Island of Demons Page 7

  Everywhere people were stirring – coughing, shifting phlegm, sloshing water, groaning against the effort of another wretched day. I wandered pointlessly down a dusty main street where Chinese in dirty white pyjamas were opening shutters and rolling out purely literal barrels and finally found a coffee shop where fires were being stoked and the aroma of coffee to come promised a breakfast of some sort. I collapsed onto a metal stool and a man came and looked, smiled and went back inside, shouting something over one shoulder. Then a stool scraped and a voice came from a dark corner.

  “You’ll be looking for Walter, then?”

  “I’m sorry?” I looked up and tried to focus. A dark form rose up like a wave and extended a pale hand into the light that fell through the open door and then a big man followed it and pulled up a stool. He plonked a bowl on the table, full of fishy rice porridge. It looked and smelled like the product of an elephant’s ejaculation.

  “Behrens,” he nodded. “I’m the government doctor round here.” His eyes found the symptom of the collapsible easel strapped to the side of my suitcase and he nodded his chin at it. “An artist,” he observed and smiled sadly. “Yet another one.”

  I was dismayed. “Are there so many?”

  The man returned with two mugs of coffee that he set down with surprising grace and began spooning in sugar by the tablespoon.

  “Enough,” said Behrens with a cup-seizing gesture but whether he meant artists or sugar was not clear. He stirred, tasted and grimaced. “More than enough. We have French and American and Swiss and German and Austrian and even the odd Dutchman. We even have them homemade – born in the Indies. It’s all the work of Krause and that book of pornography he published and then Nieuwenkamp and his great big breasts.”

  “Nieuwenkamp,” I said. “I met Nieuwenkamp in Rome. He spoke of Venus or was it Eve?”

  Behrens nodded. “Aye, well there you are then. You’ll know what I mean. The poor Balinese don’t know which way to turn. As soon as they drop their drawers or try to have a bit of a wash there’s a bule there with a camera or an easel.”

  “A bule?”

  “Aye,” he gestured vaguely. “A Belanda, orang putih, Matt Saleh – dammit man, us!”

  “Oh, I see.”

  “As a doctor, I can only approve of the Eastern affection for water, regardless of morality, but the tourists are getting out of hand. In Denpasar, the natives are having to hide in their houses at dusk instead of heading for the river. I’ve talked to the Resident about it but he’s only interested in getting the tourist count up to please Batavia. It’ll end up leading to disease.”

  “Is there a lot of disease?” I did not like the sound of that.

  He sighed. “Less than you’d expect. More than I can cope with. Down south there’s malaria – don’t forget your quinine. Then there’s smallpox, cholera and diphtheria. Every couple of years we get an outbreak of yellow fever brought in by the illegal Chinese, like as not, or maybe the haj. The big scare is leprosy, they think that’s tied up with breaking religious taboos and such so they hide it till it’s too late, then make a great fuss about it and chase the afflicted out of the village like criminals. Apart from that, it’s mostly skin diseases up where it’s too cold to wash or too dry to waste the water or where we make them wear clothes. They wash themselves but not the clothes, d’ye see? In the rainy season, rinse your ears out with alcohol every morning, just a drop, to stop the mould.” He was giving automatic advice, too many years in the job, answering the same daft questions. I thought of my Hancock and Goodyear, by now probably green with mildew and disuse, and blushed. “Drink tea or coffee, not water, then at least it’s been boiled.” He lurched to his feet. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get off on my rounds. I’m heading down east today. If you’re a friend of Nieuwenkamp, maybe you’ll want to take a look at the temple at Kubutambahan.” He pointed. “You see that shop? That’s where you’ll find Fatima. Give my regards to Walter when you see him. Tell him I’ll drop by in a month or two.”

  “Who is Fatima? Walter who?” But he was gone, shuffling down the street, mind already elsewhere. My coffee tasted foul but I drank it anyway. At least it had been boiled.

  The shop had an Arabic name over the door and sold tourist stuff, locally woven scarves, filigree silver bowls, rough earthenware, painted carvings to give you bad dreams, all stacked on shelves thick with dust and buckled by heat. There was no counter, just a table littered with paper and dirty cups at which sat my first Balinese Eve. No wait, this was definitely a Venus. Spotting me, she let out a screech, leapt to her feet and almost dived at me. Then she did a strange thing. She turned sideways, dropped her hand to her crotch, smiled coyly and waggled her wrist vigorously up and down, whilst leaning back and thrusting with her pelvis. “Shake the bottle!” she screeched in English.

  “What?”

  “Shake the bottle! Welcome to bloody Bali. You just come? KM-bloody-P?” She continued shaking.

  “Er, right. Shake, er …” Where had she learnt such an extraordinary greeting? The vocabulary argued a more than passing acquaintance with sailors. There was surely something Australian about the routine and the accent and somehow it seemed even more obscene in a man than a woman to perform this little dance so I blushingly curtailed it into a limp handwave. She was a big woman, elaborately robed in a grubby blouse and sarong.

  “You want go bloody Denpasar? No worries, I fix, mate.” She smiled demurely, finally stopped shaking, sat down again, puffing slightly, and beckoned me over to an empty chair.

  “Er, do I?” Did I? She pushed papers off onto the floor and reached for a receipt book.

  “Course you fuckin’ do. All tourist go bloody Denpasar. Big hotel. Dance. Jiggy jig. Fatimah superbloodybagus car only way.”

  Bagus meaning “fine”, more specifically “beautiful”. It was not a moment for long reflection. I had been wondering what on earth to do. I certainly did not want to stay in superbloodynotbagus Buleleng. She came, after a fashion, medically recommended. Soon she was charging me a princely sum to hire her car. The tariff was a complicated affair of miles, petrol, days and wear and tear on the chauffeur, who, it was now revealed, was also called Bagus: a slender, quiet man of my own age with a kindly, homely – not at all bagus – face but a sweet moustache and simple, considerate Malay and enough English to tide us over when my own broke down. My luggage was strapped on the back, the car was fed petrol, water and oil and Bagus tucked his sarong chastely between his legs and kicked free his sandals to drive barefoot with splayed feet that did not so much rest on the pedals as grip them. He was all eagerness to be off, like a horse too long shut up. We stoked each other’s excitement and soon I too was flaring my nostrils at the upcoming adventure, freedom, the open road in an open car. Shopkeepers appeared at other doors and watched us resentfully, Arabs with their shirts hanging out, Indians with fierce beards like spades, knowing we were escaping from the world of tedium and care.

  “Selamat bloody jalan!” meaning have an emphatically safe journey, screamed Fatimah and we jolted off, her profile shaking its bottle again in staccato salutation, chubby hands clutching too many of my banknotes, watched by Bagus in the rear view mirror. We looked at each other afresh, laughed and were immediately friends over the hot leatherette.

  “Bagus?” I asked. “Is that your real name?”

  He frowned. “It means I am a Brahmana, the highest caste, only Brahmana can be priests – real priests.”

  “But you are not a priest?”

  He had long, thin, artistic hands that stroked the wheel rather than turned it. On the marriage finger he wore a nasty cheap ring set with a chunk of red glass.

  “I was not called to become a priest. I was called to become a driver. That is my destiny.”

  So there it was. Was I called? And was it my destiny to be an artist or merely a vain aspiration?

  “Who is Fatima?”

  He stole a sideways glance. The moustache twitched. “What did she tell you?”
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br />   “She told me nothing.”

  He bent over the wheel as if in respect and lit a cigarette, offered me one – declined – and inhaled, sending glowing clove fragments cascading down the front of his shirt.

  “People tell different stories,” he spoke softly. “According to some, she is a widow of the King of Bali, the Rajah of Klungkung, who refused to throw herself on his funeral fire when he was killed by the Dutch. But then his body has not yet been burned. Some say she was just a concubine. There were many concubines in the palace. Some say she never had anything to do with Klungkung. Her Balinese is wrong for a person from there but she says it was in the palace she learnt her excellent English. Perhaps she sounds like someone from Lombok. Lombok people are noisy and without culture. She is Moslem and I do not know her Balinese name. She converted when she married her husband but he is never there. Some say he is Javanese. I have not seen. I do not know.”

  We were driving through Singharaja, the biggest town in the north, centre of the administration. This part of Bali had been Dutch for eighty years, unlike the south – conquered by Nieuwenkamp – and the marks of established colonial rule were everywhere, women with covered, not bare, breasts, neat stucco villas, schoolchildren in pressed uniforms, barracks edged with white-painted rocks and dark-faced Ambonese troops with fuzzy-wuzzy hair.

  “Beh! Black,” commented Bagus dispassionately in passing and pointed with his thumb.

  A sign rose up, indicating Kubutambahan off to the left. It lit a flare in my brain.

  “There!” I said, stumbling over the name. “Kubutambahan. Is that on our way? Dr Behrens said I should see the temple there. Is that possible?”

  He smiled. “You like to see temples? Okay.” He executed a smart three-point turn and we bumped up a rising dusty track with overarching trees and suddenly, after a kilometer or two, there it was, the most extraordinary structure I had ever seen in my life.

  It stood like sherds of white stone fired into the earth, each one carved with huge figures – gods? demons? heroes of yore? I had no idea. They crouched and reared and leapt, surrounded by flames and flowers and curlicues, forming and framing a gateway. Bagus stopped the car, took my hand gently and led me inside, up a fantastical staircase, through a series of rising courtyards, open to the sky, each more exuberant than the last, where every inch of stonework exhibited a baroque horror vacui. He would occasionally drop my hand to make a courtly gesture of respect in the different directions with his own, fingers pressed together and raised to the face, a sembah, and then shyly hook up my little finger again. To copy him in his devotions would have been impertinent so I stood embarrassed like a stranger at a funeral who lacks a proper gesture. The place was totally deserted except for cooing doves and zithering lizards. Butterflies flitted in and out of sunlight. I looked around at the statues, the murals – ancient products of an alien civilisation that was surely the equal of Greece or Rome – staring in silence. I caressed a curvaceous stone thigh that was Mycaenean in its purity. This was the Indies as I had wanted it, pristine, unpolluted, unchanged throughout immemorial time, like the waringin tree that was the refuge of local culture at the Hotel des Indes. I was transported. My step was lighter, my hips more sinuous. Then the dull schoolboy need to know burst out as if in a definition of the adverb.

  “How? Why? When?”

  “It is a temple for Ratu Ayu Sari, husband of Dewi Sri, goddess of the rice. It is for the farmers who do not grow wet rice but the other crops.” He gestured towards the whole fertile plain spreadeagled before us. “For maize, coffee, fruits, vegetables. The god brings them the harvest.”

  Everywhere in the temple were carved flowers, vines, a tropical prodigality of vegetation frozen in masonry, the poignant contrast between the transitory and the eternal. I was amazed to see so much creativity, mastery of technique, wealth of skill, so much love, devoted to a small village like this. It was comforting to hear of gods that had familial relations instead of logic-chopping metaphysical status. And then I glimpsed it, the reason Behrens had sent me here, and ran over to make sure I had seen aright. On the inside of the furthest courtyard was a shallow relief that made me gasp, then laugh like a rude misericord in a cathedral choirstall. It was a man on a bicycle, the turning wheels rendered as great bursting blossoms. There was no mistaking it. It was Nieuwenkamp, a frangipani flower gallantly tucked behind his ear in Balinese fashion, pedalling off to sketch a bosom. Moss was growing up his legs.

  The gravel-topped road began to climb soon after and the houses thinned and disappeared. Only sporadic hamlets, blowing with woodsmoke, spoke of human habitation. We whined up in low gear, fog and cloud clinging to the windscreen, great stands of bamboo leaning out over the void, the engine coughing in the thinning air. The people looked wilder, long-haired and wrapped in blankets, struggling upwards on foot or riding small, shaggy ponies up towards Kintamani. This was the crest that divided north from south, a place of fantastic vistas and rainbows of light where the still active volcano smoked black against the sky and rode on a sea of meringue. At its foot lay the hot springs feeding into the lake, outlined in black lava like a cheap Japanese print, and alimenting the rivers of the south. In the distance reared the bulk of Gunung Agung, the highest peak, the seat of the gods, the centre of the world by which Balinese constantly orient themselves like homing pigeons. We stopped to drink coffee at a stall piled high with oranges and hugged our cups in the thin, chill wind. Bagus recalibrated the carburettor, pointed and sucked air, shivering, through his teeth.

  “There Bali Aga people. Bad people, very dirty. Bali Aga have great magic.” He shuddered and his voice dropped. “Bali Aga people do not burn their dead.”

  “White men do not burn their dead either.”

  He shrugged. “That is different. They know no better.”

  A jog-trotting satay seller panted up, his own world slung at either end of a bouncing pole over one shoulder, set up his brazier, fanned it back to life and began roasting little sticks of meat. The delicious smell and spicy peanut sauce conquered my hygienic scruples and I wolfed them down taking care not to use the plate provided for which no proper washing provision could have been made. A man with no teeth and a harelip appeared from nowhere and whipped back his cloak like a stage villain to show a fat, furry puppy. He said something in a language like a prolonged belch and kept poking it out at me and grinning like a lecher.

  “You buy,” giggled Bagus, cooing and stroking it. It wagged its tail and glopped air. “Dogs from here are famous all over Bali, maybe all over the world. This be a very good dog for you.” It looked at me with soft brown Balinese eyes and lunged with its tongue. In vain I told myself this was not love but the smell of satay for I felt love. Yes, I yearned to make it my dog but it would have been a stupid and improvident act, the sort of thing Walter would have done without a second thought, except of course I did not yet know Walter. A dog required a settled existence, commitment, responsibility. I shook my head.

  “One day,” I said. “Maybe one day when I too have moss growing up my legs.”

  At that moment the clouds parted on an Old Testament sky and a hazy path appeared, as to Moses crossing the Red Sea, a corridor leading down to the warm south where, in the distance, ricefields of an unbelievable green cascaded down hillsides, like a giant’s staircase, and in redemption of Nieuwenkamp’s inept picture. We drove on, heat and lushness slowly rising about us like a flood. Ancient temples dotted the roadsides, water gushed and flashed silver like a shattered mirror. Above us, towered coconut palms, their delicate fronds dancing in the breeze with the sound of a rustling silk dress. The world was suddenly gentle and caressing.

  Bagus talked steadily into the afternoon, like trickling water bouncing from rock to rock, of ceremonies and gods and women and Fatimah and someone called Walter Piss till my head began to nod. What seemed a few minutes later I awoke with a start and a stiff neck and cursed myself like a fool. We were in Denpasar, back in a world of concrete and corrugated iron and
paradise had abruptly vanished. To one side white men in still whiter flannels were chortling and playing tennis on a great field, lavishly attended by ballboys and waiters. There were the usual ugly shops and drains. A sluttish woman was leaning, appropriately, on a large sign advertising the wares of the Goodyear rubber company. We turned into a gravel drive and there was the Bali Hotel. I was slightly relieved not to find my parents waiting on the verandah, peering out from the dusty box trees.

  Suddenly Bagus was by the side of the car, hands clasped in respect, head bowed, reaching for the door as my luggage was unstrapped by two strapping, bare-chested lads. It seemed that for Bagus I was now “Tuan”, “master”, and existed only in the third person. If Tuan would like to enter the hotel, his slave would attend to the car. Did Tuan wish for the car later? Then his slave would wash it and see Tuan again in the morning at ten o’ clock if that was acceptable to Tuan.

  “Bagus, what about you? Where will you eat and sleep?”

  He blushed. Tuan should not concern himself about that. His slave would sleep in the car, the better to guard it, and they would feed his slave in the hotel kitchen.

  The hotel was a thing of potted palms and white tile floors with something of the disapproving air of a sanatorium. At the desk, a neat Eurasian signed me in and noted my easel. Perhaps I was a friend of Mr Piss? No? A pity. A most amusing gentleman, Mr Piss. Would I care to see the menu? The plat du jour was boiled gammon and cabbage. No thank you. Just a pink gin in the room that came with a white-painted hospital bed and enough white netting for three brides.

  I retired to the bathroom, ladled cool water over my head from the big maternal earthenware pot and felt the suffocation of the still air. It was the dry season and the refreshment of rain lay months off. I stretched out undried on the bed, barely resisting the temptation to throw off the mosquito net that gathered the heat down around me so that I flowed with sweat and groaned against the Dutch wife, a cool bolster that you draped yourself around to allow the flow of air. I finally fell asleep to the whine of the mosquitoes circling the net in frustration, like hungry flies around a meat safe.