Monkeyshines
Chapter Three

We left Rome on a route through Pisa, Venice, Trieste and on to Istanbul. (Alice was in Pisa, and when we passed through there, I seriously considered losing Jack and Frank and finding Alice.) Jack planned to sell the Mercedes in Istanbul and make a bundle.
From Rome to Trieste was a fairly simple story of great spaghetti and spotty youth hostels, except one encounter with Italian prostitutes that reminded me of Federico Fellini's film Nights of Cabiria. A group of prostitutes were running from a police raid. Garish women exploded down the streets and into alleys. One dived under a parked car, like she was doing a head first slide into home plate.
I felt a kinship with them I liked the way this one prostitute crawled out from under the parked car, stood up straight, defiantly, feet anchored a distance apart for balance, and glared out at everything and nothing. She put her hands on her hips, thrust her chin up and forward, and yelled, "INSERT ITALIAN TRANSLATION HERE." (Fuck you, you wanker blue-bloods and your phony laws that pretend to cultivate virtue.)

We entered Yugoslavia, and the highway changed from pavement to rough gravel. Our tires weren't the best, and one went flat ten minutes into Yugoslavia. We started looking for a convenient filling station where we'd look over the racks of tires and pick replacements. We finally found a gas station by a grimy old industrial building in Skopje. It was a yard stacked with 55 gallon drums, and protected by a banged up cyclone fence. In the back rooms of my mind a voice said there must be nice shiny gas stations in the better neighborhoods. Jack pulled the Mercedes alongside the drums that had spigots in them. A guy in greasy cover-alls came out and said, "Super or normal'?"
Jack said, "Normal'," and the guy went back and started pumping fuel into our tank. Frank rubbed his chin in contemplation and said, "Hey, Jack, maybe we oughta get super, I mean, this stuff's coming out of drums, man. We better get the best they have."
"Yeah, I think you're right," Jack said. He opened the window and shouted, "SUPER, SUPER."
The guy looked up, waved, and said, "Super," but continued to fuel the car from the same drum. The next day, the engine was pinging like hell. Also, we had to replace a tire on the Mercedes with one sized for an Opal. It barely touched the ground. When a third tire blew, we were stranded on a road so deserted, we talked about abandoning the car. Eventually, a huge truck came along whose driver had everything necessary to repair tires, including an air pump. This guy knew the neighborhood. The flat tire was so worn, we had to wrap its inner tube with the rubber mat from the floor of the trunk to get some chance of reaching the next town, Dubrovnik.
Entering Dubrovnik was like entering a Hollywood set for a swashbuckler movie. It had an operational drawbridge, and the buildings, streets, and the wall surrounding them were all made of large, identical blocks of orangy-beige stone. We got a hotel room with a door that doubled as a section of wall next to a giant fireplace. When the door was closed, it looked like all the other mahogany panels that veneered the the lobby. The room itself tucked behind the fireplace. I'd live in such a room forever.
Dubrovnik didn't have tires. No tires for a Mercedes for at least a week, so we plotted to steal one. After dark, we drove around the section of Dubrovnik outside the walls until we found a Mercedes parked conveniently on a dark street. Jack kept the engine running, while Frank and I meandered over to the target car.
Frank had this stupid idea that we should say we were looking for his aunt's house if we were confronted. It reminded me of the time in third grade when I'd forgotten to do my homework, and I tried to tell fierce Sister Lucia that my dog ate it.
We were scared but safe until we slipped the jack under that car. Couldn't explain that away. We jacked up the car. I nearly had a heart attack when Frank dropped the hub cap. It clanged on the asphalt like a blacksmith's hammer hitting the anvil. We froze and watched for lights to go on or doors to open. Either would have caused us to flee. We would not have gained a tire but lost a jack. No one seemed to react, so we finished the job. We left that Communist Mercedes sitting on its wheel drum, and we got out of town.
The whole deal seemed more dangerous and less larcenous, because we were in a COMMUNIST country. The guy whose wheel we took was going to be as crazy mad as any capitalist, but we drove off away with his wheel, agreeing that the occasional theft tires was a cost the Yugoslavian people had to bear because of the frightful condition of their roads, lack of tires, and, after all, we took only one tire; the guy surely had a spare, etc., etc.
******
Monkeyshine #12, Rationalizing the deed.
******
We drove through the night averaging 5 miles an hour. Shortly after we left Dubrovnik, the road opened up into a vast bed of partially graded sand occupied by sleeping road building machines. It was dark and foggy, and these machines were hunkered down everywhere. There was no hint of where the road resumed. We had to stop and wait for daylight.
When morning came, we found ourselves parked in the middle of a small mountain village. People stared in the car windows at us. When we got out, we were immediately invited into a home to wash and eat. Not bad for communists, I thought. Later, as I strolled through town, I encountered a very old, wrinkle-faced woman. She was dressed in black, as were all the other women. She came walking around a corner, and looked up and saw me. She blinked, made the sign of the cross, shifted into reverse and, retracing her steps, backed all the way around the corner from which she'd just come. This was no tourist town.
We drove on to Kotor, and were carried across a river on an old wooden ferryboat. We followed the road up the side of a mountain, through thirty switchback curves, reaching a pass at about 8,000 feet. From the point the road crested the summit we looked back and saw the road we'd been on for the last hour curl and wind like a ribbon to the coast. Ahead, we saw a pristine valley, two or three thousand feet below us, stretching for miles. This was Montenegro in the Fall. The trees were at peak fall color. As beautiful a place as there is on Earth.
This was a different Yugoslavia than we'd seen driving south along the Dalmatian coast. The coast was mostly jagged rock. Off shore islands poked out of the water, and looked like smooth stones laying in an enormous puddle. I came to think nothing lived along that coast, when out of nowhere, an old woman in black crossed the road with a few sheep. For the next twenty barren miles, we wondered aloud where the woman came from and where the hell she was going.
We cut inland into Montenegro, and entered Daniel Boone country. It was wooded and rugged with rushing water and steep slopes. We followed a hand hewn road carved into a steep hillside along the river course. Toward evening the road ended in a front yard. A man came out with a rifle, probably to go boar hunting. He calmly indicated the way back to the road. A woman and three children came out and joined him, and they stared impassively after the departing Mercedes.
That night we slept in Titograd, a city with wide boulevards, street lights, traffic signals, and modern buildings. The people didn't seem to belong, though. It was as if someone had captured some villagers and settled them there in Titograd. There were more horse-drawn wagons than cars. And the only restaurant we found didn't have a menu. A waiter asked us if we wanted to eat. We said yes. He brought us some food. (I think it was a slice from some animal's knee-joint.) And there were no women in the place. It felt like a men's club, and it wasn't as friendly as the countryside. And there was always a guy hanging around wearing a trenchcoat. The belt was tied in front, and he wore sunglasses. He tried to look engrossed in a newspaper. We peeked at him, and he peeked at us. It gave us the shivers.
Titograd wasn't far from the Greek border. After stealing the communist's tire, we were happy to return to the free world where stealing is more a part of life.
Greece was a culture bump. We drove through a night filled with Greek music. After passing Thessaloniki and Alexandropolous, we stopped at one of the roadside taverns that were the source of the music. The patrons greeted us like heroes and invited us to sleep at their houses and stay as long as we liked. We couldn't spend our money on drinks, they were always paid for before we got the chance.
The tavern seemed to be for men only, except for serving women, and it was an intense, emotional scene. The many different conversations, one louder and more animated than the next, were punctuated when one or more of the participants jumped to the dance floor. The dancer then ventilated his feelings in a slow, intense, serpentine dance that usually ended when the dancer fired his glass into the fireplace or onto the floor. Men cried, shouted, danced with each other.
Early one morning in October, we reached the Turkish border. It was not under fire, but it was the tensest border we'd seen. The border into Yugoslavia had seemed very serious, Yugoslavia being a Communist country and all, but the guards hadn't troubled us. They did trouble a young Yugoslavian who apparently lost his papers. A guard pointed emphatically toward Italy, and shouted at him to go away. The guy was walking around in circles in the dark outside the border control station. He talked to himself, and seemed to be in a terrible state. He appealed to us for help. That's the definition of a terrible state.
Here at the Greek-Turkish border was a cold, eerie feeling. The no-man's land between border stations was actively observed and, I believe, the target for a variety of weapons. We met a tiny fellow from Scotland, Bill McGill, who was playing out the last act in a personal drama. His motorcycle was wrecked in Greece, and he abandoned it as unrepairable. He explained this as he was leaving, but the customs officials weren't satisfied. To be sure Bill wasn't circumventing tough Greek laws governing the importation of motorcycles, they made him take the motorcycle out of Greece with him. Bill went back, got his trashed motorcycle, dragged it through customs, and wheeled it out of Greece. He then chucked it over the shoulder of the road into the ditch of no-man's land. A mile long string of expletives was Bill's way of saying good-bye to Greece. Bill was always a businessman, though, and I wondered if the motorcycle he chucked off the road was the same one he originally brought into Greece.
Our happy band swollen to four, we drove on through Edirne, the Turkish border town. More culture clash. After the East-West montage of Yugoslavia and Greece, we entered the East. Women's faces were veiled and the verbosity of the Greeks gave way to the sparse vocal communication of the rural Turks. We reached Istanbul, and checked into the local YMCA. I was amazed to find a Ymca in Istanbul.
We checked into the "Y", and went directly to the Grand Bazaar, the biggest collection of shops and stalls in the world. Square miles of covered streets dissembled in an intense maze. One stall offered used, Maytag, wringer washing machine parts. A withered old man sat on the floor of the stall fingering an ancient string of beads. He had thirty odd pieces of inventory, a picture of John F. Kennedy on the wall, and looked willing to wait forever for a customer.
We were eager to learn what a 59 Mercedes might fetch. We found some new government regulations. They said a 59 Mercedes couldn't be sold. A black market guy made an offer, but Jack was committed to making a serious and legal profit. "I'm going to sell this thing in Nepal, " Jack said, "I bet I can get twelve thousand dollars for it there." He was undeterred by stories of revolutionaries and bandits, or sandstorms that peeled the paint off cars, and etched their windshields to death, or by the story of a fellow whose car hit a pothole in eastern Turkey and had its oil pan torn off. His car was towed back to Istanbul by water buffalo. The profit potential made Jack bold.
No profit potential motivated Frank and me. We hung around the Blue Mosque, Istanbul's famous six minaret temple. It was cool in the mosque, literally, and beautiful, with massive carved marble pillars and screens, enormous open areas covered by Turkish carpets, harmonious feelings of the faithful at prayer, and the call of the muezzin, six times a day to remind people it was time to pray.
As we lounged in the mosque one day, a rotund fellow in a suit walked briskly inside without removing his shoes. Horrified attendants, assigned the task of seeing that this very thing not happen, rushed to intercept him. The man raised a camera to his face and shot a flash picture. A large crowd was in attendance, and the disturbance was electric and instant. As four attendants pulled the man back outside, he shouted, "My name is Sam Houston Weissman, I'm from Texas, and I don't want to take my shoes off. Let go of me!" I remembered the flag I left in that ruined hotel room in Germany. Sam was lucky. They just threw him out.
A few days later we had a dispute of our own at the Y. A Pakistani and a Scot got into an argument that turned into a fist fight. The Pakistani was seriously outweighed, and he picked up a board which he used as a club. An English guy tossed a knife to the ground so the Scot could pick it up. Before he did pick it up, the Pakistani ran to the police station.
Soon a policeman returned and arrested the Scot. It appeared he would be charged with some serious offense. The Pakistani spoke Turkish, and the Scot didn't, and the policeman spoke no English, so eight of us English-speaking YMCA cronies followed them to see that the Pakistani wasn't the only interpreter in this. We all crowded into a stuffy little police station. Everyone babbled at each other. Tempers rose fast.
A critical moment arrived. Jack Peters was nose to nose with the police chief, and both of them were shouting, Jack in Canadian, the police chief in Turkish. The chief poked his index finger repeatedly into Jack's chest. Jack poked him back. The chief flew into a rage, grabbed his truncheon and swung at Jack I caught his truncheon arm and held on.
Instantly, a cop's arm grabbed me around my neck. Frank collared him, and so on, like a fight at a hockey game. Everyone in the station held on to someone and, in turn, was held by someone else. Fortunately, no one threw any punches. Into this Babel came an interpreter. Grips relaxed and calm returned as everyone wanted to hear what was said. As the interpreter unraveled the story, the chief looked more and more balefully at the Pakistani who, in his excitement, had exaggerated a little.
******
Monkeyshine #17, Defending by embroidering the truth.
******
The chief told him to apologize to each person in the station, one at a time. To our astonishment, given the reputation of the Turkish police, the chief himself apologized. His manner made it obvious that he required a reciprocal apology, and we immediately complied. Apologies flowed like a river of honey. Everyone seemed relieved and surprised that such a harmless conclusion followed such a heated scene.
Jack left that afternoon for Nepal. Bill McGill went with him. The rest of us set out to celebrate the day's events. A few hours and many bottles of wine later, we discovered the government brothel area. We decided to tour it. It was an area of ordinary streets a few blocks in each direction, with a wall around the area and a single gateway for access. Instead of curtains or consumer items in the windows, there were women. In their underwear. They adorned their siren calls with mincing moves and darting eye. Most of them looked pretty rough to me, but it would be a mistake to think they didn't get any takers. Some women worked there as a way to find a husband. Some served jail sentences or paid off a husband's debts, some just earned a living.
We all separated to window shop. Half an hour later I found Mick, one of our group, limping down the street with a bloody leg wound. He'd given one of the girls a go, but was too drunk to function. They'd tossed him into the street. He went back to argue for a refund, and the pimp/guard stabbed him through the thigh. Mick swore vengeance, and I couldn't divert him. But the only support I promised was to hold his coat. Actually it was a cape. Mick was a grammar school teacher and a boxer. He had an enormous "Afro", a gold earring and a black cape. He looked awesome.
We waited by the brothel gate until closing. Fifty cab drivers clustered near the gate as well. Finally the pimp appeared, escorted by a friend and three of his darlings. He blanched when he saw that Mick was not in the hospital, where he should have been, but was standing there in front of him steaming with rage. In a quick flurry of punches, Mick dropped the pimp. Just as quickly, the pimp's friend and the three darlings jumped on Mick. I was instantly reminded of the down side to cape holding. I had to intervene. I grabbed the pimp's male friend and hoisted his little body up against a wall. Simultaneously, I saw the cab drivers edging forward malignantly, and the prostitutes flailing away at Mick with their high heel shoes, fists and fingernails. The guy against the wall seemed willing to stay put provided I didn't hit him. He sensed that time was on his side.
The situation stayed like this for some long seconds before Frank rescued us. He'd been a novice bullfighter. The bulls got the better of him so often, he decided he was in the wrong profession, but he was that kind of person. He was bold. He was a Leo. He had a wicked scar on his cheek, a grisly appearance, and a great mane of jet black hair. He advanced on the crowd roaring loudly, and gesturing like a wildman. He left no doubt that he was challenging the entire crowd. The crowd didn't "believe" Frank could beat them all up. They did seem to understand, however, that the first one, two or three of them to meet Frank's challenge might be taking a nasty risk. They were cowed long enough for me to disentangle Mick, and help him hobble away. Frank continued bullroaring until Mick and I were a block away. The next day we took Mick to the hospital. His leg was as stiff as a board. It was the last we saw of him.
Frank and I decided to take a boat to Spain. On our way to the booking office, a picture-perfect, blond, Scandinavian woman walked in front of us. She was striking and would have attracted attention anywhere, but she seemed to inspire some of the Turkish men to go crazy. One scored high for originality on the grope meter. When he and the blond passed each other, he pretended to stumble, falling in an elaborate pirouette. As he crashed to the pavement, he reached out and stroked the woman's leg from hip to ankle. She walked on showing no reaction. The Turkish guy reclined on the sidewalk apparently savoring the experience. We carried on to the booking office and bought our tickets. We left Turkey the following day.





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