Last India Overland Read online

  © Craig Grant, 1989

  All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyrights hereon may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any request for photocopying, recording, taping or information storage and retrieval systems of any part of this book shall be directed in writing to the Canadian Reprography Collective, 379 Adelaide Street West, Suite Ml, Toronto, Ontario M5V 1S5.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead within it is coincidental.

  Cover painting by Christine Lynn. Reproduced courtesy of Craig Grant and the artist. Photographed by Don Hall.

  Design by Joyce Sotski.

  Typeset by Type Systems, Regina Printed and bound in Canada by MC Graphics Inc. Excerpts from The Last India Overland were previously published in Grain (February 1981) and The New Quarterly (Spring 1983), and broadcast on CBC Radio’s “Ambience.” The author thanks Brenda, Christine, Connie, Doug, Jack, Leon, Mack, Sean, Valerie, and the Saskatoon Poets Coterie. He also thanks the City of Regina, the Saskatchewan Arts Board, and the Ontario Arts Council, and his parents, who helped make this endeavour possible.

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges the financial assistance of the Saskatchewan Arts Board, the City of Regina, the Canada Council and the Department of Communications in the publication of this book.

  Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Grant, Craig, 1955-The last India overland ISBN: 0-919926-95-9

  I. Title

  PS8563.R368L3 1989 C813’.54 C89-098077-2

  PR9199.3.G736L3 1989

  cofeau books

  Suite 209, 1945 Scarth Street Regina, Saskatchewan S4P 2H2

  Dedicated to all the Merry Globesters, particularly Mary

  Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai Whose doorways are alternate Night and Day, How Sultan after Sultan with his Pomp Abode his Hour or two, and went his way

  The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

  Foreword

  On September 27, 1978, I drove my sister, Kelly, and two of her friends, Charole Anchorage and Frank Jenkins, to the airport in Billings, Montana. They were going to India.

  At the airport I gave Kelly a going-away present: a diary.

  “Just in case,” I said, “you happen to have any interesting adventures.”

  At the time, Iran and Afghanistan were merely obscure Asian countries that were seldom mentioned in the news.

  It’s been more than ten years since I hugged Kelly goodbye at the Billings airport. I haven’t seen her since. She said she wasn’t going to be gone longer than a year.

  Ten years ago today, on February 7, 1979, I received a package in the mail. It contained a letter from Kelly, along with the diary.

  Two months later, on April 11, I received another package in the mail. This one contained a massive manuscript (a memoir of sorts, written on the backs of hospital charts), a “daybook” (which will be explained later), a sheaf of itinerary notes for a tour (the exact nature of which will also become clear), and a letter from Charole Anchorage.

  At this point, the only item that probably needs more explanation is the memoir: All in Search of the Ko Samui Mushroom, by Michael “Mick” McPherson.

  Mick’s handwriting, at first, was quite legible. Toward the end of the manuscript, however, it deteriorated rapidly. Some of the final pages were almost impossible to decipher. I have corrected, I hope, all of Mick’s spelling mistakes, of which there weren’t all that many (he had a problem with “embarrassing” and he hyphenated “toothache,” as do a lot of people), and some of his grammar (the more blatant errors). But I have left his tense shifts alone, as well as some of his frequent lapses in coherence, logic and sentence structure, in the interests of keeping his sense of voice intact.

  There seemed to be natural breaks in Mick’s narrative. I’ve used the itinerary notes and Kelly’s diary and the daybook as bridges across those breaks.

  There were several discrepancies between Pete’s tour notes, Mick’s memoir and Kelly’s diary concerning the spelling of various towns, landmarks, etc. (“Skopje,” for example, can be spelled “Scoplje”.) In all cases, I have used Fodor’s spellings.

  February 7, 1989

  DEXTER WINTER

  from Mick’s manuscript

  All in Search of the Ko Samui Mushroom

  by Michael “Mick” McPherson

  The cute little morning nurse said I should’ve brought my hand back with me, they could’ve sewn it back on. I took a look. There was a big white bandage there where my right hand should’ve been. Which kind of sent my mind reeling.

  The cute little morning nurse put an arm around my head and held me for a long time and the perfume she was wearing and the fact that my face was pressed against that small perky bosom finally brought me back to my senses. Soon, that’s her name, it’s short for Soontanapurna or something like that, she pointed out to me that I was lucky to be alive. And she’s right.

  When I got control of myself, Soon asked me what happened. So I told her. She shook her head and told me I should stay away from bad people. I said to her, “You know, I think I agree with you.” She thought that was funny. I think she likes my subtle sense of humour. She told me to rest and that was easy. She had me doped up pretty good.

  When I woke up the next time it was dark and there was just me and the shadows of palm trees through the window, swaying back and forth slowly against the breezes moving in from the Sea of Siam. Behind them was a quarter moon rising and I watched it disappear above my window. Then there was just the brown stars. I watched that starlit sky for a long time.

  I was waiting for one to fall. It took a couple hours maybe, but it finally did.

  When Soon checked in at five to see how I was doing, I said to her, well, you tell me.

  She said I had a touch of malaria and a slight case of acute hepatitis and a case of tetanus that could turn ugly real quick. She said there wasn’t much she could do about the cracked ribs except let them heal, and as for the tooth splinters in my gum, well, I should see a dentist about those on my way through Bangkok or when I get back to Vancouver. Then she gave me some more morphine for the pain and some Metronidazole1 for the hepatitis and she left, and left me staring out the window at those six palm trees swaying in the Ko Samui breeze and the first grey colours of dawn beginning to wash up that sky.

  It took me four days to get really bored with the view. Which is why I asked Soon to bring me some pens and paper. Back at Miller High, in Regina, Saskatchewan, I had this English teacher who gave me high marks in comp. They were the only high marks I ever got. He said I had a good imagination and I should take a stab at writing fiction some day.

  Well, this is as good a day as any. My twenty-fourth birthday. January 6, 1979. Except my imagination isn’t going to have a lot to do with what I’m going to write, it all really happened.

  Take for instance the day I was born. Twenty-four years ago today. I’m a Cappie with my moon in Gemini, according to this girl I met not too long ago. She said that Gemini moon means I could be a writer, maybe.

  I was born about four in the morning. It was a cold morning. The old man said it was cold enough to freeze the nuts off a Buick axle. Mom said a cold front from Alaska had moved in, it was forty below and the wind was blowing hard.

  It might not have been so bad, she said, if your father hadn’t gotten drunk and forgot to plug in the car and if the phone company hadn’t cut off service. It might not have been so bad, she said, if you hadn’t been twins.

  My little twin brother didn’t make it. Or at least that’s what everyone thought.

  My mother got pregnant again just as quick as she could, because she t
hought the spirit of the baby she lost was still hanging around, looking for a home. My little sister Jackie was born about eleven months later.

  She changed her name after the old man moved out to Vancouver. She met this Moonie on Granville and he talked her into changing her name to Hasheeba. Mom hates it and calls her Jackie though.

  I didn’t move out to Vancouver with the family, not right away, because I was sixteen at the time and head over heels in love with a girl named Peggy dil-Schmidt. But about five months after the move she broke my heart. I tried to hang myself with her pantyhose but it was cheap pantyhose and it ripped when I kicked the chair away. So I said hasta la vista to Regina and hopped on a train to Vancouver.

  I kind of wish I hadn’t.

  Four weeks after I got out there, the Regina Mafia caught up to my old man at The Olde Salvador Deli and blew him away with a double-barrelled shotgun.

  Which is what you call your basic bummer.*

  from Kelly’s diary

  Sept. 29

  Mom was cheerful & chatty behind her Valium haze today at the Bistro. She barely touched her salad. Gave me the expected Sally Ann bag complete with clothesline, passport pouch & a year’s supply of tampons. She held up really well until the goodbye hug & then her eyes misted over & a fat frog croaked in my throat. Then I met C. at Penny’s & it was over to Stampede Medical for our last vac. shots. My shoulder’s all black & blue. At the airport, D gave me this diary2 as a going-away present & even he got misty-eyed. I should go away more often. I gave him the campground & hotel address list & he promised to write. Then he kissed me for the 1st time ever. The lift-off was like the snipping of some cord. There’s no going back to the womb. F has the window seat & he & C. are happily buzzing away, holding hands. I’m homesick already & we’re not even past Minneapolis.

  Mick

  The next year was your basic heebie-jeebie nightmare. My mother went off the deep end. Took to drinking double martinis for breakfast. Hasheeba disappeared into the mountains into some Moonie commune. I got heavily into drugs, mostly acid. Got really crazy. Don’t drop it at all any more but I still get weird acid flashbacks every once in a while. I still hear strange voices in my head.

  Make that singular: a strange voice.

  About three years after the old man died, Hasheeba came back from the commune with this guy from Thailand in tow. He used to be a Buddhist, he said, but now he was a Moonie. Kind of a cool guy, actually. His real name was Jim but everyone called him Rice-Eater. He didn’t seem to mind. He did have this thing about mushroom fried rice.

  We became pretty good friends one night after I heard him play the mandolin and fiddle. I had this band going, a garage band called Cosmic Mucus. Me and a couple friends. Fat Man played drums, the Ace of Spades played bass. But we needed somebody who could play all kinds of instruments and that’s what Rice-Eater could do. He could play everything from tambourine to auto harp to piano, and play it well.

  Of course he couldn’t sing worth a damn. That was my job. Along with playing the occasional hot lick on my Les Paul acoustic that’d burn Eric Clapton’s fingers. But just thinking about a C chord now makes that place where my right hand used to be ache.

  Anyway, Rice-Eater’s old man was filthy rich. Rumour had it that some of that filthy cash came straight from Thailand’s Golden Triangle. Didn’t bother Cosmic Mucus. It’s nice to have someone around who always picks up the tab at the bar and pizza joint after a gig.

  One night we were over in his old man’s garage in West Van, practising for a high school grad dance, me and my girl friend at the time, Nancy Pickles. Nancy sometimes threw in the harmonies but she didn’t really like my buddies in the band much. She thought they had a bad influence on me.

  During breaks we’d smoke some pot and listen to Pink Floyd’s Bad Side of the Moon, and we were listening to “Money” when Rice-Eater asked me if I’d like to make some. I said, “Sure.”

  He said, “Ever hear of the Ko Samui Mushroom?”

  I said, “Nope, what kinda music they play?”

  “They ain’t a band, Mickers,” Rice-Eater said in this kind and patient voice. “They’re a psychedelic. Like what Fat Man goes out to pick every spring and fall in the Fraser Valley.” I said, “Great, you got some? I’ll put ’em on my Shreddies in the morning.”

  Fat Man let out a laugh. The Ace was pulling a comb through his Afro curls and dancing by himself to the music. Nancy was off by herself, smoking a cigarette. She thought the band didn’t let her sing enough. She was right. She made us sound too good maybe, and Rice-Eater, in some weird way, was the head honcho in the band even though I sang.

  Fat Man was sitting on an old kitchen chair. He leaned towards me and I was worried about the legs on the chair buckling. A little bit of spit trickled down from the left side of his mouth across all four chins. He said, “This is where the money comes in, Mickers. You go get Rice-Eater here some mushrooms and you’ll be rich.”

  Of course the guys knew I owed Revenue Canada a few bucks. I hadn’t paid any taxes since I turned eighteen. And they’d finally caught up to me.

  Fat Man told me the Ko Samui was supposed to be the top psychedelic around. Ten times better than your best microdot. Hundred times better than the Fraser Valley mushroom. He said Buddhists use them in their sacred rituals.

  He said, “And you’re going to love those little Thailand cuties, Mickers.”

  He said this in a whisper so Nancy wouldn’t hear it. But I knew Nancy heard what he was saying. She’s got good ears.

  Little twinkles of joy danced in Fat Man’s eyes. He pursed those prissy fat lips of his and said, “I hear they’ve got cute little jungle bunnies on these Thai islands you can rent for a few bucks a day and they’ll be happy to fuck you all day long.”

  Nancy shot this look our way, I saw it out of the corner of my eye.

  Rice-Eater laid the scam on me. All I had to do was fly to Thailand and contact this uncle of his and he’d take me to the island of Ko Samui where I’d scoop up some mushrooms, put them in the bottom of a false-bottom suitcase, and then fly to Paris. I’d have the words Jim Chui, Kitsilano, B.C. on the suitcase tag. I’d leave it in Paris and some guy who worked in customs would pick it up and take it from there, that’s all there was to it. Rice-Eater said a cousin of his could give me three thou up front for travel expenses.

  Sounded easy.

  I told them I’d think about it.

  That night when we got back to her apartment, Nancy told me she didn’t like the idea. I’d be gone a long time, she said, she’d miss me. She said I might get into some trouble.

  The next day I ran into Hasheeba on the corner of Davie and Granville. She was passing out Moonie pamphlets to hookers. I told her I was thinking about going to Thailand.

  “You’ve got money to go to Thailand?” she said.

  I said oh, yeah. Real nonchalant.

  “Enough to take me with you?” she said.

  “ ’Fraid not, sis,” I said. I called her sis. Couldn’t call her Jackie. Not that I didn’t like the name Hasheeba. I did. It just didn’t feel right coming out of my mouth.

  She said, “Well, if you’re going there, you might as well make it interesting.”

  She said she saw this brochure the other day about a tour bus that went from London down through Europe and across Asia to India and Kathmandu.

  “That’d be a great trip,” she said. “Thailand’s not far from Nepal.”

  I dropped by her little attic apartment that night and took a look at the brochure, and she was right, it did sound like a great trip.

  NOW TASMANIA'S TAURUS TOURS CAN OFFER YOU THE TRIP OF A LIFETIME! IT'S AN AMAZING ELEVEN-THOUSAND-MILE JOURNEY THROUGH THE CULTURAL HIGH SPOTS OF EUROPE AND ALONG THE ANCIENT CARAVAN ROUTES THAT LEAD BACK INTO A RICH AND FASCINATING HISTORY, AND THE SHADOWY FORBIDDEN LAND. BEST OF ALL, YOU CAN SEE IT FROM THE COMFORTABLE SEATS OF OUR MERCEDES BENZ COACHES, SPECIALLY DESIGNED FOR LONG-DISTANCE COMFORT. YOU'LL VISIT TWELVE COUNTRIES IN ALL, FROM BELGIUM TO
NEPAL!

  Okay, happy travellers, this is it, the trip of a lifetime. You'll start your journey in Bruges, a beautiful port city with a strong medieval aspect, and from there you’ll sample your way through various heady brews on your way through Heidelberg and Munich. After the wild and smoky nightclub scene, you'll need some fresh air, so it’s up to Innsbruck to expand your lungs a little. Then it’s down to Venice for a romantic gondola ride by moonlight! Don’t get too romantic, though, because a dynamite drive down the Dalmatian coast to Dubrovnik is next on the agenda and you don’t want to miss that, or the scenery you’ll see as you wend your way through the Black Mountains on your way to Platamonas, at the foot of Mount Olympos. There you'll be tempted by the same temptations that tempted the ancient gods. (Watch out for that Retsina! She's a wicked one!) In Athens, you’ll ogle the Parthenon and boogie all night at ethnic tavernas. In Istanbul, you’ll snap up bargains at the Grand Bazaar and get down on your knees inside the Blue Mosque. We can also assure you that you’ll have plenty of opportunity to sample lots of Turkish Delight! Then it’s on to the wonderful southern beaches of Turkey, the Trojan Horse and the Temple of Diana. Hope you didn’t forget your wooden hay and suntan oil and film! You'll be knocking back raki in Canakkale and snapping pictures of the petrified waterfalls at Pamukkale and the underground caves at Kaymakli. You’ll say stop, stop, it’s all too exquisite, but you haven't seen anything yet! There’s the spectacular moonscape at UrgUp and the "City of

  Tombs” at Kayseri. There are amazing carpets to be seen and, perhaps, purchased, in Sivas and Erzurum. And then it’s on to Iran, where sweet things abound! You’ll visit Esfahan, the "City of Roses and Nightingales,” and Persepolis, where you'll see the world’s most impressive ruins, and Tehran, home of the world’s most impressive Crown Jewels, but don’t let them dazzle you, there’s lots more to see and experience yet! Next, it’s Gorgan, near the Caspian Sea, and Mashhad, Iran's holiest city. You’ll drive through the Shah’s hunting estate where you’ll see the bears, boars and tigers that roam there free. Afghanistan is next. Keep a watch on your cameras because you'll be travelling through outlaw towns where banditry is the rule of the day. Fear not! You’re in capable hands. Feel free to admire the scorching desert around Kandahar, the thriving black market in Kabul, the wondrous beauty of the Khyber Pass. You're going where Alexander the Great did not fear to tread. Though we’re certain you’ll enjoy the view more than he did! On down the road, it’s Pakistan. Your bartering skills should be well honed by now, so keep a sharp eye out for bargains in Lahore. No. Kim’s Gun is not for sale. What's next? Just the Switzerland of the Orient, that's all. After a breathtaking drive to the Kashmir Valley, you’ll find yourself in a luxurious houseboat on the waters of the beautiful Lake Dal. You'll find yourself walking through “The Garden of Love.” Look out for those brambles! After that, it's down to the Punjab, to Amritsar, where you’ll visit the Golden Temple, gleaming with gold leaf in the Punjabi sun. The dazzler of the trip? Don’t be so sure, because the Jama Masjid in Delhi and the Taj Mahal at Agra are still to come. The trip should stop right there, because what can you do for an encore, after the magnificent Taj? How about the erotic sculptures at Khajraho? And you won't stop there, either. It’s on to Benares, where you’ll take a boat ride at sunrise along the Ganges. Snake charmers will put on a show for you, and shady characters in shadier back streets will offer you puffs from their hookahs, and sacred cows will leave surprises for you on every sidewalk if you don’t watch your step! You’re nearing the end of your journey now. It’s on to Nepal, where you'll sleep where the Buddha once slept, in Bhairawa, and you’ll have a chance to see Mt. Everest, once you arrive in the magical city of Kathmandu, and once you see Kathmandu, you’ll never want to go home.·