As if summoned, a slight Balinese man approached their table. ‘You want photos?’ He pushed a flip album in their direction. ‘Only fifty thousand rupiah.’
Lorenzo leaned over to inspect them, smiling at the expressions of shock and elation on the parasailers’ faces. ‘I’ll buy one for my wife, to prove I’m working just as hard as her.’ He felt for his wallet, then passed the man a crisp blue note. The seller slipped Lorenzo’s selection into a commemorative frame.
‘Is it cheaper if we buy a few together?’ asked Annie.
The man tilted his head to one side as if confused.
‘What about thirty thousand each, if we all buy one?’ she proposed.
The man shook his head. ‘No, ma’am, that price is too low.’
Annie frowned. ‘There’s supposed to be a culture of bargaining here, right?’
Remy shrugged. ‘But thirty thousand rupiah is …’ he did the mental calculations, ‘only two or three euro? That is still a good price.’ Especially since the scrawny-looking photo seller had a desperate air about him. Even more so than the beggars Remy encountered outside the stairs descending into the Paris Métro, who called out to passing commuters from beneath their tattered blankets.
Remy turned to Janelle. ‘Today’s memories are priceless! I will buy one, too. Actually, two.’ He held up two fingers at the seller, then leaned closer to Janelle. ‘You choose the one you like best, it is my gift to you.’
‘Oh.’ Janelle looked surprised. ‘You don’t have to do that.’
‘I want to. They would be resuscitating me on the beach right now if you weren’t there earlier.’
‘I didn’t help that much.’ Janelle giggled. ‘But thank you, that’s a lovely thought. This one’s funny …’ She pointed at a photo of them landing in the water, their faces a mirror of each other. Eyebrows arched in surprise, mouths open, hands clasped.
Annie and Henry followed suit, each selecting photos and paying the seller.
Then the man turned expectantly to Cara, the only member of the group who hadn’t yet purchased a photograph, but she shook her head.
‘You must buy a souvenir too,’ urged Remy. ‘To remember this moment together, n’est-ce-pas?’
Cara surveyed him coolly. ‘I live here. I don’t need a souvenir.’ She waved the seller away.
Why was Cara so bristly? Remy wondered, observing her over the rim of his lukewarm coffee. She certainly didn’t have Janelle’s friendly manner, which Remy had come to consider an Australian trait. But cultural stereotypes were dangerous, he reminded himself: he was not quite the Frenchman he was born to be, after all.
He could still remember the evening he’d realised that, aged twenty-four. He’d been sharing a meal with his parents on the fourth floor of his spacious apartment in Saint-Germain-des-Prés, bequeathed by his great-grandparents. Despite living in the same building commissioned by their forebears in the nineteenth century—his parents occupied l’étage noble, the second floor, while renters occupied the rest—they rarely shared a meal together beyond weekly Sunday dinners. But on this particular Friday evening, Remy had just completed his first week as an entry-level investment officer at the historic Société Paris bank. He was feeling slightly overwhelmed by his new responsibilities and his mother had offered to cook.
‘Well,’ his father had declared with satisfaction, as he decanted a bottle of St-Estèphe Bordeaux into a Dansk crystal flask, ‘we couldn’t have predicted this in your younger years, could we?’
Remy instantly understood the inference. Compared to his confrères at the exclusive private school he’d attended, Remy had always been a little too goofy, a little too outdoorsy, and a little too slovenly for his father’s liking. A threat, of sorts, to their conservative pedigree.
‘I was concerned in your last year of university,’ his mother added, in a veiled reference to his former girlfriend, a professor in gender studies at the Sorbonne. ‘It’s a responsibility, being a Brive. You’ve chosen well, Remy. Claudine de Croix works in finance too, doesn’t she? You two should catch up.’
He’d acknowledged her words with a compliant nod, while his stomach churned. Claudine de Croix? His mother had been trying to matchmake them since childhood, and Remy could understand why: Claudine was pretty, poised and intelligent. But with a dangerously inflated sense of her own self-importance, as far as Remy was concerned, which his mother somehow failed to see. This wilful or ignorant blindness by his mother to the follies of her own social class was a hazard, Remy decided, and a trait he didn’t wish to emulate.
As he looked across the vast polished dining table at his parents, Remy felt a growing panic. Tsunami-mind was filling the room with spectres of their noble ancestry; not quite part of les 200 familles, but traceable still to the Revolution. The figures began milling about the table, peering down their Gallic noses at him, moving closer and closer until Remy clamped his eyes shut and blurted, ‘Arrête!’ When he opened his eyes again and observed the alarmed look on his parents’ faces, Remy felt even more keenly aware of his departure from the mould of being a Brive.
After his parents left that evening, Remy had sat alone in the living room long into the night, staring at the glowing embers in the fireplace. He was expected, he knew, to marry and populate this very apartment building with children who could run between the floors. His sister, Camille, three years his senior, would have been up to the task—she was a classic Brive. Practically a carbon copy of their mother, she was already married into a family of lineage in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Her privileged world as a wife, mother and part-time solicitor was a natural extension of her upbringing.
But Remy? He was a messy aberration within his well-bred family. He could think of nothing worse than procreating with Claudine de Croix and herding their children for the holidays to Brive-la-Gaillarde in the Corrèze region. He was not looking forward to inheriting his parents’ draughty chateau there; in fact, he felt largely undeserving of all the bounty accompanying his genealogy. His hefty bank balance alone embarrassed him, speaking only of the efforts of his forebears and describing nothing of himself. Remy resolved that night to remedy this situation through personal exertion.
Over the next few years he’d done just that, working ridiculous hours and rising steadily through the bank’s hierarchy until, finally, he had twenty-two staff members reporting to him. But even when his astute investment decisions allowed him to purchase a studio apartment in the exclusive Marais precinct, which he then rented out for a princely sum, Remy’s uneasiness never receded. Tsunami-mind still accosted him at inopportune moments, running twenty-second brain clips of stern uniformed officers—the career police—bursting into meetings and interrogating him in front of clients. Did you, or did you not, receive your first career break on the basis of ancestry alone?
Even after a decade at the bank, Remy felt frightened by what the answer to this question might be. And perhaps, he reflected now, it was this self-doubt, in addition to his crippling fear of heights, that had contributed to his faltering in the tower at La Défense. Remy stared into his cup of bitter Balinese coffee, his face burning at the memory of how he’d destroyed any chance he might have had of promotion to the revered role of General Manager, Investment.
A gust of wind whipped a blast of sand into the warung, interrupting the others’ conversation, and Remy looked up from his reminiscing. Ominous-looking clouds had gathered above the beach, like a puffy grey blanket trapping the baking heat below.
‘We were lucky this morning,’ said Annie, just as the first drops of rain began to sprinkle across the sand. ‘There won’t be any parasailing this afternoon, I’d say.’
Pak Tony poked his head around the warung door and motioned towards the car park. ‘A storm’s coming. Pak Ketut is here with the minibus. Time to make our way back to Ubud.’
After paying for their drinks, the group filed back to the bus. Remy was grateful for the cooling rain, a temporary respite from the oppressive heat.
Inside t
he minibus, Annie and Henry sat together. They seem peculiarly well matched, Remy thought: the consummate American talker and the quintessential English listener. Even the chic Italian and spiky Cara had evidently created some kind of bond while they were in the air, taking a seat together at the front of the bus. Pak Tony’s parasailing tactic was clever, throwing together individuals who might otherwise avoid each other.
Janelle boarded the bus in front of Remy, but paused to talk to the driver. Pak Ketut greeted her like an old friend. It was a habit of Janelle’s, it seemed, to converse with any Balinese person she encountered: retreat staff, the parasailing crew, even the old woman in the warung. This dashed Remy’s hopes of following her to a seat, so he walked nonchalantly to the rear of the bus. Pak Tony bounded on a moment later, prompting Janelle to move along the aisle.
‘You’ve all done some serious fear-facing today,’ Pak Tony exclaimed, as they pulled out of the car park. ‘Especially Remy. Great work!’
Remy grinned as the others applauded; then he waved at Janelle and patted the adjacent seat. To his delight, she continued down the aisle and sat next to him.
‘Hello,’ he whispered, resisting an outrageous impulse to squeeze her knee.
‘Hi,’ she whispered back, her eyes trained on Pak Tony. Remy tried to follow suit, but her physical presence was distracting. He could smell her, he was sure; a heady combination of coconut, citrus and sea salt.
‘Are you wearing perfume?’ he murmured. Just then, a repulsive stench filled the minibus, the foul odour of rotten fish, overripe watermelon and rancid butter.
‘That’s not nice, Remy.’ Janelle pinched her nose between her thumb and forefinger.
‘I didn’t mean …’
‘Close the vents,’ Pak Tony ordered the driver, as the bus passed by a mound of rubbish spewing out of a huge concrete receptacle onto the road, on which several dogs and a brood of chickens were scavenging.
‘Remy,’ Pak Tony continued, when the smell began to clear, ‘what did you learn today about facing fears? Did you use your magic bottle of love up in the sky?’
‘Actually …’ Remy glanced at Janelle. ‘I didn’t have to. I tried to relax and focus on the beauty around me.’ He stole another glance at Janelle. ‘Having someone with me helped a lot.’
Pak Tony smiled. ‘You’re right, Remy. Those techniques are helpful, especially sharing the experience. You embraced your fear, which is exactly what desensitisation therapy is all about. I’m proud of you.’ He led the group in another rousing round of applause.
Remy nodded, quietly proud too. A month ago, if someone had told him he’d be parasailing off the coast of Bali—with an enticing Australian woman at his side—he simply wouldn’t have believed it.
‘Just a brief reminder of what we’re doing now,’ Pak Tony went on. ‘We’re heading back to Ubud for the first of our passion talks. Janelle and Annie are doing theirs today. Tomorrow, it’s Henry and Lorenzo, right after our Balinese water cleansing ceremony. Then, on day four, we have Cara and Remy.’
Remy was privately glad he’d been scheduled for the final round of passion talks. Even with two more days to prepare, he was struggling to identify a suitable topic. He enjoyed chess, GrecoRoman wrestling, and hiking in green precincts within a short train ride of Paris. But could any of those be branded a passion?
‘Are you ready for your talk?’ he asked Janelle.
‘I think so,’ she said. ‘I changed my mind about my topic this morning, though. I redid the whole thing before breakfast.’
‘Why?’
She shifted in her seat. ‘It’s a long story.’
‘I love long stories.’
Her eyes narrowed, as if weighing him up.
‘Only if you want to tell me,’ he added.
After a moment, Janelle said, ‘Okay. Well, I’ve been sponsoring an orangutan in Borneo for a few years now and I was going to talk about the role of palm oil in destroying habitat, because that’s what big corporates usually plant after they knock down the rainforest. It’s happening all over the world, not just in Indonesia. I’m a member of Global Forest Watch.’ Her earnest eyes made Remy’s stomach somersault. ‘Did you know that the word orangutan actually means “person of the forest” in Malay?’
Primates were a subject about which Remy was almost entirely ignorant. ‘I think I saw something about that once when I was little,’ he said, trying to dredge up a distant memory. ‘A film with Sigourney Weaver in it.’
‘Gorillas in the Mist?’ Janelle laughed. ‘That was about gorillas in Rwanda.’
Wrong species, wrong continent. What a fool I am making of myself, Remy thought. He turned to the bus window and watched the tropical downpour, trying to conceal his embarrassment. The rain was spearing down, causing traffic chaos. Motorbikes lined the roadside while drivers scrambled to remove raincoats from panniers. Poorly drained parts of the road were awash with floating leaf litter, plastic bottles and other rubbish.
The minibus stopped at a busy intersection, next to a convoy of other vehicles. Remy noticed a large electronic timer attached to a traffic light, its red numerals counting down the seconds to green. A Balinese melody blared out of a speaker, a jarring jangle of xylophones, gongs, chimes and cymbals, audible even over the deluge. Remy could only presume the music was for the entertainment of waiting motorists.
‘How can they call that music?’ he muttered.
‘Well, it’s about five hundred years old, for starters,’ said Janelle. ‘It’s called gamelan. Almost every village has a set of instruments and anyone can learn to play them, as long as they’re prepared to practise. It’s like every suburb in Melbourne having a community orchestra, or in Paris …’
‘Every arrondissement,’ said Remy. He felt boorish for dismissing the music so readily. ‘You seem very knowledgeable about … gamelan,’ he observed. ‘Is that the topic of your talk?’
‘No.’ Janelle laughed rather guiltily. ‘I just read about it in the Lonely Planet.’
Remy smiled. ‘What is your topic then?’
Pak Ketut turned his head and hailed Pak Tony. ‘I take a detour,’ he called, steering the bus onto a narrow side street. ‘Too much water.’
The road was partially flooded, but Remy was surprised to see most motorbike riders simply standing out of their seats and riding on through the torrent. He glanced back at Janelle to gauge her reaction to this sight, and was horrified to see tears in her eyes.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Did I say something wrong?’
She shook her head, composing herself. ‘Are you ready for my long story?’
Remy listened quietly as she told him about her family. A father who’d passed away prematurely when Janelle was fourteen, leaving behind a mother who’d become permanently afraid of life beyond her home—especially of flying. She described her close relationship with her older brother, Kyle, and his teenage daughter, Arabella, and the last time she’d seen her niece. How they’d walked along the beach together, a few weeks after Janelle’s twenty-ninth birthday, and talked about the cruel comments Arabella had been subjected to in the schoolyard. And then the contents of the email Janelle had received only yesterday from Kyle that had shocked her to the core.
‘The doctor thinks Bella’s bulimic,’ she explained, her voice quivering. ‘I mean, I knew she was getting thinner, but I didn’t realise she was sick. They’re taking her to an eating disorders clinic. The worst thing is, on the night I saw her, Arabella told me that she was being bullied at school about her body. She told me how it made her feel. But all I did was offer a bunch of stupid words that didn’t help at all.’
A single tear trickled down Janelle’s cheek and Remy lifted up the edge of his t-shirt to wipe it. ‘It is all I have, sorry,’ he said.
‘Thank you,’ she said, letting him dab her face. ‘Good thing we’re up the back of the bus. I feel so powerless. I’m livid with all those bloody fashion magazines spreading ridiculous expectations about women’s bodies. Young
girls like Bella are impressionable. They try to conform to these stupid ideals of skinny-as-a-rake women with big boobs. Can’t we contemplate a bit of diversity?’
Remy didn’t understand all of Janelle’s words, but he saw the distress in her eyes.
‘And it’s not just young girls,’ she continued, ‘it’s women of all ages. Did you see the cosmetic surgery centres we passed today on our way to Jimbaran? Full of Western women paying for new breasts or a designer vagina.’ She stopped and looked at Remy apologetically. ‘I’m sorry, Remy, I’m ranting.’
‘You are very upset for your niece,’ he said. ‘That is reasonable. Will you talk about this at your passion talk?’
‘I wouldn’t call it talking, but yes,’ she replied. ‘I’m dedicating my passion talk to Arabella. Pak Ketut took me to the markets this morning to get a few things for my … outfit.’ She looked briefly terrified, then her expression returned to normal. ‘Could you possibly film it for me? I want to send it to Arabella afterwards in a private YouTube link.’
‘Of course,’ said Remy, impressed by how much Janelle seemed to care. About the orangutans of Borneo, the world’s rainforests, the gamelan orchestras of Bali, teenagers with eating disorders and, naturally, her own family. He considered what he cared about. The last time he’d cried was after the defeat of Paris Saint-Germain to archrivals Montpellier in round 32 of the Ligue 1 football season. Janelle’s compassion is more than refreshing, he thought. It’s intoxicating.
Catching himself staring at her, he turned away. Outside the window, he saw a woman squatting in a narrow irrigation ditch running alongside a small shop signposted Bengkel. Inside, two mechanics were hunched over a motorbike, a mass of tools and wire coils strewn around them. The woman was within their line of vision, but neither of them paid her any attention. She simply crouched in the ditch barely two metres away, holding a newspaper above her head with one hand, and cradling a baby in the other. She shifted her position slightly, to hitch her long sarong above her knees and turn her face away from the road. Only then did Remy realise she was defecating.
Fearless Page 12