Indians on Vacation Read online

  Or Prague.

  I have to shield my eyes to see the sign. It’s dark red and white and features the image of a stylized Indian eating an entire pizza.

  Baressa Pizza and Pasta.

  “This is where you want to eat?”

  “The guidebook says ‘Baretta,’” says Mimi, “so I’m guessing that those things that look like s’s are probably the way the Czechs make their t’s.”

  “There’s a headdress in the window.”

  “Just like home.”

  “Your mother doesn’t have a headdress in her window.”

  “And while we eat, we can talk.”

  I step into the shade of the building and wait.

  “Eugene,” says Mimi. “I want to talk about Eugene and the Other Demons.”

  “Mimi . . .”

  “You can thank me later.”

  I open the door and stand to one side. Mimi walks in. And because I can’t think of anything else to do, I follow.

  III

  Eugene and the Other Demons.

  Lots of people have demons. I know I do. And my approach to dealing with them is to pretend that they don’t exist, to leave them tucked away in the darkness.

  Mimi doesn’t subscribe to my method, and early on, she decided that we should name them, to call them out as it were, to shine a light into the shadows where they hide.

  “Eugene,” Mimi began. “Eugene’s the main man. Self-loathing.”

  “Eugene?”

  “And you like to catastrophize. That’s Cat. Or Kitty.”

  “This is crazy.”

  “And then we have the twins, Didi and Desi. Depression and Despair.”

  I don’t mind talking about my medical issues. But personal struggles should always be private. That’s what private is all about.

  “As well as Chip. For that big you-know-what on your shoulder.”

  I was not pleased that Mimi had given my demons names, and I was more than put out when she shared them with her mother.

  “Eugene?”

  “Self-loathing,” Mimi told her mother.

  “Your daughter is just being silly.”

  “Seems to me,” said Bernie, “every Native person in North America has a Eugene.”

  “And Bird likes to catastrophize. That’s Kitty.”

  “He’s also kinda touchy,” said Bernie.

  “Chip,” said Mimi. “And we don’t want to forget the twins.”

  After that, each time we went to visit, the two of them would have a good time at my expense.

  “You still hanging out with that Eugene?” Bernie would ask.

  “The two of them,” Mimi would tell her mother, crossing one finger over the other, “are like that.”

  SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE, and Mimi has walked us halfway across the city to an Indian-themed pizza parlour.

  “Totem pole.” Mimi gestures towards the front counter. “Over there is a quiver for your arrows.”

  The inside of the café is dark, on the edge of gloomy, but the place looks friendly enough.

  “World is crazy about Indians,” says Mimi. “Remember that big festival we went to in Germany?”

  “The Karl May festival in Bad Segeberg.”

  “And the powwow in Denmark?”

  “Aarhus.”

  “And Cafés Indien in old-town Nice?”

  There’s a buffalo head hanging on the wall. Mimi stands under it so I can take a picture of the two of them. “I guess the Czechs feel the same way.”

  Mimi reaches up and gives the buffalo a pat. There’s a feather hanging off each horn.

  “Remember the big raid? Operation Cerberus?”

  There’s a rattle and a small drum hanging from a hook near a photograph of three Indians on horseback.

  “You covered it for The New York Times.”

  Blanding, Utah. 2009. Federal agents raided a number of homes and businesses and recovered more than forty thousand Native artifacts that had been illegally dug up from protected sites. Arrowheads, shell pendants, ceramic pottery, masks.

  Mimi looks at the other artifacts on the walls. “Robbing graves and selling culture,” she says, “has always been good business. Just ask the Egyptians and the Greeks.”

  We get a table in a corner. I lean against the wall while Mimi reads the menu. Most of the people in the café are young, but then pizza is a young person’s dish. Grease doesn’t slow them down. Molten cheese doesn’t plug them up. Processed meat doesn’t clog their arteries.

  Immortal. You have to be immortal to eat pizza.

  “We can get a Geronimo or we could try a Crazy Eagle.” Mimi hands me the menu. “But we don’t have to stay. I just thought we should see the place in case you can use it in the book.”

  “There is no book.”

  “That sounds like Didi and Desi to me.”

  We settle for the Black Bear pizza, which is made with black olives, hermelin, and chicken. Mimi has to look up hermelin on her cellphone.

  “It’s a traditional Czech cheese,” she tells me. “Like Camembert, with a coating of white mould.”

  “Is there anything with pepperoni?”

  “We can get pepperoni in Guelph.”

  “Exactly.”

  The Black Bear pizza with the hermelin turns out to be excellent. Gooey, but tasty. I’m reaching for my second piece when the cramp hits.

  AFTER AUTOIMMUNE PANCREATITIS and diabetes, leg cramps were the next surprise on my list of medical staggers. One night, about nine months ago, I was jolted out of a dead sleep with terrible cramps in the quadriceps of my left leg, as though the flesh was being torn away from the bone.

  That first cramp came in a series of waves, varying in intensity and lasting for the better part of an hour. At one point, I managed to get out of bed and stand, hoping that the pressure would ease the pain.

  It didn’t.

  I began shaking and sweating until I was exhausted, my body wet and cold. Mimi did all she could. Rubbed the thigh, listened to me scream, offered advice.

  “Can you stand up straight?”

  “What happens if you stretch the muscle?”

  “Maybe we should try singing.”

  Nothing worked. The cramps finally disappeared on their own. But they didn’t leave for long. Two nights later they were back.

  The doctor listened to my description with some interest. “Cramps?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the legs?”

  “The inside of the thigh to be exact,” I said, showing her the spot.

  “And you tried standing to relieve the cramp.”

  “Tried stretching as well.”

  “Have you injured the leg recently?”

  “No.”

  “Well,” she said finally, “it could be a potassium deficiency.”

  “Potassium?”

  “Do you eat bananas?”

  “All the time.”

  “Okay, then it’s probably not that.”

  The cramps generally occurred in the middle of the night, but one morning I was sitting on the edge of the bed, one leg crossed over the other, putting on a sock.

  Mimi came in from the bathroom on the fly, a toothbrush in her hand. “Cramp?”

  “Yes.”

  “So it’s not bananas.”

  My doctor sent me to a specialist who made me write down everything I ate of a typical day. There was a series of blood tests that bled me dry, and a fun session with electrodes and voltage.

  “Curious case,” the specialist told me.

  I tried not to hold the electroshock treatment against him. “So you don’t know what’s causing the cramping?”

  He smiled and shook his head. “No idea.”

  SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE, and my initial scream brings the server to our table.

  “The pizza,” she asks, “it is bad?”

  “No,” Mimi tells her. “My partner is just having a bad cramp.”

  “Cramp?”

  “In his leg. He gets them every so often.”
r />   I’m gripping the table as hard as I can and trying to move into a position where I can brace the leg against something substantial.

  Our server is a tall woman, broad at the shoulders and the hips. Blue eyes, a small mouth that gives her the appearance of a large fish. I can see that she is concerned.

  “He should eat more pizza,” she says. “This is much salt in pizza.”

  I block my foot against the leg of the table and try to press the cramp out of existence.

  “You hear that, Bird,” says Mimi. “More salt.”

  WHEN POTASSIUM DEFICIENCY was ruled out, salt was the next item on the Hippocratic checklist. Low sodium and dehydration, I was told, could cause cramping in athletes. I wasn’t an athlete, but at the time, it had pleased me to think that I might share a medical condition with the likes of Alex Morgan and Kawhi Leonard.

  The doctor suggested I try a sports drink. “A lot of football and basketball players drink them,” he told me. “They’re designed to replenish the fluids and electrolytes that you lose through sweating.”

  I tried to remember the last time I had sweated, but I picked up a bottle on the off chance that it might work. I don’t remember the brand, just the colour of the drink.

  Iridescent orange.

  I had finished most of the bottle before I looked at the list of ingredients.

  THE CRAMPS RETREAT, but they retreat slowly. And by the time I’m able to bring my heart rate down to the speed limit, Mimi has eaten most of the pizza.

  “Kitty is going to come along any minute and tell you that it’s cancer of the muscle,” says Mimi. “But there’s no such thing.”

  “There could be.”

  The buffalo head on the wall looks embarrassed. The drum is covered in dust. Mimi pats my hand. “You going to eat that last piece?”

  THE THIRTY-TWO-OUNCE sports drink contained about eleven teaspoons of sugar and salt. Just for fun, I put the same amount of sugar and salt into a coffee cup and showed it to Mimi.

  “Nobody cares,” she said. “Have you looked at what’s in a hot dog?”

  I held the bottle up with the Nutrition Facts label facing out. “Heart disease? Obesity? Diabetes?”

  “That’s why,” Mimi reminded me, “the companies spend so much money on advertising.”

  SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE. We’ve had lunch, and now Mimi is energized for the afternoon that lies ahead.

  “How about the astronomical clock in Old Town Square?”

  “You want to see a clock?”

  “It’s a famous clock.”

  “Is it close by?”

  “Remember where we started?”

  I look down the street in the hope that I might spot a taxi. Mimi waits on the sidewalk, her hands firmly on her hips.

  “So, were they real?”

  “What?”

  “The cramps.”

  “Of course they were real.”

  “You weren’t just trying to get out of our talk.” Mimi squeezes a little more sternness out of her lips. “Eugene and the gang?”

  I shake my head.

  “Because that would hurt my feelings. You not wanting to talk to me about your problems.”

  “I don’t have any problems,” I tell her. “And I don’t want to talk about them.”

  It takes a while, but we find Old Town Square without too much difficulty. The astronomical clock is easy to spot. It’s an elaborate thing set on the side of a stone building, two giant circles, one on top of the other.

  “The top one with the non-concentric circles is the clock,” says Mimi. “The four figures at the side are supposed to be Vanity, Greed, Death, and the Pagan Invasion.”

  One of the figures is holding a mirror, so I guess that this is Vanity.

  “Greed was originally pictured as a Jewish moneylender,” says Mimi, “but after the Second World War, the figure was altered to reflect more contemporary sensibilities.”

  Death is easy to spot. A skeleton.

  “Each hour, Death rings a bell and turns his hourglass upside down, and the twelve Apostles march past the two windows above the clock. You want to know who they are?”

  “Nope.”

  “You see the gold rooster?” Mimi moves me into place. “It’s just above the two windows where the Apostles appear. When they’re done marching, the bird crows and that’s the hour.”

  “Fascinating.”

  “The clock is over six hundred years old,” says Mimi. “That has to count for something.”

  The sides of the clock are draped in scaffolding and blue tarps. A plywood barrier has been thrown up at the base of the building to keep the crowds back.

  “Can you read that sign?”

  “Nope.”

  Mimi pushes her way through the crowd. I stand at the back and thumb through the guidebook, which warns that Old Town Square is an area frequented by pickpockets. I’ve never seen a pickpocket and am not sure what I’d do if I happened to spot one.

  Maybe take a photograph. Write a story. Photojournalism at arm’s length.

  Mimi is back, and she doesn’t look happy. “The sign says that the clock is under repair.”

  “It doesn’t work?”

  “No idea.”

  “So, all these people are standing around, waiting for nothing to happen?”

  “Maybe part of it works,” says Mimi. “Maybe the clock doesn’t tell time, but the Apostles still walk past the windows.”

  I check my watch. “It’s twenty minutes to the hour.”

  “Then let’s wander the square,” says Mimi. “Check out the crafts market.”

  “We have a crafts market in Guelph.”

  “And then when it’s near the top of the hour,” says Mimi, “we can come back and see what the clock does.”

  IT WAS BAD ENOUGH when my demons were just shapeless emotions and unpredictable moods, but as soon as Mimi named them, they began to take physical form.

  Eugene, for instance.

  Dark hair, dark eyes, full lips. Stupid smirk on his face. Frog butt. Reflective sunglasses and a dirty-white straw on his head.

  Eugene likes to hang out with Didi and Desi, fraternal twins who aren’t all that easy to tell apart. Self-loathing, Depression, and Despair. Your popular power ménage-à-trois.

  Kitty is tall and thin, blond, brittle, with sharp edges and a voice that can make cars pull to the side of the road.

  Chip shaves his head and spends too much time at the gym.

  They don’t look like demons. They don’t look scary at all. They look like people you pass on the street every day.

  At first, they were easy enough to ignore. But then Mimi named them.

  And then they started to talk.

  SO WE’RE IN PRAGUE, marking time in a crafts market while we wait for the famous astronomical clock in Old Town Square to do something. Mimi sorts through scarves and leather handbags while the vendors follow us around with discounts and deals.

  At times such as these, I tend to retreat into myself and drift. A mistake. And before I know it, Eugene is standing beside me, his hat pulled down over his eyes, as though he’s worried someone might recognize him.

  How’s my favourite loser? he says.

  Kitty doesn’t waste any time joining in. Do you know how many tourists are killed each year in Prague?

  Killed? says Didi.

  We should have stayed home, says Desi.

  Bring it on, says Chip.

  You got nothing to worry about, Eugene tells me. One look at you, and the crooks won’t bother to waste their time.

  Mimi turns and holds up two bags. “Which one do you like?”

  It takes me a moment to recover. “You want a purse?”

  “Not for me,” says Mimi. “For you.”

  “I don’t want a purse.”

  “It’s not a purse. It’s a messenger bag.”

  “I don’t need a messenger bag.”

  You don’t deserve a messenger bag, whispers Eugene.

  The vendor is a short, fat
man with a thicket of a moustache and dark, curly hair. “Feel the leather, sir,” he says. “Feel how soft it is.”

  I look at my watch. “It’s almost time,” I say. “We can come back after we see what the clock does.”

  “The clock is every day here,” says the vendor. “But soon this bag is gone.”

  Eugene throws a hand over my shoulder as we head back. You don’t even deserve to be alive.

  A substantial crowd has gathered in front of the clock. Everyone has their cellphones and their tablets out at the ready. I check the crowd for pickpockets. Now would be the time for them to move in.

  I try to imagine that I’m a thief. What would I look for? The open purse hanging off the shoulder of the woman in the blue pantsuit? The bright foil shopping bag the teenager has set on a stone abutment while she sends a text to a friend? The wallet sticking out of the back pocket of the old man in the Bermuda shorts and the canvas hat? The young man in a wheelchair with the day pack hooked over the push handles?

  Mimi takes my hand and leads me through the crowd. “We can see better from back here,” she says.

  “Don’t think there’ll be much to see.”

  “You ready with the camera?” says Mimi.

  We stand there in Old Town Square and wait. The hour comes and goes. At one point, there is a shout and something on the clock moves, but it’s nothing more than a mechanical twitch, a fidget, as though the mechanism is trying to wake up from a bad dream. The Apostles don’t make an appearance. The rooster doesn’t crow.

  “Well,” says Mimi, “that wasn’t as exciting as it might have been, but just seeing the clock was worth the walk.”

  I agree that it’s an impressive clock.

  “It’s supposed to have been built by Jan Hanus,” says Mimi. “The story goes that when the clock was finished, some of the city fathers decided to blind the clockmaker, so that he couldn’t make another clock like it.”

  “The guy builds a great clock, and in appreciation, they blind him?”

  “With a hot poker,” says Mimi. “After he was blinded, he made his way to the clock, and before anyone could stop him, he sabotaged the mechanism.”

  “Can’t fault him for that.”

  “It’s a good story,” says Mimi, “but the clock was really built by Mikulas of Kadan and Jan Sindel. And there was no eye gouging involved.”