Llama for Lunch (3 page)
I saw many acts of kindness on the subway. A well-dressed black woman gave her seat to a blind man, an elderly white man was given a seat by a young man. Another time one young man stood for an older person and a young bloke grabbed the seat so the fellow next to him promptly gave up his seat.
In the subway there were intriguing signs; one huge one advertised ‘DIVORCE for ninety dollars’. But subways are grotty, unpainted cement-coloured dungeons – the sort of place I’d never go at night.
On one of my rides around the Loop I spotted the marvellous Chicago Library and leapt off to inspect it. With nine extensive floors, it is impressively big and as you ascend slowly by escalator past its walls of white marble you feel as though you are being lifted up through a bright, light, gorgeous space. On the seventh floor, just for curiosity, I searched among the literature and found Australian writer Miles Franklin’s
On Dearborn Street
.
Another floor had computers where you could collect your e-mails or surf the internet for free. I said to the young man standing in line behind me, ‘If you want to get on the net fast, show me how to get my e-mail.’ He did and, much to my surprise, I retrieved a message. Wonderful – I have made it into the twenty-first century! The message had been put on after I retrieved it, if you can work that out. I don’t like it. It’s not natural. I feel as if I am in a time warp. How can you read something before it is writ? I could be drummed out of the Luddite society for this. Later, when I phoned home to ask how Madame Josephine, my cat, was behaving I discovered that it was fourteen hours beforehand. Still, I felt very pleased with myself. I’d found the Library, used the Loop, travelled the subway and discovered the internet. Wow!
Jaunting around on the Loop felt strange because, although you are elevated, the buildings around you are so high that you really don’t see anything of them except their middle bits. You can see the tops of a couple if you look way, way up but there are so many of them crowded around you it becomes claustrophobic. I wondered why the city fathers had decided to make buildings so high and who used them all. Everything here seemed excessively big. Sears Tower, built in 1974, has one hundred and ten floors and, until recently, was the tallest building in the world. The tower is so high that to stand underneath and try to see the top you need to tip your head back until you hurt and then you can only just glimpse its summit. From a distance on the train the tower is long, thin and angular and its black facade makes it look sinister, like Darth Vader. And as for parting with sixteen dollars to ride to the top floor, forget it. This acrophobic would have to be paid to do that. I panicked on top of the Eiffel Tower, refused to get back in the open-fronted lift to go down again and ended up walking down thousands of stairs on the fire escape.
Most of the houses of the suburbs were wood or clapboard, two or three skinny storeys high and appeared European in style to me. But now and then I saw groups of two-storeyed brick houses, dreary affairs of boring identical boxes. On trains to the suburbs many people went to sleep. Every so often there would be an announcement admonishing passengers not to litter or indulge in other antisocial behaviour. And I was astounded to hear a promise to prosecute me if I solicited on the train. Solicited for what? I hate to think. Heaven forbid that it might be that which is not spoken of in polite circles.
Out among the masses it was impossible not to notice how many fatties there were. I don’t mean pleasantly plump, but colossally gross. And sadly, many of these unfortunates were amazingly young. Some of the weight-disadvantaged wore most unsuitable clothes, such as tight lurex outfits in screaming orange, or skin-hugging terry-towelling short shorts that looked revolting. Now that I had seen the glut of sweet goodies that you get offered from breakfast onwards and the fast-food outlets, cafes and restaurants that abounded, I began to understand.
I mastered the international phone card I’d bought before leaving home. You punch in a stream of numbers, give your pin number and away you go. It’s pre-paid and costs far less than locally made calls, especially in places like South America, where the rates are breathtaking.
My visit to the United States and the book fair had been an afterthought. South America was my aim and anything but an aircraft my choice of travel. I had not been able to find a ship crossing the Pacific at the time I wanted to travel but before I left home I had managed to book a passage from Miami to Lima in Peru, via the Panama Canal on a German freighter. I had no idea what I would do when I reached Lima but I wanted to cross the South American continent overland and travel as far as I could on the River Amazon. This incredible river had stirred my imagination for as long as I could remember but I had delayed visiting South America because I was afraid – its reputation as a dangerous place is well-documented. At last, however, I had summoned the courage to take it on.
My ship didn’t leave Miami for another three weeks. I wasn’t sure where I wanted to go in that time but I wanted to travel by train and even though Chicago is the centre of the country’s railways, I found that I couldn’t get a train to the west coast and San Francisco except by taking a devious and horrendously priced route. So I bought a first-class sleeper ticket south to San Antonio in Texas and a connecting bus ticket to the Mexican border town of Laredo. I had decided that Mexico would be warm and cheap – and I could learn some Spanish in preparation for South America.
At one of Chicago’s drug stores – they don’t just sell drugs but are more like a supermarket – I asked the disinterested black girl who was supposed to sell stamps if I could buy some. She told me that they would have none until tomorrow, and admitted, when pressed, that when they had them they cost six dollars for a book of twenty.
‘How much are they each?’ I asked.
She looked vacant. ‘Six dollars for twenty.’
‘No, how much for one?’
She had no idea. She didn’t know and she didn’t intend to put herself out to find out. She just played with her hair.
I found it extremely hard to find a place that changed money. I went to where the current tourist-bureau publication said this feat was performed and after patrolling up and down the street several times finally found the shop. It was upstairs and at the rear of the given address. It also sported a sign saying that it had moved months ago. Someone directed me elsewhere. Strangely most banks won’t change money. Several more directions later, some in opposite ways for the same place, I finally came to rest at a magnificent bank with malachite coloured marble all over the place in a riot of pomp and splendour.
Another day I set off to explore the streets surrounding the Three Arts Club on foot. This area is a pleasant leafy suburb that formerly housed the affluent in grand mansions, some of which remain. They are different from Australian stately homes in that they mostly have little or no front yard and are, like the lesser houses, right on the street. Small areas of lawns and flowers are dotted between the footpaths and the road among shady trees, and the sound of birds is everywhere.
Downtown looking for the post office, I asked several people the way but I never did find it. I was directed to a place with a clock tower that one woman said must be it. Passing a beauty shop where a big fat African-American with a big fat gold earring sat in the front window having a manicure, I came to this building. It was the old railway station that had been converted to an art gallery, but a computer shop next door sold stamps – logical.
On a frightful day that had suddenly become hot and windy I decided to go to Chinatown. I nearly got my head blown off waiting on the station platform, then got on a train going the wrong way and ended up back in the Loop. I then took the line promoted as the scenic route, but the view was just the same once you were out in the suburbs and, even though I went a long way to the end of the line, it didn’t change. One line dives underground after leaving the city and continues for four stops then emerges into the sunlight like a monster rushing out of its hole. Standing in the gloom of the dingy subway cave waiting for the monster is a creepy feeling. Suddenly, with a tremendous racket it comes roaring up out of the bowels of the earth accompanied by great gusts of wind.
Entering Chinatown you walk through a gate ornately carved with dragons and are transported into streets lined by authentic Chinese shops. The people you pass are speaking Chinese. I came upon the Chinese branch of the public library and, having certain needs that were demanding to be met, entered the premises. Libraries are always a good source of a loo.
I set off to return to the city taking one of my famous short-cuts. I thought that the street I walked down must take me to the train station. It didn’t. It led into a semi-enclosed alleyway. Halfway down it, with no one else in sight, I thought, Good grief, what a perfect place to get mugged. It was not a pleasant stroll and, emerging at the other end, I discovered that I was now really on the wrong side of the tracks. Not a soul was around except a group of black people who appeared to be living under the trees off to one side. I tootled past them as fast as I could then started on a path that I calculated must lead to the train line. But I was now in some kind of railway works. Round and round this I trudged until it ended at a high reinforced barbed wire fence. The place was deserted. I could have done what I liked in there. The gate had been open when I walked in so I wondered why they had all that barbed wire to keep people out. Backtracking to where I had started, I followed the road again for a long way and finally found the station. This time I resisted the urge to board a train going in the wrong direction and miraculously ended up where I belonged.
My last day came. I returned my towels, had my room checked to get my deposit back and, having booked the lift in writing in advance, waited for the escort without whom no one could use this precious piece of machinery. What did they think I was going to do with it – go for a joy ride?
Built in 1925, Chicago railway station has a stupendous, spacious, brightly lit entry hall containing long polished wooden seats. From there you progress to waiting rooms, cafes and shops. I was allowed into the wonderful Metropolitan Lounge, a place reserved for ‘sleeping-car passengers’. Not ‘first-class’, I noted, for this egalitarian society. But what a contrast the Metropolitan Lounge was from the station’s other waiting rooms, where hordes of folk were crammed in front of television sets blaring out soap operas. The Metropolitan Lounge had comfortable leather couches and club chairs, and free coffee, juice, Coke, buns, bikkies, baggage storage, telephones, TVs and marble bathrooms.
I jettisoned my bags, drank some coffee and walked over the bridge on the Chicago River to the downtown area. Now Chicago showed me some of its famous wind. It was incredibly strong. You had to walk perpendicularly to avoid being flattened. I nearly got blown off the bridge into the water and everyone I passed looked really weird with their hair standing straight up on end like a fright wig.
Back at the Chicago railway station I sat beside the world’s most boring woman, who told me she was reading a Christian romance novel. Apparently there exists a publishing firm that produces only this type of book. More power to them. I availed myself of another free drink. Fortunately this was a most comfortable place to read or knit while waiting, as I had been thrown out of the Three Arts Club at eleven and my train didn’t leave until five. As soon as it was decently possible I moved away from the Christian woman and sat next to a smartly dressed black woman who turned out to be a publisher of travel books.
By listening to the announcements and speaking to other waiting people I discovered that, much as the railway’s publicity department would like you to be impressed by its efficiency, every train runs at least two or three hours late. One man said his last train had been fourteen hours in arrears. My train departed ninety minutes behind time.
Walking out of the waiting room onto the train platform I had been surprised to find that it was already dark. Then I realised that the platforms were underground. I dragged the small bag that I was taking on board with me for kilometres along a long train and was shown into a compartment by a conductor. I was partly unpacked when he told me that I was in the wrong carriage. Then I had to walk more kilometres back again.
The railway personnel mostly gave me the impression of being slightly off the planet. They didn’t know what was going on and they didn’t much care. A
National Geographic
survey found that one in seven Americans could not identify the United States on a map of the world. I rest my case.
My first-class compartment was a pokey little hole containing two seats that metamorphosed, with great difficulty, into a bed. Supposedly designed for two people, it was hard enough for just one to get in or out of – it would been a circus for two. My young black conductor, Lazy Boy, didn’t help. He left the operation on the bed so late that I performed it myself in desperation. I really needed sleep. And what a struggle it was! Lazy Boy was really strange. Everything I asked him, he didn’t know. His attitude was so laid back, he was almost flat out.