chapter 9 - togetherness

There was a large group of Austrians who arrived in the night, and with everyone in the place having to share only two toilets they were NOT HAPPY. We kept out of their way, and got chatting to the daughter of the hostel owner. When we were leaving she thanked us for speaking her language. This surprised us. We’re in a Spanish speaking country. “Is this not common?” She shook his head emphatically. “Especially the people who speak English. They don’t try. If you don’t talk English to them, they just speak English louder.” “What about Austrians?” Hamish asked teasingly, knowing full well she was pissed off by the complaining group. She sniffed. “No, they speak all right. They are just rude.”

We took a collectivo to Urubamba, joined by two musicians, one with a guitar and wool covered drum, the other with a ten stringed ukulele, which he plunked away on. Lovely. More passengers were added along the way - ten would have been full, but we ended up with seventeen, one child on my lap and two on Hamish’s. Our bags were roped loosely to the roof and after every bump I looked back, half expecting to see them lying in the road. At one point the vehicle slowed to a stop. Much consternation by the driver and ticket taker. Three men got out and filled plastic bottles from a nearby stream, which were then brought into the front seat and emptied in amongst a tangle of electrical wires in the dashboard. We rode like stink after that.

There was only one other traveler, an engineer. Engineers always form some sort of club, they have their own language. He and Hamish shared their secret verbal handshake and extracted every possible reference point they could. This guy worked in the Middle East. “The money is good, but the challenges are even better. It’s like a new frontier. Anything you want to build, the most amazing hotels, towers, cities within cities. Innovative is not the word. Particularly in Dubai. That’s where you should go. That’s where you should start. An extraordinary place. It’s like the Las Vegas of the Middle East.”

I ask my questions and Hamish translates his into engineer-speak. He’ll learn more about building projects in Dubai in one hour than anyone else would in one month. Amazing that this man thinks I am the the intelligent one in the relationship! It has always seemed seems so obvious to me that it is him. “You should go,” I say, and then hypocritically resent him for considering it. He asks what I would do there. I wonder anew why he feels he needs me there. He says I am his spark. He says he needs me. I think he is just trying to please me. But then he really does want to please me. He always has.

Listening to him try to work it out, I feel the odd, old poison of resentment. Even for the trip which is ridiculous because it’s afforded me new perspectives as well. I don’t know. When I want to hole up in an island cabin with him he is wanting to expand into the world. When he wants to nestle in, I get restless. I rail against the times we are in separate places and chafe at the times we are too much in each others laps. It’s like we are traveling the same road but going in different directions, forever intersecting but never in concert.