by Mike Stoner
‘Well, too late. Have a good journey and don’t come back. Brit prick.’
She takes wide steps around me and heads up the path to her school.
I wasn’t expecting that. Apology not accepted. Probably quite rightly not. But it hurts. As I flag another becak, I feel a knot in my gut that I know will be there for a while, as a reminder to think twice before going selfish and ‘don’t give a shit’. Just because I might not give a shit, doesn’t mean everyone else doesn’t. Everyone else might give a very big shit.
COCKROACH HOCKEY
T he guards let me into the house and close the door behind me. I slide my shoes off and look around the room. At first I think no one is there, the kitchen area is clean and there is just a bowl of ripe-smelling fruit sitting on the long worktop. The TV is off, giving Mr Beckham a break, and I can hear no splashing from the pool. New furniture poses by the TV: two big leather armchairs, one with its back to me. I wander into the room and reach for a mangosteen in the bowl.
‘It is theft if you do not ask.’ A body-less voice. ‘This chair is very big. I might slide down the back of it and never get out.’
‘How did you know I was taking some fruit?’ I walk around the chair and Charles is sitting there with his arms on the rests, fingers stretched out on the leather.
‘Always make sure you can see what’s behind you, especially if you have enemies.’ His points to the large TV screen. ‘I still watch it even when it isn’t on.’
I see my shape in its black screen.
‘Please have a mangosteen, but don’t get juice on my furniture.’
‘Thanks.’ I take one and twist it, breaking the skin. ‘I’ll miss these.’
‘Ah. So Teddy helped you make a decision?’
‘Maybe. Or maybe he’s just screwed me up even more.’ I sit in the chair opposite Charles. ‘Nice chairs. A lot of dead animal.’
‘Imported from Europe. They are cold and sticky.’ He runs his palm up and down on the leather arm a few times. ‘I do not like them.’
‘Have you seen Teddy?’ I ask.
‘No. But you look better. Something has changed in you.’
Yes there’s a big crack running through my head here’—I run a finger across the top of my head and down the back—‘and all my common sense and sanity is dripping out of it.’
Charles smiles.
‘Teddy will do that to a man,’ he says. ‘Just remember, I never said I believe if what he does is real or just superstition, but he is a wise old man.’
‘Anyway, thank you.’
‘For what?’
‘For seeing something in me that needed help. Thank you.’
‘This a very strange world. I live in one part of it that is a lifetime away from yours. I live in a place of tragedies, both man-made and natural. Your country is a place of soft padding and half-truths where your biggest tragedies are holes in the road and rain in summer. You are ruled by ignorance taught by your government and media.’
I wonder why he has suddenly sparked into a soliloquy, perhaps it has been rehearsed; his farewell speech.
‘But now you can go back and remember that the belief in magic still exists here. That it is a country where small children are forced to sell cigarettes through the night and others are sent out to sea to fish on platforms that they can’t get off until someone comes to get them. That there are tribes in parts of Indonesia that will still eat the hearts of their enemies because they believe it will give them strength. That if a volcano explodes it is a bad omen.’ Charles pauses and strokes the cold leather on the arm of his chair.
‘I helped you so that you could see the world is not all polished and clean and rational. This is a place where smoking isn’t bad for you, where tobacco companies hand cigarettes out free on the street using campaigns that they used in your world in the sixties. This is a place that is not educated, that has morals of the highest standard and also of the lowest. Your world and this world do not mix so well, but if both were better informed about the other, perhaps they would start to understand each other.’
‘I understand all that, Charles. I’ve seen some of it and it’s shocked me, but can I ask you one thing, and please don’t get angry?’
‘I know what your question is.’
‘You do?’
‘Yes.’ He looks to the blank TV screen. ‘Why do I do what I do? Why do I promote the smoking in my clubs and why do I sell drugs and allow prostitution?’
I nod. ‘Pretty much.’
‘Because I can. I am a businessman and people everywhere are stupid and someone will always take advantage. Sometimes governments, sometimes businessmen. What is the difference? I am a businessman. I feel better that it is me and not someone else.’
‘Perhaps governments and businessmen should take responsibility for their actions. Perhaps then changes might happen.’
He studies me, those eyes slit to almost closing.
‘You are naïve.’
‘Perhaps.’
‘And I thought you like my drugs.’
I laugh. ‘I do.’
‘So keep your Western hypocritical opinions to yourself.’ He stands and smiles an unusually wide smile. ‘And go and teach my children your oh-so-important language.’
‘Thanks again, Charles.’
‘No problem. What I just said I mean. But please remember that mostly I wanted Teddy to see you because I like you.’
‘Mm. OK.’
‘They should be in the games room. Fitri will be sad. She also likes you.’ He goes to the front door and slips his shoes on. ‘When is your flight?’
‘Saturday at ten in the morning.’
‘I will pick you up at eight. No argument.’
‘None made. See you then.’
Fitri wipes her eyes.
‘Why must you go?’
‘You remember the time I cried?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I have to go because of that. I’ve had enough crying and I hope to find out the world is more flexible than we think.’
‘Flexible?’ she asks. She lies back in the bean bag and sighs.
‘Bendy. Easy to bend. Changeable.’
‘This world is not bendy,’ she says, now with eyes closed. ‘It is hard and straight and cannot be changed.’
‘Big cockroach.’ Benny is up and out of his beanbag. He runs to the corner of the room, gets a broom and runs to the other corner. ‘Really big.’
Fitri sits up and opens her reddened eyes.
‘Such a stupid boy. It is his new game. He calls it cockroach hockey.’
‘Watch this,’ says Benny as he slides his foot close to the resting creature.
The cockroach is a long one, about seven centimetres. Benny flicks it on its back with a knock from his toe. The roach’s countless legs are scrabbling in the air. Benny runs to the door and opens it. The pool is glistening in the quickly fading sunlight outside. He runs back and uses the broom to move the cockroach away from the wall. He holds the broom back like a hockey player about to strike a puck.
‘Ready.’ He eyes the open door. ‘GO.’ He whacks it. It flies across the tiled floor, through the door, across the outside patio and plops into the pool. Benny holds the broom above his head and dances in a circle. ‘Aaaah. He scores.’
‘Idiot,’ says Fitri.
‘Got to watch it swim.’ He dashes out the door and kneels by the pool, watching the immortal cockroach backstroke.
‘Why do you think the world is so unbendy?’ I ask Fitri.
She looks up at me like an animal caught in barbed wire and says, ‘Because my father will always be sad. Nothing will bring my parents together. This country will always hate us. My little brother will always be an idiot. And friends will never stay long.’ She throws herself back in the beanbag. ‘That is why.’
Benny runs back in, looks around the room, sees a small plastic box with toys in and empties them on the floor. Then he is gone again with the empty box.
‘What if y
our mother at least started talking to your father again? Would that make a difference? Perhaps if your sister came to visit?’
‘It is impossible.’ Then there is a pause before she suddenly sits up. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘I feel something might happen. I’m not sure, but…’ I smile at her.
‘You’ve done something.’
‘Now how would I do that? And even if I had, it might not amount to anything, but there again, it might.’
Fitri studies me hard and I see her father in her eyes. The intensity, the unnerving ability to see beneath the surface of people. This girl is never going to stay in this country. Her life will not be inflexible. She has the wisdom and strength in her to go anywhere and do anything.
‘If you have managed something, my teacher, I will come and find you one day and kiss you.’
‘Like I say, what could I have done?’
She leans across and grabs my head in her hands and puts her lips on my cheek.
‘That was just in case I cannot find you. I know it is bad, but I wanted to.’
‘Well, thank you. But maybe you kissed me for doing nothing.’ I wink at her. ‘I hope whatever I have or haven’t done helps a little.’
‘Well, thank you, for maybe or maybe not trying.’ Her cheeks are now red to match her eyes.
‘But I’ll tell you one more thing, young Fitri.’
‘What, old teacher?’
‘I definitely can’t do anything about the idiot brother.’ I nod to the door as Benny comes back in carrying the box, which is now dripping water over the floor.
‘He will not die. Even if I push him under water, he keeps living.’ Benny sits down carefully on his beanbag, still holding the box. ‘Look.’ He holds the box near to Fitri and she peers in.
‘There is nothing—’
His arms move in a quick blur. The water pours off her head and face as Benny runs screaming and laughing from the room, dropping the now-empty container on the floor. She is up and running after him, yelling in Hokkien as she goes.
I am left alone in the room. I look around at the big plasma TV on the wall, the pool table, the piles of games in the corner and the two beanbags with indentations of children in. The room is filled with loneliness. I suddenly don’t want to leave these two even though I know I will; I must. But my heart breaks for them, locked up in a house guarded by men with guns in a country that looks on them as outsiders. I just hope I have helped. I just hope that what I have done will work for the better in some way.
I get up and go outside to the pool. I can hear small voices yelling somewhere in the house.
‘Fitri. Benny.’ I call. ‘I have to go.’
They come running.
Fitri hugs me. Benny watches.
‘Fitri,’ he says. ‘Dad will be mad if he sees you do that.’
‘It’s OK, Benny. None of us are going to tell him, are we?’ I say.
‘No, we aren’t,’ says Fitri from my chest, now soggy from her wet hair.
Benny holds his hand out. I shake it.
‘It is still wrong,’ he says. ‘But I will not tell him. Goodbye, teacher.’
‘Goodbye, Benny.’
Fitri squeezes and her words are lost in my shirt.
‘Goodbye, Fitri.’ I peel her off me, hold her by the shoulders and smile.
She looks up at me and smiles back.
‘Everything is bendy. Everything. If it seems that it isn’t, you just have to learn to bend it.’ Those are my last words to Fitri.
She nods.
They watch me as I put on my shoes and leave the house. As I walk across the security area the caged dogs bark and the men with guns swing them around into ready position at their fronts. I wait while the gate slides open with an electric hum and one of the guards quickly checks the road before I walk out. The two children hold hands and wave from under an almost-dark sky as the gates close in front of them, like stage curtains. The gates shut with a metallic click. The humming stops. Crickets chirp away at each other in the still of the coming humid night.
CRACKED
OR FIXED
Anew moment. It spins out of the darkness like a flaming torch falling towards me. I catch it. I look into its light. There I am. I see me, reading and rereading the same line. The phone is there beside me. It is ringing.
I put my book down.
‘Hey.’ Comes the voice at the other end.
Tension slides down my back into a pool on the floor.
‘I don’t know why, but I was expecting you not to call.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ This isn’t right. But it is right.
‘You OK, Ice-Cream Boy?’
‘Yes. So you made it?’
‘I made it.’
The light flickers around the moment. The stage darkens, a scene change, then the lights come up again. I am rereading the same line once more. The phone again. It is ringing.
I put my book down.
I listen to the earpiece.
‘There was an accident. She’s dead.’
Sickness in my gut. Tears sting my eyes. Which is it? Which moment is real? Which is happening? Are they both there, like stones lying next to each other, slightly different, but side by side? Which one do I pick? How do I pick the right one and put it in my bag, so I never lose it? How do I know it isn’t just my mind that has cracked and not time?
‘I do not want to meet your bule friends.’
Her back is straight, head held high on her slender neck. The made bed a brilliant white background to her skin, like a cup of sweet coffee on a clean white tablecloth.
‘I’d like you to meet them. Let them meet you. See how special you are.’ Condescension has somehow tainted my compliment.
‘Ha. I so special you leave me. So special you no want pom-pom now with me. You leave me to find ghost. I very special and stupid prostitute, yes.’ It isn’t a question, but a statement that she makes. One she agrees with by nodding her head.
Leaning awkwardly forward from my bamboo chair, placed in front of the bed at just the right distance for discussion, not intimacy, I try to clasp the hands that lie like nesting birds in her lap. They fly the nest before I can catch them.
‘No, Eka, please. I have never thought of you as a prostitute. And how can I when I have never paid you? I think of you only as a wise and lovely friend.’
‘And you have good sex with me.’
‘Very good.’
‘And you pay taxi and food and hotels.’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘And you pay too much. Banyak-banyak.’
‘Maybe. Yes.’
‘So I prostitute.’
‘No. Anyway, listen. I want to explain.’ I sit back and stare at the ceiling. ‘Something has happened in here.’ I tap the offending spot next to my eye. ‘Maybe I have become crazy.’
‘Huh. Already crazy.’
‘Yes, and now maybe more. I don’t know. Or maybe the dukun has done something very impossible and special to my world.’
Eka grunts something.
‘But I cannot have sex with you again. Something is different in me. I must go home.’
‘You think she lives again?’
‘I think maybe she never died. Not now.’
‘But maybe she did.’
‘Maybe she did.’
‘Dukun clever. Not that clever. She dead. She is only ghost now.’
Her head has dropped forward, losing its nobility, and thick hair hangs down over one side of her face. The birds have returned to their nest in her lap. I lean forward and capture them in my hands. They are lifeless.
‘I don’t know, Eka. I don’t know and I’m scared I’m crazy.’ My fingers stroke the hidden rough palms of her hands. The feel of them fills my eyes with water. ‘I’m scared things will be as they were when I left England, that she is dead, that I will still be alone. Just me without her.’
‘And I am scared she will be there. I am scared of this d
ukun bad magic. I am scared for my crazy bule.’ The birds escape my grip and fly around my neck. She pulls me onto the bed and overbalances me so that we are lying, arms wrapped around each other, my face in her hair and nose against her cheek.
‘You come back here if she still dead. You come back to your Eka.’ Her strength is surprising as she holds me tight, her breasts squashed against me and legs wrapped around the back of my knees. I breathe in her skin, concentrate on the softness of her hair against my face, so I’ll always remember it. I wonder how much I will miss her.
Wet lips press hard and angry against mine while I’m held there in some wondrous mantrap, and then I’m released. The birds fly again. She thrusts me away with hands of cold stone. Her legs untangle themselves and spin through the air so that the movement carries her off the side of the bed and into standing position in one swift motion.
‘Now go. Go, you crazy bule.’ A bag is thrown over a shoulder covered by a sheer satin shirt. Silky calves pour out of a leopard-pattern skirt like mocha waterfalls. Hair is thrown back from her face and she smiles, big eyes shining like dark water in moonlight.
‘You go say bye your friends then go find ghost lady. Think of me sometimes. Think of girl who lives in another world, who wants to meet nice man to look after. Think of me. I think I will always be here. Always looking for nice man.’
‘I will think of you.’ I stand and try to hold her again. Some sort of sadness urging me on to comfort her. Or maybe to comfort me. ‘And you will find—’
A thrust against my chest sends me back onto the bed.
‘Shut up. I go. I have good time at Iguana. Bye, Crazy.’
She moves with speed and grace across the room and is gone. Eka has become a moment, an exhibition of moments in my mind’s gallery, and I will never see her in another moment that isn’t already hanging there.
The bed is sadness. I jump off it and leave, shutting the door on the lonely room. I breathe in the early evening smells of chilli and noodles and rubbish and walk away from the backstreet hotel that will never hold my body again.
I hold the pebble in my hand, feeling its weight, its age, its permanence. I sniff it. The smell of an English beach still lingers on its surface. From that near-insignificant scent come images of a small seaside town, the smell of fish and chips, suntan oil, seaweed and salt. I pass it from one hand to the other, then slide it back into the pocket of my almost-full backpack, its top still undone. A blue-and-white batik shirt trying to escape it.
