“One more thing: back in Belgrade, when I called in to say that everything was all right, I learned that someone called looking to do an interview about what it means to be a hippie. The agency said it was important because it would get word out about its services—and I didn’t have the presence of mind to argue.
“The journalist in question knew where we were going to stop to fill up our tank and our stomachs, and was waiting for me there. He peppered me with questions, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to any of them—all I said was that your bodies and souls are free like the wind. This journalist—he’s from a major French news agency—wanted to know if he could send somebody from his Istanbul bureau to speak directly with one of you, and I told him I didn’t know but that we would all be staying in the same hotel—the cheapest we could manage to find, each room with space for four…”
“I’ll pay extra, but I’m not sharing a room. My daughter and I will take a room for two.”
“Same here,” said Rayan. “Room for two.”
Paulo gave Karla a searching look, and she finally responded.
“Room for two here, too.”
The bus’s other muse liked to show she had the skinny Brazilian under her thumb. They’d spent much less money than they’d imagined up until then—mostly because they lived off sandwiches and slept on the bus more times than not. Days earlier, Paulo had counted his fortune—eight hundred and twenty-one dollars, after endless weeks of traveling. The monotony of recent days had softened Karla’s mood a bit, and their bodies were already coming into more frequent contact—they’d sleep resting their heads on one another’s shoulders, and now and then they held hands. It was an extremely comfortable, caring feeling, though they’d never ventured more than a kiss—no other form of intimacy.
“Anyway, there ought to be a journalist waiting. If any of you don’t want to talk, you’re not required to say anything. I’m only telling you what I was told.”
The traffic began to move faster.
“I forgot to say something very important,” said the driver, after whispering an exchange with Rahul. “It’s easy to find drugs on the street—from hashish to heroin. As easy as in Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid, or Stuttgart, for example. Except that, if they catch you, no one—absolutely no one—will manage to get you out of the slammer in time to leave with us. You’ve been warned. I hope I’ve made myself very, very clear.”
They’d been warned, but Michael had his doubts that anyone would heed this warning, especially because they’d spent almost three weeks without touching any sort of drug. Though he kept careful watch on every one of his passengers without their knowing it, during the three weeks they’d been together, he hadn’t noticed anyone show interest in the things they consumed every day in Amsterdam and other European cities.
Which, once again, gave him doubts: Why was it everyone loved to say drugs were addictive? As a doctor, someone who, while in Africa, had experimented with several hallucinogenic plants to see if he could use them on his patients, he knew that only those derived from opium caused any dependency.
Ah yes, and cocaine, which rarely made its way to Europe since the United States consumed nearly everything that was produced in the Andes.
Still, governments everywhere spent fortunes on antidrug campaigns while cigarettes and alcohol were sold in every corner bar. Perhaps that explained why everyone loved to say drugs were addictive: political agendas, advertising budgets, that sort of thing.
He knew that the Dutch girl who’d just asked for a room with the Brazilian had doused one of the pages of her book in an LSD solution—she’d mentioned it to others. Everyone knew everything on the bus, an “Invisible Post” was in effect. When the time was right, she would cut a piece, chew it, swallow, and wait for the resulting hallucinations.
But that wasn’t a problem. Lysergic acid, discovered in Switzerland by Albert Hofmann and popularized throughout the world by Timothy Leary, a Harvard professor, had been declared illegal but remained indetectable.
28
Paulo awoke with Karla’s arm across his chest—she was still in a deep sleep—and lay there thinking about how to adjust his position without waking her.
They’d arrived at the hotel relatively early, the entire group had eaten dinner at the same restaurant—the driver was right, Turkey was dirt cheap—and when they went up to their rooms he found a double bed in his. Without saying anything, he and Karla took a shower, washed their clothes, hung them in the bathroom to dry, and—exhausted—collapsed on the bed. By the look of it, the two of them were thinking only about sleeping in a decent bed for the first time in days, but their naked bodies, touching for the first time, had different plans. Before they knew it, they were kissing.
Paulo had trouble getting an erection, and Karla didn’t help; she made it clear that she was interested only if he was. It was the first time they’d gone beyond kissing and handholding; just because he had a beautiful woman at his side, was he required to pleasure her? Would she feel less beautiful, less desired if he didn’t?
And Karla thought: let him suffer a bit, thinking I’ll be upset if he decides to sleep instead. If I see things aren’t progressing as I’d like, I’ll do what I have to do, but let’s wait and see.
An erection finally came, and then penetration, and Paulo reached orgasm quicker than either of them thought possible, no matter how much he’d tried to hold back. After all, it had been a long time since he’d had a woman at his side.
Karla, who hadn’t reached any sort of orgasm, and Paulo knew it, gave him an affectionate tap on the head, like a mother to her child, turned to the other side of the bed, and realized right at that moment just how exhausted she was. She slept without thinking about any of the things that usually helped her to fall asleep. Paulo did the same.
Now that he was awake, he thought back to the previous night and decided to step out before he was forced to have a conversation about it. He carefully removed her arm, put on an extra pair of pants that was in his backpack, threw on some shoes and his jacket, and just as he was about to open the door, he heard:
“Where are you going? Aren’t you at least going to say good morning?”
“Good morning.” Istanbul must be a pretty interesting place and I’m sure you’re going to like it.
“Why didn’t you wake me up?”
Because I think sleeping is a way of talking to God through our dreams. That’s what I learned when I began to study the occult.
“Because you could have been having a beautiful dream or maybe because you must be exhausted. I don’t know.”
Words. More words. Words only served to complicate matters.
“Do you remember last night?”
We made love. Without thinking about it much, for no other reason than we were both naked in the same bed.
“I remember. And I wanted to say sorry. I know it wasn’t what you were expecting.”
“I wasn’t expecting anything. Are you going to meet Rayan?”
He knew she was really asking, “Are you going to meet Rayan and Mirthe?”
“No.”
“Do you know where you’re going?”
“I know what I’m looking for. I just don’t know where it is—I need to ask at reception, I hope they can tell me.”
He hoped her questioning would end there, that she wouldn’t force him to tell her what he was looking for: somewhere he could find the dancing dervishes. But she did ask him.
“I’m going to a religious ceremony. Something to do with dancing.”
“You’re going to spend your first day in such a different city, such a special country, doing exactly what you already did in Amsterdam? Weren’t the Hare Krishna enough? Or the night around the bonfire?”