by Derek Hansen
‘Your bandages aren’t ready to come off,’ he reasoned. ‘Your face is still too swollen. It won’t mean a thing. Wait until your nose is fixed properly. Wait till we get home.’
Good reasons and good excuses tumbled from his lips. There was nothing he would not say, no promise he would not make to delay the inevitable. And he succeeded. Annemieke agreed to wait until they arrived back in Australia.
She began to count off the days, eager to board the plane that would take her home. Then, it seemed, her nemesis had returned to haunt her.
On June 24, 1982, just three days before they were due to leave for Sydney, Mt Galunggung struck again and nearly claimed another two hundred and forty lives. A British Airways 747, on a night flight from Kuala Lumpur to Perth, ran headlong into an ash cloud thrown up by Mt Galunggung. Within seconds, ash and debris penetrated, blocked and extinguished all four engines. The crew had no choice but to put the aircraft into a shallow dive and begin restart procedures.
For ten terrifying minutes, passengers and crew hurtled through the darkness towards the ocean until, within three and a half thousand metres of disaster, they encountered clean air and the damaged jet engines reignited. But their ordeal was not yet over. As the Boeing struggled to regain altitude, it encountered a second cloud of ash and, again, all four engines were lost. But the crew were nothing if not fast learners and turned back towards clean air. The pilot detoured two hundred and fifty kilometres back to Jakarta, where the stricken aircraft landed safely. It was a miracle it landed at all.
As soon as Jan heard about the near disaster, he rushed to Annemieke’s bedside. He was lucky. The news had not yet reached her. So he told her all about flight BA 9, praising the skill and courage of the flight crew and the bravery of the passengers. He built it into a story, all the better for its happy ending.
‘Could it happen again?’ Annemieke asked, her fear obvious despite the bandages. In her mind, the volcano had caused their car to crash. If it had caused their car to crash, could it not also do the same with their plane?
‘No,’ said Jan firmly. He did not want a repeat of her performance at Pengalengen. ‘Now that the authorities are aware of the problem, the ash clouds are being plotted. All flights will be directed around them. So there’s nothing to worry about. There’s no way it could happen again.’
Annemieke was not entirely convinced, but now Jan had a new focus for his energies. He sat with her, talked with her and reassured her. Yet he still left the room whenever her bandages were being changed.
His cowardice hadn’t escaped Lita and she challenged him.
‘If you can’t face up to her injuries,’ she accused, ‘how can she? What will you do when the bandages come off for the last time? Spend the rest of your life in the toilet? She needs your love and she needs your strength. But what do you give her? Play-acting. You are just going through the motions. Lose her trust and her faith in you now, Jan, and you lose it forever. She will never forgive you. Neither will I.’
Their arguments always ended the same way, with Lita defiant and Jan storming off down the corridor. Jan knew Lita was right, but what could he do? Anger is a convenient emotion when the only alternative is guilt.
‘When we get back to Australia, everything will be all right,’ he promised himself, though he had absolutely no grounds for his belief.
When the day came for their return to Australia, the people of Tangkuban Perahu came in their hundreds to farewell them. They came by whatever means they could. Whole families clinging to one another on motorbikes. Others packed in perilously overloaded vans or crammed three to a seat on buses. They lined the hospital exit while the Council presented flowers and their formal best wishes to Jan and Lita.
Jan was touched to the core. He took Lita’s hand in his good hand, as he had in the old days, and she let him. She hoped the simple therapy of an open, honest, uncomplicated people would bring him to his senses. He accepted the best wishes of the Council and thanked them for their thoughtfulness. He walked alongside her wheelchair as the orderly pushed her towards the hundreds of village people, all holding bouquets of flowers. He thanked them for coming on Annemieke’s behalf, explaining that she was still confined to bed and would be taken directly to the waiting ambulance. He regretted that they would not be able to see her.
But then a murmur swept through the crowd and he heard a voice cry ‘Annemieke!’. He turned to see her propped up on a mobile bed, being wheeled, doubtless at her insistence, down the driveway towards them. Her friends broke ranks and rushed to be by her side.
Jan was stricken. He didn’t want them to see his daughter this way, to see what he had done to her, not before he’d had a chance to repair the damage. He imagined them recoiling in horror when they reached her, and a strangled ‘No!’ escaped his lips.
Lita dropped his hand as if it burned, and spun around to face him with a look of fury. Jan ignored her. He couldn’t take his eyes off the village girls. They reached Annemieke. But they didn’t recoil in horror.
They laughed and smiled, and rejoiced to see their friend again, even though the bandages left little to be seen. They laid their bouquets upon her bed and presented her with a book of prayers and best wishes that every living soul in Tangkuban Perahu who could write had gladly signed.
‘What’s wrong with me?’ Jan asked, but there was no one there to answer him. Lita had gone.
For the first time since the accident, Annemieke felt like laughing, really laughing. She was engulfed by waves of happiness, and realised then what had been missing all along. Her eyes, for the other had at last deigned to open, saw relief and joy in the faces that surrounded her. They had come close to losing her, but she had survived. That was cause enough for celebration. She longed to throw her useless arms around them, around each one in turn, to hug and to hold, and to feel the simple comfort of being held tightly by another warm, loving, human being. She saw her mother at the foot of her bed smiling broadly, Levi by her side. Lita winked at her and Annemieke’s spirits soared. She began to believe that this was the beginning of the end of her ordeal. She wanted somehow to tell her mother this, but she could no longer see her as more bouquets piled up on her bed, as those behind passed their gift over those closest. It seemed now that everyone from the villages surrounded her. She looked for her father. He must be so pleased, she thought, but she couldn’t find him. It didn’t matter. Life had begun again for Annemieke.
Hospital orderlies cleared the path for the ambulance, and she and Lita and the nurse Tin, who would accompany them to Australia, were taken on board.
‘Salamat jalan!’ the smiling faces chorused as the doors closed.
‘Mum,’ said Annemieke, still bubbling with excitement, ‘everything is going to be all right. Like Dad said. Everything will be all right when we get home.’ Then a thought crossed her mind. ‘Do you think the boys will tease me?’
‘Of course, they will. That would be normal, wouldn’t it?’
Normal. How Annemieke yearned for things to be normal once more. When she wouldn’t have to wear bandages. And she wouldn’t be afraid to look at her face in the mirror.
‘Didn’t those ash clouds come close to bringing down a Singapore Airlines flight as well?’
‘Yes that’s right, Neil, but that was about a week or so after the British Airways flight and, mercifully, some days after the Van der Meers had arrived safely back in Australia. Otherwise it’s doubtful if Annemieke would ever have stepped aboard any plane. Now let me ask you a question. Do you still find Jan Van der Meer too perfect?’
Milos laughed.
‘No. You warned us that he was flawed and he certainly is. Let me compliment you on the skill with which you changed his character.’
‘Milos, that is grossly unfair. I changed nothing. I told you the story of a man who had not been tested. Then I told you the story of the same man after he had been tested. Where is the inconsistency?’
‘I suppose you are right,’ Milos grudgingly conceded. ‘H
is behaviour is consistent with the time he found the baby Annemieke in the monkey forest. But to answer your original question … yes, I find the flawed Jan infinitely more interesting. Why would this be? Perhaps this is your underlying theme?’ Milos’ eyes flicked on to high beam and his voice bored into Ramon. ‘Have you also been tested, Ramon? Are you also flawed?’
Ramon was taken aback. There was no ready response and his silence, though brief, spoke volumes.
‘Irredeemably,’ he said finally, laughing openly and altogether too obviously. ‘Please, is it also my responsibility to order coffee?’
‘Coffee is coming,’ said Neil matter of factly.
The audience of three stared at their storyteller. Milos had caught him by surprise. Ramon had been ambushed by a question bristling with implications and he had faltered. Where lay the truth now?
FOURTH THURSDAY
‘Today I will finish the first part of my story,’ Ramon began. ‘I have introduced you to the man you know as Eduardo, and to the girl Annemieke who will soon become a woman and then his wife. That will be the second part of my story. But first I must bring the beginning to its conclusion and tie up the loose ends.’
‘What’s this?’ interrupted Milos. ‘Is this another game? Or has the master storyteller changed his mind? Truth does not have the convenience of fiction—you said that yourself, no? Yet now you are going to tie up all the loose ends. Suddenly your true story smacks of fiction. Life is made up of loose ends, you of all people know that. It is a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing and others that don’t fit.’
‘Yes, Ramon, why the change of heart?’ There were times when Neil gave the impression that he would gladly delight in plucking the wings off butterflies. ‘Last week we came around to your point of view and accepted that your story was probably true. You’re not going to double-cross us now, are you?’
Ramon smiled patiently.
‘I see I shall have to choose my words more carefully. Of course life is as you describe it, Milos. It has more loose ends than a bowl of Gancio’s spaghetti. My story is true and I will remain faithful to the truth. I have not changed my story and if I have given you an impression to the contrary, then it is only through carelessness.
‘I was a touch simplistic. I will not be tying up any loose ends. It is simply a question of bringing time frames together, of merging stories and of completing the sketches of the main characters so that you can better understand the inevitability of what ultimately transpires. But life is not all loose ends. If it were, there would be no stories, for stories need coincidence and the intervention of fate to become stories.
‘We are all victims of fate but fate does not play a lone hand. It has an ally in our flaws and weaknesses and only occasionally in our strengths. When fate combines with strengths men and women go on to greatness. But for most of us, it is our weaknesses that shape the course of our lives; the things we do in haste and regret for ever; the sins that come back to haunt us. So it is with Eduardo and Annemieke.’
‘Don’t tell me your little angel Annemieke is also flawed?’
‘That is for each of you to judge, Neil. She will be tested as her father was tested and as her husband-to-be was tested. You must make up your own mind about each of them. Is Jan a bad father because he was not born with the usual restraints on his emotions? He is a man unafraid to love, to give all his love without reservation and to show his feelings without inhibition. Surely this is a quality to be admired. You can condemn him as immature and irrational, but I say, there is a man whose faults I would willingly exchange for mine.
‘And what of Eduardo? What was his crime? He was manipulated by his own father. He was used and betrayed by Carlos. He lost the woman he loved—the wonderful Rosa—for no better reason than that he was young and foolish and slow to realise the value of what he had. And had she been less impetuous and spoilt, perhaps the two of them would have married sooner or later and there would be no story to tell. No crosses to bear. You can condemn Eduardo for his shallowness and his arrogance and for his cynical betrayal of Victor, but I look upon him as one of life’s—and fate’s—victims.’
‘Ramon has a point.’ They turned to Lucio. ‘When Eduardo speaks I hear Ramon’s voice. His mannerisms and his sophistication are Ramon’s. And his kindness and thoughtfulness, particularly to the prostitute Estelle, that is what I would expect from Ramon. There is a lot of Ramon in Eduardo and so I must say this also. There is a lot to like about him and a lot I am prepared to forgive.’
Lucio was plainly embarrassed, probably no less than the other three. His declaration of support had caught them all by surprise. But it was also a plea for caution, from one friend to another.
‘Thank you, Lucio,’ said Ramon. ‘Whether he speaks with my voice or not, there is much about him to like and admire. And forgive. Where fate gives most of us a loving family it gave him wealth instead. Where fate gives most of us street wisdom it imprisoned him in privilege.’
‘Do I hear violins?’
‘No, Neil, that’s just Gancio making cappuccinos.’
‘What about Roberto?’ asked Milos. ‘Are you going to tell us what happened to him?’
‘Yes, I will tell you what happened to the boy Roberto but later perhaps.’
‘Today?’
‘I promise.’ Ramon had not anticipated that the day would begin so well. He was exultant. All good storytellers are part author, part actor and past masters of manipulating their audience. That is food and drink to them, nourishment for their egos. And Ramon’s ego was hungrier and healthier than most. Nevertheless Lucio’s caution rang loud and clear. ‘There is a lot of Ramon in Eduardo.’ He would have to be more careful.
Chapter Twenty-two
‘Her arms are healing well,’ Dr Ryan said, ‘but her face causes us concern.’ He knew he would have to tread gently. It was never easy dealing with parents of children injured in automobile accidents, and while the mother was calm and stoic in her acceptance, her husband was something else altogether. He had suggested trauma counselling, and the emphatic manner in which he had been rebuffed only served to underscore the need.
Now he watched the big man, as he had since their arrival at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital a week earlier, struggling to suppress the volatile emotions within him. His wife either pointedly ignored him or spoke to him as if he were her son, and young son at that. The scenario was not new to the doctor, but that didn’t make it any the less painful or frustrating to witness. She blamed him or he blamed himself, it didn’t matter. They were both victims of post-accident trauma, which society had not yet come to accept and did little to treat.
‘There’s nothing more I can tell you about her arms. We’ll take the pin out of her left arm in eight to ten weeks, but after what she’s been through, that’s hardly a major operation. Her ribs are healing well, though like yours, Mrs Van der Meer, they’ll be tender for some time yet.’
‘Her face, Doctor,’ said Jan grimly.
‘Basically the surgeons at Bromeus did a good job, a commendable job in fact, given the nature of her injuries. Fortunately faces also tend to heal very well, particularly when the patient is Annemieke’s age. As you’ve seen, her skin is non-keloid forming which is not always the case with people with Asian blood. So in time, we expect her scars will fade away to almost nothing. Where tissue has been lost and where lacerations are irregular, a little cosmetic surgery is called for. That should take care of that. But we’ll wait a while to see how well she heals.’ Dr Ryan hesitated as he considered ways of delivering his next piece of news, where the prognosis was not quite as rosy.
‘There is a complication,’ he began. ‘This is the area of most concern.’ He saw Jan stiffen in his seat and his jaw clench. He decided to turn his attention to the small woman in the wheelchair. In times of doubt, head for the strength.
‘As you can imagine, the nerves in her face took a savage beating. In particular the fifth and seventh cranial nerves. The fifth nerve, or trigeminal
, is responsible for the general sensibility of facial skin and anterior scalp. This is just one aspect of its function. The numbness Annemieke feels on the right side of her face is a result of damage to this nerve. Now the good news here is that sensory nerves are very good at repairing themselves, and the surrounding nerves also tend to grow in and help. It will take a little time but the numbness will gradually contract and in all probability disappear altogether.’ He smiled a smile full of warmth and optimism and was gratified to see Lita respond. But Jan may just as well have been made of stone.
‘Now we come to the seventh nerve, or facial nerve. It is a motor nerve which controls among other things the muscles of the scalp, face and neck. There is considerable damage and you have probably already seen how this has manifested itself without realising it. Annemieke herself hasn’t realised what the problem is, possibly because of the surrounding numbness. She has a condition known as Bell’s palsy. It is not uncommon and not necessarily disfiguring. Indeed there are some personalities on television who have the same problem to some degree.’
‘What do you mean “not necessarily disfiguring”?’ Jan’s voice was controlled, but his hands shook. Dr Ryan turned to him.
‘Exactly what I said. The condition exists but it may not necessarily be an inhibition on your daughter.’ He turned back to Lita who watched him carefully, measuring his words. What price would Annemieke have to pay? And Jan? She wanted badly to take Jan’s hand in hers but it was no time for weakness.
‘Annemieke has little or no use of her facial muscles below her right eye. The miracle, one that you should be eternally grateful for, is that she didn’t lose the sight of her right eye. In fact, we have not been able to detect any nerve damage there at all.’ They were unimpressed with that particular miracle. His attempt at good news had only served to amplify the bad news. The temptation was to be blunt and not pull his punches. To stun the big man and send him on his way. But Dr Ryan was a good doctor, and caring for the parents of his patients was as much a part of his job as caring for the patients themselves. He continued.