When the World Was Steady (13 page)

Max, semi-somnolent, scratched himself. This was the big day. He rolled over and tried to go back to sleep, but instead found himself listening, with his whole body, to the tiniest sounds. He heard the creak of his father’s door, and then nothing.

It was the silence that was telling: if it had been Buddy, Max would have heard his jaunty, heavy tread, and perhaps a whistle or some muttering. When it was Suchi, there was a little noise, breathy cooings as the lovers parted at Buddy’s door, speaking their empty lovers’ language for public benefit. But silence meant it was Jenny, slipping out and down the road, just to wait and walk up again as though coming from home. Max didn’t know why she bothered; everyone knew. And as Suchi got more pregnant and less inclined to love, the dawn was increasingly punctuated by what Max named Jenny’s moment of silence.

Sometimes he imagined, as a joke, the morning when Emmy might emerge from that bedroom. He would hear a prim clearing of the throat, the swishing of her skirt on the stairs. It was hilarious because it was unthinkable, but even as he taunted himself with it, he knew it would be the worst betrayal. Worse, even, than Jenny’s, in a way. The whole point of Emmy was that she wasn’t part of it, and not being part of it, she was on his side. In her peculiar, conservative way, she was good enough fun, as well as proof to Buddy that Max ought to be taken seriously.

Max kicked the sheet and ploughed his head further into the pillow. Every night when he went to bed, an oval gecko dropping lay on the sheet. It was supposed to mean good luck, but this day ahead was proof that he had no luck. And Jenny’s moment of silence only made it worse: most fathers don’t fuck
girls their sons have kissed, and then remind them of it every morning.

There was noise now, from everywhere. He heard Emmy’s voice. He didn’t hear his father moving, and decided Buddy must have gone out before Jenny. Max couldn’t ever sustain his anger against him for very long. There were times when he loved his father, smoking dope with him or reminiscing about the relationship they had barely had. They laughed over Buddy’s visits to Sydney, the trips to Luna Park or the zoo, when, in between daredevil rides or animal pens, Buddy and Chris (he had been Chris then, after all) dished the dirt to each other about Chris’s stern mother, or about Buddy’s mother even, a wide old woman who tried crabbily to control the lives of her son and grandchildren. They could laugh still, remembering remembering. They could talk about Chris’s trips to the sheep station and his childhood fear of the kangaroos leaping in the distance.

Can you really hate someone who makes you laugh, someone who loves you unconditionally? But then, Max was not always sure that unconditional love could be cobbled together of those occasional afternoons where Buddy did his best to charm an eager son. And what of now: did Buddy feel any more for Max than he felt for Suchi, or Aimée, or K’tut? Then there was the rest, the secrets, the women. And back to Jenny.

Max tried, most of all, to feel nothing for his father, to distance Buddy and silence the worst rebellions in his mind. Emmy was a help because she stood so far outside, because she listened, because she didn’t guess the half of it. At least, not before today.

The sun was showing its entire yellow orb, flooding the room with light. Max got up and threw on shorts and a singlet. The whole house felt clammy. He didn’t look into the main room, or call for his father. He brushed through the gate, knocking the careful frangipanis, and set off down the hill towards town.

*

It was early for a
warung
catering to Western clientele to be open, and Emmy was the first customer. The owner, who also ran a gift shop full of carvings, jewellery and clothes, was still hanging out those more solid wares. She was obviously less than delighted to stop doing so for a solitary plump woman, even if she did recognize Emmy as one of the Sparke household. She manifested her displeasure in a feigned ignorance of the English language. But Emmy planted herself at one of the roadside tables in the sunshine and refused to move, and eventually she was served. She ordered coffee, pineapple juice and a slice of chocolate mousse cake (yesterday’s).

The sun was warm, the coffee surprisingly good, and Emmy was suffused with contentment. She did not know why she thought, at such a wholly positive moment, of her mother and her sister, but once she had done so, she felt she ought to write them a letter. Usually, in Double Bay, she phoned every two or three weeks, on a Sunday. But the telephone in Bali, even for Buddy and his guests, was erratic and expensive. She asked the woman for some paper and a pen from the gift shop, and then composed the first letter she had written to her family for years.

While she was writing, Max strode past her table on his way into town, but she didn’t look up, and he, seeing her, chose to pretend he hadn’t. He did not yet know where he was going, and he rather thought he would like to be alone.

When someone came and cast a shadow across her page, Emmy expected it to be him. Or Buddy. In that moment before she looked up, she had an internal flutter of hope that it might be Buddy, a flutter she would not admit even to herself.

Before she had focused her eyes on this blot across the sun, she knew from the voice that it was neither Max nor Buddy.

‘Fancy,’ said Frank. ‘Fancy meeting you here.’ He was turning his crumpled panama in his hands. ‘Mind if I sit down?’ He took her silence for assent. ‘Didn’t think I’d see you again. Thought you were mountain climbing.’ He sneered. ‘Thought maybe you’d fall off.’

‘How charming. The surprise is mutual. I thought
you
were taking the sun in Singaraja.’

‘Did you? Climb? Fall off?’

Emmy closed her eyes. Maybe he would go away.

‘Didn’t make it?’

‘Does it matter? What brings
you
here?’

‘Is this your town, then? I have my reasons. Gets a bit boring, a beach, after a while.’ He called over the owner and ordered a beer, eyeing the woman’s bottom as she walked away. ‘More going on in Ubud. Always is.’

‘I see.’

‘I knew you’d be here, you know. I knew it would be you.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Word travels. The oldest concubine to our lord and master, eh?’

Emmy’s temples thundered. She hadn’t known her face could hold so much blood.

‘Be careful about robbing cradle robbers, my dear.’ He winked. ‘Some infants have sharp teeth.’

‘I have no idea what you’re talking about.’

The beer came, and Frank drank it, guzzling it down almost in one. Emmy decided against sputtering her innocence; such vermin didn’t merit it. Insinuating, always insinuating. But she couldn’t lower her colour. When he was done, he stood to go, and he was back on the road when he called, ‘See you tonight, m’dear.’ Only then did Emmy realize she would have to pay for his drink.

Max didn’t storm through town, exactly, but his pace was far from leisurely. Further along the road, having bypassed Emmy, he averted his eyes to avoid one of Buddy’s friends, the Chief of Police. When Nyoman, the tailor’s daughter, danced out into the street and clasped his arm with her eight-year-old hands, it was harder to keep going. She wanted to talk. She wanted to grow up and be a doctor, she knew already, and she wanted to tell Max all about it. Now. He patted her head and kept walking, but more
slowly, with Nyoman wriggling and snatching at his side. She babbled in perfect English, but Max wasn’t listening. He wanted only to get far enough from his father’s house to be free of its torments and secrets. If only for an hour.

Maybe he would travel around the island on his own. Maybe he would go back to Sydney early and forget about this whole thing. Why did he really need to know his father, when his father was so much trouble? Having parents, he thought, was easily as difficult as having children must be.

Nyoman did not go away. Max turned down the Monkey Forest Road with the little girl as she explained how she would save the lives of animals and people both, all over the world. She was still with him when he reached the dip in the land that marked the beginning of the forest.

The trees and vines sprang up suddenly and made an arch above the asphalt, a jungle tunnel. Nyoman held his hand now, firmly, and her voice dropped to a whisper, but Max did not stop. He was too busy hearing the dawn silence, Jenny’s sly egress from Buddy’s bed. He could have been walking with his eyes shut.

Max saw the monkeys all at the same time, the moment when he realized Nyoman’s singsong had stopped altogether and been replaced by a chatter that was not birdsong. Monkeys of all sizes were everywhere, great-grandfathers, infants clinging to the necks of howling mothers, macho youths batting at each other. They dangled from the branches overhead, they squatted in the undergrowth, they ran out into the road. Each one was jabbering and squealing, and every black monkey’s eye was on Max and Nyoman, each wise, sharp face following the humans’ every move. Some had their long, furry arms extended, waggling their prehensile thumbs.

‘This is a very bad place, Max,’ said Nyoman. ‘Why have you brought us here?’

‘What do they want?’ He didn’t want Nyoman to know that
he was afraid too. ‘Why do you think they’re looking at us?’

‘My mother says they want our souls. My mother says that they are naughty spirits.’

They were coming closer. The more adventurous monkeys were sidling right up to them, shrieking.

‘We should have brought offerings,’ said Nyoman. ‘The tourists feed them peanuts. I’m frightened.’ Her arms were around his waist.

‘Don’t be scared, kiddo. If they’re just greedy, we’ll get rid of them.’

He bent and scooped up a handful of dust and pebbles, which he flung at the most aggressive monkeys. Enraged, they simply howled louder and advanced, taking courage in their numbers, an army of maddened creatures more agile than Max could have suspected.

‘Run!’ Max yelled, trying to disentangle himself from the little girl at his side, slapping at her hands, ‘Run!’

She did, back up the road, towards the break in the trees. He saw her running, and the monkeys loping angrily towards him, baring little white teeth and pushing with their strong, furry arms, and he hesitated. He thought if he could throw them something—his watch, maybe—they would stop. He wasn’t sure he could get away.

And then it struck him: from deep in his stomach, he roared. Louder than their screaming, louder than anything, he roared so it ripped inside his throat. Bewildered now, the monkeys ceased movement and sound altogether.

Max turned to walk back out of the forest, impressed with himself. That, he thought, is how to deal with the lot of them. That is how I will deal with my father. I have won, he thought.

He heard Nyoman cry out from only a few yards away, and then he crumpled almost to the ground beneath the weight of a young buck like himself, a monkey who had seen his moment.

Max had forgotten about the monkeys in the trees. He had forgotten they were everywhere. He had imagined their strength but not the smell and the heat of them. He ran with the creature clawing at his back, and he cried, the tears hot down his cheeks. At the edge of the forest, the avenged monkey simply let go, slid off to rejoin his family; but not before he sank his sharp, white teeth into Max’s neck, just below the ear, and left a bloodied but perfect little love bite.

Emmy arrived back at Buddy’s close to lunch-time. She had been strolling up the riverside after her breakfast, past the women beating their washing on the rocks, and had discerned a path to the sacred ridge. Although the climb was arduous, Emmy was unafraid: it was brief, for one thing, its end in sight from the outset. Nor was the path dank and overgrown, as on the mountainside; rather, it was dusty with use, and wherever the ground was steepest there were the footholds of thousands to follow.

From the summit, the river looked smaller than from Buddy’s house, an idle snake beset by tiny bright insects—the women with their clothes. The air was clear, the view prolonged and crystalline, and Emmy followed the ridge northwards further than she had expected to, enjoying its flat, superior position and the gentle trickle of sweat in the small of her back. She picked out the hotel opposite, and then the house, and then, much further on, a large colonial-style residence where she pictured Buddy’s American ex reclining in languorous splendour. She imagined herself in such a setting, a fascinating recluse to whom all would pay court, visited by Pod and by Mother and yes, even by a penitent William. Perhaps, as she had first thought when he left her, she had simply become too familiar to him, and such a strong whiff of the exotic would lure him back?

And then what? She kicked some hairy tufts of grass and eyed
the pillared, terraced structure across the gorge. Then, a return to her lost respectability. And a loss of the exotic. So what did she want? Emmy most wanted, as she walked along the ridge, to have been born into this world, to be a part of it rather than a white ghost passing through. She would happily have given up her solid sandshoes and her gold watch to have one of four names, to be one of the women knee-deep in the river below, pounding at sarongs and cheap T-shirts from Hong Kong, to feel the air thick with ancestors and the world dominated by an unquestionable hierarchy. But by the time she was climbing across the river rocks to return to Buddy’s house, she knew she longed for this simplicity only because it seemed, to a ghost like herself, simple. And it would take as unreflective a soul as Buddy’s to keep going in this place, without respect or curiosity or, well, reality. Life is only simple, she thought, for the observing tourist, and even then it’s not the tourist’s life that is simple.