by Dan Smith
I rearranged my thoughts and nodded. ‘Might be a while before I use the bus again, though.’
‘You must’ve been very frightened. You want to talk about it?’
‘Not really. Nothing to talk about.’
‘I guess it was lucky Domino was there.’
‘Yeah.’ I turned to see her watching me, something personal passing between us.
‘But it was quite an experience, right?’ he went on. ‘Life-changing, even.’
‘You could say that.’
‘So is that why you’re travelling?’ Kurt sat up, came closer to the fire and crossed his legs. ‘Because you’re looking for new experiences?’
‘I …’
‘What made you decide to travel?’ he asked without giving me a chance to reply. ‘Because you want to see something of the world, or because you want to feel something? Is it because you want to pack it away inside your head, tick the box, say you’ve been there, or are you looking for something else? Something more.’
Beside me Domino lit a joint, taking a drag before passing it to me. Her reassuring touch lingered on my hand as she gave it over. I accepted it and watched Kurt sitting opposite me, half his face obscured by shadow, the other half a bizarre mix of white and orange, light thrown from the fire and the lamps.
‘A bit of both,’ I exhaled. But there was something else, too. A grey doubt that I carried with me. The lingering memory of things I wanted to leave behind.
‘What I mean, Alex, is are you a tourist? ’Cause it’s the same thing, you know. Traveller, backpacker, tourist, they’re all the same thing.’ He leaned forwards, his face in full view. ‘That what you are, Alex? A tourist? A backpacker?’ He made it sound like an insult.
‘I don’t even own a backpack.’ I sensed that more eyes were on me now. ‘Not any more.’
‘Good.’ Kurt turned his head and looked about. ‘Because there’s no backpackers here, Alex. We’re something else altogether. We’re looking for something else. Something to experience, not something to see, and that kind of makes us like brothers and sisters. We share a common ideal. We’re looking for the examined life, because the unexamined one isn’t worth living. Do you know what that means?’
I didn’t reply. I wondered where he was going with this, and figured he was a little stoned, getting deep, telling me about this place where people came to chill out and be themselves.
‘It means we want to do something different. It means we want to look inside. It means we want to enhance ourselves with a life we can’t get anywhere else.’ His voice was calm and soft. ‘We’re not tourists. You want to be one of them, you should go to Tuk Tuk, see the tombs. Go to Parapat market, stay in the hotel that’s shaped like a fish. Watch a cultural show. But if you want something else, something to enhance your life, then stay a while. Hang out. See what we can give you. See what you can teach yourself. You want all that, Alex, then you’re welcome here.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ I said, taking another hit from the joint, thinking if he was going to get stoned and spout a load of shit at me, then I’d have to join him. Maybe he’d make more sense.
‘I mean, where else can you live like this? Our own little paradise. Undisturbed and untainted.’ The guitar continued behind me, someone singing in a low voice.
‘People don’t know about this place?’ I asked.
‘Of course they know, but they leave us alone. Most of them think we’re the same as all the fucking hippies who come out to live in longhouses on Samosir and smoke dope …’
‘But we’re not?’ I said, with a half-laugh, hoping to lighten his mood a bit.
‘Of course we’re not. We’re different.’
I was almost afraid to ask. ‘Different how?’
‘You been listening to anything I just said?’ Kurt looked right at me, grinning, white teeth. ‘Maybe it’s something you should find out for yourself.’ I detected no joy in that grin, only a kind of gentle malice hiding behind it. It was as the spider might look when it opened the parlour door and invited the fly to step in. ‘So you say you want to stay?’ Kurt raised his voice, looking around the clearing.
I’d almost forgotten that Domino was beside me, but now she put her hand on my thigh and squeezed.
‘Yes,’ I heard myself say, and then I sensed people moving around us, getting up from the table, leaving the fireside, coming over to where we were sitting. The guitar had stopped; the other voices had stopped. There was only Kurt’s voice. ‘Say it louder,’ he said.
I looked around me, embarrassed and confused, but trying to go with it, taking another hit from the joint. ‘Sure,’ I said, feeling self-conscious. ‘Yes.’
‘Make him do it,’ someone said behind me. I turned round to see everybody closing in on us, coming closer. Some were smiling, some were not. Some looked excited as if anticipating a special event. My embarrassment lurched, shifted, became something else. Not fear, but something like it.
‘Yeah. Make him do it,’ said another.
Then Michael was beside me, smiling. ‘He wants to stay,’ he said. ‘Make him do it. Just like everyone else.’
‘Do what?’ I asked, not liking the smiles.
‘Jump,’ said Kurt. ‘You gotta jump.’
Then a second voice joined in, saying, ‘Jump,’ then a third and a fourth, the voices growing in number until they were all chanting one word at me. ‘Jump. Jump. Jump.’
Their voices were almost mesmerising, the constant whisper-chanting of that single word combined with the buzz from the dope, the surge of anxiety, and I looked around me in bewilderment, wondering what was going on, what the hell I’d got myself into.
Finally, Kurt stood and held up his hands. As soon as he did so, the chanting stopped.
Kurt removed the bandanna from round his neck and handed it to Domino. She moved behind me, slipped the cloth over my head and pulled it against my eyes, tying it tight at the back of my head. I could smell Kurt on it.
I raised my hands, a natural reaction, and touched the cloth, but my hands were grasped, pulled behind my back and tied. ‘Wait,’ I protested. ‘What the fuck is this? What the fuck is going on?’
‘Don’t worry,’ Domino whispered in my ear. ‘Everything’s going to be fine.’
‘No. Let me go. Untie my hands.’ Panic touching me, creeping around the bandanna, seeping into my pores.
‘You said you want to stay here.’ Kurt’s voice was measured. ‘You’ve made your choice. Now you have to make the jump.’
‘No. No jumps. I’m not fucking jumping anywhere.’
‘Push, then,’ said a voice, sniggering.
I was taken, hands at every part of my body, and I was pulled and pushed, at times lifted from my feet as I was led from my place by the fire and taken away with my eyes blindfolded and my hands tied. I felt the panic rising inside me, a wild animal desperate to get out, a fear and loathing, a great feeling of nausea. All these emotions mixing and frothing, making my head spin as they took me to God knows where.
‘Don’t worry,’ I heard Domino whisper again, then another voice, a man’s, telling me everyone had to do it.
‘No,’ the fear clawing to my throat, welling in there, preparing to burst from me like a rampaging animal, wanting to tear my bonds and rip flesh from those around me. ‘Get off. Fuck. Let me go.’
Then I was out of the clearing. I could tell because the ground was no longer hard beneath my feet. It was soft here, the same as the ground among the trees. I could hear the whoops and cat-calls of the others, the chirrup of the cicadas amplified a thousand times in my frightened state. I felt thin branches bend and give against me, the brush of pine needles and leaves against my skin.
I struggled against the rope, feeling an awkward tension in my shoulder as I tried to move this way or that, but each time I was blocked, each time I was held firm. I don’t know how much later I heard the rush of water, but the sound grew louder as we moved on, the heavy spill of liquid on rock, until I was halted, hands on every par
t of me, holding me back.
‘We’re here,’ said Kurt’s voice. ‘It’s time.’
Hands moved from me, taking some of the panic with them, replacing it with a dread curiosity. I could feel the wind on my face. The sound of water falling close by. I could smell the pine but now there was a strong scent behind it, mingling with it to make something unique. I could smell the lake.
Then, a warmth on my ear and Domino’s voice speaking to me. ‘If I can do this, you can do this,’ she whispered, and I felt her hands slip under my shirt and unfasten my money-belt. ‘I’ll keep this safe for you,’ she said. ‘And don’t be afraid. You’re strong, Alex. Show them how strong you are.’ And then she was gone.
I took a deep breath and waited for what was coming next. If Domino could do it, I could do it.
I felt the ties on my hands loosen and the rope slip away. I stood for a moment before raising my hands to my eyes, expecting them to be restrained again, but this time no one touched me as I reached for the blindfold and removed it.
To my left, a sharp rise in the land from which a steady stream of water cascaded from a crack in the rocks. It fell into a shallow pool surrounded by wet black stone, blanketed with ferns and moss. The pool frothed and welled, overflowing, spilling its innards, dropping water further into the mass below.
I was above the lake. Forty feet of sheer black rock fell away just inches from my toes. The surface of the water beneath me was pitted with waves caught and whipped by the breeze so it looked like the sea.
‘You want to stay, you have to jump,’ Kurt’s voice said from behind me.
I turned to see the others in a semi-circle, close behind me – Kurt standing one step in front – and I watched them, looked at each and every face. All attention was on me, gas lamps raised to head height and held out towards me so that I was the focus of our gathering. I looked at Domino, saw my belt bundled in her hands, and lingered over her features, looking into her eyes, seeing something that I thought was concern, before I finally came to Kurt. His head was cocked to one side, his unkempt, sun-bleached hair, not unlike Domino’s, hanging across his naked shoulders.
‘You gonna jump?’ he asked.
I took a deep breath. ‘What does it prove?’
‘That you want to stay.’ He straightened his neck and smiled. ‘That you want this life.’
‘And if I don’t?’
The smile fell from his lips. ‘Good luck finding your way out of here.’
I glanced behind me at the drop, then looked at Kurt again. ‘You mean you don’t have somewhere higher?’ I took a step back from him, turned and threw myself out into the night.
I didn’t close my eyes on the way down.
18
The world rushed around me. The darkness enveloped me. The air buffeted under my shirt, slipped up the cuffs of my trousers, tore my flip-flops from my feet. There was just enough moon-light on the surface for me to see the water hurrying up to meet me and I had a brief moment to wonder what would happen if I landed badly; to worry that my shoulder would once again break free from its socket and leave me floundering in pain, drowning in a giant lake thousands of miles from home. No one to take my hand as life slipped away. A final snatch of breath. A terrible descent into the weedy blackness. Fighting, clawing my way to the surface. One arm struggling against the motion of the water. Then, without oxygen to feed my body, I would sink, drifting among the tendrils, convulsing and jerking as life ebbed from me.
A fraction of a second was all it took for those things to flash through my head. An instant data transfer, information darting from one place to another at extraordinary speed. Electrical impulses chattering in my brain, brought to a sudden halt when I hit the water, my body straight, my shoulder braced.
I went deep, my clothes drenching immediately, my weight increasing, but I was a strong swimmer and my instincts over-rode anything I had been thinking or feeling. As soon as my descent into the water was slowed, I struck out, kicking upwards, thankful I could use both arms to pull me through the lake towards the surface. I was hastened by the stroke of the weeds on my feet, an eerie sensation that probed a primitive spot inside me. I hurried away from them, escaping their touch, afraid they might entangle me and pull me down, or that they weren’t weeds at all, but something dark and animate waiting for me in the cloying depths.
I reached the surface, my shoulder still intact, glad to be away from the clinging plants, and burst out, opening my mouth and taking a deep breath of clean air. I rubbed my eyes while treading water and turned round, scanning the shoreline for somewhere to come out of the lake, but there wasn’t an obvious spot. Behind me, Danau Toba stretched out towards Samosir. I would tire if I had to swim that far, and the thought of striking out into the darkness, heading for the distant shore, filled my stomach with a heavy sensation and made the water feel colder.
In front of me, the black cliff reached up to the place from which I had jumped. Nothing but rock from water to sky, no visible way out. I thought if I moved a little further into the lake, I could get a better view, find a place to land, but as I began to swim away, I heard someone shouting, the voice coming closer, then a splash just a couple of metres away from me. A heavy sound, followed by another and then another.
I stayed where I was, watching the choppy surface until something broke just ahead of me. Then something to the left. Another, this one closer.
‘Hey, you think we were gonna let you have all the fun?’ Michael’s voice, the unmistakeable American accent calling to me from the darkness, followed by the other two coming to the surface and shouting, one of them whooping like a cowboy.
‘Some of us liked it so much we just can’t get enough of it.’ As Michael came closer, I could see his head above the surface of the water. ‘And anyway,’ he was beside me now, his smile still there, like it was impossible to wipe it away, ‘how you gonna get out without us to tell you where?’ He was breathing steadily, pursing his lips, blowing the water away from his mouth.
‘He figured he’d have to swim all the way to Samosir,’ said another voice, its owner coming close. ‘Like Jason did.’
‘It was a nice night, Matt. I like to swim.’
Matt laughed, a short sound, trying to conserve his breath and his energy. ‘Set off before any of us got down here. Thought he’d drowned, all of us shitting ourselves he’d wash up somewhere. Turned up next afternoon. Big grin on his face.’ In the limited moonlight, Matt’s head was a peculiar shape, the short dreads sticking out at angles like Medusa’s serpents.
‘Come on,’ Michael spoke to me. ‘Stay close. There’s an easy way out.’
We kept together, close enough that we didn’t lose sight of each other. There was light from the moon, but not enough for us to see more than a few feet, and there was a slight wind cutting across the top of the water, raising the lake into waves big enough to obscure our view. Matt and Jason swam ahead, Michael keeping closer to me, all three of them knowing where to go despite the lack of visibility. But as we swam, we heard another shout, almost a scream, and the sound of rushing wind followed by another loud splash.
We stopped swimming.
‘Someone else jumping tonight?’ said Michael.
‘Don’t think so,’ Matt replied. ‘No one else said … You hear anything?’
We moved as slowly as possible, treading water but trying not to make any sounds, straining our ears.
‘I don’t hear anything,’ I said. ‘Why?’
‘We should hear something,’ said Jason. ‘Someone coming up. Breathing. You hear any of that?’
‘Maybe if you shut the fuck up,’ said Michael. ‘Maybe then we’d—’
‘Shh,’ I interrupted. ‘There.’ I was whispering, keeping my voice quiet so it wouldn’t hide the sounds. A weak splashing in the water not far from us. Not the sound of swimming, not a regular sound, but an erratic sound like something repeatedly hitting the water. Then a cough. Unmistakeable.
‘Shit,’ I said. ‘Someone’s in t
rouble.’ I turned and struck out towards the source of the noise, Michael following, telling me not to go too far.
I swam back towards what I thought to be the place where I had first entered the water, the noises of struggling closer yet weakening. I kept my head up, my neck strained as high as possible to see over the top of the waves.
There. Up ahead. Something on the surface, a froth of white, then nothing but black as the bubbles dissipated. It could have been anything, but I headed for it, swimming faster now.
A hand broke the surface and I knew for sure now that someone was struggling in the water, perhaps drowning as I’d feared I would. I felt horror surge in my body, a glimpsed memory of the tendrils brushing my feet, and I pushed harder to reach the spot where I’d seen the hand. I took a breath and dived under, not wanting to sink deep into the thick black below, but knowing that I had no choice.
I felt around me, spreading my arms, swimming deeper, afraid to become turned round in the water, lose my sense of direction, forget which way was up.
My hand brushed against something solid – not a weed, but something more substantial; something that reacted to my touch, turning and grabbing, fingers gripping my forearm like a vice, dragging me with it, deeper into the lake.
The oxygen I’d taken before I dived was thinning. My lungs were tightening and I knew that my fear might now become a reality. To die at the bottom of the lake. Like the old woman on the road who’d reached out for me, a stranger, I was to die with someone I did not know.
But I was not going to drown here, I was not going to breathe the water and sink to the weeds and the detritus that littered the floor of the lake. I was going to survive. I would live.
I twisted in the grip of those tight fingers, wrenching my arm free and snatching at the swish of cloth that brushed my skin as I sank. I grabbed at the clothing, pulling, finding something solid so that I was controlling the drowning person instead of them dragging me deeper. I could feel their panic, almost more tangible than my own as I struggled to remain in control of them, trying to keep away from flailing limbs, and I kicked my legs, used my free arm, and pushed towards what I hoped was the sky.