Jalan Jalan (37 page)

‘It is theft if you do not ask.' A body-less voice. ‘This chair is very big. I might slide down the back of it and never get out.'

‘How did you know I was taking some fruit?' I walk around the chair and Charles is sitting there with his arms on the rests, fingers stretched out on the leather.

‘Always make sure you can see what's behind you, especially if you have enemies.' His points to the large TV screen. ‘I still watch it even when it isn't on.'

I see my shape in its black screen.

‘Please have a mangosteen, but don't get juice on my furniture.'

‘Thanks.' I take one and twist it, breaking the skin. ‘I'll miss these.'

‘Ah. So Teddy helped you make a decision?'

‘Maybe. Or maybe he's just screwed me up even more.' I sit in the chair opposite Charles. ‘Nice chairs. A lot of dead animal.'

‘Imported from Europe. They are cold and sticky.' He runs his palm up and down on the leather arm a few times. ‘I do not like them.'

‘Have you seen Teddy?' I ask.

‘No. But you look better. Something has changed in you.'

Yes there's a big crack running through my head here'—I run a finger across the top of my head and down the back—‘and all my common sense and sanity is dripping out of it.'

Charles smiles.

‘Teddy will do that to a man,' he says. ‘Just remember, I never said I believe if what he does is real or just superstition, but he is a wise old man.'

‘Anyway, thank you.'

‘For what?'

‘For seeing something in me that needed help. Thank you.'

‘This a very strange world. I live in one part of it that is a lifetime away from yours. I live in a place of tragedies, both man-made and natural. Your country is a place of soft padding and half-truths where your biggest tragedies are holes in the road and rain in summer. You are ruled by ignorance taught by your government and media.'

I wonder why he has suddenly sparked into a soliloquy, perhaps it has been rehearsed; his farewell speech.

‘But now you can go back and remember that the belief in magic still exists here. That it is a country where small children are forced to sell cigarettes through the night and others are sent out to sea to fish on platforms that they can't get off until someone comes to get them. That there are tribes in parts of Indonesia that will still eat the hearts of their enemies because they believe it will give them strength. That if a volcano explodes it is a bad omen.' Charles pauses and strokes the cold leather on the arm of his chair.

‘I helped you so that you could see the world is not all polished and clean and rational. This is a place where smoking isn't bad for you, where tobacco companies hand cigarettes out free on the street using campaigns that they used in your world in the sixties. This is a place that is not educated, that has morals of the highest standard and also of the lowest. Your world and this world do not mix so well, but if both were better informed about the other, perhaps they would start to understand each other.'

‘I understand all that, Charles. I've seen some of it and it's shocked me, but can I ask you one thing, and please don't get angry?'

‘I know what your question is.'

‘You do?'

‘Yes.' He looks to the blank TV screen. ‘Why do I do what I do? Why do I promote the smoking in my clubs and why do I sell drugs and allow prostitution?'

I nod. ‘Pretty much.'

‘Because I can. I am a businessman and people everywhere are stupid and someone will always take advantage. Sometimes governments, sometimes businessmen. What is the difference? I am a businessman. I feel better that it is me and not someone else.'

‘Perhaps governments and businessmen should take responsibility for their actions. Perhaps then changes might happen.'

He studies me, those eyes slit to almost closing.

‘You are naïve.'

‘Perhaps.'

‘And I thought you like my drugs.'

I laugh. ‘I do.'

‘So keep your Western hypocritical opinions to yourself.' He stands and smiles an unusually wide smile. ‘And go and teach my children your oh-so-important language.'

‘Thanks again, Charles.'

‘No problem. What I just said I mean. But please remember that mostly I wanted Teddy to see you because I like you.'

‘Mm. OK.'

‘They should be in the games room. Fitri will be sad. She also likes you.' He goes to the front door and slips his shoes on. ‘When is your flight?'

‘Saturday at ten in the morning.'

‘I will pick you up at eight. No argument.'

‘None made. See you then.'

Fitri wipes her eyes.

‘Why must you go?'

‘You remember the time I cried?'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, I have to go because of that. I've had enough crying and I hope to find out the world is more flexible than we think.'

‘Flexible?' she asks. She lies back in the bean bag and sighs.

‘Bendy. Easy to bend. Changeable.'

‘This world is not bendy,' she says, now with eyes closed. ‘It is hard and straight and cannot be changed.'

‘Big cockroach.' Benny is up and out of his beanbag. He runs to the corner of the room, gets a broom and runs to the other corner. ‘Really big.'

Fitri sits up and opens her reddened eyes.

‘Such a stupid boy. It is his new game. He calls it cockroach hockey.'

‘Watch this,' says Benny as he slides his foot close to the resting creature.

The cockroach is a long one, about seven centimetres. Benny flicks it on its back with a knock from his toe. The roach's countless legs are scrabbling in the air. Benny runs to the door and opens it. The pool is glistening in the quickly fading sunlight outside. He runs back and uses the broom to move the cockroach away from the wall. He holds the broom back like a hockey player about to strike a puck.

‘Ready.' He eyes the open door. ‘GO.' He whacks it. It flies across the tiled floor, through the door, across the outside patio and plops into the pool. Benny holds the broom above his head and dances in a circle. ‘Aaaah. He scores.'

‘Idiot,' says Fitri.

‘Got to watch it swim.' He dashes out the door and kneels by the pool, watching the immortal cockroach backstroke.

‘Why do you think the world is so unbendy?' I ask Fitri.

She looks up at me like an animal caught in barbed wire and says, ‘Because my father will always be sad. Nothing will bring my parents together. This country will always hate us. My little brother will always be an idiot. And friends will never stay long.' She throws herself back in the beanbag. ‘That is why.'

Benny runs back in, looks around the room, sees a small plastic box with toys in and empties them on the floor. Then he is gone again with the empty box.

‘What if your mother at least started talking to your father again? Would that make a difference? Perhaps if your sister came to visit?'

‘It is impossible.' Then there is a pause before she suddenly sits up. ‘Isn't it?'

‘I feel something might happen. I'm not sure, but…' I smile at her.

‘You've done something.'

‘Now how would I do that? And even if I had, it might not amount to anything, but there again, it might.'

Fitri studies me hard and I see her father in her eyes. The intensity, the unnerving ability to see beneath the surface of people. This girl is never going to stay in this country. Her life will not be inflexible. She has the wisdom and strength in her to go anywhere and do anything.

‘If you have managed something, my teacher, I will come and find you one day and kiss you.'

‘Like I say, what could I have done?'

She leans across and grabs my head in her hands and puts her lips on my cheek.

‘That was just in case I cannot find you. I know it is bad, but I wanted to.'

‘Well, thank you. But maybe you kissed me for doing nothing.' I wink at her. ‘I hope whatever I have or haven't done helps a little.'

‘Well, thank you, for maybe or maybe not trying.' Her cheeks are now red to match her eyes.

‘But I'll tell you one more thing, young Fitri.'

‘What, old teacher?'

‘I definitely can't do anything about the idiot brother.' I nod to the door as Benny comes back in carrying the box, which is now dripping water over the floor.

‘He will not die. Even if I push him under water, he keeps living.' Benny sits down carefully on his beanbag, still holding the box. ‘Look.' He holds the box near to Fitri and she peers in.

‘There is nothing—'

His arms move in a quick blur. The water pours off her head and face as Benny runs screaming and laughing from the room, dropping the now-empty container on the floor. She is up and running after him, yelling in Hokkien as she goes.

I am left alone in the room. I look around at the big plasma TV on the wall, the pool table, the piles of games in the corner and the two beanbags with indentations of children in. The room is filled with loneliness. I suddenly don't want to leave these two even though I know I will; I must. But my heart breaks for them, locked up in a house guarded by men with guns in a country that looks on them as outsiders. I just hope I have helped. I just hope that what I have done will work for the better in some way.

I get up and go outside to the pool. I can hear small voices yelling somewhere in the house.

‘Fitri. Benny.' I call. ‘I have to go.'

They come running.

Fitri hugs me. Benny watches.

‘Fitri,' he says. ‘Dad will be mad if he sees you do that.'

‘It's OK, Benny. None of us are going to tell him, are we?' I say.

‘No, we aren't,' says Fitri from my chest, now soggy from her wet hair.

Benny holds his hand out. I shake it.

‘It is still wrong,' he says. ‘But I will not tell him. Goodbye, teacher.'

‘Goodbye, Benny.'

Fitri squeezes and her words are lost in my shirt.

‘Goodbye, Fitri.' I peel her off me, hold her by the shoulders and smile.

She looks up at me and smiles back.

‘Everything is bendy. Everything. If it seems that it isn't, you just have to learn to bend it.' Those are my last words to Fitri.

She nods.

They watch me as I put on my shoes and leave the house. As I walk across the security area the caged dogs bark and the men with guns swing them around into ready position at their fronts. I wait while the gate slides open with an electric hum and one of the guards quickly checks the road before I walk out. The two children hold hands and wave from under an almost-dark sky as the gates close in front of them, like stage curtains. The gates shut with a metallic click. The humming stops. Crickets chirp away at each other in the still of the coming humid night.

CRACKED
OR FIXED

A
new
moment. It spins out of the darkness like a flaming torch falling towards me. I catch it. I look into its light. There I am. I see me, reading and rereading the same line. The phone is there beside me. It is ringing.

I put my book down.

‘Hey.' Comes the voice at the other end.

Tension slides down my back into a pool on the floor.

‘I don't know why, but I was expecting you not to call.'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know. I don't know.' This isn't right. But it is right.

‘You OK, Ice-Cream Boy?'

‘Yes. So you made it?'

‘I made it.'

The light flickers around the moment. The stage darkens, a scene change, then the lights come up again. I am rereading the same line once more. The phone again. It is ringing.