The Paradise Guest House (22 page)

She finds Nyoman on the corner near his house, standing with another man. When she approaches, the two men turn toward her.

“Transport, miss?” the other man asks. “Nice car for you.”

Nyoman bows his head.

“No, thank you,” she says to the man.

“This is Miss Jamie,” Nyoman tells his friend. “She stays with me for the anniversary ceremony.”

“Welcome, friend of Nyoman!” the man says with an eager smile.

“Nyoman,” Jamie says, and she glances back and forth between the two men. “Can I ask you a question?”

He steps away from his friend to give her privacy, and she’s grateful that he understands.

“Do you have a car today?” she asks. “Are you free right now?”

“Yes,” he says. “When I do not have a job, I look for work on the street. I have the car if I need it.”

“I’d like to go—” she says, and she stops.

“I can take you,” Nyoman says. “My friend does not care. You are my guest.”

“Have you been to the bomb site?” Jamie asks.

Nyoman’s mouth opens but he doesn’t say anything.

“If it is too hard for you—”

“I have been many times,” he says.

“I want to go,” she tells him. Her voice trembles even as she says it.

Nyoman shakes his head. “Maybe it will be too hard for you.”

“I want to go,” she repeats, her voice stronger.

“I will take you,” he says.

“Can we go now? I don’t want to change my mind.”

Nyoman walks back to his friend. He speaks in Balinese and the man hands him a set of keys. He steps to the car in front of them and opens the passenger door, then pauses and looks back to Jamie.

“I am ready,” Nyoman says.

The words ring in her ears.
I am ready
. And yet her feet do not move; her body stays stubbornly rigid.

She remembers that Gabe visited the bomb site only days after the attack. “I never want to see it,” she had said. Somehow she knows that now she must see it.

She walks to the car and steps in.

“I met a man who also lost his wife in the bombing,” Nyoman says as they drive.

Don’t tell me stories to make me feel better, Jamie thinks.

“He married soon after. It is what I must do—I have waited too long. We must bring children into the world. I have no children. And so, even if I do not want a new wife, I must find one.”

“That shouldn’t be hard,” Jamie says, offering him a small smile.

“It is hard because I miss my wife.”

“Of course,” Jamie says. She’s surprised by his honesty. She glances at him, but he stares ahead, a thin smile on his face.

“Still. My parents need grandchildren. My nieces and nephews need cousins. I need a son.”

“Or a daughter.”

“A son,” he repeats.

“What’s so bad about a daughter?” she asks.

“A son inherits his father’s land. I must have a son.”

“Women can’t inherit?”

“They do not need to,” Nyoman explains. “They will live with their husbands on the husband’s land.”

Jamie doesn’t have the energy to argue. She has already lost all arguments today, the moment Gabe walked away from her. Besides, why argue with one man when it’s really a country, a religion, a thousand years of history that she’s fighting?

They’re driving through so much traffic that it seems as if they’re crawling to the bomb site, inch by painful inch. The streets are full of evening commuters on motorbikes, and the air is thick with a coming storm. Jamie cradles her arm, which aches with phantom pain.

“The man you met?” Jamie asks.

Nyoman glances at her, his face blank.

“You were starting to tell me a story about a man—”

“Yes, yes. A man who lost his wife in the bombing. Like me. But this man, he married soon after. And last week a baby was born.”

“A son?”

“A son.”

Jamie looks out the window, past the stream of motorbikes, and sees a row of stores selling art. The paintings are crude, unsophisticated. One after another, the canvases stack up against the buildings, their bold, simple colors calling for attention. They’re awful—only a half step beyond a velvet Elvis. There are images of birds and flowers and Balinese women
with bare breasts. Clichés, all of them. Jamie feels a surge of anger toward the artists who think that tourists are so foolish. Who would buy these paintings?

“You are not listening,” Nyoman says, like a patient teacher.

“I’m listening,” Jamie tells him wearily.

“When a baby is born, the priest comes to make a blessing. The priest can tell the family where the soul of the baby lived in its past life. The priest knows these things.”

Nyoman is smiling, happy in his belief.

“How does he know?” she asks.

“He knows. He speaks to the dead person’s soul before a cremation and learns what the soul needs for its journey. And at a birth the priest knows the soul of the baby. The baby is new, but the soul is old.”

“And your friend?”

“The priest who came for the blessing did not know my friend or the family of my friend—they had moved to a new village after a flood destroyed their old home—but he said that the soul of the baby came from a woman who died in a fire. She died very young.”

Nyoman stops talking and looks at Jamie. “You see?”

“The baby has the soul of the first wife,” Jamie says.

“Of course,” Nyoman tells her.

He smiles and drives and smiles and drives. The traffic does not make him agitated or restless. The stories of his people do not confound him. The tragedy of his wife does not paralyze him.

“What’s at the bomb site?” Jamie asks. It only now occurs to her that she doesn’t know this.

“What do you mean?”

“Is there a memorial? Did they rebuild the clubs? Is it exactly the same?”

“You will see,” Nyoman tells her. For once, he does not smile.

Nyoman parks the car and leads Jamie on foot from one street to the next. Nothing looks familiar. She sees rows of tourist shops, businesses, restaurants. Billboards blast brand names: Bintang beer, Coca-Cola. It’s still daylight—she might not even recognize the area, since she was in Kuta that night after dark. But this looks so banal, so unthreatening. A bomb somewhere near here? Two bombs? Hundreds dead?

They turn a corner and suddenly Nyoman stops.

“We are here,” he says.

Jamie looks around. An icy sweat coats her skin.

But there’s nothing here.

On one street is an ice cream parlor, on another a bank and an office building.

“Where?” she says. The word barely escapes her mouth.

“This,” Nyoman says, pointing behind them.

They are standing on a corner, and when Jamie turns, she sees a large sculpted design on a wall. Under the scowling face of a plaster god, there is a shiny black surface, about ten feet square. Etched in gold are names. Rows of names.

In front of the wall are bouquets of flowers, some fresh, some dried and crumbling. Someone has pasted photos on the wall—one shows a beautiful young blond woman, another a teenage boy, probably Balinese.

“Was the club—”

“This was Paddy’s Pub,” Nyoman says.

He points across the street. “Sari Club,” he says. There’s an empty space, the beginning of a construction site, between the two buildings.

“This is the memorial, then,” Jamie says, pointing to the wall behind them.

“Yes.”

Jamie walks up to a low fence that surrounds the corner, enclosing the wall of names. She is baffled: Why is there a fence here? Should she step over it? Is she not permitted to get closer so she can read the names?

Then she sees a small gate at one corner. She walks over, passes through the gate, and steps up to the wall.

She’s the only person here. Nyoman stands on the corner, looking away from the wall. Has he traced his wife’s name a hundred times? Or does he always stand this far away, too far to let that mass of letters turn itself into names, into one name.

Jamie steps close to the wall. She will look for one name.

They are divided by countries: Australia leads the list with column after column. Then Indonesia. United Kingdom. The United States has seven names. She stares at them. Of course, she doesn’t recognize them. Sweden, Germany, Netherlands, France, Denmark. Guillaume, Daneta, Lise, Natalie, Emma. She scans the list of countries. Where’s Chile?

And then her eyes find the word and the one name below it.

MIGUEL AVALOS
.

She places her fingers on the wall, feeling the grooves of each letter, as if reading Braille. She remembers the way he kissed her behind the waterfall as they descended from Mount Batur; she remembers her thought: Can I love this man?

She remembers the sweetness in his eyes as he leaned forward across the table at the restaurant in Kuta and asked her to marry him.

I failed you, she thinks. I didn’t love you enough to say yes. Days later, I loved another man. I cheated you of what should have been yours.

Her ribs feel tight in her chest. She leans forward and touches her lips to the cold marble. She feels each letter of his name.

After a moment, she straightens up. She walks back to the names of the Indonesians. Nyoman’s wife. Ati. Elly. Tata. Widayati. Which one of you loved that good man?

She steps back and looks at the jumble of names, so many names. Who did I pull from the rubble, only to have you die in my arms? Who stood too close to the bar that went up in flames so quickly that no one had time to run? Who did I step over on the way out?

She drops to her knees. Her face is wet with tears.

Nyoman is suddenly beside her. His hand settles on her shoulder. They both stare at the list for a long time.

In the morning, Jamie wakes up, clear about what she has to do. She showers, dresses, eats breakfast, and tells Nyoman she’ll be back in a couple of hours.

Outside the gates of the guest house, Bambang and TukTuk greet her as if she’s been gone for weeks.

“You have job for Bambang?” the boy asks, and the dog circles them, as if tying them together.

“Sorry, kid,” Jamie tells him, “I’m on my own today.”

She starts to walk up the hill, away from town.

“You go to see Mr. Gabe at the school!” Bambang says proudly.

Jamie keeps walking.

“You fall in love with Mr. Gabe?” he asks, trotting after her.

“This is none of your business,” she tells him lightly.

“You have no husband. You have no baby. Mr. Gabe will be baby daddy.”

“No,” Jamie says, laughing. “I’m not looking for a baby daddy.”

“What are you looking for?”

“You’re a nosy little bugger.”

“I don’t understand those words.”

“Like hell you don’t.”

Bambang is smiling.

“Where are you from, Bambang?”

“Nowhere,” he says, lowering his head and hiding his eyes.

“Where are your parents?”

They’ve reached the top of the hill. Jamie is happy to realize that, for the first time in days, she’s not winded. She must be ready for what’s ahead, she thinks.

“I am old enough,” Bambang says. There’s a crease between his eyes that she’s never seen before. “Do not need parents.”

“Where are they?”

“Too many questions, Miss Jamie. You told me not to ask too many questions.”

“Do you sleep on the street?” she asks.

He looks away from her again.

“I find job in town,” he tells her sadly. “You have no job for me.”

Jamie leans down and rubs TukTuk behind his ear. The sweet dog leans into her leg and makes a whimpering sound.

“Don’t get into trouble,” she tells the dog.

Bambang turns and runs back down the street, whistling for TukTuk to follow him. The dog cocks his head, looking beseechingly at Jamie for one last moment.

“Oh, go on,” she says, and he takes off after his master.

She turns the corner and stops in front of Gabe’s school. She can hear the noise of children shouting and laughing—surely no one can study with all that commotion. At once, all of the sounds stop. There’s an eerie stillness in the air, and then the voices burst into song.

Jamie reads the sign on the front door of the school:
FULL MOON CELEBRATION ON FRIDAY. 10 A.M.
—
2 P.M. GAMES AND REFRESHMENTS
.

Looks like I’m here for a party, Jamie thinks. She pushes her fear of crowds away. She has nothing to lose.

She walks through the door of the school and follows a corridor that leads past the empty classrooms and out to the back gardens. While she walks, the song—a beautiful Balinese melody—fills her heart and makes her feel brave.

“Welcome, miss,” a teenage boy says at the back door. “Fifty thousand rupiah for raffle tickets. Fifty thousand rupiah for games. One hundred thousand rupiah for the food. All money goes to Ubud Community School.”

He talks too quickly. Jamie hears an onslaught of noise now that the song has ended. And, from everywhere, kids race in all directions.

“You missed dance show. So sorry, miss. Now fair begins.”

He sits at a table, a dusty field of tents and games and booths spreading behind him. The place is packed with kids and parents and teachers. I’ll never find Gabe, Jamie thinks, her resolve melting in an instant.

“You are a parent? You have child here at school? My mother works in the kitchen. I am student here, too.”

The boy doesn’t stop talking. The sun beats down on them, and dust stings her eyes.

“How much to enter?” she asks.

“Free!” he exclaims. “But so many things to do.”

Before he has a chance to rattle them off again, she hands him some rupiah and buys tickets for some kind of games. The boy is thrilled.

She wanders into the field. The great majority of kids are very young. She passes a makeup booth, where a woman paints a pouting clown’s face on a little boy. There’s a bottle toss and a dartboard—she could be at a county fair back in the States.

But on the next ramshackle stage, a group of kids play the gamelan—they’re only ten or eleven years old, she guesses, and they’re very good. Proud parents applaud them.

She passes a tall pole that has flags attached to the very top. A young boy is trying to shimmy up the pole so he can grab one of the flags, but he keeps slipping. The crowd cheers him on, but finally, about halfway up, he runs out of energy and slides down.