When the World Was Steady (30 page)

‘Max?’

‘Tonight. For Sydney.’

Emmy looked at Jenny who, teasing Ruby, showed no sign of having heard.

‘I didn’t know,’ Emmy said. ‘Surely not before the festival. He so much wants to see the ceremony. We both do.’

‘I’m sure there’s room on the plane.’ Aimée spread out her towel and summoned Ruby to her, festooning the girl’s tiny arms with the water-wings. Jenny looked at Emmy and rolled her eyes and giggled. It was hard to believe, Emmy thought, that these two women were about the same age. Not much older than her Pod.

Jenny spoke almost in a whisper. ‘Soon I am going to Suchi’s house,’ she said. ‘To make ready the offerings for tonight. If you come with me, I can teach you something also.’

They both got out of the water and stood, rivulets cascading off their bodies, only a few feet from Aimée and her daughter.

‘I’ll be fifteen minutes, at the house,’ whispered Jenny, before going, leaving small crushed grass footprints glistening in her wake.

Emmy stood dripping in the sun. Aimée ignored her.

‘Seen the Buddha?’ asked Emmy after a minute.

Aimée nodded once, her eyes invisible behind the glasses.

‘Are you a Buddhist?’

‘I was brought up that way. Why?’ Aimée waved at invisible flies. Her face was scrunched up.

‘What’s your connection to the Buddha, then? To the “shipment”—to all the antiques?’

‘You ask personal questions. I
am
Buddy’s connection. Without me there wouldn’t be any.’

‘But what,’ asked Emmy, pausing to pull her sundress over her head, ‘what can you possibly get out of it?’

Aimée turned her face downwards, away from the sun. ‘Ruby,’ she called to the little girl, who balanced at the water’s edge, preparing to jump. ‘Ruby, wait for Mummy. Mummy is coming.’

When Max was woken by the morning sun and he saw the splendour of the gorge outside his window, he felt better than he had since the monkey bite. As if an evil spirit’s curse had been lifted and he was ready to get on with his life.

When he remembered that he was now committed to going home, the realization crushed this sense of well-being. He sat on his bed in his shorts for some time, his fingers playing, out of
habit, at the place on his neck where the bite mark had all but disappeared. He contemplated grovelling to his father, saying he had changed his mind. He even toyed with the idea of trying to explain the whole Jenny thing to Buddy—before he acknowledged that to do so would only ruin Jenny’s already slim chances for Sydney. He thought of bartering on the Komodo trip, saying he had done an about-face for the treat of going with Buddy to see the dragons.

But Max knew it was probably too late. The sun had climbed well above the rim of the gorge, and although there were no clear sounds, Max could sense activity—activity bent, he knew, on sending him back to Sydney.

Aimée was in the sitting-room, in her leopard-spotted bathing-suit, smoking one of her extremely long cigarettes, when Max came in. Ruby, also dressed for swimming, was playing on the floor in front of the Buddha. The Buddha held fresh flowers. On the table, for the first time since he arrived in Ubud, lay a prepared breakfast: a sliced papaya on a plate, with a lime wedge; a glass of juice; some cold toast and a dish of murky guava jam.

‘Good morning, Christopher.’ Aimée waved at the breakfast with her cigarette, sending a billow of smoke over the toast and fruit. ‘That’s for you. Your father made it.’

‘Wow.’

‘I understand you’re leaving us,’ she said, as if she were closer to Buddy than Max was. It was particularly annoying because she was not much older than Max, and he did not consider her to be family. She was just another in a long line of his father’s ex-girlfriends, only still around because she’d had a baby, because Buddy was a sucker for kids.

Max didn’t say any of this. He tackled the papaya and said, ‘I guess so,’ loathing her for making it a final decision in such an offhand way. She was one person he definitely couldn’t lose face in front of. He hated being called Christopher.

‘Your father sorted out your ticket this morning. He got through to Garuda on the phone—imagine!’

‘Yeah. Imagine.’ The papaya was very slippery, and the slices kept sliming off Max’s spoon.

‘He sorted out his own ticket at the same time,’ she said, with a small smile, patting absently at Ruby’s head.

‘Yeah?’

‘Yes. He’s decided, since you won’t be here, to come with me and Ruby and Kraut to Bangkok.’

‘For the shipment, then?’ Max said this because he knew it would bug her; she would want to believe that Buddy was chasing after her. Like he could care less.

She didn’t say anything.

‘What about Komodo?’

‘What about it? He’s gone into town with K’tut to cancel Komodo. For the time being. That’s all I know.’

‘When?’

‘When what?’

‘When are you going?’

‘My ticket is for a couple of days from now,’ said Aimée. ‘But as far as I know, Buddy’s hoping to fly out tonight. This afternoon, maybe.’

Max knew that he must have upset his father a great deal for him to take off in such a rush. Either that, or there was some question of sweetening the Burmese antiques deal if he went to Bangkok. The cold toast tasted like sawdust; the guava jam was sickeningly sugary. He ate half a slice and put it down.

‘You haven’t seen Jenny this morning, have you?’

‘The servant girl? No.’ Aimée picked up a pile of things from the sofa, which was mottled by sunlight: towels, sunglasses, shiny water-wings. ‘We’re going for a swim,’ she said. She hauled her daughter to her feet with her free hand. ‘Come along, Ruby, my treasure. Swims. Swims.’

‘Sims!’ cried the little girl on the way out of the door. ‘Sims!’

Max smacked at the gooey guava with the back of his spoon. Too late. It was done, irreparably, tiresomely, done. And where
was
everyone? Why was Jenny not around? Or Emmy, even?

He walked down the hill to the hotel reception next door, to ask if they had seen Jenny, but they hadn’t. The young woman at the desk did remind him, however, that it was the day of Ubud’s temple-naming ceremony, and she suggested that Jenny might be at her home, involved in preparations.

Max did not really know where Jenny’s home was, but he knew that her parents’ house—where she formally lived, although she often stayed with her girlfriends, or, of course, in the Sparke house—was not in town. It was several tiny villages to the east, and not on the main road. He did not know how to find it. This, though, was a case of necessity, and there was not time to delay. At the bottom of the hill, by the
warung
Emmy so loved, just on the far side of the bridge and before climbing the slope into town, Max turned left, eastwards, on to a road he had often seen and rarely followed, and set off in urgent search of his beloved.

Emmy didn’t know what to think about Max, much as she didn’t know what to think about the Buddha. She didn’t have time to look for him before meeting Jenny—who seemed, outwardly, strangely unperturbed—and she didn’t know whether or not to believe Aimée. If Max
were
going, in such haste, Emmy was unsure of what effect this might have on her visit. Perhaps it would be time to move on? Back to Candi Dasa, or to Lavina Beach, with its flush toilets? As honorary mother, her duties would be over, and as anything else—well, she would just have to wait and see.

And the Buddha: maybe the Buddha, Emmy reflected, with his enigmatic smile, the Buddha so out of place in Buddy Sparke’s Balinese
Hideaway—maybe he held all the answers to the riddles she confronted? If she could make up her mind about the Buddha, it would be time to go—time dictated from inside herself, not by Max’s whim. Emmy was fed up with how little she seemed to control in this supposedly most controllable of environments. She was aware that she had ceased, at some unmarked moment, to be a tourist, but what she was now she hadn’t stopped to think.

Jenny was already waiting, dried and dressed, when Emmy reached the house. She carried a basket filled with frangipanis, lilies and orchids. They set off at once for Suchi’s parents’ house, where the increasingly pregnant and—since the arrival of Aimée—rarely seen Suchi was preparing for the evening’s ceremonies.

The most efficient route was through town, past the clusters of tourists in the main street, past the rows of shops and stalls including the one belonging to Nyoman’s mother, the tailor, who noticed them and waved. Her daughter was not in evidence, but Emmy could see that all households were busy preparing their offerings even as they tried to get on with the business of the day: pyramids and cones of flowers, like extravagant wedding-cakes, were forming everywhere, and great oval platters of fruits and sweetmeats were piled alongside the flowers, attracting the interest of curious insects.

The sun was high, and the air warm and singing; as they walked through the bustle of town, Jenny and Emmy moved in companionable silence. It was only when they turned on to the quieter Monkey Forest Road, the canopy of trees looming at the dip in the land ahead, that Emmy spoke.

‘Is this the only way to Suchi’s?’

‘The other way is very far, and we have not much time.’

‘Aren’t you afraid? After what happened to Max, I’d almost rather—’

‘He was bitten,’ Jenny explained patiently, ‘because he was not respectful. Because Nyoman was too young to know how to
placate the spirits. The monkey spirit is mischievous, but not—not
evil
. Sometimes good, sometimes wicked. You see?’

‘So you are basically saying that the monkeys might bite us, but then again, they might not?’

‘They will not bite us, because we are respectful and wise.’ Jenny reached into her basket, beneath the profusion of flowers, and brought out two paper packets of peanuts, the sort sold in the main street to tourists.

‘Offerings to the monkey spirits?’ Emmy took one of the packets and slit a peanut open with her fingernail. They were dusty nuts, shrivelled, their shells flimsy as rotted tree bark.

‘The monkeys expect it. The tourists have made the monkeys expect.’

‘Devotion has to be flexible, I suppose. Does Suchi do this whenever she comes to town to see Buddy?’

‘She comes in a car, or on a moped. But not now: it is bad luck for the baby in the Monkey Forest. Shall we go on? There is not much time, when there is so much to do.’

Armed though she was, Emmy was apprehensive, tingling with adrenalin: the same feeling as when, several months ago, in Double Bay, she awoke to hear a burglar—only to discover that it was Pod, key-less, trying to jemmy the back door with a credit card. Jenny kept up a patter as they followed the road into the canopy of trees. ‘Do you know the Indonesian word for monkey? No? Say after me:
monjét
. The word is
monjét.
’

Emmy, her eyes veering crazily around, caught sight of monkeys gathering in the shadows. Ears and noses, outstretched hands, waggling thumbs. So
human
. She checked the branches overhead and saw a couple scampering from tree to tree above her, calling to their friends.

Jenny deftly tossed a peanut here and there, not stopping, not looking at the monkeys. Where the nuts fell, the monkeys swarmed and batted at each other.

‘Say
monjét
. The word is
monjét.
’

‘This is horrible,’ whispered Emmy, feeling her bare shoulders prey to the greedy monkey hands. She was prepared to scream, her throat clenched.

‘Say it,’ said Jenny. ‘And throw one, now, to the right. Go on.’

Forcing her frozen limbs into motion, Emmy raised her arm, threw overhand: her nut made a ‘pht’ sound as it landed, on leaves, three or four trees back from the road. At once, a patch of the path cleared, as with great chattering and rustling several monkeys pursued the gift.

‘You see?’ said Jenny, still looking straight ahead, not pausing, not smiling. ‘It is not so bad. The spirits can be controlled.’

‘Up to a point.’ But Emmy unclenched the sweating fist that clutched the nuts and proceeded to lob her share, intermittently, into the undergrowth.

‘And the word?’ asked Jenny again.

‘The word is
mun-jette.
’

‘Monjét,’
Jenny corrected.

‘Monjét.’

‘Good. Now, the word for tree is
pohon.
’

Afterwards, Emmy did not measure the distance of the forest in minutes (it seemed an eternity), or in distance (to the very last, each step was an effort: it was like being stuck in a child’s nightmare, unable to wake up); she measured the distance in words. By the time they reached open land again, Emmy had learned the Indonesian words for monkey, tree, forest, bird, duck, pig, dog and baby. She had learned the words for friend, mother, daughter and sister, not just in Indonesian but in Balinese as well. And she had learned a Balinese expression that moved her, in the soft, certain way Jenny spoke it. It was the phrase for the island’s time of origin and peace, when all was right with the world; the time before the white men came. The expression was
‘dugas gumine enteg’
, and it meant ‘when the world was steady’.

‘How will we get back?’ Emmy asked, holding up her few remaining peanuts. ‘Do you have more?’

‘Going back we will be carrying offerings, for the temples.’

‘So we’ll go in a car?’

‘So we will walk the long way around.’

‘
Monjét
would eat anybody’s offerings, I suppose?’ Emmy asked, laughing.

Jenny’s reply was serious. ‘They do not eat flowers,’ she said. ‘You see, the basket is untouched.’

Emmy had not realized that preparing for the ceremonies was an all-afternoon activity. When they arrived at Suchi’s parents’ house, half a dozen girls and women were already there. Several of them Emmy recognized from Buddy’s house, and two who were unfamiliar were introduced as Suchi’s sisters. Each woman was busy with a clearly defined task: with flowers, or food; with initial trimmings or twistings, or with the final formations of elegant and eloquent devout display. The women worked in the shade of a porch, overlooking a swept courtyard where younger girls entertained small children, and chickens strutted and darted about. Several cocks, preening within their bamboo cages, placed out of the sun with the finest view of the yard, ruffled their feathers disdainfully and blinked at the proceedings.