When the World Was Steady

by Claire Messud

  And then, of course, there were the ones who came and went, tourists, tour guides, just women passing through, although there had been none since Emmy’s arrival. She knew there were people who would think she was one such, despite her age. Whether this was somehow pleasing or purely a source for alarm she couldn’t quite decide.

  But on this day, eleven days into Emmy’s stay with the Sparkes, two things were supposed to take place that might, Emmy felt, radically alter her fragile grasp on the household. When she had said as much to Max, he laughed and said, a little bitterly, ‘Damn right they will. You’ll have to stay another six months to figure it out.’

  Figuring it out, Emmy was convinced, would mean being able to pass judgement, which in turn would mean knowing where she stood, what she believed. And only then would she be able to go home and know how to begin again. In spite of everything, she was half in love with this life, and she knew Max was too. They both needed to understand; their pleasure and their quiet horror needed explaining. She sometimes thought Max already knew more than he pretended, but as with the women, it wasn’t ultimately clear where his loyalties lay.

  Two things, two events. Emmy remembered them both before she even washed her face. She remembered them as she peered out into the growing daylight. Today, first of all, little Ruby was arriving from Thailand, all of three years old, to stay with her father and half-brother. What nobody seemed to know for certain, and what Max seemed most concerned about, was whether Aimée, Ruby’s mother, would be coming to stay as well. She had been to the house before, in the time of the American clothes exporter, and the visit had not been fortuitous. K’tut had told Max this. He thought the strain of that time had brought on his ulcer, a wound that still had him driving to a doctor in Den Pasar every week. K’tut didn’t want to go to meet the plane, because if Aimée was on it, he didn’t want to know. Just thinking about it made him sweat, he said.

  And the second thing was a party, the celebration of a wedding. It would be a chance to see Buddy’s real friends, who were coming to celebrate the marriage of a foreigner from the north of the island, whom Buddy fondly referred to as ‘Kraut’, to a Balinese woman named Madé, whose family lived in a village near Ubud. Emmy could not help her curiosity: she wanted to see what these friends, foreign and native, were like, what it meant for a man like Buddy to have friends, and she wanted to know whether Buddy would continue to play the role of feudal lord amid his minions, or whether a new aspect would reveal itself.

  When she stepped outside, she could tell that the whole house was already humming. The workmen did not pause, as on other mornings, to greet and to appraise her. A young girl she hadn’t seen before was arranging frangipani flowers around the carved gateway at the foot of the path that separated Buddy’s world from the hotel below and from the road. And the number of flip-flops piled outside the sitting-room door indicated that there were many more women at work than usual.

  The large room had been turned upside down: the women were brushing and mopping, and more were calling to each other in the narrow kitchen. Rolls of mosquito netting had been brought in to encase the porch after dark, and were half-spread, like huge spider webs across one end of the room, where two women knelt to inspect the laced pattern for holes. Spiced smells and heat hung already on the air.

  Only K’tut remained unaffected by the commotion; he sat cross-legged on the bed in a white shirt and sarong, smoking, intent upon a seventies film playing without sound on the television.

  ‘Busy busy, isn’t it?’ ventured Emmy, perching beside him. ‘Good film?’

  ‘Max is still sleeping,’ he said. ‘Buddy’s out.’

  ‘In town? With Suchi?’

  He shrugged.

  ‘Are you worried about today?’

  He looked up from the television and narrowed his eyes at her. ‘I’m going to the doctor today. I’m always worrying about the doctor. I think he’s a bad man. Very bad man.’

  ‘I meant about Ruby coming. And Aimée.’

  ‘Aimée?’ He made a face. ‘I’m going to the doctor. Then maybe I’m taking a holiday. Buddy don’t know trouble when she’s coming.’

  ‘Well … no chance of breakfast today, I suppose?’ Emmy thought K’tut looked at her disapprovingly.

  ‘Ask Jenny,’ he said, his gaze flitting back to the television screen.

  When Emmy had hovered for a few moments and had not found any sign of Jenny’s efficient movements, or any sounds of life from upstairs, she decided to walk to the western-style warung halfway into town, down by the bridge, to have a slice of chocolate mousse cake for breakfast. If K’tut’s monosyllabic chill was any indication, this day, Emmy thought, might be less exciting and less revealing than she had hoped.

  Max, semi-somnolent, scratched himself. This was the big day. He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but instead found himself listening, with his whole body, to the tiniest sounds. He heard the creak of his father’s door, and then nothing.

  It was the silence that was telling: if it had been Buddy, Max would have heard his jaunty, heavy tread, and perhaps a whistle or some muttering. When it was Suchi, there was a little noise, breathy cooings as the lovers parted at Buddy’s door, speaking their empty lovers’ language for public benefit. But silence meant it was Jenny, slipping out and down the road, just to wait and walk up again as though coming from home. Max didn’t know why she bothered; everyone knew. And as Suchi got more pregnant and less inclined to love, the dawn was increasingly punctuated by what Max named Jenny’s moment of silence.

  Sometimes he imagined, as a joke, the morning when Emmy might emerge from that bedroom. He would hear a prim clearing of the throat, the swishing of her skirt on the stairs. It was hilarious because it was unthinkable, but even as he taunted himself with it, he knew it would be the worst betrayal. Worse, even, than Jenny’s, in a way. The whole point of Emmy was that she wasn’t part of it, and not being part of it, she was on his side. In her peculiar, conservative way, she was good enough fun, as well as proof to Buddy that Max ought to be taken seriously.

  Max kicked the sheet and ploughed his head further into the pillow. Every night when he went to bed, an oval gecko dropping lay on the sheet. It was supposed to mean good luck, but this day ahead was proof that he had no luck. And Jenny’s moment of silence only made it worse: most fathers don’t fuck girls their sons have kissed, and then remind them of it every morning.

  There was noise now, from everywhere. He heard Emmy’s voice. He didn’t hear his father moving, and decided Buddy must have gone out before Jenny. Max couldn’t ever sustain his anger against him for very long. There were times when he loved his father, smoking dope with him or reminiscing about the relationship they had barely had. They laughed over Buddy’s visits to Sydney, the trips to Luna Park or the zoo, when, in between daredevil rides or animal pens, Buddy and Chris (he had been Chris then, after all) dished the dirt to each other about Chris’s stern mother, or about Buddy’s mother even, a wide old woman who tried crabbily to control the lives of her son and grandchildren. They could laugh still, remembering remembering. They could talk about Chris’s trips to the sheep station and his childhood fear of the kangaroos leaping in the distance.

  Can you really hate someone who makes you laugh, someone who loves you unconditionally? But then, Max was not always sure that unconditional love could be cobbled together of those occasional afternoons where Buddy did his best to charm an eager son. And what of now: did Buddy feel any more for Max than he felt for Suchi, or Aimée, or K’tut? Then there was the rest, the secrets, the women. And back to Jenny.

  Max tried, most of all, to feel nothing for his father, to distance Buddy and silence the worst rebellions in his mind. Emmy was a help because she stood so far outside, because she listened, because she didn’t guess the half of it. At least, not before today.

  The sun was showing its entire yellow orb, flooding the room with light. Max got up and threw on shorts and a singlet. The whole house felt clammy. He didn’t l
ook into the main room, or call for his father. He brushed through the gate, knocking the careful frangipanis, and set off down the hill towards town.

  *

  It was early for a warung catering to Western clientele to be open, and Emmy was the first customer. The owner, who also ran a gift shop full of carvings, jewellery and clothes, was still hanging out those more solid wares. She was obviously less than delighted to stop doing so for a solitary plump woman, even if she did recognize Emmy as one of the Sparke household. She manifested her displeasure in a feigned ignorance of the English language. But Emmy planted herself at one of the roadside tables in the sunshine and refused to move, and eventually she was served. She ordered coffee, pineapple juice and a slice of chocolate mousse cake (yesterday’s).

  The sun was warm, the coffee surprisingly good, and Emmy was suffused with contentment. She did not know why she thought, at such a wholly positive moment, of her mother and her sister, but once she had done so, she felt she ought to write them a letter. Usually, in Double Bay, she phoned every two or three weeks, on a Sunday. But the telephone in Bali, even for Buddy and his guests, was erratic and expensive. She asked the woman for some paper and a pen from the gift shop, and then composed the first letter she had written to her family for years.

  Dear Mother and Virginia,

  Sorry not to have called lately, but as I warned you, it’s not so easy from here. The holiday is going well. I’m glad I left my return flight open. I feel I could stay until my visa expires. It really is paradise. I’ve met up with an Australian father and son who are accommodating me in Ubud. Nothing romantic, although Mother, you would doubtless have a good laugh about my host, a man about my age, and his escapades with girls hardly older than Portia. His son is, like Virginia I’m sure, disapproving. They have graciously invited me to stay for as long as I want to.

  I did climb my mountain, although I very nearly didn’t make it. That was how I met the Sparkes. This island is a real adventure, in spite of the tourists. The people are spiritually alive in a way I can’t explain, except to say that I’m envious. Everyone is at peace with and in awe of their island. Or they seem to be. As for the expatriate community, it’s hard to say. I think Buddy Sparke probably loves this island for precisely that spiritual element, but he’s not part of it. Sometimes I think he’s bent on destroying it. He sets out to do admirable things, but he’s like a bull in a china shop. His sexual exploits aside, I haven’t yet decided whether he is a very good or a very wicked man. Probably I will discover he is both.

  I don’t know when I expect to go back to Sydney. Maybe I’ll just set up house here.

  While she was writing, Max strode past her table on his way into town, but she didn’t look up, and he, seeing her, chose to pretend he hadn’t. He did not yet know where he was going, and he rather thought he would like to be alone.

  When someone came and cast a shadow across her page, Emmy expected it to be him. Or Buddy. In that moment before she looked up, she had an internal flutter of hope that it might be Buddy, a flutter she would not admit even to herself.

  Before she had focused her eyes on this blot across the sun, she knew from the voice that it was neither Max nor Buddy.

  ‘Fancy,’ said Frank. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’ He was turning his crumpled panama in his hands. ‘Mind if I sit down?’ He took her silence for assent. ‘Didn’t think I’d see you again. Thought you were mountain climbing.’ He sneered. ‘Thought maybe you’d fall off.’

  ‘How charming. The surprise is mutual. I thought you were taking the sun in Singaraja.’

  ‘Did you? Climb? Fall off?’

  Emmy closed her eyes. Maybe he would go away.

  ‘Didn’t make it?’

  ‘Does it matter? What brings you here?’

  ‘Is this your town, then? I have my reasons. Gets a bit boring, a beach, after a while.’ He called over the owner and ordered a beer, eyeing the woman’s bottom as she walked away. ‘More going on in Ubud. Always is.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘I knew you’d be here, you know. I knew it would be you.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Word travels. The oldest concubine to our lord and master, eh?’

  Emmy’s temples thundered. She hadn’t known her face could hold so much blood.

  ‘Be careful about robbing cradle robbers, my dear.’ He winked. ‘Some infants have sharp teeth.’

  ‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

  The beer came, and Frank drank it, guzzling it down almost in one. Emmy decided against sputtering her innocence; such vermin didn’t merit it. Insinuating, always insinuating. But she couldn’t lower her colour. When he was done, he stood to go, and he was back on the road when he called, ‘See you tonight, m’dear.’ Only then did Emmy realize she would have to pay for his drink.

  Max didn’t storm through town, exactly, but his pace was far from leisurely. Further along the road, having bypassed Emmy, he averted his eyes to avoid one of Buddy’s friends, the Chief of Police. When Nyoman, the tailor’s daughter, danced out into the street and clasped his arm with her eight-year-old hands, it was harder to keep going. She wanted to talk. She wanted to grow up and be a doctor, she knew already, and she wanted to tell Max all about it. Now. He patted her head and kept walking, but more slowly, with Nyoman wriggling and snatching at his side. She babbled in perfect English, but Max wasn’t listening. He wanted only to get far enough from his father’s house to be free of its torments and secrets. If only for an hour.

  Maybe he would travel around the island on his own. Maybe he would go back to Sydney early and forget about this whole thing. Why did he really need to know his father, when his father was so much trouble? Having parents, he thought, was easily as difficult as having children must be.

  Nyoman did not go away. Max turned down the Monkey Forest Road with the little girl as she explained how she would save the lives of animals and people both, all over the world. She was still with him when he reached the dip in the land that marked the beginning of the forest.

  The trees and vines sprang up suddenly and made an arch above the asphalt, a jungle tunnel. Nyoman held his hand now, firmly, and her voice dropped to a whisper, but Max did not stop. He was too busy hearing the dawn silence, Jenny’s sly egress from Buddy’s bed. He could have been walking with his eyes shut.

  Max saw the monkeys all at the same time, the moment when he realized Nyoman’s singsong had stopped altogether and been replaced by a chatter that was not birdsong. Monkeys of all sizes were everywhere, great-grandfathers, infants clinging to the necks of howling mothers, macho youths batting at each other. They dangled from the branches overhead, they squatted in the undergrowth, they ran out into the road. Each one was jabbering and squealing, and every black monkey’s eye was on Max and Nyoman, each wise, sharp face following the humans’ every move. Some had their long, furry arms extended, waggling their prehensile thumbs.

  ‘This is a very bad place, Max,’ said Nyoman. ‘Why have you brought us here?’

  ‘What do they want?’ He didn’t want Nyoman to know that he was afraid too. ‘Why do you think they’re looking at us?’

  ‘My mother says they want our souls. My mother says that they are naughty spirits.’

  They were coming closer. The more adventurous monkeys were sidling right up to them, shrieking.

  ‘We should have brought offerings,’ said Nyoman. ‘The tourists feed them peanuts. I’m frightened.’ Her arms were around his waist.

  ‘Don’t be scared, kiddo. If they’re just greedy, we’ll get rid of them.’

  He bent and scooped up a handful of dust and pebbles, which he flung at the most aggressive monkeys. Enraged, they simply howled louder and advanced, taking courage in their numbers, an army of maddened creatures more agile than Max could have suspected.

  ‘Run!’ Max yelled, trying to disentangle himself from the little girl at his side, slapping at her hands, ‘Run!’

  She did, back up the road, towards the brea
k in the trees. He saw her running, and the monkeys loping angrily towards him, baring little white teeth and pushing with their strong, furry arms, and he hesitated. He thought if he could throw them something—his watch, maybe—they would stop. He wasn’t sure he could get away.

  And then it struck him: from deep in his stomach, he roared. Louder than their screaming, louder than anything, he roared so it ripped inside his throat. Bewildered now, the monkeys ceased movement and sound altogether.

  Max turned to walk back out of the forest, impressed with himself. That, he thought, is how to deal with the lot of them. That is how I will deal with my father. I have won, he thought.

  He heard Nyoman cry out from only a few yards away, and then he crumpled almost to the ground beneath the weight of a young buck like himself, a monkey who had seen his moment.

  Max had forgotten about the monkeys in the trees. He had forgotten they were everywhere. He had imagined their strength but not the smell and the heat of them. He ran with the creature clawing at his back, and he cried, the tears hot down his cheeks. At the edge of the forest, the avenged monkey simply let go, slid off to rejoin his family; but not before he sank his sharp, white teeth into Max’s neck, just below the ear, and left a bloodied but perfect little love bite.

  Emmy arrived back at Buddy’s close to lunch-time. She had been strolling up the riverside after her breakfast, past the women beating their washing on the rocks, and had discerned a path to the sacred ridge. Although the climb was arduous, Emmy was unafraid: it was brief, for one thing, its end in sight from the outset. Nor was the path dank and overgrown, as on the mountainside; rather, it was dusty with use, and wherever the ground was steepest there were the footholds of thousands to follow.

  From the summit, the river looked smaller than from Buddy’s house, an idle snake beset by tiny bright insects—the women with their clothes. The air was clear, the view prolonged and crystalline, and Emmy followed the ridge northwards further than she had expected to, enjoying its flat, superior position and the gentle trickle of sweat in the small of her back. She picked out the hotel opposite, and then the house, and then, much further on, a large colonial-style residence where she pictured Buddy’s American ex reclining in languorous splendour. She imagined herself in such a setting, a fascinating recluse to whom all would pay court, visited by Pod and by Mother and yes, even by a penitent William. Perhaps, as she had first thought when he left her, she had simply become too familiar to him, and such a strong whiff of the exotic would lure him back?