Death Trance

by Graham Masterton

  Michael picked up another sea slug and said, ‘My father killed himself.’

  Randolph said nothing but watched and waited.

  Michael went on. ‘He went out one day into the yard when I was playing inside the house. He was wearing his temple sash, a loincloth and a long white band around his head. He sat on the stones in the middle of the yard and laid out all his copies of the lontar manuscripts around himself in a special arrangement. Then he poured gasoline over his shoulders and set himself on fire. I remember hearing a crackling noise. I went outside and there he was, blazing. There were flames streaming out of his face. He was completely quiet, completely impassive. I didn’t know what to do but something told me that he would never forgive me if I tried to save him. He was seeking something, I understood that much. I saw him turn black. He collapsed on the ground after a while and was obviously dead.’

  ‘Did he leave a note? Any explanation?’ Randolph asked.

  ‘No,’ said Michael. ‘And as I found out later, he deliberately intended his death to be a mystery. When I eventually met him in a death trance, he explained that the only way that had been left to him to achieve spiritual understanding was to burn himself, to release his soul from his body, his antakaranasarira. It had been the happiest moment of his life, he said, and I should never grieve. He had left no explanation of why he had killed himself because he had wanted me to continue with my studies.

  Only by learning how to go into a death trance would I ever be able to find out why he had died.’

  Randolph ate a little beef. Then he asked, ‘Will you help me find my family?’

  Michael pressed his hands together in front of his face as if he were thoughtfully praying. His eyes stared at Randolph like the eyes of a sanghyang dancer seen through the holes in a mask.

  The girl called Mungkin Nanti very slowly shook her head. ‘He won’t do it. He can’t.

  You shouldn’t ask him. The last time he nearly died.’

  ‘Don’t you think he ought to be allowed to answer for himself?’ Randolph suggested.

  ‘He’s not well. You can see how sick he has been.’

  ‘Yes,’ Randolph persisted, ‘but he’s the only person in the world who can do this for me.’

  ‘Michael, you have to say no,’ Mungkin Nanti pleaded, taking his arm.

  Michael shrugged. ‘I don’t have to say anything, yes or no.’ He picked up another sea slug and ate it, washing it down with tea.

  Dr Ambara said, ‘All your expenses to Memphis would be paid for. This young lady could accompany you if you so wished it. And, believe me, Mr Clare would be most generous in his appreciation.’

  ‘How generous?’ Michael asked.

  ‘How much do you charge?’ Randolph responded.

  Michael thought for a moment and then lowered his head. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I won’t do it. I made a promise to Nanti, and that’s a promise I have to keep.’

  Mungkin Nanti put her arms around him and hugged him. He looked up again and from long experience, Randolph knew that the flicker in his eyes was a little something called indecision.

  He said the same words that he had spoken to I.M. Wartawa. ‘Fifty thousand dollars in cash. No questions asked. If you continue living here in Bali, you won’t ever have to work again for the rest of your life.’

  Randolph knew that his offer was outrageous, almost absurd. But he had developed over the past few days the deepest aversion to inheriting any of Marmie’s money. He felt that he would prefer to give it away rather than continue to use its interest, especially and most painfully because he no longer had any children to whom he could pass it on. He would far rather use the money to see Marmie again and tell her how much he still loved her.

  Michael said, ‘How much? Fifty thousand? Are you serious?’

  ‘How much were you paid before?’

  ‘Five, ten thousand dollars. I think the most I ever got was ten.’

  That was still quite a respectable fee. How come you’re so broke?’

  ‘Mah-jongg,’ put in Mungkin Nanti sharply. ‘The last time, after he was almost killed, he gambled away the whole fee in three hours flat. That’s one of the reasons I made him promise to stop.’

  ‘Well, you can do whatever you like with your money,’ Randolph said. ‘I guess fifty thousand would last longer than ten, even if you lost it all at the gaming tables.’

  ‘You really mean that you’ll pay me fifty thousand dollars if I take you into a death trance?’

  Randolph nodded.

  Mungkin Nanti said with undiluted bitterness, ‘I was right to call you a rapist, wasn’t I, Mr Clare? Rapists always attack the weak, and rapists always make sure they get what they want.’

  ‘Rapists usually take what they want by force, Miss Nanti. I’m offering money.’

  ‘So much money that it almost amounts to violence,’ Mungkin Nanti protested. ‘If you kill Michael, believe me, you’ll be just as brutal as those men who killed your family.’

  ‘Michael has a choice. My family didn’t.’

  ‘Who can possibly have a choice when he’s offered fifty thousand dollars? The money or poverty. What kind of a choice is that?’

  Michael raised his hand to silence them. ‘Mungkin Nanti’s right,’ he said in his quiet, hoarse voice. ‘There isn’t a choice. I’ll do it.’

  ‘You promised!’ Mungkin Nanti breathed at him fiercely. ‘Michael, you promised!’

  ‘Nanti, in the face of fifty thousand dollars, not many promises stand much of a chance.’

  ‘So that’s the price of your life, is it?’ Mungkin Nanti snapped at him. ‘I’ve always wanted to know what kind of a value you place on yourself, and on me. Well, now I know, don’t I? Down to the last cent.’

  She got up from the table, knocking her chair over backwards, and marched out of the restaurant. The Bali-nese waitress came over and picked up the chair. ‘Are you finished?’ she asked hesitantly, looking at their dishes of uneaten food.

  Michael took out a cigarette and lit it. ‘Fa, terima kasih.’

  ‘Berapa semuayana?’ asked Dr Ambara. He seemed to have appointed himself to the position of Randolph’s business manager.

  ‘American dollar?’ the waitress asked.

  Dr Ambara took out his wallet.

  ‘Five dollar,’ the waitress told him.

  ‘Terlalu mahal,’ said Dr Ambara flatly.

  ‘Four dollar,’ the waitress suggested. Dr Ambara thought it over and then made an acquiescent face and counted out four dollar bills.

  ‘You people amaze me,’ Michael said. ‘One minute you’re offering me fifty thousand dollars to take you into a death trance and the next minute you’re haggling about one lousy dollar for the price of a meal.’

  Dr Ambara said, ‘I wanted to emphasize, Mr Hunter, that we expect to have our money’s worth. We expect to get as much value from every single one of those fifty thousand dollars as we did from every one of those four dollars we just spent on lunch.’

  ‘I understand,’ Michael said. He glanced from Randolph to Wanda to Dr Ambara and back again, his face veiled in cigarette smoke.

  ‘What about your friend?’ asked Randolph.

  ‘Oh, she’ll be back. She always is.’

  ‘She seemed pretty annoyed with you this time.’

  Michael said, ‘She saved my life. She’s been keeping me together, in one reasonably cohesive piece, and I don’t appreciate her half as much as I should. But sometimes, you know, you don’t need people like that. Sometimes you have to throw yourself headfirst off the precipice, and it’s better for everybody concerned, including yourself, if there’s nobody there to grab your ankles. All of life is centred around commitments.

  My father was so committed to the Hindu ideal that he burned himself alive. When your father has done something like that, how can you spend the rest of your life sweeping floors and polishing windows? The leyaks are waiting for me. Rangda is waiting for me. I knew that right from the beginning. There are times when you can’t
rewrite your own destiny, no matter how much you may want to.’

  Randolph drummed his fingertips on the table and then said quietly, ‘How would you describe yourself if I asked you?’

  Michael smiled. ‘Mystic. Idiot. Religious zealot. Potential suicide.’

  ‘But you’ve achieved what your father failed to achieve. You are Hindu. You understand the Trisakti from the inside … spiritually, not just intellectually.’

  ‘Mr Clare,’ Michael said. The circles under his eyes were as dark as plums. ‘My suicide would be quite different from my father’s. My father was trying to find total understanding. I had that understanding, right from the very moment I could understand anything. It is not the understanding I seek. It is the confrontation with the forces of evil. It is the challenge to Rangda. Sooner or later I am going to have to test myself against her. In one way or another, at one time or another, every man has to do it. Very few, of course, have the privilege of meeting her face-to-face. Few have the competence to be able to fight her, or the nerve. But … well, I think I’ve known all along that I’m going to have to come to grips with her sooner or later. Your money really hasn’t made that much difference. It wasn’t the deciding factor. It has simply helped me to make up my mind.’

  Dr Ambara said soberly, ‘If you challenge Rangda, you will die.’

  ‘Probably,’ Michael said, drawing tightly at his cigarette.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I.M. Wartawa was locking the door of his office when a tall man came quickly and quietly behind him, seized his left arm and touched the razor-sharp blade of a Bowie knife against his naked neck.

  ‘Where did they go?’ the man demanded hoarsely.

  ‘Where did who go? I don’t understand you,’ Wartawa protested.

  ‘Mr Randolph Clare, that’s who. And his secretary. And that nigger doctor.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ I.M. Wartawa winced. ‘I never heard of such people in my life.’

  ‘How would you like a free on-the-spot tracheotomy?’ the man asked.

  I.M. Wartawa licked his lips. ‘All right. I’ve heard of Mr Randolph Clare.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘How should I know? He came to talk to me about import-export. Then he went away.’

  ‘You’re lying,’ the man told him, pressing the blade of the knife even more viciously against his Adam’s apple. I.M. Wartawa felt blood slide warmly down the front of his neck and into his collar. Although he was frightened, he did not lose his self-control.

  He had been working for too long among the heavyweight gangsters who dominated Djakarta’s crime; he had escaped too many times from sawed-off shotguns and Molotov cocktails and splashes of concentrated sulphuric acid. There was always a get-out. There was always a deal to be made. Everybody wanted something; everybody had his price. This man, whoever he might be, would be no exception.

  ‘Let’s talk about this reasonably,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s talk about this now,’ the man retorted.

  ‘All right, you want to talk about it now. Mr Clare left Djakarta this morning on Garuda Airlines.’

  ‘Where was he headed?’

  ‘How should I know? We talked a little business, that’s all.’

  ‘If that’s all you talked about, buddy, then believe me, I don’t need you any more and I’m going to cut your throat. Here and now, from ear to ear. Look around. You see this hallway? This is where you’re going to die.’

  I.M. Wartawa said, ‘He flew to Bali.’

  ‘Bali? Why’d he go there?’

  ‘He went there because I suggested it.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ the man asked caustically. ‘And why did you suggest that?’

  ‘Listen,’ said I.M. Wartawa, ‘I can pay you twenty thousand dollars. That’s how much Mr Clare gave me.’

  ‘Now why would you want to do a thing like that?’ the man asked with a sudden grin.

  To let me go. To take that knife away from my throat. All of it, twenty thousand in cash. Right here and now.’

  The man said, ‘You still haven’t told me why Mr Randolph Clare and his friends flew off to Bali.’

  ‘I don’t know. They wouldn’t discuss it.’

  ‘But you suggested it.’

  ‘Just for the scenery, that’s all.’

  “The scenery? That’s rich. You have twenty seconds left, hairball, and then you’re going to die.’

  ‘They were looking for somebody,’ I.M. Wartawa managed to choke out.

  ‘Oh, yes? They were looking for somebody, were they? Well, I hope you don’t mind if I’m impertinent enough to ask you who that somebody might be. I mean, that somebody must’ve been somebody pretty special for a man like Mr Randolph Clare to fly all the way from Memphis, Tennessee, to find him and, in addition, to pay off a scumbag like you.’

  ‘Mr Clare was looking for a death-trance adept.’

  ‘Mr Clare was looking for whutT

  ‘A death-trance adept. Somebody who can take you right through the spiritual barrier of death so you can meet friends and relatives who might have recently passed away.’

  ‘Are you putting me on?’ The knife cut even more viciously into I.M. Wartawa’s skin.

  ‘It’s true. That’s the whole reason Mr Clare came to Indonesia. He told me his family was recently killed. He wanted to talk to his wife and children again. The only way he can possibly do that is through apedanda, a special high priest, somebody trained to go into a death trance and guide other people into the trance with him. That way Mr Clare can go beyond death, into the world of the dead; don’t you understand me? He can meet his family again, their spirits. He can talk to them, touch them as if they were real, as if they were still alive. It sounds crazy, I know, but it can be done; it has been done. It’s all in a trance.’

  The man said, ‘He goes into this trance and he meets his family again? He meets them for real?’ His voice crawled with suspicion.

  ‘Do you think I would say such a thing with a knife at my throat if it wasn’t the absolute truth?’

  There was a long pause. The man kept the blade pressed hard against I. M. Wartawa’s larynx. Although the blood had stopped flowing now, I.M. Wartawa could feel the stickiness around the collar of his shirt.

  “They went to Bali, huh?’ the man asked at last. ‘What part of Bali? To Denpasar?’

  That’s right. To Denpasar.’

  ‘You got a name? Who was it they went to see? One of these death-trance guys? One of these addicts?’

  ‘Adepts,’ I.M. Wartawa corrected him with a painful swallow.

  ‘Well, who was it?’

  ‘One of the best. Michael Hunter. He’s half-American but he was trained in Hindu mysticism from childhood. He has a special talent for the death trance.’

  ‘How about a location?’ the man wanted to know.

  ‘I was given an address on Jalan Pudak. Number 12a.’

  ‘You’re not trying to fool me, are you?’

  ‘Fool you? Why should I try to fool you?’ I.M. Wartawa gasped.

  Without another word, the man sliced the Bowie knife from one side of I.M.

  Wartawa’s throat to the other, cutting through to his windpipe. I.M. Wartawa knew instantly that he had been killed, but as the blood fountained out of his neck, he found it impossible to speak, impossible to cry out. His legs buckled under him and he found himself staring at the linoleum on the floor, his body shivering and shaking as if he were cold. The man stood over him, watching him die. The dark blood formed a wide oval pool on the landing, with the glossiest and most reflective of surfaces. I.M. Wartawa suddenly thought of something his father had told him, something he had never understood. It seemed clear now, crystal clear, and he wondered why it had taken death to bring him realization.

  His father had said one morning, close to the end of his life, ‘The good is one thing, the pleasant is another. It is well with him who clings to the good; he who chooses the pleasant misses his end.’

  I.M.
Wartawa tried to turn his head, to explain to the man who was standing over him what he had at last understood. But there was nothing except darkness; the man seemed to have vanished. The world had turned into a black, hollow, echoing tunnel.

  He died, feeling that he was falling.

  The moment he died, Michael Hunter was arriving at Randolph’s lostnen on Jalan Diponegoro and paying off the taxi driver with some of the fifty rupiahs Dr Ambara had given him. It was a brilliant, hot morning and the air was bright with dust and fragrant with the sweet aroma of flowers. Michael wore the same Ever-Ready T-shirt he had been wearing the day before and a pair of ragged shorts that had once been jeans. He was smoking a cigarette. His hair was wet, just washed, and combed straight back from his narrow forehead. When he asked the pretty, plump girl behind the desk for Mr Clare, she pointed upstairs and said, ‘Number Five.’

  Michael knocked briskly at Randolph’s door. ‘It’s me,’ he called, and for some reason, he felt more American than he had in years, although he had never been to America. He pinched his cigarette out between his fingers and tucked it behind his ear.

  Randolph opened the door. He was dressed in light-grey summer slacks and a white shirt, and he looked tired. Michael said, ‘Here I am, as promised.’

  ‘Good,’ Randolph said. ‘Do you want to come in?’

  ‘We shouldn’t be too long,’ Michael told him. ‘We have to start your studies right away. You didn’t eat any breakfast, did you?’

  ‘No, I didn’t eat any breakfast.’

  Michael prowled around the room, prodding the bed, picking up the book Randolph was reading, lacocca, peering out the window, running his fingertips down the bamboo blinds.