by Mike Stoner
Pak introduces him as Albert the receptionist. Albert hoists himself off his stool and lays his hand in mine like a piece of wet fish which lies there for a second before sliding off.
‘You are hungry?’ Pak asks me.
Am I? My stomach rolls and turns, but I’m not sure if it’s hunger or him trying to throw some more Laura my way.
What does she think of me standing here now in a completely foreign place trying to be not me? Probably raising an eyebrow and poking me in the side and saying something like, ‘Nice move, numbnuts.’
And I laugh or poke her back and try to lick that irritating, sexy, ebony caterpillar over her left eye.
‘Yes or no?’
Oh, well done, you crafty bastards. I swallow down on them and the broken fragments of pain they’ve left. Perhaps I do need to throw some sort of foreign food down me to stop the heartburn.
‘Yes. Food would be good. No meat, please. I’m vegetarian.’
He snorts and is then yelling out something that sounds like ‘Eepooo.’
From down the corridor that runs off next to the counter comes hurrying an Indonesian in matching brown shirt and trousers. He is as high as my chest, with a long dark-brown fringe that hangs over his eyes.
Eepooo stands in front of Pak with his head slightly bowed through either respect or fear. Pak doles out some foreign words which have the clipped tone of instruction, and a couple of notes from his back pocket. Eepooo, if that is his name, shoves the money in his shirt pocket, looks at me from under his fringe and flashes a set of impressively white large teeth in such a way that I can’t help but smile back. I think of Mowgli: Mowgli ripped out of The Jungle Book and put in the uniform of an errand boy, no doubt Baloo having been captured for his dancing skills and placed in a cage somewhere to amuse simple and mindless tourists.
I must be getting tired. My mind is going all over the place.
Still smiling, Mowgli goes out of the front door and boogies across the road, probably singing to himself, ‘Be doop doop do, I wanna be like you-oo.’
Knackered. I want a bed.
‘Food is coming. Come. I’ll show you the staffroom and give you your timetable. You will start at nine tomorrow morning.’ Pak walks off down the corridor.
Nine? Tomorrow morning? I look at the clock hanging behind the counter to make sure I haven’t crossed fewer time lines than I think I have. Fat boy behind the counter smiles in such a way that I don’t return it.
I follow Pak down the corridor and into a room on the left. A very tired New Me is about to take control of the situation and tell Pak there is no way he’s working tomorrow. As Old Me would say, there are moments different to this. Moments when he thinks very strongly about saying no to things he doesn’t want to do, but never actually does. Probably because he’s a gutless wimp of a piece of shit. So I am impressed and proud when New Me, being the opposite of his nemesis, opens his mouth and says, ‘No. Sorry. I’m not working tomorrow.’
Pak is standing next to a desk against the wall, one of about ten lining the room.
‘You will sit here.’
‘OK. But I’m not working tomorrow. Sorry, Pak, but I’m jetlagged and need to sleep.’
‘But I have you on the timetable for tomorrow. There are students.’
Old Me almost surfaces, but I swallow him down.
‘Sorry. Wednesday alright, but not tomorrow.’
‘I will have to ask another teacher to cover. He won’t like it, but…you are tired. I am always being told you Westerners are different, not used to work, and I need to understand. OK. You can start Wednesday. Class J1. Here is all the information you need.’ Red-faced, he picks up a folder on my desk, waves it at me and drops it again.
‘Thanks.’
‘And please, do not call me Pak. It is Pak Andy, like you say Mr Andy in English or Andy-san in Japan. Please show respect.’
‘Oh. OK, Pak Andy. Sorry.’ I guess I’ve pissed him off. Never mind.
‘Wait here. I have some work to do in my office. Epool will bring you food in a minute.’ He is gone from the staffroom. I look at the green folder and think about opening it. I can’t be arsed. I sit in my new chair and hope I can stay awake long enough for the food to arrive.
So Eepooo isn’t Eepooo but Epool. I prefer Mowgli.
Looking around, the room feels like an academic Mary Celeste. Papers and open textbooks lie arrayed on most desks, some pinned down by coffee mugs.
What has happened to the teachers? They must have made a rapid exit if the classes have only just finished. Perhaps there are no teachers. I am The Replacement. The Teacher.
I’m too tired to consider the god-almighty cock-up I might have made in coming here. What sort of idiot takes a job after a five-minute phone interview, in a country he knows nothing much about and on the other side of the world, in a school he’s never heard of? Me idiot. That’s who. But that’s what I’m about. I don’t care anymore. Or at least I try not to. I’m supposed to just do it. New Me just does it.
I lean my head on the desk, turned a little so I can feel the desk’s smooth cold on my cheek. Sleep. Need sleep. Sleep tonight. Relax tomorrow. I’ll be fine.
The air conditioning hums a lullaby on the wall above me, wafting cool air across my aching neck. My eyes close, open, close. Soothing on my neck. Laura gently runs her fingers over my nape and up into my hair; she rests her hand on the back of my head, fingers softly massaging my scalp while she gently whispers,
—Don’t worry, baby. Don’t worry.
Her breath sways the minuscule hairs in my ear back and forth like meadow grass, meadow grass that I’m lying in, the sweet smell of it in my nose. Her hands on my cheeks, she kisses my eyelids, my nose, my lips…
BANG.
I open my eyes, my hand clasps my mouth trying to hold her there but she is gone. I look around, not sure of where I am. Epool stands in the doorway, a bag of something in his hand, the smell of chilli swirling around him.
‘Food for you, mister.’ He makes a rotating hand movement in front of his mouth.
‘Thanks.’ I blink away any fragments of Laura and the meadow and hit my chest to silence the dead. Epool eyes me with the caution of a small, nervous child.
‘It’s OK. Very hungry,’ I say, and instead of my chest, I pat my gut. ‘Very, very hungry.’
‘Oh, gooood.’ The big toothy smile is back. ‘Good food here.’ And he brings over the bag and plonks it on the desk in front of me.
‘Noodles.’
‘Thank you Epool.’
‘No. Not Epool. Epool.’
‘Epool?’ I can hear no difference.
‘Wait, please.’ He takes a pen from the desk next to mine and pushes it down hard on a piece of paper. He starts moving the nib slowly and carefully across it.
I look at the finished piece, a little scratchy and wobbly but a word, a name, has made it out of the pen.
‘Ah, Iqpal.’
‘Yes, yes.’ He slaps me on the back and then double slaps his chest. ‘Iqpal.’
‘Nice to meet you, Iqpal.’ I offer him my hand. He looks at it as if he’s being given a present and then shakes it like it’s made of porcelain.
‘Iqpal.’ Pak, sod the respect, is back talking Indonesian to my new friend. Iqpal smiles and nods at me, then runs off to do whatever it is Pak has just told him to do.
I wonder what time they finish working here. The clock on the wall clicks to nine fifty-one, which is two fifty-one in the afternoon back home. I yawn. I haven’t slept in over a day and a half.
‘Come. I will take you to your house.’
House? That sounds promising. I pick up my bag of noodles and the folder off my desk and follow Pak back to his car.
‘Where are the other teachers?’ I ask as I climb back in, placing the food between my feet.
‘The driver has already taken them home. They left directly after class.’
‘A driver? What time does he pick up in the mornings?’
‘No picku
p. Only take home. You must take a bus or taxi to work in the mornings. Taxi is safer.’
We slide off the forecourt into the slow-moving traffic. Pak starts beeping his horn and steers the car in any direction he sees an opening. Multicoloured cycle-rickshaws are steered out of the way at full leg-power by skinny men in dirty shorts, T-shirts, and sweat-stained caps. They ring their bells and shout while taking hands off handlebars to shake fists.
‘How will I find the bus?’
‘You are sharing with Kim, another teacher. Kim will tell you how to get to work. Don’t worry.’
Don’t worry? I put my head back against the rest and pretend I’m not worried. I look sideways at Pak, something dark and ugly is just under his skin, almost invisible. My gritty, weary mind slips sideways for a moment and anxiety soaks into the marrow of my bones like blood through a bandage.
We go to sleep.
His is surprisingly long and deep and dark. Nothing flashes behind his eyelids, no beautiful woman dances across his retinas, shedding clothes as she moves. Just sleep, like a taster of death.
And I sleep too, down in the snugness of his chest. But my sleep is fitful, broken and full of images, because that is what I am: a record of a life like an old cine film in a can, curled in on itself so frame lies upon frame upon frame, image doubled over image, from the outer edge of the spool to the tightest curl in the centre. A whole life stored away, but always available for late-night showings. Always ready for curtains to open on one of the countless moments of now.
Swoosh, almost silent, the curtains part to keep me from sound sleep. A short, but a classic, keeping me occupied while he snores.
I watch the scratchy lines move up and down and across the screen, the black-and-white numbers flash in countdown, focus the lens and there it is…
Her apartment: she stands with her back against the open door, one hand on the handle and the other ushering me in, as if she is showing me a portal to a magical land.
‘Here we are,’ she says.
I am gently spinning from alcohol and the closeness of her. I walk past as she holds the door open, aware of the sparks that jump from her to me and me to her. We are a Van de Graaff generator on heat.
There is a smell of patchouli and coffee in her apartment. A sofa, a rocking chair and small portable TV occupy the room. A rug keeps the wooden floor warm, and off to the right I see a kitchen hiding behind a wall and off to the left a bedroom winks.
‘Take a seat. That seat.’ She points to the sofa with its pair of big red cushions and caress-me fabric. I do as I’m told.
‘Whisky?’ She pulls off her hat and scarf and coat in a motion that is so quick it baffles me. Am I that wasted that time is playing its tricks with me?
‘It’s all I have, so it’s all you’re getting.’ And she is sucked into a flashing white light in the kitchen.
I watch my fingers play an invisible miniature set of drums on the arm of the sofa. Then a glass is pushed into my hand. An inch of light-golden liquid sloshes drunkenly around its base while a fat and half-melted candle on the coffee table is lit. A body falls onto the sofa next to me and my shoulder is touching hers. Static builds. I run a hand through my hair to make sure it’s not standing on end. The warmth from the whisky runs down my neck and through my stomach.
‘So?’ she says, curling her legs up under her.
‘So?’ say I.
‘It was a good day.’
‘It was.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Thank you.’
I swirl my whisky around the glass and then my mouth and then my head.
I look at her and she is staring at her knees and the teacup of scotch which she holds there. Her eyes are glazed and flicker in the candlelight and she is smiling.
‘A very good day,’ she says and looks at me and my heart detaches itself from its veins and arteries and tumbles down into my stomach, where it lies stunned, before jumping back and reattaching all its life support.
She looks like she saw it happen.
‘Kiss me,’ she says.
I kiss her.
She dances across my eyes, shedding clothes as she moves.
HELLO GOODBYE
W hen I awake at some point before dawn, there is a voice nearby, its song undulating, growing stronger with the changing light. From further off another two voices travel across the city to me, melodies added to the main theme. It is a human dawn chorus that rises from nothing to something beautiful. It winds its way around my senses and holds me to my bed. I don’t expect it. I have never considered it and its appearance surprises me. I am just here, without expectations or any real knowledge of this country. I have come only out of the need to be rid of my past and with no thought for where that expulsion has taken me. That is why, when the muezzin starts, and other voices join in and fall across the city with the rising sun’s light, I cry. I cry due to the unexpected and simple beauty of the song.
There again it might not just be the call to prayer that makes me cry; it could partly be due to the close call to vomiting from a few hours ago. Maybe too much beer on spicy noodles in an unsteady stomach, maybe too much grass. That could the reason for my tears—strong, strong grass. This is yesterday:
Pak takes me to my new home. He introduces me to Kim and Kim to me. Kim is a man. A Californian man, mid-thirties, tall, in a brown flower-patterned shirt. Pak leaves as soon as he can. He has to be somewhere else. Kim closes the door behind him. My new house is open-plan and cool, white tiled floor, big-cushioned armchairs with wooden armrests, a muted TV showing a small and chubby Asian-American beating up four men in suits with swift and precise movements of an umbrella. There’s a kitchen along one wall and a dining table in front of a window and door to a concrete garden. Four more doors lead off the main room. This is my home.
‘Fuuuuuuccckk. That man is such a fucking fuck, man.’ Kim sits in a chair and puts his long legs out over the small table in front of him. He hits the volume on the remote. ‘Make yourself at fucking home, man.’
I drag my travel-tired rucksack across the tiles, opening doors until I find a room that isn’t a toilet, a shower or a bedroom with Kim’s dirty underwear sniffing the floor. In my room are two single beds; only one is made up, the other still has a plastic cover on the mattress. I lay my rucksack on the unmade bed. Fumbling deep inside one of its pockets I find the pebble. It is smooth and comfortable in my palm. It’s the only thing I’ve allowed myself. The only memory I’ve brought. No photos, no other souvenirs of her, just this pebble. I turn it in my hand, swallow down hard on the two of them who stir at the feel of it and return it back to the pocket. I give my bag a pat.
‘Sleep well.’
I go back and flop in an armchair next to Kim.
The chubby Asian-American on TV is now giving life-changing advice to a small blond American boy, while Indonesian subtitles translate along the bottom of the screen.
‘Yeah, go Sammo. Tell that white boy how to be good. I fucking love Sammo. Beats the shit out of people with toilet rolls and fucking bananas and things like that and is sooo fucking wise.’
I nod. Sammo does look wise.
‘Do you smoke?’ Kim asks me.
Not much. Not recently. Not since Laura.
How much pain have I been in? Too much to remember I’m an addict. I have never once thought about smoking again. Now I remember I am an addict, I want one.
‘Yes. Are they Marlboro?’
‘No, not these, man.’ He waves his brown cigarette under my nose, and for some reason the pungent smell of it makes me think of apple pie. ‘But you can have one if you want.’
‘Cheers.’ I take one and light it. The return of a forgotten comfort, long-time banished. Too pissed off and demented to remember the deadly old habit. It hits my throat like a saw and I cough. Smoke swirls around us like a mist. The sweet smell of scented tobacco hangs in the stillness of the warm and humid evening.
‘Kretek cigarette, man. Strongest cigs in the world.’
‘Tastes like it.’ I know why the smell reminds me of apple pie. Cloves. The taste is surprisingly strong and it’s suddenly soothing my throat, taking the teeth off the saw. My coughing subsides. ‘But very good.’ The clove coats my tongue while the tar slides into my lungs.
‘Anyway I didn’t mean smoke man, I meant smoooke. Do you smoooke?’
I look blankly at Kim.
‘Smoke smoke. Smo-o-o-ke?’
‘Ah. Yes.’ Comprehension arrives as I look at the roll-ups mixed in with normal butts in the ashtray. ‘Sometimes.’
With this Kim pulls a Frisbee from under his chair. It overflows with dangerous-looking green-brown foliage.
‘I don’t usually share, man, but as you’re new.’
Kim rolls, no tobacco added, and we smoke.
And now I lie in my bed crying, listening to men singing out across the rooftops, welcoming me to the first full day of my new life. Men who may never have met, yet their voices interweave with the others to harmonise as though members of the same choir; which I guess they are. The voices stop and the silence is sudden.
I am lying with my head to the mosquito-netted open window. There must be a hole in it somewhere as a small lump on my thigh asks to be scratched. From where I lie I can see the top of a wall and a thin strip of sky. Day arrives quickly. The room changes from dark to light as the night is edged out. When the arrival of day is complete, I’m surrounded by varying off-white shades of the walls and floor tiles. I look at my watch: quarter past six. I’ve had maybe six hours’ sleep. I try to recall the conversation with Kim, but nothing comes. A moment of life lost to magical foliage.
I wonder why Laura hasn’t made an appearance yet and then push the thought aside. I get off the bed and busy myself with finding my pants. My bed cover is in a ball on the floor. The sheet I was lying on is damp with my sweat. Something small and bloodthirsty buzzes by my ear, close enough to make my spine shiver. This place is hot. And I want a cigarette. That is a morning need I haven’t had for a while. I must have smoked everything to hand last night. The nicotine needs topping up. Re-infected already. Easier to catch than a cold.
