Idiots in India

I had been teaching English at a Christian high school in South Korea for about one year when a tall, gangly dude named Puffer was hired to teach economics. His first day, another coworker guessed Puffer was just a nickname he'd gotten because he smoked a lot of marijuana. It turned out it really was his last name, though he later admitted he did know his way around a bong.

Now, he claimed he'd given drugs up and was a clean-living conservative reformed by God. His appearance was that of an average, middle-aged stiff—he had sensibly trimmed hair and wore an Oxford shirt every day. But he was interesting. Though only a few years older than me, he seemed to have a million stories. Like the time he took a taxi in Shanghai, realized the driver was going to deliver him to a communist interrogation center, and leapt out at 50 miles an hour. Or the time he and his brother's truck somersaulted down an embankment and he came to missing half an index finger. Or about his job working at Disneyland.

"Those schmucks who get jobs as princesses and princes are the biggest collection of degenerates in the country," he said. "I used to slink off on my break to smoke a dube and I can't count the number of times I walked in on Jasmine getting bent over by Goofy or some other knucklehead."

He often broke down the world with this word choice: "Knucklehead" was the word he used for any adult not making the most of life. Kids we taught who didn't turn in their assignments were "ratbags." Anybody else, from George Bush to his brother to himself, was capable of being a "schmuck." I admired this philosophy immensely, and as time passed, we became something like beer buddies.

That summer, Puffer invited me to go backpacking for a month in Nepal and India. Though I was intrigued, he was going to Nepal the first two weeks of July, weeks I'd already committed to teaching summer school classes. But Puffer egged me on. He told me to meet him during the second leg of his trip for two weeks in India, which he painted as a country in which the only things more impressive than its natural wonders were the world-renowned hospitality and honesty of its people.

"Tell me how this sounds," said Puffer one night in his apartment as he handed me a huge glass of pomegranate juice and Korean soju. "We start in Delhi, then take a train down to the Taj Mahal. When there aren't seats, supposedly people ride up on the roof, so that's what I'm about. After that I'm thinking we rent some motorcycles."

"Motorcycles?" I asked.

"Motorcycles. We can head back up to Delhi on the train, get the bikes, and then get out into the real India. We can aim for a few temples and stuff, but other than that, we'll just be birds in the sky, dude."

At first, I was tentative. Then Puffer gave us refills. He could drink soju all night straight and then go read a book, but even mixed with pomegranate, it tended to knock me on my ass. Combined with the assurance in Puffer's voice, I couldn't help but take out my credit card. I thought of him as a free spirit, and something was telling me that joining someone so enlightened in this ancient land was just right. I swear I heard a voice, which could have been God's, say, Go, Danny. Go to India. It is your destiny. I smiled lovingly as I punched my credit card number into the airline site. My mind's eye was already conjuring an image of a turbaned, flute-wielding native compelling a cobra to dance at his feet in front of a frenzied crowd including Puffer and I, who looked at the scene with the same boozy approval with which I now looked at my e-ticket.

 

Delhi

I got off the plane in Delhi around 3:00 AM. The terminal seemed like a crossroads station of the afterlife. People shuffled noiseless as ghosts through the checkpoints. The Indian employees didn't even seem to be talking. The second I stepped outside the building, I stopped flat. I'd never felt such humid air. But the main shock was the mob spread out before me in the darkness. There was something different about these people, something that would have been fascinating if I wasn't right in front of them. I didn't perceive all this yet, but they didn't really look like people at all. Under their crusty clothes, their bodies looked somehow wrecked. Joints jutted out oddly along with the odd goiter. One man's entire cheek had a birthmark covered in long, black hair, as if he was slowly turning into a rat. They had these dark, upset eyes that immediately gave me the impression they wanted me dead. Orders for me to follow them to their cars began. They moved in on me, and I spun to retreat into the airport, but a soldier who had the build and face of Saddam Hussein slid in front of me and prodded me backwards with his gun. I looked for another door, but soldiers manned the entire entrance.

"I have to go in and call my friend," I pleaded. The gun jabbed me again, directing me back the way I came, back to the mob. My plan had been to appear confident, a veteran who couldn't be had, but doubling back to the door already had exposed me. Ragged, hateful Indians now screamed all around, beckoning me towards their cars. When someone grabbed me, I shrugged him off and went the opposite way, but I was grabbed again. I spun around.

It was Puffer. It was like being surrounded by bullies—and then seeing your father. He did look like a soccer dad—one who'd had a harrowing game. He was skinnier than I remembered and wore the most generic tourist cap that said, "Nepal." Only hours ago, he told me he'd peered down into the toilet and saw a small worm squiggling about his turd.

The next morning, we set out on foot toward the train station. The heat was still oppressive, but it seemed a more natural, even cheery phenomenon in the daylight. The first intersection I saw had stoplights, but the roads had no lanes anybody stuck to. Everyone—hundreds of cars, motorbikes, bicycles, oxen-drawn wagons—piled up absurdly all over the road, then burst forward at the green light. Cars going the other way did the same, and suddenly the intersection became a colossal clusterfuck. Vehicles scraped against one another. Motorists attempted wild maneuvers to outwit the other numbskulls. Everyone seemed to have their hands permanently on their horns, like it was just as integral as the gas pedal to moving the vehicle.

To get to the station, you had to walk through a door of a tall metal gate. As we were turning inside, a portly man in a purple turban accosted us. Showing us his laminated transportation agency ID, a look of deep concern came over his face.

"Sir. I'm very sorry," he said, "but nobody is here. The train station is closed for repairs today."

"It's Monday," said Puffer. "What do you mean it's closed?"

"Yes, but nobody is there, sir. I'm afraid you have to come to our office on another street."

"What repairs?" asked Puffer.

"There's a problem with the building, so there's repairs," he replied, beaming. He again pointed to his ID. "I worked with International Tourist Bureau 25 years, see? Follow me, I will take you to the other office."

Puffer took another long look at the station beyond the gate.

"I guess it's closed," I said, and started after the man. Puffer followed.

The man was a head shorter than me and had a gut like a bowling ball, but he moved like an Olympic speed walker. He kept turning his head around and beckoning.

"This way. Don't worry, sir. We will arrive directly," he'd say.

"Thanks a lot for helping us," I said.

"Don't worry, sir. It is my job. This way... You see my son!" he suddenly said, thrusting me a wallet photo of a handsome young man. "His job is train engineer. He is repairing the office today. Very important job! You can meet him later. I invite you to my house for dinner, sir."

We just met this guy, I thought, and he already invited us to his home! What kindness!

The International Tourist Bureau was in an alley. On the front it said, "Legitimate, trustworthy, reliable service." The entire office was little wider than the front door. Inside, a solitary man sat slumped watching TV. We told him we were headed to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

"Unfortunately, all tickets this week are sold out," he told us, "so you will have to travel by bus." And the bus would be twice as expensive.

Puffer turned to me and sighed. "What do you think? Can we afford to dump so much cash already?"

"These will be sold out soon, so hurry please," the man added.

"Sir, I'm discussing this with my friend. Please wait."

"Okay, sir, there is no problem of course. Of course we have no problem."

"I don't know," I told Puffer. "Let's just talk outside for a second."

The manager became aggressive. Tickets were running out, it seemed, and we needed to act fast. I was listening to him, when suddenly I realized Puffer was on his feet shouting.

"You know what? No!" he said, sticking his index finger in the man's face, and then waving it back toward our guide. "Your little dog out there fetched us at the train station. This building looks like garbage. My friend and I..."

The owner heard mention of the turban man and seemed to conclude this was all his fault. He swept outside, mumbling vicious epithets.

"I work for the tourism bureau!" the turban man cried when we passed on the way out. His voice contained infinite heartbreak. "You saw my ID! My son's picture!"

When we arrived back at the train station, we found the door wide open. We decided it might serve us better to try to motorcycle all the way down to the Taj Mahal, though, so instead of getting train tickets we called up a motorcycle shop on the other side of the city. We made an appointment for the following day.

Getting there took an hour on the subway. We got off and began searching for the building. Everywhere, there were tiny, wooden shops, but we didn't see motorcycles in front of any of them. Nor were there any people, period. I could understand that—the temperature was a thousand degrees. It was like walking down a street in a Western movie before the showdown. A filthy, frumpy rug blew sideways a few stores ahead; as we passed, I saw it was a dog. It suddenly heaved itself up, sending its raw, enormous breasts swinging, then trudged into a hole in a crumbling stone wall.

It was right around noon when we finally found the shop, but no one was there, so we called the owner.

"Motorcycles?" the man answered. The call seemed to frighten him, as if we were debt collectors or the cops. "What do you mean?"

"We want motorcycles," Puffer said.

"Motorcycles?"

"Yes, motorcycles," Puffer said.

"Who told you my number?"

Eventually, he told us the store was opening at 3:00 PM.

"We made an appointment for 12:00 PM. Today!" Puffer said.

"Yes, but the store isn't open until three o'clock today, sir."

"What?!" Puffer said. "Are you insane? We talked yesterday! You said you were open and would meet us!"

"I see there was a mistake," the man said, as if the source of this mistake were a mystery.

"Come to work on time, douchebag!" Puffer shouted and hung up. "What the fuck is this guy talking about?! What kind of store opens at 3:00 PM?" Every few seconds on our walk back to the train station, I heard Puffer muttering, "Schmuck... can't get his ass out of bed..."

 

Agra

It took two days, but we got to Agra by train. We expected it to be more together than Delhi. It was the city of the famous Taj Mahal, for Christ's sake! To get to the Taj, one must walk through a small, quite pleasant woods. Neat trails of soft gravel were lined on each side with trimmed hedges. In gaps separating the hedges, we noticed generous helpings of rice, apples, bread, and even candy. These were gifts Hindus offered their animal deities.

"Half the country doesn't have enough to eat, and they're throwing all this food away," said Puffer. "Hindu retards."

It wasn't going completely to waste—it was going to rats. It had swollen them to the size of Chihuahuas. Bushes shook as they rolled around playing tug of war for it all. A little girl visiting with her father begged him to carry her on his shoulders after one darted across the path over her feet. All you had to do was bend over to see the woods was rife with these creatures—there were thousands of them. It put the fear of God into me. I imagined the entire horde suddenly spilling out onto the path and swamping us: they'd climb each person, screeching with bloodlust, until he was nothing but a human-shaped mass of writhing blackness and fangs.

Inside the gates of the Taj, though, was Valhalla. The grass was cut as neat as a putting green. Twenty-man crews circulated with the finest lawn-manicuring technology in existence. Even the sun seemed to beat softer here, as if drawn by pastels. We sat down on a bench inside, watching the smiling tourists taking selfies and not wanting to go back outside into the real India.

Our train back to Delhi wasn't until the next morning, so we'd have to kill some time in Agra. We soon found out it was full of literal shit. Streams whispered down all the alleys, like the city's sinews. Along points of some sidewalks, it flowed so heavily, there was the sound of rushing. I tried to assume as neutral an expression as the local citizenry, but my mouth often fell open as I strode behind Puffer and took in all the filth. Concrete buildings were all around. Many were collapsing. From the shadows within, eyes gazed apathetically out at the scene. God only knew what was going on inside those houses, and I felt truly sorry for Him. We came upon a completely naked toddler slumbering on a sidewalk, her cheek down in the dirt and her butt in the air. Flies landed in the crack and walked right in, only flying out when dogs passed to sniff. Indians just stepped over her. The way her mouth was wide open was almost cute.

"Jesus H. Christ," I murmured.

"Excuse me!" Puffer shouted, frantically waving his hands in front of the crowd. "What the hell is this? Are you people blind?" Indians shot him scandalized glances, then walked on. We eventually located a cop to tell, then, faces ashen, asked a cab driver to find us a hotel.

This wasn't simple. He seemed to know only establishments fit for randy honeymooners. After we'd exited the fifth such hotel, Puffer refused to get back in the car and exclaimed, "Your hotels all suck!"

"Just one more, sir," the driver pleaded, backpedaling in front of us as we walked away from his cab. "I know veeeery good place. You love this place. It is veeeery good place."

"Fucking schmuck!" Puffer bellowed back at him as we walked off. A moment later he shook his head and sighed, "Of course, that fucking schmuck is probably the father of that ass naked baby we saw earlier today..."

By 8:00 PM, we had found a hotel, a perfect cube of a room with off-white walls. The air conditioner was right over our bed, making noises like a construction site and pummeling us with cold. I soon was shivering and turned it off. A few minutes later, when the temperature should have been comfortable, my shivering had gotten worse.

I later guessed the problem had started at lunch, when we'd eaten at an apparently clean naan place. The dishes were cleaned with well water, and that was all it took. I spent an hour in the bathroom trying to vomit but couldn't. The next hour, I did what my father has always called, "Puking out of the ass." I clung to the seat, trying not to fall from shivering and wheezing out the exhausted ramblings of a dying man. "Whyyy, whyyy... heeeeerlp, heeerlp... Geeoood, Geeoood..."

Sometime later, I heard Puffer call, "Do you see any worms?"

I eventually wandered out into the city in search of Pepto-Bismol. I took slow, deliberate steps, both because I knew any sharp movement might trigger a flood out of my ass, and because I was beginning to hallucinate. Though it was 100 degrees, I felt like it was 100 below, and my head retracted turtle-like into my hoodie, so that barely anything was keeping the hood up. My huge eyes dodged rabidly left and right—anyone who saw them would have guessed I was seeing beyond, or so fucked up on blow my gourd was about to fall off.

It started gradually. The faces brushing past me on the road blurred, then became shadowlike. Eventually I saw them as wraiths, great demons populating this hell I was passing through. Some were giants, their footsteps booming around me. Others were cats, filthy as strays but human sized, fully clothed, and—most frighteningly—speaking English with Indian accents. I didn't have a clue what they were saying, and fresh horror overtook me as it dawned on me these cats might be gossiping about me. The last thing I remember is being sold pills by a pair of empty clothes before I woke up at 2:00 AM with my head next to the toilet.

The next day we went to take our train back to Delhi. Puffer had warned me Indian trains were notoriously unpunctual, but I assumed that meant the train would arrive perhaps 15 minutes late. After an hour went by, I began to worry. Everything looked filthy. Rats scampered about the tracks. The air was completely still, yet many of the people had clothes that looked like they'd been worn while trudging through a sandstorm. The worst thing was the heat. It reminded me of times in my youth when my sister would sit on me until I'd beg, "Just kill me, for God's sake!"

It was around this time that a little boy about as tall as Puffer's legs began following us all around with his hand out. We tried to lose him, but he tailed us all the way to our platform and planted himself there. This boy was cute—like a dirty puppy. Puffer told him he wasn't cute, though. "You're no different than all the other lazy bums in the country," he informed the boy, and then proceeded to serve him with a series of ultimatums in firm, perfect English the boy didn't understand a word of. Eventually, he picked him up around the waist like a sack and carried him back where we found him. A minute later, the boy came sauntering down the stairs again, a dazed little smile on his face. Puffer carried him up again, but he came right back down.

"That's it. If you don't get out of here, I'm going to hit you," Puffer finally said, jabbing a finger into the boy's chest. The boy recoiled his hand a second, looking skittish, then smiled coyly, and stuck it back out.

"I'm warning you! I will hit you!"

Finally, to my mortification, Puffer picked him up, bent him over his knee, and began spanking him. The boy didn't make a sound. When Puffer put him down again, he looked up at us once more, then left without a word. Puffer turned to me. "Do you believe these crazies?" he said.

Our train came three hours late.

 

Delhi 2

Back in Delhi, we checked in to our original hotel. After sleeping on the train, I still felt wormy, but decided I should probably eat something. I went to a café across the street. Exactly after I ordered, it came on. I couldn't believe such a drastic change could occur so fast. I clenched my asscheeks together tighter than an airlocked door, but it felt like I was holding back the whole world in there.

My head shot from our hotel across the street, where the only nearby bathroom was, to the panini I'd ordered. I thought I could get the panini and make it back—the damn thing was pre-made!—but the employee seemed to be trying to break records for slow service. A massive smile on my face, I held my money out, trying to hurry him, but he still hadn't even wrapped it. Instinct took over. My legs crossed themselves. My chest torqued violently right, and then back left. Attempting to further seal off the area, my hands gripped the waist of my shorts and pulled them to just below my nipples.

The moment he handed me the panini, it happened. An involuntary spasm swept over my ass muscles, and for a quarter of a second, a gap the size of a pinhead opened in my clenched anus. A jet of liquid manure, maybe 1,000 psi, exploded outwards.

"Oooooh!" I moaned, feeling warm liquid wash down my calf.

To maintain total containment of this situation had required undivided focus. My hands and feet had already gone numb—like a general directing reinforcements, I'd somehow sent blood from all quadrants of my body to shore up defenses at the Battle of My Rectum. The first breach had compromised that focus though, and, as I penguined back to the room, others were developing.

I didn't say a word to Puffer when I got in but went directly for the bathroom, where I ripped down my shorts and dove ass-first toward the toilet. I sat there an hour, silently weeping.

Puffer knew something had happened, but he still wanted to get flight tickets to Kashmir, the northernmost province. "There will be clean air, less people," he said. "This is the fresh start we need!"

Very reluctantly, I agreed. I was starting to consider Puffer a big reason for all our woes. In Korea, I'd known he was a loose cannon, but India seemed to have made him even looser. I made him promise to stop provoking the locals.

"Just act normal," I told him. "I don't want to get fucking stuck here."

Not an hour later, Puffer and I were waiting in a security checkpoint line outside the airport when a chubby, turbaned man with a nose like a block of soap sauntered up to the right of the line. As the line moved, he took a step closer. Everyone knew he was cutting, but only Puffer seemed bent out of shape about it. "What does this jackass think he's doing?" he said. "Is he high?"

When the man finally made his move and cut into the line, Puffer put his foot on the man's rolling suitcase and lashed out, sending it sprawling across the concrete. The man's head shot up. "Bastaaaaaard!" he rasped out, his tongue shivering like a snake's.

I was livid. "What the hell are you thinking?" I hissed. "There are police with guns right there!"

"He was horning in on our line!" Puffer laughed, as if the world over, it was standard practice to kick such offenders' suitcases.

 

Kashmir

As soon as the flight to Kashmir took off, I passed out into a deep sleep. I was ensconced in dreams of kindly Korean grandmas giving me food, and then of healthy, 6-to-8-hour digestion cycles. Later, I dreamed I was in a room as white and clean as a Microsoft Word page. I smiled lazily. Turning to the window, a mammoth, snow-capped mountain exploded into view. I stared outwards the rest of the flight, unsure if I was still dreaming.

The capital of Kashmir, Srinagar, was better than Delhi—that much was obvious at first glance. I played cricket with some little kids. We ate some truly good food, mutton, that calmed my roiling stomach. From dusk until dawn the weather was no more than 70 degrees. Walking around gave me a kind of runners high. I knew every ghostly gust had once been a whirlwind in the Himalayas, at the zenith of the world. The place had beauty, too—you could feel the simple contentment of the people who called it home.

I was mostly blind to all of it, though, and lumped it with the rest of the dirty country. Like the rest of India, it did seem out to get us. We had checked in to a hotel that reminded me of the ramshackle Weasley Burrow. It had nice facilities and had been given a high rating by Lonely Planet, but was run by an old perv who did nothing but badger us for pictures of our girlfriends. The Lonely Planet crowd also apparently hadn't minded the loudspeakers located on a nearby roof that blared the call to prayer to every Muslim in the area incessantly each night. "Waaaaayaaaaeeeeeyaaaaaaeeeee Waaaaaayaaaaaeeeeeyaaaaaeeeeeeeee..." Disoriented, we spent each prayer that first night shouting futile curses out the window.

"Shut that fucking thing off!"

"Obnoxious as fuck!"

"Un-fucking-believable!"

We made plans to stay near a famous lake outside Srinigar. In pictures, it was majestic. Cliffs shot up to the heavens on all sides, and I imagined myself canoeing there happily with some beautiful lady, or anybody besides Puffer. Online, we'd seen that buses to the lake departed each morning at 7:00 AM, so we were at the terminal to buy our tickets at 6:30. There was a huge line of people waiting at the ticket window, but nobody was inside. As we waited, an Indian man who resembled Liam Neeson approached us. He wanted us to stay at his boat hotel floating on a nearby river. He told us several times that it was pristine, not to mention exactly what we were looking for. We told him we'd come back with our answer later. Encouraged by our politeness, he seemed to decide that, when later came, all we'd have to do was turn around. He followed us everywhere, always dropping hints about his hotel. Suddenly, I realized someone was screaming.

"We said no! Okay? No! Now get the fuck away from us!"

It took a moment for me to realize that the one yelling was me.

"Why do you speak this way to me?" the man said. His eyes narrowed, like he was finally seeing what poor guests we would have been.

"We don't like you!" I said. "Go! Fucking GO!"

"Speak gently to me," he said. "I am a human being—I'm not Israeli."

"You're 'not an Israeli!'" Puffer shouted, laughing.

"Yes. I'm not Israeli, you're not Israeli, we can speak gently with each other like human beings!"

"We're 'NOT ISRAELIS!'" Puffer repeated, now cackling. He had a huge, shit-eating grin on his face. I was still glaring at Liam Neeson, seeing red, not just because he was hassling us, but because my threshold had been reached. The man looked at us like he still thought we could be friends. He seemed to think nothing amiss about his Israeli comment, and even that it was smoothing things over.

"Yes, you're not Israelis and we have no problem with each other," he continued, "so I still welcome you to my house tonight and—"

"What the fuck are you talking about!" I shouted, being pulled away by Puffer now.

"Sir, bye," Puffer said. He shook his head as he dragged me, erupting every few seconds into laughter. "Israelis... Danny, am I going to have to be the sensible one here?"

Even though we'd already bought return tickets to Delhi for only five days later, I told Puffer I was going back immediately. I was beginning to imagine nightmare scenarios in which I'd get stuck in India, and I wanted to be as close as possible to the Delhi airport. He could see there was no arguing with me.

 

Delhi 3

We had four days left in the country. At first, we walked around Delhi, trying to see some sites. I'd like to report we took them all in with wonder, that we learned the true meaning of world travel as the splendor of India finally smote us, but it wouldn't be true.

"Well, there it is," Puffer said when we saw the Red Fort.

At the India Gate, I said, "Huh." The air seemed worse than ever. Brown. It reflected a dull tint onto everything, making the entire world seem dismal. It seemed incomprehensible to me that people could spend their whole lives here.

On our last day in the country, we again bumped into the turban man we'd seen two weeks ago. He was with a young, North American couple. They were smiling and thanking him as he ushered them away from the train station.

"How's your son, jackass?" Puffer shouted, cackling.

The turban man spun around, sending the fake ID around his neck swinging. "You are a bad, bad man!" he screamed.

"Fuck off!" Puffer shouted, giving him the double bird.

He galumphed red-faced and stupidly after us. With no regard for proper syntax whatsoever, he shouted, "Fuuuck! Man fuuuuuck gooooo! Big! You! Fuuuuuuck!"

We wiled away the days however we could, doing anything to avoid setting foot outside our hotel. We always tried to eat as much as possible at our hotel breakfast, which hadn't made us sick yet. But occasionally we still had to step out onto the streets for dinner, which most often consisted of Oreos and beer. I felt atrophied, like this diet was getting the best of me, but my aforementioned diarrhea must have played a role, too. I later found out I had lost 15 pounds. My mental state was even worse. I always stepped out warily, feeling like Wile E. Coyote, eternally fated to get my ass kicked in more and more creative ways. I took to tip-toeing around every corner, speaking to no one. I walked with my hands crammed in my pockets, a vice grip on my wallet, snapping my head leerily in any direction I sensed movement. Sometimes my cheeks suddenly puffed out, as nerves made me vomit in my mouth.

All around us—leaning against dusty buildings, spooning with each other under blankets in the dirt, crowded 20 to a room watching mini-TVs, if they were lucky—were Delhi's unwashed riffraff, people who had fallen between society's cracks, which in India were obviously better defined as gaping chasms. I was terrified that even the few remaining days were enough to land me out here with them on my ass, naked, begging, and gnawing on my own skin like a dog. Scenarios in which fate would through the unlikeliest of chances force me to either stay in India to save Puffer or sell him out to save myself ran through my mind, and I knew full well that if they ever unfolded, in the end I'd always turn to him and say, "Look. This friendship had to end sometime..." The thought occurred to me that perhaps I was overly-prejudiced against India. Then I dismissed it. Once you really go to India for two weeks, you realize too much prejudice simply isn't possible.

I remember I felt such relief on the plane—and, to my dismay, a touch of survivor's guilt. Why was I up here, being allowed to escape the down there? Why was I born in America instead of India? I thought back to my first night in Delhi, when I'd seen the mob outside of the front doors of the airport. My worst nightmare was walking through a door and finding myself face to face with a horde of an untold number of... zombies. Zombies—that's what they looked like. The disfiguration, the birth defects—those were bad. But most of all it had been the eyes. Those black, famished things could only belong to the damned. And after all, they were the damned, those poor Indian bastards. I pretended my sorrow for them was genuine, but as soon as I had gotten on the ground, of course, just like all the other Indians not yet getting eaten, the only thought on my mind was getting out.