Last India Overland (18 page)

“Well, you’re the psychic on the bus,” said Jenkins. “What’s he doing?”

I really shouldn’t have let the cat out of the bag in Venice about being a psychic. Hardly a day went by when somebody didn’t bug me about it.

I called up Dave and asked him and then I said, “Oh, he’s just getting some sexual therapy from Suzie.” Because that’s how Dave put it.

“How d’ya mean?” said Jenkins.

I said, “Well, it seems that Rockstar’s only got one testicle. His old lady chopped the other one off when she caught him playing with himself.”

Jenkins gave me a weird look. “No kidding,” he said.

“No kidding,” I said.

“How do you know that?” he said.

“Told ya. I’m psychic,” I said.

Jenkins gave me a deadpan look I couldn’t have read with a microscope. “Oh, yeah, right,” he said.

Jenkins said goodnight. I said goodnight. And I drifted into a dream in Dave’s TV where Rockstar and Suzie are sitting up in a bed with a real nice canopy and Rockstar’s naked except for a pair of grotty gotch and Suzie’s wearing skimpy midnight blue lingerie and they’re snorting coke and dropping acid and drinking retsina. Then Suzie goes down on Rockstar and when she comes up for air she tells him she’s weird, she knows it, but she’s got this thing for men who are completely fucked up, and Rockstar says that’s bloody nice, but if she ever tells anyone that he’s only got one bollock she’ll be the one who’s completely fucked up. Suzie goes back to work, except this time she put his one testicle in her mouth. Don’t you bloody dare, hisses Rockstar with a worried smile, and Suzie grins up at him and laughs and then the TV goes black and a few minutes after that Rockstar comes staggering through the tent flap and he steps on Jenkins’s face, or was that the next night?

GREECE
Platamonas—Athens

Day 13

Departure: 8:00 a.m.

Route: Platam0nas—Larissa—Lamia—Athens Camp: Voulas; tel: 89.52.712.

Points: 1. Just beyond Lamia there’s the Thermopylae monument, commemorating the place where Leonides and three hundred Spartans withheld the Persian army of Xerxes, in 480 B.C. (Those three hundred Cyprus trees you see aren’t there by coincidence.) I guess Xerxes’s army was some few thousand strong (can’t find a book anywhere that says exactly how many). The hot springs at the foot of the pass has lime, sulphur, salt and carbonic acid in it and they say it’ll cure your scrofula (whatever that is)* and your rheumatiz.

2.    Try not to get into Athens in time for rush-hour traffic. Might as well hit the Acropolis and the Parthenon right away. While they’re walking and gawking, you can pick up the mail at the Athena Club. You’re bound to get stalled in traffic somewhere, and that’ll be a good time to tell them that the Parthenon was built from 447 - 438 B.C. and it’s devoted to Athena, the Goddess of Wisdom. A guy named Phedias was head honcho of the architects. There are fifty columns in all, of Doric style. There used to be a 37 ft. gold and ivory statue of Athena until the Turks took it to Constantinople, and it was destroyed by fire. As for the Parthenon, some guys from Venice hit it with a cannonball in 1687 and the place hasn’t been the same since. There’s no single line that is perfectly straight. The most sacred place in the Acropolis is the Erectheion. This is where Athena and Poseidon had a little tiff concerning who should rule Athens. Poseidon struck the rock with his spear and a fountain sprang up. Athena caused an olive tree to grow on the spot. And then a temple was built which was converted into a Christian church for a while, until the Turks came through and turned it into a harem for a Turkish commander who had forty wives. No wonder the Greeks hate the Turks.

3.    Language lesson: Good morning—Kalimera. Goodbye—

*A tubercular condition of the lymph glands.
—
D. W.

112

Kali andamosi. Please—Parakalo. Thank you—Efcharisto. Yes— Ne. No—Ochi. Good—Kali. Where’s the toilet?—Pou ine i oaleta? Ladies—Ginekon. Men—Andron. How much?— P0sso? The bill, please—To logariasm0, parakalo. Without oil, please—Horis lathi, parakalo. When?—Pote? Beer—Bira. Wine—Krasi. Red—Mavro. White—Aspro. Menu — Katalogo. Open—Anikton. Closed—Kliston. Breakfast— Proino. Eggs—Avga. Yoghurt—Yaour. Coffee—Kafe. One, two, three, four—Ena, dio, tria, tessera. Five, six, seven, eight—Pende, exi, epta, okto. Nine, ten—Enea, deka.
¹⁰

Mick

Pete was playing a new tape on the way into Athens. Linda Ronstadt’s
Living in the U.S.A.
Great tape to have on a trip to India. And there was an Elvis tune on it, “Love Me Tender,” and so me and Kelly were talking about Elvis while the bus sat stalled in Athens’s nutso rush-hour traffic. We both agreed that Elvis’s
Memphis
album is one of the great albums of all time. And I told Kelly that I learned how to play guitar by listening to “Heartbreak Hotel,” which perked up her ears.

“You know how to play guitar?” she said.

“They call me Eric Clapton for short back in Kitsilano,” I said.

She was sewing some leather. She was making a passport pouch for me since I’d forgotten to bring one along. I thought it was a neat thing for Kelly to do. Made me fall in love with her just that much more. Which was maybe the whole idea. Women are pretty sneaky when it comes to love. They’re all just a bunch of Venus’s flytraps and us males, of course, are the flies. Not that I’m bitching about it or anything. Soon just gave me a great sponge bath and so I just had to ask her to shack up with me once I get out of this hospital.

She smiled, said sorry, she was still involved.

Dave told me she was telling a little white lie there, so I called her on it. Told her I was psychic.

Her eyes got big and wide. She said, “Really?”

I said, “Really.”

She said, “Am I going to have a baby soon?”

Dave said most definitely. Within the year. I passed the info on.

She smiled. “Oh, good.”

I said, “Well, how can you have a baby if you don’t have a husband?”

“I’ve already had a husband,” she said. “They’re no fun. Now I want a baby.”

And then she took off. While I listened to Dave tell me she’d been having an affair with some married doctor in Bangkok she’d seen about once a month.

“But he won’t be the father of her child,” said Dave, “he called off the affair a week ago,” and then hung up.

Which left me fantasizing about Soon. Making love to her. I wouldn’t mind living on Ko Samui for the rest of my life. But it’d be a lot more fun to do it with a woman like Soon.

But getting back to Athens, Kelly said, “I think I read in
Rolling Stone
that they make good guitars in Athens. Guitars that aren’t too expensive.”

“Oh, yeah?” I said. “Maybe I’ll look into it.”

“We could roast marshmallows around the campfire,” she said, “and have little campfire sing-a-longs. ”

“You’re just a romantic at heart, aren’t you, Kelly?” I said.

She thought about that for a moment, as the bus began to inch forward a few millimetres. Linda was singing, “Ooh, Baby, Baby.” Finally Kelly said, “I don’t know. I used to be, maybe. I’m not sure any more.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

She looked up from her sewing needle. “I fell in love once, Mick. Once was enough.”

I said, “You’ve spent a few nights at the Heartbreak Hotel, huh?”

She said too many nights. So I said, me, the big expert, you’ve got to get up off the dirty carpet and dust yourself off, that’s what you’ve got to do. Go down to the lounge and cast your eye around the room. Check out the piano player.

She laughed. Said she’d keep it in mind.

She said, “I think that’s what Elvis died of. Heartbreak. I

don’t really want to follow his example.”

I told her she was wrong. I told her Elvis died because he had a needle shoved up his butt. I told her he died because of Hershey bar bloat.

Kelly thought that it wasn’t quite that simple. She thought that Elvis was some kind of martyr representing the sick American culture. Where the pursuit of fame and cash finally lands you face up on a hospital gurney and all that. He was the golden boy martyr of a desperate society, that’s the phrase she used. He burnt out on the power trip syndrome. I told her yeah, it was a power trip syndrome alright. I told her Elvis just wanted to see how many housewives he could get to masturbate themselves silly with shampoo bottles to the tune of “Teddy Bear.”

At the other table Patrick was playing gin with Charole. I saw him raise an eyebrow. As if to say I’d gone maybe just a tad too far. Which has always been a problem of mine. That’s what Hasheeba used to say. Know what your problem is, Mick? You always go just a bit too far.

It’s the only thing she ever said that really irritated me.

But it maybe was a mistake saying that, because Kelly gave me this tired look that as much as said the conversation was over, and I made a mental note not to say bad things about “Teddy Bear” any more, because it must’ve been a favourite song of hers or something.

Though Dave says I missed the point altogether. Well, I know I missed the point. He missed the point of why I missed the point.

While we crawled through traffic, Pete took the opportunity to lay some Greek on us. Efcharisto, parakalo, bira, etc. I didn’t pay any attention. The old man used to take me to all these Greek pizza joints when we were living in Regina and I can say hey, malaca, with the best of them.

While he was going ena, dio, tria, beware of gonorrhea, I was listening to Dave tell me I was being just a bit unfair to Elvis, and he told me why.

When Pete was finished, I said to Kelly, “Hey, don’t get me wrong, I think Elvis is great. But he should’ve stuck with rock and roll. His big mistake was selling out to the movies. Like
Blue Hawaii
and
Speedway.
I mean, get serious. He turned himself into a joke. Though
Jailhouse Rock
wasn’t bad.

And as for having a needle shoved up his butt, well, I feel bad about saying that, he didn’t have a needle shoved up his butt at all. That’s just tabloid bullshit. It was all his doctor’s fault. His doctor gave him every drug he wanted. Demerol, benzedrine, all kinds of drugs.” I said, “When Elvis died, he had the effects of six hundred and eighty pills in his system and twenty cubic centimetres of liquid downers, uppers and painkillers in his stomach. He was a walking, talking drugstore. He died of what the coroners call polypharmacy.”

Kelly said, “You read this in the
National Enquirer?”

I said, “Nope.”

“You have a good memory for figures,” she said.

“Some figures,” I said.

She looked out the window. There was a smog haze in the air. Some kids on the street were waving at us.

Kelly said, “Well, one thing is certain, it was a tragic waste. ”

“Sure was,” I said. “I know I cried a tear or two.” Which is the God’s honest truth. And I leaned back and lit up a State Express, just to have a puff or two, and then I put it out, because Kelly always waved her hand whenever smoke came near her, she was almost as bad as Teach.

Pete dropped us off at the Parthenon, or is it the Acropolis? Dave says it’s both. The Parthenon is part of the Acropolis. Okay, fine. And then Pete took off to get our mail at some kind of club.

The Parthenon was okay, though I’ve never ever been too turned on by big slabs of rock. Actually, it was kind of sad in a way. There was garbage all over the place, and scaffolding and sawhorses and more Japanese tourists than you can shake a Nikon at. There was this thick smog in the air. And all the noise of Athens’s traffic blared up at us. Somehow when you look at the Parthenon in books it looks so quiet.

Patrick was in a pissed-off mood, I could tell, because he didn’t have a camera. Rockstar offered him his Polaroid but Patrick refused to take it. Maybe because Rockstar hung him over that wall. Or maybe because Polaroids were beneath him. Maybe a little of both.

But Rockstar took a lot of pictures and he labelled all of them. He took a picture of Tim and Teach, without their permission, and labelled that one “Marriage on the Rocks,” which goes to show you that Rockstar did have a sense of humour of some sort.

Not that Tim and Teach’s marriage was on the rocks or anything. At least it didn’t seem to be, last time I saw them.

Pete got back with the mail about the time that the sun was going down, and I wasn’t too surprised that there wasn’t a letter for me. Everybody else, though, got tons of letters, except for Rockstar, but even he got one. It was from one of his roadie buddies. He showed me the picture that came with the letter. It was a corpse lying on a bed between two smashed guitars. There was a needle sticking out of one arm.

“That’s Charlie Putrid,” said Rockstar, “after someone killed him.”

Someone. I liked that. Dave told me Rockstar killed him. But I kept my mouth shut about it. All I said was, “Well, why would anyone send a picture like that to you, Rockstar?” “Bloody Eddie is trying to blackmail me,” said Rockstar. “And here I thought he was a friend of mine.” Rockstar laughed. “Pretty stupid, huh, Muckle? Ain’t nobody got any friends in this world, huh? Everyone’s out to screw you, that’s how it works, ain’t it, Muckle?”