Toilets? "How could they build toilets in front of the view?" I asked Lino, who'd followed me upstairs.
"We are afraid to swim. Our houses face away from it, and we put the toilets behind the house."
"You never swim? Hey, is that a door?"
"Yes. You have five doors leading outside."
I opened it to find concrete steps descending to the back porch. A few feet away was the well. I stepped down and ran a hand lovingly over the seats of the porch.
"How do you like?" asked Lino.
"It's the most wonderful house in the world."
I re-entered through the kitchen door. As I moved from room to room, images, colours, and designs flew through my brain. "This will be the dining room. Is that a sink?" By the window was a concrete depression with a drain hole. Bending to peek through the hole, I caught the eye of a chicken pecking in the yard. "Oh! . . . How cute." Water would have to be carried in from the well.
"Are there furniture stores in Mapusa, or must I go to Panjim?" I asked.
"No stores. I know a carpenter. He made your stairs. You want I send him to you?"
"No ready-made furniture?" I gazed around the room. "Hmm. Actually, it might be fun that way. I can design what I want. I'd like to have a long table here. Enough to seat twenty people. Low, so we'll be sitting on the floor, get fluffy cushions. . . . Hey, this will be great!"
As soon as I unloaded the taxi, I unpacked the most important item—the bhong. I smoked a few bowls of tobacco and smack, put on a new Singapore dress, grabbed the silk parasol I'd bought at a Bangkok market, and headed for the south end beach.
"Hi, Laura!" I waved to familiar faces.
Zigzagging through bronze bodies, I helloed my way to Amsterdam Dean and laid out a lungi. "I got a house," I said, overflowing with the joy of a homeowner.
"Yeah, where?"
"Just down there, behind Apolon's chai shop. It's two stories."
"Two stories near Apolon's? Isn't that a ruin?"
"It was. I had it fixed. Took a ten-year lease."
"A lease? How much are you paying?"
"Ten thousand rupees a year," I said proudly.
"TEN THOUSAND RUPEES! What? He’s ripping you off. You can’t let him get away with that!"
"It's a terrific house," I protested. "He made it the way I wanted."
"No place is worth ten thousand rupees. You'll give the Goans the idea they can change us anything they want. Watch, now everybody's rent will go up." Dean had been cleaning ashes from a chillum and, turning the chilum over, he pounded it forcefully. I felt misunderstood. "TEN THOUSAND RUPEES!" he exclaimed again, louder than before. "You'll ruin the beach."
"Wait till you see it," was all I could answer. Why didn't he applaud my building a mansion in a prime spot? Humph!! Did he expect me to settle for a shack behind the paddy field?
Then again, although the Goa Freaks were money-oriented, life in Goa was rather simple: no electricity, no running water. Would domestic extravagance change the ambiance? Well, so what? They'd called me Hippie Deluxe in Europe; now I'd be Freak Deluxe. A few comforts wouldn't destroy the pristineness. Besides, the Goa Freaks hired locals to fill their water vats, clean their houses, and do laundry. They'd already progressed beyond living like natives.
Ruin the beach; I'd show him ruin the beach. I would make: myself a castle. Let everybody's rent go up. The Goa Freaks could afford it.
Before returning home I ran an errand—scoring coke. This season I wouldn't wait to be offered some. I had plenty of money to buy my own. I could buy as much as I wanted, and I wanted a lot.
Junky Robert and Tish lived in a house up the rocks from the beach. I entered their door to find Tish on a mattress reading a book and Robertin the process of falling asleep. While the bottom half of Robert kneeled on the floor, the top half curled over, about to plunge head first into an open suitcase.
"Cosy little place you have here," I commented.
". . . to Bombay Brian's," said Junky Robert, waking suddenly and finishing the sentence he'd apparently started before he nodded off. "Oh, hi, Cleo."
"Did you find your letter?" asked Tish. "Joe has it for you in his back room."
Joe Banana now kept aside the mail of people he knew, putting the rest in the box on the porch. I felt honoured. An official Anjuna Beach resident. Tish supplied me with a gram of coke, and the three of us went to Gregory's restaurant for dinner.
Exhausted by the time I returned to the house, my vitality returned when I saw my roof peeping over the palms. My home! The coke perked me up more, and I spent the night pushing boxes and planning what would go where. My very own house, made to order. Oh, this was going to be great.
The next day, I crossed the paddy field to the road where motorbikes and their Goan drivers waited for passengers. Unlike my male friends, Goans would obey me when I told them to drive slower. In Mapusa, I hired a taxi and, making numerous trips to the marketplace, filled it to overflowing. I needed twenty kerosene lamps to light all the rooms. Pillows, mattresses, bags and bowls—I had trouble matching the drab coloured items sold in Mapusa to the bright colours I envisioned for my interior decor.
"No, not grey," I said to a merchant. "I need orange. You don't have orange? No, no. That's a boring brown. I need orange. ORANGE!"
When I could spare time from art work, I went to a beach party. With the noisy generator up the cliff out of sound range, the band's electric guitars blasted from a wooden stage. Beneath them, eighty dancers stomped the sand in bare feet.
Beyond the dancers, hundreds of Freaks stood and mingled. Further back, groups sat around candles planted in the sand. Furthest away were the worm-like shapes signifying sleeping people in bags. Goa's Freak beaches extended north and south on either side of Anjuna, and the people who lived there came to our parties and spent the night. While some hardcore Goa Freaks preferred to five off Anjuna—usually on an isolated beach far away—most of the people from other beaches were transients, new to the scene.
My crowd sat near the band. I found myself a choice spot next to Dayid, Ashley, Barbara, and Max and offered my stash of coke.
"Did you and your aunt have a nice time in Sydney?" asked Barbara.
"Eek, would you believe the police searched our apartment?" I said. And I recounted the events that took place after I left Barbara in Australia. I loved the admiration the Goa Freaks showed for my successful brush with the law. "Close call, huh?" I said at the end. "Who's that?" I asked, pointing to someone in black and silver dancing around a tree.
"That's Petra," answered Dayid. "Haven't you taken cognizance of her in Kathmandu? She's resided there for years. I think this is her first peregrination to Goa, though."
"You should see her house in Nepal," said Ashley, holding, aloft a foot-long cigarette holder. "It’s decorated in black and silver, and she has a pet owl."
Petra joined us. She wore layers of black skirts in different lengths. From her neck, ears, wrists, and waist hung jingling silver ordainments. She had a deep voice with a German accent and spoke with sharp, dramatic emphasis, a remnant of her days touring Europe with the Living Theatre.
"HelLO, CHILdren of the sun god HuitziloPOCHtli," she said, spreading her arms like a priestess addressing a temple of followers. "This beach is MARvelous. I've never been a BEACH person, though. I like the MOUNtains."