Last India Overland (67 page)

5

1 later discovered from Kelly that Suzie was lying here. Suzie later confessed to Kelly, in Lahore, that she wasn’t actually one of the sex surrogates; rather she was a nursing aide, responsible for changing the sheets and such things.

— D.W.

6

There were detailed directions to campgrounds and tourist attractions, etc., on most of Pete’s tour notes, but I have included only this page as an example, probably because I tried to imagine what Pete would’ve done, if say, he’d lost this page and had to ask for directions.

7

Whoever wrote these notes obviously didn't take his history very seriously.

— D.W.

8

Loosely, “Look, there’s a bird in flight. ” (Usually uttered when someone is contemplating the theft of someone else’s dinner.)
—
D.W.

9

This business with Dave struck me, at first, as being a delusion of Mick’s mind. Though I did phone up a psychic on a Great Falls radio phone-in show, just to get his opinion on whether or not the souls of dead twins can enter the minds of surviving twins, if the transfer happened in the womb. He said, yes, definitely. He knows personally of six such cases, and then he went on to the next caller.
—
D. W.

Patrick evidently chose not to finish this daybook entry, perhaps because of what happened next. My suspicion is that it came to symbolize something for him. Like how short, brutish and incomplete life can be.
—
D.W.

Mick said Kelly had this conversation in Zadar. Since Kelly was writing her version immediately alter the fact as opposed to two or three months later, it is likely more accurate. This, of course, would apply to all discrepancies, of which there are a few.
—
D. W.

10

Such a language lesson came with each country. I’ve chosen to include only the Greek language lesson. I’ve always liked the language, the way it sounds.

First of all, yes, I am a writer. A published writer, now. I have a seven hundred page novel in a drawer about life on a Montana ranch in the late 1990s. It’s kind of a postmodern, magic realism effort. And, to answer Kelly’s question, yes, that was an old story with a new title. It used to be called, “When the Calf Gets Butchered.”

11

An effort was made to disguise the handwriting. But, as Mick explains later, it was Patrick’s. According to Dave at least.
—
D.W.

12

Kelly used to write a lot of poetry in high school. She has perhaps a hundred poems stashed away in a closet.
—
D. W.

There was at least one page missing here, and at least one page missing in the Istanbul section, all of which will be explained later.
—
D.W.

13

1 have done some research, recently, into drug use. A recent special on PBS, called, simply,
The Brain,
examined the way that drugs affect the brain, creating delusions as they stimulate what is called the brain’s dopamine circuit and the nucleus accumbens. These are the same centres that are activated by sexual pleasure and food. Man and animal alike are creatures of habit, and anything that is stimulated wishes to be stimulated again, a fact which finds its measure in the brain’s most primitive centres, where (it is speculated by today’s new age mystics) our past lives are held in storage by whatever it is that forms the foundation of our memory system. This place, I suppose, is where Dave makes his home, if we allow for the supposition that Mick is sane.
—
D.
VV.

This is the other point at which there was a page, or pages, missing. When Mick’s narrative picks up again, the group is at the Galata Tower.
—
D. W.

14

Due to the extra days the group spent in Istanbul, the itinerary is now out of sync.
—
D. W.

15

A
book came out in 1988 called
Holidays in Hell
by P.J. O’Rourke.
—
D.W.

16

This postcard, with a picture of the Goreme Valley at sunset in the front, showed up in our mother’s mailbox in early December, two days after she died of a heart attack. It was the second piece of mail to her from Kelly in over a month. Kelly told me later she had been sending postcards and aerogrammes. They just weren’t getting through.
—
D.W.

The reader shall see what this graffiti is by the end of the book.

17

In what might be Rob’s scrawl.

18

Mick’s, of course.
—
D.W.

And Suzie’s.

19

When I received this postcard, no telegram from Kelly had arrived. A major mistake I made was disobeying Kelly’s request. I showed the postcard to our mother.
—
D. W.

This doesn’t exactly jibe with Mick’s description of their menu selection. Given the fact that fesejan (a chicken or duck dish, served in a sauce of walnuts and pomegranate), shirin polo (sweet rice served with chicken breasts, sliced almonds and orange peel) and ab-gusht (a spicy stew of meat and vegetables) are all Iranian national dishes, I’m more inclined to go with Patrick’s version. Dave, apparently, did not feel it was a sufficiently important detail to set Mick straight on it. Understandably.
—
D. W.

20

It struck me, as Kelly neared the end of her diary, that she was less inclined to scratch out a date and continue on with the previous date. She tried to keep the entry to each date down to the given page, and this sometimes resulted in her squeezing her scrawl down to a minuscule hen scratch, which was very hard to decipher.
—
D. W.

21

Kelly’s telegram, which arrived 4 days after the Urgiip postcard, and one day after our mother died, held only one word: “SAFE. ”
—
D.W.

22

There are four states of consciousness. Beta is the normal waking rhythm of the brain, which is measured with a frequency of thirteen to thirty cycles per second and which can be increased by anxiety or pronounced mental activity. The alpha rhythm, which occurs during sleep or relaxation, is the most prominent rhythm, and vibrates between eight and thirteen cycles per second. Pheta is in the four- to seven-cycle range and is associated with the dream state and access to creative insight, subconscious information and breakthrough insights. Delta is very slow, from one to four cycles a second or less, and occurs during deep sleep, or, it has been suggested, at the onset of psychic phenomena and the higher levels of consciousness.
—
D.W.

23

Fried leek and “Afghan ravioli” respectively.
—
D.W.

302

24

This postcard did not arrive until April 19, 1979, several weeks after Kelly’s parcel from Bangkok arrived, The aerogramme never did arrive. I had by that time phoned Michael Herring, a state senator, and he made some inquiries with the American embassies in Tehran, Kabul, and Lahore, as well as the American consulate in New Delhi, but there wasn ’t any information concerning a Frank Jenkins anywhere. Concerning the American Embassy in Tehran, he said, “They were going nuts there trying to find their own people, they said there wasn’t much chance of finding a missing tourist.” On the front of Kelly’s postcard: a picture of an Afghani buzkashim horseman crossing a goal line with a headless goat on his pommel, a picture taken at Nawroz (Afghan New Year) in a place called Kunduz.
— D. W.

25

According to Fodor’s, his dying words were “Kashmii—only Kashmir!" — D.W.

This line was heavily crossed out, perhaps because Suzie thought about it, and decided she didn’t want to answer a lot of questions about it, or face possible further retribution from Rob. I’m not even absolutely certain that’s what the phrase said. But I’m fairly certain.
—
D.W.

1 have since talked to Hasheeba. She didn't receive this letter.
—
D.W.

26

This page was written in Kelly’s careful calligraphic hand.
—
D.W.

27

At this point, Mick began to string some of his words together. As a kindness to the reader, I have separated these words, leaving only this phrase as an example.
—
D. W.

An Australian slang word that refers to diarrhoea.
—
D.W.

389

Mother died on Dec. 10, while Christmas shopping downtown. At that point in time we hadn’t heard from Kelly since her postcard to me from Urgup, dated Nov. 11, which I’d received on Nov. 23. As I alluded to before, I was worried because the telegram Kelly said she’d send had not arrived. Still, I didn’t show mother that postcard until Dec. 8. I really don’t know why I did that. I certainly wasn’t thinking straight. As for the telegram, it arrived on Dec. 12, the day before the funeral. Kelly’s postcard to our mother arrived a week later. Needless to say, it was a horrible and heartbreaking time for me, but that is neither here nor there. I immediately wired $2,500 to Kelly via the Royal Nepalese Central Bank.
—
D. W.

28

This could be a bandicoot, which are native to India. Although a cat-sized kangaroo might’ve been a more accurate description.

29

This would be Patan.
—
D.W.

That which is without source, according to my copy of
A History of Religious Ideas.
Eternal.
—
D. W.

30

The womb.

Hasheeba wondered why Kelly wouldn’t mention Mick in this entry. I can only speculate. “She’s a monster,” said Hasheeba. That, I think, is an overstatement.
—
D. W.

31

1 was, of course, somewhat shocked when I received this package. I was further shocked by the frankness of some of Kelly’s diary entries. But I got over it.
—
D. W.

This was as far as Mick got. This was the last page of his manuscript and his last word was incomplete. By and large though, the manuscript is complete. Perhaps thanks to Dave. Perhaps not.
—
D. W.

32

This diary entry, by rights, should precede the previous section. But I have no notes of Pete’s to fall back on at this point and I need a bridge between the two Mick sections. So I’m putting Kelly’s last diary entry here.
—
D. W.

33

This is the first chapter of Mick’s memoir. I decided to put it at the end of the book in the interests of continuity. At the top of the first page were quite a few titles scratched out. Among them:
Last Bus to the Blue Star, Blood on the Bus Seat, Crossing Borders.
The only one that wasn’t crossed out was
All in Search of the Ko Samui Mushroom. —
D. W.