When the World Was Steady (3 page)

During this trip, Emmy felt more blessed and good than she had imagined possible: her luck was at a pinnacle, she was needed and envied and loved. She clung to the memory always, and disregarded the fact that, back in Sydney and hurled into a whirlwind
of social and wifely obligation, she had somehow neglected the lists of books, of luxuries, then lost them, then forgotten them altogether. When she did recall this, with a quickly stifled pang of shame, she would remind herself that she had been young.

But that was just the first forgetting, and it seemed, somehow, when much later all the perfect luck had soured, that it had been only the first step in a mammoth self-deception. Thinking that her life was in her hands, Emmy had ordered her days with lunches and receptions and had eventually borne a child. She had launched a career writing about restaurants and society, gleeful impetuous pieces about places that delighted her, published in the papers and magazines of her husband’s family.

‘Be like me,’ she would tell Portia as her daughter grew older. ‘Be sure your life is your own, your happiness in your control.’

And then, a year and a half ago, things started happening to her, pulling the pins out of her life, revealing … what? That she had been blind and a fool all along. William, whom she had barely considered a factor, more a presence, a part of herself that was at times irritating but was, above all, a part of herself, left her. He left her for her friend Dora, the wife of his friend Andrew. At Emmy’s outcry over the selfishness of two divorces (not one but
two
families ruined!) William replied, calmly, almost generously, as if explaining to an uncomprehending child, that he was merely taking control of his own life.

Six months ago, Portia had informed Emmy that she was dropping out of university to study sculpture at art college. She had, at the same time, changed her Christian name to ‘Pod’, so that she truly was no longer the daughter whom Emmy had nurtured and created. And this mysterious Pod, who still hung clothes and ate food and slept in Emmy’s house, had recently brought home Pietro, a fellow sculptor, the son of an Italian labourer from the far western suburbs of the city, from the rows of little bungalows that stretched for ugly multicoloured miles and
looked, not very much but oh-so-slightly, like the drab terraced houses of south London that Emmy had so triumphantly abandoned many years before.

Emmy was forced to concede that things did just happen. But still, she insisted to herself and to her one dear, remaining friend Janet, that if things did indeed just happen, it was only because you let them.

She took on the full weight of responsibility for the changes in her life. She felt that perhaps the very adaptability she had considered a virtue had brought about her downfall. Shedding selves like skins, she had also shed their emotions—or rather, her own. This mutability had led to a loss of herself and, Emmy had to conclude, to a loss of her luck. And it had been so easy—until she was called upon to play ‘divorcee’. Divorcee wasn’t in her repertoire. It was not, to her mind, a lucky opportunity. Not an opportunity at all.

She found the burden of her failure so great that she was suddenly, and for the first time in her almost fifty years, incapable of making any decisions at all, of taking any action. What if she were deceiving herself? Playing into the hands of the enemy? She had been so blind, William and Dora’s affair had gone on for years. She couldn’t see their old friends, she was a laughing-stock. She remembered that she was English, he Australian, their friends somehow thereby his. As for her work, she could not write for his magazines, it was too great a blow to her pride; she could not write for the opposition, it would be too public a betrayal.

She spent an entire month leaving her small house in Double Bay only to go to the supermarket or to walk Aristotle, an Afghan hound and the sole remainder of her pulverized existence, along the thin strip of beach at the end of their street. The alien Pod did not count, a fairy changeling dropped in her darling Portia’s place. Emmy grew broader than she had ever been: unable to decide what to eat, she ate everything, hoping something, some potion ingested, would restore her life to her.

She did not decide, really, to go to Bali; she chose Bali only when Janet had decided that Emmy had to go somewhere. Janet had got on the phone to Qantas, had decided on the date, had given Emmy’s credit card number and had then turned, in the by now cockroach-infested kitchen, to ask Emmy where she wanted to go. She had to say something, or Janet would, she threatened, pack her off to London, to her mother and sister, whom Emmy hadn’t seen for six years and found dreary in the extreme. At that moment, her head in her hands at the kitchen table, Emmy had said, for some reason, Bali. Perhaps not for
any
reason, but rather because, on the table beneath her eye, one of her ex-husband’s magazines was open at an article entitled ‘Bali: The Last Paradise’. What, after all, had she left to lose?

That afternoon, in a moment of exuberance, Pod’s Pietro had backed her car—yes, her, Emmy’s car—into and over the unsuspecting Aristotle. He too, last and most cherished, was gone. Emmy had no life left to be lucky in. It was time for something.

If only she didn’t catch herself adapting again, moulding herself. In this tiny cell of a room, there was not much to mould to, and, Emmy assumed, it would be the same on the mountainside. The real island, which she sought, would bring out her real self. It would provide answers and a new beginning. Looking around her she felt certain, suddenly, of her changing fortune, of her soon-emerging soul. As William and her daughter and her sister all proved, the arbiters of luck and opportunity were not things but people: flesh and blood. And in their absence, she might be free.

As it turned out, the flute-playing guide, whose name was Gdé, was taking an expedition up Abang in five days’ time. It was very rare, he insisted, that he should go at all; he was the only one, he assured her, who would take tourists; he suggested very strongly that she wait. He was a round-faced man with a goatee, and he had
the disconcerting habit of laughing whenever he spoke. The people he was to take were Australians, he giggled. They were ‘especial friends’; they were, he implied, inhabitants of the island rather than tourists. Would they mind if Emmy joined their party? Oh no, Gdé laughed again: they were very hospitable people.

Which left her with four days: it was Tuesday morning and they would be gathering for the climb before dawn on Saturday. Emmy didn’t want to stay in Kintamani for that time. Fifteen minutes walking with Frank among the pyramids of citrus fruits and mounds of cheap clothes and chickens in baskets that constituted the morning market, and Emmy had seen enough. Even the early morning mist that should have rendered the scene magical could not change her grim impressions of the evening before. Besides, for breakfast there had been
nasi goreng
again, the same fried rice with chilis, and if she stayed on in the village, Emmy was certain she would starve.

Already someone in the market had pointed at Frank—who must have slept in his clothes; he looked more bedraggled than ever—and said in English, ‘You husban’?’ When she said no, the youth grinned, stuck out his tongue and said, ‘Yes, you husban’! You husban’!’ So when Frank suggested that they ride to Singaraja in the same
bemo
, Emmy figured she might as well accept.

Frank was headed north to a resort called Lavina Beach, where, he whispered in her ear, they had flush toilets in the
losmen
. Emmy did not commit herself to going there, although she could tell that Frank thought she had.

This
bemo
was a newer model, an enclosed van that had once been carpeted floor to ceiling in ochre shag that was now peeling away in strips. The vinyl on the seats had cracked and popped, allowing obscene sproutings of greyed foam. Frank sat beside Emmy in the row behind the driver, and two Balinese men managed to squeeze in next to him. The combined girth of Emmy and Frank would, under normal circumstances, have been
considered to fill the space, but the pock-marked driver was unwilling to let go of a single potential fare.

They sat in the van for almost an hour before it was full, an hour during which the morning mist cleared and the sun grew strong, so that even with the windows down, or those that would open, the
bemo
became a pungent stew of spices and grease and hot vinyl and, above all, the sour smell of unwashed flesh.

Sitting so close to Frank, the fat of their buttocks closer than touching, almost mingling, Emmy felt it was indeed high time he made it to a world of flush toilets and showers. He had removed his linen jacket for the freedom of his lightweight shirt, which was missing a button, allowing aggressive stray chest hairs to poke through. It was dyed a deep, varying yellow in the circles of his armpits, where days, perhaps months, of perspiration had gathered.

Through this hour, Emmy and Frank didn’t really converse. They behaved like a long-married couple, each in a reverie, sometimes noticing something outside the van and pointing it out to the other, with a tap or a nod.

When the
bemo
set off, they were launched into even greater intimacy. The road was narrow, steep and winding, but the driver wasn’t about to slow his pace for such minor impediments. Emmy found herself in Frank’s lap, then he in hers. She was so miserable that she almost missed the sudden and spectacular transformation from arid mountain landscape to the swollen fertility of terraced paddies, deep green boxes flooded with muddy water, in which men, women, buffaloes and ducks waded in the distance.

To be back in this safe world—what she had known and expected of the island—was a source of relief to Emmy. With that relief came the realization (although she had known it all along) that she wanted no more of Frank’s company. He, like the village of Kintamani, depressed and repelled her.

At the bus station in Singaraja, he reached and took her hand
as they got out of the
bemo
.

‘What
are
you doing?’ she hissed, reclaiming it. Her ‘viper-tongue’ tone, Portia would have said: Emmy at her most forbidding.

‘Well, we’ve got to hurry. There might be a bus leaving for Lavina Beach right now. We don’t want to miss it.’ His eagerness, from another, might have been touching, but Emmy was too indignant to be charmed.

‘We?
We?
What are you talking about,
we
?’ She raised her voice. In the flurry of the station some of the people stopped to stare.

‘Well, I mean, I thought you said—’

‘You mean, you thought I’d provide a “bit of fun”, did you? A little diversion?’

‘No need to get riled up,’ he said, huffy now, offended. He was gripping his battered little suitcase tightly, with both hands. ‘I don’t believe I ever suggested or implied such a thing. And …’ he faltered, then went on, ‘And if such a thing ever crossed my mind, it was only because of
your
behaviour.’

‘My behaviour?’

‘Following me through the market this morning, cuddling up against me in the bus—’

‘I beg your pardon?’ By now there were a dozen people around them, smiling, sucking their teeth, pointing, whispering. ‘As if there was anywhere else for me to put myself. Listen, Mr—Frank—I’ve had quite enough of this. I’m not going with you, to Lavina Beach or anywhere. Goodbye.’ She hoisted her pack on to her back and walked out of the circle that had formed around them. The crowd laughed and cheered.

After a moment she heard Frank asking repeatedly, loudly, ‘Lavina Beach?
Bemo?
Lavina Beach?’ and a chorus of drivers replying. A man tapped Emmy on the elbow and said, ‘Missus, you husban’, going,
jalan jalan
, you husban’, look.’

Frank was indeed stuffing himself into an already crowded
bemo
. Emmy felt a flash of regret at having been so rude to him. ‘He is not,’ she said to the man at her side, who was obviously perplexed,
‘not
my husband. No husband.’ She showed him her bare ring finger. He shrugged and turned away.

What to do now, where to go? Singaraja, like Den Pasar, the capital, was bustling and urban, with billboards and neon signs and a dirty, hot smell. She didn’t want to stay there. Lavina Beach now seemed appealing, the prospect of a cabin by the sand and the soughing of the water beyond. Not to mention the luxury of plumbing! But having lost her temper with Frank, and all for effect, really—she hadn’t known how else to be rid of him—she couldn’t risk the humiliation of running into him again. All she knew for certain was that Lavina was to the west of Singaraja, and that she would, therefore, go east.

When she found a
bemo
destined for Amlapura, at the southeast tip of the island, she got in and went.

It was well before dawn on Saturday morning when Gdé came to waken Emmy. She had arrived back in Kintamani only the evening before, after dark, having had difficulty finding a bus out of Singaraja. She had spent the week not ten miles from the city, paddling in the freshwater pools at Air Sanih, walking alone along the stretch of black sand beach, wandering to the
warung
down the road, where two old betel-chewing women served up
saté
and where the crispy prawn crackers called
krupuk
were kept piled in jars on the plastic tables.

Several tourists, on motorcycles and bicycles, stopped for meals at the
warung
and spoke to Emmy. To them she seemed a fixture, installed on a bench near the road, sunburnt, drinking Coca-Cola with a paperback novel in hand, in this spot where Westerners usually only rested an hour.

‘Do you live here?’ they all asked, wondering whether they had perhaps come across an uncharted celebrity, settled in the back corner of the island, one the guidebooks had not yet mentioned. ‘Are you a painter?’ Looking at the novel: ‘Do you write?’

To which Emmy daily said ‘no’ or ‘I live here
this
week’ or ‘I’ve written
letters
,’ or some equally tired joke, leaving the adventurers to pass on, disappointed.

The guest house at Air Sanih was peopled by Javanese tourists mostly, small, modest women in large black bathing-suits who would poke a finger or toe into one of the pools and then dart backwards, squealing, until at length a husband or a brother would push them in with great splashing and fanfare.