by Nigel Barley
“How did you manage that?”
She laughed again. I now realised she had a whole expensive wardrobe of laughs. This was a nasty off-the-peg snicker, wet with saliva. “I seduced him of course. A very brutal man. Jesus, my fanny was black and blue for a week.”
Oh my God! I began to feel a little sorry for Walter and lit a cigarette of my own, chuckling. “I heard there was another man after you at the moment.”
Her pudgy little face looked sly. She tried to throw her hair back dramatically but that gesture doesn’t work when the hair is mousey and short. I detected a need for drama in her life. Poor Walter!
“My prince! Alexis. My father hates him, says he’s one of the ‘marrying Mdavis’. They just happen to be deathly attractive to rich women. Like I say, why have money if you don’t buy what you fancy? And he can’t leave me alone. Jimmy has a habit of taking showers in the sports clubs downtown and says Alexis is hung like one of his own polo ponies.” She preened queenily. I was puzzled – shocked too – but more puzzled than shocked.
“But didn’t you come here to get away from him?”
She snorted. “Just till his honeymoon with that bitch he married for her money is over. One must observe the decencies. There’s also the matter of my coming of age in a few months. That’s why we came.”
We were interrupted by a splashing. It was Morley, paddling in the stream. He paused, swaying off balance, nearly tumbled, grabbed a rock.
“I grow old, I grow old. I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,” he chanted, smiling a greeting. “Did I hear you explaining how we came to be here? Most extraordinary coincidence, really. Jean and Barbara went to this film in New York – Love Powder, that was the name of it – and it turned out to be about Bali and Walter was credited. Outside, it was wet and cold and raining and Bali seemed like a good place to run off to – take a powder as we say in America – so the girls made up their minds then and there and here we are.”
“Halloo, dahlinks.” Walter’s Russian accent was becoming absurd, a parody of itself. He appeared on the balcony as in Romeo and Juliet, wearing multi-spattered shorts and that silly calabash hat he wore for painting. But wait. There had been none of the usual dramas, Ubud had not been required to go into mourning while he was easing himself at the easel, the boys were not walking around on eggs and talking in whispers lest they frighten his muse. “Morley, where is dear Jean?” he called down.
“She went to the market with Resem to buy cloth. Oh yes. I was going to ask. What should she give him as a thank you?” It was impossible that had completed anything in half a day.
Walter leaned on the rail. “I think you usually find a cloth about right for a small service, don’t you, Bonnetchen?” Painting always drained him utterly. There was no sign of any of the inevitable exhaustion. And yet, when we arrived upstairs, there were three new paintings, stood in a line like serving maids with their hands out for a tip, not – it must be confessed – his best, in fact rather repetitious with none of the poignancy that comes from leaving something just unsaid. I looked at one showing juxtaposed scenes of village life, men driving cattle, the dark forest beyond, night and day side by side, Rembrandtesque pools of light in between.
“What’s this?” I asked suspiciously. Walter looked uppity.
“You know the way I work, Bonnetchen. He winked, slipped an arm Balinesically about my shoulders and squeezed a little too hard for comfort. “I labour away at a painting for months, simply bleeding into it, and then, sometimes, I just can’t quite bring myself to kill it off and end the relationship. It is a relationship of the soul.” He looked soulful and touched his heart. “You feel it, Bärbli. You are a poet. So I start another. And before I can finish the first, I have to wait for inspiration to come. I’m sure you know how it is, Bonnetchen.” I knew no such thing. I knew that Walter was like the whole of Bali – nothing was ever quite finished, or, if it was, something else had fallen down in the meanwhile, so the list of things to do never got any shorter. I sneered.
“Well it looks as if inspiration turned up today – by truck – which reminds me why I came.” How many paintings had he got tucked away in that studio that no one was ever allowed into?
“Oh Walter!” Barbara interrupted. She picked one up and twirled. “They’re beautiful, the true voice of Bali,” she honked. “Look, there are three of them and three of us. It’s as if it were planned. It was meant to be. You must let me buy them all!”
Walter looked bashful, a little boy praised extravagantly by his mother in front of guests. “All three? Well … really … I honestly didn’t expect …” I could not stand it any more.
“Walter,” I said. “I really came to say that I’m off to Java. An exhibition. Next week in Batavia. My own works and some of the Pita Maha. Lee King has a truck leaving adventitiously tomorrow and has offered to take us and the paintings on highly favourable terms. I would have asked whether you had anything new you wanted to include but you are obviously quite spent.”
***
The Hotel des Indes had not greatly changed. At this hour of the afternoon, it was still overswept and - polished, overstaffed and doubtless still overcharged. The marble-tiled vestibule echoed with the clicking heels of those busily engaged in the world economy from which I had seceded. Theirs was a sphere of rustling Dutch banknotes, mine one of chinking Chinese cash. I started at a strange sound, then remembered – the shrilling of a telephone. I could no longer afford to stay here myself and had taken lodgings with a respectable widow near the Protestant Church, conveniently near the Lapangan Gambir, where, in the shadow of the railway station, occurred those nocturnal activities traditional to a town square in the Indies. The news stand snarled with the concerns of a wider world. Adolf Hitler had become chancellor in Germany. Paraguay and Bolivia had clashed. Peru and Columbia were at war. The Japanese were still in Shanghai and quailing before threatening Western powers. Nothing to do with me. Off to one side, three willowy, becummerbunded Eurasians were playing something syncopated and South American – possibly Peruvian – with excessively martial maracas. Exhibitions in those days were organised mostly by little circles of art-lovers, principally Dutch ladies of a certain age. I had spent the last week in a desert of small-talk and stolid food. My guts and ears were clogged with stodge. Yesterday, I had given the circle a talk on Rembrandt, to a packed sitting-room, that had indeed led on to a vigorous discussion, but unfortunately about the perennial problem of mildew in the tropics. I deserved a little treat and made my way to the bar where the golden glow of the sun through the shades gave light without heat and the overhead fans rustled the leaves of the palms like the wind in distant Bali. Another brief moment of shock at so many white faces together, then, behind the bar, at which I took my place, was a delightful brown face, a new barman, sharp-featured, a fine nose but with huge, dark eyes … I heard myself groan.
“Tuan?”
“Bir.” It came cold and frothy-headed, in a glass like a vase, on a neat coaster and delivered with a smile. It was the beer you dream about on a hot, sultry night in Ubud. I smiled back and held his eye just a little too long for normal politeness and feigned bored, time-rich idleness. I was ashamed of myself, with a sad foreknowledge of self-disgust, but the anonymity of a relatively strange town spurred on my excitement.
“How long have you been here?”
He arranged his little dishes behind the raised bartop. “A month.”
“How is it?”
He seesawed with his hands. “So-so.” I sipped, affecting leisurely chatter.
“Where are you from?”
“Semarang.”
“A pig … fine town, Semarang. I have friends there.” The politenesses were dealt with. Now to business. “You are married?”
He blushed though there was nothing irregular in my asking the question in the Indies. When people as dark-skinned as him blush it is a thing not of colour but of heat.
“Belum – not yet. And you?”
I was ten y
ears older than him, an explanation was necessary, at my age, for my singularity. “No. I am a bachelor.” I paused with simulated brooding significance. “I like the company of other bachelors.” The line sounded ridiculous even to myself. I looked at him. Did he get my drift? Oh yes. He got it all right and was smiling down at his hands. I leaned forward to ask what time his shift finished. I must remember to ask his name. A hand fell on my shoulder.
“Bonnetchen. Leave him alone. He is young enough to be your cousin.”
My hand spasmed and sent beer flying, clutched at my wobbling glass, caught it back in the nick of time.
“Walter. What? How?”
He raised an eyebrow at the barman. “Another please, Adi.”
Adi smiled. “Yes Tuan Walter.” He mopped at my mess with distaste and served Walter with a bow that expressed what an unutterable pleasure and honour it was.
“Agog for your news Bonnetchen. Oh, all right, two gogs but that’s my final offer. How goes the exhibition?”
“What exhibition? Oh that. The usual. Down the road at Dreckers, the book shop. We’ve shifted quite a few. Little Sobrat has done particularly well and has a nice sum coming. Even I have nearly sold out of my market women.” A man looked up at me from a neighbouring table and frowned. Scanning the room, I saw only white linen suits. “Are you here alone?”
“Not exactly. We all came together.” His face lit up. “We flew, Bonnetchen, from that airfield down by the beach at Kuta, actually flew! Oh, you can’t imagine how marvellous it is! Now I understand Elli. The exhilaration and sense of freedom! And the luxury of it all! Hot coffee served to you from a vacuum flask as Gunung Agung glides underneath your wicker chair. You can look right down into the crater, just like looking up the skirts of the gods. It is amazing, up in the clouds just like a bird. And then you fly down the entire chain of volcanoes the length of Java and swoop down over the whole, sprawling city. Marvellous!”
“Weren’t you frightened?”
“Of what. They guarantee that, no matter how high they take you, you will ultimately get back to the ground. And now we go to Bangkok and Angkor Wat, all by air! Of course Bärbli is paying for everything. It is understood that Bärbli always pays.” He sipped beer and winked at Adi who winked back as if to say that, yes, he too, understood that Bärbli always paid. These beers, here, for instance, Bärbli would pay. But I had not forgiven Walter for that remark about Resem and the cloth.
“But she must be very demanding” I smirked. “I understand that she requires the most complete service and what Bärbli wants, Bärbli gets.”
He looked puzzled. “You mean? … Oh no,” he laughed. “You’re wide of the mark there, Bonnetchen. That’s all taken care of.”
On cue, the doors of brass and chrome were flung open and an extraordinary figure strode through and up to the bar in a waft of hot, spiced Batavian air, seized Walter’s hand and spouted fluent Russian. He was tall and muscular, thick black hair and a bounder’s moustache, a panama in his hand and – God help us – spats with parti-coloured shoes. A silk handkerchief flared from his elegantly tailored breast pocket, arranged with the care that a Balinese would expend on his headcloth. Light sparkled from his teeth. This was the first time I had encountered Hollywood capped teeth and the hand he finally extended was a work of art, professionally buffed and manicured, worthy of being drawn by my chicks.
“May I introduce His Highness Prince Alexis Mdivani, Bärbli’s fiancé.”
“Oh Walja,” he giggled. “The title is only for formal occasions.” To me. “We reactivated it after the Revolution. My father says he is the only man alive to inherit a title from his sons.” He slapped my arm archly with kid gloves – to Walter “handshoes” to the Javanese “handvests” – held in the left hand, as if for the issuing of challenges to duels, and laughed. It was a dreadful noise, as though someone were giggling down a musical scale. If he and Barbara ever both heard something hysterically funny in the same room, it would be hard on the ears.
“Excuse me.” I was distracted. “Is that a gold bracelet you’re wearing? I don’t believe I have ever seen one on a man before.”
He adjusted it, not in the least abashed. “From my wife … ex-wife; when ladies like to buy you things it is your duty to cultivate needs other men do not have.”
He exuded the smell of Russian leather, a nostalgic mix of the covers of the bibles in the Sunday school of my childhood and the seats of WWI railway carriages. For some reason, it made me want to cry. Walter eyebrowed Adi across and more beer was brought. Now we received nuts, too. With Alexis, our stock was rising by the minute. The white linen suits were all staring as he settled into an elegant, Côte d’Azur, pose, arranging the pleats in his trousers.
“Your ex-wife?”
“My new ex-wife, Louise van Alen – American Fur Company. It is quite in order. It has been arranged that she is to marry my brother.” I was fascinated to see the expensive commercial edition of whatever it was Walter was the rough-edged, amateur version of. “I confess when I flew here, I was a little concerned about my bride and this terrible man, Walter, who had apparently supplanted me.” They looked at each other and laughed. “But now, as you see, we are the best of friends. We plan to marry in Bangkok – Barbara and I, not Walja and I – and I have asked and Walja has consented, to be my best man.”
“Where is Barbara?”
He sipped beer and immediately blotted his upper lip with a second-line silk handkerchief drawn from a side pocket. The white suits had their heads together and were sniggering through curled lips. I somewhere heard the word “Poodlefaker”.
“Shopping. Where else? Which reminds me. I must dash. I have to order more white lilies for the suite, to lift it a little. So glooomy! They are to be the theme of our wedding. Women like those little touches.” He rose and bowed, took his time to arrange all his accessories before strolling back across the floor, hefted the heavy door open with his own fair hands, turned, fixed Adi with his eye and pointed at the table with cocked wrist. “For Miss Barbara Hutton’s bill, 601.”
Adi nodded, bowed, smiled, clutched the bill to his chest and looked at us in something like triumph. The name “Hutton” had the unreality of a film star glimpsed in the street and the white suits went into a frenzy of outraged whispering and strained neckwork as Walter drained his beer coolly and signalled for more with the innocence of a little boy left with a large banknote in a sweet shop.
“You can bet the flowers will go on her bill too,” he smiled in mitigation. “Did you know she bought Kinnerley a Bentley? I told her my own sister was called Mercedes. Yesterday we went to see a marvellous film, Gold Diggers of 1933. Busby Berkeley. So original, so rich. I expected it to be about hairy miners but it was not. You should go.” And when beer-carrying Adi came, Walter slipped a large tip in his top pocket, patted his rump with chaste affection and ordered another glass for me too. Such spontaneous generosity with someone else’s money, remembering all the little people, is the mark of the true gentleman. I looked at Mdivani’s beer, lavishly abandoned after a single sip. I could never do that.
***
McPhee was sweaty and red-faced and – I suspected – not entirely sober. He was running rapidly to fat and had the seedy and apologetic look of a man staggering home after an ill-advised night on the tiles. We were on the terrace of the Bali Hotel, nighttime moths fluttering around us, reminding me that I might be elsewhere.
“Coffee?” I suggested. He shrugged. I ordered. It would do him good.
“Bit of trouble at the old homestead,” he confided ruefully. “Jane gets odd ideas in her head at times. She is not always stable.” He looked across the table to see how all this was going down. I said nothing. He lit a clove cigarette with a shaky match and put the used residue back in the box – a very annoying habit.
“I’ve been away at Kuta, you see, arse-end of the universe. You know Lotring, the musician?” I nodded. I knew him, a regular visitor to Walter, thin, birdlike, a composer martyred by hi
s art whose music came to him in tortured dreams that seemed to devour him like demons. “He brought me to Bali. I heard a recording of the old Kuta gamelan when I was in New York, one of his works, and couldn’t get it out of my head. I listened to it over and over, drove Jane crazy. ‘Balinese gamelan is the only thing that can save Western music from the dead end it’s stuck in,’ I told her. And I was right. Then, when I got here, I found the group had had a big fight over a chicken or a goat or something and broken up. Lotring and I had this plan. We revived the group, bought out the old members, recruited new players, regilded and retuned the instruments, got the big gong back from the government pawnshop. To save the orchestra and Western music cost me $150. We had a big shed under a great old tree down on the beach where no one goes. I would go down there for a week or two at a time, work with the men, Lotring composing in his dreams, them rehearsing, all of us playing together. The Dutch would never allow that in public, a white man sitting at the feet of a Balinese as his pupil but who cares. You can’t imagine what it was like, being absorbed into the orchestra, that great, breathing, living, ancient creature – feeling its rhythms pounding in your body and its blood flowing along with yours. It was like a dream for me too. We got up every morning to the smell of the ocean, threw open the doors and stepped into the sea. A woman from the village brought us fresh coffee, made on an open fire, porridge and fruit. Some of the boys came along to make notes. Every evening there was the greatest sunset in the world, like a huge pink flower just opening up and the swallows swooping and diving with the blush of it on their wings. And then we’d play again far into the night.” The coffee arrived – not brought by a village woman moving to ancient rhythms but a waiter choking in his tight tunic – and with all the usual unnecessary complexity of china and silverware, trays and fussy chits. “At first Jane didn’t mind. She had her own work and the house. She loves that garden Walter got started for her. Then she began to feel neglected and wanted to come with me and of course that ruined it for everyone. So I stopped going for a while. Lotring would creep round the back of the house every couple of weeks and keep me informed or I’d send one of the boys on the bicycle. Then Sampih turned up.”
