Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  ‘So much for that pricey piece of information,’ Randolph said, his hands on his hips.

  Their taxi driver remained parked by the kerb, watching them with unabashed curiosity. ‘You look for somebody, Tuan?’ he asked.

  ‘An American, a young American. We were told that he lives here.’

  The driver climbed out of the ancient Volvo and walked on slap-slapping sandals across to the house next door where an old woman was sitting on the steps sorting through baskets of fresh-picked nutmegs. He had a lengthy conversation with her, nodding and pointing and occasionally smacking his hands together. Then he came back over to Randolph and announced proudly, ‘This American you look for, he was here for one year. Then he left, one or two months ago. The old woman doesn’t know where he lives now. But she says he used to go to the Two Sisters restaurant because sometimes he brought her back Chinese food.’

  Dr Ambara said, ‘It seems that we have no choice but to look for him there. Will you take us, please?’

  ‘Bogus,’ agreed the driver. ‘Fine.’

  The Two Sisters restaurant was halfway along Jalan Tabalan in a run-down area northeast of the night market, populated by Chinese, Arabs and Indians. It was quieter here, more reclusive. None of the storefronts spilled out into the street in the way they did around Jalan Gajahmada and Jalan Veteran. Apart from small, hand-painted signs on the facades, usually in Chinese or Arabic characters, it was often impossible to tell whether one would find a general store behind them, or a restaurant, or a gambling parlour. A pack of mangy dogs yapped and tussled in the road.

  The front of the Two Sisters was covered by a pierced iron grille and a sign reading,

  ‘Rumah Makan 2 Sisters.’ Randolph paid off the taxi driver and they pushed their way through a clattering beaded curtain to the restaurant itself. Inside, it was gloomy and smoky and hot. Running the length of the righthand wall, there was a bar behind which a small Chinese woman was mixing cocktails in a shaker. There were a dozen tables covered with green oilcloth; almost all of them were taken, mostly by elderly Chinese patrons. A young Balinese girl was carrying around trays of crab soup, frogs’ legs and fried noodles. On the far wall there was a yellowed painting of mountains in China with cranes flying over them.

  Five or six people were sitting at the bar, three of whom were Westerners: a handsome-looking girl of twenty-four or twenty-five in a turquoise-blue sarong and head scarf; a fat man of about fifty who looked rather like a down-and-out Orson Welles; and a boy of nineteen or twenty with short-cropped black hair who was wearing a faded T-shirt with an Ever-Ready Battery motif on the front, and washed-out jeans.

  Everybody in the restaurant turned around and stared as Randolph, Wanda and Dr Ambara walked in. There was one thing that Randolph could say for the Far East: nobody was embarrassed about showing how interested he was in anything that was going on around him.

  Randolph walked to the bar. ‘Selamat siang,’ he said to the Chinese woman. Dr Ambara had taught him how to say ‘Good afternoon’ in Basaha Indonesian.

  The Chinese woman finished shaking the cocktails and poured them into large glasses. She did not exactly ignore Randolph but neither did she exactly acknowledge him. There was only a slight, subtle half-closing of the eyes.

  Randolph said, ‘I’m looking for an American. I was told that he used to come here to eat.’

  The Chinese woman said, ‘No American here.’

  Randolph looked along the bar at the young man with the black hair and the Ever-Ready T-shirt. ‘How about you?’ he asked him. ‘Did you ever see any Americans in here? A young American boy I’m looking for, round about your age. Name of Michael Hunter, or Michael Arjuna.’

  The girl in the sarong stared at him. ‘Who wants to know?’ she asked in a strong New England accent.

  Randolph nodded towards the young man. ‘Is that him?’

  This isn’t anybody. This is just a friend of mine.’

  Randolph walked around behind the other customers at the bar and approached the young man. The girl jumped down from her stool and stood protectively in front of him.

  Randolph looked the boy straight in the face and asked, ‘Are you Michael Hunter?’

  The boy returned his gaze with eyes that were dark and lifeless. His face was emaciated and yellowed by malaria and there were sores at the sides of his mouth and in his hairline. Close up, Randolph could see that his hair was actually blond and that he had dyed it. The ash-coloured roots were beginning to show through.

  The girl said defensively, ‘He just wants to be left alone, okay?’

  Randolph did not take his eyes from the boy. ‘I’ve travelled all the way from Memphis, Tennessee, to talk to Michael Hunter.’

  ‘Well, Michael Hunter isn’t talking,’ the girl retorted, ‘so you can just travel all the way back to Memphis, Tennessee.’

  Randolph stood still for a moment or two and then reached into his shirt pocket to take out his billfold. He noticed the way in which both the boy and the girl stared at his money and his credit cards with the unabashed hunger of the really poor.

  ‘Maybe I can buy you folks a drink,’ he suggested. ‘Maybe something to eat. I’ve been looking for you all over. That’s thirsty work. Hungry work too.’

  The girl said, ‘Mister, whoever you are, Michael is just not interested.’

  Randolph made a face. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that. I thought that maybe we could simply sit down and have a meal together, that maybe you could advise me on what I ought to be eating and then I could put my proposition to you and see whether you’re interested or not. There doesn’t have to be any pressure involved. You don’t even have to talk if you don’t want to. All I’m asking you to do is to listen.’

  The girl said, ‘Forget it,’ but the boy reached out and held her arm, keeping his eyes fixed on Randolph.

  ‘You want to eat?’ Randolph asked.

  The boy nodded and then in a slightly hoarse voice, said, ‘Don’t expect me to say yes to anything, that’s all. I know why you’ve come here. I know what you want.

  You’ve got to understand that I don’t do that kind of stuff any more.’

  Randolph gave him a tight smile. ‘And what kind of stuff is that, the stuff you don’t do any more?’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ the boy replied coldly.

  Randolph said, Tor sure, I know what you mean.’

  The girl said with ill-disguised fury, ‘If you try to get him involved in any of that trance business, so help me, I’ll scream out rape.’

  ‘Rape?’ Randolph inquired, trying hard not to sound amused.

  ‘That’s what you’re trying to do, isn’t it?’ the girl asked defiantly. ‘Rape Michael’s mind, the same as all the others did. Now he’s caught between the devils in one world and the devils in the other, and believe me, there isn’t much to choose between them.’

  ‘Do I look like a devil?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘Don’t you know?’ the girl demanded. ‘Devils always have smooth tongues. Devils are always tempting.’

  Michael Hunter shook her arm to show her that he understood what she was saying and that he appreciated the way she took care of him but that he wanted to eat.

  ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Let’s go sit down. Let’s see what the devil has to say for himself. Simply listening won’t do any harm.’

  They sat down at one of the oilcloth-covered tables, close to the jukebox. It was an old 1960s Wurlitzer, although the records in it were modern: Chinese versions of

  ‘Thriller’ and ‘Purple Rain’ and ‘Ninety-Nine Red Balloons.’ Randolph introduced Wanda and Dr Ambara, and Michael laid his arm on his companion’s shoulder and said, ‘This is Jennifer Dunning, although I call her Mungkin Nanti.’

  Wanda asked, ‘What’s that, some kind of a pet name?’

  ‘I think it’s a joke,’ said Dr Ambara. ‘It means “maybe later.’”

  Michael propped his bony elbows on the table and took out a pack of Indonesian cigarettes, Monkey brand. He li
t one without offering them around and blew smoke out his nostrils. ‘Did you learn of me in Memphis?’ he asked, ‘or did somebody in Denpasar give you the nod?’

  ‘A man called I. Made Wartawa in Djakarta,’ Randolph told him.

  Michael nodded without taking the cigarette out of his mouth. ‘Oh, yes. Wartawa.

  Strange guy. Quite ethical for a crook. He sent somebody on to me before. A meat packer.’

  The Balinese waitress came over and Michael ordered wulung tuzhu, sea slugs and pigeon eggs; jiachang shaozi niujin, simmered beef tendon; and caogu zhenji, chicken with straw mushrooms. He looked at Randolph after he had ordered and said a little sarcastically, Their specialty here is stir-fried cobra and fried rolls in the shape of Buddha’s hand, but I guess you can wait until next time.’

  A large pot of jasmine tea was set on the table between them. While the girl called Maybe Later poured for everybody, Randolph watched Michael Hunter through the rising steam and tried to figure out what might tempt this extraordinary young man to take him into a death trance.

  ‘You say you don’t do “this kind of stuff’ any more,’ Randolph remarked, sipping his tea.

  Michael shook his head.

  ‘Is there any particular reason for that? Wartawa seemed to think that going into a death trance was one of your major pursuits. He said you were the only person he had ever heard of who actually did it for sport.’

  ‘Sport? What did he mean by sport?’ Michael asked sharply.

  ‘He said you went hunting leyaks.’

  ‘Hunting leyaks is not sport. And besides, what do you know about leyaks?’

  ‘My friend, Dr Ambara here, is something of an expert on the Hindu religion as practised in Indonesia.’

  ‘Your friend, Dr Ambara, should be careful of what he says.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ asked Randolph. There was a faint challenge in his voice.

  Michael said, ‘I gave up hunting leyaks because we nearly had an accident. Nanti could have been killed. I promised not to do it after that.’

  ‘So what have you been living on since then?’

  Michael at last took out his cigarette and allowed the smoke to seethe around his discoloured teeth. ‘I work at the Museum Bali some mornings. Sweeping up, cleaning the display cases, that kind of thing.’

  ‘How’s the pay?’ asked Randolph.

  ‘How would you think it is?’ Mungkin Nanti demanded aggressively. ‘But it’s better than being torn to pieces.’

  The waitress brought a large dish of hunsu pinpan, cold meats - spiced lamb, breast of duck and marinated chicken - arranged in a fan shape. Michael and Mungkin Nanti immediately picked up their chopsticks and began to eat. Wanda frowned and studiously tried to arrange her chopsticks so they didn’t tangle.

  ‘Go ahead, use a spoon,’ Michael suggested. He chewed duck, then took another suck at his cigarette. ‘I guess you must be bereaved,’ he told Randolph. ‘Your mother? Your father?’

  ‘Both long dead already,’ Randolph replied. He suddenly realized that this was the moment he had been thinking about, over and over again, ever since Dr Ambara had told him it was possible to go beyond the gate of death. ‘I lost my wife and my three children. I buried them Tuesday.’ He found that his throat had constricted so tightly that he was unable to carry on.

  Michael looked up, a piece of lamb in his chopsticks, unmoved by Randolph’s emotion. ‘What was it, auto accident?’

  ‘Homicide. They were up in Canada, alone in a cabin we used for vacations.

  Somebody - three or four men, maybe more - broke into the place and killed them.’

  Mungkin Nanti kept on eating, as undisturbed by the death of Randolph’s family as was Michael. Randolph watched both of them for a while, wondering what it would take to provoke them into reacting to what had happened to him, but then he guessed that for somebody who had already been into the realm of death many times, hearing about somebody else’s homicide must be pretty uninteresting. Death had been Michael’s business, at least until Mungkin Nanti had persuaded him to give it up. He was no more impressed by death than a coroner was, or a mortician.

  Randolph said, ‘My friend here - Dr Ambara - lost his wife. That was an auto accident. He wants to make contact too.’

  ‘Well, I’ve told you,’ Michael said, deftly picking up a decoratively sliced radish with the tips of his chopsticks, ‘that I don’t do that kind of stuff any more. Besides, if I had to do it for you people, it would mean going back to Memphis with you, and believe me, of all the places in the world, I really don’t feel like going to Memphis.’

  ‘Have you ever been to Memphis?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘No, and I don’t intend to go.’

  They sat back for a while and after they finished the hunsu pinpan, the waitress brought them hot towels. Michael wiped his face all over and the back of his neck too, as if he were suffering from a fever.

  Tell me about yourself,’ Randolph urged Michael. ‘How did you get into this death-trance business?’

  ‘Do you really want to know?’ Michael asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Randolph told him. ‘You’re an American, aren’t you? Well, at least fifty per cent American. What makes even a fifty per cent American want to get involved with Indonesian religion? Isn’t there enough religion at home?’

  ‘Home?’ asked Michael. ‘You call it home? Well, I guess you would. But my father could never call it home, not after he came out to the East. He was a junior adviser in the US Military Mission in the days of President Diem. He argued so strongly with the Pentagon that the Vietnam War should never be fought and could never be won that in the end they sacked him. But he didn’t go back to the United States. He felt betrayed, you know, and let down. And more important than that, he was beginning to develop some kind of an understanding of the Eastern mentality. He went to Java first and then wound up here. He said that Bali was the spiritual centre of everything, of the whole darned world. In fact, the Balinese call Gunung Agung, the volcano, the navel of the world. That’s a really fantastic way of putting it, don’t you think?’

  ‘Your father married a Balinese girl?’ Wanda asked.

  Michael smiled. ‘She was a village girl from Sangeh. My father met her when he was exploring the famous monkey jungle. Her father refused to let him marry her so in the end he followed the old Balinese tradition and kidnapped her. He took her away on his moped, would you believe?’ It was obvious that Mungkin Nanti resented Michael’s speaking so freely, but she did not interrupt him. Not only was he halfway between the world of death and the world of life, he was halfway between East and West, and he was plainly enjoying the opportunity to speak to Americans for all that he scorned the idea of the United States as home. The waitress began to set out the hot food in front of them. Randolph took one look at the sea slugs, lying grey and juicy in their sauce of peanut oil, and decided to stay with the chicken.

  Michael said, ‘My father made friends with one of the local high priests and had himself trained in the mystic arts of the Trisakti, the holy Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Siwa. But he was always a Westerner at heart. At least that’s what he used to tell me. He could understand what the high priest was telling him … like, intellectually. He could glimpse the inner meanings of things. But when it came down to it, he couldn’t actually be a Hindu.’

  Michael picked up a sea slug with his chopsticks and bit one end of it. ‘You should try these, they’re good. It’s one of the best dishes they do here.’

  Wanda looked at Randolph and swallowed hard. ‘I don’t think I’m all that hungry. Jet lag, you know. My stomach just doesn’t know what time of day it is.’

  Michael said, ‘I was born on the day the Marines first landed at Da Nang. Nineteen sixty-five. My father said it was an omen. I don’t know what it was. It was also Kuningan. the last day of the feast of Galungan, which celebrates the defeat of the demon king Mayadanawa. To me, that was an omen.’

  They ate for a little while in silence and then Michael said, �
�My father took me by the hand one day and walked me down to the Temple of the Dead. I was seven years old. He introduced me to the high priest, the pedanda, and told me that from now on, the pedanda was going to be my spiritual father, which, as it turned out, he was. And something of a real father too, because my own father died when I was ten.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Randolph said.

  ‘Well, you needn’t be,’ Michael told him. ‘I met my father again, in a death trance, and I know now that he’s quite content.’

  ‘You actually met your father after he died?’ Randolph asked.

  Michael stared at him and put down his chopsticks. ‘I thought you believed in the death trance,’ he said. Dr Ambara looked uneasy. Wanda sensed that something was going wrong and said, ‘Taste some of that beef, Randolph. It’s absolutely delicious.’ But everybody ignored her.

  ‘Of course I believe in the death trance,’ Randolph said evenly. ‘I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’

  ‘Ah, but you don’t really believe. You’re just another one of these curiosity hounds. A tourist. You wouldn’t have sounded so surprised about my meeting my father if you weren’t.’

  Dr Ambara put in, ‘You’re misjudging Mr Clare, and you’re misjudging him quite seriously.’

  ‘I can’t take anyone into a death trance who doesn’t believe in it totally. You know that. It’s far too dangerous.’

  ‘Michael,’ Mungkin Nanti insisted, ‘you’re not doing death trances any more.

  Especially not with these people.’

  Dr Ambara said, ‘Mr Clare has come a long way towards understanding and believing in the ways of Yama. But just remember that to Western minds the concepts are difficult, not so easy to grasp, just as Western ways are often a mystery to us.’

  It was Dr Ambara’s use of the word ‘us’ that salvaged the moment from complete breakdown. Dr Ambara had shown that he counted Michael not as a half-caste, but as an Indonesian, and that he respected Michael’s spiritual abilities. Besides, it was becoming evident that Michael was far more interested in doing business with Randolph than Mungkin Nanti was trying to make them believe. It was one thing to sweep up at the Museum Bali for ten rupiah an hour, it was quite another to go hunting for leyaks through the regions of the dead. The sheer terror of what lay beyond the gate of death was stimulating beyond human imagination. Michael’s adrenalin level was rising even while he was trying to argue that he would never take anybody into a death trance again and that Randolph was an unbeliever. Dr Ambara, in the subtlest of ways, had given Michael all the justification he needed to break his promise.