Island of Demons

by Nigel Barley

  ***

  Elli Beinhorn came with the first small rains, after a blistering hot season, like a breath of fresh air. She came, like most, in Fatimah’s car, but arriving with a great sideways skid and a loud klaxoning. Bagus climbed not from the driver’s but the passenger’s seat, ashen-faced and reknotting his sarong, his bottle well and truly shaken by the ride. At the wheel, sat a pert and delightful young woman in a white leather flying helmet and a yellow silk scarf. She gunned the engine, cut it and leapt out without bothering to open the door. In a man, such a gesture would have been distastefully cocky. In her it was quite charming. She pulled off the helmet, shook out her luscious blond hair and stepped forward, smiling, hand outstretched for shaking. “Elli Beinhorn!” I saw, heard and felt Conrad gawp and, unbidden, we formed a sort of instinctive line, as though for deferential presentation to Queen Wilhelmina, down which she then passed. Only Walter received the confident kiss of a recognised equal on the cheek. She was wearing trousers, still an exotic sexual perversity for a woman in those days – not even slacks – with a provokingly prominent button fly.

  “Hallo darling! Can I stay for a bit?”

  At that time, Elli Beinhorn was one of the most famous women in the world, Germany’s leading aviatrix, a sort of feminised Amelia Earhardt, a figure of unbelievable glamour and a focus of male sexual yearning from schoolboys to septuagenarians. The boys went into fits of shy giggles whenever she was around and Conrad followed her about the house with a dogged, doggy devotion, inhaling her fragrant slipstream.

  She had numerous adventures under her belt, had flown across Africa and Asia, thrilled and terrified crowds with aerobatics in her little Klemm aircraft and disappeared, presumed dead, in several savage places. The papers had made much of her recent return from beyond the grave in Persia, having been forced to ditch in the desert in a sandstorm and charm the fiercely uxorious tribesmen into transporting her back to civilisation by camel. She had been part of the first expedition to photograph Mount Everest from above, the honour finally going to a more powerfully engined and mustachioed American air ace, their names romantically linked, who had been nearly killed when the photographer – innocent of the laws of aerodynamics – had stood up in the plane to get his shot and sent it into a near-fatal spin.

  “My plane is in Batavia,” she explained huskily over dinner, “having floats fitted in the locomotive workshops for the flight down the islands to Australia. It’s a complicated business. You have to find the centre of gravity of the whole machine by suspending it on cables and attach the floats at exactly the right angle, otherwise you stick to the water like glue when you try for takeoff. Last time I had it done they dropped the plane so, this time, I couldn’t bear to watch and decided to see Bali instead.” She leaned forward sensually over the cruet. “So, darling, what do I see?”

  What she saw was a special ceremony at Besakih, the mother temple of the whole island, built on the slopes of Gunung Agung, volcanic home of the gods. From there, she had a lofty aviatrix’s view of the world as the Balinese knew it and wallowed in the sensuous music, flags, flowers and stacked ceremonial offerings as Walter probed and nitpicked and etymologised inside. He and Stutterheim had an ongoing academic war over the distant history of Bali. The broad sequence was clear enough, a primordial Bali with archaic religion of sun and moon, stone megaliths, buffalo sacrifice and simple accompanying social structure such as they still had amongst the caste-free Bali Aga and the hill peoples. Of course, the fewer the facts, the thicker and firmer are the arrows of influence and migration that archaeologists can draw on their maps. He and Stutterheim had together paced the island, measuring, recording, photographing and become jointly lacrimose over the discovery of primordial pyramids. Then had come Hinduism from India and Java, intensified by the flight of nobles, artists, craftsmen from the Majapahit kingdom of Java when it fell to Islam in the fifteenth century. But where did Buddhism fit into all this and how many people were involved in the migration of an idea? Its traces were clear enough in a division of the priesthood into those of Siva and those of Bodda but this could not be easily equated with differences of doctrine or function and both would be performing, side by side, at Besakih. Oddly, Walter was always prepared to fight his way through hours of shrugging mystical obfuscation to engage such Balinese issues, exactly the sorts of doctrinal distinctions he treated with contempt in his own life.

  I had known better than to accompany them on such an arid quest, especially since the sky was growling and coiling with bilious clouds the colour of gangrene, announcing the imminent downpour. If it split now and unleashed the real monsoon rains on them, the trip through the mountains would be a slithering nightmare. Instead, I busied myself with my chicks and a visiting painter from Klungkung, pinnacle of Balinese nobility and freshly returned from punitive exile, who was a master muralist and had promised to show me the techniques he was employing in the illuminated cloth panels for the ceiling of his rajah’s palace of justice. He had just embarked on a depiction of the torments of the ungodly in hell and, I confess, I was a little curious to discover whether I and my kind had our place there and – if so – how we were kept occupied.

  They returned late, delayed not by rain but by the local pedanda priest to whom Walter had offered a lift. Being of high Brahmana caste, it was a lifelong concern that his head should not be below the heads of others. This had naturally been accommodated through the provision of a deep cushion on which he might sit. Unfortunately, the Dutch administration had recently embarked on a major programme of road-building, with the creation of cuttings in which the roads might be sunk, whilst the footpaths remained along the tops of the embankments. This was an immediate threat to the priest’s ritual purity and dignity so that, each time these were encountered, he had to disembark, scramble up the bank and use the high path until it rejoined the road and he the car. He was also troubled by overhead irrigation pipes. He must pass over, not under these and so the journey was wearily prolonged by several hours. Walter, to his credit, remained supremely calm and offered the priest refreshment at the house before sending him off, with Conrad as driver, to his own compound. The old man sat there in complete self-satisfaction, sipping his pink fruit crush, as Elli bustled off to bathe and change and return all smiles. “This woman,” he said with slow authority, “is much prettier than that other one we had with us in the car today.” Offered a tour of the gardens, he demurred, noting that the kitchen would thus be above his own head height and observed with outrage that Walter’s roofs were higher than those of the old royal temple on the other bank.

  “Not so,” said Walter. “It is an optical illusion caused by the shape of the banks and the fact that the eye assumes that the river is level, whereas it is dropping away quite rapidly. I had Dr Goris come with his surveying equipment and he assures me that the roofs over there are fully two meters higher than my own.” The old man was unconvinced, set his face firmly against all but the evidence of his eyes. When he finally left, Walter roared, tore at his hair and stood on his head for a full five minutes in refutation. The boys came and watched in amazement, laughing nervously. No Balinese could do that, only a demon. To stand on your head was to deliberately disorder the universe. The Balinese have no somersaulting acrobats.

  Still the rains did not come and the weather continued like a boil that would not burst. Even the Balinese sat slumped in the shade, sweat running down their chests and hid from the sun. It was too hot and heavy to eat, too hot to sleep and no sex could have been had by anyone on the island for several weeks. We were worn and bored, Walter prostrate over the great table in desperation for a cool surface to rub his face against, speaking wildly of ice and snow and the glory of feeling cold. Conrad was outside, sitting alone on a rock in the cool river, his loins plunged into the stream, which probably met several of his needs at once. Then Resem let slip that witches were known to be dancing nightly in the overgrown graveyard a couple of miles down the road. Elli lit up. She needs must go. Please, please
, Wälti. When would she ever be able to have such an opportunity again? Wasn’t he curious to see which kind of dance they did? At first, Resem begged us not to. We had no idea how dangerous such creatures could be. Then, when Walter and Elli’s resolve was set, he refused all entreaties and blandishments to go along as guide.

  “You should listen to him, Walter,” I urged. “If he was talking about rice-growing you wouldn’t dismiss his knowledge so easily.”

  “But Elli isn’t interested in rice-growing.”

  “Then I absolutely refuse to have anything to do with it. What would the Balinese think if they caught us creeping about in a graveyard at this time of night? We should be seen as witches.”

  Twenty minutes later we were drawing up outside the graveyard, perched – like Walter’s house – between the edge of a village and a deep ravine. As we pulled up, a dog started barking, detonating the calls of other dogs that ricocheted around the village, rose to a crescendo and then died slowly away, each dog unwilling to let its rivals have the last word. “For God’s sake,” I said, “drive past, pull off the road and let’s walk back only if it’s all clear.” Walter continued another twenty meters, yanked on the brake and climbed out, slipping on the gravel at the roadside and falling flat on his backside in a classic pratfall. Elli immediately exploded in giggles, Walter caught the infection and the two of them howled till they were gasping for air over the bonnet, Walter developing into a sound rather like a braying donkey.

  “For God’s sake,” I stage-whispered. “Be quiet! You’d waken the dead.” That set them off again. They teetered along the road, arms around each other like two drunks. Reluctantly I followed, not wishing to be left alone in such an eerie spot.

  A Balinese graveyard is a desolate place, not the well-tended plot seen elsewhere in the archipelago, covered in low scrub and the debris of cremations with lumps of stone and wood to mark the spots where the dead await the final freeing of their souls in fire and water. It is not a place much frequented by visitors except for the witches who may come to dine there, their favourite meal being the entrails of an unborn child. The mere sight of the place seemed to sober my companions like a bucket of cold water. There were odd emanations, an unmistakable stench, a chill, mist where no mist – surely – could form at this season. Walter pointed.

  “Look!” I turned, thinking it was another silly joke then caught my breath. Moving around the far end was a ball of lambent blue fire as though from the flambéd cognac of French cuisine.

  “Perhaps,” I suggested, “we should …”

  “Come on.” Walter was already through the gate and stumble-tripping towards the thing, Elli unhesitatingly in pursuit.

  “Elli!” I shout-whispered. “Walter! You can’t!” But nobody heeded me. The flame paused, as if considering them, then seemed to dance up and down on the spot in derision. As we neared, individual coiling flames could be clearly seen and the thing’s rotation was evident. It danced back and forth, like someone trying to block your way in a corridor, then shot up a tree and disappeared. Walter paused, bemused as I panted up, having twisted my ankle rather nastily on a rock. The tree was empty. Then the thing reappeared several hundred meters off and bounced up and down again, only to vanish once more as soon as we approached. Then it seemed to come up out of the very ground a few meters to out left, shot wildly from side to side, zigzagged haphazardly away at speed and disappeared. We paused and looked at each other.

  “Well,” said Walter, impressed. “What do you make of that?”

  “Marsh gas,” said Elli. “Tell people about it and they’ll just say it was marsh gas. They always do. Pilots see all sorts of things but learn to keep their mouths shut. On my way to Timbuktu, I was pursued for miles across the desert by a sheet of orange flame. Inside a cloud in Katmandu, I saw … well, I cannot tell you what I saw but I never want to see it again.”

  “For God’s sake,” I said, not liking the tone of hysteria creeping into my own voice, “what are we doing here? Let’s go home. If anyone sees us here there’ll be real trouble.” But when we arrived back at the car, it was as if a hurricane had dumped it full of rubbish – dead branches, clods of earth, banana skins and, on top, a curious object. Walter lit a match and examined.

  “A genuine German Bockwurst!” he exclaimed in wonder like a connoisseur examining fine art. “Somewhat rotten and – look – with huge tooth marks. Where on earth would anyone have got hold of one of these in a place like this at this time of night? They don’t even stock them in Denpasar. You’d have to go to Batavia to find one. How would a witch know I was German and not Dutch? Even the Balinese don’t know the difference. To them, we are all Belanda.”

  “How do you know it is intended for you?”

  “Oh Bonnetchen, it was in the driver’s seat. Oh my God, Plumpe ate these all the time, these and booze. You don’t see an empty schnapps bottle do you?”

  “Be serious, Walter. Why would Murnau send you a sausage from beyond the grave?”

  Walter tossed it away and began throwing rubbish in all directions. “It is not a sausage but a message. From Plumpe. I don’t know what it means but I can be certain he’s not sending his love. Now come on, let’s clear this stuff out and clear out ourselves.”

  ***

  The European Protestant cemetery in Denpasar was neater than the native Balinese but still at a formative stage, the vegetation more weed than shrub, parched and, as yet, insufficiently fertilised by its lean contents. The Dutch administrative presence had so far generated little custom, since the junior officials assigned there were mostly young and vigorous whereas any senior officer who expired in Denpasar would expect to be assigned space strictly appropriate to his rank at administrative headquarters back in Buleleng. I anticipated that its most significant occupant would be Mads Lange, the nineteenth-century Danish adventurer, whose machinations had delayed Dutch intrusion by more than fifty years and earned him a painful death by poison. But no. It seemed that he had only made it as far as the Chinese cemetery in Kuta. Criteria for admission here were quite strict, then. The Balinese, whose memories were blissfully undistracted by abstractions, remembered Lange mainly as the owner of an interesting orang-utang and a unique Dalmatian dog. I could not help wondering if they would fix Walter in their minds in much the same way.

  Most of the mourners were Balinese – Walter, after all, had spent as little time as possible with the bureaucrats. Smits had not come, though the assistant controleur of Badung and a couple of the more open-minded officials engaged in the museum project had turned out in high-buttoned tunics, and were standing by the grave, sweating for their nation and the honour of white men in general. Elli – good girl that she was – knew what was required of her, though a guest of only a week’s standing, and was stifling sobs in her hankie, supported by men on either side, as the white wives speculated, thin-lipped and flint-eyed, on what exactly had been her relationship with the deceased in that disorderly house of bachelors and hussies. The Balinese were at something of a loss, since, for many, this was the first white funeral they had attended. Because their own cremations were rather jolly affairs, they were puzzled by a public festival of depression whose only function was to make everyone infinitely more sad than they had been before. This, moreover, had been a bad death, one that in their own world brought pollution and threat yet no one here seemed to be concerned with averting that danger. Instead of wild, hammering music, there had been a mournful wailing, as of demons, before the unfamiliar groaning organ. One or two had been totally unnerved and crept quietly away. Instead of whirling processions, there had been standing about and talk and it was clear that even the white men themselves did not seem to know quite what they were supposed to be doing. The eulogy – delivered bleatingly by an annoyed-looking Dutch Reform minister – had seemed to be about someone totally unknown to me, a solid citizen snatched from the jaws of married respectability and regular employment only by his untimely death. Later, instead of general feasting, there would be horrib
ly evocative cold meats served at the Little Harmonie Club – Europeans inside, natives on the lawn, mingling strictly limited to the no man’s land of the verandah. And the problem of dress remained unresolved. Agung and his retinue had opted for the white of death and their finest jewels, standing under their umbrellas like a rehearsal for a puputan mass suicide. Natives in government service had chosen the black favoured by Dutchmen while those of more divided loyalties sported the black and white chequerwork of traditional poleng cloth about their waists. Traders had favoured loose, silk pyjamas. Oleg, Resem and Alit had turned events into an occasion for a visit to a man with a sewing machine in Denpasar and agonised deliciously for hours over the choice of shorts or long trousers, buttonholes and lapels. The resulting over-tailored outfits made them look like three pimps from Buleleng. Putting everyone else to shame was the old man who watered Walter’s plants. He had simply bathed and walked down from the hills, wearing the same sarong he always wore, barefoot and barechested. Unintimidated by those around him, in his simplicity, he trod the grass like a master of the earth. Meanwhile, Mr Kasimura, the Japanese photographer, himself unversed in Dutch ritual, was hopefully erecting his camera tripod for the companionable photographs around the coffin that would surely be requested. As we watched the plain wooden box lowered into the torn earth, the rains finally broke with a crack of thunder – dramatically most effective – and hosed us down thoroughly. Plumpe would have approved.