Back of Beyond (33 page)

“Five minutes, then wash,” he said.

He was right. In five minutes I washed off the mud to find the holes sealed and only a few purple bruises left as souvenirs.

After lunch I was alone again.

The beaters had moved to another section of marsh further to the west and I had been placed in a shallow pool about fifty yards wide, away from the main lagoon and surrounded by reeds.

“If we miss,” M’mad had told me, “boar come this way. Be careful. Very mad sometime.”

He had presented me, proudly, with a double-barrel shotgun of indeterminate age and held together with twine.

“If he comes at you—shoot!”

Shoot! I hadn’t come to shoot. I’d come to take world-class photographs. I accepted the gun rather disdainfully.

It seemed as if our hunt would be a flop. But it was pleasant in my pond anyway scribbling notes to myself and thinking how little had changed in this remote part of a restless nation.

The beaters seemed to be getting closer. Maybe they were packing up, and we’d be home for more caviar and catfish steaks sooner than I thought.

But there was another noise too. Someone was running through the reeds. I tried to peer in but they were too dense. Then I saw the tops of the reeds shaking a few yards beyond the edge of the pool. Maybe it wasn’t one of the hunters.

It wasn’t.

It was a boar. I could hear grunting—a very irritated type of grunting. And then it came. The biggest piglike creature I’d ever seen, but much more muscular and alert than any farmhouse porker. Its tusks projected a good four inches out of its mouth and hairs bristled along its thick neck and back. I stood very still and quiet and focused my camera. The boar, way out at the far side of the pool, paused and seemed disoriented. I extended my zoom as far as it would go. What a ferocious thing! I could see its eyes clearly. Angry, cruel eyes. One hell of a fine photograph!

And then I dropped my lens cap.

I don’t know how it happened, and it didn’t make much noise. Just a little splash in the water. But it was enough. The boar turned. I must have moved. He saw me and gave a furious grunt. Oh God! He was coming at me.

I’d heard all the tales of these creatures. They can do terrible damage to a body when angered, particularly in the area of the crotch, which seems to be inconveniently placed at their jaw height.

He was coming fast. I could hear the hunters too, splashing back in the reeds and shouting. The boar was mad and scared. I dropped the camera and tore the gun off my shoulder. The sights seemed all buckled. I didn’t know how to use one of these damned things, and the boar kept coming, roaring across the shallow pool, white spittle blowing out the side of its mouth. I pulled one of the two triggers. Wham! An explosion of water erupted way off to the boar’s left side. The noise was deafening and the jolt almost knocked me backward into the water. And still it was coming, faster now…

One last chance. I lined up the battered sights on its forehead. Wham! This time the recoil sent me sprawling into the pool. My ears were ringing with the sound of the blast. I’d had it. I should never have come on this dumb hunt. All I wanted were a few photographs. I closed my eyes…

But nothing happened. I’d expected to feel…God knows what I’d expected to feel, but it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

But nothing happened.

I opened my eyes and the pool was empty. The reeds were shaking again all across the far side. Lots of shouts. I stood up very shakily. My legs were wobbling, like wonky pistons. My camera lay in the water. The gun was still smoking in my hand.

M’mad was the first to break through the reeds.

He stopped, but he wasn’t looking at me. The others burst through and he pointed. They cheered and leaped around in the water. Then M’mad called to me: “Davi, Davi. You got him! You got him!”

He pointed again to a spot in the pool about ten yards from where I was standing. “You got him!”

Something very black was floating just below the surface. Something with bristly hair.

“You—big shot,” Khusrow called out.

They approached cautiously. A wounded boar is notoriously dangerous. One of them jabbed the animal with the barrel of his gun, and rolled it over on its back, its legs sticking in the air. It was definitely dead.

“Two shot—dead!” M’mad said.

Blood was slowly returning to my head. I felt dizzy.

“One shot,” I said. “The first one missed by a mile.”

“One shot! Ah—you big, big hunter.” M’mad slapped my shoulder hard and I almost fell back into the water again. The others were admiring the wound on the side of the boar’s head. He looked harmless now—and smaller. Even the tusks in his open jaws seemed harmless. I felt sorry for him. He was just a rather large pig. I didn’t feel like celebrating at all.

But they obviously did. Three of them were still shouting and dragging the boar by its legs out of the pool and back to the lagoon. The meat would last them for a week or more.

M’mad and Khusrow insisted on lifting me onto their shoulders but hadn’t allowed for a combination of my weight and my waterlogged thigh boots with the result that we all came crashing down into the pool, laughing and spitting water like a bunch of drunks on a Friday night blowout. Then M’mad stood up looking very serious and pulled out his belt knife and said, “Wait.” He marched across to the poor dead boar and then marched back again. “The tail. Is yours now.”

It was a rather pathetic little thing, about six inches long with a brush of brittle hairs at the end. I felt a bit silly accepting it but he looked so formal about the whole affair that I smiled, said thank-you, and vowed to dispose of it later.

It’s still around the house somewhere in a box of travel trinkets. Not much of a souvenir really, but I never seem to get around to throwing it out.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

I have not been able to return to Iran since the terrible earthquake of June 1990. Rasht was one of the hardest hit cities and my friends’ village also suffered severe damage. I have written to them but—not surprisingly—have received no replies to date. I send them all my sympathy—and my love. Along with a promise to go back again as soon as I can
.

I’m usually a mellow fellow, a tolerant world traveler, familiar with all the wackiness of errant schedules and the permanent out-to-lunchness of petty officials. But in the heat and hectic pace of India, agitation and aggravation sometimes smothered my benevolent nature, and I occasionally became your typical Western TET—Totally Exasperated Traveler. And what was even worse—I discovered fragments of a true colonial Englishman lurking in my subliminal regions and didn’t like him at all….

Hot! It’s unbelievably hot in Allahabad, as only India can be, leaving you drenched, drained, and wandering in a druglike trance between infrequent patches of shade. I was so glad to be leaving. Just a couple of things to do—make an important phone call to the United States and catch the 7:30
P.M.
train to Delhi. I had two hours, more than two hours. Plenty of time. No need to rush in this interminable heat.

The manager of Allahabad’s best hotel was a skinny little weasly faced man with a penchant for pomposity that exceeded the absurd. He was obviously fully aware of the power of his position and loved every disdainful moment of his dealings with guests. A true Indian Basil Fawlty in miniature.

“I’d like to call New York, please,” I said with a bright smile.

“Ah.” (His eyes closed to slits and his thin lips curled under a full black mustache into a sneer.) “To America?”

“Yes—New York, U.S.A.”

“Ah.” His sneer became a wide smirk and he seemed to be preparing himself for a most enjoyable interlude.

Now this was a hotel recommended in all the reliable guidebooks and it didn’t seem a lot to ask.

“I can wait,” I said pleasantly. “I have plenty of time.”

He smiled patronizingly. “Is not possible…sir.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked gently, entering his snare.

“The problem, sir, is Calcutta.”

“Calcutta?”

“We must go through Calcutta, sir, and they will not take our calls.”

“Well—shall we just give it a try and see what happens?”

His sigh and uplifted eyes were truly Shakespearian in gesture.

“Sir, Calcutta does not answer us. Calcutta is so very badly lazy. Much, much time.”

“I’m quite happy to wait in the dining room until you get through.”

“Is not possible, sir. Please go to Central Telephone and Telegraph. Very quick there.”

“But listen…”

“Sir, I must attend now to other businesses, please.”

He swept into his tiny cubicle of an office, delighted with his performance. Another anticolonialist victory.

The taxi driver outside the hotel had apparently never heard of Central Telephone and Telegraph. The doorman instructed the driver, who stared blankly until the correct dialect was discovered for the conversation. Then he nodded, opened the door for me, and roared off (literally), using his one working gear.

We drove for mile after mile with the taxi engine squealing in protest. My driver pointed out the key city sights with incomprehensible exuberance. My impatience increased. Time was getting short.

Finally, after stopping three times to ask directions, we pulled into the forecourt of a large, distinctly unimposing concrete building at the far side of a stagnant and stinking drainage channel. On the roof was an appropriate array of telegraphic equipment, which gave me confidence that our mission might be accomplished. However, we had problems from the start. The large gates were closed and there was no sentry in the box at the left side. On the opposite side a watchman lay asleep on a low trestle bed. My driver called out to attract his attention, but he was dead to the world.

Five long minutes later a man dressed in military guard’s uniform sauntered down the steps and into the sentry box. He paused, ignored our presence, and then returned to the building. My driver, whose power of patience seemed endless, just waited. Another five minutes later the man returned to the box, shuffled some papers on his desk, finally opened the gate for the taxi driver to walk through, and closed it abruptly in my face.

My driver explained our need at great length. The guard seemed disinterested but eventually picked up a phone to call someone. Having received no reply, he strolled nonchalantly back into the building. Ten minutes later he reappeared, sauntering down the steps, and said it might be possible to place a call, although they were very short of staff. He asked me, through the driver, the location of the call. I offered to write down the number, but he said that was not necessary, he just needed the country and city. I told him, he nodded and disappeared again up the steps of the building. Eight minutes later he reappeared with a little torn piece of paper and asked the driver to tell me to write down the telephone number.

“How long do you think this will take?” I asked the driver.

He asked the guard. The guard had no idea and said he would find out. Before we could stop him he vanished into the building again. Four more minutes passed. He returned slowly.

“Is not possible to call quickly. Calcutta is always difficult.”

I asked if I could accompany him inside.

“That is not possible.”

“So you mean I have to wait outside here until you get New York and then you come all the way back to fetch me? That could take a lot of time. It will be very expensive for me.”

The complexity of this logic eluded him.

“Okay. Please tell me how long they think the call will take to place.” I tried hard to hide my impatience but didn’t succeed. The guard noticed my rising belligerence, turned, marched back to his box, and slammed the door shut behind him.

The taxi driver turned and shrugged his shoulders.

“It is better I think we go to the other office.”

“There are two telephone offices!?”

“Yes.”

“What’s the difference?”

The driver smiled and shrugged his shoulders again. Time was definitely running out.

“Okay. Let’s go. Fast. I’ve got to make that call.”

We clambered back into the taxi, a faithful reproduction of a 1950s British Morris Oxford, made in India and renamed “The Ambassador.” He switched on the ignition. The engine gave two ghastly howls and died. Silence. Utter silence. He tried again. Nothing.

“This is ridiculous,” I groaned.

The driver turned and predictably shrugged his shoulders.

We sat for what seemed forever. Then he opened his door and walked toward the guard to ask for assistance. The guard was deaf as a slab of granite. As far as he was concerned we had never existed.

The driver returned, opened the door, sat down, and started thinking again.

“I’ll push,” I said.

He turned, smiled, and nodded.

So I got out of the car, pushed it across the bridge, over the stinking moat, and into the street. Some passersby stood watching, amused by this rather overweight foreigner struggling with a bulbous, dilapidated taxi. Finally two men on a moped stopped and came to help push-start the car.

We all had the impression the taxi driver was not familiar with this method of starting a car (or the car had no workable clutch as he seemed to drive in one gear all the time). After thirty yards of sweaty pushing, he still hadn’t let in the clutch. We stopped and the moped driver explained what he should do. On the fourth go the car burst into something approaching life, with two cylinders banging and clanking.

It was now 6:30, an hour before my train was to leave.

“We have no time,” I said. “Forget the telephone. We must pick up my bags from the local station—then drive to the main station for my train.”

Again the driver looked perplexed. Fortunately the moped driver was able to clarify my instructions.

We set off, the car lurching and jerking like some kind of apopletic bull, down the dark streets.

Ten minutes later he was well and truly lost. I felt he’d taken a wrong turn way back, but as I’d only been in the town for one day I wasn’t at all sure of my way around.

The driver stopped to ask directions to the station (in his own town!). We set off, only to become completely lost again, in a narrow alley blocked at the far end by half a dozen white cows, wallowing in pools of muddy rainwater.

More enquiries, too exasperating to recount.

In another ten minutes we finally found the station, and I hurried off to collect my bags from the left luggage office.

The clerk was a delightfully impish elderly man with a betel-stained toothy smile and eyes sparkling behind the thickest spectacle lenses I’d ever seen.

“There’s no key, sir. So sorry.”

“You have lost it?” I asked.

“It has been taken,” he said firmly.

“Do you have another?”

“Oh no, I do not, sir,” said the clerk, smiling. “But the stationmaster does.”

“Can we get it?”

“I cannot leave the office here.”

“Can we telephone him?”

“His telephone is not working.” He was still smiling brightly.

“Can I go and fetch him? I’m in a great hurry. I need my bags.”

“He may not be where he normally is, sir,” he said.

“Well, can I try?”

“By all means, sir, by all means.”

“Where should he be?”

He drew me a little map of the station on the back of an old luggage chit, and I went to find the stationmaster. He was not where the clerk thought he would be, but I eventually located him sitting with a group of turbaned porters in a room behind a room, behind another room, drinking tea.

I explained the urgency of my predicament.

“This will be settled,” he said smilingly, “in a moment.” He continued to sip his tea, finished a tale he was telling his friends, lifted his very substantial bulk off the tiny wicker chair, and accompanied me back to the left luggage office.

When we arrived, he placed his hat officiously on his broad head and adopted a mantle of absolute authority.

“Where is your chit?” he asked.

I explained that I had already given it to his assistant, who was grinning and bowing and apologizing, all at the same time, for any inconvenience caused to the stationmaster.

“Give him his chit,” the stationmaster said, ignoring all the obsequiousness.

The old man handed it to me like a wafer at holy communion.

“You must sign,” said the stationmaster.

“It says here I should sign only after recipt of the luggage,” I said.

The stationmaster’s authority was obviously not to be questioned.

“You must sign now.”

I signed.

“And here.” He handed me the clerk’s copy of my chit.

I signed.

“And here.” He flung open an enormous ledger and pointed to where my name was entered in meticulous script.

I signed.

The stationmaster handed the ledger to his assistant imperiously and swept out of the left luggage office without another word.

I looked at my watch. I’d never make the train.

“Look, I’m running very late. Can I please have my bags—now!”

I must have panicked the poor man. He moved too quickly and fell against a shoulder-high pile of ancient left luggage ledgers near the door to the baggage room. In a wonderful explosion of dusty and crumbling paper, they collapsed in total disarray, blocking the door.

“I’ll help you move them. Let’s hurry!” I said and looked for a way to reach his side of the counter.

“Please, sir.” He struggled to reach his full height. “Please, sir, no, I will call my assistant to move them.”

“Look, I can help you. I don’t have time.”

“Sir, I do not lift ledger books.” His manner suddenly became just as imperious as the stationmaster’s. To him my suggestion was outrageous, an affront to the meticulous system of behavior and protocol in India.

“Where is your assistant, then?”

“I will send for him, sir,” he told me. A young boy was passing with a tray of tiny tea cups. He ordered the boy to leave the tea on the counter and go to find his assistant.

His dignity and authority restored, he turned smilingly to me and offered me a cup of tea. I declined. My patience was gone. I stood staring at the fallen ledgers, sweating and fuming. Within a couple of minutes his assistant arrived, and he began to sort out the ledgers in date-order.

“Please,” I almost shouted, “just move them and let me have my bags!”

My imperiousness appeared to work. They pushed the ledgers aside, opened the door, and dragged out my bags. I was amazed to find them intact. But there was yet one more hurdle.

“Where is your chit, sir?” asked the old clerk.

“I already gave it to the stationmaster.”

The poor clerk must have lost it in all the confusion.

I could see he was going to hold on to my bags. My tolerance was used up. I broke all the taboos, lifted the counter flap, pushed between the two men, picked up my bags before he could say a word, and stormed out of the office to my taxi.

Fortunately, the next bit went smoothly. The driver actually remembered the way to the main railroad station. I was so amazed I tipped him far too much and left him smiling benignly like a minor Hindu deity.

At last—the sound of trains, blowing steam, and people (lots of people!). Stepping over, between, and around the (now familiar) array of sprawling sari and dhoti-covered bodies in the main concourse of the railway station, I scampered to the ticket counter at the far end of the “safe drinking water” stand.

“First class to Delhi, please. The train leaves very soon, I think.”

The clerk was another elderly man, slightly deaf and obviously unimpressed by my disheveled, sweaty appearance.

“It is too late.”

“No, I don’t think so. I’ve got twenty minutes.”

“You wish reservation?”

“I’d like a sleeping berth, yes.”

“In which case you need a reservation.”

“Fine. May I have a reservation, please.”

He pointed to what looked like a minor mob scene across the concourse.

“Go there, please.”

“But your sign says ‘First Class Tickets.’”

“That is a different matter. You go over there, please.”

More running of gauntlets between bodies, snagging people, clothes, and infants with my ridiculously overstuffed bags. The crowd is pure chaos. There are five windows but only one is open. Everyone is shouting, cursing, hacking, spitting.