The Kuloo Valley was like a ride into a Chinese teacup. The landscape rose up Himalayan heights and down rice paddy chasms. Tension bridges spanned outlandish drops. Cherubic Buddha faces on the narrow roads. Backs bent over with small-car–sized packets of straw. There were no more Hindu or troubled Muslim faces. The inhabitants mellowed in their pace, their mood, their manner, the moment the altitude rose. The Dauladhar Range was pebbled with sweet beings, complying, moving right off the road in the wake of the van. Not like those below, who would bob their heads belligerently as you shaved them by an inch. Even the faces on the water buffalo turned pretty.
I peered at the women through the window in their costumes of reds, blues, and yellows; gold in their noses; turquoise headdresses; clusters of necklaces jangling. Pad pad paddy, they scurried aside with their moonfaces and cranberry mukluks; innocent children old and young: refugees from Tibet.
“What if we can’t find the others?” I worried, unpacking layers of clothes and putting on everything I owned to ward off the chill.
“They know we’re coming,” Blacky reassured me. “They picked up the cablegram at the American Express when they passed through Delhi. I’m quite sure they know you’re alive.” He smiled cheerfully. “They just expected us some days ago. They couldn’t know about the rabies shots, though, could they?”
“No.”
“You know,” he said excitedly, “Swamiji told me about a wonderful leper colony hereabouts.”
“Wonderful?” I replied skeptically, plunging my arms into a sweater.
“No, I mean in the sense that would be a wonderful experience. Worth the entire trip. You know, Claire, there aren’t that many lepers left in the world.”
“That’s good news.” For a moment I thought he was going to turn off and take us there. But of course there was Tupelo to think of now, and so we continued on our way.
The frosty air was thin as a willow, cracking and whirling the night about, winding through the first town, Dharamsala, its stores on stilts and crumbly buildings and tea shops forming a tiny boulevard. Bicycles and wagons were everywhere. We passed through there and continued farther upward into thick and furry trees, past running streams to what was once an English officer’s retreat, huddled snuggly in McLeod Ganj.
Blacky wove the van around the last right-angle turn and pulled to a stop between the blue night and the kerosene-lit street. A waterfall dropped enchantingly from an evergreen peak. Tea shops clustered up and down the rowlike, wide way, humming with voices and warm yellow flickers. Wooden buildings, some on rickety slender poles, stuck upright like splintered boxes right and left of the Buddhist Stupa. There was open-air all day and night
devotion in the backyard of the Dalai Lama’s temporary palace. Tiny, strangely garbed Tibetans with rosy skin and gentle expressions circled the prayer wheel even at night. They touched the walls and turned the wheel while it clanged, each sound a prayer. Children bundled up like panda bears reached up and rang the bells along the side. It was such an eerie, yet a friendly sight.
Blacky parked the van and slammed his door shut. We were both keen to find the others after weeks of separation but a thrill of joy ran through me just to be in this magical place. I am well, I congratulated myself, taking great gulps of the delicious air. And we would meet the Dalai Lama, perhaps even photograph him! Blacky had been talking about it for so long I’d begun to think of it as his destination, his goal. But now, suddenly being in this place where all night devotion turned the prayer wheel, I recognized something: I felt as though this was it, this was the place you dug toward as a child with your shovel when you aimed for the other side of the world. It was the most exotic place I would ever experience, the other side of everywhere. I knew it then. I know it now. How far we’d come! I could hardly believe it was happening. As I stepped from the stuffy warmth of the van there were more stars than darkness and I thought I’d arrived in Shangri-la.
We headed for the Kailesh hotel, where groups of other Western travelers sat over miniature tables gobbling noodly soups. CHAPADEE AND TEA said the sign on the wall, TWO RUPEE. A feeling of dread overtook me then. I didn’t know what I’d feel seeing Tupelo. She would by now be physically changed. Was I to feel guilty having kept Blacky from her when she needed him most?
Blacky found a table with two mended chairs in the corner and we shuttled them over to the warmth from the potbellied stove. There was a proprietor at a massive wooden desk directly in the middle of the room. He wrote exotic-looking numbers into a cloth-bound blue book while his daughter sat owlishly on his comfortable lap. His wife, dressed in the traditional Tibetan apron,
bustled about the tables carrying away empty plates and scolding customers who hadn’t finished. I diverted to the restroom—not much more than a rattletrap enclosed chamber with a hole in it, and then I hurried back, not wanting to miss a thing. I loved the smells of McLeod Ganj, coal and kerosene and wood fires, delicate incense and vegetables cooking. We ordered noodle soup, which was delicious, and buttered tea, which took some getting used to.
Children with round faces and snotty noses leaned without fear across my knees. They touched my red hair, braceleted my wrists with colored paper.
The Westerners spoke openly from one table to the next, trading travel information and discussing meditation courses to be taken at the ashram or the library outside of town. On the side tables there were more than a few well-worn copies of the everpopular Tibetan Book of the Dead.
We were just about to inquire of the next table if they knew of a film company hereabouts when, at that very moment, in floated Reiner. But it wasn’t the Reiner we knew, it was some sort of high priest of a Reiner, done over in burgundy robes.
He was pleased to see us, if not outwardly very expressive. He glided over to us, pressed his palms together in welcome, and lowered himself, spine rigid, into a chair. All this in three short weeks. I felt like saying, “Snap out of it!” but I didn’t. Everyone’s entitled to their day in the impersonation world. I reminded myself of the heavy French accent I’d affected around New York before I’d ever left Queens.
He took my cheeks in his thumb and forefinger and studied my eyes. “Well,” he said, “you look like the devil but you’re alive.”
“Where are the others? Where’s Isolde?” I charged.
“They’re most of them down at the ashram taking a class.”
“What about the movie?” I said.
“All in due time.” He smoothed the air with a patting-down hand. “There’s no rush.”
“I can’t believe we just ran into you like this,” I said. “I imagined we’d be going from hotel to hotel.”
“Oh, everyone haunts the same spots. They’ll all wander in here in a little while. I’m delighted to get to see your first impressions. You don’t get a second chance at a first impression.”
Blacky said, “I parked near the waterfall. Is that all right? I didn’t see any signs.”
Reiner raised a benedictory hand. “Everything is all right, man.”
I squirmed in my seat, impatient to see the rest of them.
“What a wonderful place!” Blacky marveled.
Reiner said, “The palace of the Dalai Lama is just down at the end of the street. The whole village of two thousand is in reality a refugee camp Mrs. Gandhi has given them. They’re homeless, actually, waiting to be let back into Tibet. I don’t think they will be, though.” He surprised me by spitting out the window. “The Red Chinese are already using their photos on their travelogues to get the Westerners to come to fun-filled China, see?” He looked at me. “Much like the buffalo and feathered Indians you destroyed and use to attract German tourists at the travel bureaus on the Bahnhofstrasse.”
“I destroyed?” I sputtered.
Blacky stood up and tucked his shirt into his blue jeans. “When do you think I can get in to see him?”
“Who?”
“The Dalai Lama.”
“Oh, you won’t be seeing him. He’s off to Sweden.”
“Wie bitte?!!”
“Yeah. Collecting money for his people. Pity. After all that.”
“But he’ll return shortly …”
“Oh, I don’t think so.”
We looked at one another.
“This can’t be,” Blacky said.
Reiner said, “It certainly has taken away the feeling of urgency with the film.”
Blacky sat down, personally betrayed. Angrily, he slurped his buttered tea.
It had never occurred to any of us—after all we’d gone through to get here—that the Dalai Lama might have gone away somewhere. I didn’t even dare look at Blacky. I knew he was furious and somehow this would be translated to me. Suddenly he stood up in an aggravated fluster. He said, “I’ve got to see Tupelo. Where is she?”
Reiner made a face. “Oh, I wouldn’t go trouble her now. She’s meditating.”
“She’ll want to see me straight away.”
“They won’t let you in.” He yawned raucously. “Blacky, there are other interesting people here, you know. You might be interested in the doctor of the Dalai Lama, for example. Or the hermits living in the caves. There are dozens of those. Veritable Saint Francises. I’ve already got them on film.”
But Blacky would not be consoled with substitutes. Already his thoughts had moved on. He’d taken out his little record book and was recording the outrageous cost of gasoline. “I wonder if it would be simply cheaper to fly at this point,” he said. He consulted his map. “We could hop over to Kashmir.”
“We won’t be going anywhere soon,” Reiner put in. “The lines at the fuel pumps are six hours long.”
We all looked out the window. Yes, there they were, the last threads of local men with their empty canisters.
A Tibetan family sat in a corner trying to sell their last pieces of turquoise to Westerners who must be rich to have come such a long way on a whimsy. They were shy and polite. One of them held out two stones to anyone who would look. Travelers walked past and kept on going. From across the room, one dark red stone glimmered. I went over and admired them.
“They’re uncut, Claire,” Blacky said from across the room.
“And they’re only semiprecious,” Reiner added.
Suddenly I wanted those stones very much. I didn’t care what the two of them said. I thought the little family sitting there offering them were so pure and lovely. I wanted something of theirs, not because I wanted to help them, but because I wanted a part of them. “How much do they want?” I asked the proprietor. He answered in rupees. Something ridiculously low, I thought. I was well into the habit of bargaining, had become a regular little rug merchant. I knew it was expected. But I kept looking back to the innocent faces of those little people. It was like they knew God would take care of them and they weren’t going to worry. I opened my velvet film pouch and counted out the rupees. The woman pressed the stones into my care. The red one had a vein of green down one side. It was the size of a walnut. I don’t know what it is about those Tibetans. They break your heart. My eyes filled up with tears at my generous gesture. The family stood and filed out the door, who knew to where?
“You shouldn’t have done that,” Blacky reprimanded me.
“Why not?” I sniffled.
“Ach! And tears on top!”
“Oh, shut up.” I sat down.
Reiner came down from his cloud just long enough to point out, “They’re only garnet and turquoise. Not worth much like that.”
“But I’ll keep them forever,” I swore, meaning the family, folding the stones away into my sack.
Wolfgang stood in the doorway. He screeched and charged across the restaurant. You’d have thought I was back from the dead for the fuss he made. He began touching me as if to make sure I was real.
Then they all came in. “Darling!” Isolde threw herself across the room and actually picked me up and twirled me around while Wolfgang filmed our reunion from every angle.
They all stared at me as though I were make-believe. Blacky stood beside me proudly, exhibiting my good health.
“Give me a squeeze!” Daisy clucked.
“Blacky saved my life,” I told them.
Isolde observed, “Wenn es dir dreckig geht, der Blacky ist ja immer da.”
I perked up, alert, always looking for the clue to who Blacky was.
Reiner translated, “That means when things are down and dirty, Blacky’s the one who’s always there for you.”
“She knows what it means.” Daisy nudged him playfully, lovingly, and I was captivated by their affection for each other. Even Isolde and Vladimir seemed changed, second honeymooners at the ashram.
“It’s true,” I said, “he is.” I stood there letting them gape at me, feeling suddenly like the little corpse who could.
Blacky, by now bored with their astonishment, said, “Didn’t you get my cables?”
“We did,” Harry assured him. “We got one. But you know it was all so iffy when we left, remember? Anything could have happened.”
“But I sent two.”
“That’s India,” Chartreuse explained.
“And all you said was she was on the mend.” Harry petted my shoulder with one hand. “But then you didn’t arrive and we thought Claire might have had a setback—and we haven’t been back to Dehli because there’s no benzene. None.”
“There is,” Chartreuse put in, “but you’ve got to wait for hours on lines.” Harry threw his chubby arms around me. “There, now. There, now,” he crooned. “You’re alive then, aren’t you.” The whole world loses weight in India. Harry, on the other hand, thriving on endless bananas and peanut butter sandwiches, looked like he’d gained seventeen pounds.
“I think we should have a party!” Isolde said to the whole room, “like we used to have at home!”
“Don’t be stupid,” Vladimir fell into his old habit of eradicating her joy, “there’s no booze.”
Chartreuse whispered, “No hash. Nothing.” His eyes were feverish with the very idea of such scandal. “I haven’t had a joint for over two weeks! None of us have.”
“You all look like part of a religious order,” I said, trying not be judgmental but knowing that Blacky, too, must find them sort of ridiculous gussied up the way they were, looking like part of a sect. I don’t know how it happened but an uncalled-for, childish rivalry seemed to have developed between everyone over who would wind up more holy. This was true except for Harry, and of course the now slender Daisy, who’d gone along with it but whose miniskirt peeked through from a slit in the flowing guru garb. She made a show of her worry beads, dangling them before me like a lure in a magic show. “What’s different?” She kept looking me up and down. “You’re awfully short,” she observed.
“I’ve given up my facade,” I announced proudly.
“What, you’ve taken off your brilliant shoes?”
I held up my short legs and wiggled my happy toes. “Yup.”
“Do you still have them? Might I have them, then, do you think?”
“Of course you may have them. They’re in the bus. You’re welcome to every pair. But wait till you hear what else,” I said, now enjoying my newsworthy saga for the first of many times, “I was attacked by rabid monkeys and had to have rabies shots.”
This achieved the hoped-for response.
“Well, that’s why we took so long!” we explained.
“Ach!” Wolfgang smacked his head. “If only I’d been there! What a visual that would have been!”
“There’s a nice thing to say!” Daisy reprimanded him.
“Of course you’re right. Forgive me.”
I waited for Blacky to inform them of my sorry news from Herr Binnemann. He didn’t say anything, though, and then neither did I because, I guess, I enjoyed my status as a lady of means, whether it were true or not.
Harry said, “Here’s something you didn’t know.”
“What’s that?” Blacky asked.
“We’ve got a telegram from Wolfgang’s agents. Listen to this! The Americans are interested in buying the film.”
“No!”
“Yes. Can you bear it? We’re practically a hit already!” Reiner threw back his head and bellowed a laugh.
Isolde threw her arms wide. “Now what do you say to a party?”
“A party,” Harry repeated. “With what, noodles?”
“I knew it. Didn’t I tell you we would be successful?” Reiner rubbed his hands together. “Didn’t I say so?”
“Don’t forget to lock up your valuables, Claire!” Harry warned me, eyeing my turquoise and garnet. “It’s not the Tibetans you have to watch out for. Golly, they’re honest to a fault. But I’ve noticed a band of unlikely travelers around the edge of town.”
“Where’s Tupelo?” Blacky and I said at almost the same time. And then there she was, timing perfect as ever, standing in the doorway with the light behind her, not emaciated at all but slender and compelling. She looked like an angel because she was wearing that pale blue dress I’d bought in Afghanistan and could never find and now I knew why.
“Tupelo!” Blacky rushed over to her and sheltered her in his arms.
Next patient! I remember thinking.
That night when I returned to our van—now I thought of it as our van—I was a little cranky. I’d been getting used to being
the number-one girl, chauffeured through the Orient by my stunning private doctor. It was unnerving to watch Blacky switch concern from the now healthy me to the authentically, seriously in need of attention Tupelo—not that she looked it. Blacky was still locked in a huddle alone with her near the waterfall. An unnecessarily long huddle, I thought. Was it possible, I interrogated myself, that I was jealous of a dying girl? The thing was, she looked so darn well. I even wondered if all this was a hoax. But of course I was just stuck in another unworthy, malicious thought. Everyone else had been behaving so magnificently, I knew my sour tone was going to reveal me for who I realized now I really was, a green-eyed monster. I even was loathsome enough to worry that before she died, Tupelo might confess to all and sundry that we’d slept together. I punched my worn-out pillow. I wasn’t used to being the worst in the bunch. Even Vladimir had pulled in his horns and given Isolde a heartfelt massage in the tea shop. How out of character was that?
The prayer wheel’s music seeped across the square and into the van. Someone was out there praying for the world even now. I remembered reading something about Hermann Hesse. There was an order of silent nuns in the inner-most part of Switzerland. All they did, day and night, presumably besides eat and drink and sleep, was pray. He believed, did Hesse, that the very world remained on its axis because of the vibration these holy nuns’ prayers maintained. I lay there quietly, listening to the steady tinkle and gong of the prayer wheel. Then I thought, Suppose I’m wrong and everything will work out after all? Good things did happen. Look at the way these poor Tibetans, chased from their homeland, had humbly settled in. This place did seem to be working its magic. I took a deep breath and pretended to be happy. As so often when you pretend
something, it occurs, and I slipped into a long and delicious sleep.
The morning arrived with the bright incessant droning of the prayer wheel. These were the last warm days of October. A red dawn waited on the horizon and we brushed our teeth in the stream. Yesterday’s moon hung still, lanternlike and see-through, in the china sky. I reloaded my film, waiting for the light. Wherever I pointed my camera was new and unusual. Although my starlit Shangri-la looked somewhat ramshackle in the almost daylight, it was in no way less captivating. You could see just past the stupa and outside the little village to the palace of the Dalai Lama. It was painted in beautiful bright colors but it remained remote, standing behind iron gates and an impenetrable growth of forest. We walked past the stupa to Hula’s Tea Shop. The shop glittered white from the shackled-down tin on the roof. I was so excited. It was like going up into a tree house.
They were all there, our motley crew, dressed as prophets, behaving virtuously as novitiates, actually praying over their bowls of honey and oatmeal! I could hardly believe it. My appetite had returned in full force and I dug in with gusto.
Chartreuse came in with eyes shining. Isolde scrunched over, making room for him on the bench. “What is it, Chartreuse, you look like you’re about to bust?”
He cocked his head, leaned forward, and whispered, “We have benzene.”
We regarded him skeptically.
Reiner said, “Do you mean our tanks are full?”
“Exactement.”
“Just how did you manage that?” Wolfgang asked.
“You might not want to know. Okay?”
We all looked at one another.
“What do you say we drive over to that leper colony?” Blacky suggested. “Claire?” he looked at me beseechingly. How could I deny him this pleasure, I thought—if going to explore a leper colony could be considered pleasurable—for nothing else pleased him since learning there was to be no Dalai Lama. I was glad to see him happy about something. I’d been happy to see him at all, especially when he’d come quietly into the van late at night, smelling of nothing but himself.
“I’m staying here,” Isolde announced. She was playing Pickup Stix with Harry.
I didn’t really want to go to any leper colony, either. I said so.
But, “You must come, Claire,” Wolfgang insisted. “Think of the pictures!”
“That’s just it. I am thinking of the pictures.”
Wolfgang seemed to hesitate. He picked up the incense holder on the table and rolled it around in his little hands; then he said, “We’ve had to be very patient with you, Claire, because you were ill. But now I think you ought really to pull yourself together and do the job we’re paying you for.”
“As of yet nobody’s paid me a nickel,” I had the wherewithal to say. But even as I said it, I knew I’d made a mistake.
He seemed to look into the newly vast beyond. He cleared his throat. With elaborate patience he said, “We’ve all of us laid out time and money, Claire. Your job is an apprenticeship, and there are hundreds of established photographer’s assistants in Munich who would have paid us to let them come along.”
“Yes, of course.” I scratched my head, embarrassed. “I’m sorry.”
“And I might add,” he gave a laugh, “that if your pictures are not up to snuff, you never will be paid.”
“Well, that’s not fair,” Daisy whispered, but she didn’t say it out loud. Nobody did.
I felt like I was standing before the principal, in trouble again. But I couldn’t just leave it alone. I said, “So, what? Like, I’m just along for the ride?”
“You are an independent. Yes. If your pictures turn out, we’ll probably buy them.”
“Why would you want to go to a leper colony anyway?” Isolde grumbled, just to change the subject.
“Because Blacky needs to feel like a savior,” Daisy chided.
I defended him with, “I suppose I could think of a lot of things worse than that to want to be.”
I got no grateful side glance. Instead, Blacky spoke to Isolde. “I think we should all stick together. Except Tupelo. I’ve given her a sleeping pill so she won’t be joining us.”
“Why?” Isolde said, instantly alert. “What’s wrong with her?”
“Nothing’s wrong with her,” Blacky busied himself rolling up the map and putting away his book, “she just has that persistent cough and she hasn’t been able to sleep, what with the prayer wheel going day and night. She’s in my van.”
Reiner rubbed his large palms together and strode about. “I think it’s a good idea to attend meditations first, though. For one thing, Claire has never been and I think it’s an important experience.”
“Why, Reiner!” Isolde chided him. “I didn’t know you were so thoughtful.”
“He rightly is providing me with the opportunity to get more footage,” Wolfgang said. “They wouldn’t let the camera in before so now he knows enough to sneak it in.”
There was sense to his reasoning, so we went, all of us tromping piously over to the meditation center. I wasn’t very talkative along the way. I was still stinging from Wolfgang’s reprimand. I
knew he was right but I also knew he’d never have crossed me had he not noticed Blacky and I were now an item. Men were, it occurred to me, just as silly as women.
Anyway, the sky was bright blue and colorful prayer flags snapped in the wind. Although the temples here weren’t what you’d call impressive—there was no loud gold or towering spire—the buildings and flavor and people were so transcendental you couldn’t help being inspired. But for all they thought they were turning me on to a brand-new experience, I couldn’t help feeling it was exactly like when my brother would altar-boy the six thirty Mass when we were kids and I, always the tagalong, prayed in the pews. It was the same wonderful fervor, the same rays of honeyed light through stained glass, the same connection to the true source. A strange pain came over me then, because although I despised all the hypocrisy in my own church, there was a beauty there, back there in my past, in my home, that I was still proud and glad to be a part of. I prayed for my brother’s soul that beautiful morning, prayed without guilt, prayed at last with a joyous heart that I had known such a good and gentle spirit in my lifetime. It wasn’t that I began again to believe in God. It was more like picking up a thread that had always been there, but just let down.
When it was over and we walked along Sangee Road toward the vans, I hesitated. I said, “Why can’t we just stay right here, in McLeod Ganj? It’s so charming and special!”
“Come on, Claire.” Harry prodded me with his cane. He didn’t need a cane but he very much liked the look. “This will be fun!”
Fun! I was afraid of lepers. I was afraid of catching it. But we fit ourselves into the one van and off we went.
“So why didn’t Tupelo come?” Chartreuse asked no one in particular.
I overheard Isolde say to Vladimir, “I have to tell you, Tupelo isn’t half what she used to be. She was always so filled with mischief. She never wants to do anything anymore.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “she’s turned into a lemon.”
“Dehli Belly,” Reiner scoffed and they all laughed.
I held my tongue. We were all squashed together and there was hardly any room but I managed to sleep the whole way there. “Where are we?” I rubbed my eyes and turned over hours later.
“Claire!” Blacky almost exploded with joy. “We’re almost there! The leper colony!” He smiled at me from the wheel with boyish anticipation. Chartreuse laid down his guitar and pushed the curtain open a crack. The weather had changed and the light was pure aluminum.
“Get up, you lazy thing!” Daisy sang from the front. She was brushing her hair. “It’s half the morning gone already. We’ve been on the road for hours. You missed the gorgeous landscape, Claire.” Isolde poured steely tea from the thermos and passed it back. I sipped the ghastly liquid, grateful for it. My alternative Kuchi dress hung crumpled on a hook.
“That’s it!” Chartreuse hollered. “There’s the tea planter’s cottage. That must be it! Go on! Turn left!”
We pulled into a dusty, ugly drive that led past a clump of tinroofed huts and ramshackle, whitewashed buildings. A garbage pile was festooned by eagles. Magnificent, enormous eagles swooped and dove and gathered about the rotting mess of litter. Just then, the main house door opened and out stepped a formidable-looking woman. She was of uncertain age but she moved with vivacious energy and her fine long hair, still red, hung down her ramrod back in a loosely held tail. There was the lilt of an elf about her dignified person. A rawboned, brawny Hepburn.
“Now who is this?” she called testily and peered into the van at the lot of us.
I supposed we looked ridiculous, more like a religious sect than who we really were.
“Good day!” Blacky stepped out and yelled to her.
“Good day, my foot!” she shouted back at him. “Have you come about the water or not?”
“Oh, dear,” said Daisy.
“I’m afraid not,” Blacky admitted. “Just visitors.”
“Well, you can turn yourselves right around the same way that you came, in that case,” she scolded with just a trace of a German accent. “I don’t have all day to sit around here and entertain hungry tourist hippies. Visitors indeed! Go on!” She poked Blacky and directed him point-blank to the van.
“See here,” Blacky stood his ground, “I am a doctor. Ich bin Arzt.”
“My English is very good, thank you. Excellent, in fact.” She rubbed the galaxy of freckles on her arm. “We have no use for German here. Or a weekend doctor, for that matter.” She squinted at Blacky. “I’ve seen your type before. Come in here and expect a grand tour and a hearty dinner. Go home and write an article—yes,” she turned to Wolfgang, who was trying to step from the van, “I see you with your big camera! Turn right around!” She turned back to Blacky. “—make a fine lot of cash and all your colleagues think you’re quite a guy! I’ve been through all this before.”
“It’s not that way at all,” Blacky sputtered, deciding at once—I could tell—that an article would be just the thing. “I don’t even have batteries for my tape recorder,” he swore, eyeing me combatively, for I was the one who was supposed to worry about such details and hadn’t.
The woman continued to rage. “What we need is a plumber. Our pump hasn’t run for three days. So unless one of you ridiculouslooking
people happens to be a plumber, you can turn right around and get the hightail out of here! Go on.”
Blacky continued to try to reason with the woman. Reiner slipped off to have himself a look at the lepers around the back. I just knew he was going to photograph them, beating me to the punch.
“For God’s sake,” Blacky finally gave up, “we’ve been on the road for hours. Just tell us where the camping place is and we’ll come back at a more convenient time.”
“There hasn’t been a camping place around here for three years! Now you listen to me, young man,” she raged, “I’ve got three hundred men and women here who need facilities and if they don’t get some water I’m going to have another Ruhr outbreak. For that we might need you. Now round up your band of gypsies and get, please, back where you came from.”
She went on tirading for quite a while. I imagined Blacky thought he’d let her wear herself down, but she didn’t show any signs of slowing. He continued to reason with her and she just kept refusing us entry.
Finally, “Come along, Blacky,” Daisy sniffed, “we’ll find some other lepers somewhere else.”
But just then from behind one of the ugly buildings came a grinding, metal scraping sound, and then a gurgling slush.
The tyrant lady perked up her ears and dropped the box of wires she was holding. “My water!” she exclaimed and ran behind the house. Blacky was right behind her and I took up the rear. Sure enough, water streamed. Filthy water, but water nonetheless. It rose from an ancient rattletrap pump. And there stood Reiner, surrounded by some dozen lepers, very dirty with grease all over his guru shirt. He was holding a wrench.
“You did that?” the woman called in disbelief.
Reiner puffed up his chest and cocked one leg up on a pail. “Nothing to it.” He did a little sidestep of modesty.
“Reiner!” Daisy tripped toward him in her new fancy espadrilles. “You’ve saved the lepers!”
The forbidding Agnes, finally subdued, sat tall and stooping but smiling in her creaking rocker over a mug of Nescafé on the makeshift front porch. Now that she had her water she’d become hospitable and even friendly. An aged leper who still had the use of his hands poured boiling water into chipped mugs from a kettle. The damp coarse grains of Nescafé he doled out as though they were gold; everybody got half a teaspoonful. Still, it was the first trace of coffee any of us had had in quite some time and so we savored every wily sip. I did refuse the pitcher of warm milk that was passed around—though I longed for the taste of it—as I imagined it would be seething with leprosy germs.
Not one to let go of a good thing, Agnes had sent Reiner and Chartreuse off to see if they could repair a faulty loom. Blacky sat cross-legged on a mat beside her. He stirred his watery-brown liquid enthusiastically. “Whatever got you started in this line of work?” he asked her.
She peered at him under orange brows. “I was a social worker back in Germany.” She smoothed her lilac skirt. “That was my background. Years and years of taking in the most hopeless cases I could find in the postwar years. As time went on, so did the desperation of my charges. Then I heard an Indian bishop who was attending a nearby conference describe the appalling conditions of the lepers.”
The old leper stood directly behind her chair and nodded his head. He held the burning teapot in the palms of his hands. Agnes lit a cigar and continued. “I impulsively asked him if I could come and help. Well, the bishop hemmed and hawed, then finally gave his consent—on the condition that I pay my own
fare,” she suddenly snorted, shocking Daisy so she jumped out of her seat. “One sunny day, much to the bishop’s surprise, I arrived with a little money, a packet of books about leprosy and the Hindu language, and dauntless bundles of energy. If I had known then what hurdles lay in front of me, I don’t think I would have felt so optimistic.” She swept a very weathered, sturdy hand in a broad gesture and smiled. “But as you see, in a way, it can be done!” She turned without looking at the man behind her and removed the scalding pot from his unfeeling hands and put it down on the floor beside her long feet. The man just stood where he was and continued to smile.
“The bishop did not know what to do with me, but he sent me out to a recently donated plot of land in the outskirts of Dehra Dun. I persuaded thirty lepers who made their livings naturally, by begging, to join me. They thought I was a rich philanthropist and their days of work were over. Ha! What a shock they were in for!”
There was a funny smell around the place, chlorine and formaldehyde. While Agnes spoke I peeked into her room. It was cheerful, lined with books and rows and rows of classical music albums. Agnes pursed her disapproving lips at me. “Nice,” I said.
“Yes, they are. Only I have to get up before dawn to hear them. After about six A.M. the electricity just goes kerplunk.”
A blind, partially limbless leper shuttled past the porch supported by a stick. “That’s Jagjivan, our favorite citizen.” Agnes chuckled. “He’s too far gone to work but he sits all day with the women who do, telling them all sorts of stories and fables. He’s got a wonderful wit. Everybody works nowadays, only his job is keeping the citizens’ minds off their troubles.”
Blacky shook his head in wonderment. “How do you ever get them to sustain themselves?”
“Well, the German Relief Organization agreed to finance the maintenance of the inmates for a while. I was busy learning by
trial and error how to dress their wounds when Jürgen, a trained mechanic on vacation, dropped by to see what was going on. We desperately needed a latrine and he just pitched right in. With the help of the patients, he built one. It was the first time any of the lepers had known the experience of work that wasn’t begging. They grumbled a lot about the effort, but I think they really enjoyed it. When it was finished everyone sat around the thing for days admiring their work. And Jürgen. He wound up staying for two years.”
I glanced furtively at Blacky, praying he wasn’t coming up with any noble ideas.
“You must understand,” Agnes sighed, “what life means to a leper in India. There are more than a million cases and it is by no means confined to the lower classes. Many are educated, cast out from good families. Because of its terrible connotations, anyone contracting the disease hides it as long as possible so he may go on living in society. Because of that it’s usually in the advanced stages by the time treatment is sought.
“A leper must leave his home and family once his secret is learned. His wife breaks her bangles in the tradition of all widows, shaves her head, and wears the traditional white sari of mourning. There is nowhere for him to go, only begging from the distance of a curb and watching the years rot away his miserable body. Even if he is successfully treated and cured, he is barred from everything, even religious services. Come along,” she said suddenly, jumping up, “I’ll take you on a tour.” She turned and glared at Wolfgang. “But no pictures. These people have their dignity. I insist you respect that.”
“Yes, of course,” Wolfgang said.
“Of course.” Blacky hurried to walk beside her.
“I got the idea to start the patients with hand weaving one unbearably hot August or September, I forget which,” Agnes was saying. “We all got together and built ourselves a loom. We were determined to become self-sufficient.”
We followed close by. Daisy was having a bit more trouble keeping up in my shoes. We entered a white building filled with snapping, whirring looms. It made a cheerful picture, all those yards of colorful woolen thread, and might have been a factory anywhere but for the fingerless, feelingless hands pushing and pulling at them. Layers of multihued carpets, wall hangings, and bedcovers littered the tables.
Limbless lepers smiled to greet us but kept on working. Agnes rambled about gossiping, hollering, making special note to compliment the finer, more intricate pieces she examined. “Oh, Lord!” she cried out. “I’ve forgotten to send someone for lotto cards! I’ll be right back.”
With that she marched out the door, leaving us alone in a room of curious, half-eaten-away faces. With the boss gone, the women felt a little bolder, made jokes about Daisy’s sexy miniskirt and laughed happily. Jagjivan sat on the floor of the threshold and noisily sucked his pipe.
Chartreuse enthusiastically demonstrated to the men outside how to take their normal game of checkers and turn it into “strip” checkers. They watched him with intense concentration. We all stood laughing at Chartreuse’s attempt to make them laugh with his striptease.
Agnes returned with her hair askew. She walked right up to me. “It is surprising,” she smiled cheerfully, “how fast you find yourself not trying to avert your eyes from the gruesome mutilations and stumps, eh? You see, when you are surrounded by a clean and healthy atmosphere you can look at it as though it is a treatable disease rather than a hopeless, frightening plague. The inflicted become fellow human beings that are within your comprehension. When a man grovels in the gutter like an animal—pah, you can’t help reacting to him as though he were one, no?”
“Oh, yes!” I agreed.
“The beggars in the city call for pity and the coins are thrown
with pity. But pity leaves the receiver still begging. And why shouldn’t human beings like you and I not give a higher side of the coin: compassion?”
I took a step back, knocking over a bolt of purple fabric. Three women raced to pick it up, not one of them sporting a full set of fingers.
Agnes, engrossed in her speech, went on. “These workers not long ago lay on the street like all the other animals. I can’t say now that their faces shine with the light of holy redemption but once again they are part of the human race.
“But where,” Agnes went on, “are the rupees, the millions of dollars that people in the West give every week on Sunday for those who really need help? Where is it? Where does it go, all this money we never see, eh?”
I stood there staring back at her, dimly regretting the glittering bangles I’d splurged on in Nepal.
“We will leave our workers to their work,” she said, steering me into the fresh air. Her sneakers, I noticed, were battered with holes and laced up with red string. “You’re headed back to Dharamsala, are you?”
“Yes, we are.”
“The home of the Dalai Lama.” Agnes made a sign of respect. “He might be a king. But he is also a refugee, like the rest of his people. The Chinese have chased all the Tibetans of power away. They’ve murdered many and, naturally, stolen much treasure. Ah. Even the holy ones are driven out.”
“Not many holy people left in the world anymore.” I nodded.
Agnes looked at me with shock. “Don’t say that. Even where you’re going, up in those hills, there are many hermits in the caves. Great hermits. Of course there are charlatans and tricksters, too. Their powers are quite strong and very real.” She let go a caustic snort. “They achieve these powers by sacrilegious means, such as
consumption of their own feces when the moon is full, reciting ancient and diabolical chants. Of these you must beware. And another thing: the monkeys. They live there in tribes. The most enlightened monkeys of their race. Unfortunately, they are quite frisky and they are also pranksters. You must be careful because they are dangerous.”
I was just about to tell her my own sad monkey tale, when Daisy and Reiner—the man of the hour—waved to us as we walked down the path. They were surrounded by stubby-nosed leper children who wanted cookies, a story, a smile.
“I wonder where Blacky is?” I said.
“I asked him if he would give me some aspirin for my arthritis, and he went back to your van. I suppose he’s found the clinic by now.” Agnes chortled. “I’ll take you there.” We strolled along a winding path toward a building set in the shade of some nice old trees.
“I have to say it’s very pretty here sometimes,” I said. The clouds had cleared away and I noticed someone had planted flowers. I looked sideways at Agnes and thought, She must have been a picture once. “Did you,” I ventured, “ever marry?”
“Marry?” Her face took on the strains of a cello. “No, I never did. I guess because at the time when I was a girl, all the marriageable men were at war. And when they came back I went off to India. I can’t say that I feel as though I’ve missed anything, though.” She laughed outright and rivets of wrinkles filled up her face. Nice wrinkles. Not like those ugly, overpowdered ones you see at charity luncheons and afternoon movies. She relit her cigar. “I’ve got a family big enough to keep me busy. Right now we’re counting our pennies to buy more land between here and Rishikesh. We’ve almost got it, too. When that happens we can build a new colony and produce more work. And,” she hastened her step, “I’m not really alone, am I? I have my music and my
books. The hardness of my life comes when I have to turn away lepers who ask for entrance. Every day they come. Every day I condemn them to a life of begging by saying no.”
We reached the clinic and I caught sight of Blacky before he became aware of me. He was stroking the head of a small child. Sometimes, seeing his goodness, I had the feeling I would never be able to hold on to him, that he would need to be kind to everyone and that I would never find within myself what it would take to live with a sort of a saint. I walked up to him and touched his shoulder. “Would you prefer to stay here? Is that it?”
“The thought did cross my mind,” he admitted.
“But?”
“But, with my specialty, I think I can do more good where I am.”
“Yes, of course.” I sighed. “I, I, I” was always his tune, it came to me. What about “us, us, us”? I grumbled to myself. If this guy didn’t have some sick girl between us, it was an important illness itself. He was just too good for me. If I wasn’t going to be first now, I supposed I’d never be. I might as well try to get used to it. It was a good lesson for me to learn. Why did I think I was supposed to be number one, anyway? I ought to be grateful to be the sidekick to such a wonderful person. One of the lepers, a girl about my own age, was managing to get to her feet with a stick. She hobbled past. I caught a whiff of her decaying smell and I thought, Why do I spend so much of my time preoccupied with dread? Compared with this girl’s, or Tupelo’s, my complaints were nothing but vanity!
At the gate, as we were about to leave, Agnes took my hand warmly and smiled. “I’m not alone here, you see.” She picked one of the children, a scabby, grubby little boy, up into her arms. “Three years ago they planted a piepa tree up the hill there.” She pointed to an attractive spot in the distance overlooking the camp. “And when the tree is big enough, and I am old enough, they will build a little house for me under it.”
“May I photograph that tree?” I asked her.
She thought for a moment and then she said, “Oh, all right, but do it quickly. You won’t want to give the others ideas.”
She waved us away.
On the road back to Dharamsala I was full of my own thoughts and only half aware of what was going on, but then I was distracted by Wolfgang unloading the film from his camera. I kind of looked at him because of the way he slipped it into a can. Then I realized why. He was trying to do it in a sneaky way.
“What did you do?” I confronted him, my hand on his wrist. “You filmed the lepers?”
“Wait until you see the footage I got,” he snorted. “This here is award-winning stuff.”
“Wolfgang, you have no scruples! She specifically asked you not to!”
He gave a short growl of disgust. “And how will she ever know?”
“I wouldn’t have done that if I were you,” I said. Gone were the days, anyway, when I was his pet, that was clear.
He made a cockeyed, know-it-all face. “That’s why I’ll get a first at the Berlin Film Festival and you, missy, will still be shooting bathing suits and wedding gowns in Tenerife.”
“No, I won’t,” I shot back but I saw that he was embarrassed. I said gently, “Wolfgang, we used to be such good friends. And now … how did this happen?”
“I know exactly what happened.” He spit the words out savagely. “Chartreuse had the bright idea to fix you up with Blacky.”
That’s ridiculous,” I said. “You’re nuts.”
“You’re right,” he said, “I was.”
“Claire won’t be in Tenerife,” Daisy said for me, “she’ll be a doctor’s wife in Munich, raising little kiddies.”
“I’m hungry,” Blacky announced. I noticed he didn’t say something to back me up. Then he laughed uproariously and said, “I
can’t get that picture out of my mind of those fellows playing strip checkers!”
Chartreuse grinned with him.
Blacky continued. “And when some poor chap is down to his undershorts he can snap off a finger. You know, if it comes down to it. Can’t you see the table in the middle of the night? A shoe, some shirts and pants, and—ho ho—a nose or two!”
They laughed and laughed and I, feeling both worse and better, realized I might actually have a good shot at this relationship because Blacky, good as he was, was no saint after all—and worse, because it seemed that I, bad as I was, would never be good enough.