Ab left before John and Claudia had made their morning appearance. He drove back to the market at Bandungan and bought some fruit to eat on the way, and then down to Ambarawa and the main highway. It was eight in the morning, and the air was already hot. He was daydreaming his way through the dust and fumes and haze, so that he didn’t see the two buses coming at him until almost the last second. He veered sharply to the left, bumping a motorcyclist and sending him crashing into a fruit vending stall. Ab’s car knocked over a couple of chairs next to the stall, ran over a chicken, barely missed a tree, and jerked back sharply on to the main road. He looked in his rear-view mirror. The two buses had scraped each other, and one went sailing off the side of the road and into a rice paddy. Gripping the wheel until his knuckles ached, and concentrating with all his might, he drove on another ten kilometers. Then he pulled off to a side road into a grove of trees, and stopped the car. He climbed out of the car and sat with his back against a tree, looking out over the rice-fields, breathing deeply.
If he had stopped at the scene of the accident, he would have been mobbed, since, being a foreigner, he was de facto at fault. He had to keep going. When he had stopped shaking, he climbed back into the car and headed back onto the road. He wouldn’t find out much dead, or in jail. He’d better pay attention to the driving.
Ab drove slowly, and then turned on the tape he had purchased from the store next to Nancy’s. One small pattern of bells and gongs, a minor harmonic line. But the overall force and direction of the music still escaped him. It seemed to be going nowhere, a random sprinkling of tinkling and clangs and deep gongs, playful innocence and naiveté and something sinister, like a dark fear, momentarily displaced by the investigation, now clawing its way back into his heart. He arrived in the city by late morning. He drove first to the veterinary college, to check for messages. There were none. The office was empty. Even Tri was not there. He wondered if she was in the hospital. Should have asked Findlay up at the Hash.
He stopped off at the Garuda office and asked for Jacobus. The young man at the front desk seemed uncertain, but Ab told him to say there was a message from Heimun Sentosa. In a moment, the young man came back and guided him around the front counter and to an office at the back.
Jacobus was an older man, grey-haired, slightly dishevelled in appearance.
Ab handed him the letter from Heimun, which he took, and then returned to sitting behind a large desk piled high with papers.
Jacobus read the letter carefully, turned it over and read it again. Then he looked up at Ab and smiled.
“So, you are a good friend of Mrs. Sentosa?”
“Ah, yes. A good friend.”
“Mmmm. She is a very fine lady, yes?”
“Yes.” He suddenly felt tired, and wanted to go home, to his own bed, with no other bodies in it, and sleep.
“And now you are going to Bali…for a vacation?”
“For…yes, I guess so, for a vacation. I will be visiting with Pak Sani.”
“Ah, excellent, excellent.” He stood up. “I shall have a ticket made for you in a moment, if you will wait.”
It seemed like half an hour, but was probably more like ten minutes before Jacobus came back with the ticket. He tucked in the back of his shirt and showed Ab to the door.
“Have a good holiday in Bali, Mr. Ab,” he said.
The front gate at the house was padlocked; he didn’t remember having had the presence of mind to do this when he’d left. The value of habits, he thought, are to help us survive in chaotic times, when we don’t have presence of mind. Or someone else padlocked it, which was a more ominous possibility. The guard was nowhere to be seen. He pulled out his keys, unlocked the gate, pulled it open, and drove in. With the car motor off, he sat for a moment. Everything was quiet. No Nancy. He hoped there were also no dead bodies. He’d had enough. He went back to pull the gate shut, and returned to the front door. It too was locked, as he must have left it.
Inside, the house was silent and smelled warm, close and musty. The drawers of the buffet looked like they had been ransacked, as did his closet in the bedroom. Yet nothing seemed to be missing. Somebody was looking for…what? The kris maybe? He went to the telephone and dialled the number Mrs. Sentosa had given him. A lady answered in English, and, when she heard who it was, immediately asked which flight he was arriving on. The news of his impending trip had preceded him already. The arrangements made, he repacked the overnight bag he had been lugging around; he laid the kris at the bottom, covering it with a few light clothes, his bathing suit, deodorant, toothbrush, a couple of towels. If he was going on a holiday, he might as well play the part. Then, on second thought, he threw all his belongings, clean and dirty together, into his two battered blue hockey equipment bags. One never knew. Maybe he would be leaving the country directly from Bali. He left the bags just inside the bedroom door.
Finally, exhausted after the events of the previous twenty-four hours, he slipped into a sarong and fell into bed and into a deep, dreamless sleep.
***
He came up through the layers of sleep with a headache. A sharp, metallic rattling hammered in his brain. His body was shaking. A sharp pain in his shoulder jarred him awake. He turned over and sat upright so quickly that he almost passed out and momentarily had to put his head down into his hands. As he did so he thought that he saw, in his half-sleep, a shadow pass quickly from the room. His first thought was that the pain in his shoulder was from an aborted stab from a knife. There was a crashing sound in the next room. He leapt to his feet to run after the assailant, but realized with horror that the floor was shaking under him. Another sharp pain, this time to his back, brought him to his senses. An earthquake! And the ceiling was caving in. He staggered across the shaking floor to the screened back door and threw himself through the screen and on to the grass outside. Handful by handful, he dragged himself across the quaking earth as far away from the house as he could. In a moment, everything was still. As he lay there, he saw a snake coil from the bushes beside the door and slip through the broken screen and into the house. He could hear cries and voices in the street. He thought that it really was a good thing that Java’s nuclear power plant was still on the drawing boards. Then he passed out.
When he came to his senses, he was still lying out on the grass behind the house, and the muezzin was calling morning prayers through the loudspeakers from the mosque. It was still dark. He felt stiff all over. “I’ve got a plane to catch to Bali,” was his first thought. He groaned to his feet and looked around. The house looked like it was still all there. A few roof tiles had shaken loose and fallen to the ground. He walked to the screen door and stepped through it. The image of the snake entering the house came to him and he stepped gingerly until he found a light switch. Inside, there was a bit more damage. Pieces of plaster had fallen from the ceiling. Broken glass from vases that had been knocked off coffee tables. Still, the situation didn’t look as bad as he had thought it would be, given the size of the quake.
He bent down over the bag where he had stashed the kris. There was a big gash in the leather, and the latch appeared to have been broken open, though he couldn’t remember having locked it. He opened it and pushed aside the clothes and towels. The scabbard was still there, but the knife was gone. Crouching beside the bag, he looked up at the bed. From this angle, he could see the silhouette of the finely carved handle of the kris. It was pushed in up to the hilt at about the spot where his shoulder would have been had he not suddenly put his head down. What had first awakened him? He recalled a loud rattling sound, like sabre rattling, or maybe it was just the falling plaster from the earthquake which had awakened him. He stood up, tightened his sarong, and slipped on his sandals. Then he leaned over the bed and very carefully pulled up on the knife. It had been rammed in with great force, and he had to strain with all his strength before it finally pulled free.
He held it by the handle, and laid the blade across his left hand. The blade felt hot, and his hands were sweating. He fondled the snake and the damascene like a small pet in his hands. Carefully, he slipped the knife back into its sheath, laid it on the bed, and stared at it. Then, as if in a trance, he took the kris and with a small trowel dug a hole next to the mango tree, where he buried it.
It was a moment before he realized that someone was rattling at the gate.
“Pak Ab! Dr. Ab! Everything okay?” It was Tina, the housekeeper, and Budi, the night watchman. They must have come by and seen his car out front.
Yes, everything was fine, but the house needed a bit of cleaning up, and he needed a quick breakfast before catching the plane to Bali.
“To Bali?”
“Yes. I think I need a little vacation.”