Why wouldn’t he have the energy, eating three huge meals a day, being waited on hand and foot, swimming lazily in the pool, his fit, perfectly nourished body sprawled at ease now in a cushioned chair? Why wouldn’t she, massaged to boneless bliss, a wallet full of spending money, relaxed, pampered, married? She pushes away this feeling, and spears a piece of pineapple. Still carved. Someone must do this every morning, as their job.
‘Handicrafts,’ she says brightly. ‘That’s what we need for gifts.’
It feels like a foray into battle, the market. A labyrinth. Slim hands reaching to touch her arm, low insistent voices asking her to name a price, faces seeking eye contact. Women holding up lengths of beautiful fabric to her body, wrapping her in sarongs. Murmuring, always polite, the sound like bees, deepening and rising in volume as soon as you pause, as soon as you betray an interest.
‘No thanks,’ Andrew keeps saying, growing more brusque and resolute as the onslaught continues. ‘No, we’re just looking.’
Carved painted cats and windchimes. Incense in woven canisters. Lurid acrylic paintings of Buddha. Cellophane-packed hairclips of clustered plastic frangipani flowers. Silk dresses of every conceivable pattern and colour.
And a whole floor of the market dedicated to offerings – tiny cakes and eggs and flower arrangements, heaped coloured balls of rice. Not for eating, for placing on shrines, dozens of times every day. Cakes and rice eaten only by street dogs, or left to rot when the incense burns down, replaced with fresh ones. It is overwhelming, Karen thinks. It is unstoppable. She’s dizzy now. The heat, the smells, the assault of it. Too much of everything.
They buy ginger soap and coconut oil shampoo, incense and vanilla pods. Andrew buys a stack of Bintang t-shirts for the guys at his work, haggling until Karen feels uncomfortable; suddenly he’s an expert in intimidation.
‘That’s a good price to you, is it?’ he says. ‘Well, it’s not what I call a good price. Not at all.’ Stern, like an intolerant boss. Like a headmaster. Her towering, bulky husband, meaty hand pressing on a stack of cotton t-shirts, leaning down over the vendor. And the man’s face closed, struggling to his feet, his wife faltering behind him.
Andrew, she thinks. Stop. It’s so cheap. It’s too cheap. And Andrew, sliding the stack into a plastic bag when she protests over beating them down, saying baby, it’s a buyer’s market like you wouldn’t believe. Moving off between the narrow aisles, an expressionless Goliath.
Nauseous now as well as dizzy. The sickly scent of the tropical flowers. Hammocks and kites and dreamcatchers; they are in the handicrafts section now. And Karen sees the stall selling wayang kulit puppets. They are the real thing, some made of card and some of something more durable, like hard, cured leather. The elongated painted eyes on their grimacing faces look away from her, the cut-out costumes spilling over their shoulders intricate as lace doilies. Andrew catches her eye and grins indulgently.
‘How much for these three?’ he says to the stallholder, pointing at some puppets strung up over their heads.
‘What are you doing?’ says Karen.
‘I’m buying you some of these. You loved that performance, didn’t you? They’d look great on a wall somewhere at home, don’t you think?’
Andrew, wealthy here, assured, a consumer comfort zone he’s enjoying. She squeezes his hand. ‘Thanks. I mean it.’
‘Which ones do you want?’
‘Well, I don’t know the stories … they’re all different and important characters I think …’
‘These three,’ says Andrew again, pointing. ‘They look like kind of a set.’
And the stallholder carefully unhooks the puppets with their delicate articulated arms and torsos, shows her how fluidly and expressively they can move, and they strike a deal.
‘A present,’ says Andrew, grinning like Daddy Warbucks as he pays, ‘for my wife.’
The stallholder musters an expression of delight. ‘Your first time to Bali?’ he says, and when they assent, he cries ‘Honeymoon!’
*
Then the return limo transfer from the resort to the airport, back into the grimy tropical heat of Denpasar, the driver hefting their overstuffed zippered cases into the trunk with a grunt of effort, a man used to lifting the booty of tourists, a man who does it every day. Karen staring out the window at this traffic-clogged highway, vehicles of all descriptions ferrying more and more in and out. I’ll give him my money, she thinks. The wad of rupiah she has left in her money belt, grimy with being counted out by fretful, hardworking fingers, money folded and refolded, earned so hard. She’ll give him the cash, not make a big deal out of it, just tuck it discretely into his hand when they get out and Andrew is getting the bags.
They pull up at International Departures. Karen has the money in her hand, ready, waiting for Andrew to get out and haul their cases from the boot, so they can start the trudge into the terminal and into the queues full of other sunburnt, sweating white people, all with huge, stuffed suitcases, waiting to check in. A terminal which will be cold with expensive chilled air after the muggy, tarmac-smelling heat of outside. She waits. But Andrew stays sitting. She stares at him, curled notes of a poor currency in her fist by her side.
‘Aren’t you getting out?’ she says and Andrew shakes his head.
‘That’s his job,’ he says, a patient, slightly annoyed edge to his voice. ‘That’s what he’s paid to do. It’s part of our transfer.’
Karen hesitates a second, seeing her husband’s stubbornly folded arms, the ease with which he’s sprawled, waiting for the driver to open his door. Then she pushes open her own door and moves around to the back of the car where the driver is hauling out the bags.
‘Sorry,’ she says, too brightly, ‘they’re so heavy! Let me give you a hand!’
But the man stiffens, and she has the sudden, stricken thought that Andrew is right: she’s doing it all wrong, she’s probably insulting him now. And sure enough, the driver’s discomfort is visible as he lugs out her suitcase. Andrew is suddenly out of the car in a flash, looming at his other side, giving her a pissed-off glance and saying ‘sorry about that’. Apologising for her.
Karen hesitates, smelling hot tarmac and rubber, fecund rot, jet fuel, the sunscreen sliding off her with her own sweat. Just into that terminal, and into the air conditioning, and through check-in and customs, shunted along into where they belong, passport holders only beyond this point, the guiding lines painted on the floor taking them back to where they come from. Processed. Honeymoon over.
Karen grips the handle of her own case and jerks it up onto the kerb, and the folded wad of money falls from her hand as she does so, fluttering to the ground like rags. The driver watches her crouch hurriedly to claw the notes up off the ground while Andrew is distracted by his own case, and as she rises clumsily to press them into his palm she thinks, well, now his humiliation is probably complete.
‘Thankyou!’ she blurts, ‘thankyou! Terima kasih, good night!’ Then into the terminal, x-rayed, stamped, buckled into economy for the long flight home.
*
In Australia, they pass through customs in fluoro-lit early morning, and shuffle with sleepwalkers’ obedience into the ‘Something to Declare’ line, because Karen is concerned about the vanilla and raffia passing quarantine. She unzips her case for the official.
‘Here,’ she says, pointing, ‘this is the organic material.’
‘The vanilla’s fine,’ says the woman. ‘What about seeds? Animal products? Anything made of hide?’
‘No,’ says Andrew firmly.
And Karen hesitates, feeling him tense beside her.
How familiar he looks to her here, back on home turf, still taking up so much space as he stands planted squarely before this official, refusing to be drawn. Her husband. They’re married. This is it. She takes in his Bintang t-shirt; his sunburnt forehead; the shuttered, bored sullenness of his expression, as predictable and closed as the faces of the tourists on the bus, paying for their ration of cultural tradi
tion and done with it the moment it was finished.
‘Wait,’ she says. And she’s reaching under the stiff layers of waxed batik with its gorgeous geometrical designs, beneath the compressed stack of cheap t-shirts, beneath the crackling cellophane-wrapped soaps and cats and hairclips – all their loot – for the thin delicate surface of the puppets.
‘You got some of those shadow puppets?’ says the customs officer, unsurprised. ‘Well, yeah – I’m afraid they have to be confiscated. They’re untreated buffalo hide.’
Andrew shifts his weight, incredulous.
‘What about shoes and that?’ he says. ‘They’re all untanned leather too. All the …’ – he makes a wide gesture at the queues of other tourists shuffling through the ‘Nothing to Declare’ lines – ‘… all the crap these guys have bought, the sandals and jewellery and whatnot? Why aren’t they declaring it?’
Up goes his arm, blocky and angry, then falls back to rest in a curled, combative fist on his hip. Karen hears the bullocky, aggrieved tone of implied injustice in her husband’s voice as he rocks back on his big sunburnt feet. What do they use, she wonders, to destroy the things they seize – a big incinerator, maybe? Or a large tub of acid? God, that must be jetlag talking, she thinks, catching herself. As if they’d use acid! Burning – that would be better.
She doesn’t want to look at Andrew, or witness this display. She pushes her hand through the suitcase now, sure of where she’s carefully stowed the three figures. Runs a finger full of regret over the painted hide surface of the first one, tooled with such care and exquisite detail. Imagines the lamplight shining through the intricate lace of these holes, the character rearing up to its full dignified height, chin lifted, wrists tilted, narrowed eyes lined with scarlet, full of power and grace. The puppets’ sticks click together uselessly as she tugs them free, their arms and legs splaying, askew, awkward now they’re in her hands.
‘Take them,’ she says flatly, pushing them across the counter. ‘Please, just take them away.’
Review of Australian Fiction
The Three Treasures
Melissa Beit
Some things happen without any warning or deliberation. Wu Wei. Action without action.
Jase finds me up in the corner of the west paddock, re-stringing a section of fence. I watch him stalking his way up the line, his shaggy mop of hair like an African marigold just past its heyday.
‘George Carlyle,’ he greets me, grinning. ‘You guys are hard to find.’
He watches me remove the elbow-length leather gloves and push my sunglasses up. In spite of these tokens of protection, I’ve just given myself a long, complicated scratch on my shin from the violent scrolling of barbed wire back into its inert coil, the shape it apparently wants to hold forever. That’s an interesting thought, and if my schoolmate hadn’t just shown up, I would probably have sat down and dwelt on it at length.
I’m so pleased to see him that I hold out my hand to shake his, and watch Jase cover up his embarrassment by turning the handshake into a complex series of rapper moves, ending with a loose man-hug. I figure we have maybe twenty-five minutes until my father comes back from town, and in that time I have to sweep the driveway, put the spuds on and set the table. I can’t stop smiling.
Jase helps me put my tools into the bucket and we run down to the house with the shadows from the trees licking our backs.
‘Where’s your old man?’ Jase asks, and I glance at him, trying to gauge if he’s running a gauntlet by showing up here. Other kids had done that for some months after The Mrs Hatten Incident.
‘He’s in town,’ I say, opening the front door. ‘He’ll be home soon.’
‘Wow,’ says Jase, following me into the kitchen, apparently disinterested in that piece of news. ‘Your house is really tidy.’
I’ve never been to Jase’s house, but I’ve seen his mum pick him up from school in a green station wagon. She looks neat enough.
‘I guess.’
I choose two large potatoes out of the box in the pantry and scrub them clean in the sink. The water on my hands is neither cool nor warm and the potatoes’ eyes are plugged with red dirt, which runs like paint over my hands. On my way to the oven I prick the potato skins with my fingernails to stop them from exploding. Jase is slouching in the doorway to the living room, taking everything in. I still can’t stop smiling.
‘Do you want some water?’ I ask him. There isn’t anything else. We’re out of milk and my dad never buys juice, soft-drink or alcohol. Which is fine by me.
‘Nah,’ says Jase. He picks up a tape measure from the dining room table, turns it over in his hand and puts it back down again. ‘Your house is so masculine.’
I get two plates out of the dresser, two knives and two forks. I set them on the table, then arrange salt and pepper, two glasses and the water bottle in the middle. Then I go to the sideboard and get two red cloth serviettes and fold them beside the plates. Jase raises his eyebrows.
*
‘What are these?’ my dad said, the first night. He didn’t look at me.
‘Serviettes,’ I said, aware I was walking a fine line. When I’d found the tablecloth and matching serviettes in the hall cupboard, I’d briefly considered spreading the red cloth on the table, collecting wildflowers to go in a jam jar.
‘What’s wrong with paper towels?’
I could have said, paper towels are disposable, a reflection of our throwaway society, these ones are pretty, but instead I said, ‘We’ll save money if we don’t use paper towels every meal.’
My father picked up his fork and speared a chunk of meat. ‘Well, you’re washing them,’ he said.
*
‘How’s that new English teacher?’ Jase says, as he watches me sweep the drive. He offered to help but when I told him we only owned one broom he went and sprawled on the front steps.
‘Which new teacher?’ I say, but I turn my body away because I know who he’s talking about.
‘Miss Grantham,’ he says, as though her name is a caramel he wants to suck. ‘She’s hot.’
Is she hot? She doesn’t look hot to me, she looks soft. Her hair is brown, pulled back into a loose ponytail, more and more wisps escaping throughout the day until sometime around 2 p.m. her hairband gives up altogether and springs away, releasing the rest of her hair in a glossy curtain. Her face is freckled, her cheeks as round as a child’s. Everything about her looks soft, her long skirts and shawls, her small freckled hands, her neat sandalled feet. She looks, I think now, still turned away and sweeping in large efficient strokes, like a mother should look.
‘I don’t imagine there’re many Taoists at Clarence State High,’ she said to me in her soft, low voice, the day she returned my essay on the Three Treasures. She pronounced it properly, so that the t sounded more like a d. And I sat there beaming at her like the Buddha, imagining those hands smoothing my hair back and plumping my pillow.
When she moved off, Clunker said, ‘I could eat her for breakfast.’
*
‘I have her on Wednesday afternoons,’ I say to Jase.
‘I’d like to have her every afternoon,’ he says.
He’s lying, and I wonder why.
*
Rugby union is a Richard Carlyle Approved Activity (an RCAA), one of very few, so I’ve played every winter for the last six years. Does rugby contravene the principles of Taoism? Probably, but I’ve found that I can channel the violence on the field around me into something like a dance. I play better rugby now that I’ve stopped trying to force my way forwards.
‘Fuck, George, you never get dirty,’ Clunker, a forward, complained to me once. His massive chest smoothed out some parts of his jersey, ruched others. ‘But you kick like a fucking ballistic missile.’ He slammed me across the shoulders in what I took to be a gesture of camaraderie.
‘Jason Reilly’s a faggot,’ Clunker said a few weeks ago when we were standing in the canteen queue. ‘Look at him, little poofter.’ Across the asphalt, Jase was dancing
with some of the girls from our year, exaggerating all his hip movements and shaking out his red bush of hair, singing in falsetto, until eventually the girls had had enough and pushed him away good-naturedly. ‘Fuck he can surf though,’ said Clunker, rotating a finger in his ear hole.
I laughed out loud. I keep doing that lately, even though I try not to.
*
Spattering gravel warns us. By the time the sedan pulls into the garage I’ve finished the sweeping and Jase has sprung to attention, tucked his shirt in and done something to tame his hair. I have butterflies in my stomach.
When my dad unfolds himself from the car and walks over to us, unsmiling, Jase extends his hand like a bank manager. No rapper moves now. ‘Mr Carlyle,’ he says. ‘My name’s Jason Reilly. I’m at school with George.’
My dad looks at Jase’s hand like it’s a dead invertebrate, no surprises there, but then puts his own hand out and shakes it, once.
‘Did you get that fence fixed?’ he says to my chest, wiping his hand on his trousers.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Dinner on?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Bring in the shopping.’ He turns away and stumps into the house without making eye contact with either of us. I have a personal theory that my father hates himself so much he can’t bear to see his own reflection in other people’s eyes. He re-emerges at the doorway and addresses the clothesline behind us. ‘Put that broom away.’
‘Man,’ breathes Jase in awe. ‘He is one hundred percent 1950s.’ He ruffles his hair back out of place. ‘You call him sir?’
‘I have to go in now,’ I say.
There is not a single tree on our entire holding. Not even a shrub. Just concrete, lawn and pasture, all bullied into neatness. But the bush closes in around us like a big messy hug, and at this time of day, when the sun has already left the land but still strokes the highest limbs of the trees, I feel like the dot inside the yin–yang symbol, the chaos within the order. The farm only started to make sense to me when I saw it in juxtaposition with the bush. Sunny side, shady side. Hard, soft. Taoism has saved my life.
The Best Australian Stories 2015 Page 6
