Indians on Vacation by Thomas King

Author:Thomas King
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Canada
Published: 2020-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

I DON’T SEE Oz until it’s too late. The little man appears in the doorway and is across the room in a flash.

“Hello,” he says. “You are here.”

“I am.”

“You are not here yesterday.”

I don’t feel like talking, but that is not going to stop Oz. “We went to Budapest.”

“Budapest?”

“Early in the morning,” I tell him. “Then we came back.”

“The same day?”

“Yes.”

Oz rubs the side of his nose. “What good luck.”

“Luck?”

“Today, there are no trains.” Oz arranges his knife and fork so they are parallel to each other. “They have closed the station in Budapest.”

“The refugees closed the station?”

“No, no,” says Oz. “The government closed the station. There are too many refugees, and there are too many angry people.”

The server comes by, and I decide that I’m hungry after all and won’t wait for Mimi. I order the ham dish. So does Oz.

“You saw the refugees?”

“Yes,” I say. “It was sad.”

“To see them is sad,” says Oz. “To be one is . . . bouleversant, but this is not strong enough.”

“Shattering?”

“Yes,” says Oz. “Shattering. Moria. Zaatari. Calais. Mae La. Dadaab. To be a refugee is to be shattered.”

I follow Oz to the buffet. There is a good selection of fruit today and some small pastries with raisins.

“So, what will you do today?”

“I don’t know. You have any suggestions?”

Oz takes two of the pastries. “You have seen the clock?”

“We’ve seen the clock and the Kafka courtyard and the castle and the statue of the boy and we’ve been to Golden Lane.”

“And, of course, the bridge.”

“We walked through the old Jewish quarter and saw the cemetery, but we didn’t go in.”

Oz stops in front of the yogurt. “Have you been to the KGB Museum?”

I’m tempted to tell Oz about the medicine bundle and Uncle Leroy.

“When you were in Budapest, did you go to the castle?” Oz waves a serving spoon in my face. “There is a museum. In the basement of the castle. The Hospital in the Rock. Filled with wax figures. My favourite is a German officer sitting on a toilet with his pants around his ankles.”

“Wax Nazis?”

“Doctors, nurses, patients, soldiers,” says Oz. “A history lesson in wax.”

We finish with the buffet and go back to our table. It’s only eight thirty. I don’t expect to see Mimi for another hour. Now that I have food in front of me, I’m no longer hungry. What I really want to do is go back to the room, crawl into bed, and stay there for the rest of the day.

Instead, I sip my coffee and wait for Oz to finish his meal. Through the window, I can see the sun in full throat, and I can hear the sounds of motor scooters as they zip up and down the narrow streets.

“Tell me,” I ask him as he eats the last of his pastry, “what do you know about Wild West shows?”

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