Fearless

by Fiona Higgins

  Lorenzo pushed her to the side of the pool. ‘What happened?’ he demanded.

  As she filled her lungs with oxygen, the words tumbled out of her mouth. ‘My daughter drowned four years ago. I haven’t been near water since. Except for yesterday, parasailing with you.’

  Lorenzo gaped at her. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She turned her face away, feeling the tears start.

  The priest beckoned to them. ‘Please, come out of the water now.’

  Lorenzo helped Cara to clamber out of the pool, then pulled himself up next to her. The attendant draped towels around their shoulders as they sat on the pool’s edge, catching their breath.

  At length, Lorenzo placed a hand over hers. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Cara shrugged, but did not remove her hand.

  The priest approached them again. ‘We fear it is the tonya,’ he said. ‘They are displeased. We must prepare extra blessings now.’

  Cara nodded. There was no point contesting this, of explaining that yet again, she was to blame.

  Lorenzo looked at her. ‘Are you alright?’

  ‘I’m fine now,’ she lied. She glanced at the Italian and saw that his hair was dishevelled and his sunglasses were missing. ‘Sorry about your sunglasses. They looked expensive.’

  Lorenzo shook his head. ‘I have several pairs. They’re just part of my job.’

  ‘Oh.’ Then, automatically, she asked, ‘What do you do?’ As if they were strangers at a party, exchanging small talk.

  ‘Fashion photography. I specialise in accessories. But my real passion is the photography of the young.’

  What did that mean, Cara wondered, the photography of the young? Since arriving in Bali four years ago, she’d developed a mistrust of self-appointed labels. Ubud was full of people describing themselves as healers, visionaries or spiritual masters. But the bulk of them, Cara had come to conclude, were charlatans or delusional.

  ‘I capture things that cannot last,’ Lorenzo went on. ‘Youth is always on its way out, to something grosser and baser—the awareness and self-consciousness of adulthood. But in a photograph, innocence is eternal.’

  Cara nodded. Eternity in a photograph was something she understood; the things she held dearest now were the photographs preserving Astrid’s imprint on earth. Even the blurry images Richard had taken by accident—shots that other parents would simply delete—had, after Astrid’s death, become precious archival material.

  Cara’s hand began to stiffen under Lorenzo’s and she winced, at both the ache and the realisation that she hadn’t had such physical contact with a man since Richard. Since fleeing Sydney after the inquest, when the coroner had found that Astrid’s death had been caused by accidental drowning. But Cara hadn’t required a formal finding to confirm her negligence. The fact that others were there that day—family, and people she’d once called friends—was irrelevant. As Astrid’s mother, she alone was responsible for safeguarding her daughter.

  They sat for a while, watching petals floating on the surface of the sacred spring. Then Lorenzo asked, ‘So, why did you decide to come to Bali after your daughter … ?’

  Cara sighed. The truth was, she hadn’t really decided anything. She’d covered the Bali bombings as a journalist in 2002 and, since then, Bali hadn’t been on her list of must-see destinations. But after Astrid’s death, she had been faced with two possible choices: suicide, or self-imposed isolation. Strangely enough, Bali had emerged as a viable third alternative.

  ‘It was unexpected,’ she explained. ‘When Astrid was alive I was close to the other women in my mothers’ group, and one of them was originally from Bali—a woman called Made. After the accident, I was a mess. Made offered to take me to her family’s compound, in a little mountain village not far from Kintamani, for a break away from all the attention in Australia. I needed some time alone. It felt like my only chance to get away.’

  She closed her eyes, remembering how quickly she’d realised her mistake. Living in a Balinese family compound was not the balm she’d hoped. After an uncomfortable week, during which every well-meaning member of Made’s extended family—and a steady influx of neighbours—attempted to console or befriend Cara, or simply to practise their English with her, she had fled to a budget hostel in Ubud. In her usual kindly fashion, Made had taken no offence, quickly recognising that Cara needed anonymity and space, not dozens of people scrutinising her every move.

  But the crowded hubbub of Monkey Forest Road made Cara claustrophobic, with its street hawkers and sprawling markets and swarms of overweight Westerners downing cocktails and beer. Or even the svelte, virtuous ones with yoga mats strung across their backs, picking at raw mezze plates and drinking green juices. After more than a week of roaming the streets and trawling through accommodation websites, Cara was almost ready to give up on Bali altogether.

  Then one afternoon while sitting in a café in Penestanan village, drinking gritty Balinese coffee and wondering if she would ever sleep at night without sedatives, Cara spotted a colourful flyer pinned to a noticeboard. In the centre was a photo of an airy-looking double-storey villa perched in the middle of a verdant rice field. The few sentences beneath the photo promised privacy and peace at Villa Gembira.

  When she rang the number on the flyer, a pleasant-sounding Indonesian man answered. He offered to show her around the villa immediately. ‘Just wait at the café,’ he told her. ‘I’m on my way.’

  Fifteen minutes later, she found herself climbing onto the back of a motorbike driven by Indra, a tall thirty-something man with a cheeky smile and long black hair tied back in a ponytail. She kept her body carefully separated from his, holding onto the rear of the seat and bracing her abdominals. They drove along winding back streets that Indra called gangs, and through a picturesque patchwork of rice paddies.

  As they pulled up outside Villa Gembira, Cara knew instantly that this was the place for her. Indra ushered her inside. On the ground floor was a small kitchen and lounge, and a high-walled outdoor bathroom with a huge marble bath at its centre. Up a narrow, uneven staircase to the second floor, she found a comfortable-looking four-poster bed draped in a filmy white mosquito net. The balcony faced west, overlooking the rice fields, and suspended from its ceiling was a rattan swing chair lined with plush cushions.

  ‘Perfect for a couple,’ said Indra, motioning to the oversized chair.

  Cara looked at him blankly.

  ‘Or just for one,’ he added quickly.

  They descended the stairs once more. ‘How much?’ she asked when they were outside.

  ‘Six million a month, or sixty-five million a year.’ He smiled. ‘For you, five million a month or sixty million a year.’ Were Indonesian teeth actually whiter than the Western variety, Cara wondered, or was it simply the contrast against treacle-dark skin?

  She did the mental calculations: it was only six thousand dollars a year, a little more than their monthly mortgage repayment in Australia. Not that she would own the Sydney house for much longer; she’d already composed the email to Richard, seeking a formal separation. It was saved in her drafts folder, waiting for her to push the button, literally.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ she said.

  ‘For how long?’ Indra asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Then, looking up at the balcony and the rattan chair rotating slowly in the breeze, she made a snap decision. ‘A year,’ she announced. ‘With first right of refusal on renewal, please.’

  Indra looked a little taken aback. ‘I will ask the owner to prepare the lease. The year will need to be paid in full in advance, you understand.’

  Cara nodded. She had more than enough in her Australian account, and a longer-term lease made sense. After all, she didn’t have a definitive return date in mind. Slowly, Indra extended his hand to shake hers and, squinting against the rays of the late-afternoon sun, Cara reciprocated. As their hands touched, a tingling sensation caught her by surprise.

  Now Cara lifted her gaze from the water and blinked. Her wri
st was beginning to hurt from holding the same position, and the wet sarong was cold and clammy on her skin.

  Lorenzo looked at her. ‘Is your husband here in Bali?’

  ‘We’re separated.’ How could a couple’s relationship survive the death of their only child?

  ‘Have you been lonely?’ asked Lorenzo.

  Cara looked away. She’d had Indra, at least.

  Soon after moving into Villa Gembira, she’d learned that Indra was Javanese, not Balinese. He’d left Yogyakarta, the cultural capital of Central Java, some ten years before, seeking work on the more prosperous island of Bali. Lucky for him, he’d found work with a Belgian property developer, for whom Indra now managed five villas in the Penestanan and Sayan regions, including Cara’s. Apart from looking after general maintenance on the villa, Indra delivered Cara market produce in the mornings and her post in the afternoons. She’d never asked for these small attentions—they were included in the villa service fee—but she appreciated them all the same.

  A fortnight after she moved in, Cara had opened her front door to find a basket of oranges sitting on the doormat, a little card placed on top with the word ‘jeruk’, and an Indonesian–English dictionary lying alongside it. Tucked into its cover, she found a note from Indra, in neatly penned English: You are staying in Bali for a year, so you need to learn Indonesian. We can start tomorrow at eleven o’clock.

  Cara recognised the truth in his words; her career in journalism had taught her that understanding language was a prerequisite for comprehending culture. For the first few months, she spent an hour a day with Indra, six days a week, learning the basics of Indonesian. Gradually their conversations became more complex, about politics, history and current affairs. She insisted on paying him the market rate for such lessons, despite his apparent reluctance to accept a fee.

  ‘It is not work for me,’ he murmured at the end of every lesson, before stuffing the notes into his pocket.

  Six months into their tutorials, Indra started arriving on Saturday evenings to collect Cara on his motorbike to ‘jalan-jalan’ to nowhere in particular. ‘It is an important part of your language learning,’ he insisted.

  Invariably these evenings involved a meandering, scenic route, and often a meal of nasi goreng or sate ayam at a roadside warung. If Cara didn’t feel up to the outing, Indra simply went away again; but he always reappeared the following week to jalan-jalan once more.

  It was an easy, casual, comfortable friendship. Convenient for them both, Cara realised, once Indra had divulged more about his background. As the youngest of eleven, he was destined to fend for himself in the world. He’d done well by local standards, and the earnings from Cara’s language lessons were helping too. But their relationship was more than commercial. With only a handful of other acquaintances in Bali—met mostly at Friday prayers at the mosque in Denpasar—Indra considered her his friend.

  ‘We are both foreigners in Bali, Cara,’ he’d said to her on more than one occasion. ‘The Balinese hate the Javanese. You like me more than they do.’

  And he accepted her. She’d never told him about Astrid, but he didn’t seem surprised by her experimentation with multiple healing modalities. She tried so many healers, she lost count of them; including a Swiss woman who used Tibetan singing bowls in her lengthy ‘soul adjustment’ sessions, an American raw foodie who claimed Hawaiian lomilomi massage could cure everything from sadness to cancer, and an old Balinese priest who advertised as clairvoyant but failed to intuit anything at all about Cara’s situation.

  When people didn’t work, Cara turned to products. Everything from conventional Western psychiatric therapies—antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs purchased readily without a prescription—to alcohol, magic mushrooms and ganja sold in dark alleyways by young men with glassy eyes.

  As Cara’s linguistic skills expanded, she found herself increasingly enjoying Indra’s company. Perhaps due to his status as the anak ragil—the youngest child—of such a large family, Indra was hardworking, funny and unfailingly buoyant. As the months had turned into years, and Cara had moved from taking drugs to yoga classes, her fondness for him grew. And she fancied she sometimes caught him looking at her longingly as he strummed his guitar on her balcony. But never once in more than three years of friendship had he tried to touch her. Nor had she ever acted on the fleeting impulse to stroke his long dark ponytail.

  Cara moved her hand uneasily beneath Lorenzo’s, discomfited by this stranger’s touch.

  ‘Let’s go,’ the Italian said. ‘You must be cold.’

  They stood up, leaving the priest and the attendant to their task of appeasing the tonya. The rain had all but stopped, and as they walked along the cobbled path towards the car park, peddlers popped out from behind stalls proffering fruit, ice cream and souvenirs. Lorenzo waved them away, gently steering Cara through them.

  Suddenly grateful for his thoughtfulness, she said, ‘Thank you, Lorenzo. For helping me back there.’

  ‘Please, get changed.’ He motioned at a set of changerooms the others had used earlier. ‘Then let us drink coffee. You are shaking.’ Cara realised he was right. The sky was still grey and a light breeze tugged at their wet clothes.

  ‘Meet you there,’ he said, pointing at a nearby stall where two middle-aged women were selling coffee in the shade of a coconut palm.

  Cara nodded, then carried her bag of dry clothes into the changerooms. It was a relief to peel off the sodden fabric.

  Several minutes later she emerged to find Lorenzo sitting on a wooden barrel next to a squat table. He motioned at another barrel for Cara to sit on.

  ‘But surely the others will be ready to go?’ said Cara.

  ‘They can wait. They are dry at least,’ Lorenzo said. ‘What would you like?’

  She smiled, relenting. ‘Black coffee, no sugar.’

  Lorenzo greeted one of the attendants—a tall, thin woman wearing a brown batik sarong—and ordered two Balinese coffees.

  They sat in slightly awkward silence now.

  Cara was unsure what to say to the Italian. She wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t been there earlier, and she hoped he wouldn’t ask. She listened to the ladies’ idle chatter behind the stall; they were speaking Indonesian, not Balinese, presumably because they hailed from different parts of the archipelago. The taller woman was fixing their coffees, while her plump friend grated a turmeric bulb over a small sieve. The woman’s hands were stained yellow from the liquid, which she siphoned into plastic bottles to sell as a medicinal jamu drink.

  ‘Why does a bule need a water ceremony, anyway?’ asked the woman preparing the jamu. ‘They’re not Hindu, so why bother?’

  Cara’s eyes widened.

  ‘Why do they do anything?’ asked her friend, pouring hot water over the coarse coffee powder. ‘They’re strange. No sugar in their coffee. Milk in their tea. How revolting.’ She pulled a face. ‘But they’re the rich ones, right? Just do as they ask.’

  The ladies tittered and Cara’s cheeks reddened. She was tempted to turn and shock them by responding in Indonesian, but she remained silent, riveted by their candid assessment of bule idiosyncrasies.

  The taller woman brought over their coffees and set them down. ‘Twenty thousand,’ she said in English.

  Lorenzo fished a green note out of his pocket, the exact amount, and passed it to the woman. ‘Terima kasih,’ he said, with his rolling Italian accent.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ the woman replied, smiling at him. She lingered at the table, looking from one to the other. Lorenzo smiled back at her.

  After a moment, the woman turned and headed back behind the counter. ‘Miser,’ she muttered to her friend. ‘So rich, but he won’t even give five thousand for a tip.’

  Oblivious to this reproach, Lorenzo sipped his coffee, then turned to look at Cara.

  ‘My wife, Lavinia, wants a baby,’ he said abruptly. ‘She would be the best mother in the world, I am sure. But she is very frustrated that pregnancy hasn’t h
appened yet.’ He swallowed another mouthful of coffee. ‘Maybe if she met you, she would realise there is something much harder than not getting pregnant.’ He shook his head. ‘I cannot imagine how terrible it must be, Cara, to lose a baby. Or how you can rebuild your life afterwards.’

  Disarmed by his empathy, Cara squeezed her eyes shut, fearing the onset of more tears. When she opened them again, Lorenzo’s earnest gaze was still trained on her.

  Something in her gave way. For the first time ever, she found herself trying to explain what it felt like to lose a child. She told Lorenzo how it wasn’t truly living, existing with a baby-shaped gap in your life. How poisonous hindsight could be, like salt rubbed into a festering wound. How guilt sometimes visited her in the night as an invisible supernatural force that crushed her chest. How she’d tried to expunge the nightmares with sleeping tablets, but even now she still woke to find herself reaching for Astrid.

  She described how senseless it seemed, robbed of her only child, to watch expatriate parents so readily outsourcing theirs to a battalion of Balinese babysitters. Or the cringing fear she felt when she saw young parent-yogis, bedecked in lycra on their trendy Vespa scooters, casually strapping babies to their chests, with nothing but a flimsy layer of fabric to protect their infants from the road. How she longed to confront these New Age fools as they zoomed past, sequined scarves trailing behind them. Oh yes, it will never happen to you! she wanted to scream. I thought that once, until it did.

  Lorenzo sat in silence as she relayed the pain she felt on passing a schoolyard, a playground, a toy store. The grief that still randomly flattened her when pushing her supermarket trolley past shelves of baby products, receiving baby-related email spam, or scanning jovial Facebook posts about other people’s children. The peculiar sorrow of watching families with multiple children; Astrid’s death had deprived Cara not only of her first child, but also of the possibility of having more—because how could she ever sufficiently recover from losing her first baby to properly love a second?