Shaman of Bali

by John Greet

  His body was stretched out on the wooden platform, his head resting peacefully on matted hair. The hook, fixed firmly in place, protruded from his dislocated jaw like a tribal piercing. I tried to remove it but it wouldn’t budge. A small trickle of blood dripped from its entry point under his chin.

  Then I saw something. My eyes stared at a spot on Jimmy’s neck. There was movement! A faint rising of his jugular. I reached down and touched it with my finger. Yes, feeble and intermittent, but definitely a pulse. I pinched his nose and was about to apply mouth-to-mouth resuscitation then realised I should first empty the water from his stomach. I applied rhythmic pressure to his chest. I pressed and pressed but to no avail. Long moments passed, and my head spun with exhaustion, and I had no strength left to push on his chest, and I couldn’t hold enough breath to blow into his lungs. Still I kept trying. I stopped for breath and was about to reach down when Ketut held me back.

  ‘Let him go, Adam.’

  I stood. Anger rose up from the soles of my feet. ‘Damn you, Jimmy!’ I cried, looking down at him.

  The Zodiacs had moved closer. Bas’s gaze was on Jimmy, his face impassive. I reached down and pulled Jimmy up. With one hand on his hair and the other on the band of his shorts, and with the strength of a madman, I lifted him high. I wanted to throw him back into the sea, to be rid of this whole cursed thing. My muscles gave out. Jimmy’s body slipped from my grip and fell hard on the wooden platform below. He landed on his shoulder. A great gush of water issued from his mouth. A pink frothy foam surrounded his head and bubbled onto the platform. Then he inhaled, taking in a gurgling strained breath. More water gushed out, followed by more pink foam.

  His gasping breath was the best sound I’d ever heard. Jimmy the Fish was alive. I knelt down beside him. His eyes opened, a blurry pool of flecked yellow and red, and centred on me. He tried to speak. The pain of his jaw found him. He raised his hand to it, tentatively feeling the hook. In a voice so faint that only I could hear, ‘Fish win … Him big, Adam.’

  ‘I saw the fish, Jimmy. I saw it … Sshhh, now.’

  * * *

  We needed to move fast. I wasn’t sure that Jimmy could survive the reef crossing. I looked towards the reef and saw an outrigger breaking through a wave. It was Anak with two fishermen ploughing through the choppy sea towards us. They were coming to help us. Jimmy had lapsed into unconsciousness, his pulse growing weaker, his breathing dangerously laboured. Anak was ten to fifteen minutes away. Bas’s Zodiac lay ten metres to port.

  ‘Help us!’ I hollered to the Muslim. He didn’t react. His attention was focused on Anak. Bas reached into his waist band and pulled out a military style handgun. I heard a metallic click as he rammed a loaded magazine into the gun’s chamber and released the safety latch. I swung around to warn Anak, only to see him standing there, bracing his legs against the hull, a rifle pulled against his shoulder and trained on Bas.

  ‘Ketut, what’s going on?’ I asked desperately.

  ‘Maybe Anak watching from long way. Maybe he think Bas kill Jimmy … Don’t know. Anak crazy sometime.’

  ‘Send a boat. Stop him. Tell him what happened. It was an accident for Christ sake!’

  One of our crew swung an outrigger away from our fleet and pushed out towards Anak. Our terrified Japanese fishermen slid down into the hulls of the outriggers.

  ‘Why doesn’t Bas leave? He could be out of rifle range within seconds?’ Ketut’s look confirmed what I already knew: like at the cockfights, neither man wanted to back down.

  Jimmy’s breaths were coming in short staggered bursts and his pallor was becoming death-like. Bas’s Zodiac drifted closer to our remaining vessels. Did he intend to use our hull as cover? I cupped my hands to my mouth and hollered, ‘Mahmood Bas, I ask you in the name of Allah to show compassion. This man is dying.’

  Holding his gun pointed at the oncoming boat, Bas waved his pistol as if dismissing my request, and looked down at Jimmy. He rubbed a hand over his face, gave his boatman an order then re-aimed his weapon at Anak. The Zodiac pulled alongside us. I jumped aboard. Ketut quickly unfastened the wooden platform, and we eased it into the rubber boat. I left the stunned and silent Japanese fishermen in the care of our boatmen. Another command from Bas and the engine roared. We bounced over white caps at twenty knots. Bas returned his handgun to the folds of his kaftan and held the guy-lines. Not once did he look down at Jimmy or me. Within minutes we were on a boat ramp beside the airport runway. We lifted the platform to the tarmac. Airport staff and onlookers came rushing, quickly regretting their curiosity. Jimmy lay on the wooden plank, eyes open, like a sacrificial human offering. A black limousine arrived and with the help of one of Bas’s men we placed the platform on its back seat. As the car door shut, I turned to thank Bas, but he was already gone.

  The driver, wearing a Bali Haj uniform, sped along the edge of the runway. He turned and asked in the coolest manner, as if we were a couple of rich tourists he’d just picked up from the airport, ‘Where to, sir?’ I knew Eddi Medan’s cellphone number and asked the driver to dial it. I knew it would be hopeless going to the public hospital. We could be stuck in a waiting room for hours.

  ‘What’s up, Adam?’ Eddi’s voice crackled through the phone.

  ‘Fishing accident, local kid. He’s only just hanging in there. I need a doctor urgent. Eddi, it’s touch and go.’

  ‘Bring him to the Sanur Beach Hotel. I’ll meet you out front.’

  ‘Got it.’

  Twenty minutes later, we pulled into the grounds of the hotel. I knew this was where Eddi had his office, and I also knew he had some kind of arrangement with the management.

  ‘Jesus Christ!’ Eddi stammered after taking in the extent of Jimmy’s wounds. He rushed us to a doctor’s surgery inside the hotel – a white, immaculately clean room with fluorescent lights and ceiling fans. We transferred Jimmy onto the surgery bed.

  The doctor entered and inspected him. ‘I will take out the hook and reset the jaw, but first he must gain strength. Saline drip with antibiotic, morphine and rest. You will have to leave him here overnight. Who will be paying? I must have money before treatment. These are my rules.’

  Eddi pulled out a couple of hundred dollars from his wallet.

  The tension drained from Jimmy’s face as the morphine took effect. He closed his eyes and drifted into a slumber. Eddi took me to his room, where I showered and borrowed a fresh T-shirt and shorts. Over a beer at the beach bar, I told Eddi about what had happened, leaving out the fact that I knew Jimmy was underwater.

  When I got to the stand-off between Anak and Bas, Eddi said, ‘Mate, I swear, one day those two will shoot each other. Why don’t they get it over with, you know. One of those duels at sunrise, pistols at twenty paces like in the movies.’

  The relief that Jimmy was alive countered my regret that the fishing tours had to come to close, and with them most of the Sandika’s revenue. I leaned back, my arms and legs aching, my head still reeling.

  Back at the Sandika, I took a bottle of arrack from the bar and went my room.

  13

  I slept well into the morning and awoke to the sound of temple bells and gamelans. Every muscle in my body cried out in stiff protest, and my head thumped. From my balcony, I saw that the ceremony preparations were well underway and then remembered that today the roof was to be hoisted into place. Wayan looked up towards me and waved.

  ‘Adam, if you stay there, they will take the roof from your head,’ he said to an outburst of cackles and calls from everybody around him. Then I heard the sound of hammers and looked up to see workmen dismantling the old roof above me. I had time for a quick shower before the corrugated iron was ripped away and sunlight flooded into my room.

  I found Ketut in the coffee shop. He told me Anak had bribed workmen from a high-rise building in downtown Kuta to tow over two construction cranes in order to raise the roof. While we spoke, the cranes came rumbling in, and the ceremony began. Balinese women, decked out in their best silks and
lace, carried palm baskets laden with saffron rice and offerings. They streamed into the Sandika’s grounds. Men in black-and-white chequered sarongs and white turbans gave directions. Wearing a white satin sarong and gold embroidered jacket, the same pedanda who had officiated at the blessing ceremony sat on a chair, resting his hands on a gemstone-encrusted walking stick.

  Members of a gamelan orchestra arranged their stage, placed instruments and tuned drums. Jimmy the Fish’s family arrived. His mother, now in her forties, carried herself with the elegance and poise of the high-born. From the coffee shop, I observed her discreetly. She was a beauty indeed and as Anak and she exchanged greetings, I recognised something in her face, the curl of her lip, the way her hair followed the curve of her neck. I saw the son in the mother, but there was something else. What was it? Then I saw it again. In her quick secretive glances towards Anak, a subtle flirtatiousness, a capacity for something other than the tightly regimented life of a Balinese woman. I understood then why Jimmy had ginger hair.

  The ceremony began with the chanting of mantras and prayers. The pedanda checked the roof for any bata or kula that might have been be hiding in there and inspected the structure for violations of the spiritual laws of building. The ceremony was for purification, a rite of completion called melaspas, during which the previously dead materials became alive as life was breathed into them by the gods. The hotel’s foundations were considered its feet, the pillars its body and the roof its head. We were thereby giving our hotel a new head. After hours of chanting, music and the mandatory sprinkling of holy water, it was time to lift the head onto its body. This event went smoothly. The bamboo towers did a perfect job of holding the roof, while construction cranes lifted it high above us and onto the hotel. Anak and a few workmen placed terracotta tiles along the top ridge and attached two small protective statues of gods on either peak. The Sandika Hotel now had its head. It stood redeemed. It was once again the only hotel on Kuta Beach with a handsome lady-grass roof.

  * * *

  Anak cancelled the fishing tours. He mumbled something about angry demons and crazed sea gods as he stood admiring our new roof. We pulled our outrigger onto higher ground and put the outboard in storage. I puttered around the place, not knowing what to do with myself. We had no guests, and our restaurant customers had dropped off. Wayan’s face was etched with worry lines, and Ketut spent hours pulling dead leaves from our empty swimming pool.

  I hadn’t heard from Grace in over two weeks. It was unlike her not to call; had something happened to her? All my efforts had come to nothing. Anak told me that he couldn’t pay my salary until business picked up. Getting my life back on track seemed to be slipping away from me.

  I wanted to get away from the Sandika for the night. At the Blue Ocean terraces, I threw the bike onto its stand and pulled up a seat at Geno and Paolo’s table. They were with Satchimoto and were entertaining a group of Japanese from the Bali Haj. I’d noticed earlier that the brothers were tight with the expat fisherman. I ordered a Long Island iced tea for myself, drank it quickly and ordered another one. Cold droplets of water ran down the glass. A smattering of rain had left the air hanging like a wet blanket and the earth smelling musty. I watched Satchimoto and the brothers talking to the fishermen. It sounded like they were trying to sell them something. Geno’s eyes were like stoned marbles, and his hands waved about as he talked. Paolo sat back, quietly watching.

  A grinning waiter hovered around our tables, knowing that the Japanese would offer him large tips. Satchimoto leaned into my ear and in a drunken slur told me how sorry he was about Jimmy. He asked if I could talk to him the following day, because he had some ideas about how we could restart the fishing tours. As he was talking, I saw Geno take his shoulder bag and disappear into the shadows with a local expat. He then returned and nodded to Paolo. For a moment I envied the simplicity of their business, their easy lifestyle, but I knew it wasn’t for me; my cloth wasn’t cut that way. I twirled the cocktail umbrella between my fingers and crushed it into my hand. I wished Grace would call, even if it was just to remind me of who I was and what I should be doing. I felt trapped, drifting in limbo, lost in a tropical wilderness, unable to move forward, unable to go back. I paid the waiter and wandered out onto the beach, waited until the salt air had cleared my head then drifted over to Omar’s café.

  Janna sat at her table, peeling a piece of fruit. The orangutans were tethered on either side of her, calmly waiting for their next morsel. I’d heard that orangutans made great pets when they were young but became aggressive when they reached maturity. Janna’s apes were remarkably passive however, as if she had mysterious control over them. She filled her glass with the last of her arrack and drank it in one shot. I saw the silken beauty of her neck, her smooth skin. The strong liquor seemed to have no effect on her as she moved with a dancer’s ease, unhooking the ape’s chains and talking to them in a soft lilting voice.

  She walked through the coconut trees and out onto the beach, with an ape loping along on her either side. I followed her from a distance, stumbling along the moonless beach, her white figure glowing before me in the darkness. I kept well behind. They stopped where I’d first seen them, at the light tied to a palm tree. She fumbled through her bag, and the orangutans became animated, reaching towards her, almost smothering her. I couldn’t see what she was giving them. It was the same ritual I’d seen on that first night. I watched fascinated, but then as my head cleared, I felt kind of creepy, hiding out of sight and spying on someone I didn’t know. I left, walking back along the beach.

  At the terraces, Geno was having trouble getting four drunken Japanese into a taxi. He signalled for me to help. Satchimoto was in a terrible state and when he saw me, he pulled my ear to his mouth. The vapour of his breath was foul as he said, ‘I want to talk to you … We talk soon, huh?’

  ‘He been going on about it all night,’ said Geno, ‘driving us crazy with that shit. Hey, you still boss of the hotel or not? Well, this guy is your fucking guest, so look after him!’

  * * *

  Morning came, and I hung around the office, waiting for a call from Grace. It had been three weeks now and there was still no call. A heavy tropical downpour pounded on the coffee shop’s roof like applause. Steam rose from the earth and hung in wisps in the carpark. Disturbed fruit bats swooped by, gibbering and squealing. I left the empty coffee shop and walked purposefully towards the office. I had decided to take the risk of calling Grace.

  My ex-wife answered, ‘Hello, this is Grace’s phone. Can I take a message?’

  I hung up immediately and pulled my hand from the receiver as if it had given me an electric shock. A minute later it rang, long shrill calls that vibrated through me. I stood there, unable to move. The phone was still ringing when Wayan appeared in the doorway and looked at me strangely. I picked up the receiver and put my hand over it then nodded to Wayan.

  ‘This is the overseas number that called my daughter. I want to know who this is?’ came Elisabeth’s sharp voice, followed by, ‘Is that you Adam?’

  I placed the receiver onto its cradle as noiselessly as I could and swallowed hard. Elisabeth would know it was me. I looked around. The rain had stopped. Wayan was hanging out the tablecloths. I waited until my chest had stopped thumping and the lump in my throat had settled then headed out to the beach. The receding tide had left a large expanse of flat sand. The beach was deserted. I walked at a steady pace. I suspected that she would call the New Zealand Embassy and give them the Sandika’s number. My days in Bali were surely coming to an end.

  14

  When I returned to the coffee shop, Satchimoto tried to approach me, but then saw my sour expression and moved away. I went to the bar and downed a shot of arrack. A short time later Wayan called for me, ‘Telephone, Adam.’ I suspected it was the Embassy. Wayan’s voice came again, ‘Hurry, Adam, it’s your daughter.’

  ‘Dad! Why did you ring? You nearly blew it,’ said Grace in an agitated whisper.

  ‘Because I wa
s very worried. I thought something had happened to you,’ I said.

  ‘Listen, I’m outside the house, can’t talk long. I’m staying with Mum because Tula showed up in person and she’s scared. He said something about how she’s still okay for her age and if she came to see him, she could work off some of your debt … He’s disgusting. Oh, and after that David walked out, said he can’t handle all this shit.’

  ‘Wow, that’s heavy. I knew something was up but I thought it was more like she might call the Embassy …’

  ‘She was going to, but I came downstairs and managed to talk her out of it.’

  ‘Did she know it was me?’

  ‘She’s not sure. She asked me if you’d ever called me.’

  ‘What did you tell her?’

  ‘I lied. I’m getting so tired of all this. Tula knows Mum can’t pay him anything. I’m sick of him, and Dad, I know I keep on saying this, but you need to come home. I don’t know how long I can keep it together over here. We need you here. I need you here.’

  ‘Be strong, Gracie. Hang in there a while longer. It’ll work itself out, it has to.’

  ‘I wish we could go back to how we were.’

  ‘That’s over, forget about Milano’s … It’s history!’ I felt my voice harden.

  ‘If Tula keeps threatening us, I’m going to do something.’

  ‘Grace, listen to me. I’m your father and I’m telling you: stay away from Tula. He’s not some kitchen cook you can boss around. He’s a serious gangster. Don’t go near him!’