open.
“She’s a junkie,” he said. “We’re not going anywhere with her. And besides, we are stopping at Ankara. There are things I want to see there.”
Marguerite looked at Oliver and she shrugged. I was sad and a little bit pissed. I moved closer to her on the bench until she was leaning against me. I had fallen a little bit in love with her. I loved her more in the days that were to come. This was not the end by any means.
Oliver left and I ordered another tea and a rice pudding. “He is pretty,” Marguerite said.
Oliver was pretty, I thought. I had a beautiful man. My old man was beautiful. Still, since that night on the dining room floor, we hadn’t touched. It would be many weeks before he touched me again. And terrible things had to happen before he did. I will tell you but you will have to wait.
“But why do you go with him?” she asked me.
I looked at her. Until she asked, it had been obvious to me what I was doing with Oliver. I told her even as I told myself. “He’s taking me to India,” I said, and watched her eyelids close again.
I had been living in Italy with the spoiled only son of a rich Milanese family who did not use their influence when he was called up for compulsory military service. His father might have thought it would make him a man. And so I followed him to a dark mountain village where the children threw stones when I came to the square to shop. His mother had sent us off with a small cheese grater for parmigiano.
The dark village was most likely beautiful, the birthplace of popes, high in the Dolomites, but I have never loved mountains, I told Marguerite. What I did love was the preening Alpini of the elite Italian army unit, who came to the bars in their medieval velvet hats with long white plumes. My Milanese was not one of these.
Enter an invitation to Sorrento, enter Oliver, the piece of cake passing through Sorrento on his way to India, enter me, the seducer, looking for a way out.
“And your Italian lover?” The question startled me. I didn’t think she was listening.
We passed through Belluno to get my things. I left Oliver in the bar with the plumed Alpini. I came into the house like a thief in the night although it was mid-afternoon. The plan was to gather up my things and disappear. I didn’t consider a note. I can be a sneak.
But my Milanese also came like a thief in the night. He cursed me, and tore my photograph into small pieces and threw them in my face. I stood and took my medicine. I understood consequences. Where I come from, you pay for your sins. I left the cheese grater. I felt badly but I just wanted to go. I wanted to get away from the terrible curses.
So, is there a happy ending? Does the adventurer/seductress make her way to the East and find fulfillment? Hell, no. I blame the curses, which, eventually, hit their mark.
Marguerite started another joint and told me she had left Amsterdam alone. The dope was getting too expensive. She didn’t like the cold. She kept getting pregnant. She had a fake passport in a man’s name and sixty US dollars in traveler’s checks that someone had given her. She was going to Goa. For Christmas. “Everyone,” she said, waving her hand to indicate the room. “All. Goa for Christmas!”
The youth of Western Europe and America were on the move. I smoked with Marguerite until I thought I had gone blind, paid for her tea and found my way to the dormitory room in the Gülhane. I fell asleep on the narrow cot next to Oliver’s wearing all my clothes. It was cold in Istanbul.
THE ISTANBUL TRAIN STATION
NOVEMBER 16, 1969
2:00 P.M.
We came to buy our tickets to Ankara, Oliver and I, according to his plan.
“Where are you going to, mate?”
I stood mute while my Istanbul train station satyr, my destiny, my destruction, spoke to Oliver. I looked over at Oliver and, at that moment, it seemed to me that his heart too had been struck. Oliver stared at Rick.
I was ignored by both of them. I stayed silent. I listened to Rick, his name was Rick, he said, from Yorkshire, tell Oliver that we couldn’t stop in Ankara. We had to push on through Turkey. There was a group of them leaving that night. It was important to be in a group, Rick said. “The Turks, the women . . .” He pointed his chin at me. “You don’t know what you’re doing, mate, traveling with a bird.”
And just like that, we were in the Grand Bazaar buying kilos of nuts and dried fruit. Rick bought cashews and apricots and figs. Oliver, pennies in his palm, stuck to peanuts and raisins.
Oliver, we would say where I come from, as I may have convinced you by now, didn’t go for spit. Oliver wouldn’t spend a wooden nickel. Oliver could squeeze a dollar until it cried. Oliver, we would say where I come from, was a cheap son-of-a-bitch. But Oliver was my ticket to ride.
THE ISTANBUL TRAIN STATION
NOVEMBER 16, 1969
8:00 P.M.
Rick saw us when we came into the station. He smiled, he waved. Oliver and I moved toward him. He stood in the center of a group, the one he insisted we go with to India.
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