Kissing Through a Pane of Glass (4 page)

Such was the power that this extraordinary building held on the imagination, that whenever it came into view I would stop in my tracks and stare in awe and disbelief.

At one such terrace the view was completely unobscured, so I sat down on the cool flagstones, positioned my back against the wall, and marvelled at the spectacle. The air was clear and warm, the sky a brilliant, undisturbed blue. Ahead of me, the waters of the lake rippled in the gentle breeze, and the only sounds to be heard were the occasional birdcall and the steady rhythms of wet fabric being beaten against stone, as the
dhobi wallahs
executed their clothes-washing duties.

I must have sat there, mesmerised, for a couple of hours, drawing in the visions before me, mulling peacefully over the events of the previous few days. It was the first peaceful time I had had since my arrival.

By late afternoon the sun - no longer beating down from on high - had entered my general field of view, heralding a magnificent sunset which lay just a couple of hours away. How lucky I am, I thought to myself, to have been allowed to witness this, to experience this moment.

And as if this wasn’t enough to keep a twenty-one- year-old entranced, into this dream walked another, more splendid vision.

‘Have you everseen anything more beautiful?’

The interruption should have shocked me, jolted me out of my reveries, caused me, at the least, consternation. But it did not. The voice was as peaceful as the scene I had been gazing at, and I merely turned my head to discover who had spoken.

‘Have you?’

I had not.

That first sight of Liana still registers as one of the few perfect moments of my life. She had walked, silently, on to the terrace, and was standing to my left. She was wearing a simple cotton dress with an Indian print design and leather sandals. She appeared tall, lithe; the sun, behind her, shone through her dress so that her figure was outlined in partial silhouette: a beautiful shape.

I believe I gave an involuntary gasp, which Liana probably interpreted as surprise. She turned her head a little towards me to look across to the mountains, and I set my eyes upon the profile that would haunt me all of my days. She was possessed of a beauty unlike anything I had ever encountered before. She oozed sexuality from every pore.

The feelings, emotions and passions that pulsed through me in that moment had a character, a taste, a shape that was unique, other-worldly, ecstatic. Even in that desert heat, with the sweat running down my back in rivulets, shivers ran through my body. This was not a normal reaction, not a sensible, considered response. It was not natural.

For a moment I was all but over-whelmed; fear took hold of me, gripped me around the throat like an iron hand, a vice. I did not know its nature, or why I should suddenly feel so scared, but it was as real a feeling as anything I had ever experienced. The beads of sweat that now broke out across my forehead were cold, clammy. A loud, buzzing noise inside my head made me feel sick. I closed my eyes momentarily, trying to regain control. What was this? What was wrong with me?

Try as I might, I could make no sense of what I was feeling, of what was happening to me. I opened my eyes again, drawing in the vision before me, the splendour and perfection of another human being, a woman so beautiful that the mere sight of her was capable of reducing me to a mute, quivering idiot.

And then it dawned on me. Despite all my fantasies and daydreams, despite what I knew about my needs and lusts, until that moment I had never really known what true desire was, and that, in its purest form, it was a terrible and frightening thing. I did not know her name or where she had come from. All I knew - to my eternal shame thereafter - was that, whoever she was, I wanted to possess her, entirely.

In those days, whenever anyone asked me what I did for a living, I told them I was a travel writer. This was a lie. I had not, as yet, attempted to put pen to paper, and even on that first trip to India I had made no provision to keep a journal. History records that it was to be three years before I was to publish so much as a single article. If events from that trip have been recorded in any way, then such information resides in the convoluted spirals of my increasingly unreliable memory.

My declaration of so specific a profession was not the result of delusion or a fevered imagination, or even the wish to impress others. Nor did I consider myself a
de facto
liar. It was more a case of wish fulfilment. I wanted to be a travel writer and believed the swiftest route to achieving this goal was to set out with the firm belief that I was already a member of that select élite.

In retrospect, it is outrageous that I should have persisted with this falsehood, and lauded my mythical reputation with such vehemence. “You haven’t heard of me? But surely... you do read the Sunday papers? You must have seen my name. No? No matter...”

And so on. I believed then that travel writing was my passport to glory, fame, independence, wealth and freedom. More fool me. But such are the dreams of the young, and, despite the fact that I had yet to consign a single descriptive scenario to paper, I felt certain of my vocation and of the glittering prizes that inevitably awaited me.

Of course at that time I did not differentiate between confidence and egoism. Indeed, if anyone dared accuse me of egocentricity, I would flare up at them, angered by the implied defamation. But this is no crime, and whilst I may regret some of my more flamboyant displays in defence of my integrity, even now I do not condemn my former self for such excesses.

Twenty-one-year-olds are entitled to be brash, optimistic, egotistical. They have, in fact, a right to such feelings. They have yet to suffer the blows of disappointment that start to rain down as one grows older; they have yet to become world-weary. We should applaud and sanction their self-belief, because as we approach that chimerical phase of life known as adulthood, with its attendant uncertainties and complications, it is our belief in ourselves and our confidence in our abilities that is most swiftly eroded, and we are left without dreams, desire and the energy required to achieve our goals.

So do not be angry with twenty-one-year-old Michael Montrose and his wide-eyed naiveté, his swaggering bravado, his inability to accept even the most mild criticism. Allow him these few brief months - maybe years - of unbridled enthusiasm. You, too, were once young.

Remember?

***

I was to learn, eventually, that it is no easy matter trying to make a decent living as a travel writer. It sounds like a cushy number, doesn’t it? One of the great glamour professions - travel the world, visit exotic locations, scribble down a few impressions and hey presto, money in the bank. What could be easier?

Trying to fly of one’s own volition, that’s what. Or inscribing the New Testament on the head of a pin.

The problem is, anyone who can scrawl their name on a piece of paper and has been further afield than Bognor, thinks they can write travel articles. They believe their visions and versions are as valid as the next person’s, and consequently there’s no reason why they shouldn’t get paid for their well-informed opinions. The really sickening thing about this is, it’s true.

The competition is phenomenal, especially these days. Independent travel has become the Holy Grail of the late twentieth century. Anyone with a few hundred pounds and a couple of months can now become a Grand Explorer. The world is full of roving bands or neophyte reporters, searching for the exotic, having “experiences”, seeking nirvana. The Third World has become an event supermarket, complete with daily specials, bargain offers and cut-price, shop-soiled goods. You just wander along the aisles selecting the desired items according to taste and cost (Thailand: convenience; most attractive packaging. India: cheapest, best value on offer. Galapagos Islands; most expensive and exclusive commodity etc.). Head for the check-out, flash the credit card and
voilà
, instant life experience (which, like instant coffee, may be more convenient and cheaper than the real thing, but bears only a passing similarity to it).

And just like shopping at Tesco, you can’t help but feel at the end of the day that you’ve been conned, seduced. You arrive home, look at what you’ve purchased, and what do you find? Fancy packets filled with mass-produced, processed muck which is full of artificial additives and tastes of nothing much in particular. It is also, invariably, over-priced and bad for your health.

The great travel writers know the truth. Paul Theroux, Eric Newby - they know that travelling is a dreadful experience, circumscribed by boredom, loneliness, frus- tration, confusion and sickness. To add insult to injury, one pays good money and expends valuable time in the process. They’re honest enough to tell us all this (espe- cially Theroux), but do we listen?

We do not. We become envious of their amoebic dysentery; their sleepless nights in flea-infested hotel rooms that double up as brothels; their endless hours of aggravation at the hands of insane Customs officials who are not content with merely ripping their bags apart, but wish to do the same thing to their bodies, having first raped them at gunpoint. We remain victims of the travel agents’ brochurese gobbledegook. We have been brainwashed by too many repeats of The Holiday Programme and The World About Us.

We have nothing better to do with our time. And we are all aroused by the lure of the exotic.

If you’re looking for villains in this tawdry little exercise in mass deception, look no further. I am the worst offender. Unlike Theroux and Newby, I am a rotten stinking little liar, a purveyor of petty fibs and terminological inexactitudes. I rhapsodise about the beautiful peacock-blue lakes that shimmer in the heat-haze, and ignore the dead bodies floating on the surface. I eulogise about the awe-inspiring walks through the snow-capped mountain ranges and neglect to mention the sky-high piles of faeces on the paths. And I enthuse about the uniqueness, the matchless quality of the moment, forgetting, conveniently, to mention that there will be hordes of other people standing beside you, wondering what all the fuss is about. Whilst others are economical with the truth, I am deliberately mean, premeditated in my parsimony.

And I do it all for money. I’m selling ersatz experiences and false dreams. I am a whore. On the integrity scale you will locate me somewhere between a used car salesman and a child molester, and if my Hindu friends in Udaipur have got it right, I shall probably return in my next life as a dung-beetle.

Or a politician, perhaps.

Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on myself. After all, I’m merely performing a necessary function, one that - had I chosen a more noble profession - would have been executed by someone else. The fact is, for all the lies and bullshit, people still want to travel. It all rather begs the question.

The late Bruce Chatwin - probably the greatest commentator of all about the process of travel - had a beautiful theory. Man, he said, is intrinsically nomadic, that it is virtually his purpose to walk, to travel, to be for ever in the act of moving on, and that the whole concept of civilisation, of stationary society, is a mistake, an error, a miscalculation.

It’s a lovely idea, and I wish I could believe in it. Unfortunately, I am of a wholly different and rather more prosaic opinion. Travel is a sickness, an addiction, the curse of misfits who are incapable of finding meaning in the ordinary, the everyday. They are the malcontents. They travel, not because they want to, but because they have no choice, because there is no place for them in this world, because, for their sins, they live in a continual state of partial dissatisfaction.

They are lost souls.

And so, alas, am I. So I travel, and tell my tales and sell my lies, and because I spend six months of the year living in countries where the per capita annual income is less than the fee I receive for three thousand carefully written words, I survive.

I have no home, no car, no savings. I have nothing to give to anyone except love, and now Liana wants to take that away from me. If anyone’s getting used, fucked or fooled around here, it’s me, wouldn’t you say?

‘Liana,’ said the girl.

It could have meant anything; for all I knew, she was talking a foreign language. I was sure she could hear my heart beating. My mouth had dried completely, and I felt short of breath; for a moment the symptoms all added up to one of those dreadful diseases I had read about, the sort of thing one is bound to catch in India just by breathing the air. I was incapable of saying anything, so I just nodded. This response, or rather lack of response, must have impressed her in a way not intended.

‘You don’t think that’s an unusual name?’