Troppo (6 page)

This is not what I imagined in the month leading up to my flight. It was supposed to be a chance to run away – no, not to run away, but to take a breather from Josh, create a bit of distance. Instead, the sense of claustrophobia has followed me here. I've landed a job with a bloke who's gone troppo, who's loathed by locals and expats alike and apparently cuts the fingers off his staff. I probably should take off. I'm not bound by any contract, don't owe anything to Shane. It's ten days until I'm due to start and as far as I know, he's not aware I'm here. I can get on a bus and leave tomorrow, head back to Kuta, maybe find some work, spend my weekends shooting arak and dancing with a bunch of people I've met a hundred times before and never met, because along those narrow debauched lanes everything is always the same and always changed and the only thing that's certain is that it's easy.

But I don't want easy, don't want to go back to WA – I'm more open here, I laugh more, I feel more dangerously, boldly alive. And what if it's all just rumour, the stories about Shane? Before I make any decisions, I need to find out for myself. I'll head to his surf camp tomorrow.

Cahyati emerges from the kitchen, balancing a tall glass of coffee and three glasses of tea on a tray. She places the coffee in front of me (it's my fourth) then sets the teas down for the backpackers. The English guy snorts.

‘What's this then? I asked for tea with milk.'

The girl stands there, tray trembling against her thighs and throws me a look of panic.

‘Ada susu?' I ask the girl.

She nods and dashes back into the kitchen, returning a few moments later with a punctured can of condensed milk. She brushes a few ants from the side of the can and places it on the table. One of the German girls lifts the tin and turns it over in her hand, lower lip buckled in disgust.

‘You've got to be kidding me,' says the English guy.

‘Ja, stop complaining. At least is cheap to stay here,' says the German girl, placing the tin down.

‘But I think Shane's Sumatran Oasis is a little bit cheaper maybe.' The other girl is poised over a
Lonely Planet
with a highlighter. ‘It's a surf resort but it says there are dorms. We should go this afternoon.'

The English guy shrugs, sniffs his tea, then tosses it over the pond of waterlilies.

That afternoon I'm feeling nervous, edgy, bored. I can't focus on my book, can't think about anything much except the party last night. Even the memory of the bloke on the beach pales in comparison. I head off on another walk, not up the beach this time, no way, but into town.

The police station is about halfway in. Did Franz and Adalie report the incident? Have the police found out who was throwing rocks at the house? There's probably no harm in asking. The police are gathered in a damp courtyard sipping coffee from small plastic cups and smoking kreteks. When I call out a hello, one of them springs to his feet and leads me back to the reception desk inside. I tell him exactly what happened, then ask if they know who did it, if it was just kids mucking around, if this kind of thing happened often. The sides of his mouth drag down, as if by fishhooks. Idiot! It would've been better to soften the query with a permisi, a maaf, with some tactful circular conversation. So I slip fifty thousand rupiah across the counter, and say, ‘Sorry Pak, perhaps this might help?' The officer looks at the fifty. Looks at me. Takes the fifty. Then tells me they don't know for sure but are investigating the incident.

I end up back at the bungalows with my feet up and
en passant
propped on a knee. After a while, the Frenchman ducks through the blue door. He places his board under a tree
then waves for me to join him on his balcony. He doesn't look at me but stares at the ocean: it's insipid, the ribbed grey of old shells. There are no silhouettes.

It begins to rain.

After a while I say, ‘Emile, have you been here in Indonesia for long?'

He looks startled as if from sleep. There are rockets of darkness in his eyes.

‘I, no, not so long.'

‘Where were you before Indo, have you been travelling for a while?'

‘Oui. In a way. I've just come from Côte d'Ivoire. I am a photographer, a photojournalist. A few weeks ago nine French soldiers were killed by airplane. Now the situation is very –' he flicks his wrist, ‘– instable?'

‘Unstable, yeah.'

The rain makes coral-like clicks on the roof.

‘So will you work here?'

‘No, here is for surf, maybe do some yoga, relax. Some horrible things I saw in that country.'

We fall back into silence.

It's one of those sweeping and sublime Indonesian dusks that presage disaster. The sky has the dark cracked texture of snake fruit except for just ahead, where it smoulders lava-like through the palm fronds. Men drag wooden carts over their shoulders, heads down, dusty as dokar horses. An old woman pedals a bicycle; her tiny granddaughter is tucked into a basket on the front. Eventually the buildings give way to rice fields; they run from the mountains all the way to the palm-fringed edge of the coast. Streams of wet light run in the folds between rice paddies.

Shane's is a long ride out of town. I didn't intend to arrive so late in the day but on the way I checked out several side roads leading to the coast to scope out the surf – one black-sand beachie had some form. Then I stopped for coffee alongside a waterfall foaming with detergent. Now at last, the turn-off to Shane's. The track's riddled with tree roots and runs for about fifty metres before opening on to a clearing. In the clearing, there are two men sitting on a log. One jumps to his feet.

‘You looking for Mister Shane?'

‘Yep.'

‘No bag?'

‘No bag.'

‘Okay. My friend watch motorbike so no stealing.'

‘Okay.'

‘Two thousand rupiah.'

‘Hey? I've got a job here, I start next week!'

‘Does Mister Shane know you coming?'

‘Yeah! Well, no. He doesn't know I'm coming today.'

He sticks out his hand. ‘How about a cigarette?'

I pull a crumpled packet from the back pocket of my pants and offer them. The men inspect the pack and scoff. They're poor-men's cigarettes: filter-less, tar-full, smoked by becak riders, fishermen and kaki lima owners. Not the cigarettes smoked by employees of a bule.

‘Two thousand rupiah,' the man says again. Grumbling, I fish out the money.

The man says something to his friend in a quick snicker of Lampung, then gestures for me to follow him. We cross a river on a swinging wooden bridge. It's only wide enough for one person. I trail my hand along the wire railing for balance.

Shane's Sumatran Oasis is just past the bridge. A dim bulb lights a back verandah. I'm at the door before I realise my guide is hanging back. I catch the crouching shine of his shins, the crumbling point of his cigarette.

‘What's wrong?'

He shakes his head and waves his fingertips.

I turn and knock on the door. A muffled voice shouts for me to wait. There's the sound of vigorous footsteps. Shane swings open the screen door and for a moment, looking up at him, I'm stunned. From the stories I had imagined a mean Aussie bloke in his fifties or sixties with a beer gut, in a blue singlet, flaunting a spray of stars across his bicep. But Shane looks like he was once an ironman, an Olympic swimmer, Laird Hamilton's Aussie twin. His hair is surf-mag blond, thick not thinning, and it falls sideways over his eyes. His frame fills the door. He's looking at me with frank, warm interest. No way, I
think. This
couldn't
be Shane. But there's also no way it could be a Swedish backpacker – the bloke has the stubble and sun lines and brazen don't-give-a-fuck look of an Aussie.

‘Shane,' he says, sticking out his hand. ‘Welcome.'

I shake his hand mutely.

He looks amused. Must happen to him all the time.

I follow him down a corridor plastered with posters of waves: Raglan, J-Bay, Mavericks, Padang Padang. At the end, a huge wooden balcony serves as an open-air living area. I expected the place would be like a shipwreck, full of sand and green with mould. Instead, it's modern, Western, and full of toys. There's a flat-screen television playing bits of last year's Quicksilver Pro, beanbags, padded board racks, low coffee tables stacked with surf magazines, a pool table, fussbal table, massage table, hammocks, a surf-check tower and a bar. Two-thirds of the balcony is shaded by a wooden roof, the other third is for the Bintang umbrellas, daybeds and deckchairs facing the surf. Off to the right, a corridor leads to rooms attached to the main building. Over the edge of the balcony, wedged between frangipanis and jasmine, are half a dozen bungalows.

‘So, what can I do for you this evening? You lookin' for a room?' Shane asks.

‘Not exactly …'

‘Not exactly? How about some dinner then, or perhaps I can tempt you with a drink?'

‘Actually, I'm your new manager. Penelope.'

‘Ah,
nice
. Penny. I can call you that, right? I heard you were in town. Shall we grab a drink?'

He doesn't wait for me to answer, just strides across to the edge of the balcony and sets himself down in a chair.

The moon's rising through scissor-edged palms. ‘Well?' he calls back to me.

‘Sure.'

I'm wary. Wary of the charisma. Wary of the mismatch between the stories and the man.

‘Kristi!' he calls out, sliding a kretek from the packet. ‘Rokok?' he asks, nudging the packet toward me.

‘Nggak.'

His eyes are close together and focused. ‘So you speak a bit of Indo then.'

‘Yeah. I lived here for a year when I was a kid.'

He shoots a flame from the lighter, takes a drag. ‘Rotten habit,' he apologises, aspirating clove-warm smoke. ‘Only in Indo.'

I laugh. He wouldn't be the first non-smoker to get hooked here. Even I'm partial to the occasional kretek.

A girl is suddenly next to us. She wears a pale cotton dress. Her shoulders are bare. She wouldn't be sixteen.

‘Kristi, some drinks. What do you drink, love?' he asks me. ‘Beer? Vodka?'

‘You got gin?'

‘Gin it is.'

The skin around the girl's eyes is black, as if pinched; the eyes themselves are as blank as unhatched eggs. She blinks.

‘You heard our guest. A gin and tonic. And another beer for me. And please, Kristi, serve it properly this time, yeah?' When Kristi's out of earshot he says conspiratorially, ‘You gotta watch 'em. If you're not careful they'll fuck everything up.'

‘Mmm,' I murmur, in what I hope is a neutral tone. ‘So you guys don't talk in Indo?'

‘Nope. These people don't know I can speak their language. It's better that way.'

‘Right.'

Beyond the trees I can hear the dark heave of the ocean. The
sound is always more distinct at night. ‘So you're pretty close to the surf here then?'

‘Thirty-second walk to the water, fifteen-minute paddle to the best dry-season right-hander you'll find on mainland Sumatra.'

‘What a spot!'

‘Yeah, well, I guess like anywhere it has its challenges.' He glances over his shoulder. ‘What's taking her so long?'

Five minutes in and already, inevitably, I'm baited to placate him. ‘I'm sure she's not far,' I say quickly. Then, ‘Do you still surf?'

‘Be mad not to,' he says. ‘But not as much as I used to. Had a couple of years on the tour when I was younger but ended up getting dropped. Blew it. Got distracted by beautiful women and drugs.'

He gives me a guileless grin and I find myself grinning back.

The girl is behind us again, waif-like, balancing a tray. She sets my glass on a low wicker table and fits Shane's beer to his hand.

‘Thanks sweetheart.' He takes a long swing. ‘I probably had more time in the water when I first moved here. But at the moment all my energy is going into keeping this place together. Keeping myself out of trouble.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘The locals here are fanatics. It's not chilled out, like Bali. I was seeing a girl for a while. She was from Bandar Lampung. A couple of days after I brought her here, a group of blokes from the mosque came round demanding to know who she was and where she was from and if I'd married her. They said no woman was to turn up and live with me unless she'd signed their book first.'

‘What did you do?'

‘Told 'em I'd do as I fucken well pleased!'

‘So is it worth it then, staying here? You know, if the local crew aren't that friendly?'

Shane pulverises the kretek stump, adjusts a paw around his beer. ‘When I first came here, to Batu Batur, I saw potential: great waves, cheap land, unbelievable location. I started with a losmen, extended that to some bungalows, then to this … but it's been an uphill fucken battle. Do you know why?'

He's not interested in an answer. I put my mouth to the cool edge of my gin.

He gestures in the direction of Kristi. ‘The locals,' he says in a low voice. ‘They're either fanatics, lazy cunts or thieves. And you've got no idea how much money it costs. You think it's cheap to live here? Wrong. Something breaks, I gotta get it fixed, right? Even now, after livin' here for nearly ten years, they charge me twice the amount the locals pay!' The neck of his beer glistens. ‘Then there's the issue of staffing. They're always complaining they don't get enough money. But why would I pay them any more? They hardly work as it is, the men especially. They spend most of the day squatting around smoking durries while the women do all the work. I only employ women now but, Christ, don't get me started on the local women!'

My steely silence gets him started; he mistakes it for attentiveness.

‘Dolls to look at, the most beautiful women in the world. When I first came to Indonesia, to Yogyakarta to study, I rented a house opposite a local high school. When I wasn't at uni I sat out the front and watched the girls.'