They sat in silence as the limousine pushed along the highway, scattering chickens and people on bicycles in its wake. Ab stared out the window. He had wanted to meet the infamous Pak Sani. So, here he was, sitting next to him, sitting next to one of probably the richest men in Indonesia, and perhaps in the world, speeding along the highway as tourists in rented dune buggies, peasants on bicycles, chickens, always the ubiquitous chickens and, here in Hindu Bali, dogs, scattered out of their way. Here he was, helping the poor people of the world. Is this what it meant?
Pak Sani propped his walking stick up between his knees and played with it. Ab noted that the head of the stick was the open-mouthed head of a cobra. “You should not let all of this distract you, Dr. Dueck.” He motioned with his hand to indicate the luxury of the car interior. Ab noted that his name had been pronounced correctly. “Do not be angry with me on account of appearances.”
Ab said nothing, but continued to stare out the window.
Sani continued to fondle his cane. “Just remember that the reason you are here, in this car, today, is because you want to understand why your friends have been killed. And one of the reasons you are interested in that is because you have been concerned about the farmers who are receiving the cows. So you see, you are still helping the poor. Because if you can understand that killing, perhaps you can also help the farmers.”
Ab was silent for a few minutes longer. Yeah, he thought, help them by leaving the country. The car was taking them away from the main tourist beaches and along the south coast road. “I see that you do not like to deal with wealthy people. You do not trust me. Heimun and…and others…have told me that you trusted them.” He sighed. “But then that’s women. I have had the same failing. Trusting women where I would not have trusted men. Being led by the loins, as it were.” He smiled, then immediately turned serious. “Your distrust of wealthy men, is it a part of your religion? Or are you racist too, like,” he waved his hand, “like Allah’s little helpers in Jakarta?”
Or maybe just an unscrupulous opportunist, like you, Ab thought.
Sani put his strong hand firmly on Ab’s knee and gripped it until he winced. “And who do you think pays for the dairy cows? Do you think they drop from the sky? Do you think the American dairy farmers give them away? Do you think, even if your government gave them, and sent us all you experts for nothing, that there would not be political strings attached, strings to make us dance? Look at me!” Ab looked at Sani; his eyes were ablaze, like coals glowing in the wrinkled log that was his face. “If you want to come here and help the poor, sooner or later, you will have to deal with me. You might as well do it sooner.”
Ab looked away. “It’s too late, Mr. Sentosa. The police say I should be out of the country by tomorrow. There is no point to any of this, really. I don’t know why I came.” He looked out the window at a Balinese farmer in his dirty shorts guiding the plow behind a pair of Balinese cattle. The cattle were deceptively pretty, brown, with black and white markings, like deer. Deceptive, for they were also very strong and strong willed. Deceptive, like so many things in this beautiful country, because the observers didn’t take the time to understand what they were looking at. Deceptive because Ab, like so many visitors to tropical paradises, had seen Java in terms of the illusions he had created, the things he had wanted to believe.
Sani Sentosa took his hand off Ab’s leg. Ab rubbed it to bring back the circulation. The old man held his cane firmly with both hands, and spoke in a clear, business-like fashion. “So, your visa expires tomorrow?”
“No, my visa is still good for another year.”
“But I thought…”
“The Klaten police chief said I had seven days from the day George and Soesanto were killed. That was six days ago.”
“The Klaten police chief.” Sani waved his hand dismissively.
“He said his orders came from elsewhere.”
Sani turned to Ab and smiled his clay-imagination smile. “Ah, that proverbial elsewhere. You may need me yet, more than you know. With your papers and my money, we may be able to keep you out of jail for over-staying your welcome. Now,” he said with some satisfaction, leaning back into the car seat, “think of more pleasant things for today. We are almost at my place. Tomorrow, after we have rested and eaten and played a little, then we can work.”
The car pulled up to a large, wrought-iron metal gate, and a guard let them through with a wave of the hand. They wound down a smooth road between overhanging coconut palms. Through breaks between the trees, Ab could see the brightness of the ocean sprinkled with whitecaps. In a moment, they had stopped before a palatial villa, built of orange brick and decorated everywhere with bas-reliefs, grey stone carvings of many-headed gods, monsters and animals engaged in the perpetual struggle between good and evil. The front doors were intricately carved and the lintel was painted in floral patterns of many colours. The driver opened the door for Mr. Sentosa, and another servant came around to Ab’s side to open his door. Ab stared a moment at the slim young man in the sunglasses holding the door open for him. He could swear it was the guy who was tailing him in Yogya. Was that because they all looked the same to him, as Nancy had once suggested? He got out of the car and joined Pak Sani before the doors. Sani stood for a moment gazing up at them.
“Do you like them?” he asked. He did not wait for Ab’s answer. “They are a reproduction of some doors that have been in the family for centuries. The originals are too small for us now. I suppose we have grown in stature.”
“And in favour with God,” Ab murmured.
Sani turned. “What?”
“Nothing. Just a quote from the Bible I remembered from my childhood. ‘And Jesus grew in stature and in favour with God.’”
Sani paused to ponder this. “Having favour with God does not always help with men, as your Jesus discovered. Anyway, as I was saying, the doors are now too small. We keep them in a special room at the back along with…” The front door was opened and swung inward.
If Ab had been taken aback at who greeted him at the Sentosa place in Bandungan, there was no word sufficiently strong to describe the shock waves that went through him in the next few moments. Just inside the door stood a beautiful young lady in a light, lacy red Balinese dress. “Pak Sani,” she said as the old man came through the door. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him on the cheek. Two thoughts flashed through Ab’s mind, one nipping at the tail of the other: Sani had a young mistress. No, Sani had a granddaughter. It was Nancy.
She looked over Sani’s shoulder at Ab, her eyes searching his face.
Pak Sani held out his hand in a gesture of introduction. “I believe you two know each other,” he said.
Ab stood with his hands by his side, confused, upset, unable to move.
“Hello, Ab,” she said quietly, pushing the hair away from her eyes. “May I show you to your room?” She slipped past him and called something to one of the men outside, then returned, putting a hand lightly on Ab’s shoulder as she passed. “Excuse me. If you will just follow me, I’ll show you where you’ll be staying. The helper will bring your bags.”
He followed her from the front hallway with its ornate stone carvings, down a carpeted hallway. There were little alcoves at periodic intervals along the hall, each with its own light, each with some precious or beautiful object: carvings of ebony and jade, silkscreen paintings from China and Bali, antique silver work from Java. They walked in silence. Near the end of the hall, Nancy opened a heavy, teak door, carved in patterns of snakes and flowers. The room beyond was spacious and full of light. Large windows looked out across a small park-like space to a wide, sandy beach and the ocean beyond. Ab walked into the room, and the servant followed struggling with the two big hockey bags. He set them down with a grunt and then, silently and discreetly, disappeared.
Ab stood at the window looking out. He was churning inside with anger, love, close to tears and laughter. He tugged at his beard to the point where it began to hurt. He could feel Nancy standing very closely behind him, almost touching, as if waiting for him to turn around. Then, when he refused to move, he could feel her move away. “There is drinking water in the jug by your bed. And the tray over on the small table has tea for you.”
Ab’s feelings were all over the place. Nancy had been the first woman he had met who had taken his mind, and his heart, away from Sarah. In a sense, she had given him back to himself. And then, just disappeared. He didn’t even know, he realized, whether he could trust her. Sani’s granddaughter? He even wondered, somewhere deep down, if she could have been a killer. He thought of the kris he had found on the buffet that day. He wanted so much to turn around and take her into his arms, but remained frozen, staring out over the green sea.
“Ab, I know you don’t understand, but you will. Right now, if you wish to wash up, you may. We shall have lunch in a few minutes.” She started to pull the door shut, but hesitated. “My room is the next one down the hall, if you should need me,” she said quietly, and then pulled the door shut.
Ab had not moved from the spot by the window, staring out at the ocean, when there was a knock at the door just a few minutes later. “Dr. Dueck? May I come in?”
“Silakan, please,” Ab said toward the window, and turned as the door was pushed open. It was Pak Sani. Ab turned to look back outside, and Sani came over to stand beside him. He stood there a moment, also looking out at the sea. It annoyed Ab that the person he wanted to dislike the most was the only person in a decade to pronounce his name right. “If you really want to know, I had to spirit my granddaughter away without telling you, for her own safety. She was supposed to find and return a kris to its rightful owner, but it went missing, and someone else was ready to kill to get it from her. The aspiring killer was convinced that she must still have it.” He paused. “It seems to have gone missing at your house. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
Ab fiddled with the inside of his trouser pocket. He had been trying to sort out where his theories of the murders now stood, but it was all hopelessly confused. The man who was now asking about the kris might well himself be a murderer, asking for his own weapon back. Ab was pleased that he’d had the foresight to bury it. “Can we talk about this tomorrow? You said yourself that today was a day for pleasure, and tomorrow was for work.”
Ab looked directly at Sani. The old man glared. Then his face broke into something between a deep frown and a mocking smile. “I can see that if you were to stay here just a bit longer, Mr. Dueck, you would fit right in. A pity. Lunch will be served when you hear the bell.”
Ab bolted the door and wandered around his room, which turned out to be a kind of mini-apartment fitted with a couch and several soft chairs and an ornately carved low table, on which stood the tea tray. Off one end of this living space was a bedroom, almost equally spacious, with a queen-sized bed, and silk sheets. The bathroom was all of white marble, in western style, with a bathtub big enough for two people, and an overhead shower.
He stripped down and tried out the shower, which did indeed have hot water as the inscription said. The spray pounding against the top of his head felt good and freeing. So, today was a day of pleasure. So it would be. Enough of trying to understand. He was sick of it. Maybe tomorrow he could try again. Maybe after a day of pleasure, it would finally make sense.
He could hear the silver bell ring even from the shower, and when he had gotten out and dried off, he looked around to see how it worked. Small silver bells hung in the corner of each of the rooms, apparently connected by a string which passed from one to the other above the ceiling. At some central place, there must be a master pull-rope to set them all ringing.
He brushed his beard and slipped into a clean pair of shorts, which he very seldom wore on Java, it being considered either too boyish or too foreign, and a pull-over batik shirt with an open neck in the modern, bright, geometric design of the Javanese artist Sapto Hudoyo. He slipped on his sandals and retraced his way down the hallway toward the main entrance. The dining room, he had noted despite his distraction on his way in, was just off the main entrance to the left. The lunch was spread out on the table. There were plates heaped with white rice and rice fried with tiny shrimps all through it, chicken curry and succulent beef stew, steamed Chinese greens and stir-fried broccoli and cauliflower, two kinds of crackers, papaya, pineapple, lichees, rambutan, bananas. There were bottles of beer and jugs of water, cold and covered with condensation.
Nancy and her grandfather were already there, standing by the window and talking. Nancy’s hair was brushed back clean and straight, and Ab could see the striking resemblance to her grandmother and grandfather both, now that he knew. She was still in her red dress, which came about halfway down her thighs and clung to her slim body. He had no trouble remembering why it was he had fallen for her, why he still wanted her so badly his gut ached. Her grandfather had changed into a more modest blue shirt, with shell patterns on it.
The sun slanted down between the palms and through the open windows, through which could be heard the recurrent hissing of the waves. The air was warm and pleasant, with a slight smell of salt.
Ab motioned with his hand toward the table. “This is all for just us three?”
Sani crinkled into his smile. “There are many other people in this house who also eat. But for now, yes, this is all for us. Perhaps we can fill our plates and go eat outside on the patio near the beach,” he said.
They filled their plates and Ab took a cold beer and they strolled over a grassy knoll down toward the beach. Impulsively, Ab kicked off his sandals to feel the cool prickliness of the grass against his soles. He felt good. They sat on stone-carved but cushioned furniture under a thatched beach-shelter just off the sand. Beside them, in a shed with one side open to the sea, hung a range of snorkelling and diving gear. Below them, the beach dazzled under the bright sun. The beach spread out in both directions in a semi-circle, with the Sentosa house at the centre. To the right, off the point where the beach and the palm trees turned and disappeared from sight, another, smaller island was visible several miles across the water. Several sailboats moved swiftly and gracefully through the channel between the two islands. It was now high tide, but a reef, stretching from one point of the semi-circle almost to the other, was clearly visible beneath the clear water about a hundred meters off-shore.
“There must be a strong wind out there, past the reef,” Ab murmured, stretching out his legs and watching the boats.
Sani followed his gaze to the boats. “Yes, the wind seems fine for sailing, but the under-water currents are strong—and more dangerous. More than one boat has come to grief on that reef.”
But Ab didn’t want to talk about hidden meanings. He reached over and gently touched Nancy’s hair, then pulled his hand away. “Tell me, would it be possible to go snorkelling here?” he asked.
“Of course,” Nancy said lightly, “we’ll fix you up with some equipment this afternoon. You need to stay on this side of the reef to avoid the currents. I’ll come with you to show you the best places.” She paused. “If you like.”
“I would very much like.” He closed his eyes and let the gentle nudge of the warm breeze against his skin lift away the little crusts of darkness and worry that still clung there, in shallow crevices.
“Before I go inside for my afternoon siesta, I would like to say just one more serious thing to you, Mr. Dueck.”
Ab opened his eyes. “Abner. Call me Abner. Can I call you Sani?”
The old man looked intensely at him. “This is serious. That bit of knowledge that you acquired today, the relationship between Nancy and myself, that is never to pass beyond the bounds of your lips.”
“My lips are sealed.”
“This is not for clichés or jokes. Many years ago we had to change our names. Nancy was raised by English friends in the expatriate community, and never knew who her real parents were until she became an adult, just a couple of years ago. Because of my ambiguous relationship with the government in power, my family is always under some threat. I don’t want Nancy to get caught up as a pawn in this. It is better that she not be closely associated with me.”
Ab looked at Nancy as her grandfather spoke. Her eyes were serious and sad.
He pushed himself wearily to his feet with his cane. As he passed his granddaughter, he laid a hand on her shoulder, and she laid her hand over his. “Have a good time, my children. This old man needs to get some rest.”
They watched him make his way across the lawn, the rich and powerful Pak Sani, a sad and weary old man. Ab gently stroked the back of Nancy’s hair.
“Shall we go for a swim?” she asked.
“I’d love to. I’ll just go and slip into my swimsuit. Can I meet you back here?” They walked back to the house in silence, not touching. Coming back from the house in his swimsuit, his feet brushing over the cool grass, the warm wind enveloping his body like soft cloth, he could see that Nancy was already there, her silhouette at the edge of the water, bent over to see some starfish or urchin. He wished the moment would never end. He was surprised at the hot slap of the sun on his back and the sting of the hot sand on his feet when he stepped onto the sand, and couldn’t refrain from giving out a little yelp. Nancy turned and laughed. She wore a bright red bikini and had goggles pushed back up on her forehead.
“Grab yourself some gear from the shed there and come into the water,” she called. “It’s the only comfortable place.”
Ab took the largest sizes of everything from the shed, having learned that, in Indonesia, “large” meant “medium” or “small” in Canadian sizes. He stepped into the water and leaned on Nancy to put on his flippers. She really is strong, he thought as he let his whole weight fall against her and she did not flinch.
She picked up a bottle of sunbathing oil from the edge of the sand, filled her hand, and massaged it deeply, firmly, gently over Ab’s back. “You can get burnt to a crisp out there before you know what’s happened,” she said. “And then you wouldn’t be good for…for anything…for at least a week.” She laughed. Water on stones. Moonlight on stones. He could feel the warm oil melting into every muscular sulcus of his back and he just wanted to fall back into her arms.
They stepped gingerly out into the sea, the coral sand biting into their feet. At waist depth, about twenty metres off-shore, they pulled down their masks, adjusted their air tubes, and floated out over the inner side of the reef.
From this angle, face-down in the water, the sea was an entirely different place. Below them schools of tiny fish like fragments from the same shattered jewel darted in and out of projections from the coral. Angel fish waved past them, graciously nonchalant. Bright blue starfish startled them unexpectedly in dark crevices. They passed close to a high point in the coral, and Nancy reached out and drew Ab to one side. She pointed back to the clump of black, spiny urchins he had almost grazed. Even they, the deliverers of pain, with their fluorescent blue and yellow markings buried deep between the spines, were things of beauty. Time was of no consequence here. Everything was in a soft, blue-green undulating eternal moment.
Ab didn’t know how long they had lingered there before Nancy touched his arm and they moved back to the shore. He only knew that his mind was blank, and full of quiet peace. He slipped out of the flippers at the edge of the water, and tip-toed painfully over the hot, sharp sand. Nancy pulled out two folding lounge chairs from behind the beach house where they had eaten and set them out in the shade on the grass. Ab lay down and, in the warm womb of the afternoon air, fell into a peaceful sleep.