Part 10 (2/2)

'I don't know, the lab report's not back yet,' I replied drily.

'I'm serious, is that dog s.h.i.+t?'

'How should I know?'

Katz leaned far enough forward to give it a good look and a cautious sniff. 'It is is dog s.h.i.+t,' he announced with an odd tone of satisfaction. dog s.h.i.+t,' he announced with an odd tone of satisfaction.

'Well, keep quiet about it or everybody'll want some.'

'Go and clean it off, will ya? It's making me nauseous.'

And here the bickering started, in intense little whispers.

'You go and clean it off.'

'It's your shoes.'

'Well, I kind of like it. Besides, it kills the smell of this guy next to me.'

'Well, it's making me nauseous.'

'Well, I don't give a s.h.i.+t.'

'Well, I think you're a f.u.c.k-head.'

'Oh, you do, do you?'

'Yes, as a matter of fact. You've been a f.u.c.k-head since Austria.'

'Well, you've been a f.u.c.k-head since birth.'

'Me?' A wounded look. 'That's rich. You were a f.u.c.k-head in the womb, womb, Bryson. You've got three kinds of chromosomes: X, Y and f.u.c.k-head.' Bryson. You've got three kinds of chromosomes: X, Y and f.u.c.k-head.'

And so it went. Istanbul clearly was not destined to be a success for us. Katz hated it and he hated me. I mostly hated Katz, but I didn't much care for Istanbul either. It was, like the train that took us there, hot, foetid, crowded and threadbare. The streets were full of urchins who s.n.a.t.c.hed anything you didn't cling to with both hands and the food was simply dreadful, all foul-smelling cheese and mysterious lumps of goo. One night Katz nearly got us killed when he enquired of a waiter, 'Tell me, do you have cows s.h.i.+t straight onto the plate or do you scoop it on afterwards?'

One of the sustaining pleasures for Katz in the later stages of the trip was talking candidly in this way to people who could not understand him, making smiling enquiries of a policeman concerning the celebrated tininess of his p.e.n.i.s or telling a surly waiter, 'Can we have the bill, Boris? We've got to run because your wife's promised to give us both b.l.o.w. .j.o.bs.'

But in this instance it turned out that the waiter had worked in a little place off the Tottenham Court Road for thirteen years and he understood Katz's question only too well. He directed us to the door with the aid of a meat cleaver, making wholly justified remarks about the n.o.bility of Turkish cuisine and the insolence of young tourists.

With this final pleasure denied him on the grounds of prudence and a sincere threat from me that I would kill him myself if an English-speaking Turk didn't do it first, Katz spent the remainder of our time in Istanbul in a moody silence, except for growling at touts in the Grand Bazaar to f.u.c.k off and leave him alone, but this I excused on the basis of justified provocation. We had reached the end of the road in every sense. It was a long week.

I wondered now, as I rode a taxi in from the airport through the hot, airless, teeming streets of Istanbul, whether my att.i.tude would be more receptive this time.

Things did not start well. I had made a reservation at the Sheraton through the company's internal reservation system in Sofia, but the hotel turned out to be miles away from the Golden Horn and old town. The room was clean and pa.s.sably sw.a.n.k, but the television didn't work, and when I went to the bathroom to wash my hands and face, the pipes juddered and banged like something from a poltergeist movie and then, with a series of gasps, issued a steady brown soup. I let the water run for ten minutes, but it never cleared or even thinned. For this I was paying $150 a night.

I sat on the toilet, watching the water run, thinking what an odd thing tourism is. You fly off to a strange land, eagerly abandoning all the comforts of home, and then expend vast quant.i.ties of time and money in a largely futile effort to recapture the comforts that you wouldn't have lost if you hadn't left home in the first place.

Sighing, I smeared a little of the brown water around my face, then went out to see Istanbul. It is the noisiest, dirtiest, busiest city I've ever seen. Everywhere there is noise car horns tooting, sirens shrilling, people shouting, muezzins wailing, ferries on the Bosphorus sounding their booming horns. Everywhere, too, there is ceaseless activity people pus.h.i.+ng carts, carrying trays of food or coffee, humping huge and ungainly loads (I saw one guy with a sofa on his back), people every five feet selling something: lottery tickets, wrist.w.a.tches, cigarettes, replica perfumes.

Every few paces people come up to you wanting to s.h.i.+ne your shoes, sell you postcards or guidebooks, lead you to their brother's carpet shop or otherwise induce you to part with some trifling sum of money. Along the Galata Bridge, swarming with pedestrians, beggars and load bearers, amateur fishermen stood pulling the most poisoned-looking fish I ever hope to see from the oily waters below. At the end of the bridge two guys were crossing the street to Sirkeci Station, threading their way through the traffic leading brown bears on leashes. No one gave them a second glance. Istanbul is, in short, one of those great and exhilarating cities where almost anything seems possible.

The one truly unbearable thing in the city is the Turkish pop music. It is inescapable. It a.s.saults you from every restaurant doorway, from every lemonade stand, from every pa.s.sing cab. If you can imagine a man having a vasectomy without anaesthetic to a background accompaniment of frantic sitar-playing, you will have some idea of what popular Turkish music is like.

I wandered around for a couple of hours, impressed by the tumult, amazed that in one place there could be so much activity. I walked past the Blue Mosque and Aya Sofia, peeling postcard salesmen from my sleeve as I went, and tried to go to Topkapi, but it was closed. I headed instead for what I thought was the national archaeological museum, but I somehow missed it and found myself presently at the entrance to a large, inviting and miraculously tranquil park, the Gulhane. It was full of cool shade and happy families. There was a free zoo, evidently much loved by children, and somewhere a cafe playing Turkish torture music, but softly enough to be tolerable.

At the bottom of a gently sloping central avenue, the park ended in a sudden and stunning view of the Bosphorus, glittery and blue. I took a seat at an open-air taverna, ordered a c.o.ke and gazed across the water to the white houses gleaming on the brown hillside of uskudar two miles across the strait. Distant cars glinted in the hot suns.h.i.+ne and ferries plied doggedly back and forth across the Bosphorus and on out to the distant Princes' Islands, adrift in a bluish haze. It was beautiful and a perfect place to stop.

I had clearly come to the end of my own road. That was Asia over there; this was as far as I could go in Europe. It was time to go home. My long-suffering wife was pregnant with her semi-annual baby. The younger children, she had told me on the phone, were beginning to call any grown man 'Daddy'. The gra.s.s was waist-high. One of the field walls was tumbling down. The sheep were in the meadow. The cows were in the corn. There was a lot for me to do.

And I was, I admit, ready to go. I missed my family and the comfortable familiarities of home. I was tired of the daily drudgery of keeping myself fed and bedded, tired of trains and buses, tired of existing in a world of strangers, tired of being forever perplexed and lost, tired above all of my own dull company. How many times in recent days had I sat trapped on buses or trains listening to my idly prattling mind and wished that I could just get up and walk out on myself?

At the same time, I had a quite irrational urge to keep going. There is something about the momentum of travelling that makes you want to just keep moving, to never stop. That was Asia over there, after all right there in my view. Asia. Asia. The thought of it seemed incredible. I could be there in minutes. I still had money left. An untouched continent lay before me. The thought of it seemed incredible. I could be there in minutes. I still had money left. An untouched continent lay before me.

But I didn't go. Instead I ordered another c.o.ke and watched the ferries. In other circ.u.mstances I think I might have gone. But that of course is neither here nor there.

Bill Bryson's opening lines were:

'I come from Des Moines. Someone had to come from Des Moines. Someone had to.'

This is what followed: The Lost Continent A road trip around the puzzle that is small-town America introduces the world to the adjective 'Brysonesque'.

'A very funny performance, littered with wonderful lines and memorable images' LITERARY REVIEW LITERARY REVIEW Neither Here Nor There Europe never seemed funny until Bill Bryson looked at it.

'Hugely funny ( (not sn.i.g.g.e.r-sn.i.g.g.e.r funny but great-big-belly-laugh-till-you-cry funny)' DAILY TELEGRAPH DAILY TELEGRAPH Made in America A compelling ride along the Route 66 of American language and popular culture gets beneath the skin of the country.

'A tremendous sa.s.sy work, full of zip, pizzazz and all those other great American qualities' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY Notes from a Small Island A eulogy to Bryson's beloved Britain captures the very essence of the original 'green and pleasant land'.

'Not a book that should be read in public, for fear of emitting loud snorts' a book that should be read in public, for fear of emitting loud snorts' THE TIMES THE TIMES A Walk in the Woods Bryson's punis.h.i.+ng (by his standards) hike across the celebrated Appalachian Trail, the longest footpath in the world.

'This is a seriously funny book' SUNDAY TIMES SUNDAY TIMES Notes from a Big Country Bryson brings his inimitable wit to bear on that strangest of phenomena the American way of life.

'Not only hilarious but also insightful and informative' only hilarious but also insightful and informative' INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY Down Under An extraordinary journey to the heart of another big country Australia.

'Bryson is the perfect travelling companion ... When it comes to travel's peculiars the man still has no peers' THE TIMES THE TIMES A Short History of Nearly Everything Travels through time and s.p.a.ce to explain the world, the universe and everything.

'Truly impressive ... It's hard to imagine a better rough guide to science' GUARDIAN GUARDIAN The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid Quintessential Bryson a funny, moving and perceptive journey through his childhood.

'He can capture the flavour of the past with the lightest of touches' SUNDAY TELEGRAPH SUNDAY TELEGRAPH

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