Ab awoke to the sun glowing just above the range of volcanoes off to his left. Nancy was nowhere to be seen. He felt pleasantly at ease, and decided to go for a walk to the point of land off to his right opposite the island. The sand was cooler against his feet now, and he sauntered down to the water’s edge. The tide had gone out, exposing the rough surface of the coral and leaving strands of seaweed draped over the exposed areas. He thought he could hear music off in the distance, perhaps just around the bend of the beach, and he quickened his pace in the hope of seeing one of the many Balinese festivals he had heard so much about.
From the point where the coast turned, he saw not very far down the beach a knot of people coming out of the palm forest above the sand. They were bearing in their midst some kind of pavilion, all decorated with fruits and leaves cut into intricate shapes, and bouquets of flowers. Musicians trailed behind the main group, beating sharp drums and sounding on nasal-voiced horns and small bamboo flutes. Ab remained, still, at one with his surroundings, where he was. The party stopped near the water’s edge and set down their little parade float. More music wafted over the sand to him and he squatted, not thinking, not feeling, just being in this magic twilight. Then, as he watched, the crowd moved away from their flowery creation, and flames blossomed out and up into the darkening sky.
The music intensified, and the flames embraced the pavilion in its entirety, burning fiercely before falling back, like a soul striving for godliness, for purity of spirit failing, falling back to this mortal earth, and then…As he watched, the charred silhouette of a body fell through the flaming platform and to the sand beneath, and then the whole structure seemed to partially collapse and the flames burst upward in another brief, fierce blaze.
He turned his eyes away from what he now realized was a cremation and stared out over the darkening sea.
His father’s funeral had not been such a celebration. How stiffly the family stood around the open coffin to have their pictures taken. The pastor spoke, dishing out the false comfort of the bright life to come. The thin yellow face of Gerhard “Gerry” Dueck was couched, incongruously for such a frugal man, in the white satin. Ab thought only of the last year, as his father wasted away, in constant pain, of stomach cancer. He and his sisters had slipped in whispers past the living room where the big hospital bed had been put, where his mother watched night and day, spooning him soup, where the starchy but kindly visiting nurse went to give him his shots. Stumbling headlong, headstrong into the confusions of adolescent life, he was forced, day by day, to live with death. He hated his father for that death, hated the preacher for his optimism, his mother for her selfless compassion, God for His stupidity in foisting this on them. He wished, then, that last year, that he could have burned the whole house down and walked away. Now, looking back to see the last flames of the cremation pavilion die down, he wept, for the first time since the funeral, for his father, for himself, for all of life that he did not understand.
Just before he died, his father said, “You are on your own now, in this place. I can’t help you anymore.” Ab had wondered what he meant. Now, Ab thought, he was saying, “I am on my own now. You can’t be with me anymore.” It was as close as he had ever been able to come to expressing both his own vulnerability and his love for his son. And Ab had not been able to hear it. And here he was, so much like his father, unable to make that risky leap beyond his own bounds, no strings attached, which might make communication between people possible. He wanted to love the world and everything in it, desperately, but couldn’t, for fear it might forsake him. He was taking off again and again long after the thrill was gone, when all he really wanted was a soft landing.
He looked back out toward the island. The last, faint rays of the sun washed the western sky in watercolour flames. The night would be clear, and the first stars blinked down out of the jewel-like blackness in the east. A young man, a teenager, about the age Ab had been when he was baptized, had walked out from the trees not far from where Ab squatted motionless on the sand. He waded out up to his knees, bent down, and splashed the water over his head. Then he lowered his whole body into the sea and rose again. His shirt and shorts clung to him, and when he again lowered himself into the water, he peeled down his shorts, and then his shirt up over his head, the water running in little rivulets down his slim arms, his sleek, wet black hair, trickling lightly down over his glistening ribs, down to the darkness and the faint gleam of light where his legs came together, down, back to the sea itself down his firm dark limbs. From this vantage point he seemed, if not innocent, at least, quite simply, nothing but a boy. He was held like that by the last light of the sun, in Ab’s mind, an image to displace, to stabilize, the reality that, for the past week, had seemed to shift malevolently all around him.
The boy swam a little, holding the clothes in his hand, then arose, like a god from the sea, like a newly baptized convert, wrung his clothes out, and, carrying them, walked slowly back to the shore and into the darkness of the forest. Ab pulled himself stiffly to his feet, stretched his legs, and walked slowly back to the house.
Nancy was standing at the beach house, a strained look on her face. “We wondered where you were. We hoped you hadn’t wandered off and got lost. It’s supper time.” Ab didn’t say anything as he approached. He brushed her arm, lightly, and kissed her on the cheek.
She looked at him carefully. “Have you been crying?” He didn’t answer and she continued, “You should be careful. We don’t think your life is in danger, but…”
Ab stopped a moment as she continued into the house. “But?”
She turned in the light of the doorway. “Yes. But.” Then she went in and Ab followed. Ab recalled the incident in Yogyakarta just before the earthquake. Had that been real? Now, in his room, changing into a clean white shirt and light beige cotton slacks for supper, he felt a vague sense of unease, alone in this strange apartment, almost as if he were being watched. The garden outside was pitch dark, and he drew the curtains.
The supper was a spicy shrimp soup, followed by ocean fish and octopus with white rice. Sani was grouchy and distracted during the meal, not saying much, answering questions curtly. He is as anxious as I am to get this business over with, Ab thought. And perhaps he even has more at stake. Ab played with Nancy’s foot under the table.
After supper, they went to their rooms. Again, back in his room, he felt uneasy. He sat at the small table and flipped through a copy of Suara Alam, the Indonesian nature magazine. He changed into a sarong, lay back on the bed, sat up again. Perhaps he had got too much sun. He opened his door and looked out into the hallway. It was empty, dimly lit by the lamps in the alcoves.
He stepped out, walked down to the next door, and knocked lightly. No response. He was about to knock again when it opened. Nancy was wrapped in a sarong, her shoulders bare. “Would you like to come in?” she said.
“Actually, for some reason I felt very uncomfortable in my room. I can’t rest and thought I’d go back out for a little walk. Would you like to join me?”
She hesitated. Ab stood silently in the hallway, making no move.
“I suppose if we go out the back,” she said, “and down the beach to the left, there shouldn’t be a problem.”
***
She brushed past him, smelling cleanly of scented soap, pulling the door shut after her. Outside, it was cooler, but only just enough to make them walk closely together, and not enough to make them feel uncomfortable. Nancy walked slightly ahead, her feet seeming to know their way through the dark, wooded park without the need for seeing. They walked, holding hands lightly, not speaking, down a small mud path that came out onto the beach several hundred meters away from where they had been that afternoon, away from the point of land where Ab had seen the cremation.
The moon was up and glimmering over the water. They dropped hands and strolled further away from the house, kicking at the sand, still not speaking. “I’m sorry about all the trouble this may have caused you, the way I disappeared,” she finally said. Ab was about to say something about being sorry that he had taken and hidden the kris, but something in him rebelled. He didn’t want to talk about that now. About George and Soesanto and dead cows.
She stopped and spoke out over the water. “Sometimes I get so tired of this. Of always looking over my shoulder.”
Ab came up behind her and slipped his arms around her. She leaned back against him, and his hands slipped up to cup her breasts. She turned to face him and put her arms up around his neck. She laid her head against his shoulder and he held her against him, gazing over her shoulder at the moon on the water, and the dark silhouettes of the volcanoes.
“It’s beautiful out here,” he whispered. “Can we go for a swim?”
She put an arm around his waist and turned to look at the water with him. Then, pulling her hair away from her face with both hands, she loosed the top of her sarong and let it drop to the sand. “Sure,” she said. “Come on.”
They swam close together, the warm wakes from their bodies softly pushing against, and enveloping, each other. They went almost out to the reef, and then returned to where they could stand again. He drew her to him, their lips met, lightly, briefly. Her fingertips skimmed down his body like little fish and his mind went blank. He stepped back a little, and reached out, his hands wanting to swim down her body, but she turned away and swam, just below the surface, leaving golden ripples in the path left by the full moon on the water. He swam after her, not quite keeping up, his hand reaching, touching her foot, grazing her leg. This time, they swam almost to exhaustion before turning back. As he regained footing and walked up onto the beach, he felt hot and disoriented, his leg muscles stiff. He bent over for a moment, his lungs heaving for breath. When he looked up, she was already wrapped in her sarong.
They walked silently back to the house. At the door of her room, she looked both ways, as if scanning for someone watching them. She kissed him lightly on the cheek and then went inside, her eyes meeting his as she pushed the door shut. Was it all the way shut? He hadn’t heard the click of the latch. He stood there, agonizing as to whether to knock on the door, or push on it. He walked down the hall as far as his door, and then came back, and stood in the dim light of the hallway for several distressed minutes before returning to his room.
He sat on the edge of the bed. There was a glass of what looked like icewater on his bedside stand. He sniffed. It had the sweet bitter scent of gin and tonic. He sipped, then gulped it down, and then sank back against the pillows, and fell into a deep sleep.
***
Suddenly, he was awake. Had he been asleep? He looked down at himself. His sarong was rumpled and hitched up around his waist. His heart was racing and he felt a sharp pain searing in his chest. He felt strongly that someone was watching him. Again the pain, like a knife piercing him. For a second, his eyelids felt glued shut by fear, and then, with great force of willpower, he tore them open and stared in horror directly above him. A greenish, translucent face hovered there, a triangular head with long wavy hair slicked back behind the ears, but a male face, a malevolent face, the eyes burning down at him. He gasped out a cry, a choking, fearful-dream, terrified, night-time cry, rolled from the bed, and scrambled toward the door. “Help!” he drew the bolt and fell into the hallway. “Help!” he called and ran to Nancy’s door. He beat upon the door, and when it opened, fell unconscious through it.
When he came to his senses, he was lying in a bed, his body aching all over, bathed in sweat. His vision was blurred. His breathing was fast and painful. Someone was sponging his forehead with a damp cloth, and then a hand rested momentarily there. “He still feels very hot,” he heard Nancy’s voice say before he passed out again. He was in a deep, cold fog. “He’s here?” The voice spoke in a forced whisper. “He’s an idiot. First, he was just supposed to frighten George, not…and now, now this…It has to be his doing. Don’t these idiots have brains?” And then the fog was thicker, and there was only a soft, cold hissing.
The next time he awoke, he felt cold, and he drew the bed covers up under his chin. He tried to sit up, but a hand pushed him gently back and he was too weak to resist. He fell back against the pillows again with his eyes closed. The bed sheets had a light perfume of flowers. A faint light was coming through the windows. Nancy was sitting at his bedside, and behind her, he could see Pak Sani, leaning on a cane.
Nancy put a hand over his eyes and he closed them again.
“What happened?” he whispered, his voice cracking as if from long disuse.
“We think perhaps you had too much sun. Sun-stroke. It happens here. Foreigners are not used to gauging the heat of the tropical sun.” Her voice was firm, re-assuring. But as she spoke, the greenish face hovering above his bed came clearly back into his mind and he felt his heart racing. He gripped her hand and threw himself upright. “No! No, It was…it was…a head, a face, hovering over my bed.” He fell back on the pillows again, exhausted at the effort he had made. “I don’t believe in this stuff. It was like a ghost,” he whispered. “A malevolent ghost. A bad dream. I felt like I was being stabbed.”
The old man came closer. “Tell us what the ghost looked like.”
“It was a face, a head only. It seemed…triangular…the forehead much larger than the lower half of the face. He…I’m sure it was a he, I don’t know why, but I know that…His hair was curly, but brushed back from his face and behind his ears. His eyes seemed as if they were piercing right through me.” Ab spoke with his eyes shut, his body shivering uncontrollably as he spoke. “There was a terrible pain in my chest, in my shoulder, like a knife.” He pulled the covers more tightly up under his chin. No one spoke, and Ab could hear the swoosh and hiss of the waves through the open window. And the piercing melancholy call of a caged bird.
He opened his eyes. Sani’s wrinkled face was leaning over him, gazing at him intently. “You are right,” he said. “It was not just the sun. You must rest. We will talk later.”
Ab closed his eyes. “He shouldn’t be left alone any more, for any reason,” the old man said to Nancy. Ab could hear the shuffling steps of Pak Sani across the carpeted floor, the door opening and shutting, and the weight of Nancy’s hand resting on him. Then he fell asleep again.