Island of Demons

by Nigel Barley

  “They are building an aquarium – he always pronounced it akvarioom –in Sanur. It will be fantastic. They will make a fortune.” Walter was hopelessly optimistic in financial matters. He would believe you if you told him you could get rich by selling the Balinese bicycle clips. We were seated on the verandah, looking down. The pool was finally complete, neat stone steps, flanked by two carved stone demons clutching phallic clubs, water plants softening the edges, a real live stork washing its feet in there.

  “Walter,” I laughed. “No one, ever, made a fortune from an aquarium. You would make more money by letting people bathe in the tanks as a swimming pool.”

  He paused and considered. “A marvellous idea – perhaps later, but I think the akvarioom should come first.”

  A terrible realisation set in.

  “Walter. Don’t tell me you’ve invested money in it.”

  He shrugged and pouted. “Ja … well … I put in a little and they put in a little … not so much. The fish and the water we get free! The tourists will pay to come in and be sold fish food and so pay to feed our fish and then we sell them the fish on the way out! It is not simply a matter of economics. There is an aesthetic beauty there. Maybe even locals will come – special reduction for Balinese!” He slapped his knee. His eyes were gleaming. He could see it all. In his fevered brain, he was probably busy designing the fancy uniforms the staff would wear. “The Neuhaus Brothers know everything about the technicalities. The collection of plaster casts will be a sensation. We will have a whalefish of a time. People will come from everywhere to see it – in buses. Then there will be a place where they can drink a little coffee and have cake and cold orange crush. I should like very much to drink cold orange crush.” I had a vision of Walter’s “profits” being drunk away in an orgy of cold orange crush. “Later a zoo. Then only maybe your swimming pool idea or maybe the best fish restaurant in the whole of the Indies. We must be practical, Bonnetchen.” He was, I could see, hopelessly hooked. Would there be sharks? In Sanur? I shuddered.

  Over the next few months, I took a malicious pleasure in seeing myself proved right and Walter proved wrong as each visit by the Neuhaus Brothers brought new exactions. For the construction of the tanks, vast sheets of expensive toughened glass had to be brought from Java, by road and at the owner’s risk. Many did not survive. The water might be free, but to move it required a special pump from Batavia and it needed electricity to make it work. To save on glass, the tanks only used it on one side, which meant that they must now be lit from the rear with electricity, shielded from corrosive seawater with costly lead. The arguments for the undertaking no longer dwelt on the huge profits to be made but the prodigious sums already invested, that would be entirely lost, were it not to continue to completion. Walter’s attaché case must be looking pretty windswept by now. I searched for, and easily detected, signs of economy. Walter decided that it was cruel to keep the horses so much shut up since there were no dry fields to graze them in and flooded land rotted their hooves. They were sold. Then, wine disappeared as swiftly as it had come, since, Walter announced, he was conducting extensive, comparative research into the qualities of different kinds of brem of diverse origins and only that would now be served. After the flash flood of cash, we were swinging back to drought and pinched normality.

  And then, quite suddenly, it was done. We drove over one afternoon in the Whippet and there, hard by the beach, stood a solid white-stuccoed installation, shaded by palm trees, a big sign announcing it as an “akvarioom” and a bedsheet slung between two treetrunks, declaring today a grand opening. Dutch flags were waving everywhere, like alibis, and somewhere a military band oompahed a soundtrack of imperial respectability. As we climbed out of the car, the wind whipped a spray of fine grains off the sand dunes and lightly scoured our faces. I knew that, for Walter, these occasions were a martyrdom and he had increased his sufferings by squeezing into his Bärbli finery so that he was constantly easing his tight collar with an angry finger. This must all be the work of the Neuhaus Brothers and there they were, identically dressed and wearing the same smirk on the same sweaty face, oleaginating over white guests with handkissing and heel-clicking. Only a few brown faces, mostly honorary whites because of their high rank, the rest smiling, bowing staff, all suspiciously handsome and obviously chosen for their looks. The guests already had a couple of glasses of wine in them and were mellowing nicely, quick to refill, with a thirst born not of the climate but a sense of exile. Father Scruple was there, murmuring fervently in the ear of a short Balinese, presumably offering to slip him a quick Bible round the back. Smits was there, gripping a frosty beer with one chilled hand and ball-juggling with the warmed other. He saw me and leaned over to whisper something to his wife – mean mouth, parsimonious breasts, Christian faith borne like an affliction – who glared hot disapproval and crossed her arms over her chest. Probably, then, something like, “There’s that dirty bugger who paints tits.” Miguel and Rosa tried in vain to merge into the background, for they humbled the Dutch by the elegance of their clothes. At any moment, it seemed, they would burst into a tango and the crowd would part and fall back to make space for them to stalk and strut. They twinkled the briefest of waves. It was not entirely clear to me why they had moved back to their own quarters in Belaluan. Perhaps it was simply a matter of economy but at least Walter no longer crept around the house wall-eyed, like a Muslim in a bacon-factory, waiting for the inevitable sound of Miguel’s voice. “Oh Walter! Is that you? I have a list of questions about the historical division of irrigation water in Gianyar villages.”

  I must admit that the tanks, under woven awnings, looked magnificent, each window some two meters high and three long, giving swirly green views onto recreated tropical reefs, swarming with multi-coloured fish, elaborate devices bubbling aeration, floors strewn with swept sand where lobsters and the more energetic shellfish scuttled. Many species were crowded together, as though, living in peace or only modest predation, they wished to set an example to the races of mankind. There were, I noted with relief, no sharks. Each window was gratifyingly crowded with pointing oohers and aahers and even the appalling plaster casts were going down well, especially with the few Balinese guests. As usual, Walter had been completely in tune with local sensibilities and Cokorda Agung was there crying “Luar biasa! Extraordinary! Are they for sale?” and swiftly pocketing up several without further formality. Walter’s face lit up.

  “Of course! An art shop! Another outlet for Pita Maha. Our Sanur members can do seascapes, still-lifes of fish. How could I have missed it? Why,” he cried, staring irrelevantly up at the sky, “have I never painted the sea?” I had no answer to that.

  Outside, oompahs had given way to the cascading tinkle of a gamelan. I looked up to see the Kuta group, McPhee’s old orchestra, already settled and raising their hammers to rattle off into something inchoate and watery with Lothring on the female drum, hands a blur, guiding and driving them on.

  “A new composition,” Walter explained far too loudly, ”inspired by the ocean that he saw in a very wet dream.” It had ended up sounding like an imitation of Debussy at his most pastelish. Nyoman Kaler was out there too, hovering at the edge of the group, hiding vainly behind a cigarette, ears pricked for what he might borrow and puckering sourly at his orange crush. Behind me, Walter was explaining his big, new idea of an art shop exalting sea and fish to the brothers who were automatically scanning each other’s faces, trying to organise a common reaction that retained symmetry. The piece ended and Lothring looked around swiftly – no time for a smoke – caught everybody’s eye and immediately brought them in again with a few smart drumtaps, the introduction to baris. A symbolic pair of curtains had been set up, and now a dancer – properly male for once – parted them and stepped out evenly into the space, back stiffened by a long kris running from shoulder to shoulder, bright sunlight gleaming off the thick white makeup and painted black moustache. It was Sampih, but a Sampih transformed. Every movement of his eyes, his shoulder
s, his feet picked out and synchronised with something in the music. He was not performing to it, he embodied it. Even the Westerners could tell that this was something special, luar biasa. The music accelerated into a sudden stormy section and Sampih was all audacious fireworks, sharp muscle contractions, then riding the slowing rhythm with his breath and feeling its crests gently with his hands to cries of “Beh!” from the Balinese who were there, their eyes fixed, all sympathetically inside his body, bouncing on the balls of their own feet along with him, feeling with him, as he waited for the next explosion of sound and movement. At the end, there came a throaty Balinese roar, thunderous applause from the Europeans. Sampih, allowing no wedge between self and role, sembahed unsmiling and glided back through the curtains. I turned to Walter.

  “What? How? Who?”

  This was not the work of the Bedulu woman. This was something else. I caught Nyoman Kaler throwing down his cigarette and stamping on it before stalking off, a very choleric Kaler, a “windhead” as the Malay has it.

  Walter was immensely pleased with himself. “You know Mario?” Of course I knew him. Who did not? The most famous dancer in the whole of Bali, inventor of the flashy kebyar duduk, a dance that had created a sensation and set him head and shoulders above everyone else on the island. A very vain and difficult man by reputation, completely unapproachable. “He owed me a favour or two and felt uncomfortable not being able to pay me back so he agreed to take Sampih on for three months, sink or swim, and we needed a main act for the opening, so … Well, I think he swam at our akvarioom, don’t you?”

  I was lost for words, “gobsmacked”, to use one of Walter’s recent acquisitions. He had taken two problems – three really – and, putting them together, created a short-circuit to make a solution. I ducked confusedly behind the curtain, looking for Sampih, wanting to congratulate him, warn him against excessive arrogance, ask him what further arrangements had been made … He had disappeared. I asked around. Balinese shrugs. Headshakes. From the front, I heard Walter’s voice, shy, squirming and embarrassed, forcing itself into a stiff speech. Now I was stuck behind the curtains until he had finished.

  “Ladies and gentlemen. The Balinese just do things but, for some reason, we have to both do them and say what it is that we are doing. Sooo … Let me thank you all for coming to this opening today. I should like …” There was a sharp bang, a puff of blue smoke, as if in mockery of a military salute, and all the lights went out in the tanks. As I peered round the curtain, suddenly, all the fish in the main display were boiling, convulsing, one even flying through the air to land, with a wet slap, in the lap of a large – and not surprisingly, screaming – woman in a cloche hat. Another short circuit, then, this time less welcome. The crowd turned like some great mindless beast and a stampede was about to happen when Walter – in what was surely his finest hour – stopped it dead.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he called. “I should just like to announce our special surprise event for this evening.” Unwillingly, they turned back and listened. The hubbub died down. Perhaps all this had been a deliberate stunt. All colonial life is about keeping up a front. Perhaps they were showing themselves up. They looked guiltily around for natives that they might be showing themselves up in front of. “We have just decided that, in about an hour, we invite you to a special, and very fresh, mixed fish barbecue on the beach.” They stared and then someone started to laugh and soon they were all laughing and clapping. The military band struck up again and Walter retrieved the flying fish with great ceremony and carried it away, by its tail, to be cooked. One of the waiters caught my eye, smiled and shrugged. There were, he seemed to say, plenty more fish in the sea.

  ***

  Another of those dreaded brown envelopes and Walter, headholding and gibbering over coffee.

  “I won’t do it. They can’t make me, can they?” I opened my eyes in interrogation. He picked up the letter. “Listen: ‘Following the success of the recent akvarioom opening and in the light of your intimate connection with the museum, the Resident has determined that you are the fitting person both to organise the reception for H.E. Governor General throughout the period of his stay in Bali, the cultural events he will witness and to show him round the installation before the official opening’. And then there is an invitation to the banquet in Singhraja. ‘White tie and tails’. Tails! I hate such things! You know how I hate them. They can’t make me do it.” All this fuss. The boys would be thinking he was about to start another painting.

  “At least the aquarium opening was a success. Now it’s official. I don’t really see how you can refuse, Walter. As a semi-illegal alien you need friends not enemies and you disdain to take Dutch nationality. You know Smit would love to have a reason to send you packing. The Governor General might be a good friend to have.”

  He groaned. “It doesn’t work that way. You make friends with a dog to make friends with its owner not the other way around.” He slumped over the table, showed teeth, growled and howled in pain.

  “Walter, this is his first visit to Bali and he will be judgemental. Please stop that noise. Every official promoted will thank you for it whilst every one found wanting will always lay that at your door. But think of it another way. You will have a huge budget. You can order around the army and the air force, arrange them in nice, neat patterns, make Smit stand in the hot sun for hours. All the Cokordas have to do anything you say. You can turn Bali into your own personal fairyland.” He raised his head. There was a flicker of interest at the back of the eyes. “You can get them to paint anything any colour you say – even Gunung Agung. You can pick the music and the food and the flowers and the dancers. You are dictator for a day.”

  “Must I bite into the sour apple? Will there be not just Wirrwarr but also Trara?”

  “All the Trara you want, Walter. Trara-boom-de-ay.”

  He let his tongue loll out and panted doggishly. “God damn me, I’ll do it.”

  ***

  “As I mentioned this morning to Charlie,

  There is far too much music in Bali,

  And although as a place it’s entrancing,

  There is also a thought too much dancing.

  It appears that each Balinese native

  From the womb to the tomb is creative.

  From sunrise till long after sundown,

  Without getting nervy or rundown,

  They sculpt and they paint and they practise their songs,

  They run through their dances and bang on their gongs,

  Each writhe and each wriggle,

  Each glamorous giggle,

  Each sinuous action,

  Is timed to a fraction.

  And although all the ‘Lovelies’ and ‘Pretties’

  Unblushingly brandish their titties,

  The whole thing’s a little too clever

  And there’s too much artistic endeavour.”

  Thus Noel Coward on Bali, protesting against the onerous schedule imposed by Walter on his visitors. It has been wrongly assumed, because of the opening, that he and Charlie Chaplin came together. As a witness, I can vouch for the fact that this is emphatically not the case. The coda, with its typical cowardly sting in the tail, is habitually omitted. It runs thus, “Forgive the above-mentioned Charlie, I had to rhyme something with Bali”.

  His extreme intellectual energy masked by professional langour, The Master spent his time on Bali “trying to find the rhyme” – his habitual term for lying around doing nothing more demanding than watching the slow dissipation of his own cigarette smoke. He lay by and in, the pool. He lay on the sofa. He lay in bed. Night and day, he sported extravagant silk pyjamas from the Burlington Arcade. The boys waited on him, hand and foot, in awe, recognising his immobility and dependence as marks of status. Oleg was his particular favourite. “Your young men here are very pretty, dear boy,” he would concede to Walter, “but they do not move me. I have been to the West Indies where the local lads make good old Anglo-Saxon terms like ‘heft’ and ‘girth’ spring
to one’s lips. One does not dine with tweasers. But Oleg here has ‘character’, what, in the movies, we term ‘a good face’. Were I shooting a film about a mass murderer I should engage him at once.”

  Walter bemused., vainly groping amongst dark Germanic roots. “What is ‘heft’? What is ‘girth’?”

  “Ah! Quite so. What indeed?” He sucked his ebony cigarette holder that possessed neither. Noel was perhaps, then, at the height of his powers. In his mid-thirties, slim, sleek, he had conquered the musical stage, the theatre, the recording studio. He always seemed to be rehearsing, internally, incubating and wherever he went he left sheets of paper, ditties, drafts of something or other, as other men might leave dandruff. His early Vortex, with its overtones of drug-fiendery and homosexuality, had been a major succès de scandale, since when he had effortlessly reeled off hit show after hit show with no illusions about the shallowness of his craft. He could, he always made you feel, do so much more, delve so much more deeply but simply could not be bothered, as to break into a sweat was unbecoming. Walter recognised, in him, a brother.