Shaman of Bali

by John Greet

  ‘Bob’s told me you were subjected to torture and that these wounds were inflicted by the Indonesian police. Is that correct?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In that case, we could lodge a formal complaint with the Human Rights Commission in Geneva. To be honest, I’ve never treated injuries caused by torture in my career. I would like to see the people who did this held to account.’

  ‘Doctor, my main concerns are my swollen testicle and my ribs. I don’t want to lodge any complaints. I’m sorry, but I have my reasons, and another thing … I really need to use a telephone to call my daughter.’

  ‘I’m sure Bob can arrange that, but for the meantime, let’s begin with the testicle. It’s absolutely functional and the contusion, the swelling you have, will disappear over the next few weeks; you see, fluid accumulates around the testis when it’s injured, and takes a very long time to come right. The condition is called hydrocele. In your case, you will first notice a softening and then the swelling will start to diminish.’

  Doctor Grey’s words were a huge relief.

  ‘The bad news is your ribs; the X-ray tells me they were broken more than once and haven’t knitted properly, and that’s what’s causing the pain. We’ll have to fix them. And your index finger will have to be rebroken and reset.’ He paused. ‘All these procedures we can do here. Apart from these broken bones, you are remarkably intact.’

  The doctor then looked over the top of his glasses and said, ‘But if you change your mind about that complaint, I would like to help.’

  ‘Thank you, doctor.’

  Bob came in and informed the doctor he’d got the bill on the Embassy’s account. ‘After all, he is an Aussie, right?’ He smiled sympathetically and winked. Eddi must have filled him in. When the doctor showed Bob the X-rays and told him there was quite a lot more to do, Bob was clearly shocked at the state of my ribs. ‘I think I can swing it with the Embassy,’ he said.

  ‘Right now he needs a place to rest up, a telephone and some good food, and we’ll attend to those ribs as soon as we can,’ said the doctor as he handed me a bottle of Codeine tablets.

  * * *

  Bob took me to his apartment. It looked out over the south end of Roppongi, a suburb of tree-lined avenues where most of the foreign embassies in Tokyo were located. Bob was a good host, and although it was tiny, his sixth-floor apartment contained everything: a fully stocked refrigerator, a collection of books and a spare room with a comfortable bed.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you to it. Make yourself at home. I’m not here often so it’s all yours.’

  I took a shower and marvelled at the phenomenon of hot water and shampoo, and I enjoyed being able to brush my teeth in a clean bathroom once again. I paced the apartment, thinking about how I got here. I was free. I had survived the Polda and probably escaped a twenty-year jail sentence for assisting with a prison break. I had to consider myself lucky, but I didn’t feel lucky, I was too shattered to feel anything. My immediate concern was Grace; I found the telephone and called her.

  ‘Dad, you can’t keep doing this, you know? You disappear all the time. Eddi called and said you were away on tour. Are you okay?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m okay. I couldn’t get to a phone, that’s all.’

  ‘You voice sounds different. Where are you?’

  ‘I’m in Tokyo. I am living under a different name.’

  ‘You sound all worn out. Is something wrong? What are you doing in Tokyo?’

  Before I could answer, Grace cut in. ‘Dad! Listen!’ I heard the ruffling of fabric. ‘Can you hear that?’ she asked.

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘He just kicked like hell. I think he’s trying to talk to you, asking you to come home.’

  ‘I’m trying, sweetheart. I’m trying.’

  ‘Just promise me you’ll be here when the baby’s born.’

  ‘Okay, I promise.’

  I stared out the window. It was evening, and below me, a heaving mass of people lit by stark street lights moved towards a subway entrance. Neon lights screamed from pachinko parlours, sushi restaurants and trinket shops. I heard the whoosh and screech of a train, and saw the people quicken their pace. I looked down through the blaze of light, and I thought of all the promises I’d made to Grace that I hadn’t been able to keep.

  * * *

  The first week in Tokyo, I slept and ate, and felt my body heal. Grace and I talked almost every day. She rang early one morning. ‘Can I ask you something personal?’ she said.

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Do you ever think about your mother?’

  ‘It’s strange that you should ask that, because I just recently started thinking about her. Yeah, since you’re expecting, and when I was talking with Janna back in Bali, I was wondering about her … You know, what does she look like, where is she, does she have kids, that kind of thing.’

  ‘She’s my grandmother, Dad. When this one’s old enough to travel, I’m going to go look for her.’

  * * *

  Bob took me to his dentist, who arranged a porcelain cap for my broken front tooth, and Doctor Grey reset my ribs and finger. I was told to rest up for another week. Slowly my swollen testicle softened and began to reduce in size. I wanted to call Bali and tell them I was safe, but I resisted doing so. Instead, I asked Bob to send a message to Eddi. I thought of Janna constantly; she had no telephone so I couldn’t call her. I wandered around the shopping centres in Tokyo, walking listlessly through the malls and sidewalks. I saw Janna’s face in reflections on shop windows, in advertisements on subway trains, in the faces of women I walked past.

  All around me, life swirled, and people moved busily like the rise and fall of a tide. Whenever I stopped and closed my eyes, everything that had happened to me would flash before me. I saw the face of the guard who had used the cattle prod on me, and I would burn with anger. I would see Geno shouting through the dark surf: ‘I would never hurt you.’ I would remember the look he’d given me in the fishing hut. Why hadn’t I noticed that self-obsessed look before? I had been prepared to do anything to stop my fragile world from falling apart, and he had known that and had taken advantage of it. In the prison cell, I had been seen humanity at its worst, but rather than breaking me, it had empowered me; behind the pain and exhaustion, I felt a new strength, positive and strong.

  I walked back to Bob’s and paced the apartment. I couldn’t sleep. In the middle of the night I peered through the window and saw skyscrapers looming through the first rays of a foggy dawn like grey monoliths from some futuristic age.

  * * *

  The next day I went out to buy clothes with the money I had; Mahmood had packed my wallet with a good amount of American dollars. Bob had told me about a meeting place for foreigners looking for employment: Studio Alta, an area under a giant outdoor movie screen near Shinjuku Station. I found it and approached a young guy who worked there. He turned out to be an Aussie.

  ‘No worries, mate. Just about every foreigner in Tokyo is teaching English.’

  ‘I’ve never taught English before,’ I said.

  ‘Hey, neither had I until I got here. But as long as you can speak it, you can teach it. Just along this road, there’s a bookshop … Go to the top floor and get a copy of the Tokyo Times. Hundreds of jobs in there. Good luck, mate.’ I wanted to talk more to him but he was swallowed up by the crowd.

  Located in the shadows of skyscrapers, Shinjuku was a fast and furious place. The streets were lined with bustling restaurants, gaming parlours, computer shops and the ubiquitous noodle stands with their sour tang of fermenting soybeans. Neon signs rose up the sides of buildings, higher than the eye could see, and teeming throngs of people pushed and shoved their way along the pavements. As I tried to find the bookshop, I became caught in a group of schoolgirls moving in the opposite direction, chattering like a flock of sparrows, texting on their cellphones, totally unaware that they were pulling me along with them. I managed to free myself and found the shop. The Aussie wa
s right. There were plenty of jobs available for English teachers.

  I found a job within a week. The school was on the tenth floor of one of the smaller skyscrapers in West Shinjuku, a stark and sterile building of thirty-five floors. After a rigorous interview, I was asked to sit in on a class.

  That night I brushed up on my English grammar, and the following day I took my first beginner lesson. It was basic stuff, and I enjoyed the enthusiasm of the young, mostly female group of students. After class they invited me to a coffee shop, where conversation revolved around a dozen English words and involved a lot of exaggerated politeness and school-girl giggles. They addressed me formally as Sensei-san, which translated to Mr. Professor. That night I called Grace to tell her I had a job.

  It was time to leave Bob’s apartment. He’d done so much for me, and I appreciated it, but I felt I’d overstayed my welcome and began looking for other accommodation. A friend of Bob’s introduced me to an older suburb called Akebonobashi in Shinjuku; it was one of the few suburbs in Central Tokyo that had survived the blanket bombings of the Second World War. Ornate wooden buildings with tiled eaves lined its lanes and byways. You could find there trimmed bonsais and potted bamboo precisely placed on tiny balconies; a myriad small shops with shopkeepers wearing traditional clothes and hawking their wares in guttural tones; taverns and restaurants emitting mouth-watering aromas; people in kimonos, holding sponges and towels, shuffling on their way to the bathhouses.

  I found a letting agency that specialised in cheap traditional rentals. They showed me a six-tatami mat room with an old handheld telephone and a little recess with a sink that doubled as a bathroom. The main room was also the bedroom. It had a duvet I could roll out at night. I didn’t mind the size. I didn’t intend to stay there too long. The day I moved in, I called Grace to give her the new number.

  * * *

  As I came to terms with my situation, I knew that Bali was over for me. I could never go back. I would never see Janna again. The only option available to me was to save my money and fly home on my Australian passport and then hand myself in to the authorities and tell them what had happened. At least I would be keeping my promise to Grace. That night I wrote a letter to Janna. It was so long that it only just fit into an envelope.

  A few weeks later, Bob called me at the school and asked to meet up. In a café outside, he told me that his colleague at the Brazilian Embassy wanted me to help identify Paolo’s body. The Embassy couldn’t find any relatives, so the body remained lying frozen in the police morgue since the murder because the Embassy could not go ahead with the cremation and other formalities until it had been formally identified. I hesitated at first then agreed. I could do that for Paolo.

  We met a few days later outside an austere building in Yotsuya, which housed the police morgue. Bob introduced me to his Brazilian colleague, an older man in a suit and tie who spoke excellent English.

  ‘I’m sorry to put you in this position. I know it must be difficult for you. I understand that you knew Mr. Roberto for some time.’

  ‘Yes, I did. He lived in the hotel I managed.’

  ‘Perfect, then you will be able to give us a positive identification,’ he said as we entered the building.

  Before we were allowed into the refrigerated area that held the bodies, we were required to sign an entry book. Bob signed but then the Brazilian stopped in mid-pen stroke.

  ‘Somebody viewed Mr. Roberto’s body two days ago. How extraordinary, after all this time. Look!’ He held up the book for me to see, and there under the name of Paolo Roberto I recognised Geno’s signature. I’d booked him into the Sandika Hotel so often that I knew it. A cold chill came over me. I said nothing as I put my signature on the page. I looked back at the entrance way, half expecting to see Geno. He was probably still in Tokyo if he’d visited his brother recently. I didn’t know if the information of his escape had been relayed to the Embassy here yet. Perhaps not, because if they had been alerted of him then his signature would have caused alarm. But then his handwriting was almost illegible.

  ‘Well, unless this person contacts us, there is nothing we can do. We still have our process to complete. The police want the body out of here and it’s our responsibility, so we’ll get on with it, shall we?’ said the diplomat in a matter-of-fact manner.

  The attendant led us to a chilled room with body bags on metal trolleys. Harsh fluorescent light reflected off metal tables and turned our skin pale. The place reeked of chemicals. The morgue attendant checked the number he’d been given and unzipped the bag. Before us on a stainless steel draw was Paolo’s body, sheet-white but clearly recognisable. For an instant I wished it were Geno lying there instead.

  I seePaolo laughing as I fall off my surfboard. I hear his lilting harmonies as he sings. Then he gulps down a shot of arrack, grins, and looks at me. I tried to push away the thoughts of Paolo from my mind but I couldn’t. I turned to the diplomat, fighting to control my trembling speech.

  ‘Yes, that’s Paolo Roberto,’ I stammered, and I tried not to vomit. The diplomat took a couple of photographs and asked me to fill out and sign a form in Portuguese, which he roughly translated for me. As I signed, I noticed Paolo’s birth date. He would have turned thirty-five tomorrow. The diplomat and Bob paid this no concern. With the identification process done, we left the building.

  Ever since I’d been in Tokyo, I’d thought long and hard about Geno. My hatred for him burned with such intensity that I sometimes had to walk the concrete boulevards of the city to try to get him out of my mind. Now that I knew he was here in Tokyo, something compelled me to find him. I wasn’t quite sure what was driving me. I remembered his last mad words on the night of his escape: I would never hurt you, man. You are free now. You don’t owe me.

  28

  The next morning I phoned my school to tell them I would be taking the day off. On the way to Shinjuku Station, I stopped at a trinket shop and bought a carpet knife and tucked it in my jacket pocket. Holding a colour-coded subway map, I navigated my way through half-a-dozen train stops until I surfaced at Yotsuya, near the police morgue. A café across the busy street gave me a frontal view of the entrance. I waited there for three hours. Then I walked up and down the pavement for an hour and sat at an outdoor noodle shop, eating a bowl of udon soup. It tasted hot and bitter, and I left it and returned to the café, where I waited for another hour.

  It was Paolo’s and Geno’s birthday; I’d acted on the hunch that as they were twins, Geno would come to see his brother’s body today. But I was beginning to think I was wasting my time. I paid for my coffee and decided to leave. As I opened the door and stepped onto the crowded street, I almost collided with Geno. He took one step back, mumbled what I assumed was a Portuguese prayer and held his crucifix before him. Then his face exploded into a smile. He grabbed me, lifted me off the ground and swung me around. When he let me down, he held my face in his palms and said, ‘Man, this is fucking out of it. How the fuck did you get here?’

  My heart thumped as I tried to get the measure of him. How incredible, I thought, that after all we’d been through, all the trouble and pain he’d caused me, he was able to push it all aside, disregard it all, and act as if none of it had happened. He seemed so genuinely happy to see me. My hand wrapped itself around the carpet knife as we went back into the café.

  When we took a seat, I caught a glimpse of him watching me out of the corner of his eye, a cold chameleon’s stare, as hard as a nail. He was checking me out, trying to gauge me. Then as I sat to face him, his warm enthusiasm returned. I forced myself to pretend like I was happy to see him. Don’t let him see the depth of your hatred, I told myself. As I began my charade, I was surprised at how easy it was. It was like slipping into an old and familiar habit. I told Geno everything that had happened since I last saw him. He listened and seemed to showed genuine concern, particularly about my time in the Polda.

  ‘You’d make a crap detective. I been in to see Paolo already. Man, my own flesh and blood, we been
together since we born, never apart. It’s killing me, man. I go many times to that place to see him. I just wanna be near to him, you know.’ Then he quickly changed tack. ‘It’s so good to see your face, man. I’m so fucking sorry. I never thought you would get into shit like that. Never thought they’d figure out you helped me. Those fucking Indo bastards at the Polda, man.’ Geno then asked in a low voice, pointing his finger to his pants, ‘And the conyo, it working, man?’

  ‘The doctor tells me it’s all good.’

  ‘Thank fuck for that.’

  ‘So how did you get here?’ I asked, keeping my voice steady, hoping that my eyes weren’t giving me away.

  ‘It wasn’t easy. Everywhere I go, I’m shitting myself. I been in Indonesia until now. The boat trip was perfect, man, perfect. I found G-Land in a couple of days, stashed the boat and made my way overland to Jakarta. I hid out there. Anyway, I see a backpacker place in Jakarta, but I can’t go in ’cause I got no I.D., nothing, man, just this big bag of cash. I see a guy come out. He look a little like me, same height, same eyes, only brown hair. I follow him, and I hear him speaking Spanish to his friend. Perfect. I steal his bag. I didn’t hurt him, okay? Anyway, I stop at a hair place, and they colour my hair brown, and then I take taxi to the airport. First flight out was to Hong Kong. When I arrive there, I take a flight to Tokyo straight. All the time, I’m thinking I gonna get picked up for the stolen passport. But I get through. And here I am. I got here four days ago.’

  ‘Why Tokyo? You could’ve gone anywhere.’

  ‘I have to get Paolo home, man, you know. My passport says I’m Antonio Solera from Spain. I can’t just show up at the Brazilian Embassy.’ Geno stopped in mid-sentence as if something had just occurred to him. He looked at me keenly. ‘But you could, man, you could.’