No-one answers. Matt leans back. Manages to command the attention of the group with this single movement.
‘I think Dennis is right,’ he says. ‘I think that’s a good way to go about it. But I’ve also been working with Bapak Joni on a different strategy. We’ve been to see a dukun.’
‘A dukun?’ pipes up the English bloke for the first time. ‘A fucking dukun? Are you serious, man?’
The Kiwi looks smug. That’s obviously what she was referring to at the internet cafe.
Dennis puts his head in his hands.
‘To make Shane sick,’ Matt says. ‘Less trouble. Just for a while, just while things settle down.’
The night I met Shane he’d winced and buckled and grabbed his gut. Is he sick? I asked the girl. No, not sick. I remember Matt and Joni talking that morning, and Matt asking me, after we’d had a surf together, how Shane had seemed. It doesn’t surprise me, Matt going to the local black magician. From what I’ve heard, there’s still plenty of black magic in the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. Matt would have grown up around it.
‘Bullshit.’ Rick sneers. ‘It’s a load of bullshit.’ He turns to me, even though I’ve been watchfully silent. ‘Your hippy mate here might think there’s such a thing –’
Matt springs to his feet. Rick tenses. We all tense.
But Matt ignores him and starts collecting the empty bowls. Meri rushes forward to help but he waves her away. I follow him to the kitchen. He fills Meri’s sink. I add a squirt of green detergent then hand him the bowls, one after the other. They make a percussive sound as Matt stacks them, clean, on the other side.
‘When do you go back to work?’ I ask without looking at him.
‘Coupla days,’ he says.
‘Before you go, will you take me to the dukun?’ My voice trembles. As a kid I always had the feeling that the uneasy line between the spiritual and the physical was easier to cross here than at home. This chance, to go and visit a dukun … it is rarely something you can even talk about with local people, let alone experience firsthand.
‘No.’
I take his hand. ‘Please?’
He says nothing and we’re saved from silence by the sound of a text message. I pull out my phone, wondering if Josh has replied. Then I realise Matt has the same message tone, and it’s not for me. A bright strand of hair is caught in his stubble and it takes all my willpower to resist reaching over and drawing it free. He puts his phone away.
‘Sorry, Pen, I won’t be able to give you a lift home. I’m sure Dennis will take you after everyone’s left. I’ll see you tomorrow. We should go up to the hot springs. When do you start at Shane’s?’
It takes me a beat to answer. What’s so important that Matt has to race off without giving me a lift?
‘In a coupla days,’ I say.
‘Righto.’
The Kiwi’s voice bounces after him into the courtyard: ‘But Matthew …!’
And then he’s gone.
I go back to my chair, to the now-struggling conversation. It’s obvious the group doesn’t get together often. The only thing they really have in common is that they’re all outsiders.
Before she leaves, Adalie asks for my number. ‘We’re starting to pack soon. I will send a message in case there is anything you might like. We won’t be able to take everything.’
I thank her warmly and soon I’m the only one left, waiting in the kitchen while geckos zigzag the walls.
‘That Matt’s a scoundrel,’ Dennis says after he and Meri have seen off Rick and the Kiwi, ‘leaving you here to walk home. I’ll give you a lift after a cup of tea.’
‘Oh, I don’t want to be any trouble. I’m more than happy to walk. It’s not that far.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’
He heads into the kitchen and I help Meri carry the extra chairs back out onto the front balcony. Her lips and nails are a loud proud red and she’s pencilled on a beauty spot just to the left of her lower lip. Her hair is cropped short and uncovered.
‘Have you been to Australia?’
‘Of course. Nice for holiday but if you stay there for too long: pusing,’ she taps her head. ‘And, sorry ya, but also a little bit boring!’
‘Boring?!’
We laugh.
Years ago, I met a young Balinese guy who fell in love with an Australian girl, got her pregnant and found himself bailed up in Bunbury with a bub and a babe, lonely as hell and desperate to get back to Bali. He told me that every night he went to the pub for some company, but it was always the same weather-fucked faces, and so the first chance he had he flew home.
‘Bu, is it hard, being married to a bule?’
‘In what way? Privately, or with visas and government and things like that?’
‘Well, privately I guess. Like with the cultural differences.’
She gives my question some consideration before answering. ‘It was hard at first. You wouldn’t think it now, but when Dennis first came here he was always angry about everything. “Why do you throw your rubbish out the bus window,” he asked me, and, “How come I’m still paying twice as much for everything when I live here?” and, “Why did your neighbours have to go and sell their rice paddies, they’ve wrecked our view!”’ She slaps the knees of her jeans, excited now. ‘I told him, if you want to stay here with me, you must learn this culture, understand this culture. But don’t complain. Stop complaining and getting angry over stupid things. It’s just the way it is here, you just have to accept it. Begitulah saja.’
She smiles fondly.
From inside comes the siren of the kettle.
‘So does he still get overcharged, like at the market and when he has to bargain at the shops?’
‘Iya! All the time! He’s a bule, kan?’ Ibu chuckles softly. ‘You know what he say to me? He say: “Meri, I already live here long time, why they keep calling me bule? My name is Dennis and I’m from Australia!”’ Ibu wheezes with laughter. ‘Ha, ha, but he still bule! I tell him, “You still bule”’
Her laughter is infectious.
She dabs her tears with a tissue and continues. ‘Ya, it’s better if I do the shopping. When we go on holiday to Bali, I say, “Dennis, you stay here in the hotel while I go shopping.” As soon as they see him – wah! At once everything is more expensive. Hang on a moment Penny, I get the tea.’
She disappears inside.
I’m knackered. Don’t think I’ll make it through a cuppa. Maybe it’s better to head back now. Dennis is already asleep, slumped soft in one of the chairs in the lounge. I join Meri in the kitchen. ‘He had a big day today,’ she says.
‘Of course, I’m sorry for keeping you up so late.’
‘Not at all, it was nice to finally talk to you. Can I drop you home?’
From the way Ibu asks the question she’s hoping I’ll decline. It’s been a long day, and putting up with a bunch of whingeing bules has probably been exhausting.
‘No, no, really it’s fine. It truly isn’t far.’
There’s a thump in the roof. The triumphant sound of claws.
‘If I get tired, I’ll jump on an ojek.’
‘Maybe it’s too late for ojek.’
I wave away her concern.
The air is emptier than during the day. I fill my lungs, enjoying the brisk burn of it. On either side of the road there’s the wet suck and burble of evening rice paddies. It takes me nearly an hour to walk back into Batu Batur and across town to Ibu Ayu’s. I didn’t realise how far out of town Dennis’ village actually is. I don’t feel unsafe, but consciously avoid thinking about dukuns and black magic. It’s one thing to be excited about a potential trip to a dukun in the well-lit company of friends, another to entertain such a thought on a dark walk home.
Ibu Ayu’s is tucked in right at the end of a lane that twists like a shoestring. During the day it’s filled with big-eyed schoolkids crunching lollies and men wheeling kaki lima of sugary crushed ice. But now, the warungs and shops, all boarded shut, look completely different. A
light bulb barely burns the edges of the dark. A rat weaves through the gutter grates by my left ankle. I keep an even pace.
And then hear footsteps behind me.
There’s a chattering sound and the tiny cymbal clash of something metallic. I focus on the kink in the lane ahead. After that, I’ll be able to see the sign to Ibu Ayu’s, can start hollering.
Whoever is behind me keeps pace. Not closing in, not falling back. Every now and then there’s that strange chatter, like mice, or wind-up children. I round the kink and speed up. There’s the sign now, hand-painted, with the blue curl of a wave. Behind me, the steady slap of rubber on cement. It’s him, I think. It’s the guy who was watching me in the shower. I hope and hope and hope that the gate is open.
It is. I slip through, shut and bolt it.
Then I run across the grass to my bungalow, climb the steps two at a time, and try to get a glimpse of the lane from the balcony. The wall is just a little too high. So I climb up onto the balcony railing and steady myself by curling my fingers around the roof.
There’s a man standing just back from the gate. The fire-flower of his cigarette end blooms and fades. It’s too dark to see his face. Wound around his hand is a chain. My eyes follow its straining links to a collar. A monkey’s collar. The monkey looks around, alert, ears pricked. Then it slides a mask over its face and jumps onto the man’s shoulder.
The man stays like that, perfectly still, face upturned.
36
I’m in tight jeans, gripping Matt between my thighs. We lock hard around a mountain corner and my breath catches. The vegetation becomes thicker as we climb: vines drop like wet lassoes, poisonous flowers exhale. There are no people, no wooden stands of durian or banana by the roadside.
At last we come to a clearing where Matt parks the bike. It’s cool. Above us, birds wail long and lustily. Matt takes my hand and we walk up a dirt track. Ten minutes later, the jungle falls back around a string of steaming volcanic pools. Water trims off into water.
Matt’s stripping, and my gaze whips back to his body, a bit skinny from too much surfing and rice, but not bad.
‘Jesus, Pen!’
I cover my face and laugh – a moment later he’s dragging my jeans over my thighs, grabbing my chin between his fingers, owning my mouth. Monkeys backfire through the trees. We fall into one of the pools. Once or twice I glance at the surrounding jungle. Matt murmurs, ‘Don’t worry. The locals don’t come here, they’re scared of the spirits.’
And so I stop looking and let those freckled lips take mine.
Later, I dip under, hold my breath until my lungs swell blue. Burst back. Completely physical. Completely whole.
‘What kind of spirits do the locals think live here?’
‘The spirits of children.’
‘Oh.’
‘But not all the locals. Things are changing.’
‘What, with religion?’
‘Sure. And the influence of the West. Technology. Look at the crew using mobile phones. No-one had one five years ago. Telly too. There’s only one or two families in my village with a satellite dish but everyone’s saving up.’
‘Mmm.’ I swim over. Circle his waist with my legs. ‘So what did your parents do for work in the Pacific?’
‘They were missionaries.’
‘Really? So … what about you?’
‘What about me?’
‘You don’t – I mean, are you religious?’ He’s got me worried. I’m not too fond of the whole missionary idea.
‘I’m not Christian. My brothers and sisters all still go to church but I was the black sheep in the family. I wouldn’t say I’m irreligious. I’m really interested in the beliefs of the people here. Like about this place,’ he presses me closer to him, ‘or the place you talked about near Cahyati’s village, or dukuns.’
Since last night my head has been buzzing with questions for Matt about the dukun.
‘Why have you got it in for Shane? Why are you going to a dukun about him?’
Matt unlaces my legs. ‘It wasn’t my idea. Bapak Joni talked to me about it – he’s got personal reasons for disliking Shane, and on a purely professional level, I think he’s keen to take out the competition. I’m just going along for the ride, you know, interested to learn a bit more about black magic, if it can work on a bule. This kind of stuff is vanishing as quick as satellite dishes are going up.’
I tread water, perplexed. Just going along for the ride? ‘But what if it does work? If Shane gets really crook and dies or something? Have you got it in for him that bad?’
‘I’m not trying to kill the bloke, if that’s what you’re implying. But I do think he’s a waste of oxygen. Like I said last night, the dukun’s spell is just to make him crook, to take him out of the equation for a while. If he goes, things will be a lot easier for the rest of us who are trying to live here. There have been rumours that some of the local blokes have something else planned for him, but I don’t have a clue what.’
I feel a tremor of wariness. I am certain Matt’s a hell-man, one of those characters who’ll be talked about across the archipelago for years to come, and like all hell-men, he courts darkness.
‘So you said you wanted to go to the dukun?’ There’s a tilting, half-teasing, half-mad look in his eyes.
I did yesterday, in the warmth of Dennis and Meri’s kitchen, mouth full of sticky rice, heart ready for adventure. But wouldn’t that make me responsible, implicated, accessory to anything that happened to Shane?
‘Come on then,’ he says and it’s a dare. A challenge.
Moral reluctance battles curiosity. Curiosity wins. But only after I’ve promised myself to tell Shane.
So I step out of the pool with my back to him, conscious of the water streaming from me, conscious of my own lissom body from too many bad nasi campurs and gutter-grown prawns. I wonder what he sees when he looks at me? My skin’s darker than it was in Perth. My eyes are dark. My hair’s long, printed straight down my back like monsoonal rain. Pretty much as good as it gets. I turn to face him. He sweeps back his hair with a hand.
‘Ayo,’ he says.
37
I heard a savage story about a dukun when I was a teenager. Dad had offered our house in Kuta to some family friends for a week during school holidays and we relocated to Balangan, a white-sand, blue-water cove. The road down to Balangan was still unmarked, a hazardous slide of loose gravel and slyly squealing pigs. We slept on the balcony of a guesthouse, on thin mattresses under mozzie nets. At night, Dad got on the piss and I let a Brazilian butterfly-kiss my thighs in swap for sips of buttery arak. Until I got caught. Dad was disgusted. Not because he found me necking a bloke ten years my senior but because I was with a Brazilian.
‘No Germans, no Brazilians,’ he told me.
‘What about Japs?’
‘Yeah. Japs are alright.’
Dad’s measure of a man’s worth was how courteous he was in the surf and how well he surfed; in his experience, Germans or Brazos didn’t make the grade.
Dad kept me closer after that. No sneaking to the other guesthouses to watch the backpackers practise fire poi. No drifting to the rock platform between Balangan and Dreamland in a white dress.
The night I heard the dukun story I was wrecked sideways in a hammock. The surf had been a solid four to six foot and on low tide I missed a take-off and got dragged over a jungle of reef.
It scissored up my bikini, my back.
The blokes at the guesthouse, Aussies mostly, made a fuss and painted me up with Mercurochrome. They complimented Dad on having such a gutsy daughter and I think he was secretly proud.
With nightfall came violent rumbles. The surf was doubling, trebling. I was glad I wouldn’t be able to go out the next day. The men’s voices, scarred and rough, were almost crushed by the sound of the water. They were talking about Nias. One of the older men said he’d been in Nias in the ’60s. With another bloke and a French girl. The three were camping out near a wave. After they’d been there a
few days an old man approached and told them to leave.
‘Does someone own this land? We’re happy to pay,’ offered the Aussie bloke.
‘I don’t want your money, I want you to leave.’
There was a splinter-sharp madness. A betel-tinged absence. He shuffled off.
In the surf they learnt he was the town’s dukun.
They’d heard about dukuns. They weren’t scared. But that night in the tent they discussed whether there’d be repercussions if they stayed.
‘Nah fuck it, we’ll be right.’
The next day the two men scored Lagundris. A flawless, almond-eye barrel. They surfed until they were ravenous, until their skin glowed with the wattage of Jakartan brothels. When they got in, the French girl was out, off somewhere, probably walking. That evening she still hadn’t come back. All her stuff was there: passport, money, clothes. But no girl.
They never found her.
38
We follow the track further up into the mountains. The air here seems so pure compared to the air in Indonesia’s cities. When you step from air-conditioning onto a pumping artery of Jakarta or Denpasar or Balikpapan it crushes you; the air’s bronchial, it’s infection, it’s smoke and soap and shit. But here, these soaring, scarred trees keep it clean; have swallowed penicillin, the radio, and Sukarno in their rings.
After another half an hour, we reach a village and Matt pulls up in the shade. Within moments we’re surrounded by a bunch of women pinching and crowing. ‘Who’s this? Where’s she from? Is this your wife?’
Matt laughs and shakes his head.
They turn to me, talking over the top of each other in Indonesian, frank and nosy.
‘Matt’s a good person,’ they say. ‘He’s put two of the children in this village through primary school and he’s always bringing gifts. How long have you known him? Are you going to marry him? Do you have any children?’ Their hands go to my belly. ‘How long have you been in Indonesia? What hair!’ They lift it out, let it run through their fingers.
We break away from the women and follow a track further into the jungle. The dukun’s shack is a squat wooden structure with smoke leaking through the roof. Around it, a yard is pegged out neatly in bamboo. A couple of bare-bummed kids chase the chooks. Shell-shaped leaves spiral to rest. The dukun is nothing like I imagined, no mask or bones through his ears. He looks like an ordinary village bloke, crouching on the doorstep of his shack, mobile phone jammed between shoulder and ear, fingers racing the skin off a rambutan. He doesn’t stop talking when we arrive, so Matt and I drift to a bamboo bench and wait.
Troppo Page 11