalsoum penetrated the air. We walked for a long time. We went down hidden alleys and came to an Arcadian series of ledges. Blacky knocked at one of the ancient doors. “Is your heart beating the way mine is?” he asked, searching my eyes.

This can’t be happening, I thought. “Yes,” I admitted.

“Good God, that coffee was strong! We’ll be up all night!”

“Oh.” I saw what he meant. Actually, now that he mentioned it, I realized my heart was indeed hammering away from the caffeine. “I thought it was you,” I said.

That got me a hearty laugh. But I’d meant it. Wait a minute. Had I only imagined his arousal? Now I was unsure.

There was a towering wooden door, studded with brass and turquoise. I took its picture, then one of Blacky before it. The door was creaked open by two old men, twins, one with a milk eye. Because I held my camera already cocked, I was able to take their picture before they realized it. What a shot! I congratulated myself. Blacky cleared his throat and proceeded to address them politely in first English, then German, then French, then Italian. None of these was understood. However, money was the key. They had a swift discussion without words: he held some out, they took it all. We entered a sort of tiled bank where our belongings were put in a locker. Then, together, they led the way down a dark and hollow-sounding corridor. I was placed in the hands of an old woman and carted off behind a lattice, through a door, and down a tunnel. I assumed this was the women’s division. She handed me over to another hobbling old woman, this one as good as naked and with no more than four or five teeth in her mouth. Now I was not only disappointed, but frightened. She was carrying what looked like a mild cat-and-iron scourging broom. She scurried me down another long, dank corridor; we seemed to be going underground. A door opened and suddenly we stood beneath a huge dome. Tiny stained glass windows here and there let in rays of light that pierced the thick steam.

Alabaster sewers emitted drizzles of water from copper spigots, like Greek aqueducts. The water tripped and danced along, then poured into the center of the room. I caught my breath in wonder. The women waiting to grab hold of me nodded in jabbering approval. There seemed to be no other customers so I got their full attention. I removed my clothing. “Naa naa,” the one wagged at me, implying that I must give her my underpants, too. Awful feeling. “No, no,” I said. There was a moment where I thought I could still run. But I thought of Blacky, going through the same procedure down the hall somewhere. I almost laughed. Still, I tried to stop them but they persisted, a little bit angry now at my ignorance. I was reassured by this outrage and finally surrendered. What the heck, I decided. This will never happen to me again. So off went the underpants and I lowered them over to her—she was all of three feet tall—gingerly. She snatched them up and I wondered if I would ever again see those tanga Triumph briefs that had cost a good eighteen marks. And if I did, what Asian strain of virus would they carry? They transported every strip of my clothing away. That startled me. I thought of stories of girls dropped down false-bottom rugs and kept as harem slaves. Steam weakened and softened me, though, and all the while these women with their broomy things swept away at my skin. It went on and on. Waxy balls of sugar were applied to my legs to remove any hair, their old sacks dangling and penduluming past my horrified nose. They didn’t care. They chattered and hummed—these were their working clothes. At one point they tried to do away with my rusty thatch of pubic hair and were surprised that I should want to retain it. When I was finally drunk with dampness and heat, they laid me down on a loose mat and began to rub me. Shyly I tried to smile. “Aaahhh.” They liked that, rubbed harder with their loofah sponges. Embarrassingly, gray gobs of skin were coming off my body; layers, like from a filthy snake. I couldn’t believe it. Was that me? But another one of the women was at my top, cranking away at my head, loosening my neck. I remember lying there half asleep, half euphoric, a line of dribble falling out the side of my mouth and me not minding, my feet being wheedled and prodded and massaged on and on. In the distance I could hear the calls to Allah.

When it was over, I was given my belongings. My clothes had been cleaned and pressed. I remember being let out the great studded door and my wonder as I emerged from that place into the Turkish evening. It had felt like we’d been far away for a long, long time. Blacky and I beheld each other. Distractedly, he patted his cigarettes down into his shirt pocket. He had this way of smiling. I don’t know. It made you feel like you were part of something.

There was an alley that sloped to a cellar. It was all tiled like the inside of the baths but it was abandoned, probably for years. I leaned against the yellowed, grimy tiles.

“Look at you,” he said and came toward me.

We stood like that for a long while, then suddenly he seemed to come to himself. He sort of shook himself off and turned away. I followed. We began to walk up the crooked path and with every step I felt as though I were lifting, physically lifting, above myself. I said so to Blacky and he said, yes, he was experiencing the same sensation. I can only liken it to when as a child you’d stand in a doorway and press outward with your hands then step away and your hands raise themselves up into the air.

With wonder he said, “I can’t imagine ever forgetting this feeling, can you?”

“No.”

Our eyes locked in a bond of souvenir. That would have to be enough for me, I told myself. This wasn’t a man who slept around. Once he was committed, he would honorably restrain himself from frivolous dalliances. And, I realized now, that’s what I would have been. He didn’t belong to me.

It was warm outside, the evening upon us. We took our sweaters off and tied them around our waists. We came upon the port. Little boats bobbed in the sea. “Want to take one out?” he said.

“What, now?”

“Yeah.”

“What if something happens?”

“What could happen?”

“I don’t know.”

So we rented a rowboat and took turns pulling all the way out into the harbor. Huge fishing boats came and went around us, rolling us in their wake. The sun had grown huge in the west. We stopped rowing and lay there under and over the uncomfortable benches, bobbing lazily up and down, the green water sloshing against us as we basked in the sun’s last warmth. That was one thing Blacky and I had in common: we both loved that sun.

“So,” I said finally. “You’re engaged.”

He turned from me, pretending to admire the delicate minarets of Topkapi. “Claire,” he said finally, “there are things you don’t understand.”

“It’s okay,” I said. “I get it. You have responsibilities to your family.”

He sat up. “It’s not that.”

“Oh. Well, if it’s not that then you’re right.” I threw my arms up. “I don’t understand. Oh. Look. Please don’t go lighting up another cigarette. Every time something is about to be said, you light up a darn cigarette and everything gets put off. And then nothing ever happens.”

He must have heard the real unhappiness in my voice because suddenly he leaned over with terrible clumsiness—as though despite himself—and covered my mouth with his. I remember that kiss. I can close my eyes and taste the salt on his full lips. Jesus, there are moments in life that are good.

It took us a long while to get back to shore. We sang as we rode: “Danny Boy,” the only song we both knew the words to—me from home and he from lonely boys in Vietnam. I sang out loud and clear. I felt the air turn cold, the tautness of the rope, the peeling green paint on the oars.

When we got to shore we strode along, peering in windows where ladies in kerchiefs prepared meals. We smelled the turmeric and cumin and the sauciness of lamb. I grew excited thinking of the scrumptious food and rich coffee that awaited us at the Pudding Shop. We walked more quickly through the dust and commotion of tooting vehicles.

“I’m hungry,” we both said at the same moment then laughed happily.

“Come on, then,” he said, taking my elbow. Looking over his shoulder, he said, “I wish I knew the state of my liver. So I could go on drinking or end it.”

By tens and then hundreds, the sky filled with stars. I couldn’t wait to get back and have them all see us together.

“It’s too dark to shoot,” I said, “just let me put my camera in the van,” and I headed across the street while he stood there and waited. I always told people I only shot in natural light because I liked the result but the truth was I hadn’t got the hang of the flash contraption yet. I was whistling as I crossed the street. The van had a tricky lock and it took me a while to get in. There was Chartreuse’s guitar case on the bed. I looked around. I knew immediately he’d gone through our things because even Harry’s neatly folded trousers were sticking out of the false-bottom backseat, caught by the hurry he must have been in when he’d snapped it shut. I remembered Chartreuse’s enthusiasm when he’d told me about that drawer. Unable to resist, I lifted it just a crack and peered in.

Why, the little monkey! A sheaf of kimdunkari, inlaid gems—special ones—lay there in a saddle of soft metal. The encrusted stones glimmered through years of filth. But though they were filmy with age and grime, they were very valuable; you could see that right away. He must have stuck it there when he came back from the bazaar, knowing no one would come across it.

I lay my camera under the bed. Then, uncomfortable, I picked it up. I’d keep it with me. I didn’t like the way it all felt. Where had he stolen that? I wondered. And why was I spending my young life with thieves? I didn’t have long to think about it, though, because once I crossed over the street I saw that Blacky’d gone in without me. I hurried in. He was already sitting at the table. And Tupelo, eyes glimmering with fun, sat rocking on his lap.

Why was it that in stories, when you found the one of your dreams, he was always one way or another, when in life, the hero might be all the things you’d ever want, but he’s also judgmental, parsimonious, jealous, and, most painful of all, flirtatious.

“Hullo, Claire!” Wolfgang waved to me from behind the camera. “Come! Join us!”

I must have stood there in the doorway, my feelings written all over my face. But Wolfgang had the camera pointed toward me. He was always looking at me with it. Chartreuse played me in, strumming some dramatic opening. If I hesitated it was only for a moment. I pretended to smile. If Blacky was going to act like nothing had happened then so could I. I was getting used to it. Still, it seemed a little ironic to me that after all that had happened, once again I was alone in the world with my jeans jacket and my camera, my six-inch espadrilles, and my floppy, here-I-am-again-the-bridesmaid hat.