Shaman of Bali

by John Greet

  ‘Jimmy, could you take me out over the reef?’ I once asked as we took our seat on the sea wall.

  ‘Sure, Adam, no problem. Tomorrow morning I go fishing, I come get you early, okay.’ He reached down into his gunnysack and handed me a parrot fish he’d speared that morning. ‘For your lunch,’ and he gathered up his things and left.

  * * *

  There was a knock on my door just before sunrise. Jimmy the Fish stood there shuffling impatiently while I pulled on my shorts and T-shirt.

  ‘Big tide this morning, Adam, big tides, many fish, hurry.’

  Within minutes we were in the outrigger, motoring across calm lagoon waters, with the outboard pushing us at a steady five knots. In the light of a breaking dawn, the reef looked formidable. The waves were glassy and huge. A couple of early morning board-riders were surfing. I watched them ducking in and out of the pipeline and weaving over white crests. On the shore side, the first rays of sunlight highlighted the peak of Mt. Agung. Before us, spumes of spray peeled back from the tips of breaking waves. Gannet-like birds circled and cawed, diving into the waves to catch the swimming herring.

  We rolled over a couple of walls of churning foam, which felt like they’d topple the boat, and then we were breached against a giant wave. Jimmy must have seen the fear in my face because he raised a hand in reassurance. He reached down and pulled the motor’s throttle on full, swung the helm so we were now face-to-face with the wave and pointing into it. We rode up the glass wall. The screaming outboard motor pushed us upwards, even though, caught in the wave’s momentum, we were moving backwards at a faster rate. The outrigger’s bow hovered directly above me. I wedged my legs against the hull and tightened my grip. In seconds, we had reached the crest of the wave; Jimmy made a deft manoeuvre by swinging the helm to port, putting us out of the wave’s grip and behind the breaking peak just before it broke. We motored towards the horizon until we lay well beyond the forming waves.

  I relaxed my grip on the rails, released my legs from their vice-like clutch and turned to Jimmy with a big smile. He pushed his sunglasses up onto his forehead and said, ‘Not so bad, eh?’

  The next few hours I spent alone on the boat while Jimmy dived. I waited, listening to the cawing of seabirds and lapping of small waves against the hull. He occasionally surfaced with a trevally or a small tuna or a Spanish mackerel; he speared many fish and filled his gunnysack. The tide soon began to turn. I felt the strength of the rip beneath the boat. Jimmy surfaced once more, threw his spear gun and gunnysack aboard, and then climbed in.

  ‘You no worry yourself. Go back, easy, okay?’ said Jimmy as he put on his Ray-Bans. He fired up the boat and headed back over the forming waves. As we came precariously close to the reef break, Jimmy swung the outrigger to face a wave. We rose high. I looked down from a moving mountain of water. The crest of the wave took us with it. As it began to break, peeling white water to starboard, Jimmy swung the steering oar again, bringing the boat vertical to the wave, then he cut the motor. The wave’s thrust lifted our stern and held us in its momentum. We gathered speed and surfed. We moved faster, careening lengthways along a sheer wall of water. On the starboard side, a wing of spray shot away from our outrigger like the fin of a giant flying fish, and to port, rolling water climbed to a towering azure wall beside us, so close that I could reach out and touch it. Beneath us, through thin crystal water, black dagger-like coral rocks sped by. The wave’s crest, now a ton of white water, loomed above. It broke with a pounding roar. Erupting sea foam almost swallowed the boat. Our bow rose, and the stern lifted, and we raced headlong on the cascading water. The wave’s final thrust carried our boat into the calm waters of the lagoon.

  I’d done it. I’d finally nailed my fear of the reef. As I shook Jimmy’s hand he looked at me strangely, not quite sure what I was doing.

  We fished together often after that. Jimmy taught me to dive. But more importantly, he showed me the helming techniques he used to cross the reef. Within a short time I could manage the boat without his help.

  11

  ‘Duncan’s alive!’ Grace’s voice jumped out of the phone.

  ‘How so?’ I stammered.

  ‘He washed up in the Sea Rover’s life raft on the northern tip of Australia, and a group of locals brought him to Port Douglas. Flew into Auckland yesterday. It’s in all the newspapers.’

  ‘Grace, sweetheart, this is great news.’ A surge of warm relief washed through me, but then I froze as she continued.

  ‘Dad, don’t freak out, okay? Because it gets bad. He’s saying that you were never on the Sea Rover during that storm that wrecked him, says that you left the boat somewhere off the coast of Indonesia – they didn’t, like, mention Bali, but the newspaper says that they will try and find you.’

  I felt like a hand had reached into my stomach and was squeezing my intestines. I could say nothing. Grace’s matter-of-fact voice changed to pleading. ‘Dad, can you think about coming home? I’m over this. It’s getting really complicated, and I have to tell so many lies. Come home, Dad, please.’

  The telephone receiver felt like a lead weight. Sweat dripped from my forehead. I could hear Grace’s breathing as she waited for an answer. Of course I wanted to go home to see my daughter and clear my name. But I would first be charged and jailed in Indonesia then deported. Once home, my creditors would be at me like a pack of hungry dogs, not to mention Tula. And what could I do there anyway? How would I repay my debts?

  ‘Dad are you there?’ she asked.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Oh, and by the way, Mum is so pissed off. She said that it’s just like you. She says that you’re probably clinging to some rock somewhere, just like you clung to the restaurant that nearly killed us all. What are you going to do?’

  ‘Grace, I want to stay here. I’m managing the Sandika Hotel, and I know I can make something of it.’

  ‘But that’s what you used to say when Milano’s was going broke …’

  ‘I know but this time it’s different. I have a chance here. There are some real possibilities, and I want to try. I need to do this.’

  ‘What if they find you?’

  ‘I’ll take my chances,’

  There was a long silence, followed by a resigned, ‘Okay’.

  I’d started the phone conversation as a dead man, presumed drowned, but had ended it as an illegal immigrant, a fugitive even. The good news was that Duncan had survived and, regardless of my situation, that knowledge brought relief.

  I was heading across the carpark when Eddi pulled up beside me. He had a copy of TheNew Zealand Herald rolled up in his hand. He handed it to me. ‘Thought you might like to read about yourself.’ I waited. ‘Look, Adam, as far as I’m concerned you’re Michael Brown. As it says in that passport Geno got you.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He asked me to help him get the work visa. The way I see it, mate, whatever happened back in New Zealand is not my business.’

  ‘Who else knows?’

  ‘Nobody, and we’ll keep it that way. If something happens, and if they start looking for you here, it’ll come through me, and I’ll get to you first.’

  As Eddi and I walked on the beach, I told him what had happened. ‘Incredible, mate! Stay here, make the Sandika into something. It needs someone like you, and if I were in your shoes, I’d think about growing a beard.’

  Two weeks later, with a thick stubble hiding my face, and with my shoulder-length hair and sun-bleached skin, I looked nothing like myself in the newspaper photograph.

  * * *

  After the rafters and framework were completed, the tedious work on our roof began. Lady-grass was wrapped around the bamboo battens before being stitched in place. Wood carvers chipped away at the teak rafters. Mythological figures and stories appeared along each beam. Another group of workmen built bamboo-scaffolding towers at either end of the hotel block. These were to stabilise and guide the roof when it was ready to be hoisted into position.

  I awoke to the laughter
and chatter of the workers’ women and children. From my balcony, I looked down at the roof, now covered with its first layer of lady-grass. Once again, it looked like a massive oblong mushroom, like our previous roof, and was as large as the hotel. It covered the entire carpark.

  The roof builders’ insatiable appetites multiplied our need for food supplies, so I contracted Jimmy to use our boat daily and supply the Sandika with his complete catch. Wayan negotiated a price for the fish, and each morning Jimmy laid out his catch behind the coffee-shop kitchen for Wayan’s inspection. He brought us mangrove snapper, parrot fish, striped eel, blue bream, rock crayfish, sole and, the tourists’ favourite, the prized yellow-fin tuna. Some said Jimmy had an affinity with this species on account of its colour. Envious fisherman said he didn’t have to hunt the yellow fin, that they came to him on their own accord and he simply made his choice.

  Regardless of rumours, thanks to Jimmy our restaurant served the freshest fish on the beach. Our sole meunière and char-grilled crayfish became a hit with the Japanese tourists coming through from the Bali Haj Hotel.

  * * *

  I was in the coffee shop with pad and pencil, working on a business plan, when an idea stared me in the face. I’d noticed that the Japanese men coming through from the Bali Haj had an obsession with fishing. Decked out in expensive fishing gear, they came to the coffee shop in the morning as if they were prepared for a major fishing tournament. They wore green waders, jackets with an extravagant number of tiny pockets, each containing a fishing gadget; cloth hats complete with flies and lures attached; and carried two or three expensive fishing rods. They waded out into the lagoon and, to the amazement of the locals, seemed content catching tiny herrings and sprats.

  One morning, after watching these fishermen’s frantic casting and futile endeavours at the lagoon, I casually suggested to Jimmy that he might want to take them out over the reef to go after bigger fish.

  ‘Big problem, Adam. Japanese no dive. Fish around here no eat lure.’

  ‘Take them out anyway. They can’t do any worse than what they’re doing here.’

  I put Jimmy in charge of our boat, and he took the Japanese fishermen out to the ocean daily. Surfing back over the reef became a talking point. Our boat was booked out every day. The Japanese were glad to pay a good price for their fishing obsession, and the Sandika fishing tours became our first steady money-earner outside of the hotel and coffee shop.

  * * *

  It bothered me that our fishing boats often came home without fish. Sometimes they picked up a few small trevally, only slightly larger than the fish in the lagoon. But surely the point of the tours was to catch decent-sized fish.

  ‘You making good money these days?’ I asked. Jimmy had just sat down at my table, and removed his shades. His eyes glowed like incandescent amber in the light of an oil lamp.

  ‘You know it, Adam. You pay me.’

  ‘Yeah, you do a great job.’ Jimmy shrugged. ‘Is there any way we can catch more fish with the tourists? What’s the problem? Do we have to go out into deeper waters or is it the type of bait they’re using? The tours are booked out already, but imagine if we had good catches. We could put more boats on. There’s some serious money to be made in this business, Jimmy!’

  ‘I know it, Adam. I know it. But Japs, only have short time to fish, too hot in day time, water too warm, fish no eat, look,’ Jimmy pointed to the faint glimmer of lights on a moonlit horizon. ‘They fishermen, and they catch good fish. But Japs no go night-time. They too scared, Adam. I ask them already.’ He slipped his Ray-Bans back on and looked out at the sea. A distinct crescent moon hung in a smattering of stars, and a rising tide sent sweeping white foam splashing on to the sea wall before us.

  ‘Adam,’ said Jimmy in a whisper, ‘I got an idea.’

  Over the next thirty minutes, with animated hand movements, Jimmy the Fish laid out his plan. He would go out with our boat at night and catch a number of good-sized yellow fin tuna, which he would keep alive in a large woven basket strung between the outriggers. He’d drop the enclosed basket, weighted with stones, on the deep side of the reef and return to give me the location using a set of land bearings. The next morning, Ketut and I would take the Japanese out fishing in our boat. Before our departure, Jimmy would slip away over the reef with a scuba diver’s oxygen bottle, allowing him to stay submerged and wait for our arrival. As the two boats came past the pre-arranged location with lures out, Jimmy, with a tuna fish in one hand and a steel boat hook in the other, would catch the lure and give the Japanese fisherman the simulation of a tuna strike. He would then attach the fish to the lure, and the fisherman could reel away to his heart’s content.

  Jimmy poured himself a shot of arrack, swallowed it and looked out to sea. The wind had dropped and the moon shone a silver pathway towards the horizon. We both watched the fishermen’s lights.

  ‘Jimmy, my friend, that’s a wild plan.’

  ‘Make them Japs very happy. Big fish, big feed, big photo, big money for us,’ he said as he smacked his lips in contentment.

  12

  The Sandika was making money with the fishing tours and the coffee shop, but whatever we earned was getting used to build the roof. Anak had gone over budget. He’d spent all of his cockfight winnings on it and needed more money daily. The lady-grass roof had become his obsession. I knew it had something to do with Mahmood Bas; Anak had something to prove to his opponent. I was acutely aware that our current earnings came from the Bali Haj guests. If Bas closed the pathway, he could cut off our income, and it wouldn’t surprise me if he did.

  The following day I called over Jimmy the Fish. ‘I’d like to give your plan a try.’

  ‘Sure Adam, start tomorrow?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I go tonight, and I catch fish.’

  The next morning, I told the six or so Japanese tourists, who were about to board our boat for the day’s fishing tour, that we were taking two boats. I’d skipper one myself, and Ketut would take the other. Jimmy and I had decided not to tell Ketut about our plan.

  Earlier that morning Jimmy had given me instructions about where we should make our crossing. He also told me that the night’s catch looked good and he had four large tuna ready in the basket.

  Kuta’s dependable offshore wind caused waves to break in an even formation as we powered the outboard motors and shot over the reef between waves. From my position in the bow, I lined up our bearings and gave Ketut hand directions. Trolling rods went out when we found deep water.

  Within minutes a fish had struck. One of the rods bent double, and its ratchet screamed as a Japanese fisherman, red-faced with trembling legs, fought for control. I told Ketut to cut the motor and ordered all the other rods to be wound in to avoid tangles. The fisherman’s line paid out at a fast rate, with the reel making a high-pitched whistle. The fisherman braced himself for the fight. His nylon line cut through water, giving off a fine spray. A sudden series of sharp tugs almost ripped his rod from his grip. Then it stopped. Movement ceased. The rod bent double again and the ratchet sounded. Beads of sweat erupted on the fisherman’s forehead. His rod rose and fell, slowly gaining line. Ten minutes later, a firmly hooked yellow-fin tuna lay beside our hull. We hauled it aboard with a gaff hook and net. It was a large and elegant fish, with yellow fins, large black eyes and a horizontal green-blue striped midriff crossed with shimmering silver lines. Cameras snapped and flashed as the tuna shivered helplessly in the grip of the fisherman. I heard a shout from Ketut’s boat and the sound of the motor being cut. They had a strike.

  ‘Good luck!’ I called, cupping hands to mouth, knowing well that luck had nothing to do with it. We motored closer to watch the fight. The same scenario played out aboard Ketut’s vessel. The opulent colours of another gaffed tuna shone as Ketut’s fishermen held up their fish for our inspection. The jubilant atmosphere among the fishermen made me almost forget about Jimmy hiding underwater with hook and fish, waiting for the next lure.

  * * *r />
  That evening Wayan and her kitchen staff prepared a tuna feast for us. The fishermen invited our entire contingent of roof builders and the Bali Haj regulars. Under a mango-streaked sunset, with a receding tide leaving swirls of silver on sand, our dinner guests sat at tables on the sea wall. One after the other, plates laden with sashimi tuna, fish marinated in coconut cream and stuffed with crab meat and lime butter, and grilled tuna-steaks with mango-chilli sauce were brought out of Wayan’s kitchen, along with platters of steamed saffron rice and tropical fruits. A gamelan player’s bell chimes played to laughter and different languages. The feasting and drinking lasted until the early hours of the morning.

  I didn’t see Jimmy the Fish all evening and wanted to speak to him about the following day’s tour. I had an uneasy feeling about his absence. I sent Ketut down to his hut, and he came back with the message, ‘He fishing, Adam.’

  Anak came to the coffee shop for a game of chess.

  ‘I hear that Bas is seething about the fishing tours. I saw him today: binoculars up on the water tower, watching the boats leave. I looked at today’s take and realised we make more money from these boat trips than we do off the hotel. Well done, Adam.’ Anak’s delight about antagonising Bas showed in his quick movements and sly grins. ‘I hear that Bas has bought his own boats and will offer the same deal as us. Only he has inflatable rubber dive boats with powerful outboards. He will use a side ramp by the airport runway to avoid the reef. He has those kinds of connections … Be careful out there, Adam. Watch out for him.’