Mary Ellen Courtney - Hannah Spring 01 - Wild Nights (34 page)

“You’re going to live apart?”

“I don’t know yet. We haven’t made a plan.”

“Good relationships run on serendipity, I quote our counselor. You have to be in the same place for that.”

“Then why is Oscar still in New Orleans?”

“Because he’s under contract. I wish he were here today. Is there anything you want me to do at this end? It sounds like it was a total wipe-out; the guys had to borrow clothes from the neighbors.”

I guessed there was an insurance claim to file for Sparky if nothing else. Poor Sparky, incinerated. What a way to go. There was no way to put a value on a tee shirt full of holes or a homemade box. I needed to call Jon.

He answered before it even rang, “I didn’t think I’d ever say I’m glad you’re in India.”

“My house blew up, even my car burned up. I’m homeless. I didn’t see this coming.”

I told him the story, and that Karin and family were okay, but that Ed was heading back.

“You’re not homeless, Hannah.”

“I thought I’d have that place for work.”

“I know you loved it, but there are other places. I’m sorry you lost your things.”

“They can’t be replaced. All I kept was what couldn’t be replaced. All my memories.”

“I know H.”

“I can’t stay on. There’s a line out the door waiting to make a call. I don’t like the feeling that the earth could take you away from me just like that. That I’m so far away from you.”

“It could do it with you right next to me. We both know that. Get some rest, I’m not going anywhere.”

I stopped at the internet cafe to email my family, but there was no way I’d get on a machine. Margaret and Ed were waiting for me when I came up the stairs. They were just glad that I hadn’t been home in bed when it happened. They said the rest of it didn’t matter. I realized I was whining about some old things while their daughter was badly injured. Ed was leaving in an hour. Margaret and I would go ahead and make the move to Varanasi. We already had train tickets and there was no reason to sit around watching the same cans fall off the same shelves.

We were up early the next day. Dilip and Chahel loaded our bags. Ed had taken care of giving each person at the hotel an envelope of money. Knowing Ed, they’d all gotten a year’s income of $600. The train station was packed with people. Huge family groups in colorful fabrics sat on piles of luggage lashed together with rough rope; carts loaded with boxes that looked like they were leftover from 1850 were being pushed by the bent backs of sinewy men. Kiosks selling veggie cutlets and drinks, chips, cigarettes, and tobacco for bidis marched at intervals down the way.

Men carrying our bags on their heads pushed ahead of us with Chahel and Dilip directing movement. We would be traveling through the night. We found our first class sleeping berths; bench seats that would be our beds too. Each section on our side of the car was curtained off with four berths to a section; across the aisle they were single stacked berths with their own curtain. We had extra room with Ed’s berth empty. Dilip and Chahel were across the way in single berths. They had never had such luxurious accommodations on a train. It was not luxury by any Western standard. They stored our luggage under the berths and locked them to sturdy hooks with bicycle locks. It felt like more of the same old British world.

Margaret and I sat across from each other on our bunks, knees touching, and looked out the window as we left the station. The screens on the windows were so filthy it made the white turbans and sharp brown profiles that passed close by outside look like grainy film from a different time.

“Ed would enjoy this,” she said.

“I’m still finding it impossible to describe this place to Jon.”

“There will be a lot of that over the years. There’s never enough time to debrief. Can’t really. How can you describe the smells and noise? What do you plan to do about work and life with Jon?”

“I imagine we’ll do what you and Ed have done. I don’t know what Jon thinks. We haven’t talked about it beyond this picture. Except that we need some time before I go away again like this. He says he doesn’t want to raise kids alone.”

She looked at me for a second and then out the window again. “Have the conversation. Keep an open mind.”

We made our way to the dining car where we all crammed around a small table and had thali plates and chai. It was time for bed.

It was remarkably quiet considering the way we were packed in separated only by curtains. I fell asleep under a rough wool blanket and dripping air conditioner, swaying to the clickety clack of train on tracks. It reminded me of the palm fronds outside our window in Honolulu.

We awoke on the outskirts of Varanasi. Piles of trash were banked up against crumbling walls with dogs and monkeys, and naked trash-picking children. India can be hard to process.

Dilip went for a car while Chahel got porters and counted pieces of luggage. Water was up to the running boards in a torrential rain as we drove through 8th century streets that we shared with donkey carts, cars, teams of water buffalo, bicycle rickshaws, and wildly decorated buses with “Horn Please” painted on the backs. They looked like they were on a magical mystery tour from my parents’ youth.

We played chicken through intersections made dicier by the addition of more skinny white cows lying in the middle of the road. Everyone had it timed out to the nanosecond. I had quit squealing and saying “Oh shit” after the first few days. Police officers blew whistles to no effect. It was incredible how fast everyone could drive, and right at each other, without crashing. We made a roundabout. In the center sat a small brightly painted yellow shrine. A goddess sat inside, huge red lips and voluptuous breasts impassive behind swirls of incense with marigolds at her feet.

We drove down to a dead-end street. The goddess Ganges slid by in front of us. She cleanses all. We pulled into a dirt lot lined on one side with cows in a makeshift pen. Across from the pens was a multi-storied white adobe building with a security gate that opened onto a small courtyard.

A short flight of stairs led to an entry area. A big room had tables shoved together to create one large table. Doors lined the perimeter of the room. One opened into a large kitchen, one into a small booth with a phone. The phone was huge; it looked more like a small 1960s computer than a simple telephone. Another small room had a computer with a listing chair. Our rooms were on the top floor and opened onto another tiled terrace.

My corner room was a monk’s cell. It was just big enough for a single bed, another pallet with blanket and flat pillow. A small desk and chair under the window overlooked the terrace and river beyond. Shelves carved into the wall over the bed would serve as my dresser.

The bathroom was two steps up with a small lip at the door. I quickly saw why; there was no tub or shower. There were simply hot and cold water spigots coming out of the wall about two feet off the floor. A ten-gallon bucket and a small plastic measuring cup sat underneath. A drain was in the middle of the floor. The lip was to keep water from running like a waterfall down the stairs and into the bedroom. There was a traditional squat toilet made of institutional green enamel dropped into the corner of the floor.

The main room had windows on both walls. I could look down on a family going about the business of living to one side and onto a Buddhist center in front. There was no painting on the walls. It was all white. I liked it, an oasis of simplicity in what Jon had taken to calling the busy busy of India.

One of the workers brought a small stack of thin towels. He bowed hello and asked me how I like India. I told him I love it. He beamed.

Margaret came up behind him and peered over his shoulder at my room.

“Oops, I didn’t imagine temple hotel meant anything so basic.” She addressed the nice man. “Are there other rooms available?”

He did a head bobble and explained that all the rooms were spoken for over the next few weeks, but he’d see what he could do.

I swept my arms around the small space, “I’m fine. I like it. It seems perfect after having my house blow up.”

He was confused by that and made a quick exit. Margaret came in and checked out the bathroom, then sat on the bed.

“This is a little rough around the edges for two months,” she said. “My room is more like a room. I have a shower you can use.”

“I’m fine here. It feels like a retreat cell. If it doesn’t work out, I’ll move in a couple of weeks.”

She sat on the cot, “Well, Ed wanted to be right down where the action is.”

It turned out it really was a temple; Ed wouldn’t have been cooking with onions or garlic. Dilip and Chahel were staying with us again.

“Let’s go up to the roof for tea,” she said.

We went up the last flight of stairs to the rooftop. There were tables and chairs along the railing at the edge. Sheets were hung on lines in the breeze to soften the sun. They were already dry from the earlier rain. We were catching the tail end of the monsoon season. We would be working through daily downpours and gusty wind for at least a month. The producers had decided to use the weather as a dramatic element as our characters’ stormy lives came to a climax. It would be powerful on film, but it would require a lot of plastic sheeting and tie-downs to make it happen. We’d heard that each day was getting a bit milder than the last.

The river was starting to recede. We were high enough to see down the riverbank until it disappeared into a haze. The bank of the river was lined with fantastic buildings built between the broad flights of stairs, or ghats, that ran from the street right down under the river water. Prime real estate on the flanks of the goddess.

I stopped downstairs to email Jon our new location. I told him about dancing in the desert and that I wanted him to do the hula at our wedding. I was trying to sound more upbeat despite feeling weary.

Margaret and I set out on the narrow dirt path to explore. Once we got down to it, we could see that the riverbank was an expanse of black slime-covered trash. Every morning the locals took their plastic bag of trash tied up with bunny ears and threw it in the river; she cleanses all. The seasonal tide lines were lines of trash.

We walked ghat-to-ghat as young girls in thin cotton dresses with faded patterns, like my grandmother’s, danced their bare feet and smiling white teeth at our sides. I didn’t remember Amber ever smiling like that. They sold fragile boats handmade from large leaves. Each boat had a tiny wick and a marigold. We were supposed to light one and set it afloat in the river out of respect for the goddess.

There was something different going on at each of the closely spaced ghats. In one people were washing their water buffalo, the next they were washing their hair. The women bathed modestly in saris, all except some of the very old women, who bathed with sagging bare breasts. People were brushing their teeth and rinsing off almost on top of each other. The next ghat was for laundry, women had cotton garments in saturated colors spread out on the steps to dry. The next ghat was for religious puja, rituals for the god or goddess who was looking over you. People dunked and smiled in the thick brown water. Monkeys ran along the narrow building ledges and watched. Holy men sat along the bank with their hands out. Chahel dropped a coin in one man’s hand. I wondered how he chose. There were unholy holy men who looked like wild cannibals covered in human ash from the burning ghats. One carried a human skull like a purse.

I was fascinated by the idea of the burning ghats, the ceremonial cremation area. Indians dreamt of being burned at the ghats and of having their ashes given over to Ma Ganga, as one of the crew called her. People even shipped their ashes to her if they could afford it. But the ideal is to be burned on a pile of wood watched over by your loved ones. We didn’t have time to walk that far, but we would go there.

The ritual is expensive by Indian standards. Some families couldn’t afford enough wood, so partially burned bodies were dumped in the river. The government-bred snapping turtles could eat a pound of human flesh a day. They batted clean up, without biting the thousands of living who were in the river at any given moment.

We walked on as bands of young children trailed behind us then dropped away. Our body language was much less foreign after months of working. We moved with sureness and swept our foreheads in respectful acknowledgment of all the souls around us. We stopped on the way back and set a lit wick leaf boat adrift in the water.

I should have started reading up ten years ago. I knew I would be leaving without ever understanding much of it. I rarely study a place before I go, except as it relates to work. I let it wash over me. I’m sure I miss a lot, like not renting the audio tour in a museum. But my mind isn’t busy with being busy with facts either; it’s more impressionistic than that. It was fine. There are all kinds of ways to approach the world. Apparently I like to do it by feel. Eyes half open, like a meditating Buddha. Though I hate meditating. Jon had been reading. He referred to us as Radha Krishna, the divine lovers. What a romantic.

India is everything all the time. I usually dream a lot but I hadn’t dreamt once since I’d been there. As Phyllis the Physicist had said, being awake in India was enough for one Western brain.

We had a few days to rest and wander as the company shook off the earthquake and made their way to the new location. People were scattered around town, we were the only ones at the temple; just the way we like it.

Dilip drove us across town to a restaurant to meet Dede, the Director, and other department heads. It was an Indian feast. I fell in love with butter masala. Dede had a message from Ed that he had arrived safely and had the kids under his wing with help from Karin. Their daughter was in bad shape; she was going to need extensive plastic surgery. Her husband would be able to leave the hospital in a few days, wrist-to-neck in a cast with pins. Ed planned to drive him to work each day and handle the household.

Margaret went straight to bed and I got a cup of chai from the kitchen and went up to the roof. I could see the flames of an evening Ganga Aarti at the Dashashwamedh ghat. We’d considered shooting it, but I’d checked it out a few nights before with Chahel. Millions of hard-shelled insects, attracted by the fire ceremony, rained down like rockets and bounced off our heads. I had to cover my mouth and put on sunglasses to keep from eating them or getting an eye gouged out. Chahel seemed impervious to the onslaught. I don’t know what the bugs were, but I couldn’t control them. We weren’t going to grab any shots of their world without a firefight. I told the Director we couldn’t shoot it. She nodded at her assistant. He’d slashed a red line through the scene in the script and went off in search of the writer. I was waiting for a replacement scene.