"Who knows?" Tintin remarked with a smile. The boy reporter and his friend continued on afterwards for some time in silence, alone with their thoughts. The party stopped for lunch at a mountain pass and then all afternoon, they descended down a precarious winding mountain trail. Porters were once again carrying Chang on a stretcher, as the horses could not be ridden on the steep portions of the trail. As they descended, the afternoon sun beat down on them and the temperature suddenly began to rise to levels they had not experienced in weeks. Along with the heat came a sudden burst of humidity, which felt strange and alien. After so many weeks spent in the bone dry mountainous areas of Tibet, they were now gradually making their way back into the subcontinent, where the summer monsoon was beginning to unleash its fury.
In the early evening they had entered a beautiful valley, with a meadow and stream running through the middle, and towering trees rising up to the peaks along the edges. As the sun set, the caravan crew set up camp a few hundred meters from a small stone house by the stream. A farmer and his wife came out of the house to greet them, and everyone settled down to a hearty dinner of tsampa and buttermilk tea under the purple sky. Stars began to appear in the night sky. Captain Haddok asked the farmer whether he had any chang, now fully aware of the difference between the beverage, and the boy he had just helped rescue from the Yeti. The farmer had none. The Captain hadn't had a drink since the day Tintin had given him the bottle of brandy, after which he had almost died in the attempt to scale the rock face. The monastery had of course been bone dry, and the village near the Horn of the Yak had also proved unfruitful in the attempt to procure alcohol. The Captain couldn't remember ever having gone such a long stretch without a drink. He in fact felt very good, but he also felt that being back on the edge of civilization, he had a sudden and strong urge to get drunk and celebrate.
"Oh well." The Captain thought to himself. "I remember the location of that bottle shop in Kathmandu. Only a few more days till I get there. There'll be whiskey galore then, and not a moment to soon." He lit his pipe and smiled up at the warm night sky, the stars twinkling now a more mellow glow than the harsh starlight of the high mountains, which had reminded him of being on the moon. The farmer from the stone hut pulled a small dark brown object out of his tunic and gestured to the Captain's pipe. At first the Captain didn't understand, but then he gasped and shook his head at the farmer. He wanted nothing to do with drugs. He quickly got up and went over to sit with Tintin and Chang. The farmer shrugged and lit his own small pipe, his smoke wafting over towards the Captain.
"Can you believe it?" The Captain remarked to Tintin. "That two toothed neolithic cave dweller over there offered me opium. Me a man of stature. I ask you? Can you believe it?"
Tintin sniffed at the smoke from the farmer's pipe."That's not opium Captain." He replied. "That's hash. You know me, I'm not into any sort of drug, but as far as I'm concerned, that's pretty harmless compared to the whiskey you drink. In fact lots of holy men in India and Nepal use cannabis, I don't think it's that dangerous."
The Captain looked puzzled. He thought all drugs were dangerous. He knew of the dangers of alcohol, but didn't know much about cannabis. He had seen people smoking it in the ports of North Africa. He was suddenly reminded of the night he had spent in a jail cell in Bagghar, when he had been looking for Tintin, shortly after they had first met aboard the Karaboudjan. There had been a similar smell coming from a nearby cell deep in the night. The Captain suddenly got up and walked back to the farmer, smiling at him. He gestured to the hash and asked whether he could try some. The farmer immediately pulled out his Zippo, and prepared a bowl for the Captain. He handed him the bowl and the lighter. The Captain at first took a few light puffs without inhaling. The farmer stared back at him with a quizzical toothless grin. The Captain took another hit, this time deeply inhaling the smoke from the pipe. He didn't feel much, but he felt something. It was quite pleasant. He smiled at the farmer. The farmer took the utensils and taking his time, he slowly prepared another bowl. He smoked it himself, and then slowly, for what seemed an eternity, prepared another bowl, and handed it back to the now eagerly awaiting Captain. The Captain smoked it up, taking the smoke deep into his bowels. He smiled and then giggled at the farmer. The farmer laughed back. Suddenly the two burst out laughing. The Captain laughed so hard his belly ached, but then he found that so funny, and it made him laugh even harder. Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He and the farmer didn't really understand each other when they spoke, but they had already formed an immediate bond like old shipmates. A few of the porters smiled over at the Captain with a knowing twinkle in their eyes.
The next morning the party awoke at dawn. The Captain awoke feeling a bit drowsy and lightheaded, but otherwise very good, a different feeling altogether than if he had downed an entire bottle of whiskey or two the night before. One thing was for sure, he had slept very well, better than he had in weeks in the cold tents pitched on the hard rocks and ice of the mountains, or in the austere monastery, with severe gods staring down at him. As he raised his head, he saw a small bundle of cloth, carefully wrapped in string, that had been placed on his belly on his sleeping bag. Inside was a little piece of hash. A parting gift from the funny toothless farmer from the night before. The Captain went out in search of the farmer. He found his wife outside the hut, but she pointed up to the higher meadows. The farmer had already left before dawn to tend to his livestock in the fields above.
"Boy. You sure had a great time with that farmer last night." Tintin said smiling at the Captain, as they mounted their horses to descend down the valley path. "I didn't know you'd be able to understand a word of his language or his jokes. How could you communicate so well without speaking a word of Tamang?"
"Never mind me boy, never mind." The Captain said to Tintin, and gazed lethargically off into the distance, as his horse carried him down into the valley. He carefully unwrapped his present and prepared a morning smoke, mixed with a bit of tobacco, as a cool breeze gently blew against his cheeks.
Two days later the party arrived at a small town of several hundred, that was situated on a highway leading back to Kathmandu. The travelers were suddenly confronted with the sound of traffic and the smell of exhaust fumes. They were back in the world of Brussels, Geneva, Hong Kong, New Delhi, and thousands of other cities across the planet. They stared up at billboards advertising cigarettes and toothpaste. The time spent in the mountains had suddenly come to an end. The three travelers, Tintin, Chang, and Captain Haddock said goodbye to the caravan party and boarded the back of a truck with their gear, headed to Kathmandu. They arrived late at night, on bumpy roads, and checked into the hotel Tintin and Haddock had previously stayed at before embarking on the rescue mission. Even late at night the city was filled with the sounds of horns, bells and chants. The Captain found the bottle shop to be closed, but the hotel had beer, and the Captain purchased 12 bottles and took them to his room. He quickly downed two bottles, and then headed out into the streets, to see if he could get a hold of some weed or hash. As he rounded a corner, he bumped into the curly haired porter, whom he had bumped into several times before when he had first arrived in Kathmandu. The porter was out drinking with friends. The Captain smiled warmly at the porter, and the porter, whose name was Iman, invited the Captain to join his group. They went out drinking together, and the Captain had no trouble scoring a bag of marijuana from one of Iman's friends. Later, back in his hotel room, the Captain smoked and downed the rest of his beer, and then, for the first time in weeks, he collapsed into a western style bed, in a room which had running water and electricity. Strangely enough though, he couldn't sleep. Something kept him awake, but he didn't know what it was.
The next morning Tintin woke early and collected tickets to Paris for his party at the Air India office in town. He then went to the meteorological bureau to get a detailed weather forecast. Although Chang had insisted that he was fine, and not at all afraid of boarding a plane, Tintin wanted to reassure his friend, and maybe to a certain degree himself, that their flight would not encounter any storms. The weather was reported to be fine on the flight to Patna that afternoon. Although there were thunderstorms forecast in Patna, they were to be widely scattered, and not a threat to their flight. Kathmandu was supposed to remain dry until well after their departure. Tintin felt confident that they would be ok. He went back to the hotel and tried to wake the Captain. The Captain had dosed off sometime after 6 am, and now at 10 am he was very groggy. Tintin had arranged to have lunch at Li-Kin's house, where Chang had already gone to see his uncle and cousins in the morning. Tharkey was to join them there for lunch. Around 11, Tintin and the Captain made it to the house and together with Tharkey, they all had a joyful reunion, and tasty lunch of steamed dumpling and fried rice dishes. Sadly, Chang said goodbye to his uncle and cousins, and together with the Captain and Tintin, boarded a cab for the airport after lunch.
Chang couldn't help but feel trepidation while boarding the DC-3. As the engines rattled during the takeoff roll, he gripped the armrests tightly. The flight turned out to be very bumpy, but eventually landed safely in Patna. Shortly after landing, a violent thunderstorm erupted overhead, and the travelers got drenched running from the plane to the airport terminal.
Adjacent to the terminal was an airport hotel, where the travelers checked in for the night. In the lobby they met Kanta, the flight attendant who had bandaged the Captain on the flight out from New Delhi to Patna. She invited the travelers to join her for dinner at a nearby restaurant, together with her husband, an Air India captain. They ate a delicious vegetarian curry and afterwards strolled along the riverbank. The night was hot and muggy.
Early the next morning, the travelers caught a flight to New Delhi. They then took a cab to Delhi's other airport, and in the early evening boarded their 20 hour Super Constellation flight to Paris, with stopovers in Tehran and Istanbul. The flight was uneventful, but upon arrival in Paris, things took a turn for the worse.
The line through customs was unusually long and slow that day. Tintin and Haddock discussed how they were to get home. Nestor had been wired their arrival information from Kathmandu, and Haddock had phoned him from the airport in New Delhi, to make sure he would send a car to pick them up. They were anxious about the long drive back to Belgium and Marlinspike.
After nearly an hour, they finally reached the customs desk, and were told to place their bags on the counter. "Look here my fine fellow." The Captain said to the customs officer. "We've had a long journey. We're very tired. Surely you don't suspect us of trying to smuggle anything, now do you? So be a good fellow and let us through!"
"Silence!" The customs officer snarled at Haddock in French through his thin mustache. "You will make no demands here! We have a job to do, and it is of no importance if you are inconvenienced by this. Now open your bags for inspection!"
The Captain, Tintin and Chang grudgingly opened their bags. "I shall complain of your rude behavior!" The Captain shouted at the customs officer, while he rifled through the Captain's bag. "Thundering typhoons! Are you even listening to me? You can't just mess up all our belongings like this! Blistering barnacles! We have a right to some privacy you hear! You pot bellied nincompoop you!"
The customs officer turned his head up and gave Haddock a death stare. "You shall be fined for insulting a customs officer after completion of this inspection. Now be silent until I have finished my search!" He said this with a menacing seriousness in his tone. He began to search through Haddock's carry on bag, and opened the purse containing his pipe and his pouch of tobacco. He laid a large white piece of paper out on the desk, and emptied the contents of the tobacco pouch onto it. "Aha! What have we here?" He cried with glee.
Mixed in with the tobacco were several solid, thumb sized pieces of Nepalese hash, the Captain had purchased from Lin-Yee, Chang's friendly portly cousin, during their luncheon in Kathmandu. The Captain could only manage to mumble some incoherent words. He was suddenly petrified with fear. He looked over to Tintin for help.
"Please sir! Take the hashish, but let us go!" Tintin cried. "You see, we were invited to smoke by a Nepalese yak herder. They say it has medicinal properties over there. We went through great hardships while we were in Nepal and Tibet. I advised my friend here, that it would be ok to smoke some after our ordeals. Please don't make a crime out of this!"
The Captain, Tintin and Chang were subsequently hauled off into separate rooms for further interrogation and full body cavity searches. Tintin and Chang were later released, but the Captain was taken into custody to stand trial on drug smuggling charges.
"Ah! Master Tintin! And this must be your dear friend Chang! Welcome to Europe sir! But where is the Captain?" Nestor was there to greet them when they finally emerged from customs. He had inquired about their whereabouts, but had only been told that they were on the flight and no more, so he had waited faithfully for four full hours, until Tintin and Chang came out.
"Oh. My dear Nestor. I am so glad to see you!" Tintin cried. "Something terrible has happened. The Captain has been charged with drug smuggling, and it's all my fault!" Tintin explained everything to Nestor. Nestor assured Tintin that none of this was his fault. The Captain was old enough to make his own decisions, and it was one thing to partake in a bit of hash smoking with the porters and yak herders while still in the mountains, but a different matter altogether to try and bring several grams of the stuff back home. What were several grams Tintin thought. It shouldn't be a big deal. But on the other hand, he hadn't even been aware that the Captain had purchased more weed and hashish after they had left the mountains. Why couldn't he just be charged duty, as he had been with his bottles of Whiskey, that time when they had flown into Syldavia together to meet professor Calculus?
Later that evening Tintin, Nestor and Monsieur Marcel Deschamps, a prominent Parisian lawyer, sat at a coffee table in Tintin's hotel room, discussing the Captain's defense. Meanwhile Chang had taken Snowy out on a leash to explore Paris by night. In the following weeks, Captain Haddock stood trial, and was ultimately sentenced to three years in a French prison, for importing an illegal narcotic. In addition, he was sentenced to 10 days imprisonment, and a hefty monetary fine, for having insulted the customs officer.
Tintin and Chang eventually went backpacking across Europe. Neither of them drank nor smoked nor did drugs. They were genuinely interested in the sights, the museums, the history of the places they visited, and retired early each night to the bunk beds of their youth hostels, only to be awoken much later by returning partygoers. They would rise early, eat their breakfast, and go off to explore new destinations each day. They were young and monastic like, and they didn't begrudge others their pleasures. They both agreed that the Captain's sentence had been way too harsh. Of course Tintin thought about the drug trades he had busted in the past. Those had been opium operations, driven by ruthless criminals for massive profits, who would kill anyone who got in their way. He remembered the plight of the Maharaja of Gaipajama, stating how the farmers in his region were pressured into growing opium, and later on would not have enough food to eat. That hadn't been the case in the Himalayas. Cannabis grew freely on the side of the trails, and every now and then a porter would simply snatch a handful, like picking apples from a tree. Tintin didn't feel a hypocrite. Although he never planned on taking any drugs himself, he demonized opium and heroine, found cannabis to possess certain dangers, yet it was comparatively harmless, and he saw alcohol as lying somewhere in between in the spectrum. He never stopped blaming himself though for seemingly having encouraged his friend Haddock to smoke some hash on that beautiful warm harmless evening in that magically spectacular valley of the high Himalayan foothills.
Every evening both Tintin and Chang would sit for half an hour over chamomile tea after dinner, and write postcards and keep diaries of their travels. The bulk of the postcards went to Captain Haddock in his French prison cell. The Captain had nothing else to indulge in, and he cherished Tintin and Chang's postcards and letters tremendously, reading about their travels and adventures. He wished that he could somehow convey to Tintin, that his imprisonment was in no way Tintin's fault. But Tintin never stopped apologizing for what had happened.
By December, Tintin and Chang had been traveling for six months, and had visited 15 countries. It was time for Chang to return to Hong Kong. They sat together at the Acropolis, watching the sun set. Tintin felt sad that his friend couldn't stay any longer. Captain Haddock would still be in prison for two and a half more years. Tintin decided that work would be the best solution to keep his mind occupied, and prevent him from sinking into depression. He would rent an apartment similar to his old one in Brussels, continue writing articles, and embark on new adventures until the Captain was released. "Just like old times eh Snowy?" He said to his faithful companion after Chang had gone to bed. Tintin lay awake that night, thinking about the future. The next day he took Chang to Athens airport, where he caught a Cathay Pacific 707 bound for Baghdad, Calcutta and Hong Kong. He knew Chang would never fly again without feeling some sort of fear, but he also knew that fear could be a good companion, keeping you alert and experiencing the spice of life. He waved as the plane roared off into the hazy sky, leaving black clouds of smoke in its wake. Briefly Tintin felt depressed, but then he smiled, thinking of the new adventures to come together with Snowy, and the colorful characters he might meet.
First Tintin flew to Brussels and took a train to Marlinspike. He, Nestor and Calculus drove down to the French prison in the city of Paris on Christmas eve, where they were able to sit together with Haddock at a table for the first time since his incarceration, with no barricades between them. They had ordered a goose from chef Pierre Santé in Montparnasse, and were allowed to eat it together at the table, Haddock in his prison fatigues. Although it was against the rules, they all hugged tightly after dinner. They were however allowed no champagne, no alcohol of any sort, but the Captain didn't seem to mind. He glowed in the warm company of his friends. Calculus hugged him especially tight, reminding him of their moon journey together, and that he would devise a way to land the moon rocket in the prison courtyard if need be, to get his friend out of there.
Tintin never, not even for one day, stopped writing his friend Haddock. Even on Christmas eve, when they met in person, he still wrote him. He found a nice two bedroom apartment on the top floor of a building, just two buildings away from where he used to live on Labrador road. He soon joined a Swiss-Italian expedition to the jungles of Peru, where a sort of Lost World was reported to exist on a jungle plateau. Later he joined Captain Haddock's old ship buddy Chester on an icebreaker, mapping potential natural gas fields in Arctic waters. They once narrowly escaped a Russian torpedo, as they drifted too close to the Kola peninsula. Time passed and the adventures continued. One day, only a few months before Haddock's impending release, as Tintin arrived home to Brussels from having just reported on a spate of crocodile attacks in the Gambia, he received an unexpected letter from Haddock.
My dear Tintin, Blessed Lightning and the Grand Abbott taught me something important during our time spent at the monastery in Tibet. True freedom comes only from within, and not from without. You see, here I sit in a small cell, I can't even see the city around me. I can't go out and buy croissants in the morning and drink wine in the afternoon. But I have found true happiness here. I'm really no different from a monk in his chamber, meditating, understanding, and feeling the true nature of things, the cycle of creation and destruction, that they are all one and the same. I'm no more and no less free here than I am at home in Marlinspike, on top of a Tibetan mountain, in the streets of Kathmandu, or even on the moon. With every birth there is a death and vice versa. The two are inseparable. You came from somewhere, and you will go somewhere. You don't have to worry, you will always exist, no matter what, unless you reach Nirvana, which is even better. Ok, I'll stop rambling. Just wanted to let you know, that the time spent here has simply allowed me to focus on breathing, and nothing else, and the process of breath, is in and of itself a good representation of the way of the universe.
Yours truly, Cpt. Haddock.
The Captain's letter both worried Tintin, and made him feel bemused. Maybe he was on to something. Maybe he had partially grasped some deeper explanation, for why things are the way they are, or maybe he had simply lost his mind. Maybe they were all one and the same, but no, he didn't think losing one's mind was the same as understanding something deep. One thing was for sure, he would be there to pick up the Captain on the day of his release, and bring him back home to Marlinspike.
That day finally arrived. The Captain looked calm and happy, sticking his head out the window and sucking in the polluted air as they made their way out of the city on crowded highways and byways. A few days after returning to Marlinspike, he was his old normal self again. Drinking whiskey in the afternoons and evenings, smoking his pipe, and occasionally sending a delivery boy to Amsterdam to get him some weed and some hashish, not wanting to take the risk of getting caught again himself.
"Look here me lad." He exclaimed to Tintin one evening in a contemplative, drunken and high stupor. "These past years have been the doldrums, the horse latitudes if you will. Of course I think my sentence was unjust. 25 grams of plant material for my own personal use, to be seized like that. That was the true crime I tell you! But I'm not mad, aye I'm not mad. It gave me time to meditate."
The Captain fell asleep peacefully in his armchair with the cat in his lap, a just opened second bottle of whiskey by his side, a few finished bottles of blonde Belgian ale, and a bag of Northen Lights next to his pipe. He snored soundly, and Tintin left him there to enjoy his next round, when he would wake up later, some time after midnight, and Nestor would bring him some fresh cold ale and roast beef sandwiches on a tray, and he would smoke and drink some more and enjoy his munchies while watching tv, before drifting off into sleep again.
THE END