Rudy's Rules for Travel Page 12

  “Rude, do you think they bring everything to a food bank after dark?”

  “I’m sure the spirits know what to do.”

  The following days are dedicated to The Search. Once more violating his own rule against large souvenirs, Rudy wants to bring home a Balinese woodcarving. I have been on his searches before. I have hunted for the brightest silver belt buckle in Mexico, the loudest but cheapest cuckoo clock in Germany, the almost-free-of-charge silk robe in a Thai night market. I suspect now that I will see every carving in Mas, the neighboring village where the gods themselves bestow skills upon wood carvers.

  I suspect also that this mission will be another training session for Hadi as he launches his newly announced business, “The Real Bali Tours.” Rudy has not been able to leave his teacher role at home; he and Hadi meet on the porch early each morning to practice English and design a colorful sign for the battered truck. Today, I find our trainer standing face to face with our driver, some ten feet apart, holding a pair of scissors in one hand, gesturing toward the space between them.

  “He needs to learn about the middleman, hon.”

  “Okay. And the scissors are for what?”

  “Simple—(cut, cut)—we are cutting out the middleman. This is a demonstration.”

  It is becoming clear that the search for the perfect wood carving will not take place in comfortable, air-cooled art galleries of Mas, the ones pictured in tourist brochures. I change from sandals to ugly but sturdy walking shoes, for we are cutting out the middleman.

  After a quick reconnaissance of sample galleries in Mas, studying especially their asking prices, Rudy directs Hadi down the back roads of the village. Yesterday’s rains have muddied our path, but the truck lumbers on until Rudy spots a back alley with stacks of tree roots and branches, raw materials for elegant Balinese art. We leave our truck in a clearing and begin to walk, peeking into windows and open doors, looking for artists who supply works to the galleries. Rudy moves past the carvers who are making what look like identical statues of a Balinese dancer.

  “That’s just what happens,” he says, “a few Americans come along and buy the same carving and word spreads. Every carver for fifty miles copies it, over and over. We need to get off the beaten path to get something unique.”

  I could have sworn we had left the beaten path long before. We are an oddity in the back passages—adults, children, even the dogs look at us with a mix of suspicion and puzzlement.

  On day two of The Search, we spot a small alcove along the side of an alley, where three carvers, probably of three generations, work on what Hadi says is a large, single hibiscus root. Their knives shear off only thin layers of the root; at this pace they must not produce more than one sculpture a month. We see in the corner of the small yard only one finished piece, a four-foot bird carved from root. I remember that Michelangelo is said to have insisted he had not carved David of marble; rather, David had emerged from marble. Here, an elegant soaring bird, wings spread wide, head thrust back and mouth open, long, narrow legs balanced on the root base, flies from the hibiscus.

  The piece is beautiful, creative, unique, but oh so delicate.

  “AND how will this get home?” I ask.

  Anticipating my question, a woman and two young children emerge from a doorway, dragging a large box, big enough for a chest of drawers or an oven. The carving will take perhaps one fourth of the carton space, and in gestures they demonstrate that the bird will be wrapped and wrapped until he is snug in the large cocoon. To illustrate, the woman uses strips of rag to wrap one wing securely. Rudy is sold.

  Preparation of the bird for his first flight takes hours. The family is proud of its work, Hadi translates, and wants it to travel safely to America, California. They turn three barrels upside down and gesture for Rudy, Hadi, and me to sit. The children bring tea in battered cups, then sit cross-legged on the ground close to us.

  This is one of those times I wish I could be more like my spouse. He is mesmerized, sipping his tea and intently studying the carvers at work. I am trying to recall all I have read about cholera and teacups.

  LATE that night, we are squeezed into Hadi’s front seat heading toward tonight’s regional kecak, or monkey, dance. In rainy daylight, unpaved roads between small, remote hill towns challenge drivers with muddy potholes, collapsing shoulders, and roaming dogs. Night multiplies the threat. As the rain and darkness increase, Hadi spots friends by the roadside waiting for a bemo. He is visibly upset, as he and the Americans ride in such great comfort while his friends stand in the dark in a growing storm.

  “We need to pick up those poor souls, don’t you think?” Rudy says. “But where do we put them?”

  Hadi rescues seven or eight men and women and shelters them under tarps in the back of the truck. The trip is slower now as the vintage vehicle adjusts to its new load, and by the time we reach the makeshift dance site, a dirt floor with portable metal roofing, most benches are filled. Our passengers approach Rudy and me, bowing slightly and gesturing to a bench in the midst of the crowd where the Balinese audience has squeezed together to make room for us all. We will sit there and I will fight back tears. I am, after all, the one who thought the truck so unsuitable.

  The performers, perhaps one hundred men robed in cloths hung round their waists, sit in concentric circles on the ground before us. There is no orchestra. For over an hour, the men are their own percussion, bouncing, swaying, moving arms and hands faster and faster, sweating, chanting like the monkey, “cak-a, chark-a,” until a fevered pitch is reached and our benches seem to sway. Someone lights a bonfire in the center of the circles and the chant becomes hypnotic. Performers near us are in what look like trance states, and they seem to be taking us with them.

  After some time, the fire and the rhythm of the monkeys very, very gradually slow down until the flame is extinguished and the performers sit resting. As the intensity of the night decreases, we all sit back, watching colorfully clad dancers enter the circle and through music and motion tell the tale of two young princes, a demon king, a damsel in distress, and a mischievous monkey.

  We leave our passengers in front of their small family compound, a long way from the street where we first met. As we drive toward our bungalow, Rudy puts his arm around me and talks quietly. “I was really proud of you tonight. I know how deathly afraid of fire you are, and we were packed into the middle of that crowd, but you never said a word.”

  “Fire? That’s right . . . I remember fire, but I don’t remember fear.”

  True, it was not the performers alone who were in altered states this night.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  RUDY PULLS UP A CHAIR OPPOSITE MINE AT OUR BREAKFAST table and looks at me intently in that way that says he has a lot on his mind.

  “I think it’s time. I want to go there . . . no, it’s not that I really want to. I guess it’s that I need to.”

  The “there” I know is Tibenham, an English village of less than five hundred residents, where very little happens now. Over fifty years ago, a lot was happening. Tibenham housed a major airbase from which the American Eighth Air Force launched attacks on Nazi Germany. Success came at a price: the division suffered one of the highest casualty rates of American air forces in World War II, many occurring in a single mission.

  I have two pictures of Rudy from that time. In the first, a handsome, healthy, smiling young recruit in dress uniform looks into the camera and the world with confidence. In the second, a far older, thinner airman with pursed lips stares straight ahead through dark eyes, eyes that must have seen too much. Four months of training as a B-24 gunner separate the photos.

  The first is a portrait of a man I know well, the man I travel with. I meet the second man only occasionally, never in travel but late at night at home, when he tosses bedding and mutters about being late or writing his parents or being shot from the sky.

  Rudy has not forgotten or even willed to forget World War II. He is a student of military history, reading account after acc
ount of strategy and combat. He has visited Churchill’s War Rooms, Hitler’s Eagle Nest. He has pored over the Imperial War and Eighth Air Force museum collections, and he has walked D-Day beaches and knelt at American cemeteries in Europe, those unbearably sad places with their rows and rows of white crosses. At each resting place, Rudy has looked for names on the crosses, names that might be familiar, noted the ages of twenty-year-olds, twenty-five-year-olds.

  But Tibenham, his own airbase, is different. In fact, we have come very near the town several times in our travels. We have been on British trains that stopped at Norwich station, twenty kilometers from the village, but we have never gotten off. “Someday I’ll want to see it again,” he would say. “I’m just not sure when.”

  On this rainy, gray winter day, nearly fifty years from his service there, Rudy and I are on a train approaching Norwich station. He has written ahead to a memorial center, asking to see his old base. Subdued, he takes down our overnight cases, and without a word, he descends the train steps. A middle-aged man on the platform spots us immediately, apparently from the photo Rudy has sent.

  “Sergeant Jensen, Yes? Rudolf? I am Neal. Welcome back, sir. Welcome, Mrs. Jensen.”

  He offers firm handshakes and what I take to be an encouraging smile. “We have some people waiting to see you here in Norwich. We’d like to start your homecoming here before you visit Tibenham tomorrow, if that suits you.”

  Rudy is visibly relieved that this return can be done in stages.

  Neal’s station wagon takes us downtown to a large, modern public library where a librarian greets us on the doorstep. Following her through a colorful children’s area and a dignified history section, we come to the 2nd Air Division U.S. Memorial Library, a spacious, comfortable reading and research area with shelves of World War II tomes, films, photographs, personal diaries, and papers, all documenting sacrifices American airmen made here. Next to the war documents is a lending library of all things Americana, past and present: our histories, cookbooks, travel guides, magazines, and novels. Many of my favorite books are on these shelves. Being in their company soothes me.

  Rudy recalls that, as the war came to an end and the American airbase began to close, airmen donated funds to leave a memorial behind.

  “One of the officers said an endowed library could tell future generations the story of what happened here. My friends and I were just kids—we didn’t know what an endowment was, but we emptied our savings accounts and left a lot behind. We loved the Brits. They were so kind to us.”

  Neal has an interpretation. “I think they treated you as heroes and you rose to the occasion, no matter how young you were. You’ll meet Matthew soon. He has never forgotten you were saviors.”

  As if on cue, a graying gentleman, perhaps in his sixties, dressed in tweed suit and a tie, studies the library calendar where Rudy’s name is listed as today’s guest. He turns to us.

  “Are you really Mr. Jensen? I’m Matthew. I probably know you.”

  And with that introduction, Matthew becomes our escort protector. He refuses to eat dinner with us, saying, “That would not be right.” Instead, he waits at the door of the restaurant until we walk out, then shadows us to our bed and breakfast and gives a slight wave good night. “I be sure you’re safe.”

  The next morning our innkeeper Elizabeth knocks on our door before breakfast. “Matthew is here,” she says. “He wants to sit at the table next to you and be with you while you eat. He won’t allow you to buy him breakfast, but he’ll take a cup of tea from me. He just wants to be near you.”

  Rudy is puzzled. “He said he may know me . . .”

  “He may,” she says. “You remember when you were here, food was scarce for villagers—there was at times such hunger, such trauma.” Elizabeth turns to me to explain. “In the afternoons, American airmen would share their ration kits, handing them through the wire fence to children waiting there. Matthew was one of those children. At holidays they’d give a party for the little ones—so many sweets! Matthew remembers it all.”

  “I do too,” Rudy tells us. “I remember the children and the fence.”

  We eat breakfast in silence. Matthew, dressed again in suit and tie, seems more comfortable not talking, and Rudy is engrossed in his own thoughts. Every few bites, we three make a little eye contact and offer shy smiles. As we finish, Neal appears and is ready to be our guide to Tibenham base. Matthew waves good-bye, but Rudy and I cannot leave him behind. He is too much a part of the story. He starts to say “It would not be right,” but Neal puts his arm around him and the two of them show us to the car.

  “There are some changes at the base, Rudy,” Neal begins as we head onto the road. “Your barracks are gone but a few huts are still there. The new Gliding Club uses one of them as canteen and office. The old control tower is gone, but it was haunted anyway by that airman ghost who wandered its rooms all night.”

  Rudy nods. He has heard many stories about the ghost and believes some of them. “What about the tall spire on All Saints Church? When we flew in after a mission and spotted that spire, we knew we had survived one more time. Made believers of us all.”

  “The church spire is there, waiting for you. And so are the members of the Gliding Club. Want to go for a ride and see it again?”

  I am glad to be on the ground visiting with two war brides, village women who met and married U.S. airmen, and their husbands, both mechanics here during the war. Matthew declines a ride too, instead sitting alertly behind me until Rudy and Neal make their return glider run. When they do, Matthew opens the door for me and we go outside to see them flying past the church tower and onto the runway. Rudy is thrilled with his ride, even though getting out of the glider is harder than getting in. We all sit at a weathered wooden round table in the canteen, having tea, talking of today’s flight. Before long, Neal turns to Rudy.

  “You must get tired of talking about this, but I saw in the directory that you were born in Germany, that you became a U.S. citizen in the armed forces.”

  “Right,” Rudy says. “I always thought they must have been running out of airmen to have accepted a German Enemy Alien, and then let him volunteer to fly over Germany— and the son of a Hitler loyalist no less.”

  Neal is startled at this last detail, but he has more questions.

  “I’m probably like everybody else, wondering what let you war against your land of birth. Do you ever share that?”

  “Well, it’s not very complicated. Papa was loyal to Hitler but I thought of myself as an American. I was so angry at the German government. They brought horror to my homeland. I just wanted to help stop them. I never looked back.”

  “And your parents? What did they say?”

  “They didn’t talk at all, not about my going to war or about our relatives still in Germany. On the morning I left, Papa gave me a long and strong hug and said, ‘Good luck to you in whatever lies ahead.’ That was a lot coming from that man. There was such a terrible tension between us once the war started.”

  “Well, then, you left one set of tensions for another set, Rudy. You were here at the base during the Kassel Mission, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, yes I was,” Rudy answers, his voice uncommonly soft. “Actually, I was supposed to fly that night. Our crew was all suited up, briefed and ready to go, but at the very last minute the commanding officer took us off the flight list. He said we were too new and hadn’t finished enough night orientation training. We put up a fight, but in the end another crew flew to Kassel in our place. We were so angry at the time. We had to fly thirty-five missions before we could go back home. We complained to anyone who seemed to be listening. How would we ever finish thirty-five if they denied us chances to fly?”

  “That night,” Neal explains, “thirty-seven planes left base. Kassel was a German rail and industrial center, such an important target if the war was to be ended. They were manufacturing aircraft and tanks there. They had to be stopped.”

  Rudy nods. “Several of the crews were f
rom my barracks. The next afternoon, they were due back at 1:40, so after lunch, a friend and I rode bikes out to the control tower to welcome home our buddies. I noticed a lot of officers standing at the upper rails looking through binoculars. I should have known then, but it was strange—I couldn’t let myself think. We stood there waiting, watching the sky for the longest time. Finally, two of our B-24s came straight in with wheels down, shooting off red flares.”

  Neal says, “Red flares mean wounded men aboard, don’t they?”

  Rudy bites his lip. His voice breaks but he insists on telling the story.

  “Right. Ambulances roared in and we waited for the rest of the planes. After hours, three more came in, and they were so damaged—riddled with holes—we didn’t know how they could have stayed in the air. My friend and I couldn’t make ourselves leave. The officers told us there would be no more planes, that we should go, but we kept scanning the skies over and over anyway. Thirty-two of our planes and our crews were missing, lost.”

  Neal puts his hand on Rudy’s shoulder as he tells the rest of us, “It was the greatest loss to a single group in aviation history. Rudy, it must have been so hard for you and your crew to fly out of this base after that.”