I’ve taught in a lot of places in South-East Asia, and all of them have the same unmistakable odour of excess and ruination. The availability of cheap sex and alcohol for men draws a steady stream of drunks, sex addicts, drug addicts, fallen school principals and fallen diplomats, men who are only there for the boys, and the odd one who fits into all of those categories. It’s so easy to get cheap booze and sex, and it isn’t hard to get a job as an English teacher: you can even buy a degree off of the streets if someone points you in the right direction. I’ve worked with men who have impregnated the students, teachers who curry favour by scoring drugs for the boss, men who can’t go home because of pending warrants, and also a couple of paedophiles. I had been expecting pretty much the same from this place, and I have not been disappointed. There are some people who, regardless of their predilections, I can talk to. But others, I have quickly learned to avoid.
The female teachers are a different story. For a start, while there is no end of sex available to white men in a country like this, it is not so easy for Western women. There are too many good-looking, poor, young females around. Who wants an old white bird with the financial resources to walk out on you at any time? Who wants an independent woman who will not tolerate infidelity, nor take care of all of your cleaning and cooking needs? Marion, the senior teacher on the staff, has already confided in me that she has not had sex for eight years. In fact, it was one of the first things she told me when I started and was I settling into my desk at the back of the room. At fifty-five, she has converted to Islam and then back again, and married and divorced a gay chauffeur. All to no avail. She is cast adrift in a sea of loneliness and anxiety, and this makes her dislike the women in the office, while fawning upon the men. They can say anything to her and she will take it with a schoolgirl’s giggle.
Where’s Gabriel today, Ricky? she will ask with a breathless tremor.
Up Jack’s arse picking strawberries!
Ricky the Pom is obsessed with vulgarities, as well as having a special interest in Cockney slang, although he has not been home for at least twenty-five years. Marion will listen eagerly and chuckle in turns as he trots out his lists of rhyming slang or his favourite insults from North America or Serbian translation, or as he ranges round the staffroom waving student papers, magazine articles and personal emails under everyone’s noses and demanding attention.
Gabriel was not up Jack’s arse picking strawberries on that particular day, but he could have been doing something along those lines with the security guard in the storeroom, where they have sometimes been known to retire. The office is divided into straight men, gay men and women (mostly, unhappy eunuchs). While the gays are usually talking amongst themselves, the straights are usually talking loudly about football. The women are either standing on the sidelines joining in where possible, or wearing headphones.
29 March
After less than two months in my new job, I have begun to wear headphones while in the office. I also wear them at night, to block out the terrible noise of the kost. It begins at eleven, right about when I need to go to sleep to prepare for a six o’clock start. It is mostly workers arriving home from evening shifts and maids playing and giggling in the next room. The traffic, of course, is another assault on the ears, but definitely the office is the worst by far – the sound of unlikeable, lonely people clamouring for attention in a wilderness of dust, smoke and disappointment.
The trees around the kost are tall and thin – they stand with their arms by their sides and when the wind blows, they wave their long necks around in the courtyard. There is a filthy dog that lies half-blind in the sun. The woman who owns the place is a sleepy Chinese with milky pudding arms who wears pyjamas all day long. She minds her own business. The servants are all from the village and are not trained. There are many of them but the place is always dirty. They spend their days burning shirts and shouting to each other across the yard or scrutinising me. The gateman watches me come and go, and the laundry girls, and the kitchen cleaners. I can never get the hang of being so closely monitored by people.
The crazy thing in all this running away from Australian suburban-domestic bliss is that, almost as soon as I arrive somewhere, I start looking around for ways to make it more homely. I have friends who live like monks in these situations, which makes a lot of sense. You spend as little as possible on home comforts, or on anything else for that matter, and you work and save and then travel. But I don’t. I’m always looking for ways to make it more comfortable, buying knick-knacks, plants, linen and kitchen utensils. Not that I even have a kitchen where they have put me. But, of course, I will start looking for a nicer place to live immediately.
So the stage had been set for the great dark-red Victoria O’Halloran. Inedible food, hostile workmates, filthy poisonous clouds of petrochemicals piled up sky-high like dirty washing, constant noise, terrible heat. Reading back on this now, as the Indian Ocean stretches out below, I realise that this is basically what I do. I go to great lengths to place myself on some rocky, uncomfortable outcrop, and then, as if I have no intelligence at all, begin to build a nest.
Aryanti
For six years our family has lived in this street. Every day I make the cakes and take them down to the factory where people may buy them at their break time. At first my father resisted this:
Why are we sending our daughter out like a common woman to sell at a factory? What else will she sell and who will buy from her?
And he is right because sometimes the boys there are very rude.
Do you have something sweet for me? they will ask, or:
Who is it you are coming to see every day? Is it me? Are you in love with me?
At such times, I lower my eyes and keep silent, remembering that these are the cakes that keep our family with some extra money for food and medicine. My father has been sick for many years and cannot work, but he is a proud man and he would kill these boys if he heard them speaking to me in this way.
There is life in the house and life on the streets. The man appears to be head of the house but, from behind, the woman is really in charge. The streets are ruled by men, especially those who are looking for driving work, and also families with small restaurants and, of course, cars, which are constantly moving like a river through the houses and people. Wherever you go in the streets, there are men watching you. If they are sure there is no relative of yours around, they will mock you as you go past.
One day I was walking past the warung, where many men were sitting and smoking together. I was carrying the cakes and there was a big wind blowing my hair across my face. My eyes were stinging with dust and I felt foolish walking past all these staring men.
She is going to blow away. We must tie her down, one of them joked.
Although my face was burning, I tried to ignore them and walk straight past, but I stumbled and they began laughing and clapping as I bent down to pick up the basket I had dropped. I was furious at my face, which would not obey orders and calm its fire, and with this pack of cowardly fools who were amusing themselves in this way.
Someone stepped quickly through the little crowd and said:
Let me take them for you.
I looked up and saw Fajar, the brother of my friend Chitra, holding his hands out for the cakes. I used to see him at Chitra’s house before she got a job and we could not meet very often after that.
Where are you going, little sister? I will take you there, he said.
As I handed him one of the baskets, a young man shouted:
Look! They are Rami and Ramanya!
Only one second later he was picking himself off the ground and Fajar was standing over him with his nostrils flaring like a crazy horse.
Would you like to give me some more bullshit? he shouted.
The young man shook his head and rubbed some small stones from the heels of his hands while Fajar glared at the small crowd, which had gone very quiet. Then he walked over to me a picked up the basket again.
These ar
e men with nothing to do, he told me very softly, without taking his eyes off them. You mustn’t let them upset you.
His face glistened with sweat as he put the cakes on the front of his bike. When we arrived at the factory, nobody spoke badly to me because they could see that he was waiting at the door. I was getting back on the bike when he surprised me by saying:
I am working tomorrow, but will you visit my sister tomorrow night?
I am happy to visit your sister if she will be home, I answered.
He wanted to drive me home but I asked him to drop me at the shopping centre. I did not want my father to see him driving me like that, and I was confused by all that had happened. I wanted to be alone for a while and not have to make conversation with anyone.
That night I listened to my brother arguing with my father as usual. That is something they always do in the evenings, while my mother and I talk and cook and watch the television shows. I felt very still and excited at the same time. In my mind I could see the road flashing along beside me as I sat sideways on Fajar’s bike holding my skirt on the way to the factory. I could see his checked shirtsleeves as he handed me the cakes and hear the warmth in his voice. He already knew my name, of course, but he said it slowly and carefully. Aryanti. I had a strange, pleasant feeling in my arms. It was like a lovely sound had been rung out, which only I could hear. It is the beginning – it is now, I was thinking. After all this time of nothing happening, suddenly it has begun.
The next morning I took the cakes as usual along the road to the factory and nobody gave me any trouble. I was thinking about the evening ahead and I was very afraid but also had an exciting chill running through me. When the time came to go to Chitra’s house, I had to remind my mother where I was going, and I was certain that she would see that something was different. But she only told me not to stay too late, and be sure someone would take me home.
Chitra opened the door with a smile that showed nothing at all, and brought me straight away to her mother who was making coffee in the small kitchen. We drank the coffee and began work on the cakes, which Chitra had asked me to teach her how to make. I felt like a quiet little doll under the eyes of Fajar’s mother, not kind but not unkind, and the small room was stifling. She was asking many questions about my family and I tried my best to answer. All the while my back was tingling, because I knew he must be coming soon. Then, without warning, he walked in the door.
I hope you saved some for me.
He seemed very tall standing under the low ceiling. He took a cup of coffee from his mother and some cake and sat down next to me. My face, which has been my lifelong enemy, betrayed me by turning pink and hot. Thankfully, almost straight after he had finished, he looked at the clock and said:
Thank you for coming to help my sister. May I take you home now?
Of course I told him that I would take an ojek, and, of course, his mother insisted that he would take me.
It was fresher outside and my face began to cool down in the darkness. As I got onto his bike for the second time, he said:
Call your father – tell him you will be home soon; you are still with Chitra.
I did as he said and then we drove to a small warung and got some green tea. Although it was quite dark inside, I was worried. This was the first time in my life I had been in a place without my father’s knowledge, and the first time alone with a man. I looked around to see if there was anyone who might know me.
What are you afraid of? he laughed. There is nothing for anyone to see. We are having a nice cup of tea and then I will take you home.
We sat and he asked me some questions and he told me about his job, which was a security guard for KFC. He told me that someday he would like to get married, when he had paid for his motorbike. It was easy to sit there with him, not like the awkward moments at his mother’s house, and after a while I forgot that I should not be there and began to relax.
You have a very pretty laugh, he told me and smiled with his black eyes.
When we left, we did not drive in the direction of my house, but to a small park where he stopped under a big tree and switched off the engine. The silence came rushing up from the road and seemed to be shouting all around us, until suddenly he asked:
Do you want to kiss me?
His skin was very smooth except for the top of his lip, which was prickly, and he smelled of cigarettes mixed with some kind of perfume. We were at first on the bike and then somehow we were standing under a tree and then he was pushing me against it. I felt his hand moving upwards from my waist and started to panic and push away. I began to scold myself in the middle of panicking. Was I a crazy woman to be in the dark with a man I hardly knew? I had witnessed, with my own eyes, his uneven temper. Then I reasoned that he would not have invited me to his home if he had planned to take advantage of me. I started to ask him to take me home, but he kissed me again, softly, and this time only held my hands in his and pushed them backwards above my head. It was late when he dropped me home. I hurried to the door so that no one could come out and scold us, but only my brother was still up, watching TV, and he did not ask me any questions.
That night I wanted to pray before sleeping, but there were too many things to think about and remember. Each time I thought I had done something very bad and should repent, I would remember that mouth pushing against mine and the lips opening softly, and the blood hammering through me in panic and excitement. I could still feel his presence, and smell the delicate blend of cloves and tobacco and something else I couldn’t name; it was a man’s smell and I wanted to keep it somehow and wear it around my shoulders like a jacket.
I worried that he would think I was a fast woman. After all, it was the first time he had asked to meet me. I should not have allowed that kiss. Perhaps he was testing me and would no longer show any interest. But it was clear that he had talked to his mother. If he had already kissed me, surely it was time for him to talk to my father. I secretly wished that he would not do this. I did not want my mother and father and brother watching me each time I left and returned to the house. I wanted to keep this adventure for myself.
The next afternoon I returned from an errand and found Fajar’s motorbike outside our house and him sitting in the front room drinking tea with my father. He was sitting up very straight and respectful in the visitor’s chair, but he winked at me as my father reached down for his tea.
This young man has asked to take you on his bike to deliver the cakes tomorrow morning. What do you say?
He may do so if you permit it.
My father’s eyes searched my face for a few seconds.
Well then, he may do so.
Suddenly, it was moving too fast and I wanted to shout at him.
Who are you to walk into my father’s house and drink tea without my permission?
When my father gave Fajar the blessing, I looked down at my feet and did not look up again until the front door had already closed on him. I ran upstairs to the small room that I have had to myself since my sister was married. The afternoon call to prayer was coming from all directions, and for the first time this calling made me feel hunted and alone.
The next morning, however, I was glad to see Fajar waiting for me when I left the house. I noticed that his shirt was frayed at the collar and that he scratched his cheek a little nervously with the long fingernail of his small finger. I made up my mind to greet him first and noticed that my voice sounded strange, as if it were coming out of a tunnel. It seemed the whole street watched me get onto the bike and it took several slow minutes before everything was settled and we drove out past all the watching eyes into the traffic. After we had delivered the cakes, we drove straight to a grove of trees in the park across the road from the plaza and kissed for a long time.
Fajar
I was in the street, at the same petrol place the cop had pulled the gun on Budi outside, when someone yelled out to me from the ojek stand.
Fajar! Bule!1
A bule woman came walking down the roa
d. She looked like a puppet, walking along on some sticks that were hidden by her long skirt. Nobody else on that street would be able to talk to her, unless she knew Bahasa, and that is why they were giving her to me, although I was not even in the line for a customer. She seemed to be new, she seemed a little unsure of everything, but her walking was strong and she was smiling and greeting people in a very strange accent: Selamat siang.
Straight away I stopped her and asked in English: Where are you going?
Oh, she smiled, looking carefully at my face and then scanning over the bike. Can you take me to Plaza Senayan?
I was happy to take her there, but surprised that she could barter so strongly about the price, and hoped that no one nearby could understand the fare that we agreed on. She sat sideways in her long pencil skirt and took a helmet out of her knapsack and put it on, then we headed out into the traffic. When we got to Plaza Senayan I offered to wait for her and take her home.
No, she said, with blue eyes looking out from the square frame of the helmet. I might be a long time.
Where are you staying? I asked her.
She showed me a card with the address of a kost very close to my house. I gave her my telephone number, and asked her to call me whenever she wanted a lift. My phone was only working sometimes, but I did not want to tell her that.
Where did you learn to speak English so well? she asked.
But I only smiled and said, Thank you. Do not forget to call me.
As she walked away, she took off her helmet and the strap became tangled up in her very long red hair. I had never seen hair this colour before. I watched her struggling with it in the wind until she noticed that I was still there and told me to go. As I drove away, I made a plan to get her as a customer for every day.
Vic
Ramadan Sky Page 4
