“Fifteen?” Charles said. He tried to remember the airport, remember how he’d gotten here. “Not five?” He held up five fingers.
The second man laughed. “Oh no, sor,” he said. “Fifteen. Twenty.” He shrugged.
Charles looked around in desperation. Hotel Tours, said the sign behind the front desk. Ruins. Free. “The ruins,” he said, pointing to the sign, wondering if either of the men could read. “Are they near the airport?” He could go to the ruins, maybe get a ride. . . .
“Near?” the second man said. He shrugged again. “Maybe. Yes, I think so.”
“How near?” Charles said.
“Near,” the second man said. “Yes. Near enough.”
Charles picked up the two suitcases and followed the line of tourists to the bus stop. See, he thought. Nothing to worry about, and you’re even getting a free ride to the airport. Those taxi drivers are thieves anyway.
It was awkward maneuvering the suitcases up the stairs of the bus. “I’m going on to the airport,” Charles said to the driver, feeling the need to explain.
“Of course, sor,” the driver said, shrugging as if to say that an American’s suitcases were no business of his. He added a word that Charles didn’t catch. Perhaps it was in another language.
The bus set off down the new two-lane highway fronting the hotels. Soon they left the hotels behind, passed a cluster of run-down shacks and were heading into the desert. The air conditioning hummed loudly. Waves of heat travelled across the sands.
After nearly an hour the bus stopped. “We have one hour,” the driver said in bad English. He opened the door. “These are the temple of Marmaz. Very old. One hour.” The tourists filed out. A few were adjusting cameras or pointing lenses.
Because of the suitcases Charles was the last out. He squinted against the sun. The temple was a solid wall of white marble against the sand. Curious in spite of himself he crossed the parking lot, avoiding the native who was trying to show him something. “Pure silver,” the small man said, calling after him. “Special price just for you.”
In front of the temple was a cracked marble pool, now dry. Who were these people who had carried water into the desert, who had imprisoned the moon in pale marble? But then how much had he known about the other tourist spots he had visited, the Greeks who had built the Parthenon, the Mayans who had built the pyramids? He followed the line of tourists into the temple, feeling the coolness fall over him like a blessing.
He went from room to room, delighted, barely feeling the weight of the suitcases. He saw crumbling mosaics of reds and blues and greens, fragments of tapestries, domes, fountains, towers, a white dining hall that could seat a hundred. In one small room a native was explaining a piece of marble sculpture to a dozen Americans.
“This, he is the god of the sun,” the native said. “And in the next room, the goddess of the moon. Moon, yes? We will go see her after. Once a year, at the end of the year, the two statues—statues, yes?—go outside. The priests take outside. They get married. Her baby is the new year.”
“What nonsense,” a woman standing near Charles said quietly. She was holding a guidebook. “That’s the fourth king. He built the temple. God of the sun.” She laughed scornfully.
“Can I—Can I see that book for a minute?” Charles said. The cover had flipped forward tantalizingly, almost revealing the name of the country.
The woman looked briefly at her watch. “Got to go,” she said. “The bus is leaving in a minute and I’ve got to find my husband. Sorry.”
Charles’s bus was gone by the time he left the temple. It was much cooler now but heat still rose from the desert sands. He was very hungry, nearly tempted to buy a cool drink and a sandwich at the refreshment stand near the parking lot. “Cards?” someone said to him.
Charles turned. The small native said something that sounded like “Tiraz!” It was the same word the bus driver had said to him in the morning. Then, “Cards?” he said again.
“What?” Charles said impatiently, looking for a taxi.
“Ancient playing set,” the native said. “Very holy.” He took out a deck of playing cards from an embroidered bag and spread them for Charles. The colors were very bright. “Souvenir,” the native said. He grinned, showing red-stained teeth. “Souvenir of your trip.”
“No, thank you,” Charles said. All around the parking lot, it seemed, little natives were trying to sell tourists rings and pipes and blouses and, for some reason, packs of playing cards. “Taxi?” he said. “Is there a taxi here?”
The native shrugged and moved on to the next tourist.
It was getting late. Charles went toward the nearest tour bus. The driver was leaning against the bus, smoking a small cigarette wrapped in a brown leaf. “Where can I find a taxi?” Charles asked him.
“No taxis,” the driver said.
“No—Why not?” Charles said. This country was impossible. He couldn’t wait to get out, to be on a plane drinking a margarita and heading back to the good old U.S.A. This was the worst vacation he’d ever had. “Can I make a phone call? I have to get to the airport.”
A woman about to get on the bus heard him and stopped. “The airport?” she said. “The airport’s fifty miles from here. At least. You’ll never find a taxi to take you that far.”
“Fifty miles?” Charles said. “They told me—At the hotel they told me it was fairly close.” For a moment his confidence left him. What do I do now? he thought. He sagged against the suitcases.
“Listen,” the woman said. She turned to the bus driver. “We’ve got room. Can’t we take him back to the city with us? I think we’re the last bus to leave.”
The driver shrugged. “For the tiraz, of course. Anything is possible.”
If Charles hadn’t been so relieved at the ride he would have been annoyed. What did this word tiraz mean? Imbecile? Man with two suitcases? He followed the woman onto the bus.
“I can’t believe you thought this was close to the airport,” the woman said. He sat across the aisle from her. “This is way out in the desert. There’s nothing here. No one would come out here if it wasn’t for the ruins.”
“They told me at the hotel,” Charles said. He didn’t really want to discuss it. He was no longer the seasoned traveller, the man who had regaled the people around the pool with stories of Mexico, Greece, Hawaii. He would have to confess, have to go back to the hotel and tell someone the whole story. Maybe they would bring in the police to find Debbie. A day wasted and he had only gone around in a circle, back to where he started. He felt tired and very hungry.
But when the bus stopped it was not at the brightly lit row of hotels. He strained to see in the oncoming dusk. “I thought you said—” He turned to the woman, hating to sound foolish again. “I thought we were going to the city.”
“This is—” the woman said. Then she nodded in understanding. “You want the new city, the tourist city. That’s up the road about ten miles. Any cab’ll take you there.”
Charles was the last off the bus again, slowed this time not so much by the suitcases as by the new idea. People actually stayed in the same cities that the natives lived. He had heard of it being done but he had thought only young people did it, students and drifters and hitchhikers like the one back at the hotel. This woman was not young and she had been fairly pleasant. He wished he had remembered to thank her.
The first cab driver laughed when Charles showed him the five note and asked to be taken to the new city. The driver was not impressed by the traveller’s checks. The second and third drivers turned him down flat. The city smelled of motor oil and rancid fish. It was getting late, even a little chilly, and Charles began to feel nervous about being out so late. The two suitcases were an obvious target for some thief. And where would he go? What would he do?