Troppo

by Dickie, Madelaine

  A couple of men crouch nearby in red, grease-stained singlets. Their hands hang between their knees, their heads are cocked.

  ‘To put it bluntly, the bloke who runs it is a real crazy fucker. Because of him, Batu Batur’s in a pretty tense state. The expatriates are barely tolerated as is, let alone blow-ins like yourself.’

  The insult stings. ‘I’m not a blow-in! I’ve got a job here!’ But his attention has been caught by a bloke riding up to us on the coughing skeleton of a motorbike.

  ‘Permisi, Mister Matthew!’

  The black heat from the exhaust scorches my shins. They’re hairy. They need a shave. Hopefully it’s too dark to notice.

  ‘Mister Matthew! Ayo pulang.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Sekarang, yuk!’

  Matt stands up. ‘Righto, Penny. I’ll catchya later.’

  He drops me a wink and swings his leg over the bike.

  ‘Seeya.’ I give him a casual smile and go back to my bakso.

  But I’m still thinking about him later that night, as the rain slips cool down the thatch.

  6

  Ibu Ayu sets my breakfast on the dining deck. It seems the Frenchman prefers to eat alone. Or maybe he’s already gone for a wave. I wrap my fingers around a glass of basalt-coloured coffee and we gossip. Our talk whirls from women’s business to the business of the bungalows, from the surly Frenchman to traditional Lampung weavings. I want to find some weavings for Dad – he collects Indonesian kain ikat and kain songket. Ibu Ayu says she knows some women who might show me their work and that she’ll ask them at the morning market.

  ‘Did you grow up in Batu Batur?’ I ask.

  ‘Ya, of course!’ she tells me proudly. ‘I spend three year at university in Bandar Lampung, studying tourism and English. Then I meet Joni and we come back here to start business.’

  ‘Were there already tourists visiting Batu Batur back then?’

  Ibu furrows her brow. Her skin is flawless: it probably won’t wrinkle until she’s well into her sixties.

  ‘Ya, not so many.’

  A quiet grows between us. The garden is jammed with wild, edible, wet colours. Nothing here is for decoration, everything has utility, from the row of pandanus palms along the back wall to the mango and papaya trees. We sit comfortably. My Indonesian friends aren’t scared of silence. As the seconds unfold, I think again of my future boss and wonder what Ibu Ayu thinks about him. The best way to approach difficult topics here is always slowly, and so I work toward the question by asking how many other surf resorts there are in the area, and if the owners are locals or bules like myself and then finally, if she’s heard of anyone called Shane.

  When Ibu Ayu hears the name Shane she reacts explosively, nearly knocking over my coffee glass with her closed fist. ‘Mister Shane, he no good! He already long-time live here. But Ibu think not much longer.’

  ‘What, why? What’s he done?’

  ‘He say to local people: no more fishing off beach because beach is for tourist! He say to them: no more using channel for boats, because channel for surfers! No good. Local people, they no like Mister Shane. And they no like the tourist so much either.’ She slaps off a mosquito, leaving a smudge of blood. Then, realising what she’s said, she adds quickly, ‘But you can speak Indonesian and you staying here with me, so I thinking you safe, no problem.’

  ‘Does he have a wife?

  Ibu looks at me almost pityingly. ‘What woman would put up with Mister Shane? He did have wife, Chinese wife, but she try kill herself. So he send her back to China. Now, sometimes he pay Javanese girl, girl from Medan, or Lampung, okay. They stay little while, then they take the money, and go, go, faraway, quick!’

  A few chooks wander the garden. They inspect, peck, and flick at the earth, gurgling in their throats.

  Ibu lowers her voice. ‘Maybe five month ago, people say he cut the fingers off a girl for stealing.’

  ‘What girl? Was she okay?’

  Ibu adjusts her headscarf. ‘This girl, no-one know her. She from somewhere else, some other village, maybe from Java. She orang lain, kan?’

  Orang lain. Not from here. An outsider. A blow-in.

  ‘It happen, then she run away. No-one see her since.’

  I’m desperate for the story not to be true but it seems unlikely, given the matching story of the girl in the brothel. ‘That’s awful, Bu. Has Shane been here long?’

  ‘Nearly ten year. He have surf camp here. Before that, he live in Aceh. Ten year too long, Penny. He no good for this town, no good for the tourist. He crazy man, orang gila! But how come you hear of Mister Shane? You want to go surfing there? Maybe stay at his surf resort?’

  Should I tell Ibu Ayu? I might learn more by staying quiet. But she’ll find out anyway so it’s probably better she hears it from me. I’d hate for her to think me dishonest, think I’m the same as him or any other dodgy expats who may have washed up here. There’s certainly no shortage of foreign con artists, speculators and drunks in Bali, and Batu Batur probably isn’t that different. So I tell her outright, ‘Actually, I’ve got a job working at Shane’s.’

  Her eyes widen for a moment.

  ‘Yeah, I start soon as his new manager.’

  Ibu stands, picks up our glasses. ‘Oh ’gitu,’ she says. It’s like that, is it? ‘Maybe you should talk to Joni ya, Joni tell you what Shane did when he first come to Batu Batur.’

  After that she becomes cautious around me, warm, but not overly intimate. We don’t speak of Shane again.

  7

  It’s those crushing hours in the middle of the day, those dead hours when it’s too hot to move. I lie under a wet sarong with a pain like yanked-out urchin spines behind my eyes. Sweat through everything: pillows, sheets, bra, singlet. The fan barely cutting the torrid air. And the loneliness. In the back of my throat. Wondering, wandering thoughts about Josh, about ex-lovers, remembered conversations, mad friends. And knowing while they’re in my thoughts I’m not in theirs. So what the hell am I doing here, alone? Why do I always bolt when things get too hard, relationships too serious? Why am I never happy with what I’ve got, where I am, always jerked along by whim and the conviction there’s something better just ahead? And then, most pressingly, what am I going to do if these stories about Shane are true?

  The dead hours.

  8

  I roll from under the mozzie net, slam half a litre of water and head out for a walk. The Frenchman’s in the garden. He has his surfboard across his knees and is applying a fresh coat of wax with long rhythmic strokes. He gives me the faintest nod. Although we’re the only guests, he refuses to be lured into conversation – he is somber-eyed, a remorseful Bertrand Cantat.

  A blue door at the end of the garden leads onto the beach. The bungalows are in line with a ramshackle row of fishermen’s shacks and palms. On the other side of the reef, waves are crosshatched to the horizon. Clouds hang hot and low. To the south, a cholera-coloured river rips a wide channel through the sand. I walk north, toward the point where the coast curves and volcanoes shear into sea.

  There are all sorts of things coughed up on the sand. A pair of thongs. The red foil of a Beng-Beng wrapper. A sodden nappy. Then there are the organs: the hearts and kidneys and livers of old coral. The sand is coarse, slippery. With each step, I sink to my ankles.

  Up ahead, two women balancing baskets on their heads move toward me with an easy, swinging grace.

  ‘Hello Mister!’ The woman’s skin is black from sun and she squints, one hand on her basket, one on her hip.

  ‘Mau ke mana Mister?’ asks her friend. Where are you going?

  Like many of the women here, she has high, sculpted cheekbones – almost Nepalese.

  ‘Jalan-jalan,’ I reply. Just walking. ‘Mau ke mana?’

  They gesture toward Batu Batur. Then the younger woman with the enviable cheekbones asks, ‘Sendirian?’ Are you alone?

  I smile and shrug and say yeah, but no worries.

  The women look at each other and sha
ke their heads. ‘Hati-hati, ya,’ they murmur. Be careful.

  ‘Kenapa?’ Why?

  ‘Ada orang gila.’ They cast fearful looks to the line of jungle and fishing shacks, then adjust their baskets, give me uneasy smiles and continue on their way.

  Their warning hangs behind them, vaguely unpleasant, like the tang in the air after insect spray. Surely I don’t need to be worried about some madman. Travelling in remote places I’ve often been asked where my husband is; I’m often warned to be careful.

  After a while, I see some fishermen up near the palms repairing a net. They regard me with narrowed eyes.

  ‘Mau ke mana?’ calls one of the men.

  ‘Jalan-jalan,’ I reply.

  ‘Sendirian?

  ‘Yeah I’m alone.’

  The men click and look further up the beach. ‘It’s getting dark,’ one says.

  I laugh off his concern and keep walking, but a cactus of unease flowers in my gut. Waves break over the reef with back-snapping force and there’s no-one surfing. There’s no-one.

  Then suddenly I catch a dark flicker of movement among the palms. I stop. Look directly at the dusky undergrowth. Nothing. No, there’s nothing moving. Perhaps it was a bird. A monkey. I start walking again, but more slowly this time.

  When I lived in Kuta with Dad, I had a room on the second storey of our house. Often on dawn or dusk, I noticed, at the corner of my eye, crouching silhouettes, penumbras without form. ‘Hantu,’ my Balinese friends whispered. Spirits.

  When I challenged the shadows face-on, or blinked, they disappeared, leaving a faint chill, the smell of petrol, a pile of crumbled incense sticks.

  I shiver. I’m a long way from Ibu Ayu’s, and the last fishermen’s huts are at least half an hour behind me. The water bracketed inside the reef is like a sheet of olive glass and, above it, the clouds are beginning to gnar with dusk and rain.

  That’s when I see the shape again. This time it doesn’t disappear. It’s a man. Standing there. Watching me. He drops to a crouch. He eases off his pants. His pale fingers wrap delicately around his cock.

  I tuck my skirt into my undies, scrunch the strap of my bag into my fist, and run.

  9

  Finally, soaked with sweat and rain, I fall through the blue door to Ibu Ayu’s garden, then slip and trip on one of the steps. My palms skid out and I land chin-first in the mud. There are footsteps. I lift my chin, hoping with all my heart it isn’t the Frenchman.

  It is.

  ‘Mademoiselle?’ He touches my elbow in enquiry, a laugh rippling under his features. ‘Would you like a towel, a drink?’

  ‘Can’t think of anything I’d like more.’

  He puzzles his brow, so I tell him, ‘Oui!’ and follow him up to his balcony. He goes inside his room and comes back a moment later with a towel and a t-shirt.

  ‘Un moment.’ Then he goes back into his room and reappears with a bottle of gin, a can of tonic, a plate of lime and two short glasses.

  ‘Is warm.’

  ‘No worries.’

  I towel off the mud as best I can, settle into one of the plastic chairs.

  Fear and shame melt into relief.

  ‘I’m Emile,’ he says, reaching out his hand.

  ‘Penelope.’

  Emile snaps the can. There’s the quick fizz of tonic on gin. We sip, slowly, to the purling sound of rain.

  10

  After breakfast the next day, I go back to the wartel. The owner lifts an eyebrow and gestures me into the box. Then he sits outside to listen. I dial Josh’s work number.

  ‘Josh.’

  ‘Penny! Where are you? I’ve been worried sick. Don’t you have internet? What happened to your phone? I’ve left god knows how many messages. You said you’d call as soon as you got to Batu Batur! I keep asking Mandy, has Penny called?’

  ‘But I did call!’ I say hotly. ‘Your new receptionist obviously didn’t pass on my message!’

  The wartel bloke fires up a kretek, eyes sliding sideways in interest. Josh doesn’t say anything and an awful pause grows. The bright red numbers bump upward, indicating the rising cost of the call: Rp100, Rp1000, Rp10,000.

  ‘Well, alright then, I’ll have a word to her,’ Josh finally says. ‘So. Are you okay?’

  I think about yesterday at the beach, about drinking in silence with the Frenchman until midnight. I think of the bus accident and of being sick and of meeting Matt.

  ‘Yeah.’ The numbers have hit Rp30,000. Four dollars. Red font, sans serifs. ‘You?’

  He started it wrong and now there’s ugliness, awkwardness between us, the kind that can only be resolved through sex. Not over the phone. Not from Sumatra.

  ‘Yeah, good,’ he says.

  ‘I miss you.’ It sounds insincere, so I rush on. I ask about the new receptionist, his company, the flat. All good, he says. Work’s good, he says. A sick pause, then he asks about Bali, what it was like catching up with my old schoolfriends.

  ‘Mellow,’ I lie. ‘Super mellow.’

  I tell him I’ve been crook, that the new boss sounds like an arsehole and the town doesn’t really feel safe. Josh encourages me to stick it out, says it’ll be a great experience, that I should make the most of it.

  He’s always so measured, so reasonable.

  ‘Jesus,’ I sigh into the phone, half-joking, ‘you sound like my dad.’ He goes silent.

  ‘I mean, Josh … I didn’t mean …’

  Rp115,000.

  The wartel owner flicks the butt of his cigarette out the door. Red cinders fade on concrete.

  At last Josh says, ‘Call me again in a couple of days, okay?’

  The receipt inches through the machine.

  Twenty bucks.

  Outside, the same old woman whacks the same small child with a cane. I decide to call back but the man tells me the electricity has dropped out.

  ‘Banyak duit,’ he says slyly, ‘calling Australia. Australian people have many-many money, ya? Not like Indonesians.’ He strokes his moustache. ‘How much you pay, ticket from Australia to Lampung?’

  11

  Back at the bungalows there’s a girl pushing a broom. She glances up, returns my wave with a shy smile. Then I bounce up the stairs to my balcony two at a time, kick off my thongs and collapse into a chair. Over the fence the ocean is the colour of old soap. Against the line of palms are the shapes of several blokes. Uneasiness sets in. I close the book on my lap. They look like wooden wayang golek puppets: crouching, stretching, flexing. They look like they’re watching me.

  I shut my eyes. The conversation with Josh is still making swing-dizzy circles in my head. If only I’d been more supplicating, humoured him, hadn’t said that fucking thing about him sounding like my dad. My age is the only thing he’s self-conscious about. When it was just the two of us it didn’t matter so much, but I could sense it when we had dinners or barbies with his friends, sense his unspoken expectation that I complement him, not embarrass him, not say anything stupid. Once, before we got out of the car, he even went so far as to advise me that maybe I should listen more, should think before I speak, should remember that his friends were bank managers, councillors, small business owners; should watch my language and maybe, just maybe, should consider staying sober. That particular night I really went for it. While toddlers crashed into the legs of the dining table, their mothers – chairs angled away from me – talked endlessly about renovations and how much they paid for their plasma televisions and which private schools they were enrolling their children at. Most of these women knew Josh’s ex-wife, some had even gone to school with her. They judged him for hooking up with me so soon after the separation. I never stood a chance of being accepted.

  I sullenly drained a bottle of white and then, working by finger-widths through a bottle of Captain Morgan, my tongue turned nasty. I was obnoxious and fixing to fight.

  Josh didn’t speak to me for two days.

  That was a month ago.

  On the first day of the silent treatment, I found
the job at Shane’s advertised on the internet, and applied. On the second day, before even hearing back from Shane, I booked a ticket to Indo.

  Josh took the news in his usual, measured manner, offering his one hundred percent support. But the night before I left I caught him sobbing on the edge of the bathtub, head bent and shoulders slack. I tried to nudge onto his lap, in my hot pink Brazilian undies, but he gently pushed me back through the door.

  I open my eyes.

  The men are still there, watching me.

  And Matt’s turned up.

  It takes a moment for me to recognise him – the kerosene-lit memory of his face is a fraction of what he looks like in the flat midday light. He calls out to Bapak Joni. Bapak emerges from behind one of the buildings, an axe in his hand. After greeting, the men’s faces become drawn and intense. Whatever they’re talking about is serious. Matt senses he’s being watched; he breaks off the conversation and glances around. I drop my eyes, face burning. A few minutes later there’s the creak of balcony steps. Matt’s head appears, a mane of sand-coloured curls.

  ‘How’s it goin’, Pen?’

  ‘Alright.’ I put my book on the table. It’s a new book of poetry by Zan Ross called en passant. Each poem is like a single stick of dynamite, sea and sex.

  Matt doesn’t glance at the book. He falls into the chair next to me and stretches out his legs. They’re long, tanned, braided with scars.

  We sit for a while in an easy silence. Over the garden the air is thick with dragonflies. They float, juicy and fat and red. The afternoon is still, tepid, and now sharp with his smell.

  ‘It’s amazing, isn’t it,’ he says after a while, ‘the way the Indos open you. You can be sitting down for a feed and someone will come up and sit next to you and ask how are you? where are you going? what’s your name? You’re constantly being opened, constantly have to share. It’s not like back in Aus where people don’t give a shit.’