Lawrence Looks for Treasure

Part 2 - Chapter 32

32

We lay under the shady tree, beneath the burning sun, exhausted, stuffed on greasy burgers, and emptied from the night's events. You might expect that we'd finally have a long talk. Discuss everything that had happened. Decide to call it quits. Maybe I'd tell Chris that at this point, I wasn't even looking for treasure, but something more valuable: direction.

But that wasn't the case. We were pooped. We were stuffed. And we just started to laugh. At what? I can't remember. I was more upset than I had been all trip. Yet I was laughing harder than I had all trip. When we're at our most upset, perhaps that's when we're ready to laugh the hardest. I was, anyway. We laughed until we napped. And we napped until the moon replaced the sun.

When we woke, it was dark. Yet we were still exhausted. Dead, more like it. We were only a few hours from Camp Okanagan and the treasure, but we were too tired to move, let alone bike. So we stayed put. We got seconds and thirds from Terry's, and pigged out on the field where we had slept. We set a fire and ate burgers and drank milkshakes in front of it. They tasted even better the second and third time round.

'It's a shame we ditched our stuff,' Chris said. 'I wanted to know what happened to Dmitri.'

'Really?' I asked. The guys disliked everything I showed them. I figured the book was just another example.

'Yeah,' Chris said. 'Didn't you say that, last you read, he was on his way to New York?'

'I did,' I said. 'We can still find out what happened—I have the book with me.' I pulled it from under my waistband. It was bent and wrinkled, but it still worked good as new.

'No way,' Chris said.

I opened the book and started to read, but Chris interrupted: 'Hey man, mind if I read this time?'

'Not at all. I'd love it, actually.'

And this is what he read:

War had arrived in France. I was now twenty-two, Inès nineteen, and we spoke of starting a family. We were quite comfortable managing our restaurant, she keeping the books, I performing magic for the guests. We had stored a sizeable, and swelling, sum in the bank. We were married and in love. Overnight, however, the bank had been pillaged and our earnings along with it. The restaurant was first occupied and then burned. Inès' parents, like so many of the bourgeois, were dragged from their homes never to return. Our talk of children moved to talk of survival. What little wealth remained fit in a box beneath the floor.

Then, like a blessing from heaven, an American offered me a ticket to sail to his country. He had seen my magic show and thought he could make a tidy profit of me. America, a land of peace, of freedom, of opportunity. Only hardship remained in Europe. Inès and I decided I would go, and, once I could afford it, bring her. We planned only to be separated for three months, but the distance was frightening. I loved her like no one I had ever loved. I did not want to leave her. I would make the finest home for her when she arrived. All this, I told her. Yet I did not know what was to come.

On a rainy November day, I boarded the ship to New York. I remember the day like I remember my own name. The passengers were divided into five classes, I on the fifth, and we were separated on boarding. My car was packed full, smelled sour and looked deathly, more like a can of sardines than a passenger ship. I left Inès the little money we had. Suddenly, I was back to where I began: penniless, travelling to foreign lands. It was a comfortable feeling; my time with Inès, settled and happy, was the strange one.

By the time the ship departed, I was starving. The only hot food on board was a restaurant restricted to third-class passengers and higher. I resolved to go. I scrubbed off as best I could in the bathroom, and changed into my stage-clothes, which, though theatrical, were clean and formal. I locked my bags, collected the few coins I had, and walked to the restaurant.