HAZARDS AND HARMONIES ON HIGH WALLS
Listen, Myrtle, you can’t stay up there all day. You have to go either forward or backward.
My best friend Myrtle had followed me out onto the high narrow wall, at my insistence I do admit, and then got stuck there as I blithely walked on admiring the view, which really and truly was spectacular: the entire Urubamba Valley lying beneath our feet with that pretty little river snaking around far, far below, and gentle clouds swirling around Huayna Picchu.
But I guess when Myrtle looked out to her left and then looked down, again at my urging, I do admit, she started swaying, let out a squeaky yelp, dropped to all fours, and froze. And that’s where she had been for the last ten minutes, until I became aware that there were no longer any grunts or huffing and puffing behind me and I finally turned around and spotted her back on that foot-wide high wall.
I noticed with a bit if concern that she seemed to be gasping a little and her fingers where they held on to that wall seemed to be an amazing pure white color. But she did not seem to appreciate my concern for her, surprise, surprise.
Myrtle: “Shut up already! And stop bossing me around. You’re always bossing me around! And if you tell me one more time to look down at the beautiful view of that Urubamba River way down there where hell is, I will ram that whole river down your throat!”
Well, I was half inclined to remind her, with my most sophisticated legendary wit, of course, that Urubamba means spider, and the river and valley are so named because there are so many spiders there, and that unfortunately my very strict diet at the moment did not include spiders.
But then I thought of an effective way to get her to move. “Well, you know that pretty soon you will have to go potty.”
Myrtle: “SHUT UP ALREADY!! Now look what you did! I was doing just fine until you had to open your big mouth and use the “P” word. Now what am I going to do?”
I opened my mouth to say, “Just go the hell forward or backward unless (and here I would insert that wonderful sarcasm I am so famous for) unless you would rather go to one side or the other.” One side was an eight-foot drop to the flagstones where I was standing; the other side was a 2000 foot drop down the mountain, which would probably involve some spectacular bouncing off terraces, big rocks, and boulders. And wouldn’t you know, I did not even have my video camera with me to video that for YouTube!
But just then I noticed the lizard sitting on the stone right in front of my face, flicking his tongue out and puffing that pouch under his chin, and I backed up a little and kept my eye on him. I have heard that male lizards puff out their pouches to attract a female, but believe me, I was not very attracted to him at that moment because to me it looked for all the world like he was just licking his chops in preparation to taking a big bite out of me, which is not what I paid my money for on this trip. My arm still had a bandage on it where that parrot in the Amazon had decided to take a chunk out of me.
You know, it’s actually pretty embarrassing when you go on a big, exciting trip and come home to report you were bit, not by an enormous crocodile or fierce lion, but by a small parrot and an even smaller lizard.
But back to my friend Myrtle. That’s Myrtle Mancuso, and I am Josephine Hunter, or Jo-Jo to my friends. Myrtle and I are women “of a certain age” – and if you think I will give numbers here you have less going on upstairs than that lizard that keeps eying me – anyway, we are women of a certain age who have raised families and lost their husbands.
Now THAT is a puzzling phrase, like we have somehow misplaced them like a pair of glasses that we could not find until we sat on them, or a tiny little dental partial we somehow misplaced months ago and could not find until we had to call in a plumber one day because the guest room toilet would not flush properly, and guess what he found!
And oh my dears, I do have to tell you he was a cutie-pie and I was so thinking of inviting him to stay for a beer until he suddenly pulled out this dripping ball of wadded-up toilet paper all wrapped around that lost little devil. Surely it was a scientific anomaly how such a tiny little thing could cause that whole big problem?!
I was SO mortified, and even though I recovered quickly and mentioned coyly that my last house guest thought she had lost a small partial, he declined my offer of beer.
Anyway, back to Myrtle, my friend of many years and now my traveling companion. We decided that since we had time on our hands we would “do the world”. And that’s how she came to be up on that wall in Machu Picchu on all fours clinging to the sides and shaking.
Just then she screamed “GET ME OFF THIS FFFING WALL!” Now if you know my Myrtle, you know immediately that this is a major breach of protocol and would occasion a serious frown from Miss Manners. My friend Myrtle does NOT curse or swear or use any god’s name in vain. So I knew right off that this was a serious occasion.
I made a lightning decision, and with a motion that would cause envy in any pro NBA player, I shot out my arm, grabbed that lizard, and with a mighty overhand throw tossed it right up on top of Myrtle, causing her to shriek in decibels that probably could be heard by the dogs in China.
She shot forward on hands and knees and in three seconds flat was sprawled on the terrace above me outside the Temple of the Sun. I climbed back up those impossible steps to join her there and found her lying flat on her back on the flagstones with her arms outstretched as curious tourists gaped at her and wondered if she were part of the morning sunrise show.
I cleverly said to her, with my famous sarcasm, you remember, “Myrtle, if you are the High Priest, you have to stand upright, and you really should be near the Hitching Post of the Sun God on top of the Truncite Pyramid, and are you sure you drank enough of the juice of the wild nicotine plant to ensure that you are sufficiently high to foretell the future of the king?”
Since she had told me all these things a half hour earlier, I thought she would appreciate the fact that I did learn something.
But what do you think were my thanks for all my kind solicitude and for being such a good student? Myrtle hauled off and belted me with her purse, which, if you know Myrtle, you know is filled with everything she emptied out of her suitcase that morning, plus a two-liter bottle of water and a piece of lead pipe that she always carries “in case she gets mugged.”
Well, I tell you, that baby knocked me off my feet, and I was saved only by the timely appearance of our guide, who happened to be coming up the steps to investigate the screaming. I careened backwards into her, and she went backwards with an “ooof” and careened into the young lad coming behind her, which caused an interesting cascade on the top steps as everyone became more intimately engaged with the person immediately behind.
Fortunately. there was a man of generous proportions bent over on one of the steps tying his shoe, and when the cascade cascaded (don’t you just love that word “cascaded”? It has such a lilt to it!) anyway, when that cascade hit up against that broad behind, it stopped up short. There were no casualties.
I quickly used the distraction to drag Myrtle into the Meditation Room because I remembered that she and I were already in a spot of hot water with our guide about the trip up the mountain early that morning.
I pushed Myrtle down into a corner, where I sat next to her and sort of threw my shawl over us both and commenced with a nice OOOHHHHMMMMMM.
Now, if you know the Meditation Room at Machu Picchu, you know that it has special acoustics designed to echo your humming or chanting. The walls quickly took up my chant.
Myrtle, of course, had to best me, so she chanted even louder in two keys higher.
Soon the whole Meditation Room was rocking with OOHHMMs in the key of C (mine) and the key of E (hers) and the walls started bouncing it all around us – quite wonderful I thought, perfectly conducive to a truly religious experience.
The other people in the Meditation Room did not seem to share my opinion, and one of them bellowed, quite rudely I thought, “SHUT UP!”
It was then I saw our guide’s face in the doorway, and she was not exactly smiling. She wore an expression quite like the one she had that morning on the bus, to tell you the truth.
To be continued…
To be continued…