Black Water

by Louise Doughty

  ‘Want to know what the schoolteachers here get paid a month?’

  Harper nodded again.

  ‘Five hundred rupiah.’

  Next to the stone oven, Abang’s bag lay, a large cloth bag with outside pockets. He was already packed.

  They both shook their heads as they ate, sitting on the step next to each other looking out at the garden and the pig sleeping pantingly; dreaming, perhaps, of kitchen scraps and unaware of its impending fate. We are like that pig, Harper thought, tucking into our rice for breakfast. Isn’t that all anyone really thinks about, where the next meal is coming from? And if you know it’s coming, isn’t it easy to believe that it is all you need? But if you don’t know when or where your next meal is coming from, then it is the only thought to possess you. One thousand rupiah for a bag of rice, when a teacher earns half that much? How did anybody stay alive? No wonder the country is falling apart, he thought. When rice is that expensive, human beings are cheap.

  Now it is clear who is friend and who is foe. He travelled up country on the back of a motorbike with a driver, Wayan. He had wanted to go on his own but Abang had persuaded him that Wayan was trustworthy and knew the countryside. ‘Once you are up there, you will see,’ Abang said, ‘the paths and lanes, it’s much easier with someone who knows it. Wayan grew up round there. After you’ve seen Komang, you can go off on your own, there’s no hurry then.’

  Once outside Denpasar, Harper told Wayan, a thin young man his age, to take it slowly. He didn’t want to risk an accident on the potted road but, in addition, he wanted to get the feel of how things were in the countryside. Mostly, the villages seemed quiet. There were no charred corpses swinging from trees as there had been on Java, not yet. Occasionally, he would see groups of youths sitting on steps – once a group of four older men who looked like a more organised militia, but there was none of the humming tension of Jakarta. Who knew what was happening in the more remote villages, though, up in the hills? It might have started already but they just didn’t know.

  They had set off from Denpasar in the morning but were less than halfway when the rain fell. They took shelter in the porch of a shop selling woven baskets in every size from tiny to bath-shaped. The owner of the shop brought them tea in small cups and sat down next to them and they made idle chat while they waited out the rain. Opposite, there was a terraced rice field rising up in swooping green curves, deep green now it was drenched, now the soil and the plants were sucking in the deluge – the earth seemed animate when the rain fell this heavily, as if it was breathing in the water: you could imagine the field’s gentle rise and fall, as if the whole island was a sleeping giant.

  The rain was solid for more than two hours. After a while, he leant against a palm tree at the edge of the step and slept, the comforting patter of water around him lulling him, the low voices of Wayan and the shopkeeper nearby.

  Eventually, the rain stopped; the sun came out. Wayan smiled at him as he wiped down the motorbike – they had pulled it under the porch of palm leaves but water had dripped through onto the seat. ‘You sleep a long time, boss. You tired.’

  Harper grimaced back. He felt not so much tired as calm; a job to be done, the means to do it.

  They were around half an hour from their destination, passing through another small village, when Harper leaned forward and tapped Wayan on the shoulder. Wayan braked, killed the engine so that conversation was possible. ‘Let’s get something to eat here,’ Harper said. He didn’t want to spend time looking around for supplies when they got to their destination – such a process would only advertise their presence before they had a chance to speak to Komang and if the farmer was in as much danger as Abang thought then that might not be a good idea. They dismounted from the bike and Harper gave Wayan some rupiah, telling him to be as quick as he could without raising suspicion. He withdrew to a tree trunk at the far end of the street that was close to the undergrowth, somewhat back from the passing trade. This time, he didn’t want to be sitting on a shop step right by the bike, where any villager would be bound to stop for a chat.

  He could see the motorbike from where he was sitting and, beyond it, the small row of shops into which Wayan had disappeared. He heard a shout from the other end of the street and turned to see three men, two of them arguing with the third. He glanced back towards the shops and noticed that an elderly couple and two other women had come out onto their steps at the sound of the man’s shout. Then the man who was being confronted stopped and leaned in towards the two others. All at once, the three suddenly had their heads together in conference.

  Harper looked round. The four people who had come out to watch the argument had disappeared: the street was now empty but for a scabby grey dog who was moving to and fro across it, nose to the ground.

  Of course, he thought. That man has just named someone. Now it is clear who is friend and who is foe. Well, it’s far from clear in fact, but if you want to be a friend, you have to name a foe. Neutrality is not an option. When the militiamen turn up at your door at night, eight or ten of them, in their black clothing with their sickle-shaped machetes, fleeing is not an option – you have what, four or five children? Even if you climb out of the back window and even if the leader of the group hasn’t already stationed a man there to cut you down – a swift chop to the legs, usually below the knee – then you won’t get far before they hunt you down through the rice fields. So, as you cower in the far corner of your home, watching your door shake against the blows, knowing it will hold for a few seconds more, your choice is this: you can wait until the door flies open. You can wait until the men burst into the hut and drag you and your wife and your screaming, terrified children out into the open. Or you can stand, and you can approach the door and call out, ‘Brothers!’

  You call out, loud enough to make them pause for a second. ‘Brothers!’ Then, you speak to them urgently. You give them a name.

  Tanu. It is your neighbour’s name. He lives in a house just down the hill – a larger house than yours, a bit better than your one-room shack. And now comes the really difficult bit. You have to open the door. You have to smile at the men, greet them. You have to act as though you are pleased they have arrived in your village – if you are afraid of them, they will assume you have something to hide. So, summoning every shred of courage in your bones, you slide back the block. You gesture into the hut with your hand, then turn and bark over your shoulder at your wife to stop crying like an idiot, because these men are friends and might want something to eat and drink, and you smile out into the dark and say, ‘Tanu, my friends. It’s true what I say. I hear his wife is in Gerwani.’ And it is true, now you come to think of it. His wife has always been talking to your wife about the importance of educating the girls, of them being productive workers for the good of the whole village, and she may not have tried to recruit her to the PKI but it’s a bit odd, isn’t it, if she isn’t a Communist, that she’s so keen on the girls going to school?

  The men don’t come into the hut. You can’t even see them clearly because the flare from the burning torches is so bright – they are just dark shapes lit by an orange glow. They talk amongst themselves and leave. You bar the door again and return to the corner with your wife and children.

  And, after a while, you hear the screaming down the hill. It is the kind of screaming you have never heard before: the kind that pierces your ears. Your neighbour Tanu and his family are being dragged out of their beds. You stay huddled in the corner, your arms around your whimpering children, while the screaming goes on and on, and you know that when you see the charred bodies strung up in the village square in the dawn light you will feel horror and revulsion but what you feel right now, as the screams continue, is relief that they came to your house first, for it is only thanks to that good fortune that you had the chance to name Tanu before he named you.

  The three men turned and walked off together, away from the shops. The road curved and they were soon out of sight. It could be that the two aggressors were
simply taking the third man somewhere to kill him, or it could be that they were now all plotting together, the best of friends. Harper looked back down the street and saw that an elderly woman had come out of her shop with a broom and was sweeping her step, looking around, but other than her, the street remained empty.

  After a while, Wayan appeared at the far end, beyond the shops, carrying two banana-leaf-wrapped food parcels. He rose.

  It took longer than he had anticipated to reach the village up in the hills where Komang lived. The rain had been heavy enough to turn the tracks soggy and the route became muddy and impassable. When they dismounted to turn the bike, fat droplets of water fell from the trees above.

  It was late afternoon by the time they reached their destination and he was already thinking they might end up stuck there for the night, not ideal but safer than travelling after dark. Following Abang’s instructions, he told Wayan to park the moped just off the village square. They stood by the motorbike for a few minutes, drinking from a water bottle, while Harper orientated himself. Komang’s farm was close to the village up a steep rise that led north.

  As he walked up the rise, three boys began following him, calling out, ‘Hallo! Hallo!’ Soon, they were joined by four or five others, like yappy dogs, grinning and jumping, keen to announce his arrival. They fell away as he approached the house and ran shrieking back down the rise.

  The house was a grand construction for a rice farmer, long and low. Three dogs ran out to greet him, snarling half-heartedly. A cockerel in the front yard lifted its head, stretched its neck upwards and flapped its wings. A girl of about twelve rounded the corner of the house, saw him, stopped dead, then turned and ran back the way she had come.

  Harper waited in front of the house. He wondered if it would be impolite to light a cigarette.

  A man in a shirt and sarong came round the corner of the house. He stopped a few feet away, so that they could appraise each other: from his bearing, Harper had no doubt that this was the man of the household, Komang. He was a thin man, in his thirties Harper guessed, with the dense build of someone who had worked the land since childhood: at first glance rather small but then, on closer examination, with taut calf muscles and shoulders hard as steel: not a weakling, certainly. If you needed to lift a tree trunk, you would want him to help.

  Komang gave him a slow look. There was no aggression in it, no challenge, but instead, a kind of knowledge, devoid of apprehension it seemed, as if Komang had been expecting him. Harper watched Komang looking at him, taking in his open-necked shirt and his slacks, acknowledging that this stranger had come for a reason.

  Harper called out, ‘How close to harvest time?’

  Komang replied, ‘As usual, brother.’ It was called an identifier, in the trade.

  ‘Abang says hello,’ Harper added.

  Komang bowed his head. ‘Welcome,’ he said, and came forward.

  Komang’s wife appeared on the veranda. She was thin too, older-looking than her husband, more wary. Her face was open but strained. She and her husband exchanged a few words. He guessed she was being given instructions about hospitality.

  Komang lifted a hand towards the fields and said, ‘While the light is good, shall we walk?’

  Harper nodded. The light had that particular quality that came in late afternoon after a heavy rain, a dewiness still in the air, lit by gold.

  They walked and, first of all, Harper asked questions. What was the latest on PKI activity in the area? How was land reform proceeding? What did the locals think? How much news of what was happening on Java had reached them here? The answers were as he had expected. On Java, both the Muslim and Christian generals portrayed the Communists as atheist barbarians; here on Hindu Bali, the anti-PKI groups said the Communists were not only against God but would destroy all the local customs, the delicate balances that had been built up over centuries, the ceremonies and worship so integral to Balinese village life. People were worried, Komang said, the omens were bad. Gunung Agung had shown anger, lava had flowed, although the gods had spared the Mother Temple.

  And a teacher earns enough money in a month to buy two weeks’ supply of rice, Harper thought. No wonder people were angry; no wonder they wanted someone to blame.

  They had reached the end of the field: the rice plants were a flowing expanse, rippling in the breeze like the surface of a green sea. On the far side of the field was a dense wall of palm trees. If you ran across the field, it would take you a good ten minutes to reach the row of trees, he reckoned: the field was not a solid thing. The plants stood in water. If you were light-footed, barefoot, a child perhaps, you might be quicker, but if you were normal weight and wearing shoes, your feet would stick. The mud would cling to your feet. Your only chance would be if the people pursuing you were slowed by it too. He wondered how long it was until dark.

  They were standing next to each other, facing out across the fields. ‘Komang,’ Harper said, ‘Abang has told me, you must know, your brother’s political activities, you must know what they could mean for you, your family. Everything that has been happening on Java could happen here . . .’ He paused, to let Komang fill in the gaps.

  They stood looking out over the field, the low sun still lighting it with green and gold. At moments like this, you could believe that it was worth dying on this spot, Harper thought, because heaven was here, in this soil, in the green rice plants, the light. How would a man like Komang leave all this, give up a lifetime of work?

  They walked back up to the compound. Komang’s wife emerged as they approached, holding a tray with two glasses on it. She stared at her husband.

  While they sat on the back porch and drank tea, children ran in and out of the house. There seemed to be at least eight of them. Komang’s wife brought out some chopped fruit, banana and salak in a china bowl with a curled blue pattern, the glaze a little cracked, kept only for guests, probably. She smiled shyly, bowed to Harper and her husband, then retreated into the kitchen to continue the preparations for the evening meal, shooing the children in front of her. A few minutes later, an elderly woman poked her head out of the back door, looked at them and then immediately disappeared. Harper wondered how many people lived in the compound in total. As well as Komang’s family there might be a younger sibling or two around, his family, elderly relatives – some of the children were probably nieces and nephews. Too large a group to flee in a hurry; too many who couldn’t run all that fast.

  Komang leaned forward in his seat, keeping his voice low. ‘I’ve been fortunate, Mr Harper, blessed, you might say. Tell me, how does a man like me stay fortunate?’

  The madness would come to this village. It was only a matter of time. He knew it, and Komang knew it, but did he know how bad it would be?

  He looked at Komang, then said, quietly, ‘What will they say in the village, about my visit?’

  Komang said, ‘I am a farmer but, you see . . .’ He glanced over Harper’s shoulder to the house. ‘It is a bigger house than most farmers’. There is talk, yes, of course.’

  Harper could imagine the scenario all too clearly: the envy and resentment in the village, the whispers. Komang was probably using part of what he earned by giving information to the Institute to pay protection money to a local militia of some sort, but if that arrangement collapsed there would be nobody to protect him.

  ‘My brother is not a bad man,’ Komang said. ‘He wants to give people who have nothing their own piece of land, so that the hours they work feed their families and are not given to a landowner who does nothing for them. The PKI are going too far, I don’t agree with Communism, but the people themselves, they are not all bad people.’

  ‘I know that. Not everybody else sees things that way.’

  Komang kept his face very still. Harper admired the man’s composure, considering that the rapid calculations he must be making would have such consequences for his family.

  He was silent for a while then and Harper thought, he is adding up all he has to lose. His family will
have farmed this land for generations: it is almost inconceivable that he could leave. Should he stay in the hope that he will be able to protect it, or pack a few things and take his wife and his children to Denpasar? What will he be in the city? A street cleaner? He has friends in this village. How could he imagine, as he sat here on his own veranda, with the golden light in the fields that his friends and neighbours down the road might advance up the rise with sickles and machetes in their hands?

  He looked at Komang and could see the struggle going on behind the man’s quiet face. When you belonged to a community, you felt at home, you felt safe. If he was Komang, he would hide at night at least. He would have a place out in the rice fields, a culvert of some sort, overgrown, somewhere that looked like a disused store perhaps, and as soon as it got dark each night, he would take his wife and children out there and tell them to stay there until well after daybreak. They would have to be sworn to secrecy – but the children might gab to their friends. What then? And he wasn’t Komang, of course. Komang would never leave his home empty and unprotected.

  Eventually, all Komang said was, ‘My house . . . this village . . .’ He fell silent again.

  ‘I know,’ Harper replied quietly, after a while. ‘I am sorry. Komang, you must not talk to anyone, even your family members, and especially not your brother. You must make your own decision and then act. Do it soon.’

  ‘How soon, in your opinion?’

  ‘Days, not weeks. I don’t like the feel of things round here. If it was me, I’d leave immediately.’

  Komang looked at him then; stared.

  He walked back down the rise and turned into the lane that led to the village square. Two elderly women were in front of him carrying long bundles of branches on their heads, swaying in unison. Wayan was waiting at the end of the lane, next to the motorbike, squatting on his heels. A couple of local men were standing over him. ‘Where are you from?’ – the questions would be light enough. A few bats flitted in the trees. The gold light had diminished to grey: dusk was falling swiftly. Harper considered attempting the roads in the dark but it would make more sense to stay local – the other villages he needed to visit were north of here. Komang had offered him his home for the night but Harper knew it was best to leave the man to make the necessary decision and preparations.