A View From a Broad (16 page)

I
told a lie in Amsterdam. A big lie.

The entire troupe, myself included, was scheduled to leave on the Tuesday flight to Sydney, where we were to rest our weary bods before beginning three weeks of performances Down Under. But I didn’t want to do that. I had other plans in mind.

I told my manager I needed to be alone for a while, that I wanted to stay in Amsterdam and come to Sydney a few days later. He, of course, supportive as always, objected vehemently. He absolutely forbade me to stay alone in Holland.

I reasoned with him as best I could, but I could see it was hopeless. At first I found his protectiveness almost charming, but as he railed on about how he couldn’t possibly allow me to do this, or possibly allow me to do that, I began to feel like a prisoner, and rebelled like a child. I told him that if he didn’t let me stay in Amsterdam for a few days on my own, I would simply cancel the dates in Australia and go home.

Reluctantly, he gave me my airplane ticket, if not his blessing. “All right,” he said, “stay in Amsterdam. See if I care.”

“I will stay,” I told him, “and I’ll be fine. Don’t worry.”

Only I didn’t stay in Amsterdam. I did something I had dreamed about doing for as long as I could remember. And I did it alone. Because I needed to do something brave and daring and maybe even foolish.

I went to India.

“. . . I needed to do something brave and daring and maybe even foolish.”

M
y head was swimming with images of rick-shaws and golden temples as we headed down through the clouds towards the steaming jungles of Thailand—a one-night layover on my way to Sydney. But nothing, nothing could have prepared me for what I saw.

There was no land anywhere. Only water. At first I thought my eyes were deceiving me, but as we continued to descend through the steel-gray clouds, I could see that my first impression was correct. The entire country was covered by water. It lay over the farms and the towns, the jungles and the roads. In fact, there
were
no roads as far as I could tell, no
landmarks
of any kind. I didn’t know it then, but I was arriving smack in the middle of the monsoon season. And the monsoons so far had been particularly severe.

During the taxi ride to my hotel (the very same, I was told, where Somerset Maugham wrote several novels and had a few shirts made), through the lushest of landscapes and ten inches of water, I searched for my malaria pills and wondered how I could see it all in just twenty-four hours without a snorkel and a pair of fins. A talk with my taxi driver, who made English sound like a jazz tune, convinced me that the one thing I had to do was take
a rice barge upriver into the jungle and see Thai life
au naturel.
But where would I find a rice barge?

It was easy. Tied up to the pier outside my hotel were twenty barges or more. I didn’t waste a moment. Using the same bargaining principles that have allowed me in the past to put a show together for $12.98, I hired a barge for the afternoon and a mere pittance. At least,
I
thought it a mere pittance. After all, I got myself a whole barge for the day, and I still had enough money left over to buy a banana.

As I stepped into the boat, clouds of pink and purple raced low overhead and lightning flashed everywhere. Soaked through to the skin, but with my spirits soaring, I made my way up the River of Kings.

This is what I saw:

Enthralled, I looked up at my boatman to see if years and years of rowing up and down these same waters had inured him to the beauties of the place, but from the broad smile on his face he seemed as charmed as I was. He must have felt me staring up at him, because suddenly he turned that broad grin on me and said, “You like?”

“Oh, very much,” I answered.

“You smart,” he said. Then suddenly the smile under the straw hat disappeared completely. “And you lucky . . . you see it now. . . . Few years . . . all be gone.”

“Gone? But why?” I asked, wondering how this way of life that looked so eternal could ever change. “Will the cities take over?”

“No cities . . . war.”

“But Thailand is at peace,” I said, trying to remember how long it had been since I’d last had time to read a newspaper.

“Peace? Now maybe, but not soon. Look,” he said, pointing at a laughing child about to jump off his mother’s banana boat into the bustling river. “In all Asia only Thailand never conquered . . . only Thailand always free. Yet all around us, countries un-free. Maybe they don’t stay home . . . maybe they come here. Then what you do?”

“Me?”

“You. Miss America. All Thailand watch you leave Vietnam.
Civil war you say, why we there? We say maybe you right, but maybe you just tired. Everything look different when you live next door. Thailand okay now. But soon maybe we must fight to
keep
her free. Tell me, Miss America with your nice blond hair, you ever let your son fight again with mine?

The question, the whole conversation was so disturbing. I hate moral confusion. I like my right and wrong clear-cut, in vivid black and white, but in Thailand I had definitely stumbled into a very gray area.

In the sixties I had been committed to the antiwar movement and done my share of shouting to “Get Out of Southeast Asia Now” and “Bring the Boys Back Home!” Now here I was faced with a people I adored on sight who might soon have to battle for all they held dear. And if Thailand was attacked by her neighbors, would the United States do anything, after Vietnam, to help her? And where would I stand on the question this time?

As I rode back down the River of Kings, the sun was beginning to set on the beautiful world around me. Temple bells were chiming, and monks were everywhere in their saffron-colored robes. Was this world about to pass away forever?

And if it was, I wondered with a sinking feeling, had I, in my own small, unintentional way, contributed to its passing?

A
ustralia! Land of jumbucks, billy-bongs, mystery meat pies and the wombat. I looked forward to arriving in Australia more than I had ever looked forward to anything—if you don’t count getting my ears pierced. Being on the road in non-English-speaking countries was exhilarating to the point of breakdown, but the burden of speaking even a few words of the native language from the stage each night was beginning to take its toll. I was becoming the Tower of Babel.

“Dank yu veil,” I would tell Miss Frank as she hooked me into my no-nonsense bra, and then unable to stop myself,
“C’est difficile de trouver des domestiques, n’est-ce pas? Wenn’s etwas gewalt’ger als das Schicksal gibt, so ist’s der Mut, der’s unerschütter-lich trdät”

“Of course, dear,” Miss Frank would say, patient as ever, “as soon as I’m finished with this corset.”

And not only did we have to change our language every day. We had to change our change. Pounds, kronor, French francs, Swiss francs, drachmae, guilders, Marks. I became so confused I stopped using money altogether. I made what few purchases I required by bartering personal items such as long underwear or short exposes on celebrities unlucky enough to have crossed my all-seeing, all-retentive path.

Happily, Miss Frank assured me that all would be well once we hit Australia. Not only did they speak our language there. They
even had the sense to call a dollar a dollar. Of course, theirs was worth more than ours, but I was glad to pay extra for the privilege of being able to count my change again. Yes, hopefully, Australia would save us all from that extra thinking we’d had to do in Europe.

And it did. Once we hit that vast continent Down Under, we didn’t have to think again. I came to believe, in fact, that it is a
crime
to think in Australia. Or to eat either, for that matter.

There is no food in Australia. Not as we know it. The natives do, of course, on occasion put matter to mouth, but one cannot possibly call what they ingest food.

Still, I felt happier in Australia than almost anywhere else, because life there is so basically relaxed and uncomplicated. The Australians have the best sense of humor of any of the English-speaking nations. I felt young and carefree again. My whole troupe felt the same about the place. In fact, we left a few of the kids from our crew there. In the alcoholic ward of Sydney General—victims of the Australian national pastime.

But I think, more than anything else, I wanted to see Australian wildlife. Like so many others, I’m sure, the unique aspects of Australia’s animal population always held me in thrall. How cute they all would be, I thought: cuddly koalas, gentle kangaroos, feisty little penguins. And, it turned out, how deadly!