Getting to Know Anna

Pablo stumbled up the path in the blinding morning sunlight The sticky sweet odour of last night’s Ouzo followed him like a ghost up past the bushes dotted with red little lightbulb shaped tomatoes. The soft air was thick with the heavy scent of basil.Sometimes the autumn breeze carried the smell of the Aegean Sea, but that was a full 30 kilometers away. But there wasn’t much built between them and the distant lapiz blue Agean. Two white goats were happily humping on the hillside, “an omen” thought Pablo

Uta passed him on the trail on her way to the river. “Kali Mera”, he greeted jokingly. She stopped and smiled, secretly relieved that he and Billy hadn’t run out on her and Anna. , “You’re up early” she smiled. “Well, I guess.” He shrugged, vague as usual, “Where are the others?” “Billy snuck out a few minutes ago, said he had to meet Nico, and Anna’s still in bed.” she told him quickly. “Oh’ was all he said… but his mind was ticking, “Hmmm still in bed, is she?” His mind moved back to those happy goats, hoping for an easy catch, he ambled up the trail in the direction of her room. Pablo walked thru the open door and plopped down on the empty bed next to Anna’s. The feather quilt was crumpled and laying half on the floor. “Oh God!” he whispered stretching. “It’s been a long time since I actually lay in a bed.”

Anna hardly looked up. “Humph!” She said, intently looking for something thru the mess in front of her. She had the contents of her bag emptied out on her bed and sat cross-legged sifting thru it, she was bare-chested but wore a pair of men’s white boxer shorts. On the leg was an embroidered monogram in navy blue thread; someone’s initials.

Pablo took stock silently. Some makeup spilled out of a Moroccan embroidered pouch, a couple of crumpled cigarette packs, each with one or two stale flattened and crushed cigarettes in it. They spoke of her last few weeks: two flattened French Gitanes , an empty box of Marlboros, the cardboard top neatly ripped in squares to make tips for the massive Dutch spliffs she so deftly rolled, an empty plastic pouch of Amstel shag tobacco, , a crushed red box of Greek Santee’s. A few Swiss Francs, some small change in Drachmas, a neatly folded “emergency” 100 Dutch Guilder note, A few German Marks. There were 3 or 4 yellow plastic prescription bottles; each seemed to be around half full. A few packs of Rizla plus rolling papers, the top flaps torn off, a few tampons, a comb with the teeth spaced extra wide, a US Army kaki green Zippo lighter, a worn paperback copy of “The Primal Scream”, some pages spilling out from its cracked binding, a pair of oversized beige framed Gucci sunglasses, small bottle of Chanel number 5 perfume, a stack of letters bound by a rubber band, they had obviously been reread many times. Her pocket watch on a gold chain, its engraved lid bearing the image of a lizard, was piled neatly on top of a box of Indian incense. A dog-eared hardcover copy of the I Ching, a few old photos poking out from between the pages, a silver fountain pen, some crumpled up knickers; either clean or perhaps otherwise , a roadmap of Europe folded backwards and torn, a bone handled Laguiole French folding pocketknife … a spool of golden thread, slightly unraveled, a crumbled tissue with red lipstick marks,… all spelled out the tale.

“This is the story of her life” he thought. Under some worn Tarot cards that had spilled out from their box were a yellow international vaccination booklet, and a kaki green and brown passport. The word Reisepass was barely readable, as the type had been practically worn away. Surprised he blurted out, “Reisepass? That’s a German passport! “All along I thought you said you were Dutch, from Amsterdam, you said.’

“Yeah I’m actually not Dutch, I’m German”, she mumbled as she quickly picked up the passport. The hardcover binding was broken and the brown cloth cover was worn and frayed, it looked like the pages were ready to start falling out.

“So how is it you speak Dutch so well?” he asked innocently. She looked him square in the eye and said, ” You know man; you Americans ask too many questions. Everybody and everything got to fit neatly into a square little box, rite? And if it don’t, you get frightened and run”

Her wounded expression looked threatening yet vulnerable, damaged and deadly all in one momentary flutter of her eyelashes. You could see she wasn’t one to be taken lightly.

“Oh yeah? He challenged, “Well baby, you look like the frightened one from here, what the fuck you so scared of?” he said. He playfully snatched the passport out of her hands and walked out of the room.

She jumped up, scattering the contents of the overturned bag, and started to claw at him. Cutting him off, she grabbed one end of the passport; it was ready to fall apart as it was. She weighed up the situation. If they tore it in half arguing, she wouldn’t be going anywhere, and Pablo wasn’t letting go. “Hey”, he said laughing, I’m serious!” holding on to it tightly. “Look’ If I’m traveling with you, crossing borders with you, sleeping with you, and trusting you, I should at least know who the hell you are. You owe that much to me! Either that or you and your girlfriend can start hitching a ride to who knowswhereverdafuck. And you already know how friendly the Turkish truck drivers can be!”

She laughed lightly with a sigh of resignation, lowered her head and looked up at him raising big blue innocent eyes… sort of a practiced, sexy whipped dog look, still gripping the passport.

Pablo could see she was wounded and for a moment let his guard down. Sensing her chance, she swiftly lifted her right knee, squarely smashing his left testicle, sending him to the floor doubled up gasping and laughing in a spasm of pain. She grabbed the passport out of his hand, and stuffed it down the front of her boxer shorts; barely held in place by the elastic waistband. Pablo lay on the ground with his knees doubled up to his chest groaning.

“Well sweetheart”, he said in a loud whisper, “ I guess you realise that ends any chance of our pleasure for a while!” He groaned, still laughing to ease the pain.

She moved closer, and squatted down next to him, “Easy”, she said softly, “just take a few deep breaths, Sorry”. Even in this pitiful condition Pablo’s eyes automatically, with a mind of their own, fell to the space between her bare legs, Her shorts had risen up and sparse golden hairs were shining though the depths of her inner thighs. He put his hand on her knee while raising himself up on his other elbow feigning great difficulty and pain. “I think…. I’m feeling …. A little better”, he said, motioning for her to help him stand up. As she leaned in, he snapped into action and his hand shot up leg of her boxers to the crotch of her shorts, laughing, he grabbed the passport from under, slid it down her thigh and pushed her down on to her butt. He rolled over on to his stomach and started reading aloud in a heavy fake German accent… “NAME: Tanya, Velma, (Ha! Velma? Like in the Flintstones??!!) Hoffer” She jumped on his back. He continued. “DATE OF BIRTH: Aug 2 1950. PLACE OF BIRTH; Frankfurt Deutschland…. Pronouncing it, “Doitzlund” “She put her hands around his chest from behind and bit down tightly where the shoulder meets the neck. She bit down so hard that she drew blood. An oval shaped wound welled up red bleeding from four different points. Alright Alright! He shouted throwing it over his shoulder. She picked it up and walked away leaving Pablo lying there rubbing the blood from the back of his neck. “Americans”, she mumbled to herself, “such lightveights.”

Pablo shouted back to her knowing his humour would be wasted, he couldn’t stop himself from shouting in his best Fred Flintstone voice, “Hey Vilmaaaa!”

Anna turned and ran back to him, he was still lying there on his stomach resting his head on his elbows, and she buried her bare heel into his kidney. Ouch! He shouted. She stood triumphantly over him and looking down said, “If you ever call me that again, I promise next time I won’t be so easy on you!”

With that she grabbed a sarong that was lying there and stormed down the trail and took off in the direction of the river.

Pablo eyed the empty bed through the open doorway… It still wasn’t even 7:00 am… Between the aching in his loins, the throb in his kidney where he had just been kicked and the stinging of the bite on his bloody neck, the bed looked more inviting every minute. It had been a long time.

When he limped up and saw the mess scattered all over the floor, he couldn’t help but notice that the spool of golden thread had been further unraveled and the bright yellow trail stretched into to the pages of the opened I Ching as an impromptu bookmark. He bent down to pick up the book as it stood propped up against the quilt with its pages sprawled open obscenely. The page marked by the trail of golden thread, was “LU, the Traveler”!

He stopped short in his tracks. There it was again, “This was an omen if ever there was one.” he thought.

Spilling out from the open page was a sheet of paper with a tiny pattern repeated in neat rows. Crudely printed with a rubber hand stamp, was a carefully repeated cartoon image of the planet Saturn in pale blue ink. The page’s perforations ran in a grid pattern making tiny 1 centimeter boxes. There must have been at least 100 of them. “Holyyy Sheeet!” Pablo hooted out loud lifting the sheet up to the light examining it more closely. It was a sheet of the notorious blotter acid from Amsterdam. This legendary acid was the purest and most potent form on the market at the time. Each tiny square represented a dose of around 2000 micrograms! He wasted no time and impulsively tore one of the little boxes neatly along the perforated edges, and popped the tiny paper into his mouth. “So this was what she must have been looking for.” He folded the page neatly and stuck it back between the pages of the Ching, sat on the bed cross-legged and started reading. He patiently let the paper melt on his tongue. In a few minutes we would be leaving this planet and his aching body behind for a while. He would forget about the crushed balls, the throbbing in his kidney where he had been kicked, and the sting and the bleeding bite on the back of his neck.

It started with a familiar feeling, something behind his eyes, and a sort of metallic taste in his mouth. The clear golden morning light that filtered in illuminated the fluttering white cotton curtains began to tickle him somewhere in the middle of his brain. He gradually became aware that everything around him was alive, throbbing and pulsating in stroboscopic waves. Eventually his last shred of objectivity slipped away, and he accepted the fact that with an unnoticed and subtle shift in his vision, every color around him was just a little oversaturated, and quivering. The embroidered border along the edge of the curtain was at once a crude floral pattern and then on closer inspection he realized it was an alien script! No doubt it was a secrete message to him of vital importance from beings from another dimension. He ran his fingers over the pattern, and lifted it up to the light examining it intensely. If only he could decipher it! Surely it unlocked all the riddles and mysteries of the universe!

He lowered His eyes, suddenly painfully sensitive to the bright light, and they fell upon Anna’s oversized sunglasses. Their whiteish plastic frames were now a kind of neon ultraviolet hue. He reached over to the floor his arm stretched out in front of him seemed very long, his hand meters away! He managed to catch hold of the sunglasses and picked them up and put them on. In an instant the world was transformed; awash in a sparkling rosy hue. Comforted by this he lay back on the pillow and set about staring at his feet. They too seemed like they were miles away.

Waves of intense self-analytical introspection poured over him, questioning his own actions, and those of everyone’s reactions, and subsequently his very existence, and the meaning of existence itself. It was making him a little insecure, this too passed and was followed by built up energy he started to shake a little, a rising up to another plateau, and a momentary levelling out. A relief of now basking secure in the moment a realisation, an absolute sureness that nothing at all really mattered anyway. The levels of introspection became deeper, the questions, not verbalised in coherent thought, appeared to him intuitively, as emotions, feelings. He became aware that he believed in nothing, was nothing. And that “Nothing” was the mother of everything. Nothing, Really mattered! and the questioning of everything, the answers once again proved that all of the signs added up to one absolute and unequivocal truth and certainty, completely and logically without any other possible interpretation. That Nothing really matters, and that mattered. The universe had to come from nothing, had to exist in nothing, if God existed, he existed in nothing and nothing was there before anything; before there was anything, there was nothing, There was no separation of body mind and feelings this melded into nothingness and he was nothing. Nothingness preceded the gods, and preceded everything, and nothingness will be there and will last forever after the disintegration of all things. This was the closest to the absolute and the eternal he could ever possibly imagine. And even that was “Nothing”!

His (illusion of ) complete and total understanding of time, as being a series of actions and reaction and how every action gave birth to a reaction and that reaction was the stimulus for another response, the cause and effect that everything in the universe reacted to, added up throughout the eons in physical and metaphysical space and time an unbroken chain of stimulus and response, cause and effect, action and reaction and it all pointed to one conclusion, and that fact was, that “Nothing”, really mattered !

This was God’s message, the golden thread that tied it all together was as spoken by JesusMohammadChristShivaBuddha — .and now he for the first time understood it! Once fully comprehended, this unleashed a freedom he had never conceived of. He was finally liberated to a point never before imagined could be possible. He could do anything with such divine knowledge, he could walk with Kings, he could speak with the wise men, he could think and see the world in mathematical equations. He started to giggle out loud at the absurdity of it all for now he had the pure shining knowledge. Now he KNEW !

And now with this new understanding and the wisdom and ultimate power it brought on he could do absolutely anything. And what did he choose to do at that moment in time with that new great enlightenment and its liberating power? Was to lay there on his back smiling and stare at his big toe…. Digesting it all.

He had no idea of how long he remained like that but the next coherent thought he heard whispering through his brain was, “Now, what was it I was thinking? And by the way, why was the rubbery book melting in his hands staring back at him with open eyes. And the fact that the spider that was walking over his naked chest was smiling and laughing at him, the folds in the quilts and blankets on the bed were like the arms of a maternal and all loving and all-knowing and understanding goddess who enfolded him at her breast and rocked him with eternal love comforted by the realisation that…. Nothing really mattered!

His gaze shifted to the ceiling. The whitewashed cement was sculpted round at the sides where it joined the walls, but the white wall slowly and subtly melded into a Zen like gradient, it dominated his peripheral vision. This was a glimpse at the great and eternal void. Losing his bearing, he floated into it, this rosy yet grey, space had infinite depths, his body gone now, drifted somewhere else, his awareness dissipated, the rose colored sunglasses tinted it all lending a secure and womblike weightlessness to the vision. Until the last shred of objective thought dissipated and for an eternity with no thought at all his awareness floated blissfully in that void.

Eventually the shadows in the room elongated, and he became aware of his surroundings again. The sound of the wind thru the trees outside his window were a million whispered mantras. In a sudden flash, he understood it; the Beatles were absolutely rite. The answer was crystal clear, undeniable, and had been there staring him in the eye all along, “O Blah De Oh Bla da. La la la la la life goes on” The wisdom in those words that was the answer to everything. Nico, Makis, the kids, the farm… Billy, the girls, the road, New York, India the planet earth, the entire universe… it was all simply Oh Bla Dee!! He felt privileged to be privy to such “cosmic” revelations. !

He laughed again out loud, but now his own voice seemed to be coming from somewhere else, it was echoing from another room, somewhere not too far away. He visualized it, he saw that place in his mind’s eye; the room was empty and white and shining with a warm sunlight, a pale blue cloudless sky was visible thru its open portal. He was stirred out of his contemplation by the sounds of woman’s laughter. This too seemed like a cosmic coincidence.

The girls were coming back from the river; Anna was carrying a few figs and a pomegranate. When she saw Pablo lying there she stopped. He was on his back tangled up in the bedcovers, resting his chin on his bare chest staring at his feet. His tangle of matted hair was flattened on the sides by the white frames of her sunglasses. He looked like a transvestite caught with her pants down. She reached over and gently took the sunglasses off his face.

Pablo was not prepared for the shock of so rapid a shift in his vision, he had forgotten he was wearing the shades, and the abrupt dose of harsh reality was a huge jolt. Everything was suddenly a little too bright and blurry, and he hadn’t the slightest idea why! Thunderstruck, he drank in the vision of the girls standing before his disbelieving eyes; it was something more beautiful than he had ever imagined possible.

He silently gawked at them wide-eyed, like they were the most beautiful angels, just flown in from heaven. Anna stood there looking down at him, she was bathed in the early morning sunlight that flooded in from behind her. Through the open doorway it gleamed thru her hair like a halo, it outlined her pale golden form and illuminated the tiny peach fuzz on her skin. In Pablo’s acid drenched mind she glowed resplendently, like a pristine angel of divine purity radiating a cosmic golden aura. She was an embodiment of the divine light!! . He fell to his knees and wrapped his arms around her legs, literally floored and speechless.

Ana laughed, “OK, Ok already, get up! I accept your apology. No problem,” she laughed embarrassed. But the words to him were echoing with too much reverb; they sounded like the high-pitched trickle of a rippling stream and were impossible to understand.

She casually split open the pomegranate and offered it to him as a gesture of peace; devilishly aware of the connotations. It looked to him like a juicy dripping pink and red vagina, the oozing nectar too sacred for his profane hunger. It was the most erotic thing he had ever seen and he felt a deep shame for his impure unworthiness in the presence of this perceived salubriousness. He got up not touching it and without uttering a word started out the door. “Hey nature boy”! “She shouted. “You might want to put something on! You forgot your clothes!” He didn’t realise that he was naked! Both girls laughed as she unknotted her flimsy sarong and tossed it to him. Startled at the touch of it, he buried his face in it is softness. It carried a slight trace of her scent and he drank it in lasciviously

“What’s up with him?” Uta asked “And what’s all this blood on my pillow?” She wondered out loud. “Oh, he grabbed my passport, and we had a little fight over it.” Anna replied, “Nothing serious.” Anna’s eyes fell to the mess of her scattered belongings on the floor and saw the book on the night table. Sticking out from between the pages she noticed the Saturn printed sheet, with one corner square neatly torn away. She smiled, and understood immediately.

Later that afternoon she found Pablo lying naked on her sarong on the flat rocks near the river. It had been hours since she had last seen him, and he was getting a little closer back down to the earth. Around him were little stacks of flat stones he had carefully piled up like offerings. Some had small twigs jutting out of them and resembled stone snowmen. They ranged from only a few centimeters in height to over a meter. He had the stupidest contented smile on his face lying there in the middle of them.

Silently she watched him, he was completely immersed in the world of his own imagination. At that moment she knew she loved him and what she could learn from him. He was the perfect “real” person. Seeing him lying there playing with his toys, toys of his own creation, tripping, she saw it all. She knew that the final stage of the child’s loss of his real self was his adopting adulthood as his creed. In her 60’s mentality, she saw the innocence of infancy as a figuration of the purity of perception required to cleanse the prejudices and self-deceptions of adulthood: to regain the simplicity and wonder of childhood is a perceptual prism for reclaiming a corrupt society wracked by civil uprisings and war. It was a place she wished he could take her back to, a place she left far too soon.

Anna approached cautiously. She stood next to him unnoticed, silently slipped out of her shorts and tea shirt and dove gracefully into the river, her streamlined body dropped into the water quietly, hardly making a splash, like a dewdrop falling from a leaf. She swam to the riverbank and careful not to disturb the piles of stones picked her way behind Pablo’s motionless form. He was lying on his stomach staring at a tiny pile of flat rocks he had stacked with two toothpick-sized twigs jutting out of the sides like a snowman’s arms. She sat close to him, dripping and cool. She could feel the heat radiating from his acid flushed body. Her skin had tiny goose pimples cool in the late afternoon shade. Sunlight dappled in thru the eaves above them and its spotted pattern played across its golden surface. To Pablo, they resembled the speckles on a big cat, something like a leopard.

His first words looking up at her were, a quizzical, “Meow? Followed by a sexy, “ Purrrr”, and then an angry, “Grrrrrrowll” As if to wonder what mood this cat like creature was in at the moment. She got the meaning but chose to ignore it. She gestured towards the stones around them, “Friends of yours?” she smiled. “Yeahhh, but you are a friend of mine too, we can all be friends.” he softly whispered. She could hear the acid still in his voice, she thought he was referring to their fight that morning, crediting him with a coherence he didn’t deserve. At least he was now capable of speaking again although just barely.

“Look, she said, I’ve been thinking about what you said this morning, she confessed …”What?” He wondered. The argument they had earlier just started to come back to him as he rubbed the bite on the back of his neck. It seemed like it had happened in a dream or in another life, a long, time ago. Confused he asked, “Oh yeah? Mmmm, what was that?” She smiled and said meekly, “Something about, travelling with me, sleeping with me, crossing borders with me, and trusting me” she quoted. Pablo thought to himself, “Oh shit, did I say that?” but could answer only a long drawn out “Hmmmmmm? “ She continued, “Well, is that an invitation?” She asked flirtatiously.

Still lightly tripping his mind raced, a little paranoid, “Who is she? Who am I, Where are we? What are we? And where are we going?” He wondered, the afternoon’s enlightenment completely melted away by now, but bluffing he merely replied, another non-committal “HMMMMMMM.?”

She looked him squarely in the eye: “And by the way, where are we going?” she probed. “Well,” he said dreamily, “Ah, well, you know, you mean, making love, crossing every kind of border, right?” he teased. “Ok,” she whispered laughing sexily, “That too, but exactly where are we going?” she fished. He rolled over onto his back and offered her half the sarong he was lying on. He looked up, the acid was still with him, everything flickered thru the sunlight in the swaying trees, he felt the rock beneath him sway as if it were afloat, and the droplets of her wet hair dripping onto his hot flushed skin. He thought back to Kerouac and quoted the Dharma Bums,” “Look, don’t think, it’s like Zen, just dance along while the music’s playing. That’s all I ever do”

She was humbled; he appeared to possess the wisdom of a Zen master. But she wasn’t dancing, “Where?” She pressed. For lack of a better answer, he whispered automatically, still bluffing, “Wherever, and then further, and then beyond”. It was his standard line.

At that she took him by the shoulders and planted the longest and deepest kiss onto his dry lips, it seemed to him like it lasted hours, like he lived there. Thru his closed eyes flickering acid patterns took form, paisley, swirls, deep burgundy and gold, mandalas, strobes and tiger stripes, stars and lightning flashes. It was as if his tongue became a snake, had eyes that could see and were looking down the smooth pink tunnel of her throat, they were lashing with her satin shiny wet tongue, they opened up to a broad avenue and as it got closer, the canal led to her red and smooth, pulsating and throbbing and glowing heart! The more he focused on that, the more it came to resemble a wet and glistening vagina! He stabbed at it with his tongue, snapped back and pulled away.

“Shit” he thought to himself, “I don’t even know what I said, but judging by her reaction, it must have been the rite answer!”

Anna sensed his apprehension. He was smart not to go too deeply too fast she thought. Besides, they still hadn’t even really ever actually slept together. She felt it was a time to say something. She was about to, but she looked over at him lying next to her quietly with a half-smile on his face, this guy was really deep she reasoned, was he meditating rite now? Was she disturbing him, she wondered. What he was thinking? Wait a minute. Was he snoring?? I guess the acid was wearing off. Exhausted, Pablo had fallen into a deep sleep and was snoring loudly in her ear.

She lay there on her right side one leg thrown over his sleeping form, with his arm under her neck, motionless, not wishing to rouse him and spoil the moment. She got a closer look at her teeth marks on his back. A small oval of cut skin was already starting to dry up. It was unmistakably teeth marks strategically placed exactly at the junction of where the left shoulder met the base of his neck. It would scar, it would always be there as a reminder, a tattoo serving as a warning, not to fuck around with her. And to Anna, a sad reminder of how she always hurts, if not kills, the one she loves.