We arrived back in Herat very late. I expected Tupelo to be waiting with, at the very least, a loaded gun. She had been to the silk merchants’ stalls, though, and was guiltily folding away her packets of glory. She had her back to us but I could see the ribbon of vermillion being stuffed silkily under the table. Yet I was too thirsty to worry about her vain acquisitions. She turned with a big false smile on her face, the tea pitcher in her hand, and cups for us all. She had poise, I’ll give her that.
If I hadn’t known she’d been up to something already, I would have then, because she was nice to me in front of everyone.
“You look all in,” she said, handing me the first cup. We all sat down. Greedily, I finished mine and turned back for more but she was just reaching across to give Blacky his and we got in each other’s way. It seemed we were always getting in each other’s way. Clumsily, she stumbled and dropped the pitcher. It fell to the ground and crashed apart. Everyone gave a cry of vexation. It
would take a while for the next pot to boil. Boiled water was precious and there was no drinking anything not boiled.
We were both sorry, the others—dying of thirst—more than me. We sat about the fire waiting for the pot to boil.
“We’ve been to Bamiyon,” Blacky announced.
“Ah, Bamiyon,” Vladimir said, munching on walnuts, his legs up on a hassock. “The faceless Buddhas of time. I would have liked to come.” Isolde crouched at his feet, massaging them. He didn’t seem to mind. His head was thrown back in ecstasy. He lowered his chin with effort. “No chance of us going back?”
“No!” both Blacky and I shouted, our muscles sore from the hours of tedious throttling. But Blacky was happy. I could see it all around him. And I was happy, too. We kept bursting into laughter at odd moments. We arranged ourselves on cushions on the rug and ate mutton strips and hunks of bread soaked in chicken broth. There was yogurt—there was always yogurt—and grapes and pomegranates. Wolfgang walked around us in a circle, filming. It was our last night in Herat and he wanted to make sure he got it all. Daisy and Reiner played badminton. They got more use out of that set! Reiner would give a short blast with his whistle every time he scored.
“What’s with you, Claire?” Reiner poked me. “Don’t you think you ought to be shooting?”
“I know I should,” I murmured, “but the thought of getting up and changing film seems like an enormous job.” I just lay there. Blacky smiled at me from across the room. I noticed Chartreuse watching me. He seemed glad. Everyone was getting along so well. I stupidly believed it was all the good karma Blacky and I had produced. I should have taken better note of Tupelo’s glittering emerald, telling and alive in the firelight.
Harry couldn’t resist showing off all the treasures he’d finagled from the locals. Pots old as the hills. Kuchi dresses. He flung them over us; wonderful, many-colored, vast-skirted dresses
with beading and sleeves in still different colors. “Claire!” He slung one across my lap. “I bought this one for you!”
“For me?” I held it to my face. It was cotton, very soft, made of jewel colors: lapis and ruby and on the bib rows of vibrant, hand-worked beading. The skirt had so much material that if you twirled, it would stand straight out. I’d never had anything so gorgeous, so detailed. “I don’t know what to say!”
Harry, pleased with himself, brought out his little gifts for everyone. Then he stood there rocking back and forth, watching us, jingling the change in his pocket.
“But, but …” everyone protested.
“Tut, tut.” He brushed away our protests. “We all needed a little treat, what? Time for a bauble or two!”
We ate ravenously that night. Although we tried our best to refrain from openly showing affection, Blacky and I kept smiling at each other. And we all got stoned. Except Harry, who seemed content to reap the emotional rewards of his own generosity. “Don’t forget to lock up your things,” he would say, like a parent. I didn’t think he’d got on well with his. When he spoke of them he spoke of punishments. It was his own private mantra.
Vladimir said, “I really wanted to go see those statues.” He turned to Isolde. “You know, if you hadn’t had to go to the marketplace—”
“Oh, stop glowering!” Tupelo defended Isolde. “Look at all the wonderful souvenirs she bought!”
“Go on,” Daisy urged her, “show us what you’ve bought.” She stood in the hard glow of a dangling lightbulb with a fingernail scissors. She was trimming Reiner’s straggly ponytail. “And so cheap!” Isolde marveled. As if to prove it, she opened her basket of hand-knit, leather-soled socks. We all agreed they were practical, beautiful, and would make excellent gifts when we returned to Europe.
“Yes, but did she have to buy so many?” Vladimir cried.
“How many?” Wolfgang asked.
Isolde looked at us with innocence. “Just eighty pair,” she said.
I think we laughed for half an hour.
The next morning I slept longer than anyone. I awoke with a raging headache.
Wolfgang came in. “I can’t believe you’re not up yet! Come on, Claire! We’re going to Kabul! Don’t you want to shoot it?”
“Yes,” I said and tried to get up. I felt my brain move. I squinted and looked at him. “I think I need a cup of tea. That hashish must have been too strong for me.”
I wrapped myself in one of the blankets and went out to the others, who were already set to leave. Isolde handed me a cup of tea. She looked at me strangely. “It’s warm in here,” she said.
“No, it isn’t,” I argued. “It’s freezing.”
I was feeling low. I sat down. “You know, I don’t think I will go.”
“She’s depressed,” Daisy told the others. It was beginning to annoy me that she always felt she had to interpret my motives. I said so.
“Claire, there’s no staying behind. We’re leaving,” Harry said.
I stood there in my blanket. “I’m dizzy,” I said in an aggravated tone. “I need some time, all right?”
“Tch.” Tupelo snorted malevolently. “She’s showing off. Looking for sympathy.”
Isolde screwed up her face. “Sympathy for what?”
Reiner said, “It’s not like you to be cranky, Claire.”
Blacky put his hand on my face. “She’s burning up,” he said.
“Oh, great. Just great,” Vladimir said.
Chartreuse dashed in the door. “Let’s go! Off we go!”
“Claire’s sick,” Isolde said.
“Merde,” Chartreuse said.
I ran at breakneck speed for the outhouse. When I returned they were all standing there, waiting. That’s all I remember. I must have passed out. There was no possible way I could travel. I was ill. Really ill. Too ill to be frightened if I would live or die. I was simply, all-consumedly ill.
For many days and nights I remained sick. It was holding everybody up. “Well, she must be getting better now,” they would say. But I did not. Blacky came up with all his superior German medicines. “She must be taking a turn soon,” he would reassure them.
Still, there was no turn for the better. It went on for so long, it became at last a possibility that I might die. Through a haze of fever I heard them discussing me. Daisy was concerned that my family be alerted so they could come for the body. It was Blacky’s anger that jolted me to consciousness. “Just wait until she’s dead before you start referring to her as a body!” he yelled at them. He realized what he’d said and that I’d heard him. From my ravaged body on the cot my eyes met his. He sank down to the chair and put his head into his hands. The fever washed over me and I was gone again, but I remember his despair.
There was not one moment in all that time as he cared for me that I saw any sign of disgust or aggravation. He wasn’t just caring, I realized even in my delirium, he lived a vocation. If you were sick he was yours. I shall never forget that. And another thing I remembered, in and out of my nightmares: Tupelo’s face as she’d handed me that cup of tea. It hadn’t been hot, that tea I’d so ravenously drunk. It hadn’t—I realized now as I lay writhing on my cot—even been boiled. And Tupelo, it occurred to me in my moments of clarity, was many things but never, to my knowledge, clumsy.
One time I awoke with a jolt and saw her sitting on my bed. She held a silk scarf over her nose and mouth to cover a cough. But she wasn’t looking at me. She didn’t seek me out within my eyes. She was scrutinizing me, weighing, I thought, just how sick
I was. It was like I wasn’t a person. I was past being a person. Like I was already dead because I had no more sexuality. And she’d only seen me as sexually useful.
I remember quite clearly that I turned my back on her.
The rest of them decided to carry on. They were terrified. I could see it in their eyes when they peeked in, not coming close. Although Blacky insisted what I had was probably not contagious, there was no way he could be sure. They didn’t want to die. I couldn’t blame them. They couldn’t afford to wait for me to die and so Blacky would stay on with me until I did.
I dreamed. Nightmares. I saw my brother. He was in that hallway where he met his death. How had he felt? How long had it hurt? I struggled to run. “Claire!” he called out to me. “Claire, come back!” I woke up to Blacky sitting there on the edge of my cot, his sleeves rolled up, his glasses on. He puzzled over what to do next, for although he still had me on his strongest antibiotics, nothing seemed to work. He rocked with exhaustion. Then came the cooling gauze on my hot forehead. Cool water dripping down my cheek. I clung to that.
Once, Chartreuse came in and placed a small red velvet cushion under my head. He looked at me and shed a tear, then walked away, anguished.
However, fooling everyone, I lived. One morning—the very morning the others were packing up to leave—I awakened to see the vans pulling away. Helplessly I watched them go. I was so weak I could barely lift my head. What will become of me? I thought. But I noticed Blacky’s Roy Orbison eyeglasses left behind on my nightstand. And then, I was astonished to see Blacky sleeping on the cot beside me. He was exhausted. One arm was flung across his face. His foot, lumpy with mosquito bites, hung over the side.
A bird sang shyly in the courtyard. I lifted myself to a sitting position. Putrid gauze was stuck to my arm, my neck. I peeled it
from me and reached for the fresh cloth. I dipped it into the fresh water and caressed myself with it. It felt so good. Then, exhausted, I lay myself back on the pillow and gazed out the window with hollowed eyes. I had been near death, I knew, because I was now so far from it.
He opened his eyes and looked at me. The air must have been unpleasant. But sun shone weakly through the vapid windows. “I’d kill for a cup of tea,” I said.
He rolled over to me and touched my cheek. “Fever’s broke,” he said and folded himself onto the chair, falling asleep almost instantly. I watched him sleep while the sun rose in the sky.
A man came in. He jabbered in Afghani. I’d no idea what he said. He poured the night’s water on top of Blacky and I thought, That’s it, it’s all over now, he’ll die of the germs. But he stood up, shaking himself like a dog, and came over to me. He sank down onto a stool. “I was so afraid,” he confided. “I thought I’d have to go to America and tell your parents you were dead and I hadn’t been able to save you.”
“It would have been terrible for them,” I found the strength to say. I realized he was weeping in relief.
The man had gone outside. Suddenly Blacky stood up. He sort of sniffed the air.
“What?” I said.
He hardly heard me. He went outside to the van, picking up a shovel as he went.
There was a terrible commotion. Blacky was shouting. Other men shouted in Afghani. I was terrified. Then he came back in holding his shovel over his head. I must have still been delusional because for a moment I thought he’d come in to bury me.
“They dug a hole and positioned us over it,” he hissed. “Remember when they guided the vans into the enclave? I remember thinking they’d put us right over a hole and I’d better watch it when I backed up. Well, now I know why! One of them laid himself nicely
into the hole and wedged a huge brick of hashish under our van! Can you believe it? They expected us to carry it over the borders, I suppose. Then they would have come and fetched it.”
I gaped at him from hooded eyes. “What did you do to them?”
He swung the shovel and stopped it midway. “I just threatened them with this. I threw their hashish at them. They won’t come after us for that. But we’d better get out of here. The honeymoon’s over in this place. Without Chartreuse here I don’t know what they’ll do. We can go on through the Khyber Pass and drive until Rishikesh. We’ll catch up with the gang in the Himalayas. Okay?”
I was still so weak I merely nodded.
He rushed around the room. “I’ll help you collect your things,” he said.
What things? I thought. “My camera,” I managed to say. My throat closed. My mouth was dry. I wanted to tell him he couldn’t possibly drive in his condition; if he took sick I wouldn’t know what to do. We could die in the desert. I wanted to thank him, to tell him I loved him. I wanted, even then, to sleep one whole night in his arms.