Troppo (10 page)

I think about grocery shopping in Australia. The plethora of choice. The sterility. The waxy, tasteless fruit. The indifferent or surly or bored staff on the checkouts, blowing their noses, checking their watches. Sitting with these women yarning, arguing and bartering, I feel so much more comfortable, so much more alive!

After another half-hour of riotous laughter and lascivious yarns – through which I assemble a romantic history of their village – I buy two pieces. As money changes hands, they invite me to the mountains to meet their children and their husbands and their goats. I thank them, but Matt's swinging past this afternoon and I don't want to miss him.

God I'm a disgrace!

‘Maybe in a couple of days.'

‘Of course! Anytime! You are welcome, Mister, you are welcome.'

While I felt safe and shielded by the warm gossip of the women, on my way out I have an unnerving feeling that I'm being followed. It's not uncommon for bules to be shadowed through markets by thieves – the Pasar Badung in Denpasar is notorious for its hard-eyed ‘guides' – but although I look over my shoulder a few times, there doesn't seem to be anyone lurking behind the scaly mounds of snake fruit.

Out on the main street two young men in skullcaps lean loose-limbed over a motorbike. One of the young men holds a monkey on a chain. The monkey is barely recognisable – it wears
an obscene and eyeless mask. Music trickles from a box and the monkey strains against its chain in a rhythmless desperate dance. A child claps. The monkey dances. Then the men see me and make a hissing noise between their teeth and tongues. Lust and violence in equal parts. I keep walking.

I borrow a bucket from Ibu Ayu and head to the kamar mandi to wash my clothes. The bathroom here is communal and about fifty metres from my bungalow. There's something grounding in the rhythm of scrubbing clothes. It's the same rhythm you find when you're kneading dough, or working with earth or clay.

I'm just about finished when I hear a man's voice outside the bathroom.

‘A week. Maybe ten days. No more.'

I can't quite place it. It's quietly authoritative; almost patronising, suggestive of someone who is used to having his orders obeyed.

‘That's not enough, we need longer.' This time it's Bapak Joni, his tone gently persuading. ‘It won't happen overnight. They say he's already sick. At least this way the police won't get involved. A little more time and then we won't need to –'

‘We don't have more time,' the man says.

Bapak Joni sighs.

Their footsteps fade.

Thunder jars above the coconut trees. Shadows, sticky as tar, spread beneath palm and awning. I gather my wet clothes and run for my bungalow before the rain. Hopefully the afternoon will bring wind or muggy sunshine so my clothes will dry.

Just as the rain starts to lash down over the thatch, it occurs to me who the other voice might belong to. I'm not certain, won't put money on it, but it sounded like Abd al Hakim, the Arab-Indo looking guy from the soccer game.

There's a restless energy in Matt's movements. He leans over the balcony rail, face turned toward the evening ocean-roar, hands clenching and unclenching in excitement.

‘You alright?'

He doesn't answer, just grins.

‘Get any waves today?'

‘Yeah.' There's a manic junky gleam in his pupils. It's obvious he's been in the water all day: the wrinkles at the corners of his eyes have whitened against his flushed, dark skin like the roots of tiny plants in soil. I want to brush them with my fingertips, to kiss them.

‘Whereabouts?'

He laughs and puts a finger to his lips.

I roll my eyes – surfers are always so precious about their secret spots! ‘Do you want a beer?'

‘Sure.' He slews into the seat next to me and stretches out his legs.

A twisting, salty breeze jostles my bras and undies. They hang above us on a makeshift clothesline. I hope nothing falls on Matt's head.

His next question makes me forget the undies.

‘So I've been meanin' to ask ya.'

‘Mmm?'

‘You got a bloke back home?'

I take a panicked sip of my beer and keep my gaze fixed straight ahead. On the lamp. On the zeppelin-blur of burning insects. Mumble, ‘Sort of. We're having a break.' Then quickly, ‘And you? You got a missus at home? Wait – you're married, right?'

‘Yeah …' he draws it out, perhaps to give himself more time to think.

‘I've got a missus at home,' he says at last. ‘We're not married. When she was over here I told everyone we were, just makes it a bit easier, bit more culturally acceptable.'

‘Oh yeah. So how long's it been since you've seen her?'

‘Nearly eight months. She reckons if I don't come home by the end of the month it's off.'

‘She doesn't want to live here?'

He rolls the bottle between his palms. ‘Nah, not really, eh. When she was here we were living at my place in the village. It's pretty rustic. Sporadic electricity, water from the well. I'm away heaps with work and then when I'm back, I'm usually away surfing. So Gemma had a lot of time by herself, which she doesn't handle very well. She didn't really try to learn any Bahasa, so she couldn't communicate with our neighbours, and she reckoned she had nothing in common with any of the expats – hated Marika, the Kiwi chick you met the other night.'

The corners of my mouth twitch into a smile. I can understand that. Marika certainly did her best to rub me up the wrong way and clearly has a thing for Matt.

‘Then I think it was just a lot of hassle, you know, being a chick. With the local blokes. One time I was out surfing and I left Gem on the beach. I paddled out and once I was out there, checked to make sure everything was cool. There was a bunch of guys circling her. One minute – empty beach at the edge of the jungle. Next minute, eleven guys.'

I pick at the edge of my beer label. ‘That's hectic. What happened?'

‘I was shitting myself. I got a wave straight in and threw out some chat, greased some palms and it was all cool. But if I hadn't been there, there would have been some serious trouble.'

The breeze tongues wet and hot through the palms.

‘So, to cut a long story short, she got crook with malaria. I was away, surfing this island off Sumba with three mad cunts, the Scar Reef Boys: an American, a Kiwi and an Aussie. Scored some epic, heart-stopping waves. Fuck!' His eyes glaze a moment with the memory. ‘Anyway, by the time I got back Gemma had pissed off.'

If I hadn't been a surfer, I would've thought he was an arsehole. Wouldn't have understood the obsession, that hunt for the perfect moment, for those few brief seconds crouched under the curl of the wave, heart in mouth.

It rips countless relationships apart.

‘You don't want to be based in Bali instead and just fly back here for work?'

Matt frowns, crosses his legs the other way. ‘Nah. I don't surf in Bali anymore. It's an absolute circus. On my weeks off, this is where I want to be.' He looks warily over at the Frenchman's bungalow and lowers his voice. ‘An hour and a half from Shane's, toward Padang, there's this series of reefs. You gotta walk off the road and through the rice paddies to get to it. It's set up like a reverse Ulus, only no crowds. That's where I was today. It's unbelievable. This place is
unbelievable
.'

Dusk has moved in fast and the night air has a depth it doesn't have at home: the smell of timber, river, rain and roosters, of salt and smoke.

If only Matt would reach over, rest his fingers, lightly, on the inside of my thigh. Is that part of the deal? Can you do that
when you're having a break from someone? I hadn't talked to Josh about parameters. We hadn't really talked about it at all.

It's as if Matt's read my mind. ‘So what about your bloke? A break eh? That doesn't sound good.'

He leans toward me. ‘If you guys are having a break, am I allowed to do this?' He brushes a strand of hair from my face, then lets his fingers linger for a moment on my cheek.

‘I dunno. Maybe,' I murmur.

‘Six months at Shane's is a tough gig, even for an extra five grand.' He lets his hand drop.

‘I just don't feel like I can go back. It'd seem like I'd failed. And I'm bored at home. I mean Josh is telling me all the time that I should be using my head, aiming a bit higher than working at the backpackers, or the pub, says maybe I should enrol at uni.' I roll my head back. ‘But I've just been feeling so trapped … I had to get out. And maybe,' I hesitate. ‘Well, maybe I'm not in love with him anymore.'

There. I said it.

‘Then you've gotta tell him.'

‘Tell him?' I repeat dumbly.

‘You can't leave him hanging. That's not cool. That's not fair.'

‘You're hardly one to talk!'

He shrugs with a half smile. ‘Crack us another beer there?'

I do, fix one for myself, then tuck my knees under my chin.

It's between us now, this electric sense of possibility. Yes. No. Maybe. Maybe with more beer. I swerve, change subject. ‘Anyway. I've been meaning to ask you. Abd al Hakim. You know him?'

‘Abd al Hakim?' His accent is immaculate. He leans back. ‘White beard, hooked nose, real tall? He's the head of Batu Batur's main mosque. Not the kind of bloke you want to piss off.'

‘Shit.'

Matt arches a salt-stiff eyebrow and grins. ‘Yeah?'

I tell him about the soccer game Abd al Hakim thought I started among the girls. ‘I mean, I wish I'd stuck up for them. I totally think the girls here, whether they're in a jilbab or not, should have the opportunity to play sport if they want.'

Matt scrunches his brow in challenge. ‘Yeah, but it's not really our place to change it. We don't live here. It's not our culture.'

Matt would feel this, profoundly, having grown up where he did, always on the outside.

‘I agree with you, I guess, but I also think you can empower the women to start making the changes themselves. You can give them the tools, the ideas!'

‘But that's just the point. The local crew here
don't want
Westerners coming in and telling them how to do things. Telling their women to tear off their jilbabs. Telling their men they can't fish from certain spots, 'cause now they're the private property of bules!'

His thumbnail snicks an agitated rhythm on the bottle. It's a long thumbnail, in the style of the ancient hero Bima, in the style of some of the men here.

‘You talk about the empowerment of women. Have you heard of the women's sharia patrol up in Aceh?'

‘I haven't.'

‘Right. So there's this patrol unit up in Aceh. All chicks. They cruise around every Friday in the work ute and pick up blokes who've skipped the afternoon prayers. Fishermen havin' a quiet durry with their mates, fucken shop owners, you name it. The blokes get dragged back to the station and whipped.' He laughs cynically. ‘Empowerment of women? I'd say the chicks have got all the empowerment they want.'

Matt slides down in his chair and places the bottle near his feet. ‘Pen, just between you and me, I reckon Abd al Hakim is keen to get rid of all the expats here. It's partly due to Shane but there are also bigger issues at play. Think about the bombings.' He stabs his finger toward the earth, heavy with the smell of rain. ‘This is your terrorist training ground right here. After East Java, the madrasah around Batu Batur are some of the most radical in the country.'

Madrasah. At home the word implies something rigid, dark, synonymous with terrorist training schools, evocative of bearded, backward men drilling the Qur'an into the heads of children, creating an army of Islamic automatons, of terrorists.

Matt lowers his voice. ‘Listen, mate, I'm tellin' you this 'cause you're a pretty cool chick and I think you should be careful.'

I'm about to mention how it was probably Abd al Hakim here this morning, talking to Joni about something, when he stops the movement of my lips with a finger. Then he takes my hand. In a single, slow movement he pulls me from my chair and straddles me on his lap.

Slips my dress off my shoulders.

Brushes his nose, lightly, along my collarbone.

‘Do you know what I've noticed about you, Penny?'

He bites the words into my throat with the white edges of his teeth.

‘You ask a lot of questions, and you're a really good listener …'

His cock strains toward me, against his boardies. I want him to nail me with it.

‘… but you don't give much away about yourself.'

He takes my chin between his thumb and forefinger. I swoon, dizzy on his smell, dizzy with the feeling that I'm with a man who's strange, who's surging and fierce, who's looking at me like I'm earthy, a woman, not a doll, not a child, not a dream.

Suddenly a motorbike horn sounds over the fence and we both startle.

There's a man on the other side. Idling. Lighting up a kretek. He raises his hand. ‘Hello Mister!' he calls.

In the morning I awake to find a single red hibiscus on the pillow next to me. My skin is singing. Last night was the first night in ages that I made love without thinking; without thoughts of the past, the future, without doubt. Matt was the circuit-breaker. I'm going to call Josh today. Break it. Tell him I'm staying for six months, maybe longer. Tell him it's over. If I can spend a night trembling under another man's touch, another man's tongue, and not feel even the slightest pang of remorse, then it should be over. Not that I expect anything more from Matt, because I don't, I don't dare.

I spend a little while moving around my room, sarong on hips, adjusting the sheets, smelling the pillows, rearranging my books of poetry. Then I grab my toiletries bag and a towel and bounce down the stairs toward the bathroom for a shower. There're only two: they're positioned side by side and separated by a wall – almost to the ceiling. I bang shut and lock the door, then unwind my sarong and hang it up on a hook.