Six Car Lengths Behind an Elephant, page 19
They took me to the emergency ward of the local hospital. The interns took one look at my shaking body and immediately decided I was a drug user, leaving me on a gurney in the waiting room, until John demanded that they look at me. I was terrified that I was having a stroke, although I wasn’t sure what those symptoms would be.
I had been aware of my shaking hands for some time. I was unable to light a cigarette without using both hands to hold the lighter. Now I felt that my entire body was out of control, as was my life. I was given Valium, and was referred to a neurologist the next day. He recommended that I have a CT scan at UCLA Medical Center. Days later, as I drove alone in my rented Pinto, entering the parking lot of the medical center, I felt lost. I shouldn’t have to do this alone. My stiff upper lip made people think I was never afraid, so nobody offered to come with me. I needed my husband.
I had always known that the job came first. Frank was an overachiever, intent on making a smashing impression on every person he met, from secretaries to executives, poets to priests. They were all dazzled. When my friend called to tell Frank about my seizure, he expressed concern and asked her to be sure to call him. What I wanted him to say was, “I’ll be on the next plane. Tell her not to worry. I’m on my way.” But in our strange world, he couldn’t do that. He was immensely proud of the fact that I didn’t need hand holding. These were the grounds upon which we built the family structure. Problem? Ask Mama, she’ll figure it out. A brain scan was just another family problem that I could deal with. He was blind to the fact that I was afraid and that I felt very alone almost all the time. I felt that at this point in our marriage, he took everything for granted, primarily my independence and strength. That was a sham. I was five years old again.
The scan showed that I had atrophy of the right frontal lobes of the brain, but it “was nothing to worry about.” The neurologist said it would gradually affect my short-term memory. But it had nothing to do with my seizure. The doctor kindly suggested that moving to a foreign country was probably ample cause for what he described as a “terrible anxiety attack.” I carried Valium with me at all times. I didn’t want to be a scaredy-cat. Not me.
Miami and Visas
When Frank joined us in California for the trip to South America, we could only go as far as Miami because apparently the CIA had neglected to process our visas. It wasn’t anything that we would even we have thought about, because we were in our own country, and we thought securing visas would be simple. It was an oversight.
We were instructed to find a motel in Miami until we heard from higher-ups. Our primary concern was for Johanna. We hoped that we would arrive in Venezuela well before the opening of the high school year, which was fast approaching. Frank was peppering Washington with calls, explaining the urgency, but nothing happened. I asked Frank, what if we went to Venezuela without the necessary visas? Would it be logical that Johanna enroll in school? We both decided to go there as tourists. Thus, Johanna could start school. This meant, however, that Frank would not be able to open an office, nor would I be expected to look for an apartment. This also meant that we would have to leave the country later, to apply for the proper visas.
Johanna was eager to get to Venezuela. I understood. Personally, I could not stand one more breakfast with the old people shuffling in, the old men wearing shorts with knee-high socks and wing tip shoes and fedoras, their wives all in pastel-colored aerobic suits, staring at each other with acrimony. The previous evening, the elderly piano player had dropped dead of a heart attack while playing. “After You’ve Gone.”
Here’s the breakfast repartee we overheard:
“So, Morris. What are you going to do today?” “Mildew,” he replied. These people were depressing. Mildew was now a verb.
A few more days passed and Johanna’s school in Venezuela began classes, which meant she was already late. We decided to go to Venezuela and simply tell the truth about our visas, explaining that “red tape” held us up. Red tape covers anything. This way, we could also discuss Frank’s career plans with people, and it would be natural to look around for possible office space and an apartment.
VENEZUELA
(1981-1982)
The Welcome Wagon
We arrived in Venezuela very early in the morning, and took a taxi to the hotel apartment where we were told to stay temporarily. What we saw on the drive from the airport was shocking. There were hilly areas with decrepit old shacks and clearly wretched, smelly conditions. This was entirely unexpected. This was a rich country that had been described by the government bureau as beautiful, with a perfect climate like “eternal spring.” This was not to be compared with our airport drive into New Delhi, however. There, the misery was upon us, an assault of homelessness coming in the windows, masked with smiles. The vista in Venezuela was like a watercolor painting when you looked “up there,” as in, not near the road. A demarcation: them and us. We were all tired on that drive, and remained silent.
When we arrived at our hotel apartment, Frank and I stood on the tiny concrete balcony overlooking other apartments, and while standing there we had to jump back to avoid some disgusting spillage from above. When we looked across at other apartments, we could see that they were throwing their garbage over the balconies into the stairwell. I started to cry. “Why did you bring us here?” I wailed. “How could we do this again?” I hated this place, I hated Frank, and I hated the CIA. I wanted to run away. I couldn’t withstand another horrifying experience like India.
We were entering an era that would be hard on our marriage. I could feel it. I was seething with bitterness. We had actually tried to avoid another move anywhere, because Frank would be eligible for retirement in a year. I could not be consoled. It didn’t matter, because Frank made no move to comfort me.
We tried to find a bright side to our situation and went to the hotel dining room to enjoy the buffet, the tropical fruit, and the new spicy dishes we had never tasted. It wasn’t until later, when Frank met his embassy contact, that we learned we were not allowed to eat at that restaurant because we had no food allowance. We had to pay for our meals ourselves, and I was expected to shop for groceries and cook in the suite, which had a kitchenette. That certainly cheered me up.
I found it strange that we were in a “brand name” hotel, and that it was located in the center of such squalor. I deduced that the whole city must be pretty much like this, but that wasn’t the case. It turned out that this was the only hotel with kitchenettes, and much cheaper than the beautiful hotel in a verdant, residential area where other executives always stayed. The other hotel was where Frank had stayed when he had traveled here with his cover company boss.
Frank was now representing a Park Avenue firm, so it was a glaring mistake to have to admit that this company had put us there. When the cover company later discovered where we had stayed, the president was indignant. It reflected upon him and his company. He was an extremely urbane, sophisticated man, to whom this lack of style was an embarrassment.
There was a small grocery attached to the hotel, but not a part of it. When I walked in the door and smelled the wafts of fresh-killed meat, my past in India came flooding back. My greatest shock was the price of food. It was higher than in Tokyo. Was this possible? I assumed it must be because they had captive customers from the hotel, but this was not the case. I later discovered that this city was more expensive than Tokyo in every respect. During our entire one year there, we had dinner in a restaurant once. And I didn’t buy one article of clothing, or even a lipstick.
The School in Venezuela
Our pressing concern was to immediately enroll Johanna in school, as classes had already started a week earlier. We took a taxi to the international school from our hotel and I was once again speechless. The drive to the school took us through dirty pueblos on gravel-and-dirt roads riddled with huge potholes, and shabby people grinning weirdly at us as we drove by. Were these the slums? It was frightening. To me, their grins seemed menacing, as if to suggest, “I’ll get you later.” Would I ever dare drive these roads alone? (I did.) I had the same feeling in the pit of my stomach that I had always had in New Delhi. I was repulsed by these particular surroundings, and I felt fear.
The school was a tattered display of run-down buildings, beginning with a row of lockers for the students, which were broken and bashed, nearly every one of them. It was as though marauders had hit the school the night before. My mouth was agape. Johanna was impassive. She was handling this better than I.
Since school was in session, Johanna’s walking the halls with her mother and the admission counselor only made her stand out as the new girl. Groups of students all watched and whispered as we walked by or peered into classrooms already in session. After hearing about Johanna’s interest in drama, the counselor took us to see the theater. She opened the door and waved her hand like Vanna White displaying a prize. The theater was a dark little hole with broken seats and a stage that was nothing more than a space in front of the seats. The theater at the school in Tokyo had been large, modern, and equipped in every way for a professional production. I wanted to take Johanna’s hand and run. I had not yet been informed that nobody could leave the country without a government permit, whether for a short-time absence or a final departure. We were prisoners.
When talking to the admissions counselor, we made enquiries about a school bus stopping at our hotel to pick up Johanna and drop her off. We were told that the bus did not pick anyone up in that district. It was too dangerous. Jesus. We discussed the possibility of hiring a taxi driver to take Johanna to school and pick her up at the end of the school day, at our own expense. It seemed to be our only solution. I felt I should scheme to go with Johanna and sit at the front gate of the dirty yard of the school with a whip.
Johanna showed enormous grace and a lot more class than her mother. This applied to our entire stay in Venezuela. Even when the taxi driver forgot to pick her up at school, this sixteen-year-old seemed to be able to handle anything. I had always been proud of her, but never as proud as I was then. Meanwhile, I sniveled and bitched about everything in general. This school was not the same as the American School in Tokyo and I wondered how they got away with telling us that it was. How did our government describe this disgrace of a school in their handy little manual?
On the second or third day Johanna was in school, she found her locker had been smashed and her personal belongings stolen. Why was it necessary to bash the locker? I was angry but Johanna didn’t want to discuss it. I bitterly complained about our circumstances and she ended up consoling me. Again. One night, I thought I could hear her crying in her bed. My first instinct was to go into her room to comfort her, but she was displaying such dignity that I didn’t want to intrude.
A week into our stay at the hotel, Frank befriended the general manager who was a delightful man from Chile and spoke Spanish clearly. He lived in an apartment like ours, though not as bare. He invited us over for drinks and during the course of our conversation we discovered that his wife had not been out of the apartment for months. She had developed agoraphobia. Her husband told us that he had been begging for a transfer to another hotel for a long time, and that if he didn’t get one, he planned to resign. His wife was a beautiful, educated woman. Smart enough not to go outside, I thought. It turned out that they had a son who also attended the international school and was taken to school by their driver. When we told them about Johanna, the manager graciously offered to have Johanna join their son in their car. There was another new student staying in the hotel as well. They’d all carpool together.
A Furnished Apartment
I was desperate to get out of that area and away from the smelly little store. I felt it was imperative that I start apartment hunting immediately. As we were not allowed to ship our furniture to Venezuela, my choices were limited to furnished places. I was referred to a rental agency run by a young man who had been educated in the United States and was extremely accommodating. When I was taken around the city to look at furnished apartments to lease, I was struck by the natural beauty of the setting, the hills, the tropical greenery, the sprawling houses with grand verandas. Ignoring the dirt and the shambles that was called downtown, I felt a glimmer of hope. Downtown traffic was screeching chaos, with cars actually driving on the sidewalk, traffic lights and signals being totally ignored, and everyone blasting the horn. The majority of the cars were dented and smashed, which was no surprise, except for the town cars with hired drivers.
There were beautiful areas where all the rich people lived, and I decided to be one of the rich people. I was buoyed and impressed by the furnished houses and apartments that I had seen, but they were beyond our price range. The balmy air was indeed redolent of spring. There were beautiful views and balconies wild with foliage. I could see that we might be lucky enough to find such a place, which would divorce us from the circus below.
I was determined to find a place with a view . . . and I did. It was a penthouse apartment with private access to the roof terrace. From the bedroom, a window overlooked a huge soccer field across the street. The owner of the apartment said that the field was used very infrequently and would not disturb us. From the balcony off the living room, there was a view of a verdant golf course and its clubhouse, and beyond that, green hills and mountains. The apartment itself was tastefully and simply furnished, in pale colors. The living room was light and airy and open to the breezes, and a small circular stairway led to the roof terrace. The kitchen was bright and well equipped. We loved this apartment.
The German owner of the building had immediate plans to leave for Brazil and was in a hurry to lease the unit. She told us that someone else was interested in the apartment, and to claim it, we would have to pay $9,000 up front. Due to the fact that we still had no work visas, it was necessary for us to pay the money and do the negotiating. This should have been undertaken by Frank’s cover company, but in our current category as tourists, our commercial connection could not be revealed. The CIA provided us with the funds. I was genuinely optimistic now that I had seen the other side of the mountain, as it were.
When we moved in, we were each given a set of five keys to access our sunny, breezy apartment. We had more keys than a prison warden: one for the front gate, one for the door of the main building, one for the private elevator that went directly into our living room, one for our apartment’s front door, and one for the garage. I was actually glad we had no furniture. This way we could make a quick getaway, like con men.
As we were settling in, it dawned on us that we hadn’t seen any mailboxes. We wondered if the concierge distributed the mail, but that seemed improbable. Then I thought back to other apartment buildings I had looked at, and I could not remember seeing mailboxes, nor had I ever seen a post office anywhere, or a mailman on the street. The puzzle was explained to us later. There was no post office. Therefore, there were no mailboxes. It was unbelievable.
The Noise
On the first day of our stay in the apartment, a soccer game began below our bedroom window. Starting at 8:00 a.m. successive soccer games began, complete with roaring fans, bells and whistles. The games went on all day, almost without intervals. It turned out to be the soccer field for the entire country, for every school, every college, and every major league. This was our introduction to The Noise.
When we sat on our beautiful balcony by the living room, enjoying the view, it was impossible to have a conversation, because of The Noise. Our lips moved, but the sound was drowned out by unbelievable traffic cacophony. It was much worse than New York City. We soon found out that anyone could purchase police sirens anywhere, and this accessory seemed to be the rage. The very rich of this city apparently also collected cars. One tenant in our apartment building had six cars in the garage. I think they had worked out a system whereby they could manage to have all the cars on the road at one time, all with horns blaring. I was sick with regret that I had not returned to the apartment at different times of the day because I should have been suspicious of the soccer field. After talking to people who lived in other areas, I was relieved to know that except for the soccer games, the traffic noise was unbearable: everywhere. People in apartments simply didn’t open their windows, which muffled The Noise slightly. It seemed that this city was famous for its noise. Frank said he had thought Cairo was the runner-up.
On the day that Venezuela won the soccer championship, the blaring of horns and the screaming of people hanging out of windows or through sunroofs of cars went on all night. Frank and I roamed the apartment, looking for a place where we could talk, but even in the bathroom, we were overwhelmed by The Noise. I wondered if the German owner had paid someone off to prevent a soccer game while I was looking at the apartment.
The Pep Talk
A friend had given us the name of a man who was American and who had lived in Venezuela for a long time. While we were living in the hotel, we contacted him, and he generously invited us to his home for dinner. I could have fallen on my knees with gratitude. He even came to pick us up. He was from Texas, with the expansive good nature we had found in Texans wherever they are. His wife was a native Venezuelan who did not have an American passport, and her government denied her right to leave the country, offering no apparent reason. She was away and visiting her sister on the evening we were there. He stood behind his bar making rum drinks. “I hate this place,” he said, “and I don’t apologize for it. I’ll always hate this place. Everyone does. You will, too.” He handed us our drinks. We both took a long pull of the strong rum.
“There is total corruption here,” he went on, “and the people you must fear the most are the police. Always carry at least a hundred dollars of American cash to give to the police when they stop you . . . and they will stop you . . . and don’t argue, ever. And never let them in your house because they’ll case the place and send somebody to rob you. Don’t wear any jewelry, either. Put jewelry in the bank . . . and be careful of security guards. They’ll rob you too.”
