-
Maps and Dreaming
- The Missouri Review
- University of Missouri
- Volume 27, Number 1, Spring 2004
- pp. 99-116
- 10.1353/mis.2004.0020
- Article
- Additional Information
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The Missouri Review 27.1 (2004) 99-116
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Maps and Dreaming
Charles Martin Kearney
Night in New Delhi
Suzanne and I were nearing the end of a journey together that had taken us overland through Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India. On the front steps of a hotel in New Delhi I waited for a taxi among shirtless, mostly sleeping baggage men. My documents and belongings were packed. The hotel restaurant had air conditioning, and moneychangers—the grifters and hawkers who made Asia possible and impossible—had already grouped together close to its locked entrance, smoking cheroots, aloof, edgy and as watchful and nervous as birds. An oxcart stacked with bundles of cotton scraps passed us in the street. Early-morning cooking fires, tended by squatters, tribes of sick and poor, provided checkpoints of light close to ground. Overhead, slow blue clouds hid the moon.
It was about 3:30 A.M., and unseasonably warm even for late July. In the room upstairs I had showered, shaved and dressed in European clothes. The manager of the hotel had brought me a copy of the Herald Tribune and a serving of coffee. I was awake enough, but tired and thinking about Suzanne. We had met in Greece, when she was still undecided about her plans; she thought that she wanted a bodyguard for her trip through Central Asia, and I had gone with her, giving up for the summer my idea of crisscrossing the Near East, destined for Israel. We had gotten involved and for about three months had been close, starting in Athens, then Istanbul, Tehran, Lahore, and New Delhi. Now she was going on without me, riding the trains to Nepal, temporarily half blind.
Somehow she had scratched her cornea, and we didn't know how long it would take to heal. She thought it would be fine in a couple of days, if she could keep it clean and not rub it. She didn't bother to see a doctor. Instead, she treated the scratch with tap water from the sink, a small amount of antibiotic cream, a gauze eyepatch held in place by Scotch tape and aspirin from a New Delhi pharmacy. This first aid left her with a hesitant walk because she had no depth of vision and had to lift her head a little, elevating her good eye. She didn't complain about having to wear the bandage or about the pain. But she did have to sit down to rest more often than was usual and at night drank more beer.
A few hours before, while I was still upstairs in the hotel with Suzanne, I'd made a last search of the room, checking for anything [End Page 99] I might have forgotten to pack. Suzanne had finished taking care of her eye and turned her chair away from the mirror above the dresser. She'd showered first, ahead of me, and combed her wet blonde hair off her forehead, straight down behind her ears, touching the nape of her neck. Her wraparound skirt showed one leg, ankle to thigh. While she was in the bathroom taking a shower, I had folded my khaki shirt into her shoulder bag—a long-sleeved, baggy shirt I had given her in Iran, where men had shoved and pinched her, spat and jeered. Now her arms were once more immodestly bare, in a blouse of her own.
When I crossed the room from the closet to the bed, Suzanne stood and helped me pull back the covers and lift the mattress. We talked mostly about train schedules and visas. We were absorbed in the simple details of getting ready for my departure. By three o'clock in the morning all of my gear was by the door, and I was asking myself if I could say anything to her that would make sense, however awkward and plain. I did try asking her about her money, whether I owed her any or she needed any, and about whether her eye hurt. I asked her if I should go with her to Nepal...