Troppo (4 page)

I take a stab. ‘Is that because of Shane?'

‘In Batu Batur, I reckon it's directly 'cause of Shane.' He gives me a hard, disarmingly intimate look. His eyes are grey. Or maybe green. A subtle underwater colour.

There's so much I want to ask him. Like, what's the deal with Shane? What was it like growing up in the South Pacific? What did his parents do? How long has he been here, how long is he staying, are there terrorist groups here?

But these questions will have to wait because for the moment we're skimming, skimming in the way you have to before you can circle back, start talking with depth.

‘Are you working here as well?'

‘Yeah, I'm a pilot.'

‘A pilot!'

More questions!

‘With Siliwangi Air. They fly out of Bandar Lampung.'

‘Yeah, right. So you're obviously not working at the moment?'

‘Nah, got a few weeks off. Have a place here in the village.' He makes a vague gesture in the direction of town.

‘Cool. So where's the most interesting place in Indo you've flown?'

His tongue rests on his top teeth for a moment. They're straight, white, strong. ‘That's a hard one, Pen. But I'd have to say Nias and probably Timor Leste.'

‘Why?'

‘Well, the last time I flew to Nias with a local crew, some
hectic stuff was going down. Old, old rituals, black magic, human sacrifices, shit like that.'

He waits for my derision, for another question, but now I'm silent. The stories that come out of Nias are not the kind of stories you laugh at. Not the kind of stories you forget.

‘So anyway, the Javanese crew I flew with refused to go back on a second run. Said it was too dangerous. The flight path ended up being scrapped. I personally didn't see anything. But the place has a weird feel about it.'

‘And how about Timor?'

‘Christ,' he says. ‘What can I say about Timor? For years the Australian government did
nothing
about Indo's occupation, too busy licking Soeharto's balls to keep “stability in the region”. And then in ninety-nine … Did you know that the hills around Dili are bald? No trees grow on them. When the Timorese fled the capital to hide in the hills – we're talking children, women, elderly people – the Indos dumped chemicals on them. Fucken chemicals. Anyway. What are you up to tomorrow night?'

I shrug, trying to appear nonchalant.

‘I've been invited to a barbie. Just with some local crew and some bules who own land and have houses here. I was wondering if you wanted to come with me?'

‘Sure!'

Perhaps it comes out too eager. I'm aware of the way he fills the space next to me. He smells like man and salt; present but not present, vamped by the close proximity of the sea. Something stirs in my gut. I'd like to whip him into long dangerous conversation, like to open him, the same way the Indos open us, only much more deeply.

But he's standing up, stretching his legs, lifting my Aqua bottle to his mouth.

‘See ya tomorrow then,' he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He catches my eyes and holds them.

‘What time do you reckon you'll swing past?' I say.

Grey intimacy quickly turns to tease. ‘Jam karet, sayang!'

I laugh, embarrassed. Of course. ‘Rubber time'. Matt might turn up at five tomorrow night, or at six, or at seven.

‘Oi, Pen,' he says as he's halfway down the steps.

‘Yeah?

‘You surf?'

‘Not since I moved to Perth. Hoping to get back into it, though.'

He reaches the grass, looks back up. ‘We should go for a wave together.'

‘Awesome, I'd love to!'

‘Cool. You're on.'

He turns and walks through the garden to the front gate, nodding to Ibu Ayu as he passes. She continues to fan herself with a bit of old newspaper. Then she turns her face to me and shakes her head.

Ibu and I walk to the morning market together. One hand steadies the empty basket on her head, the other steadies her belly.

‘Masih lama?'

‘Not long,' she replies, ‘maybe six week. Hopefully we lucky, hopefully this one a boy. Penny punya berapa saudara?'

‘Just one sister. Younger.'

‘But no boys?'

‘No.'

She laughs in disbelief.

I haven't been up this early for a couple of months. Leading up to Indo, I was working at a backpackers in the city for at least a night a week and did the close shift at a pub in Cottesloe on the weekends. Although I usually got home around two, I didn't have any trouble sleeping through Josh's mobile phone alarm. He set it for five thirty every morning so he could train.

Now, despite the fact it's still dark, it seems as if no-one's in bed. Women sweep piles of rubbish into the gutters then set them alight, and all along the street is the soft, black crackle of plastic. As we near the market there's a sudden detonation of white noise, feedback from the mosque's PA. The muezzin's voice lifts rich and sonorous. When he pauses for breath, the call to prayer from dozens of other mosques can be heard drifting ash-like down the mountain valleys.

‘Mau pisang goreng?' Ibu asks as we reach the first kaki lima at the edge of the market. A blinking yellow bulb is suspended above a pan of spitting oil. Battered bits of banana are slowly turning gold.

‘Definitely!'

Ibu orders two thousand worth and the vendor hands us a warm paper bag transparent with oil.

The morning markets are busy. Women turn fruit over in their hands, men sip coffee from plastic cups and children scamper figure eights in their pyjamas. In the parking lot, buses are loaded with screaming goats and baskets of petrol-coloured fish. It's just after five and the market is in full swing. It makes sense to start early; this is the only time of day it's cool enough to do anything.

Ibu moves off to barter for some vegetables and I crouch in front of an old woman selling rambutans. They're stacked neatly on a batik sarong; cool, spiny sunsets, red and gold and chartreuse.

‘Ya, ya, enak!' The old woman is buzzing on betel nut; she nods enthusiastically and licks a set of vintage-red teeth. None of the younger women in Batu Batur chew betel. They don't seem to like the idea of accessorising their jeans or jackets with red mouthfuls of teeth.

‘Berapa?' I ask.

The woman quotes an honest price so I don't bother haggling. I scoop them into my bag and look around for Ibu. She's gossiping with a friend.

Her friend touches the tips of her fingers to the tips of my fingers and smiles. Then Ibu excuses us and we move off, bumping past stands of cassettes and combs. She tells me there's only one woman selling kain ikat at the market that morning but in a couple of days there'll be more. We have a look at it anyway:
the woman has four pieces but the fabric is in poor condition, stippled with mould.

After lapping the market, Ibu and I walk home. The morning sun is watery; it flickers through the fronds of the coconut trees as if reflecting off a puddle. Over the last few days the rain has held off until two or three in the afternoon. Then it has dropped in sheets, whitely, blindingly, until five or six in the evening.

‘Would you like to see something?' Ibu asks when we get back to the bungalows.

‘Of course!'

‘Wait here.'

The girl I saw yesterday is in the kitchen. She looks up at me, curious. She's about sixteen.

‘Who's that?' I ask when Ibu returns, carrying a bundle in her arms.

‘My sister's daughter. Cahyati. She's here to work. My sister live in the mountains but have five other children, so not much money for the food. So that one coming here, one, maybe two years.' She shrugs and places the bundle carefully on the tabletop. Inside is an extraordinary old tapis weaving. Shimmers of gold thread are worked through earthy bands of colour. Distilled in this textile is the whole process of its becoming: silk cocoon for silk yarn, wax from a beehive for stretching the yarn, the root of lemongrass as a preserving agent. The colours are drawn painstakingly from the bark of trees. Rambutan for the black, durian for the chocolate, betel nut for the reds. At the bottom of the tapis is an unusual fringe of mirrors and cowrie shells.

Dad would love this piece.

Ibu is looking at my face intently, waiting for a response.

‘Kasih ke saya!' I joke. ‘As an oleh-oleh.' Give it to me, as a souvenir!

How many times have I been asked to hand over skirts and
sunnies and shirts and purses?

Satisfied, Ibu tells me she wore it at her wedding. Before her, her mother had also worn it, as had her grandmother and her great-grandmother. ‘If this one is a girl,' she pats her stomach, ‘she will wear it next.'

Given its age, it's in good condition. Most old Indonesian weavings are preserved in museums. The climate here, the hot wet air, chews into fabrics and rots them – like the weavings I'd been shown at the morning market. It's difficult to find pieces over fifty years old. But this weaving has been well looked after. I feel humbled by how long it's been in Ibu Ayu's family, by that ritualistic connection she has to her ancestors.

Dad holds a reverence for material artefacts or heirlooms, but to us he passed on the immaterial – wild tales told to my sister Lucy and I on camping trips along the Fitzgerald Coast. When he got started, Mum would sigh. We'd hear about how he weathered a cyclone on a leaky copra boat in PNG; how in Madagascar there were spiders the size of dinner plates that chased your shadow. We'd hear stories about Indonesia: puppet shows that went all night in the palace in Yogyakarta, how he'd stomached a thick mix of pig's blood and chilli at a wedding in Ubud, how you used to be able to buy bags of hash from topless Frenchwomen in Kuta. ‘Enough!' Mum would say at this point. ‘Girls, shut your ears.' If he was feeling slack on the storytelling front, we got poetry. Dad especially dug Snyder and Baxter, enthralled us with poems about sea lions, swamps and fog; the flavour of sandstone, and cold like strychnine in the veins.

‘Mau kopi?' Ibu asks, carefully folding the tapis.

‘I'd love a coffee.'

‘Cahyati!' Ibu yells toward the kitchen.

Cahyati appears, wiping her hands on a tea towel.

‘Kopi hitam,' Ibu jerks her head at me.

Cahyati turns without a sound.

The coffee arrives at the same time as some other travellers, a dirty dreadlocked trio, one Pommie and two chisel-faced German girls. They demand Ibu Ayu move another bed into the bungalow so the three of them can sleep in one room to cut the cost. Ibu Ayu relents but tells them they can move the bed themselves. I drain my coffee, slide from my seat and go and find Bapak Joni.

Joni is in the car park crouched next to a motorbike, a silver fan of tools at his toes.

‘Hey Joni! What are you up to?'

He gestures to the bike and tells me a bule fell into a river on it a couple of weeks ago.

‘Fell into a river!' I exclaim. ‘What an idiot! How did that happen?'

His fingers move deftly around the spark plugs, chopping, changing, rearranging. ‘Who knows,' he says with a wry smile.

I crouch nearby in the shade, watch for a bit, wonder how to begin.

Joni begins for me, slipping in to Indonesian. ‘So my wife tells me you've got a job with Shane?'

Relieved, I rush, ‘Yeah, yeah, I start next week. Ibu said you had a bit to do with Shane when he first moved here?'

Joni doesn't meet my eyes and speaks slowly, but as his story gathers momentum so does his pace. Joni was the first local to surf here. Well, not quite local, both his parents were Javanese but he grew up in Batu Batur. When he was a kid, some Aussie surfers had come through the area and he offered to be their guide. He says he was amazed, watching them surf, says he'd never seen people having so much fun. Every time the boys came in from the water for rice and fish, he asked to have a go of a board. Eventually, when they headed off to the Mentawais, they
left one for him. Despite it being bruised from water damage, badly patched up after dings with coral, it was still a board, and Joni taught himself to surf. When Shane turned up maybe five years later, there was only a trickle of surfers passing through and Joni was stoked to have someone to paddle out with. He took Shane to every unnamed, pitching wave he'd discovered. Shane repaid him by bullying and bribing his way onto a piece of land that had originally been a national park. The land fronted a perfect right-hand wave with a fast, whackable wall and the occasional barrel section. Once the deal was sealed and construction was underway, Shane banned Joni from paddling out at ‘his' spot. Told him if he wanted to surf there, he'd have to pay, or be staying at his resort.

‘So what did you do? Weren't you furious at him?'

‘Ya, in every country there are good and bad people. Not all bule are like Mister Shane.'

‘But what about people in this town, why don't they just get rid of him?'

Joni's face flushes. ‘Bribes,' he says. ‘Shane gives the police bribes.'

‘But most business owners pay bribes to the police, don't they, for “security”, to stay open, if they're serving alcohol?'

‘Yeah, but Shane pays them even more.'

I think about this for a moment, then ask, ‘Joni, do the local people like having bules here?'

Joni wipes his hands on a rag. ‘Here, they're still village people. Their thinking is primitive.'

I'm shocked for a moment at his choice of words, before remembering that his family is Javanese. The Javanese are notorious for their snobbery, their belief that they are culturally superior, more sophisticated than people in other parts of the archipelago.

He says, ‘Maybe they see the tourists here, see them surfing, doing nothing, while they work hard seven days a week. And then they see a bule like Shane … For me, I always think one day my children might go to Australia and I hope people there are kind to them. So I try and help the foreigners here to find the waves, see the waterfalls, the culture. We have to be friendly, to be open, to give. That's what our religion teaches us.'