It was very early the next morning, before, even, the sun. We were headed for Hula’s, looking forward to warming ourselves with cups of chi.
Refreshed, Tupelo was standing alone at the top of the tall narrow stairs. She was still wearing my dress. Blacky was thrilled to see her looking so well. I aimed the camera at her but it was still too dark. “How did you get my dress?” I called out.
She leaned across the wooden railing and stretched. “I took it because I thought you were going to die and I wanted something to remember you.”
“And for that you need a dress?”
She smiled and moved toward me, kissing me plunk on the lips. Right in front of Blacky. He came over and put his arms around both our shoulders. “That’s what I like to see,” he praised us happily, “camaraderie.”
We watched him march briskly on ahead into the tea shop.
“That’s funny,” she wiggled her nose in my ear, “what I feel doesn’t feel like camaraderie.”
I knew exactly what she meant but I didn’t like her to think she was running the show. And I couldn’t stop myself from thinking that this time it was I who thought she was going to die.
As though she’d read my thoughts, she said, “You just want to be the one who decides when and how. You think you have that power. You’re wrong, you know. We none of us have power.”
Of course she would realize that now that she was ill. I felt immediately sorry for her. At that moment I wanted to reach out to her. I wanted to comfort her in some way but I didn’t know how without revealing what I knew and betraying Blacky’s confidence. She glanced over her shoulder to see if anyone was watching and then she yanked my hair, pulling me toward her, saying, “You think you are so clever, so good.”
Exasperated, I moaned, “Oh, Tupelo, what is it you want?”
“I’d like to beat you up. That’s what I’d really like to do.”
I tried to laugh. “You are ruthless,” I said.
She put her hand on the small of my back and her mouth against my ear and narrowed her eyes. In a croaky voice she answered, “Yes. I am. I am ruthless.”
You know how they say it’s not what you say but how you say it? Well, I swooned with the intimacy of her voice. She knew how to recognize my stream of sexual preparedness and dive into it. Yet how could it be? What lack of character persuaded me to be affected like this when I had all the love I needed with the man of my dreams? Was no betrayal beneath me? My head hung loose with vanished self-esteem and illicit desire.
She wrapped her body closer still. Her breath was on my cheek. “What’s the matter, Claire, you’re afraid to be alone with me?”
“Of course not.” But I was. I was fine as long as we weren’t in close contact. But I knew what would happen if she started up
again. I might wind up sleeping with her just to prove I wasn’t turned off to her because she had cancer.
“Look,” I pulled away, intending to be firm, “all I want is to be here now.”
She gave me an alluring side profile. “Are you sure that’s all you want?”
“Oh, Tupelo,” I laughed, giving in, taking her hand and walking with her that way, girlfriends, “what’s to become of us?”
“Nothing, I hope. I just want to stay here forever.” She laughed. Then, decisively, turning away from me, “I am going to stay here forever.”
The air was filled with mist. The waterfall roared with melted snow and you could smell it, you could smell the snow. It was cold and would be until the sun peeked through. I looked at her carefully, her face lit green by the flickering kerosene lanterns. It was true, she seemed blissful. But Blacky would never allow her to stay behind without us. I knew that for certain.
“Tupelo, you can’t be serious.”
“Oh, I am. I’ve prayed about this over and over.”
“Maybe too much,” I suggested.
“No, Claire, because I knew one thing; prayer is talking to God, meditation is listening to Him.” She smiled to herself with that irritating holier-than-thou expression they’d all perfected since they’d come here. “I’ve been listening.”
“All this meditation stuff has got you hoodwinked!” I told her.
“And what do you know?” She resumed her true personality without missing a beat.
“Well,” I said, angry at last, “I know I’m not reaching for the unobtainable.”
She turned and looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “Ah! You say that in such an assertive, I-got-the-guy way.”
“No,” I protested, “I didn’t mean that.”
“You love him, don’t you think I can tell?”
“Is it that obvious?” I admitted sheepishly.
“Of course it is. You love him and you think that’s enough. You believe that will sustain you,” she rocked back and forth, “but there are other things. You and I both know there are other things … .” Her voice trailed off.
I looked, to see if anyone was coming. “Yes, it’s true. There are ‘other things,’ as you say. But in the end, it’s they that are always not enough.”
She laughed. “That’s not what you said in Iran!”
“No,” I admitted, laughing with her. For although there had been something unfulfilling in our dalliances, something that could never be combined and completed, for me the negative had always been in the betrayal afterward and not in the act itself. There’d been a closeness reached and shared like nothing else. And now she was seriously ill and I was going to lose her. “Tupelo,” I said, becoming frightened, “we’re going to have to have a talk.”
“Ah.” She stopped in her tracks and glared at me. “So he’s told you.”
I held my breath. “You had to know he would.”
“I was so afraid of it I probably made it happen,” she admitted, perching herself on the edge of a woodpile.
“Tupelo, you’ve lost touch. When we get back to Germany—”
“Germany! What? What then?”
“Well, there’s something to be said for Western science and conveniences.”
“You can believe what you want. I don’t fall for any of it, anymore.”
“You can’t think that staying here will change everything!”
“I don’t care anymore. It’s funny but I don’t.” She plucked at the lacy, ragged strands of wood. “Death isn’t so bad. It’s love that’s the killer.”
She held my eyes and I hers. I took her hand. Her fingers were like ice. I sat down beside her.
She said, “You’re going to laugh at me when you hear this … .”
“I won’t.”
“Cancer is the best thing that ever happened to me. It straightened me right out. Oh, it’s hard to explain. It’s not that I wouldn’t rather not have it. But I do, you see. I do have it.”
I didn’t laugh. I wanted to cry. Of course she felt that way now, when every moment was so intense. What about when the pain began? What then? I told her so.
“Oh, Claire,” she shook her head, sorry for me, “you think that going into hospital will somehow make everything all right. But nothing will. All because the rooms are white and the nurses are there—it doesn’t change what’s happening. It doesn’t stop the process. Because the truth is they know not a thing about how to stop it. Not a thing. And Blacky will see to it that I won’t suffer. He’s promised. He’ll take care of me.”
I was silent. I almost said, “Me, too.” But I was done with being the “me, too” girl.
She coughed a laugh. “I’m going no matter where I do it from.” She crossed her eyes in horrified jest. “And fast. Fast, Claire, that’s the beauty of it. I’m not going to linger like a bother.” She gnawed her thumbnail cuticle and spat it out. “I’ll just,” she snapped her fingers, “go! One day I won’t be here anymore. Nobody can change that. But at least I can choose the point from which I leave the earth.” She held her arms up toward the sky, great actress that she was, and she beamed. “What finer place than this mystical village of goodwill, eh?”
We looked together at the quaint and eerie loveliness. Chimneys smoldered and puffed. A tinker’s hammer pinged. One Tibetan woman in her striped apron and bent with an enormous pack of straw—as big as she was—padded politely by us up the little path. “All this before the sun is even up,” Tupelo pointed
out. “They’ll write about me in the papers, Claire,” she went on, “they’ll say, ‘Tupelo Honig, Film Star, Dies in Himalayas!’”
“You don’t care about that!”
“Oh, but I do! I really do. And while we’re on the subject, I have a favor to ask you. But don’t think badly of me now, that I am egoist. You won’t?”
“No. What is it?”
“And you won’t laugh?”
“No. I said I won’t.”
“For my funeral I want Debussy.”
“Oh, please.” I held my head in a dramatic woe-is-me pose.
“No. Come on, humor me. That nice one. You know. You’re named for that song.”
“‘Claire de Lune,’” I whispered. “You remember that?”
“You told us the night we met.”
I hadn’t even known she’d been listening. I’d only thought of Blacky at that time. She went on to tell me hurriedly—as though there was little time left and she’d been saving all this up—“And I want to be cremated.” She looked down and shuddered. “I don’t want to be put in a box in the ground where there’s no air, no sunshine.”
I tried not to pay attention but she pressed me, locking her pinkie with mine. “Promise.”
“All right, all right.”
“I mean, I really do have regrets, though, you know?” She turned and looked into her lap. “Now that I know I’m leaving the planet. Not things you would think, like not ‘making it’ in America, you know? I really don’t care at all about that. Funny.” We watched our legs dangle over the side of the woodpile, the brilliant jewel colors of our Afghani slippers sharp in the subtle halflight. “One thing is, I would have liked to speak to you in my own tongue. What? What are you thinking?”
I heard myself begin to cry. “Only that I’m honored that you find me that important in your life.” I sniffled.
“Ach! Don’t be so stupid. You make me sick!” She shoved me and sputtered at me with loathing, spitting the words. “Stop crying immediately or they will all see from the window. I mean it, Claire. Just stop crying and listen. That you know is one thing. But I won’t have Harry coming at me with get-well flowers he picked in some sentimental field. Or Isolde checking me out, trying to figure how long it’s going to take, kneeling at my shrine with, with sacrificial lamb shanks.” We both laughed and she went on. “You have this thing about your lack of importance. I think it’s very Catholic.”
I remembered her crossing herself at Isolde’s. “You’re Catholic, too.”
“Not so very much as you.”
“Tupelo. You never talk about your family. You must want them to—”
She put up her hand, stopping me. “You think everyone has family because you have family. But I have no one. They’re both dead, my parents, can you believe it? All gone.” She shuddered. “My mother from the breast and my father from the colon. It was terrible when they were dying. I had to go to the hospital and sit there and look at them and look at them, each one in turn, and you know, they took their time. It was awful. It went on and on and on. There was something so disgusting about them wanting me to always be there and witness their pain. I hated it. It was like their pain gave them some privilege, some license to all my time. And I was young. All I wanted was to be out of there. Oh, it was horrible.” She lit a cigarette but the coughing stopped her and she couldn’t smoke it. “That was how I met Wolfgang. He found me in hospital where he was filming a scene. I was sitting in the cafeteria, passing time so I wouldn’t have to keep looking at my father
suffering. He took some film of me and came back looking for me two days later after he saw the rushes. I was still there. He told me my skin was cream. He said he would make me an actress. ‘Good,’ I told him. ‘Anything is better than this.’”
“You should have told me all this sooner.”
“Why, so you would sleep with me because you felt sorry for me? Pfhh. Who wants that?”
“Tupelo. I never realized—”
Her eyes were shining. They were deeper than they’d ever looked. “Why, I remember the very moment I met you. When I saw you for the first time at Isolde’s. You were wearing that ridiculous dirndl.”
“You were the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen,” I blurted.
“I fell in love with you right then,” she smiled ruefully, “right that moment,” and she stood abruptly, as if to close the discussion, as if she’d said more than she’d intended.
“But then why—” I began but gave it up. What was the difference? I walked her to the tea shop. The sun had sprung up over the mountain. It blazed and I couldn’t see her. It was like when you’re driving a car at sundown on the Belt and you’re scalded by the light but you don’t pull over. We walked along, blind, lit up, following the path with only our slippered footsteps.
That afternoon while Tupelo slept I wandered around the town taking pictures of all the lovely gentle Tibetan faces. They were so healthy-looking. Finally, I came back to Hula’s and sat at the top of the steps. I was tired. I guess I wasn’t as recovered as I’d thought. I put my head on the railing and watched Isolde and Vladimir walk past the prayer wheel and the Tibetan Moon toward Hula’s. He was animated, discussing something relevant with her, his hands moving in dramatic expression. Isolde walked elegantly
beside him, her one ear cocked and listening, her arms folded behind herself in an easy, contented pose. This trip had brought them back together, returned them to each other. I sighed, surprised at how well everything had turned out for them.
“What are you doing?” Harry was suddenly behind me. He reached for my arm and pulled me up. “I’m the cat. Let me drag you in.”
“Oh, Harry,” I said, slumping into his arms, “I’ve missed having you around to talk to!”
“That’s right,” he smoothed his tie, “you’ll never find another me.” Of all of them Harry was the only one to have maintained his identity. Even Blacky wore an uncharacteristic leather bracelet and his blue jean ensemble carried traces of dilapidation. Harry still wore his same old university-don clothes, his tweed jacket and balderdash trousers. He was the only one who appeared out of place.
It was dark when we walked inside against the bright wall of outside. Hula’s was like an old-fashioned schoolhouse complete with wooden benches. Hula herself, a fine broth of a Tibetan, a survivor, gold teeth still in place, sat on the floor near the potbelly stove and strained tea into a bucket of milk. The sign on the wall said, MUST BRING OWN PEANUT BUTTER. The others were already there, all but Tupelo. They were bathed in steamy sunlight at a table rocking with one leg shorter than its other three.
I took everyone’s portrait. They sat patiently, each one of them wearing the same benevolent expression. However, once they were photographed—as though for proof they’d been here—they did become a little more relaxed. I perched myself on a stool off to the side. Hula’s father, a wizened old fellow without a tooth in his mouth, sat down comfortably beside me. I wondered if I was in his spot. He took out his worry beads and hummed his prayers. I picked up a jar from the table and rudely licked some honey with my finger.
“Here, Isolde, take my biscuit,” Vladimir said with his new show of generosity.
Hula’s husband, a roll to his step, was just coming up the plank over the mud road. He was returning from a short drive to Delhi. She dropped her spoon and ran to him. He was covered in coal dust and sweaty but she took him in her arms as though she hadn’t seen him in years. They were both plump and middle-aged but there was a glamour and a privacy to their love, you could just tell.
“Claire,” Chartreuse came in, brushing the fir trees from his jacket, “try this peanut butter. You won’t believe it.”
Daisy pushed him gently away. “Chartreuse, your breath!”
Chartreuse opened a packet of sen-sen he had in his pocket and popped a few in his mouth. He picked up his guitar and began to play, but it was a different sort of music. He played each note as though it were a mantra, low and resounding. It was interesting enough, sort of Oriental, but after a while I thought, Jiminy, they’re all in such a hurry to get devout. They reminded me of the gossipy rosary society in my hometown during Lent when everyone became charitable.
Isolde was on her hands and knees jimmying an Indian matchbox under the one short leg of the table.
Daisy pulled an extra shawl around herself. “It’s awfully cold.”
“I told you it would be cold here,” Chartreuse said acidly. “No one took my advice. I told you we should have gone to Goa. It’s not my fault.”
Harry said, “No one’s blaming you for the weather, Chartreuse. Calm down.”
“I say,” came a voice from the next table, “wouldn’t you rather fancy some pineapple jam with your chapedah?”
“Why not?” Wolfgang accepted.
The man who offered the mighty-sized jar of jam was a tall, shaven-headed Englishman wearing a burgundy lama robe. More brisk than brawny, he was still very tall. “I see you have a valuable
camera,” the Englishman said to Wolfgang. “Unusual sight hereabouts.” A sardonic demeanor ruled his fleshy, firmly held lips. There was an air of triumph about him and a nervy solicitousness. He seemed quite taken with Wolfgang, who nervously clung to his expensive camera, even moving it possessively to his other side. Beside the man sat his very pregnant wife, a rather attractive girl with hennaed permanent waves. Also at their table sat two fellows robed like the first, their heads shaved as well. Their names, the first announced, in order, were Charles, Betty, Mr. Auto, and Park. Charles, the spiritual leader of the group, was a self-proclaimed unorthodox Buddhist monk. All Londoners—but only in this incarnation, Charles specified—they’d met Park and Mr. Auto while traveling through Goa.
Introductions went around.
“Not the Harry Honeycutt?” Charles said when they came to Harry.
“I’m afraid so,” Harry muttered, pleased.
“I read your column every week!” Charles said. “Well, I used to! What a column! Refreshing, informative. You spoke about everything I was interested in!
“Betty! Betty, don’t you remember the chap I used to read out loud to you, from the Times?”
Betty, too swollen with edema to be flustered, simply shook her head no.
He rubbed his huge hands together. “What a pleasure. What brings you all the way up here?”
Harry stood there letting everyone get a good look at him, all the while rattling the change in his pocket.
Wolfgang, miffed that he was no longer the cheese, informed everyone unnecessarily that a film was being made.
Charles had cradled in his voluminous sleeve an unfortunatelooking sort of Yorkshire terrier named Fancy. She was well groomed and wore a bright blue hand-carved Tibetan barrette,
but she trembled almost constantly. I thought she looked like a rat. Charles caressed her simpering body continuously while tending to avoid physical contact with his wife. She, nervously hovering, watched the dog with greedy eyes. Park and Mr. Auto spoke only when spoken to. Charles, it seemed, had convinced them to shave their shoulder-length hairdos and follow him north to the Himalayas. Their names, Charles explained, were derived from the car they’d driven from Rome to Calangute and had eventually been forced to sell in order to support their holy man, him.
Wolfgang’s creative juices were wetted now. He was back in the mood to film and he went and readied his camera.
“When’s your baby due?” I asked Betty.
“Any day,” Charles answered for her.
“But where do you live?” the practical Blacky inquired.
“In a room behind the grain store, but it’s not very clean so the Tibetan Moon restaurant is letting us stay in a room upstairs,” Charles said.
“How nice for you.” Harry raised a disapproving eyebrow.
“Actually, it’s not nice at all. The wind pokes through the boards and there are rats.”
“How awful,” I said.
Charles said, “Betty used to be a stewardess. She’s tough, our Betty.” He smiled at her.
Isolde said, “Supposing something goes wrong with the birth. Don’t you think she ought to be in a hospital?”
“I happen to know nothing will go wrong.”
“Ah. Let us just suppose,” pressed Blacky, “that it did?”
“Then a doctor,” Charles lay out his upturned hand to demonstrate how simple it all was, “would appear.”
We all looked at one another.
“You’re very sure of yourself with someone else’s life,” Blacky ascertained.
“Her life is mine in privilege as well as responsibility,” Charles stated smugly.
Betty, nodding doubtfully, shifted her uncomfortable belly and lit a beedie.
“Uh!” I exclaimed in outrage.
“Make a nice piece of the film.” Wolfgang chewed his lip. “Baby born in Himalayas. When did you say she was due?”
“Any time now,” Isolde said.
“Om Mani Padme hum,” Mr. Auto addressed our table.
“Yes?” Vladimir looked up. But no, he didn’t want anything, he was simply announcing his chant. Park chimed in and the two of them kept time in a low-volume series of ‘mani’s, ‘om’s, and ‘padme’s. “Hummmmmmmmm,” they chimed together in an Everly Brothers and often practiced harmony.
“We are on the path of Sri Aurobindo … to find the truth,” stated Charles.
“If you don’t mind,” Harry blustered suddenly, “I’d like to enjoy my breakfast without hearing the words ‘truth,’ ‘path,’ or ‘find.’”
“You’re right, Harry,” I agreed with him. “That’s all anyone talks about around here.”
But the men’s muttering chants had hypnotized the room with a monotone that droned together with the shshsho of the waterfall. They sat curled in the lotus position on each end of their little bench. The cookstove glowed with a cozy orange warmth. Suddenly Charles hoisted his pointer finger into the air, saying, “Harry, I remember reading about a Christian tabernacle in your column. You remember the piece?”
“No, sorry,” Harry said and turned away.
“But of course you do, Harry,” I piped up, happy to be of service, “You were the one who told us about it. Remember? You were so interested to come across it. That’s why you wanted to come!” I was pleased with my perfect recall and thought he would
be, too. But when I looked into his eyes I saw nothing but savage rebuke.
I think I literally shrank in my seat. It wasn’t the kind of look that would allow you to say, “What’s wrong?” It held a warning, his look—a nasty warning, I remember thinking, that I’d better shut up, which I did. I said nothing more. Harry adored me. What had I said?
He stood up and did a delicate little tour of the room. He came back to where we were sitting and said, “I seem to be caught with my pants down.”
We all looked at him, puzzled. The others had even stopped their chanting and were all ears.
He swayed, hunched in a position that neither moved nor stood still. Finally, defeated, he pulled out a chair and sat back down. “I suppose you are all disappointed in me,” he murmured.
“Harry,” Reiner put down his spoon and wiped his chin, “we haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”
He looked up, surprised. “What? Really? Oh, well, I might as well tell you, then. You’ll figure it out sooner or later.” He took a deep breath. His vest button popped at that moment but he went on. “When I organized this trip, I was feeling a bit low. You’ll remember I had a staggering crush on Isolde—” He looked at Isolde. “Yes, well, you all knew this. Even you, Vlady, admit it. The sad thing, for me, anyway, was that you didn’t even consider me a threat, did you?”
Poor Harry, I thought. We all looked accusingly at the bewildered Vladimir.
“But the point is,” he went on, “I wanted to get you all on this trip so that I might find some sort of treasure and come back home the hero. You know.” He cleared his throat. “They were making noises at the paper about letting me go … .”
“But, what’s he talking about?” Reiner asked Daisy. “It wasn’t his idea!”
“Oh, shut up,” Daisy said.
“And I thought, if I could stir up some publicity about something exotic and romantic … Well, so, I came up with that story. You see, all that about a Christian tabernacle being a gift from Tibetans to Papist Catholics sent to China as missionaries … it was just nonsense. I pretended I’d read it in an article when the truth is I wrote it in an article. I just made it up, actually. No one ever gives you anything real.”
“Oh, I see,” Charles interjected from the next table. “And my reading about it in your article and then saying so gummed up the works.”
“Exactly.” Harry sighed.
“Harry,” I touched him, “you don’t have to tell us this.”
“But I already have done,” he said.
“What are you talking about?” Reiner said.
“I never would have pieced it together,” Blacky said.
The kettle screamed and we all jumped at once.
Tupelo stuck her head in the door. She motioned for me to come.
I put up my hand. “Come in,” I said. “Come sit down.”
“Come for a walk with me,” she said.
“Just a minute,” I told her, waiting to hear what else Harry was going to say.
“No, now,” she insisted.
“I can’t,” I mouthed across the room.
“Honestly, Harry,” Blacky admitted, “I never would have given it a second thought, either! It was all so long ago!”
Daisy said, “What do you mean, you carried the tabernacle here from Germany?”
Tupelo gave me one last look and then turned and went out the door.
“Yes, yes.” Harry was by now totally irritated. He searched through his pockets and fingered the smooth felt of his lapel. “I
thought I’d come across it very soon, really. I was going to pretend some refugee family sold it to me.”
After a long silence, Wolfgang said, “Actually, we might just want to leave it in. It makes a great story when you think of it.”
“You mean like a hoax?” Isolde said, her eyes shining.
Blacky kept shaking his head. “Well, I can’t get over it. You would have had me fooled.”
“I thought this trip was my idea.” Wolfgang held his chin. “It was my idea.” He paused, thinking. “Wasn’t it?”
“I let you think so.” Harry stood up and put some unnecessary rupees on the table. He hadn’t had a thing. “As I said, you would have figured it out eventually. Anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore. It was a stupid plan. Unorthodox, I’ll grant you. But beneath me.” He turned on his heel and walked out. “Don’t forget to lock up your peanut butter, Charles,” he remarked on his way.
“Poor chap,” Charles said.
Wolfgang turned his camera on Betty. “Mind if I shoot your picture, Schatzi?
“Good God!” Charles cried out. “We really must be off. It’s almost too late for our meditation class. Do you mind paying for our breakfast? We have no money, you know.”
Reiner said, “Surely you don’t live like that?”
“Certainly.” He rose to his full six foot five. “I am a teacher and a beggar. Man must first give up all possessions to be free himself.”
“But, but …” Blacky sputtered. “How would you have paid had we not passed along?”
“Ah, but you did.” Charles handed Betty the pineapple jam to take with and plunked the little dog into the pouch around his neck. Betty, Park, and Mr. Auto all rose together at the signal. Betty looked haggard. I didn’t think she’d been raised to be a beggar’s wife.
“Blacky is a doctor,” I whispered firmly but softly, so only she should hear. Her eyebrows went up in surprise and relief.
Daisy leaned over and tapped her shoulder. “Want to stay and sit for a while, dear?”
Betty, shocked by the very idea, lugged herself into step without answering.
“Betty must have her exercise,” Charles announced to the room. “I see to it she covers four to five miles a day. It wouldn’t do if my son were born unhealthy!”
I saw Betty’s eyes glint in Charles’s direction.
“This is what I mean about male chauvinist pigs!” Isolde complained loudly enough to be heard.
“Most people would be subtle enough not to get involved,” Daisy reprimanded her.
“That’s good, coming from you,” Isolde shot back.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Daisy placed her fists on her hips.
Isolde spread her chapadee lushly first with peanut butter, then apricot jam. “I don’t know what I mean. I just think a girl who used to fly around as a stewardess deserves better than a life as someone’s servant.”
“He didn’t like her being photographed,” Wolfgang said. “Did you notice? The minute I aimed my camera at her he stood to leave.”
“Maybe she’s a wanted criminal. What do you think?” Vladimir suggested.
“More likely he didn’t want the spotlight on anyone but him,” Isolde shrewdly observed.
“What about the tabernacle thing?” Wolfgang plunged on, thinking aloud. “Should we put it in the film or what?”
“Well, we can’t very well if we’re calling it a documentary!” Daisy threw back her head in righteous indignation.
“Nonsense.” Wolfgang defended his point. “Documentaries the world over are constructed. One has to give them form. Doesn’t make them less real.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion,” I said doubtfully.
He gave me a scathing look. “It is, after all, my film.”
“Yes, but we’re all in on it,” Blacky said.
“Everything’s how you look at it.” Wolfgang shrugged.
“We’re not turning the whole thing into a farce.” Blacky gave a dark laugh. “What would be the point of that?”
“But people do like a bit of adventure,” Vladimir argued.
Wolfgang shook himself like a wet dog. “My point is, there’s no mystery. I mean, a reason to get to the end. The audience will lose interest.”
I found myself becoming agitated. “Don’t you see, if you do that you’ll be eradicating the very purpose of our coming here. I mean, everything this place stands for is the opposite of what you just suggested! This whole wonderful journey to this place is enough on its own.”
“You are sweet, Claire.” Wolfgang petted the top of my head, making the word “sweet” sound like something stupid and naive. I was furious. It was all right for them to be righteous!
Chartreuse sat glowering in the corner. I started to go over to him but then I thought why, after all, must I always feel I had to look after his emotional state? I didn’t want to sit there and listen to him complain about the lack of drugs. I was actually glad there were none around. But he stood up and threw down his velvet scarf in an angry gesture. “Not one of you is worried about Harry,” he fired. “Don’t you understand? He could do himself harm over something like this!”
Isolde stood up and shook her finger at him, like you would to a child. “Stop being so melodramatic! Anyway,” she turned to us, “I don’t think so. Harry’s always looking for ways to get attention.”
“I wouldn’t say that at all,” I disagreed. “In fact, I’d say the opposite.”
Reiner, his eyes round with wonder, said, “So what do you mean, he carried his make-believe tabernacle here from Munich?”
At last I got it. Those old but glimmering gems in the van. Those were his, not Chartreuse’s! He’d carried them in panels. “That’s exactly what he did!” I confirmed. “Oh, Chartreuse,” I confessed, moving toward him, “I’m an absolute nincompoop! I thought the gems I saw in the van were yours. I thought you’d stolen them in Istanbul.”
“That’s it! Now you call me a thief!” Chartreuse fumbled with his jacket and snatched his scarf. “I’m getting out of here!”
Blacky sipped his chi and grinned mischievously. “That’s the best job a girl can have, really, stewardess. I mean, if you’re a fellow. Four days home and then four days off to who knows where. Gives a fellow a break. Plus, you get flying benefits if you marry her. Almost makes up for the loss of freedom.”
“Ha ha ha,” said I. I didn’t mind. I was a sophisticated traveler. And after all, he was only kidding. I hoped. I was sorry to have thought Chartreuse a thief. I mean, even if he was. We were all stuck with one another. And there were worse things than theft. It didn’t help to go accusing people, though. For all I knew he’d turned over a new leaf. Anyway, I was sort of glad to see things settling down into the everyday backbiting lifestyle of moviemaking in the free world. It was a little bit too much bliss for my money, the way things had been; all that mushy good nature and angelic good works. It just wasn’t us. There’s nothing more vicious than one outdoing the other to see who’s nicer.
Wolfgang filmed the group clandestinely from the window. Out the hobnail vestibule they went, then down the road past the prayer wheel, single file: first Charles with Fancy yapping at his heels, Betty, then Mr. Auto, then Park, a family of ducks and one to come.