Monkeys in the Dark

by Blanche d'Alpuget

  ‘I’m terribly sorry. I’ve never fainted before,’ Alex said.

  The general sighed. ‘It is lovely when ladies faint,’ he said. ‘It is so feminine. It is their nature.’ Behind him Sutrisno was grinning and Thornton, she saw, had a look of gleeful amusement. Those two set me up for this. They’ve set me up for this half-witted bull, she thought with fury.

  ‘I must go home,’ she said. But the general pushed her gently back on the chaise longue.

  ‘You must rest,’ he said. ‘In a little while you can have some soup.’ He was a man used to exercising authority; his hand on her shoulder was gentle, but very firm. She lay back, feeling helpless and irresponsible. It was all too difficult. She no longer cared that Thornton and Sutrisno had conspired to make a present of her to General Djaya. She lay with her eyes shut, sipping the lime juice, while the others, seated at the round lunch table, discussed what they should eat.

  It was the sharpness of Eileen’s voice that finally revived Alex. Eileen had ordered the food, addressing the waitress in Cantonese. Suddenly she turned to Sutrisno: ‘If I say it is not pork, it is not pork,’ she said. ‘You don’t understand Chinese people, Trisno. We Chinese keep our word. We have honour.’ There was a moment of electric silence, then Eileen switched on one of her perfect smiles. ‘Trisno is always teasing me! He is so naughty, General. He knows I would never order pork for you.’ They all laughed heartily and Sutrisno became particularly attentive to Eileen, calling her ‘my little sister’, asking what she wanted him to bring her from Singapore, and seeking her advice on where to eat there.

  By the time they had eaten four courses Alex was well enough to take her place at the table, a chair left empty between the general and Thornton. As the general made a fuss about the special, light soup Alex must have, Thornton whispered to her, ‘You’re on to a good thing. Make the most of it,’ then jerked his eyebrows up when Alex made no reply.

  Djaya watched her eat with an expression of amazed delight, as if she were doing an acrobatic trick. ‘Wonderful. You are wonder woman,’ he said several times. It was, Alex found, impossible to dislike him; he was so exceptionally handsome and masculine in that soft Indonesian way. For a moment she wondered about accepting his advances, then became angry with herself, with the loosening of will that betrayed her when faced by a sexually dominant man. The general had perceived the weakness also.

  ‘I feel you are very feminine,’ he said quietly. ‘We Indonesians sometimes make the mistake of thinking Western ladies are not so feminine, because they wear their hair short and look like men. But you … ah, I would love to see you with long hair, wearing the kain …’

  She yearned for Maruli; she concentrated on him, and Djaya the Successful sank back to slow-witted, human size. He was talking about riding which, he declared, was ‘so wonderful—in the fresh air with the birds singing,’ then went on to compare this with sailing, also wonderful in the fresh air. Alex wanted to add ‘with the fish singing’, but stopped herself.

  The usual bunch of street larrikins selling stolen or smuggled goods was gathered at the door of the restaurant as they went out. They were offered cartons of contraband cigarettes and bottles of Scotch whisky. One child had an ornamental windjammer made out of thousands of cloves.

  ‘There’s a boat for you, Djaya,’ Alex said. It was a mistake.

  In a few seconds he had bargained with the child and was handing the hideous thing to Alex with a bow. She stepped back, but Thornton hissed, ‘Take it, for God’s sake.’ Sutrisno was watching with satisfaction.

  Their cars—the general’s very large black Mercedes, Sutrisno’s smaller black Mercedes and the pale blue embassy Holden—were lined up in the gutter.

  ‘I will see you soon, Alexandra,’ the general said as he handed her into the Holden beside Thornton. ‘When Mr Sutrisno returns from Singapore we shall make a dancing party.’

  The Holden drove off. Alex turned to Thornton. ‘I shall never forgive you,’ she said calmly.

  Thornton sniffed. ‘You may need General Djaya one of these days—when Maruli gets arrested,’ he replied. ‘You realise he will be arrested? Of course you do.’ He pursed his lips tight and stared out the window. The smell of the clove windjammer filled the car, making Alex feel sick again.

  The Australian Ambassador’s Residence was a two-storey white building with a broad back terrace overlooking lawns where, on Australia Day, five hundred guests would be uncomfortably entertained. On evenings when the garden was not being prepared for parties, the Ambassador, His Excellency Robert Andrews, OBE, liked to practise his golf shots there while he mulled other events which were alarming or peculiar, and which had to be considered at leisure before being committed to paper or to open discussion in the embassy. There were, in addition to political questions, problems of morale in a hardship post, as Djakarta was, which devolved upon the head of mission and created questions of delicate judgment. An Ambassador whose staff became ill, or alcoholic or divorced in large numbers, or who committed suicide or asked to be sent home, created displeasure in Canberra.

  In the Department of External Affairs, Andrews had a reputation for moral leadership to maintain: several years earlier he had assumed command of the Rangoon mission, where the male staff members were bent on re-enacting, with the help of friendly Burmese, the last days of Babylon—to the intense resentment of the female staff members. Andrews had banned alcohol and bedding in the embassy in his first week there, and within six months had established a music group and a cricket team of clean and sober people. But Rangoon had been a small and isolated post; Djakarta, treble the size, absorbing most of his attention in daily political events and part of a large and unruly diplomatic community, was testing his skills. Andrews had moments of self-pity in Djakarta, when his soothing calm would desert him and he would complain to his wife, ‘I’m a circus ringmaster. All fighting, squabbling, fornicating …’

  On Independence Day Andrews attended the President’s speech and a luncheon in the palace, where he heard a most extraordinary story from the American Ambassador, had an interesting conversation with General Soeharto, cracked a joke, arranged to play bridge with the governor of Djakarta, then went home, had a nap, made love to his wife and began practising his golf shots. The mosquitoes were numerous; his concentration on the ball lapsed as they stung his ankles. He found himself bent over for minutes at a time, thinking of Meredith Synge, who had fallen over on the Nirwana Room dance floor the week before and had afterwards been seen kissing a dark person she had only just met Bette James had publicly upbraided Mrs Synge and now both women were refusing to work together on the commissary ordering roster, with the result that there might not be any turkeys for Christmas. There was also the problem of an Air Force NCO, whose wife had returned for medical treatment to Australia. The fellow had taken up with a local girl, got her pregnant, changed his religion to Islam and was now proposing to take her as his second wife. The girl’s relatives had arrived at the embassy carrying Korans and had talked about holy war if the marriage did not take place.

  Generally, morale in the Australian community had taken a slide in the past few weeks, since knowledge of the black pamphlets, which accused Australia of neo-colonialist crimes, murder of Aborigines and so forth, had become widespread. Wives had been going in groups, and for days at a time, to the islands or to the hill bungalows, leaving their husbands behind, which created additional problems. And the embassy’s reporting had become more alarmist: officers’ judgments were affected, without their realising it. Even young Sinclaire had been nervous and intense, Andrews had noticed: his tennis game the previous Sunday had been appalling and he had lost his temper when he had double-faulted on two services.

  The Ambassador straightened up when he heard his senior houseboy call.

  Sinclaire was standing on the terrace, his thumbs hooked into the top of his cream trousers, his head cocked to one side. ‘Got a minute, sir?’ he called.

  ‘Bring us two whisky-waters,’ Andrews said to t
he senior houseboy and strolled back across the lawn to the terrace. ‘You’re looking very pleased with yourself, Anthony.’

  ‘Thought you’d like to know there ought to be no more black pamphlets for a while,’ he said. ‘One of our agents revealed the source a few nights ago. Greaves has been able to pass the information on, through the Americans, to the right Indonesian channels.’

  ‘That’s agreeable news. My congratulations. Cheers.’ They lifted their drinks. ‘Has the source been …’ The Ambassador did not care to know the details of this darker side of diplomatic life; he patted at the air, ‘cleaned up? Yet?’

  ‘If not yet, certainly there’ll be arrests in a matter of days.’

  ‘Good. Good,’ Andrews said. ‘Damned nuisance, those pamphlets.’ He stared out at the lawns which were lusciously green at this time of the afternoon. ‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ he mused aloud, then turned to Sinclaire. ‘You enjoying your life here?’

  ‘Most of the time.’

  ‘What about that young cousin of yours?’

  ‘I think she’s been going through a period of culture shock,’ Sinclaire replied.

  Andrews nodded. ‘She’s got an Indonesian boyfriend, I hear.’

  Sinclaire looked into his glass. ‘She hasn’t any more.’

  Andrews seemed to be engaged in studying a bougainvillaea vine, a surf of magenta froth that spilled on to the lawn. After a while he said, ‘Somebody told me that she was in love with you …’ Sinclaire began to laugh. ‘Yes, of course,’ Andrews continued. ‘I mention it only as one of the peculiar misjudgments people can make. If it were true she would be very unhappy, wouldn’t she, since you have so many lady friends?’ He raised his glass to Sinclaire.

  It was Sinclaire’s father, an old friend, who had written to Andrews before Alex’s arrival, telling him that his son was in love with Alex and hinting at difficulties. But Andrews felt that Sinclaire would be sharp enough to get the point: if the girl didn’t want him, she didn’t want him and that was that. The boy would pull himself together without anyone else’s help. Indeed, he was looking more cheerful today than he had for several weeks, relaxed and sardonic.

  ‘Are you trying to tide her over the culture shock?’ he asked.

  ‘I’m planning to,’ Sinclaire replied, with such force that Andrews felt vaguely alarmed.

  ‘I won’t accept another tropical post,’ he told his wife as they dressed for dinner that evening. ‘We need opera, ballet, books, films, art galleries … And I’m sick of mosquitoes.’

  11

  Alex returned to an empty house. Only Bagong, wrapped in his melancholy, was waiting by the gate for her when she alighted from the car, carrying Djaya’s clove-boat.

  ‘You should have had the day off, too,’ she said. ‘I have a key. I meant you to have a holiday, like Itji and Aminah.’

  ‘There are many thieves about on Independence Day, Non.’ He unlocked the iron front door.

  ‘Go now, then. I’ll be all right. Itji’s coming back early tomorrow.’

  He continued to hover on the verandah, near the front door.

  ‘Is it because you have no kampong, nowhere to go?’ Alex added.

  ‘Yes, Non.’ For a moment, for the first time, he looked directly into her eyes. Then he dropped his head and wandered off towards the pile of frangipani leaves and fallen flowers he had been raking together.

  Alex’s footsteps echoed harshly on the stone floor of the house, which was filled with the stagnant heat of late afternoon. She dialled the Pusat’s number without difficulty, but there was no answer. They, too, would be enjoying the public holiday and would probably not be back until late that night: Maruli had mentioned that the dance troupe and the orchestra group had both been booked for out-of-town performances on Independence Day and that only a handful of students would be around.

  She went to the bedroom and unlocked the drawer in which she kept her jewellery case; lying behind it, still wrapped in the crumpled brown paper, was the golden necklace.

  Triumph rushed through her as she picked it up: it was the means of escape for Maruli, an exit visa, a passport and plane tickets.

  Even if the New Order did stamp on the nationalists, there were tens of thousands of them, and law enforcement was not notably efficient: on embassy estimates there were still two million communists alive and at large—one of them was listening to the radio in her front garden.

  ‘So much for your evil wishes, Thornton Ashby,’ she said aloud. ‘We can be out of this place in one week, if necessary.’ The necklace felt wonderfully heavy.

  When Maruli did not arrive by seven o’clock Alex decided to go out: she had been refusing almost all party invitations in the past weeks, and had been ribbed about it by people at work. The British counsellor was holding a buffet dinner and the American consul a dance. She went to both, caught up on the gossip, and drank too much. There was no curfew that night, to mark Independence Day, and the hosts were determined that their parties should go on as long as possible, but by midnight their guests were yawning. Alex was making her farewells to the consul when Sinclaire sauntered in. attachéd to his arm was a six-foot-two black American girl.

  ‘My bodyguard,’ he said, by way of introducing her, then added to Alex, ‘Mixing with white trash these days? Where’s your music teacher?’

  ‘He’s busy tonight.’

  Sinclaire raised one eyebrow. ‘I believe you.’ He glanced around. ‘Is this party as boring as it looks?’

  Alex nodded.

  ‘Stay and have a dance with me. The dusky consort here takes her clothes off as soon as she feels hot and I get sick of sweaty black boobs in my face, don’t I, Jodie?’

  Jodie gave a lighthouse smile. ‘Sure, honey. You’re a shmuck,’ she said.

  ‘You’d never know she was Jewish, would you?’ Sinclaire said to Alex.

  Alex gave them a little wave and made for the door. Her cousin was squeezing Jodie’s red denim buttocks, she noticed, as she left.

  Alex woke from a bad dream around four a.m., clammy with sweat and gasping from dehydration.

  There was another power failure, apparently, for the air-conditioning was off and the bedroom was suffocating with stale, hot air. She wandered around the house, wondering if it would be fair to disturb Bagong and ask him to turn on the generator: he had waited up until two o’clock for her, guarding the house. After a while Alex returned to bed and dozed uncomfortably, bitten by the mosquitoes which somehow entered any room that was not air-conditioned.

  Her head began to ache in time with Itji’s knocking on the door a couple of hours later.

  Usually Itji only knocked. This morning she began to keen—‘Non! Come quick, Non!’

  Her eyes were wild and her hair was dishevelled. She grabbed Alex and rushed her into the kitchen.

  A section of fly-wire mesh that made up one wall of the kitchen had been snipped open. The house had been burgled.

  Itji was almost hysterical as she ran about the kitchen, showing Alex the spot from which the housekeeping money had been stolen, where rice and sugar had disappeared, and then, in the sitting room, records were missing, in the study, the portable typewriter. Alex turned and raced back to the bedroom. The jewellery drawer had been forced—she had simply not noticed the splintered wood when she had come home, half drunk. She ripped the drawer open. Empty. Empty jewel box. She fell down on the bed and moaned.

  After a while she stood up. Itji was half-collapsed, leaning in the bedroom doorway, pulling at her hair and chattering curses in Arabic.

  ‘Where’s Bagong?’ Alex said.

  ‘Gone. Gone!’ Itji screeched.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Alex said. She brushed past Itji and went out to the generator room. His cooking pots were there, and his sleeping mat and magazines. But his clothes were missing. Alex looked at the rubble with revulsion. A note was lying on his uncovered, yellow-stained pillow, written on paper stolen from her desk. It read Ma’af, Non. Dibawa, ‘Forgive me. Beneath’.

&nbs
p; Alex kicked at the pillow. Maruli’s necklace was underneath it, still in the brown paper wrapping. She picked it up and started to cry, hugging it so tightly that the knots of gold dug into her breasts.

  As she walked back to the house she added up the value of her own jewellery that Bagong had stolen. Her mother had insisted that she not take anything good to Djakarta. There had been about seven hundred dollars’ worth of bits and pieces, Alex guessed. It was all insured.

  Itji had already put her nylon lace shawl over her head and her plastic sandals on, ready to go to the police station, by the time Alex re-entered the house.

  ‘Wait,’ Alex said. ‘Let me have a bath first. And breakfast.’ Everyone says the same, she thought: the police beat suspects, as a matter of course. People say they use their belts, first, on common criminals. And then, if they find out Bagong’s papers are false … But I won’t get any insurance if I don’t report it.

  She was looking at herself in the bathroom mirror: her eyes were bloodshot and her cheeks were still flushed from last night’s alcohol. Suddenly she recalled how ugly and red they had all looked on the island, and Meredith saying, ‘Life is so cheap here.’

  ‘Bagong is a very bad man, Non,’ Itji said as she served breakfast. ‘First, he stole the Haji’s cat, then …’ she went into a sing-song of Bagong’s crimes.

  Alex nodded.

  ‘Will I go to the police now, Non?’

  ‘I’ll arrange that.’

  In the car going to work Alex told David, adding, ‘But I don’t want to go to the police, because I think he was a communist. And I was fond of him.’

  David scratched his ear. ‘I know how you feel. Listen, don’t go to the coppers this time. Wait until your next robbery and then report the whole lot, as one robbery. You’re sure to have a few more soon—once a place has been hit the word gets round the kampongs and it gets hit again. Poor old Bette James has had everything but her bum pinched. Just par for the course.’

  Alex sighed. ‘I don’t think I could go through another drama like this morning’s.’