Shaman of Bali

by John Greet

  ‘I was never on the ship during the storm. I landed in Bali a week ago, and that’s where I’m calling from. Grace, are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I just need a minute.’ She blew her nose again. ‘You know, I never believed it. I just knew you’d make it, that you couldn’t be dead …’ She jabbered into the phone. ‘But I just didn’t feel it. I was crying my eyes out here in the … Wait a minute, Dad. What are you doing in Bali?’ I told her what had happened. I could feel her spirits rise. I heard her voice pique with curiosity, then flag again as she thought of her old friend. ‘And Duncan?’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’

  ‘So what do we tell Mum? And those people inside? You know, they’re the same people who trashed you before you left, but now that they think you’re dead, they’re, like, saying you were such a good guy …’ Her voice trailed off.

  ‘Gracie, I called to let you know that I’m alive and okay, and if you can hold off telling anyone where I am. I need to figure out what I’m going to do first.’

  ‘Wait, Dad! That’s it, I got it! We don’t tell her, we don’t tell anyone! It’s as simple as that,’ her voice rose with excitement. ‘We just don’t say anything. Think about it … You’re dead, so Tula will back off. Your creditors will have to chuck out your debts. You stay there until you figure out what to do. I mean, if you do hand yourself in, what will you be coming back to?’

  ‘Let me think about that … I’m not sure. But for the meantime just hold off, will you?’

  ‘Yeah, I will, and thank god you’re okay. I’ve been missing you big time.’

  ‘Miss you too, Gracie. I have to go now. I’m on a borrowed phone.’

  Walking on the hard sand at the waterline, foam swirling around my feet, I looked out across the sea. Duncan’s leathery old face seemed to rise out of the swell and hover before me. I didn’t hold it against him for forcing me to abandon ship. In a roundabout way, he had saved my life. I slowly came to terms with the fact that Duncan had drowned. I consoled myself with the notion that he’d gone down with his ship and perhaps avoided the indignity of spending the remainder of his life in a mental hospital. A rogue wave slapped at my legs. The sand shifted beneath my feet. I moved to solid ground, picked up a stone and hurled it into the sea.

  * * *

  The Sandika’s gardens grew back at an astonishing speed. And soon the honeysuckle, bougainvillea vines and giant palm fronds obscured the view of the Bali Haj Hotel. The monkeys returned, and the fruit bats hung like dead leaves from the banyan tree. I worked with Wayan in the coffee shop’s kitchen. I would keep my head down and work. I would stay around the Sandika and not venture out. The last thing I needed was a New Zealander on holiday, or perhaps a customer from Milano’s, recognising me. I didn’t call Grace after that, but had come around to her idea of staying in Bali for a short time. Not to avoid paying my debts, as she had suggested, but to take a moment for myself. My run of bad luck had been extraordinary, and with all that had happened over the past few months, I was severely stressed, becoming insomniac, and my nerves were stretched. Under the warm tropical sun, surrounded by laughter, friendship and good food, I was beginning to feel better.

  The coffee shop had a meal menu so old and faded it was barely readable. The place served traditional Indonesian fare, and I thought we could try something new for a change. I tweaked the presentations of the dishes and taught Wayan how to glaze and garnish a grilled fish European style. We worked on tropical salads and introduced a fruit smoothie with a dash of arrack to the drinks list. The cocktail menu needed attention, but as we didn’t have the full range of spirits, we worked with what we had, giving each new cocktail an exotic name, such as Arrack Attack, Mango Paradise and Tropical Tease.

  Wayan asked that I accompany her on her morning temple rounds. She told me the Balinese day didn’t officially begin until the gods were offered food and water. The tray she carried had small baskets of rice, fruit and incense. As we strolled through the garden, she would pick up honeysuckle and mango blossoms along the way. The Sandika had temples with carvings of fierce-faced gods in each corner of the property. We placed fruit and lit incense before them, then Wayan knelt and prayed. From the temple on the far right of the property, I could see Bali Haj’s grounds again, and wondered about Mahmood Bas and Anak, their intense rivalry.

  That evening I asked Ketut about what had happened between the two men. He told me that the land the Bali Haj was built on had once belonged to Anak’s father. There was an issue over how Bas had acquired it, and this was the main cause of their animosity. The Bali Haj was one of the finest hotels in Bali. It was a five-star luxury hotel with fifty rooms, but it had one major problem: no beach access. The Sandika Hotel, with its twelve rooms and rustic flavour and overgrown gardens, lay directly between the white sands of Kuta Beach and Mahmood Bas’s dream of creating the perfect beach resort. He had offered to buy the Sandika, but Anak had refused. Bas had tried acquiring beach access through the Sandika’s gardens, but the negotiations had turned sour, and insults had flown like knives. The two men’s hatred of each other had developed a deeper intensity.

  * * *

  Wayan called for me from the office. ‘From New Zealand,’ she said with one hand over the mouthpiece. I wasn’t going to take the call until, through the muffled mouthpiece, I recognised Grace’s voice.

  ‘It’s me, Dad. How are you?’ she said. ‘I can’t stop worrying about you, so I found the number you called from before.’

  ‘Gracie, I’m fine. And I don’t want you to worry anymore, okay? How’s things with you?’

  ‘Well, Mum’s a little suspicious, and she, like, keeps asking if there’s something she should know about, something I’m not telling her. So I’ve bought a new mobile. One that has only your number on it, and I keep it turned on all the time. It’s on vibration, so you can call me whenever you want, or I can call you. I miss you big time, Dad.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘How are you? Are you looking after yourself?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes, I am. You know, there’s something to be said for being dead.’

  Her laughter rang through the receiver. ‘Here’s my number,’ said Grace. ‘Call me when you can, or I’ll call you.’

  ‘Hey, Adam, man,’ said Geno the next day. ‘You coming with us today? You too skinny man, look at you. Paolo and me, we gonna show you how to surf.’

  ‘Geno, I’m not sure …’

  ‘Not sure ain’t in it. I check with Wayan already. I got a big board for you to start on. Get some sunscreen on those skinny shoulders of yours, put some white shit on your nose and get in the truck. We gonna start with the small wave at Nusa Dua.’

  We pulled up under a tree near the sand dunes. I saw the waves. If these were small, I didn’t want to see the larger ones. We paddled out, with Geno reaching over and hooking me back onto my board every time a wave knocked me off. After countless tries, I caught a wave. Sea spray whipped about my face as I hung on with both hands.

  ‘Now stand the fuck up!’ hollered Geno, who was surfing beside me.

  ‘Stand up, Adam. Just let your hands go,’ came Paolo’s easy voice.

  I found my balance and surfed. But it was not more than a few seconds before I tumbled into the wash with the ankle strap pulling at my leg. When I surfaced, the brothers were ecstatic.

  ‘You did it, man! You surfed, and on your first day!’

  That night I came home exhausted and slept deeply. The next day I asked Geno when we could go again. ‘Every day, man. We gonna go every day until you learn this thing.’

  In a short time, my body became lean and brown, and my hair grew longer. Gone were the chef’s slouch and the worry lines that I thought were permanently etched on my forehead.

  * * *

  Anak often came to the coffee shop in the evenings. Once, over a game of chess, as we saw Geno and Paolo pulling out on their motorbikes, he told me, ‘Watch out for those two. They’re up to something … We have an arrangement that they keep thei
r business away from the hotel. If they do that we’ll be okay. They’re good paying guests.’

  I listened without taking my eyes off the board. Anak had trapped me with his king, and I couldn’t find a way through.

  ‘That Geno guy, he’s famous in Brazil. He showed me some newspaper clippings once. He was a sportsman, a pole vaulter in the Brazilian Olympic team. He’s won all kinds of medals and trophies and was one of the best pole vaulters in the world.’

  ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘He got busted for doping. Steroids, I think they call it. It was just before a big Olympic event. He was expected to win gold for his country, and all his countrymen’s eyes were on him. He was disqualified and banned from the sport for two years. Such was his shame that he never returned home. He came to Bali to surf. That was years ago, but I remember it well. Geno swore he was innocent and told me he was set up.’

  ‘What is it they’re up to?’ I asked, moving my queen two squares to the right.

  ‘Ask Ketut,’ he said, as he checkmated me with his knight.

  Later, as Ketut and I sat at the sea wall, listening to the surf, I casually wove the question about Geno and Paolo into our conversation. His gentle face clouded with worry. He pulled his chair closer to me and whispered, ‘Cocaine. I think maybe cocaine, Adam. Not sure.’ Then he added, ‘They brothers.’

  Anak arrived the next day with a truck laden with coils of barbed wire and metal battens. He ordered the staff to come to the back of the hotel. Over the course of the day, we had constructed a border between the Bali Haj and the Sandika: it was a hideous-looking barrier of barbed wire and battens, like something you might find in a war zone, running up to thirty metres. It lay on our side of the boundary and out of sight of our hotel, yet in full view of the Bali Haj guests. There was nothing Mahmood Bas could do but watch.

  4

  Late one afternoon, I’d settled into the hammock on my balcony and was lazily admiring the tenacity of a gecko hunting a fly on the wall. With its suction-cupped feet it moved closer and closer to its prey. A hammering on my door; the gecko froze; the fly moved. I almost fell out of the hammock in my rush to open the door. Geno grabbed my shirt front.

  ‘Adam! Something bad happen, man. Come quick!’ He pulled me towards his brother’s room. As we entered, the look of horror on Paolo’s face made my throat tighten. He pointed to the couch. Lying on it was a guy with his head lolled back, his lips blue and bloodless, and thick white saliva dribbling down one side of his mouth, his eyes open but rolled up, his arms and legs splayed lifeless.

  ‘He dead … Gone, man. I do everything. I give him the kiss, bang his chest, everything, but he dead, man, finito!’ Paolo cried.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘We know him. Mikey his name, surfer guy from Australia. What we gonna do now, man?’

  ‘Why are you asking me?’

  ‘Because you our friend, man, and we need help.’

  On the glass coffee table, there were three white lines of powder, and a banknote rolled up beside a credit card. Two-thirds of the middle line was gone.

  ‘Strong coke, eh?’

  ‘No, man, not coke. That heroin,’ said Geno with an odd expression.

  I wanted out of there. This had nothing to do with me, and I moved towards the door. But Geno cut me off and held my arm.

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘Help us, man. We got a plan.’

  ‘Geno, I …’ His fingers dug into my flesh.

  ‘Just listen, okay? We not gonna get you in any trouble, man, but if we don’t get rid of this body we in big shit, man. Big shit. Tell him, Paolo,’ said Geno, holding my arm in a vice-like grip.

  Paolo moved towards us and released Geno’s hand from mine. Then he walked me past the body and out onto the balcony. ‘It’s simple, man. You gonna be our lookout. We gonna dress him up, pour whisky in him, and then Geno and I gonna shoulder him down to the motorbike, like him really bad drunk. You know between us, like this,’ he mimed how they would carry the body. ‘We put him on motorbike, three’s up Bali style, him in middle. I hold him from back. Geno drive and we go, eh, man?’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘To Blue Ocean Beach.’ Paolo looked at me, his palms spread open.

  ‘Wait a minute, let me get this straight … You’re proposing to put this dead body between you and Geno, three’s up on a motorbike, and drive through busy traffic and crowded streets of Kuta, to Blue Ocean Beach?’

  ‘Yeah, man.’

  ‘That’s mad, that’s fucking crazy! Let me go, let me out of here.’ I saw that Geno was standing guard at the door.

  ‘Not so mad, Adam. Now you just listen,’ said Paolo, his voice soft but insistent. ‘You get whisky from coffee shop, then you go downstairs to make sure no one’s around. Give us a sign, then we fix him on bike and you borrow Ketut’s bike and follow us, so we safe from back like that. Anybody look they gonna think him drunk. And Blue Ocean, man, many people drown there. We wait till dark and drop him by the water. In the morning, when they find him, they think he drunk too much, go swim and drown.’ Paolo was waiting for an answer. I turned my eyes away from the body slumped on the couch, and towards Geno, who sat in the doorway, head in hands.

  From the balcony, I saw turquoise streaks of the sunset, and heard the call of a beach hustler chasing a tourist. Blue Ocean Beach, a surf spot about two kilometres further down the beach, where the brothers had taken me for surfing lessons, did have a strong rip. The same rip that had caught me in the dinghy. I’d heard that every year a number of tourists drowned there. But to get the body from here to there … Wouldn’t a car be better? No, in gridlocked traffic with a body in a car, it could turn into a trap. Motorbikes could get through traffic where cars couldn’t. Besides, we didn’t have a car. Motorbikes were definitely our safest option. I could ride vanguard, covering them from the rear, blocking other bikes from cutting in and getting too close. Three’s up on a motorbike was a common sight on the streets of Bali. It could be done.

  What was I thinking? I didn’t need to be part of this! I’d caught myself buying into their crazy plan without realising it.

  Paolo stroked my arm and said quietly, ‘Do this, Adam, and we owe you big time, okay?’ I looked over the balcony and briefly considered jumping from it, and fleeing, but the thorns on the bougainvillea bushes below would tear me to shreds.

  ‘And anyway, it is better for you too, man.’

  ‘How can that be?’

  ‘Well, you know, man. If we don’t do this, we leave the hotel, and they find body, and then find you and …’

  He didn’t have to say more. I had no passport, and if the police caught me, it would mean the end of Bali, as well as some immigration jail time. And considering that I have already seen the body, I was already implicated in their crime whether I liked it or not. I didn’t answer when Geno said, ‘You got it, eh? Now go get one bottle of whisky and borrow Ketut’s bike.’ He pushed open the door.

  Wayan was fussing over a table of early diners and didn’t notice me slip in and take a bottle of whisky from the bar in the coffee shop. I found Ketut, and he handed me the keys to his motorbike. Back at the room, the brothers had dressed the dead man in a red T-shirt and cleaned him up. He was already wearing board shorts, which he’d need if he’d been swimming. I handed the whisky to Paolo.

  ‘What about the face?’ I asked. ‘That face gives it away!’

  ‘No worries, man. We put him face down on Geno’s shoulder. He drunk.’ Paolo opened Mikey’s mouth with his fingers and poured in the whisky; it overflowed and ran down the red T-shirt, then for good measure Geno took the whisky bottle and poured some in his hair. Then they hauled Mikey up and draped his arm on their shoulders.

  ‘How we looking, man?’ Paolo asked. As long as one couldn’t see the blue bloodless colour of the man’s dead face, the three of them looked passable. I grabbed a baseball cap that was lying around and put it on Mikey’s head, pulling the visor down low over his eye
s.

  I went out first. The hotel staff and guests were on the beach, their backs turned, holding cocktails and staring at an exploding skyscape. The hotel grounds were empty. I gave the brothers the all-clear sign, and they shouldered Mikey towards the motorbikes in the hotel parking lot. No one noticed anything unusual. I kept some distance between myself and the brothers. As they positioned the body onto the motorbike, I heard Geno say, ‘Come on, Mikey, good boy, Mikey,’ and as Paolo was about to mount the bike from behind, the body slipped. Paulo’s arm shot out and grabbed him from the neck. ‘Motherfucker!’ He pulled Mikey back up and gave him a hard slap. I started my motorbike. Geno led the way as we left the hotel grounds. We drove towards the centre of Kuta. It was the only way through.

  At this time of night Kuta’s traffic was brought to a standstill. In the cool of the evening, everyone came out. Tourists and Balinese went about their evening business, jostling for space on the narrow walkways. Footpath hustlers competed with noodle stands and hot-grills for the choicest spots. The smell of barbecued satay blended with exhaust fumes as we crawled through the teeming traffic. Geno revved the bike, moving forward in short bursts. I kept my front wheel almost glued to their rear one, making sure traffic couldn’t pass me from behind. Paolo kept the body upright. Under the cover of darkness, we came out on Beach Road.

  An Indonesian cop stepped out of the dark side of the road suddenly. He held a flashlight that looked more a weapon and flagged the brothers down. I wanted to accelerate and get out of there. One cop couldn’t run after us after all. For an instant I thought Geno was about to do the same. But, no, he brought the bike to a halt. I drove past, and as soon as I was out of sight, slung my bike onto its stand. I looked back and saw why Geno had stopped. A second cop sat in a police car hidden behind the coconut palms.