Ab arrived at the Yogyakarta airport an hour before the plane was to leave, but it had not yet arrived from Bali. It would be more than an hour before he actually got away. Airplanes did not overnight in Yogya; a flight out to Bali or Jakarta had to await the planes from those places before the first outward flights of the day could take off. He checked in his bags and looked around the small airport.
There were clumps of tourist groups, Japanese and Dutch mostly, people his age and older, loaded with cameras, decked out in gaudy, happy, brilliant tourist-quality batiks. Ab looked at his own modest, dark shirt and brown slacks. Not much fun, a step up from the coveralls he often wore, but, after all, those clothes that seemed gay and clever here, back home would seem gaudy and would end up in the kids dress-up clothes box. Ab was dressed for anywhere. He checked the tourists over again. What was this country to them? To the Dutch, a quaint old colony, now, perhaps, gone to the dogs because they were no longer here. To the Japanese, was it a big market for their goods? A place where friends or relatives had died in World War Two? And then there were the low-budget travellers in cut-off jeans and tee shirts, scorning the tourist groups, seeing the real Indonesia. Which meant the temples at Borobudur and Prambanan, the shadow plays and the puppet plays and the stage performances, all the same things that the other tourists saw, but somehow pure because they were not seen as part of a group tour. And yet, it seemed to Ab, if you did not see Indonesia as part of a group tour, you did not perhaps see Indonesia at all, because everything, everything seemed to be done in groups. Indonesia was nothing if not a group country.
He strolled out of the airport and walked along the road skirting the airport and out along the river valley at one end of the runway. He wandered over the grass away from the road and sat at the edge of the valley rim, surveying the multiple terraces cut into the valley’s walls. This was the picture of almost the entire island of Java, with a couple of thousand people per square kilometer. Terraces, everywhere, all linked through one of the most sophisticated irrigation systems in the world. Sophisticated not just in a technological sense, but even more so in a social sense. For the kind of social organization and cooperation needed to keep such a system going must be at least as intricate and weighed down with branches and sub-branches and floodgates and power structures as the agricultural technology it was supporting. It gave Ab the sense of being in the middle of some bewildering, three-dimensional puzzle. It seemed to him that, in trying to fathom Soesanto’s and George’s killers, he would have to fathom this complex and tenacious web he had fallen into. He wondered if for a simple Mennonite boy from Winnipeg, this would be possible, any more than a Javanese could comprehend the webs of Mennonite entanglements.
A sudden, roaring thunder over his head brought him back to the exigencies of the moment. The plane from Bali had just dropped through the clouds and was landing. He stretched his legs and headed back to the airport.
It was not until he was actually in the plane and strapped into a window seat that he suddenly panicked, thinking that tomorrow was the day he was supposed to be out of the country. But he didn’t have anything in writing. Maybe it was only the paper that mattered. For a few seconds he considered getting off this plane and just flying to Jakarta and home. He had heard of people who over-stayed their visas being jailed, or having exorbitant fines levied against them. The last thing he wanted was to end up in an Indonesian jail. And yet, if he got off now, he might never be able to come back, and would spend his whole life wondering why George and Soesanto were killed, what had really happened. He wondered if he would ever see Nancy again, and what she meant in all of this. He was so close, it seemed, to understanding. So close. He settled back and closed his eyes. His official visa, after all, still said he had more than a year in the country. His only deportation order had come from the lips of the Klaten police chief. Wouldn’t they need official papers?
The plane was starting to pull out toward the runway. His knuckles tightened on the edge of the chair. The stewardess came by and offered a tray of candy. He picked out a mint and put it into his mouth.
Ab braced himself for the thrill of take-off, the orgasmic rush of endorphins that would course through his blood as the plane would leap upwards and veer sharply to miss the volcanoes. What would happen if you got a combination of a poor pilot and such a runway? He dug into his jacket pocket to make sure his little bottle of gin was there. He tried to think about Nancy, and wished that he had, just that one time after the evening out, been courageous enough to make love to her. Even now, he wasn’t sure how she would have responded to more direct advances. He wondered if the Nancy in his head was a fantasy pieced together from fragments of cross-cultural misunderstanding. He wasn’t sure about anything. The plane had just lifted clear of the ground when there was a kafuffle in the front of the cabin. The door to the cockpit was open and the passengers and stewardesses were crowding to look into it. The plane circled quickly, and, without explanation, dropped back down to the runway. It was a rocky landing, and the plane swerved sharply once half-way down the landing strip.
Finally, it came to a full halt, and the pilot and co-pilot came quickly out of the cockpit, closing the door behind them.
While waiting for the stairs to arrive so they could open the door, the chief stewardess shouted an explanation to the passengers, who laughed heartily. “A snake has been found in the cockpit, and we must wait for the tamer to come and take him.”
“Would that all snakes were so easily tamed,” said a deep, clear voice next to Ab.
Ab turned to look at the gentleman sitting one seat over, there being an empty seat between them. He looked Chinese, with pure white hair and a face richly and finely wrinkled like the bark of a maple tree. He was dressed in a bright pink shirt and white trousers, which gave him a striking appearance. He sighed, wearily. “I hope they do not make us sit here in the heat too long.”
The door finally opened and several people entered, including a very old, smooth-faced, bony man, who was apparently the animal tamer. He was carrying a large basket.
Ab’s neighbour turned to him and the wrinkles in his face moved to create a smile. Like one of those clay-imagination cartoons, Ab thought, almost laughing. “You are going on a vacation to Bali?” said the man.
“Ah, yes. Actually I work here in Java, but I am going to Bali to…to relax.”
“An excellent idea. I happen to work in Bali, but it is still, I think, a better place to visit than to work.”
“Why is that?”
He leaned conspiratorially toward Ab. “These Hindus, they are very lovely people, so friendly, but every day is a holy day or a holiday or some celebration. It is not so good for getting work done.”
The door to the cockpit opened and the animal tamer came out, holding up his basket, triumphantly. The passengers laughed, clapped and cheered. In a few minutes, the door was closed again and the airplane returned to the runway. The stewardess came around with candy again and the take-off, almost identical to the previous one, was again accomplished.
“If we go around a few more times,” Ab said, half to himself and half to his neighbour, “I may even get used to it, the landing as well as the taking off.”
“Me,” said the old man, “I will never get used to it. Maybe I was just born too late.”
Ab pondered the possibility that the thrill of taking off might be wearing thin. Like his Mennonite forebears, who had fled over the centuries from country to country and around the world, maybe he would run out of places to fly to. The erotic thrill of being saved at evangelistic meetings had worn off after seven or eight times. And how many times could he run away from his parental home? Maybe Nancy was right about the demons and angels of one’s childhood. The beauty of intense spiritual experience, the exhilarating freedom of taking off, both physically and intellectually, was that it was unique, unrepeatable. Maybe he would, finally, have to be at home somewhere and leave God, endorphins, and sex to the teenagers. The thought made him sad. He looked out the window and into the craters of the volcanoes below. The stewardesses came around with the boxes of jasmine tea and a snack that were the hallmark of every internal flight.
Ab looked at the box on the fold-out tray before him. “I wonder which it will be this time, a spring roll or a sweet bread?” he said in Bahasa Indonesia.
“You speak Bahasa.” The neighbour opened his box. “Have you been here long?”
“A year.”
The man took a bite of his bun.
“You are teaching at the university?”
“Not exactly. I am helping on a dairy development project, and working with the veterinary college to help strengthen some of their programs.”
“Ah. You are a veterinarian, then.”
Ab swallowed a mouthful of the bun. There was peanut butter inside. “I investigate epidemics and try to prevent them.” Having said that, he felt pedantic and embarrassed.
“Mmhmm.” The man chewed in silence for several minutes. “And you are finding the work gratifying?”
“It would be easier if my counterpart were around more.”
“He is often not there?”
“Actually, he’s dead. Died…very suddenly.”
The man rubbed his chin as if he were thinking. “That must be quite upsetting for you.” Then he sighed. “Well, things must continue, yes?”
“Yes, except that I’m supposed to leave the country very soon.”
“Oh?” He looked at Ab. His gaze was penetrating and Ab felt momentarily uncomfortable.
“Uh, yes. Visa problems.” The old man continued to stare at him.
“Visa problems. Well, that’s too bad. So you are going to Bali for a kind of last vacation.”
“Yes.” Ab sipped at the cool jasmine tea. It was like drinking perfume. He pulled the straw from the drink box and slipped it into his pocket, next to the gin bottle, then closed up his snack box and leaned back into the seat, closing his eyes.
His neighbour also closed up his box, and set it on the floor at his feet. Then he leaned down and opened an attaché case, pulled out a file of papers, and set them on the tray before him. He pulled a pair of glasses from his breast-pocket and began to read, leaning close to the paper and moving his finger along the line. Ab watched him through half-open eyes.
The gentleman seemed to pause thoughtfully at the end of a line. “So, you came here to help the poor people of the world?” he said without looking up. “Like a kind of secular missionary?”
Startled, Ab opened his eyes. “Uh, yes. Yes, I suppose you could say that.” His mind raced backwards. The cowboy missionary: his old joke, a childhood attempt to reconcile what he wanted with what he was told God wanted. Is that really why he had come here? Was he going out to the fields ripe with harvest, as pastor Bill Janzen had exhorted them to? Were all his rebellions and flights in vain? Did God get you in the end anyway? Not much difference between a cowboy missionary and a veterinary development worker, after all. Even the old guy next to him could see it. His mind fought against the thought, but there it was.
The gentleman set down his glasses. “And, do you think you have helped the poor people, by coming here?”
Ab laughed nervously. “You seem as if you have been reading the question on the paper before you,” he joked, “like a lawyer.” The man did not answer. “Yes, to answer your question, yes, I think I have helped some poor people.” He remembered the farmers in Gandringan. That had been something, hadn’t it?
The man slipped his glasses back on and looked directly at Ab. “And that gives you some satisfaction?”
“Yes, yes of course it does.” But it would give me greater satisfaction if I discovered who killed Soesanto and George, and where Nancy is.
“Good. It is good to have satisfaction in one’s work. And rare. Especially in the messy business of trying to save the world.” He returned to his reading, tracing his finger across the page.
Ab said nothing, but his emotions were turning inside him. You smug rich bastard. What do you know of suffering, right here in your own country?
He closed his eyes and tried, unsuccessfully, to rest for the remainder of the one-hour trip. When the plane began its descent into the Denpasar airport he turned to the window and leaned over, pretending to look out, while he slipped the short straw into the gin bottle and sucked deeply on it. He could see the palm-fringed beaches rise up to meet him through the window. He gripped the edge of the seat tightly and took a deep breath.
***
When the plane had taxied to a stop, he arose and prepared to step out over his still-seated neighbour, and into the aisle. He wondered how he would be met at the airport. How would they know, among the various tourists, which one was Abner Dueck? The old man was groping under his seat for something. He came up with a finely carved teak walking stick. He sat back up and gripped Ab’s hand, firmly.
“Could you help me up for a moment?”
Forgetting his earlier anger and seeing only the white-haired gentleman, he helped him to his feet. They waited until the other passengers had passed. The gentleman did not loosen his grip, but held Ab by the arm. His grip was like steel. “I would also appreciate it if you would also be so kind as to walk this old man to the terminal.”
“Of course.”
Coming down the stairs into the dazzling Balinese sun, Ab looked toward the terminal. There was a crowd of brightly dressed people gathered there. Women in what he assumed were traditional outfits were dancing and holding up flowers, and a full orchestra played crashing, bell-ringing music.
“There must be someone important arriving,” Ab said as they stepped onto the tarmac.
“Yes, I suppose there must,” said the old man.
Ab waved toward a small executive jet which had just pulled to a stop near the terminal. “Probably some government official in that jet over there.”
The old man looked in the direction of the jet. “Yes,” he said, “perhaps.”
The tourist groups on the plane from Yogyakarta pointed and gesticulated toward the welcoming party. The Japanese took out their cameras. The closer Ab and the old man got to the terminal, the more it seemed to him that the welcomers were looking in their direction. He looked over his shoulder to see if there was someone behind him just as two Balinese young ladies approached and laid garlands of orchids around his neck and that of his neighbour.
“I think,” Ab said, trying to pull away from the vice-grip on his arm. “Perhaps there is some mistake?” Cameras were aimed at him and his companion, and even a couple of young travellers in tattered T-shirts stopped to stare.
The old man bowed toward the welcomers, pulling Ab forward with him. He sighed. “In the old days,” he said, “the young ladies kept their breasts bare when they welcomed you like this. It was natural and beautiful, like a flower opening or a young rice shoot budding. But now,” he guided Ab through the door of the terminal, “now if there are bare breasts, Allah and his helpers in Jakarta are very upset. They are such weaklings, they cannot bear to look on God’s beauty. Like all cowards, they prefer guns and knives.” He stopped a moment and turned to Ab. “Surely their Allah cannot have created this world, if he so dislikes gazing upon its beauties, don’t you think?”
Ab was in a complete daze. Again, he tried to pry the old man loose. “I have to meet someone here,” he said. “Really, it is important.”
The man firmly drew Ab out the front door of the terminal and toward a waiting black Mercedes limousine, with tinted windows all around. “Yes,” he said, “your meeting is very important.”
Ab wrenched his arm free and stepped back. “So I must, I am afraid, leave you now,” he said.
The driver of the limousine had opened the back door and the old man motioned for him to precede him into the car. “Please,” he said, “if you wish to meet Sani Sentosa, then you will come with me.”
Ab pulled anxiously at his beard and climbed into the coolness of the air-conditioned car.
“And my bags?” he asked, weakly.
The gentleman made himself comfortable and the door was shut. “Your bags were marked?”
“Yes.”
“They will be taken care of. Do you have your tags?”
Ab handed them over to the old man, who leaned forward and handed them to the driver, who returned into the terminal. While he was retrieving the bags, the old man turned to Ab.
“I don’t believe you have introduced yourself,” he said.
“Ab. Dr. Abner Dueck.” He felt hopeless and depressed. Through the tinted glass he could see the driver coming out of the terminal with his bags.
“I am very pleased to meet you,” said the gentleman, reaching out his hand. “I am Sani Sentosa. I believe you have met my wife?”