Island of Demons (29 page)

“Not so,” said Walter. “It is an optical illusion caused by the shape of the banks and the fact that the eye assumes that the river is level, whereas it is dropping away quite rapidly. I had Dr Goris come with his surveying equipment and he assures me that the roofs over there are fully two meters higher than my own.” The old man was unconvinced, set his face firmly against all but the evidence of his eyes. When he finally left, Walter roared, tore at his hair and stood on his head for a full five minutes in refutation. The boys came and watched in amazement, laughing nervously. No Balinese could do that, only a demon. To stand on your head was to deliberately disorder the universe. The Balinese have no somersaulting acrobats.

Still the rains did not come and the weather continued like a boil that would not burst. Even the Balinese sat slumped in the shade, sweat running down their chests and hid from the sun. It was too hot and heavy to eat, too hot to sleep and no sex could have been had by anyone on the island for several weeks. We were worn and bored, Walter prostrate over the great table in desperation for a cool surface to rub his face against, speaking wildly of ice and snow and the glory of feeling cold. Conrad was outside, sitting alone on a rock in the cool river, his loins plunged into the stream, which probably met several of his needs at once. Then Resem let slip that witches were known to be dancing nightly in the overgrown graveyard a couple of miles down the road. Elli lit up. She needs must go. Please, please, Wälti. When would she ever be able to have such an opportunity again? Wasn't he curious to see which kind of dance they did? At first, Resem begged us not to. We had no idea how dangerous such creatures could be. Then, when Walter and Elli's resolve was set, he refused all entreaties and blandishments to go along as guide.

“You should listen to him, Walter,” I urged. “If he was talking about rice-growing you wouldn't dismiss his knowledge so easily.”

“But Elli isn't interested in rice-growing.”

“Then I absolutely refuse to have anything to do with it. What would the Balinese think if they caught us creeping about in a graveyard at this time of night?
We
should be seen as witches.”

Twenty minutes later we were drawing up outside the graveyard, perched – like Walter's house – between the edge of a village and a deep ravine. As we pulled up, a dog started barking, detonating the calls of other dogs that ricocheted around the village, rose to a crescendo and then died slowly away, each dog unwilling to let its rivals have the last word. “For God's sake,” I said, “drive past, pull off the road and let's walk back only if it's all clear.” Walter continued another twenty meters, yanked on the brake and climbed out, slipping on the gravel at the roadside and falling flat on his backside in a classic pratfall. Elli immediately exploded in giggles, Walter caught the infection and the two of them howled till they were gasping for air over the bonnet, Walter developing into a sound rather like a braying donkey.

“For God's sake,” I stage-whispered. “Be quiet! You'd waken the dead.” That set them off again. They teetered along the road, arms around each other like two drunks. Reluctantly I followed, not wishing to be left alone in such an eerie spot.

A Balinese graveyard is a desolate place, not the well-tended plot seen elsewhere in the archipelago, covered in low scrub and the debris of cremations with lumps of stone and wood to mark the spots where the dead await the final freeing of their souls in fire and water. It is not a place much frequented by visitors except for the witches who may come to dine there, their favourite meal being the entrails of an unborn child. The mere sight of the place seemed to sober my companions like a bucket of cold water. There were odd emanations, an unmistakable stench, a chill, mist where no mist – surely – could form at this season. Walter pointed.

“Look!” I turned, thinking it was another silly joke then caught my breath. Moving around the far end was a ball of lambent blue fire as though from the flambéd cognac of French cuisine.

“Perhaps,” I suggested, “we should …”

“Come on.” Walter was already through the gate and stumble-tripping towards the thing, Elli unhesitatingly in pursuit.

“Elli!” I shout-whispered. “Walter! You can't!” But nobody heeded me. The flame paused, as if considering them, then seemed to dance up and down on the spot in derision. As we neared, individual coiling flames could be clearly seen and the thing's rotation was evident. It danced back and forth, like someone trying to block your way in a corridor, then shot up a tree and disappeared. Walter paused, bemused as I panted up, having twisted my ankle rather nastily on a rock. The tree was empty. Then the thing reappeared several hundred meters off and bounced up and down again, only to vanish once more as soon as we approached. Then it seemed to come up out of the very ground a few meters to out left, shot wildly from side to side, zigzagged haphazardly away at speed and disappeared. We paused and looked at each other.

“Well,” said Walter, impressed. “What do you make of that?”

“Marsh gas,” said Elli. “Tell people about it and they'll just say it was marsh gas. They always do. Pilots see all sorts of things but learn to keep their mouths shut. On my way to Timbuktu, I was pursued for miles across the desert by a sheet of orange flame. Inside a cloud in Katmandu, I saw … well, I cannot tell you what I saw but I never want to see it again.”

“For God's sake,” I said, not liking the tone of hysteria creeping into my own voice, “what are we doing here? Let's go home. If anyone sees us here there'll be real trouble.” But when we arrived back at the car, it was as if a hurricane had dumped it full of rubbish – dead branches, clods of earth, banana skins and, on top, a curious object. Walter lit a match and examined.

“A genuine German Bockwurst!” he exclaimed in wonder like a connoisseur examining fine art. “Somewhat rotten and – look – with huge tooth marks. Where on earth would anyone have got hold of one of these in a place like this at this time of night? They don't even stock them in Denpasar. You'd have to go to Batavia to find one. How would a witch know I was German and not Dutch? Even the Balinese don't know the difference. To them, we are all
Belanda
.”

“How do you know it is intended for you?”

“Oh Bonnetchen, it was in the driver's seat. Oh my God, Plumpe ate these all the time, these and booze. You don't see an empty schnapps bottle do you?”

“Be serious, Walter. Why would Murnau send you a sausage from beyond the grave?”

Walter tossed it away and began throwing rubbish in all directions. “It is not a sausage but a message. From Plumpe. I don't know what it means but I can be certain he's not sending his love. Now come on, let's clear this stuff out and clear out ourselves.”

***

The European Protestant cemetery in Denpasar was neater than the native Balinese but still at a formative stage, the vegetation more weed than shrub, parched and, as yet, insufficiently fertilised by its lean contents. The Dutch administrative presence had so far generated little custom, since the junior officials assigned there were mostly young and vigorous whereas any senior officer who expired in Denpasar would expect to be assigned space strictly appropriate to his rank at administrative headquarters back in Buleleng. I anticipated that its most significant occupant would be Mads Lange, the nineteenth-century Danish adventurer, whose machinations had delayed Dutch intrusion by more than fifty years and earned him a painful death by poison. But no. It seemed that he had only made it as far as the Chinese cemetery in Kuta. Criteria for admission here were quite strict, then. The Balinese, whose memories were blissfully undistracted by abstractions, remembered Lange mainly as the owner of an interesting orang-utang and a unique Dalmatian dog. I could not help wondering if they would fix Walter in their minds in much the same way.

Most of the mourners were Balinese – Walter, after all, had spent as little time as possible with the bureaucrats. Smits had not come, though the assistant
controleur
of Badung and a couple of the more open-minded officials engaged in the museum project had turned out in high-buttoned tunics, and were standing by the grave, sweating for their nation and the honour of white men in general. Elli – good girl that she was – knew what was required of her, though a guest of only a week's standing, and was stifling sobs in her hankie, supported by men on either side, as the white wives speculated, thin-lipped and flint-eyed, on what
exactly
had been her relationship with the deceased in that disorderly house of bachelors and hussies. The Balinese were at something of a loss, since, for many, this was the first white funeral they had attended. Because their own cremations were rather jolly affairs, they were puzzled by a public festival of depression whose only function was to make everyone infinitely more sad than they had been before. This, moreover, had been a bad death, one that in their own world brought pollution and threat yet no one here seemed to be concerned with averting that danger. Instead of wild, hammering music, there had been a mournful wailing, as of demons, before the unfamiliar groaning organ. One or two had been totally unnerved and crept quietly away. Instead of whirling processions, there had been standing about and talk and it was clear that even the white men themselves did not seem to know quite what they were supposed to be doing. The eulogy – delivered bleatingly by an annoyed-looking Dutch Reform minister – had seemed to be about someone totally unknown to me, a solid citizen snatched from the jaws of married respectability and regular employment only by his untimely death. Later, instead of general feasting, there would be horribly evocative cold meats served at the Little Harmonie Club – Europeans inside, natives on the lawn, mingling strictly limited to the no man's land of the verandah. And the problem of dress remained unresolved. Agung and his retinue had opted for the white of death and their finest jewels, standing under their umbrellas like a rehearsal for a
puputan
mass suicide. Natives in government service had chosen the black favoured by Dutchmen while those of more divided loyalties sported the black and white chequerwork of traditional
poleng
cloth about their waists. Traders had favoured loose, silk pyjamas. Oleg, Resem and Alit had turned events into an occasion for a visit to a man with a sewing machine in Denpasar and agonised deliciously for hours over the choice of shorts or long trousers, buttonholes and lapels. The resulting over-tailored outfits made them look like three pimps from Buleleng. Putting everyone else to shame was the old man who watered Walter's plants. He had simply bathed and walked down from the hills, wearing the same sarong he always wore, barefoot and barechested. Unintimidated by those around him, in his simplicity, he trod the grass like a master of the earth. Meanwhile, Mr Kasimura, the Japanese photographer, himself unversed in Dutch ritual, was hopefully erecting his camera tripod for the companionable photographs around the coffin that would surely be requested. As we watched the plain wooden box lowered into the torn earth, the rains finally broke with a crack of thunder – dramatically most effective – and hosed us down thoroughly. Plumpe would have approved.

Back at the Harmonie, I needed a stiff drink. It came with another ferreting priest, Father Robert Scruple, lurking at the bar, an expert on the more extreme heresies of the early church, now appointed to a roving commission about the Eastern Sees and here to press the Dutch to revoke their interdiction on missionary activity in Bali. Earlier baptisms had led to canny converts refusing to pay their dues for village activities, since all assumed the participation of the local gods, and they had finally been chased away like lepers amidst great ill-feeling. Not only had this caused public disorder, it also undermined the efficient system of traditional local government that saved the Dutch endless bother. I had read at length about Father Scruple in the local paper. He sported ecclesiastical black so immaculate that it glowed with a sort of well-brushed halo and he would shortly produce a report declaring the natives to be panting for the evangelisation so brutally denied by law, which convinced no one, not even the Dutch who were often only too willing to be convinced by implausible reports. He was still bristling at the indignity of having a trunkful of Bibles impounded by beachside Buleleng customs officials as “contraband literature”, a term normally applied to works of political sedition and pornography. He sipped neat scotch with economical little swigs.

“The deceased, that poor young man, I gather you were a friend?” It seemed the pastoral position was habitual. He could smell out a lost soul as a sheepdog would a lost sheep or perhaps simply spot the weakest and most vulnerable in a flock as would a wolf. The accent was a curious mixture, part Italian, part Australian. I nodded. “Was he of the faith?”

I could not resist a smile, recalling Walter's usage of the expression. “Er … living where he did, it was impossible for him to attend church regularly but he was of a spiritual turn of mind.”

Father Scruple's eyes gleamed behind their round lenses. This was not an answer. If there was any logic-chopping or evasion to be done around here, he, as a trained man of the cloth, should be the one doing it.

“You seem to be telling me that he was a most Christian atheist. He died unshriven, then? Answer me that, if you will.”

“There was no time … It was so fast … He was not one for formalities. But he was a good man, I would almost say that, in some ways he was almost a saintly man. Look, I'm no expert in such matters, unlike yourself, but his soul, I'm sure, was relatively pure – few sins of commission, maybe a few light ones of emission.”

“I think you would mean ‘omission'.”

“Possibly so. As I say, I am no expert.”

He settled a well-shod foot on the bar rail, at his ease in such places, in such postures. Behind me I heard a voice say, “Awkward business. I'm afraid the German reputation smells rather round here at the moment. It was that woman the Countess he sent down. She played a lot of whist and cheated rather badly. She tried it on with the
controleur
so we had to run her out of town.”