‘We are friends.’
‘Until you both betrayed me.’ Hens cricked his neck sharply to the left.
‘Relax, Hens,’ Peter said, but he knew Hens wasn’t listening.
‘In fact, Harum, weren’t we more than friends once?’
‘Stop it,’ she said.
‘You’re right,’ Hens said, moving around the room now, agitated. ‘Maybe we should spare your new boyfriend the gory detail.’
Peter shuffled from foot to foot. He knew he needed to concentrate. He knew he’d need to be fast and strong, though he wasn’t sure exactly what for.
‘Nobody betrayed you, Hens,’ he said.
‘You did.’
‘I’m sorry you feel that way.’ Peter hated himself for apologizing. Hens had broken in, was frightening Harum, and Peter had every right to his rage. ‘I don’t know what I did to upset you.’
Hens laughed, like it was all so obvious.
‘You took Harum.’
‘No,’ Harum said. ‘I went with him. I wasn’t yours to take.’
Hens stroked her hair.
‘I remember you saying something very different back in Chile when you were on top of me.’
Peter thought about the discussions he and Hens once had about memory. How people remember. How the night Harum and Hens spent together now meant two entirely different things. For her, regret. For him, vengeance. Peter redoubled his efforts to remain calm, to focus. What was happening here? How could he get Harum out? He needed to distract Hens.
‘How did you find us?’
‘Went to visit your sister. Thought she might know where you were. Needless to say she wasn’t too keen on letting me in, but . . .’ Peter froze. He could think only of the horror on Susan’s face as she opened the door to Hens, the thud it made as she slammed it on the metal toecaps of the boots he was wearing now. Peter started to tremble.
‘You’d better not have hurt her.’
‘Let’s just say I found the delightful letter you sent her in the house.’ Hens smiled. Whatever he was about to reveal, he considered it his coup de grâce – a devastating display of his superiority over Peter.
‘What were you doing in her house?’
‘Looking for you, of course,’ Hens said. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t open the letter. It was already open. I found it on her bedside table.’
Suddenly, Peter exploded, grabbing Hens’s right leg, lifting it from the ground and with all his strength wrenching him across the room. Hens tumbled through the partition screen, slicing his brow open on the drawers. He yelped loudly, which took Peter aback.
Then everything fell quiet.
Hens stood, now expanding to fill the room, the veins in his neck swollen, shifting.
‘Oh dear, Peter,’ he said.
‘Now, Hens, calm down . . .’ Peter found himself backing away, and was soon against the wall. Hens spat into his hand.
‘You shouldn’t start fights you won’t be around to clean up after.’
Hens came towards him. Peter knew that if he took one hit he’d be flattened. If he was going to beat Hens then he had no choice but to do something about it now, and fast, because Hens moved with purpose and speed and one aim. To put Peter out of action; he wouldn’t leave until Harum was his, however that might be.
In one smooth motion, almost as though it had been rehearsed all his life in preparation for this moment, Peter picked up the metal poker from the floor and held it above his head. He was quaking now, his skin burning.
‘Get out!’ he screamed.
Hens smiled. Blood from his forehead dripped down over his teeth, then his chin, and the long fall to the floor. He pulled his fist back to strike. Peter knew he’d missed his moment.
He had failed.
And then, from nowhere, movement. Harum snatched the poker from Peter and held it in the air like a sword.
‘Get out,’ she said, a cold distance to the words.
Hens began to laugh.
‘Why?’ he said, his hands coming forward, clamping round her hips.
With accuracy as devastating as it was forceful, Harum speared the poker right through Hens’s neck.
Seeing how his cousin shook, Jayakatong didn’t hesitate to assist Peter with their plan. After all, he was a man who knew how to clean. He warned they should leave as soon as possible and enlisted two of his most trusted lieutenants, who parked the police truck out the front by nightfall, and asked the neighbours to stay indoors firmly enough that they obliged.
They swaddled Hens’s body in old dust sheets. It took all their might to lift him and turn him, and they wrapped until the blood stopped soaking through. Peter told Harum not to help, but she insisted with a vehemence he dared not counter. She hadn’t said a word. Her eyes refused tears.
It was heavy and difficult to manoeuvre, but they loaded the body into the truck without being seen. Jayakatong filled two rucksacks with equipment. Harum sharpened machetes until their blades shone. Peter opened his bag of cleaning fluids and went to work on the floor with a stiff brush, pulverizing the blood that had clotted in the wood. The stains vanished under the bristles. It wasn’t until he’d finished, and the air hummed with the smell of disinfectant, that he realized he hadn’t worn gloves, and the bleach had burned white speckles on his hands. He felt no pain. The room was spotless. He only wished he’d killed Hens himself.
He found Harum by the truck staring at the road like it was floodwater rising to her knees. She flinched as he caressed her back.
‘You don’t have to come with us,’ he said. She collected spit in the well of her tongue, fired it hard at the ground.
Jayakatong drove the truck into Palupu Reserve, further than before, with the authority his badge allowed. It was night-time. The jungle was alive with insects ticking. They donned head torches, took Hens’s body from the van and dragged it into the cloak of the trees. Nobody spoke.
They moved as one into the black. Peter hacked a path through the undergrowth, the three policemen carried the body – trussed to a long pole like a hog – and Harum walked behind, the rearguard of an eerie carnival parade across the forest floor. The haze had unexpectedly lifted, and what prevailed were the fledgling steps of the year’s hottest day so far. Harum still hadn’t said a word.
He led them over the ridge, and they came to a stop at the edge of the glacial lake, where Peter washed. There was a certain calm in the way the lake rippled out into eternity, but only that which befalls a hen house after the fox has left.
They began the descent into the thick relict lowland forest. Still nobody complained of tired legs. Harum scythed through the undergrowth. The others moved in her wake. Her reliance on instinct proved fruitful, and despite slow passage they came across the cloud of carrion flies before nightfall. There, on the flaking bark of its host tree, the bud whose infancy they’d witnessed before had bloomed to an adult corpse flower. It smelled exactly like the death they’d brought to it, so nobody would know, even those that came close, that this was the last resting place of Dr Hens Berg.
They each took a spade. Though the ground was hard and difficult to reach, they made short work of digging a hole beneath the flower, where if it didn’t live parasitically its roots would have grown. Not one of them took any visible pleasure in lowering Hens into the ground. But Peter smiled as he slung the first spadeful of dirt across the body. Why? He wasn’t sure. Perhaps through exhaustion alone. Perhaps because Hens’s eyes were open, so that he saw above him, when the ground came in, the very final flower on the list.
Peter and Harum took their time. They not only needed to recover, but they also wanted to enjoy falling in love, to experience each of the many levels of it. It was as if they were learning it together, how to fall in love slowly, and as the days passed, becoming more proficient in one another. More knowledgeable. The way Peter saw it, they had forever, and Harum agreed. Everything that had happened to them so far had happened so quickly, so brutally, that falling in love had to be savoured. They wa
nted to feel it growing within them. And yet, it seemed important they did something to separate the past from the future.
The small, informal blessing ceremony that took place in their garden a month later wasn’t quite a wedding. It lasted less than ten minutes, and passed so quickly that all Peter could remember of it afterwards was Harum struggling to tie a cotton bracelet to his wrist, and wishing Susan could have been there to witness it. His sister loved weddings. He’d written to her to tell her it was taking place, but hadn’t mentioned Hens, just in case the letters ever became evidence. As if sensing something was afoot, Susan hadn’t mentioned Hens’s visit in her reply either. Both could read between the lines. They’d wait until they met again in New York to tie up the loose ends. It’d happen within a year. Peter and Harum would have liked to have gone sooner, but worried that it might seem suspicious if they went so soon after Hens’s disappearance. And anyway, Harum had promised her late father that if she ever had a child, it would be born right here. Once she’d discovered she was pregnant, it made sense to stay put.
Watching Harum’s belly expand, like a petal unfurling in slow motion, Peter began to appreciate what the human body shares with rare blooms. Both depend on an alignment of infinite possibilities. Life is little more than a seedling on the wind. The Udumbara had taught him that. How wonderful it seemed now, this collision of circumstance, gestating in the bowl of her belly as she slept. All it needed was nurturing, like the campion, in a nook on the harsh rock of a cliff face. Sun on its stalk. Rain to its roots. He resolved to be both, no matter what.
How consuming the pregnancy was too. Like the sheep-eater, the child inside Harum took the goodness it needed. But it would be worth it, for when it came it would be as beautiful as the Kadupul. And it was he and Harum that were most like the Welwitschia. Despite everything, they’d survived.
The months after that ceremony, as they waited for the baby to arrive, the pain of what they’d been through subsiding, were the happiest of both of their lives.
‘Sumatra in the summer’s no place to be pregnant,’ she said, squeezing his hand until the shape of her fingertips stayed pressed in the flesh. It was a busy time for the Bukittinggi police force in the last two weeks of her final trimester, and Jayakatong had confessed to Peter that he hadn’t been around as much as he’d have liked to help with Harum’s sickness, which had grown as the birth neared, and which the doctors said was not entirely unusual, but wanted to monitor regardless. Peter forgave him with a long embrace, both men enjoying the closeness. He knew that assisting detectives from the New York Police Department with their investigation into the disappearance of a Danish flower hunter was a time-consuming preoccupation, and so appreciated any effort Jayakatong could spare. Lots of inexperienced trekkers go missing in the rainforests around Bukittinggi, he told the detectives, and they confirmed that the missing gentleman had, by all accounts, been quite an inexperienced trekker. The same had been said by the Namibian hotelier they’d tracked down in Windhoek (Jayakatong pretended never to have heard of such a place), and a Gibraltan pensioner had responded to a plea for information on a missing person by reporting that he’d seen Hens Berg on one of his flower expeditions. He said that the Dane was an ignoramus and a foolhardy climber, and it wouldn’t have surprised him if he’d accidentally abseiled down a cliff without tying the rope at the top. Peter told himself, yeah, that sounds like the Hens I knew. Today, though, Jayakatong paced the floor of the lounge, where Harum’s pregnant belly seemed to take up half the room.
‘They’re not leaving town anytime soon,’ he said. Harum closed the door. It had creaked since they had it replaced, and Peter promised himself he’d have it oiled. He was surprised not to have remembered by now, given that he spent most days staring at it, waiting for it to be kicked open by cops coming to arrest him.
‘Can we keep our voices down?’
‘They’re not leaving town anytime soon,’ he said again, this time so quietly Peter had to lean in to hear. ‘They’re sure this was the last place Berg was seen. They’ve got witnesses from the town. Asoka . . .’
‘Asoka?’ Peter said.
‘Asoka told them she saw him eating bebek goreng when she went to the market in Guguk Panjang.’
‘She’s a snake.’
‘Be fair,’ Jayakatong said, running his fingers through his hair. Despite everything that had happened, Peter hadn’t seen him so visibly anxious. Until now he wasn’t even sure Jayakatong had the ability to sweat. But the room sure was hot.
‘Fair?’ Harum said, fanning herself with a rag.
‘A giant white Scandinavian guy eating duck at the market? It’s the kind of thing you remember. She was only telling them what she was asked to tell them.’
‘Well, she’s still got a big mouth.’
‘What are they going to do?’ Peter said. His voice wavered and he swallowed to bring it under control.
‘Search. They’re not going home without a clue as to where he went next.’
‘We shouldn’t even be talking about this,’ Harum said, slicing open a soursop to unveil the pulpy flesh inside. Peter had noticed her eating these when in discomfort, their sourness an excellent temporary distraction if eaten quickly and at just the right moment in their ripening.
‘We have to talk about it,’ he said. ‘Not talking about it won’t make it go away.’
‘I’m fully aware of that,’ Harum barked, apologizing immediately for her short temper. He didn’t mind.
‘I’ve got an idea,’ Jayakatong said, standing still for the first time since he arrived. ‘They’re looking for guides to take them into the jungle. I could set them up with a few of my men. I’m sure for a little money they’d agree to walk the Americans around until they can’t walk any more.’
‘You think missing persons will be forgotten just because a few cops are too tired?’ Peter asked. Jayakatong shrugged.
‘I’ve seen missing persons forgotten about just because it’s easier to forget.’
Harum groaned; a new wave of nausea. The two men helped her back into bed, where she fell asleep on her side, posed almost as though she was running.
Jayakatong waited on the porch while Peter prepared a cold towel for Harum. Peter found him later, occasionally glancing down the street towards the town, but it was a quiet day, most of the neighbours out at work.
‘I need to talk to you,’ he said to Peter, pushing his policeman’s cap to a tilt at his hairline, exposing its dirtied hem.
‘Didn’t we just talk?’ Peter drained half a beer bottle with one gulp. Though he appreciated Jayakatong’s help, he was looking forward to having time alone with Harum before the birth.
‘I don’t want to worry Harum any more than is necessary. Not in her condition.’
‘That’s understandable.’
‘There is more I didn’t say. My sources believe Asoka might have mentioned you to the Americans.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Not that you were connected to Mr Berg. But that there was another American in town.’
‘You think they’ll look for me?’ Peter finished the beer with a second swift flick of his wrist.
‘It’s possible. I would. We don’t get enough Americans around here for it to be struck off as coincidence.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Well.’ Jayakatong rifled through a satchel, the cloth worn and smooth, its pockets hanging loose like the lips of an old beagle. ‘I think we need to take, how you say . . . precautions. It might be a good idea, as soon as the baby is born, to go away from here. Not too far away. Just until everything is calm again.’
‘I don’t know, Jay. The last thing Harum will need is to start moving around Sumatra with a brand-new child.’
‘I was thinking further than that.’ He produced a tattered purple passport. ‘To be safe.’
‘That isn’t my passport.’
‘No. It’s the passport of a tourist who, shall we say, mislaid it last week. Young man about your age, ma
ybe younger. Looks like you. Same type of face and hair.’
‘American passports are blue.’
‘So fake an accent.’
Peter suddenly craved the eye-watering flesh of the soursop. Now he too was checking the road for traffic. He saw a couple of kids playing cricket with a frying pan, and a stray dog sleeping in the shade. Beyond that was a black car he’d not seen before, parked with its tyres at an awkward angle, perpendicular to the chassis, as though prepared to make a quick break. He retreated to the shadow beneath the awning.
‘I don’t know about this.’ He opened the passport to the final page, where he was greeted with a photograph of a man he’d never seen before, who, he had to admit, would hold a certain similarity if it wasn’t for one key detail. Jayakatong reached into his satchel and pulled out an eyepatch.
‘Here. Put this on. One minute you’re Peter Many-weathers. The next you’re . . .’
‘Zachariah Temple.’
‘Precisely.’
Jayakatong straightened his cap and checked the road a final time – the car was gone now, though neither man had heard its engine.
‘Hopefully it won’t come to this,’ he said, leaving. ‘I’ll see what I can do to make the Americans go away first.’
Peter pushed his finger into the beer bottle until it strangled the flesh. Only then did he notice how dirty the porch had become, the mucky fingerprints on the handrail and the weeds growing on the steps. He hid the passport in a crack behind the door frame. It’d be just his luck to get arrested for having stolen property, given what sins already stained his soul. A cricket ball bounced past, unenthusiastically followed by the dog.
Until he watched Harum go through labour, pride was a feeling Peter associated with work. Pride for a wall scrubbed, for a floor shined. So it was curious to be experiencing a far more intense version of the same thing while remaining so completely useless, as he had for the past nineteen hours at Harum’s bedside. He was holding her hand, yes, but ultimately he was no more effectual than the spider watching from the lampshade. This situation would unfold with him powerless to affect its outcome, or the time it took to get there. All he could do was tell Harum that he loved her, over and over again. It was a task he set about with vigour.
The Long Forgotten Page 20
