She is very kind to you, I said and, picking up his pen, I drew a small flower on the top of each heading. It looks prettier now.
He leaned over to look and I smelled the familiar mix of tobacco and perfume, which reminded me of our first night in the park. It seemed a long time ago, so many unexpected things had not yet happened, and I felt a wave of sadness come at me and try to knock me down. I stood up, ready to go home, but he pushed me back down, gently by the shoulders.
Stay a while and talk.
I did not stay long. I thought it better to let him wish I were still there with him than stay too long and have him wish me gone. I did not tell him that the next day I would travel with my brother to my father’s village to get some medicine from the herbalist. Let him look for me in the evenings and wonder why I did not walk past. Just before I left, an idea came to me, quietly, like a small insect suddenly landing in my lap. I took Fajar’s pen from where it rested in the pages of the book and secretly placed it in my purse before taking leave of him.
Chapter Seven
Vic
20 September
It is two days before Ramadan. He came over this afternoon, bringing mangoes and young rose apples that looked like pink candy hearts. We perched on the bed, trying not to let the sweet mango and chilli water spill onto the sheets, and stared absently at the TV.
Fresh, he said, tasting the mango and pulling his lips back over his teeth.
It was fresh, and the room was cold. A crisp seventeen degrees, while outside the city blared with noise and heat.
He was eating the mango and stroking my knee and I was admiring his powder-blue T-shirt, which had gone out of style many years earlier back home. It had a streetscape on the front – something Greg Brady might have been comfortable wearing, and with Fajar’s brown skin it was vaguely reminiscent of the Afro haircuts and cool-cat New York bars of TV yesteryear. I almost expected to look out the window and see a line of station wagons parked outside, but instead there would be Kijang Jeeps with plastic Arabic signs reading the name of Allah and cardboard scented pine trees hanging from the rear-view mirrors. Despite his age and seventies wear, he always had a vaguely neo-classical Count-of-Monte-Cristo air about him – probably because of his quaint textbook English and the exaggerated rolling ‘r’s they use here.
He was sitting cross-legged on the bed, with his shoulders slightly hunched, translating the dialogue for me. I marvelled at the television women, who fall to pieces in any kind of crisis, crying like helpless, hysterical children. They are nothing like the women I’ve actually met here, who seem to be capable, strong, just as smart as anyone else. The real women are hard workers and, despite being covered from head to toe, they are harassed by groups of men on buses and street corners and at work. We were watching a drama about a girl who is chased out of the village by stone-throwing maniacs because she is pregnant and unmarried. I tried not to notice Fajar’s look of immense satisfaction as he watched her stumbling along the road, her forehead cut and bleeding. I wanted to ask him where he had been the night before when he had promised to visit, but I didn’t want to risk it; he was easily offended and given to temper tantrums, stomping off and turning off his mobile phone – the phone I gave him – for two or three days at a time. Wiping the last of the mango off his fingers, he leaned over and kissed me on the mouth and whispered softly: Just a moment, Vic. I must defecate first.
I have not been able to train him out of this habitual announcement. He will take his jeans and high-waisted underpants off by the bed and then wander off into the bathroom. Then there is the sound of a cigarette being lit and a bit later, frenzied bidet and shower noises, before he strolls back, takes off his T-shirt and slides under the covers.
21 September
Tonight there was an eclipse of the moon. It slowly turned dark red and then completely disappeared above the mosque where the men were praying, their low voices floating up into the stratosphere. I watched it from a rooftop swimming pool where earlier in the day I had offended a group of Saudi women by going for a swim wearing only my bathers. They had been sitting under the midday sun, their squat, fat bodies like perfect cubes draped in black cloth, watching over their children who were splashing and laughing in the water. They were like five angry ravens, perched on banana lounges, scowling ominously as I stepped out of my towel to reveal a very modest one-piece bathing suit. I wondered why they couldn’t swim when it was so hot and what other physical pleasures they were denied.
They were not there this evening to witness the display of bloody might from the ancient goddess, but I watched it, and this time, as I was all alone in the dark, I swam naked. The moon disappeared and then slowly re-emerged like a magic trick. The cool water was like silk on my skin and I floated with legs and arms stretched out, watching the sky. I imagined those women from earlier in the day were at home, with the children already in bed, watching television and secretly scoffing down kulfa and bars of pink and white nougat, bathing their fat bodies and applying cloying, scented oils against the heat.
As the last little semicircle of moon was coloured in, Fajar arrived in a cloud of excitement to take me home. I could feel the warm energy emanating from his back and thought it had something to do with the eclipse, and the sprinkling of stars that had also made a rare appearance that night.
As soon as we got off the bike he presented me with a box of deep fried biscuits with small goldfish pressed into them and a clear plastic bag of wine tied in a knot at the top. He had hunted down these treats for me as a way of saying thank you for our Bali trip, and because it was the last night he could see me before the fasting month began. After the last supper, he laid down the law – it was to be no sex for a month. I listened impassively, secretly struggling to dislodge the goldfish bones from the roof of my mouth with my tongue. He looked particularly young and sure of himself and his place in the world, and, for a moment, I wished I could join in and maybe even belong there. The magnitude of eight million people in one city participating in a shared ritual that went on for a whole month seemed reassuring and profound.
6 October
My enchantment with Ramadan has not lasted. The outside changes that have been taking place are subtle, but they have grown on me like a fungus. At first it just seemed that the mosque noises were getting louder and the prayers a little more frenzied; there were no food stalls open in the streets, but everything else was business as usual. Then I began to notice they were no longer playing Whitney Houston on a loop in the supermarket but some new songs that I suspected might be hymns. Mysteriously, wine disappeared from the supermarket shelves – but not beer, the beer was still sitting there happily for sale.
Wine is stronger, the supermarket girls explained.
What’s the difference? The rule isn’t ‘don’t drink strong alcohol’, the rule is ‘don’t drink alcohol’. What the hell is the difference? If you’re selling beer, you can sell wine.
It has been a resolution of mine to refrain from shouting at people in this country, no matter what the circumstances. Also, to control my urges to pontificate or point out why, exactly, another way would be more efficient and sensible; to, instead, smile calmly as someone chases me down the street waving something at me that I definitely would not buy; to refrain from sarcasm when asked rude personal questions by taxi drivers or when told by perfect strangers that I am fat. This time I didn’t manage it.
You’re still selling HAM for Chrissake!
I could feel my face going red and hear my voice droning on dreary and pointless. The girls in the supermarket closed their faces and their eyes glazed over, which was the standard response to bules losing their cool. It was the same in every supermarket – the wine was clearly there, behind a strip of brown hessian, but not for sale. The new piped music started to take on mocking and smug undertones, which weren’t there before.
Then, walking past the mosque, wineless, in search of dinner, I saw two lines of women kneeling forlornly at the back of a sea of men. They
were drowning in a kind of white gossamer sheeting, with only a peep of their faces showing. I couldn’t even see their hands. I averted my eyes and walked past swiftly, a little nasally man’s voice bleating out after me over the sound system.
I was gripped by the violent urge to run naked down the laneway, red hair blazing and shouting out curses to the Gods of Hate and Hypocrisy who seemed to be ruling this city. There had been too many months of biting my tongue, watching what happens to the women here. I wanted to cry out every ungodly carnal desire into the street and call for the great Goddess of Sexuality who has lost all of her ribbons and furs and has to creep around like Cinderella in the ashes or sit on a perch like an angry, tethered bird. She may not pout or purr or scream her pleasure. She covers herself in white gossamer, but is not radiant. She is broken, shackled and stunted like the bodies of the undernourished people who live here. She has a master and that master is called Husband. Father. Imam. Brother. Everywhere she turns she is assigned a sexual identity and is then denied the right to express it.
The only option was frivolous luxury. In desperation, I waved down a taxi, which crawled off towards the leafy suburb where the rich Indonesians and ex-pats are driven around in their SUVs and Ramadan is merely a quaint seasonal backdrop to affluence. One thing was certain – I was going to get wine. I headed straight for the special supermarket that kept fresh stocks of salami, stilton and Dom Pérignon. It was strange to see so many bules in one place. There seemed to be a special code there that said: Minimal eye contact, don’t smile. I don’t want to know you. It was if each white had their own relationship with Indonesia and did not want to taint it by sharing with others. Or maybe it was the high crazy-ratio making people keep their distance. You never knew who you were going to get stuck with – which mad marooned ex-pat who had forgotten how to go home would latch on to you and unleash their lonely story, the same story, more or less, coloured with intense hatred for the host country that they could not leave.
I returned home laden with expensive treats that didn’t make me feel any better.
The one big compensation has been Fajar. Despite the lecture, which had probably been more to himself than to me, during Ramadan he actually comes over more often than usual in a blaze of nervous passion and leaves to eat and pray in the cooling evening air.
Chapter Eight
Aryanti
When I got home from the Warung Fajar, I took the pen that I had taken from him and put it safely in my drawer. I planned to use some of the money that I had saved to see the dukun while I was in my father’s village. I would ask him to put a spell on Fajar, that he would forget about the bule and come back to me, and so I needed something from him to help make the spell strong. It was only a pen, but I had seen him touch it and even put it in his mouth and bite it. I would also take a flower that he had given me long ago that I had pressed between the pages of a book.
The plan was a good one, but my heart was in a panic as the bus climbed up the hill to my father’s village the next day. After all, to do this is forbidden in Islam. I did not want the spirits to be angry with me for using magic. I knew that they could do terrible things when they were upset, like send a great wave to knock over a whole town, or make someone fall down dead in the street without warning.
The village was very quiet after the big noise of Jakarta. I had the feeling that I had woken after a troubling dream and found myself in this cool, friendly place where everything was as it should be. The people are planted in the earth, and they live like trees in their villages, with a tree’s understanding of seasons and time. Nobody is in a hurry. Everybody rises at 3 am, when it is still cool and dark, and they go out into the fields to tend the rice and vegetables before the sun can strike them. The houses are made of earth and brick, and chickens scratch around the yards. But there is a sad feeling to this village now, because most of the young people have left to find work in the city, and some of the older people as well. There are not many children playing in the shade of the big trees, and abandoned huts are dotted along the dusty tracks that wind their way out to the rice fields. Of my father’s family, there was only my uncle left in the village, and his wife and younger children. The older children had already left.
After we had eaten with the family, my brother went to the river with the small cousins to check on their fish traps, while I set out to consult with the doctor. I was afraid that Aunty would want to come with me to buy the medicine, so I told her that Father had asked me to speak to the doctor alone. He was well known there as a natural healer, using herbs from his own garden and wild plants that grew on the mountain.
As soon as I had bought the medicine, I made my way to the cave of the dukun. I was afraid, although I knew he was not one of the sorcerers who send death and disease to people’s enemies. They do not allow this kind of magic here. Black magicians are cast out, and the graves of children and babies are guarded every night for forty nights after they are buried, so that sorcerers from other villages cannot steal their bodies.
The dukun came to the front of the cave, wearing only shorts and plastic slippers. He scratched at his belly and followed my gaze to the blood-red stone on the ring on his finger.
You must look very closely if you want to see, he said pleasantly, holding out his hand. Inside there are two jinn, who do not like to be disturbed by anyone but their master.
I looked closely into the ring, but I could not see anything there.
You cannot see because they do not want you to see them, but they may listen to your troubles if they are interested, he said.
We sat on the floor of the cave, and I told him the story of Fajar and Vic, and showed him the pen I had brought from the warung. Dukun was not happy that the story involved a bule, and even more troubled when I described her hair.
That colour is strong magic, he said. Especially when the hair grows down so far. Did you not bring me any of it? He frowned at the plastic biro and the squashed brown flower in front of him, and tugged at his beard. Then he went to the front of the cave and took a bottle that had been hanging from a tree outside. He kneeled down beside me and rubbed oil from the bottle into my temples and wrists, and then began chanting in a high, weak voice. The smell of the oil was strong and made my head dizzy and light. I was mesmerised by the strange chanting; it made me think of bones lying in a place where no rain fell. When the dukun had finished, he wrapped the pen in cloth and poured some of the oil into a small phial and tied this to a cord, which he placed around my neck.
Put it under your pillow and chant the words every night, he told me. His face was covered with perspiration and his hands trembled as he handed me the spell, which he had written on some white cloth. Walk back slowly and drink water when you arrive at your uncle’s house.
Outside, the world was suddenly bright yellow after the darkness of the cave, and the smell of ylang-ylang floated on the breeze like a song. The trees were shaking white flowers from their hair and the dragonflies, with their orange stick-bodies, darted forward and floated back helplessly on the wind’s current. A goat was grazing in the middle of a field, but I could see that it was not really a goat – there was an old man spirit living inside the animal. He lifted his hairy face and winked at me. I walked unsteadily through the village with the feeling that I was seeing all things as they had always been, yet for the first time, the colours behind the colours and the light behind the light, and there was a sharp buzzing noise, which was the sound of all living things, including the stones and the clouds.
I returned to the house of my uncle and drank water as instructed, and then slept immediately and dreamed a dream of voices chattering and hammering away like two angry birds arguing, but it wasn’t Bahasa they were speaking.
My brother and I stayed in the village for one more night, and in the morning went back to Jakarta with my father’s medicine. I did not look for Fajar, or go past his shop, as the dukun had told me not to seek him out. I went back to selling the cakes as usual, and every night c
hanted the words to the spell I had been given.
I was not surprised when, on the fourth day, as I was walking along the road, Fajar pulled up next to me on the bike. We did not speak, but I got on the back and he drove to a place where we could sit on the grass without being seen by too many people. I leaned back in his arms and we sat in silence and looked at the sky. I let him kiss my fingers one by one. Then, he used his big teeth and bit softly along the side of my hand, which was a very strange feeling.
We had been there together for a long time, when his phone began to ring, and before he could reach for it, I quickly took it from the pocket of his jacket. I hardly had time to see the name flashing there before he took it from me.
What does she want?
I do not know. She probably wants me to drive her somewhere. Where did you go the last days? he asked, switching the phone off. I missed you.
Weren’t you too busy with Vic to miss me?
Aryanti. How can you be jealous? Are you crazy? This is a woman who will help me, that is all.
For what, Fajar? For what reason will she give you all of this money?
The money is small for her. And she is very kind.
Why is she so kind? There must be a shrimp behind the stones. What does she want in return?
Sayang, he replied. She is forty years old. Do you think I am in love with my grandmother?
All right. I believe you are not in love with her, but an older woman may fall in love with a young man.
That’s your mother’s idea. That every girl will like me.
My mother thinks you are too handsome. That’s all.
What do you think, sayang? Am I too handsome?
I looked at his smooth face and dark eyes and was about to make a joke, but surprised myself by taking both his hands in mine and saying, Yes.
As we kissed he toyed with the button on my blouse, and then his long fingernail traced the outline of my breasts. Something was different. I no longer wanted to fight him when he touched me like this. But I was worried that someone might see us.
Ramadan Sky Page 8