by Mike Stoner
Praise for
JALAN JALAN
“MIKE STONER HAS STYLISHLY REINVENTED AND REBOOTED THIS PARTICULAR ‘EXPAT IN ASIA’ GENRE—THE ENGLISH TEACHER IN A FOREIGN LAND BREAKING HEARTS AND HAVING HIS HEART BROKEN ALL WHILE SAILING INTO HEARTS OF STARLESS, MIDNIGHT DARKNESS. IT'S A GREAT, ROLLICKING READ AND STONER HAS LIVED IT, LOVED IT AND RETURNED TO REGALE US WITH IT.”
—KARL TARO GREENFELD, AUTHOR OF THE SUBPRIMES
“JALAN JALAN CAPTURES PERFECTLY WHAT IT IS TO BE YOUNG AND ADRIFT IN SOUTHEAST ASIA. BY TURNS RIBALD AND TENDER, AND WITH MANY MOMENTS OF STRANGE MAGIC, THIS IS A NOVEL SUFFUSED WITH HEARTBREAK, HUMIDITY, AND THE SCENT OF CLOVE CIGARETTES.”
—TIM HANNIGAN, AUTHOR OF A BRIEF HISTORY OF INDONESIA
“TENDER AND ACCOMPLISHED, FUNNY AND SAD, STONER’S TALE, A COLLISION OF CULTURE, GEOGRAPHY AND SEX, IS A VERY IMPRESSIVE DEBUT.”
—DAVID FLUSFEDER, AUTHOR OF THE GIFT
Published by Tuttle Publishing, an imprint of Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd.
www.tuttlepublishing.com
Copyright © 2016 Mike Stoner
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress cataloging is in process.
ISBN 978-0-8048-4629-5
ISBN 978-1-4629-1830-0 (ebook)
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For Dad, Andy, Linda,
and everyone else who is still there,
living in those moments.
CONTENTS
ESCAPE
HUNGER
HELLO GOODBYE
PEBBLES
VISAS AND VINYL
ALBINOS AND ACTION MEN
INSPECTION AND APPROVAL
MILLIONAIRE GURU
A LITTLE PIECE OF CAKE
LIBERATION
IN YER FACE
HYPOCRITES AND IDIOTS
VICTIMS OF ECONOMY
BIRTHDAY PARTY
POM-POM
WALNUT
MINNIE
IN THE MOUTH OF THE VOLCANO
GOING WITH IT
MEAT OR VEG?
STATIVE AND ACTIVE
SEASICK
ROLLING, BREAKING, ROLLING
TYING THINGS UP
COCKROACH HOCKEY
CRACKED OR FIXED
TIME TRAVEL
‘And I asked myself about the present:
how wide it was, how deep it was,
how much was mine to keep.’
—Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
ESCAPE
Achilly late-spring day on the seafront in a preseason coastal town; a few couples meandering hand in hand, hatted grannies on Zimmer frames, granddads in electric carts tied to black Labradors, kids wobbling on Rollerblades, wearing fingerless gloves. People trying out the sun’s weak warmth for the first time of the year, looking through winter-softened eyes at a cold calm sea. The blue-white pier tinged with the brown-orange of rust and rotting wood, is dipping its toes in the spring-tide water. Small waves whisper as they curl in on the pebbled beach.
Drinking tea with a tiled counter between them. The young man and the young woman, leaning into each other. Hands almost touching. Two people who have just met, talking about everything like best friends. All early uncertainty and awkwardness gone, evaporated in the steam of half a dozen cuppas. She steps away every now and then to let an elderly lady buy her own tea, or a young mum with pram and toddler buy the first ice cream of the year; a mini-milk, it’s too early in the season to turn the Whippy machine on. And then she moves back in, leaning across the counter further, until finally she takes that first kiss, rips it right off his face like a plaster and he’s left there, licking his lips, feeling for damage, wanting more.
The sun is now midway between midday and sunset.
‘I need to go,’ she says.
‘And I need to close up,’ I say.
We look at each other. She is back-lit in silver with ebony hair tumbling from under a green hat onto a green scarf. Green eyes blink once from under thick black lashes. A smile appears briefly at the corners of her lips.
‘Well?’ she says.
‘Well,’ I answer through a mouth of dry, crumbly clay.
‘The tea?’
‘The tea?’
‘The tea.’
‘Oh the tea.’
‘Yes. The tea.’
‘On the house. Free.’
‘Thank you.’
She raises one eyebrow. I smile not knowing what I’m supposed to do in response, not sure what she even means with this gesture. Why is she raising her so very fine and utterly black eyebrow at me?
‘So?’ she asks.
‘So,’ I reply. I move straws and spinning windmills and a postcard rack carrying pictures of cliffs and lighthouses and gardens full of flowers off the counter.
An afternoon has passed too quickly and now my mouth has reached a point of immobility. My mind races to think of what I should say to her now, before she goes, so that this is more than an exceptional afternoon, so that it is to be repeated. I must think of something and force it down and along the muscle of my tongue.
‘Eight o’clock,’ she says with an eyebrow raised once more.
‘Yes.’
‘In front of the pier,’ she tells me.
‘Yes.’
‘Good.’
‘Good.’ I smile. I reach across. I put my hand into the softness and warmth behind her neck and guide her forward. I kiss her. She kisses me. We kiss.
It is…
It is…
Beautiful.
It is Painful.
It is Hurtful.
Mean.
I open my eyes and a tear falls, landing on the back of my hand. I wipe it on my trousers.
Oh, you hurtful bastard, taking me by surprise again. Why do you make me relive it? It’s done. Laura’s dead. Forget it.
I blink and look from the window and through rain that batters the car. I see night, and that is all. Darkness and water stick to the glass like oil, thick and viscous.
You will not get in my head anymore. I want you gone. Enough of you and your pain and pathet
ic sentimentalities. You and her stay down in my gut where it’s dark. Be quiet and be forgotten. Lie there, cuddle up and wrap yourselves together in your self-pity. Sleep next to the beating of my heart and leave me be.
My hand scrunches the front of my shirt, wishing it could reach under, through the flesh, and rip them out forever.
‘Is first time in Indonesia?’
I look to the man driving this four-by-four. His name is Pak Andy and he has just collected me from Medan’s airport on Sumatra. He’s a Chinese Indonesian with a swirl of thinning hair and a large mole under his lip. My new boss.
‘Yes.’ My blunt answer does the trick and doesn’t lead to any more questions. As he was late in meeting me at the airport and his voice hints at boredom, I don’t think he cares anyway.
The silence returns. I try to focus on and imagine where I’m being taken; an apartment, a house, a hostel, a hovel? I haven’t got a bloody clue where. I haven’t got a clue about this country. And I’ve just signed up for a year. The first year of the new millennium and I’m here, lost mentally and geographically. How messed up is that?
After five minutes of more silence the rain has stopped and billboards appear along the roadside, lit up in the car’s beams like TV screens being switched on; happy Indonesian faces drinking condensed milk, coffee, driving Nissans, smoking cigarettes without health warnings.
Then the city starts coming at us. First little roadside shacks appear, made of bamboo with blue plastic tarpaulin roofs and young shirtless men frying food under them. I open my window to let in the after-rain air. The bittersweet smell of soy sauce and chilli rushes through the car and the boomph boomph of music increases, decreases, increases as we pass various roadside sound systems. Behind the shacks houses start appearing: low white buildings with white perimeter walls and trees sprouting over the top of them. As the houses increase in number the smells start to vary and mingle. Old rubbish, fried chicken, rotting fruit, dust from the already drying roads, coffee.
‘Close your window,’ says Pak, ‘we are coming to traffic lights.’
I wonder why an open window should be a problem, but I close it anyway.
The flight from England via Singapore is finally taking its toll on me and a yawn escapes. Through watery eyes I see traffic lights ahead trickle from green to red. In front of us two lines of three or four cars are coming to a stop. We pull up behind them. I’m looking to see what it is that worries Pak Andy so much when there’s a tap on my window. A boy stands there, face pressed up to the tinted glass and hands cupped around almost-black eyes trying to look in. At first his eyes move and flutter like a blind man’s while he tries to focus on the inside of the car. Finally they find me and a big toothy smile appears like a cleaver’s cut through flesh to the white of bone. His hands quickly shape themselves into a bowl and I hear muffled words through the glass, ‘Please, bule. Please, mister.’
I look at Pak Andy and he is just staring straight ahead while waving his hand and shaking his head at two young boys tapping on his window.
I shift in the seat and slide my hand into my front pocket and feel around. When I touch the hexagonal sides of a fifty-pence I remember I only have some English change in my front pockets and large Indonesian notes in the wallet in my back pocket. The boy has his face pressed to the glass again. Shrugging my shoulders at him I show him empty hands. I feel like a cheap bastard sitting in this monster of a car, pretending I have no money. I wear skin the colour of—and thanks to the air-conditioning, the texture of—uncooked chicken. He must know I’m no poor man compared to him. He cups his hands again, tilts his head and stares so pitifully from under his lowered eyebrows that I can’t help myself. I pull my wallet out from under my bony behind. As I fumble out a crisp, clean, not sure how many rupiah note, the car starts pulling off.
‘No. Wait,’ I say.
Pak Andy steals a quick sideways glance at me and looks forward again. The car doesn’t stop. The boy is jogging beside us, still trying to get his face back against the glass, and manages a glance at the note in my fingers. He’s running and alternately tapping at the window and pointing to my hand. Pak turns the car right and the boy loses the race. I look over my shoulder and see him in his shorts and button-less open shirt raise his hands to the black night sky and shake his head.
‘Very bad people. Always asking for money. They should get a job. I have a job. You have a job. They should get a job.’ Pak is shaking his head. ‘Very bad.’
I return the note to my wallet. I just hope my bed isn’t much further. I don’t want to sit next to this man for any longer than I have to.
‘We will be at the school very soon,’ he says.
I turn my reddening and tired face towards him.
‘I will give you your timetable for classes before I take you to your house.’
There is a little smile touching his mouth. It isn’t warm.
I close my eyes. Try to make my mind wander to irrelevant places. Ignore the fact that I’ve taken a dislike to my new boss, that I’ve made another glorious fuck-up in my life. My stomach grumbles. Lack of real food? Or the two additions to my innards?
The pair of them, muted and gagged. Shoved down in my gut and not allowed to interrupt my ‘new’ life until I’m ready for them, which I might never be. Old Me isn’t as clear-cut as New Me. I can push moments of life aside. He can’t. He dwells and sobs on the things which I try to ignore. He’s pathetic. He wants to share his moments in time. Relive them like they’re still now. Well he can just shut up about his moments with Laura and the times that the two of them want to regurgitate.
I’ve had enough. That’s why I’ve got rid of him, of them. She is dead and he needs to shut up about the past. Shut up saying that it is still there. That those moments still exist. That if they happen in the first place then they must still be there, like an object to revisit. He needs to stop telling me that if those moments still exist, then, maybe, so does Laura..…
Just stop.
There is no point. Not to his questions and not to her constant amateur philosophising. Her quotes from head-fucks like Einstein. Stupid fucking gems like, ‘… the distinction between past, present, and future is only an illusion, however persistent.’ Blah blah blah.
She messes her hair up like Einstein when she does it.
Bullshit.
He drives me fucking mad with his hope. She drives me mad by showing up in my head, talking her rubbish. So stay in the dark, both of you. For good. You, Old Me, are as dead as her. A ghost. Stay with the ghost of her.
I rub my eyes and look at the outside. We are now moving slowly through traffic. The city has enveloped us. Cars and motorbikes spew black smoke and edge along on either side of the car. Then we pull off of the road and onto the forecourt of an ugly building.
‘We are here.’
I look to Pak Andy, and something in me wants to hurt him.
HUNGER
T he school is green and white under flickering floodlights. It is three storeys tall. Above it a green and white sign spells out ‘English World’. In front of the building stand about ten people, smoking, talking, but mostly just smoking. They are older teenagers, some dark-skinned Indonesians, some Chinese, all holding books under their arms. Others walk out of the glass doors: attractive dark-haired girls; Chinese boys dressed like James Dean popping cigarettes into their mouths as they flick back their amateur quiffs; younger kids, about fifteen in white-shirted and grey-trousered school uniforms. They cross the two-car-sized forecourt we have just pulled into, passing by my window, and disappear into the mayhem of the road we’ve just left.
‘The classes have finished,’ says Pak. He turns off the engine, opens his door and is gone.
‘Righto.’ I stare after him, open my door and climb down from my seat.
I enter an airless outside; the smell of diesel and two-stroke engines sticks to the atmosphere like a greasy film. I look behind me at the road. Motorcycle taxis putt-putt and leak black fumes, car taxis beep at
them to move, bicycle taxis ring their bells for lazy pedestrian attention and nothing moves at more than ten miles an hour on the constipated road.
‘Hey. You. Hello,’ one of a group of four sitting in front of the school shouts.
I smile back, but am too tired and too unsure how to reply. Confidence and energy are dripping from me like oil from a sump. It won’t be long before I seize up.
‘You are the new teacher?’ He is strutting towards me, a Chinese boy in leather jacket, white open-neck shirt and a bouncing quiff.
‘Yes. I am.’
‘I am Johnny,’ he announces as if he is the MC at his own concert, all stress on his name. Pulling his collar up around his neck, he flicks a white filtered cigarette between his lips.
‘Nice to meet you.’ I wonder if I’ve accidentally flown Time Machine Airlines and travelled back to the ’50s. I half-expect him to start singing an Elvis song and the people on the forecourt to start jiving.
‘What’s your name, man?’ he asks, looking at me from under his quiff.
‘I’m…’ A piercing two-fingered whistle, louder than the noise of the traffic, kills my introduction. Pak Andy is standing in the door to the school waving his hand for me to go away. I look about, trying to work out where he wants me to go to. I point a finger at his car. He shakes his head and waves his hand some more.
I point to the street, lost by his directions.
‘No, man. He wants you to go in,’ says Johnny.
‘So why’s he shooing me away?’
‘I don’t know what “shooing” is, man, but what he does means come here.’ He waves his cigarette at a scowling Pak.
I point to my chest and then to the school to get confirmation from Pak. He nods and waves for me to go away like he’s trying to lose snot stuck to his hand. Even unspoken language is foreign here.
‘Thanks. Maybe see you later,’ I say to Johnny.
‘Yeah. See you, man. Watch out for Pak Andy. He’ll take your last rupiah.’
I step from the heat and stench of the street into the skin-prick-ling coolness of the school reception, all green and white with plastic plants gathering dust. Pak is standing with an elbow on the reception counter. Seated behind it is an overweight Chinese guy of about twenty-five. Even with the fridge-like air conditioning there is a wet patch spreading out from under each armpit. He studies me through long thin eyes that are hardly there.