‘Nah.’ How does she know? Maybe she was the one who drove him home from Roger’s. Maybe he dropped in to her internet cafe to get in touch with the ex. It doesn’t really matter.
‘Are you okay?’ she asks, still looking down the road.
‘It could’ve been worse.’
I could’ve still been in Perth; could’ve just got kicked out of his apartment with all my stuff, could’ve had no other love interest to divert my attention, even if that, too, turned out badly.
‘Cool, take it easy then,’ she says.
‘Sure.’
62
I circle the village twice before remembering which is Dennis and Meri’s house. Distances are different on a bike and I’m coming from the opposite direction to town. The door is open and I call out.
‘Sebentar!’ comes Meri’s reply.
She greets me a moment later, tasting spoon in hand.
‘I’m just cooking something, come in, come in.’ I follow her through to the kitchen and she returns to her pot. She’s stirring a tofu curry. It’s full of dry, floating chillies. On the chopping board next to her pot is a bunch of leaves, some kind of fragrant herb.
‘What’s that, Bu?’
‘Kemangi. Try some.’ She passes me a leaf.
Some of the herbs and vegetables here can be evilly bitter, like whatever was cooking in the dukun’s shack, but this tastes like basil with a twist of lemon.
‘That’s amazing. I’ve never seen this at any of the warungs around here.’
‘Yes, not so much of it here. It’s Dennis’ favourite. He tried it for the first time when we were in West Java and then brought some seeds back. We have a little patch –’ she points through the window.
‘Cool. Where is Dennis? I wanted to have a chat to him.’
‘He should be on his way home from work now. He won’t be long.’
‘Is it okay if I wait around?’
‘Of course! There’re some books and magazines in the lounge room. Can I get you something to drink? Iced tea, coffee, water?’
Dennis has a fabulous collection of books in Indonesian and English. And poetry; there is a whole shelf dedicated to Australian poetry. I domino, one by one, volumes by John Tranter, Alan Wearne, Dorothy Porter, Rebecca Edwards, Bruce Beaver, Dorothy Hewett, Merlinda Bobis, Gig Ryan, John Forbes. What a goldmine! A battered cover open on the chair catches my eye: Poetry Australia, 1975. I turn the fan on high and start to flip the pages. Ibu moves around the kitchen and chooks cluck and kick in the yard. After a few minutes I find a poem that rivets me, makes me oblivious to everything else, takes me to Papua New Guinea with a missionary in 1891:
… And always outside his mosquito net
A thousand small shrill voices sing and drone.
Those circling deaths with wings soft as starlight …
… And one day a soft breeze will fan his neck,
And gently settle there and itch and kill …
My scalp prickles, as if doused in cold water. Why can’t they just let the malaria get him? What could possibly be worse?
‘Hi Penny, I see you’ve found Mr Lehmann.’
I jerk my head around.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. You haven’t been here long?’
I pull myself together. ‘No, no, I … wow.’ I stand and shake his hand.
Dennis is dressed in long pants and a sensational batik shirt. When I ask where he got it he tells me he personally selected the material in Yogyakarta then took it to one of the city’s best tailors. Impressive as his outfit is, he looks like he’s stinking hot.
‘I’ve been in the classroom all morning overseeing some construction. I’ll just have a rinse then join you.’
‘No worries.’
I go back to the poem. The poet’s grandfather, a missionary, is dying. He built his church in a ‘country brooding like a dark green brain’, and now boards a ship home to Sydney. Coming through the Heads, ‘Wind and white sails, sunlight and the salt sting.’ When he arrives home his children don’t recognise him. ‘Strangeness hangs around him like a wind.’
I take a breath and gently close the book. But it lingers.
‘That’s much better.’ Dennis has changed into a sarong and a singlet. Meri is behind him carrying a tray with two glasses of iced tea.
‘I wish I’d noticed these earlier. I would’ve come over and asked to borrow some.’
It’s as if Dennis is following my train of thought. ‘So do you like working for Shane?’
‘Well …’ I leave it there.
‘That bad?’
‘It’s pretty bad.’
‘I’m glad you dropped by. I was planning on coming to see you myself this afternoon.’
Behind us the fan blade slows, stops. The electricity has dropped out.
Dennis continues, ‘You see, there’s a few things you’ve gotta understand about what it’s like to live in a community like this. Firstly, no-one respects the police. So often when there’s something to be resolved, the community take it into their own hands. And it can be brutal. Years ago, when Meri and I first moved here, we had some money and jewellery stolen from our house. We talked about it with our neighbours and found out they were being robbed as well. This went on for a few months until at last someone caught the thief. He was a young man from Padang who’d been living here for six months.’
Dennis’ hands, folded in his lap, are like sea-creatures that have been left out on the sand. Dried up and peppered with sunspots. He’s looking at the floor.
‘I was on my way to work one morning when I noticed a group of men at the edge of the rice paddy. I slowed. There was someone on the ground. A young man with his feet and hands trussed up like a pig’s. He had no shirt on and all over his chest –’ Dennis slashes his singlet with a finger. ‘They’d cut him up with their machetes. And they were dragging him away from the road and into the rice field.’
He presses his glasses up the bridge of his nose. And finally looks at me.
‘Well, nothing went missing after that. But I didn’t stop, Penny. I knew it was wrong, and I didn’t stop to help the man.’
I take a sip of my tea, crunch pearls of ice.
‘It’s the only time I saw something like that with my own eyes. Meri tells me it’s not uncommon. Usually, if someone acts out against the community, they get taken fishing.’
‘Uh-huh.’ I can see where he’s going with this. The other night, before Rick had cut him off, he told a story in a similar way. Connecting events, connecting similarities, trying to show us that there’s always cause and effect and that it’s always bigger than one person, one incident, especially here.
‘So, are you saying the blokes have something like this in store for Shane?’
‘No. I think they have something much, much worse in store for Shane. If what Meri heard at the markets this morning is anything to go by, then I must warn you, urgently, to leave. Leave Shane’s as soon as you can. There’s a bus out of here tomorrow morning at five. Get on that bus. Because you’ve been working there, you’ve been affiliated with him. They won’t spare you.’
My throat narrows, my toes start to dance.
‘Who are they? Who’s planning something against him? Is it the “radicals”?’ I invert my fingers around the word, conscious of Dennis’ reluctance to brand, to tag, to play into the spin.
‘I can’t say for sure, but I think the discontent is bigger than a few hardline Islamists. I think the whole community wants Shane gone.’
‘Right.’
The fan stutters alive again. We look at each other.
‘But –’ I’m about to sound mercenary, ‘Shane owes me some money. Not a lot of money, just a bit. Should I ask for it tonight? Or do you think he’ll get suspicious? Think I might be planning to bail?’
‘What exactly did he promise you?’
I explain the deal, tell him about the bonus.
He’s too polite to laugh. Instead, he says, ‘Did you ever hear anyth
ing about that girl who was working for him? She was also promised a bonus – I think she was with him for a year or more. He refused to pay her. Probably had no intention of paying her to begin with. You never signed any contract?’
I shake my head.
‘It wouldn’t matter anyway,’ Dennis says, ‘he could have easily typed something up on a Word document. Well, as it turned out, Yuliana was a spirited young lady. And she had every intention of taking what Shane owed her. So she did. And then she left – she was from Bandar Lampung originally. Shane’s careful never to employ locals. That orang lain thing. If he’d been employing people from Batu Batur he would’ve been kicked out years ago.’
‘And Yuliana?’ I ask, afraid to hear.
‘Shane really had it in for Yuliana. He followed her. Found her. Then cut off her fingers for stealing. So what are you waiting for?’ he says. ‘Fuck the money, girl. Get back there and pack your bags.’
63
There’s a police truck in the car park. While I’m tempted to come back in an hour or so when the police will surely be gone, I’m more tempted by the prospect of packing. Dennis has made the danger, the urgency, seem real and immediate. If Dennis reckons it’s time to go – patient, calm, IT-nerd Dennis – then it’s time to go.
The police are on the dining deck with Shane, and I try to sneak past, courting the shadows along the far wall. Shane spots me.
‘Penny!’
There’s a reptilian stillness about the police and a ticking, twitching, percussive paranoia about Shane.
‘They say they came through the week.’
‘They did. You were in Medan.’
‘Well why the fuck didn’t you say something?’
‘I expected they’d come back. They come every month, don’t they?’
‘What did you give ’em?’
‘Bottle of whisky. And glasses of whisky while they were here.’
‘Alright.’ He looks at me evenly. His look says, Penny, it’s us and them.
‘Now listen to me, bencong.’ Shane steps up close to the police officer.
The officer is not sitting down tonight.
‘I’m not happy with the pressure you put on my staff while I was away. I’m sure we’ve spoken about this before. You want your money? Well, it’s all yours.’
Shane reaches into his pocket and pulls out a slab of rupiah fastened with an elastic band. He slides off the elastic band and starts to flip the notes from the wad onto the wooden deck. He’s flipping two thousands, five thousands, ten thousands, twenty thousands, green notes, purple notes, rust-coloured notes, Monopoly-coloured notes; but worse, he’s disrespecting the higher denominations, he’s flipping fifty thousands, one hundred thousands: nothing to us, everything to them.
‘You want your money?’ says Shane. ‘Here’s your money, mate. You want it that fucken bad, then you can bend down and pick it up.’
The officer’s motionless. His eyes, level with Shane’s armpit, are flat and motionless.
A fan whisks the air above us.
There’s the rasp of rupiah on wood.
‘Ambil itu,’ says the police officer.
His men drop to their knees and sweep up the money, quick as they can.
When they’re standing again, the police officer steps closer to Shane. ‘I kill you,’ he says calmly.
‘Yeah, good luck with that, mate. You’ll have to beat the fucken mosquitoes to it. Righto. Chop chop. Fuck off now, you’ve got your cash. No whisky. Tidak ada whisky. Sudah diminum by you, bencong!’ Shane swings his arm in the direction of the door.
‘I kill you,’ the police officer repeats. ‘Malam ini, I kill you.’
And this time, he trims it with a wicked smile.
64
My bags are packed and ready. I’m just going to boost. Early. Pre-dawnie. Leave a note. I’ll head to Ibu Ayu’s first, drop back the motorbike, pick up my things. I didn’t leave much in Josh’s apartment. Some books, clothes, perfumes, photos. It probably all fits in a single box. Ibu Ayu should be able to tee me up a lift with her driver. If not, then the morning bus at five. Then Lampung, then Bali. Then what? Then whatever.
It is as if the night has been gagged. Instead of chooks, geckos, coughs, growls, motorbikes that won’t start, the tick-tick-tick of a fan, water flushing – there’s nothing. Just the pale humid calm before rain.
At first I think it’s the mosquitoes that have woken me. Despite the net, bites sequin my belly and I’ve drawn blood in my sleep, scratching. Then I hear thumping. I slide out of bed and pull on jeans and a t-shirt. The key jams in the door lock and it takes a moment for it to open. More thumping and sobs. It sounds like Shane’s belting Kristi. I go quietly along the balcony, the wooden boards cool under my feet. There are no lights on, there’s no moon, or phosphorescent water, or fireflies, just the sweating shadows of wood.
Turning the corner, I almost trip over a dark parcel on the ground, all nude folded legs and mussed hair. It’s Kristi.
‘Kristi. Hey Kristi. Kamu oke?’
There’s a glistening arc of moisture curving from her lower lip to chin. Her hands bunch at her crotch and her eyelids are gummed shut with blood.
‘Where’s Shane?’ I snarl.
‘Penny, bukan Shane. Bukan Shane.’ It wasn’t Shane.
‘Jadi siapa?’
‘Six of them.’
‘Six of siapa?’
She just shakes her head.
‘Oh fuck.’
The thumping continues.
‘Come on then.’ My voice cracks with fear. ‘Come back to my room. I’ll give you the key. You can lock yourself in. I’ll stay with you if you like.’
She shakes her head vehemently. ‘They tell me, no moving. If I move … very very bad.’
Thumpthumpthump. My heart’s quickening to match it.
‘Come on Kristi, you’ll be safe with me. You’re not safe here.’
My fear’s splintering into hysteria.
‘No,’ she says, firmly and finally.
I’m torn. I don’t want to leave her, but feel sick with the thought of the six men and what they might do to me, feel sick with the memory of Dennis’ warning.
‘Okay, look. I’ve gotta get some stuff. But I’ll be back in less than a minute.’
She doesn’t answer.
I sprint to my room, grab the shoulder bag packed with my motorbike key, my passport, my money and cards. Then I race back out to where I left Kristi, but she’s gone. In her place, there are a dozen coin-sized smudges of blood. Where did she go? Was she dragged over the balcony? Did she pick herself up and run? Do I get out of here, or do I go and find her?
The thumping gets louder. It’s coming from the front door. Maybe Kristi went there, in search of Shane. I’ll have a quick look and if there’s no Kristi, then I’m out of here. At the end of the corridor, at the front door, there’s a lump against the wall, an area of concentrated darkness. At first I think it’s Kristi, but as my eyes adjust I see that it’s Shane and that he’s holding a gun. He swings it at me and, against the shadows, I can make out the two blown fuses of his eyes.
‘Shut ya face,’ he hisses, even though I haven’t said a word, then to the door, loud and manic, ‘Open the door! Bukalah pintu ini, you fucken anjing! You dogs!’
‘What’s goin’ on?’
‘They’ve nailed shut the fucken door.’
I’m already moving, I’m talking fast and frightened. ‘Well what about the verandah? The track down to the beach? Come on, Shane, let’s get out of here!’
There’s no-one on the verandah but I hear soft voices somewhere beneath my feet. I creep to the handrail by the stairs, peer through the leaves. The track down to the beach seems clear. Maybe I misplaced the voices, maybe they’ve been misshaped by night, maybe they’re actually coming from the front door. Shane hasn’t followed.
There’s an eruption of bats. A shout from below.
I forget about Shane. If they catch me … A rusty fear strips my throat. Fuck
, fuck, fuck. The front door is nailed shut and they’ve blocked the track to the beach. Where else can I go? I’ll head back toward my bedroom. As I turn the corner, I’ll roll off the balcony into the jungle. It’s thick. It’s tied in knots around the resort. There’s no way they’ll find me. I drop to a crouch and inch away from the edge, move low and quiet toward my room.
My legs are leaden – it’s an effort to lift my feet.
And then I freeze.
There’s the slap of rubber on wood. Coming from the direction of my bedroom. Coming toward me.
There’s only one way left to go. The surf-check tower. I turn and launch up the rungs of the ladder two, three, four at a time, scramble across the platform into the darkest pool of shadow. And shake. Lace my hands together but still they shake. Fix my teeth together but still they make a porcelain chatter that the men will surely hear. It’s over. They’ve seen me. They’ve heard me.
They’re below me now, talking.
It doesn’t sound like they’ve found Shane yet. I wonder if Shane is still at the front door. Or if he’s hiding behind something, waiting to shoot. I wriggle to the edge of the platform on my belly and see four fishermen. None are looking up. The lights are on; the coiled bulbs gloss two of the men’s hair. The other two wear skullcaps. There’s the menace of murder taut in their spines, in the fingers that hold machetes. One circles the pool table, the rest are a little further back, closer to me.
Moments later I know why.
An explosion rocks the front of the resort.
I scream.
The four men have assembled in a line. Shane stumbles into view muttering incoherently. His hair is smeared across his face in wet, white-yellow streaks, except at his scalp line, where it’s charred.
‘Bajingan,’ he jeers. ‘You fucken Muslim bastards. Is that the worst you can do?’ He cocks his gun.
The men look as if they’re waiting for something, some kind of command. The two without skullcaps wear singlets. Their arms have the tight rubbery sinew of squid. The other two wear shirts. The backs of their shirts are starred with salty-shadows of sweat. It’s four on one. Shane’s hands wobble as he swings the gun from side to side. He knows if he shoots, the other three will be on to him.
Troppo Page 18
