Ab’s heart was pounding. Something still didn’t compute. Neither John’s nor Sani’s story seemed to feel right. Something was missing. There seemed to Ab only one avenue left, one possible source of truth, if knowing the truth were even a possibility at this point. Ab returned to his house. It looked like a whirlwind had been through it. All the contents of the buffet, dishes, placemats, cutlery, were scattered on the floor. In the bedroom the sheets were torn off the bed, and the mattress was pulled half off the frame. He went to the back garden. The knife was still there, buried next to the tree.
His hands were shaking as he banged on the gate at the Wilkinsons’.
Marie emerged from the shadows of the garden, where she had been digging. “Ab! I thought you had left. So wonderful to see you. Don’t mind the dirt.” She held up her garden gloves. She wore a sun bonnet and had a trowel in one hand. “Orchids. Such a wonderful country, where a person can actually grow orchids.” She pulled the inside bar on the gate and pulled it open. “It’s okay, Agus! I have it,” she called over her shoulder.
Ab stepped into the waiting area, and held the knife toward her. “Nancy asked me to return this. She said that her family is finished with it.”
She pressed a dirt-covered glove to her chest, took a breath and bent over. “Just a head rush, dear. Stood up too fast.” For a moment, Ab thought her composure would wobble, but she never skipped a beat. “Ah yes, the mysterious missing kris. I wondered if it would come back. Harold assured me that the Sentosas were trustworthy and that there was no question. But here, well, there are always questions, aren’t there?” She set down the trowel and pulled off her gloves, setting them on the ground.
She took the kris from his hands.
She took it, pulled the knife partway from the scabbard, and then reinserted it. “It is such a fine specimen, don’t you think? Will you come in for tea?” She set the knife down on the low bench just below the glass kris display case.
Abe stepped back towards the door. “No. No thanks. I have a plane to catch. I have to leave the country. I suppose you heard.”
She reached out and took his hand and held it tightly. “Ah, yes. That is a pity.” He tried to pull away but she held him. What was it with these tough old people? She looked over her shoulder to make sure no one else was around, and then pulled him closer. “Listen. She didn’t kill your friend George. Don’t believe that for a minute. After Waluyo killed Susilo, he was supposed to return the knife, but your friend George got in the way, and then it went to Soesanto. Soesanto figured out who Nancy was. So she had to…well she didn’t have a choice did she? Family and all that. Unfortunately, George saw her that day at Soesanto’s. Very confusing for him. But I assure you, she didn’t kill George. Why would you kill someone you can just send home? Never for a minute believe it. That was pure, brutal stupidity. It had Waluyo written all over it. If it wasn’t for that girl and her family, you would be dead too. Look at me.” He stared into her eyes. They were steady, unflinching. “Do you believe me?”
He nodded his head, barely.
“Now give me a kiss and be on your way.” She raised her cheek and he grazed the dry, wrinkled skin with his lips.
Just as he turned to leave, she added, “Oh by the way, Gladys said that if I saw you I should tell you that, in case you were wondering, Tri is doing just fine. She said you’d know what she means.” There was a pause. “Leaving a couple of girls in port? Tsk tsk.” For a second he thought she was going to giggle.
Ab slowed only for a moment, wondering what sorts of bad things he could do to her, then walked out to the main road, and flagged down a taxi.
Ab didn’t remember going to the airport, or boarding the flight. Pushing his way through the jostling crowd of taxi-drivers at the new Jakarta airport, he tried to find the courtesy bus for the Sari Pacific Hotel, where Sani had made him reservations. Ab knew that the bus only made periodic trips to the airport, and not always when there were passengers, so when he failed to find it, he finally gave in to one of the drivers tugging at his elbow.
***
Jakarta was hot and smoggy, and he was sorry that he had not taken the time to select an air-conditioned taxi. By the time they got to the hotel, through the endless, crowded streets, he was bathed in sweat. Inside the hotel was another world, cool and orderly and luxurious; a luxury hotel anywhere in the world. Right now it was all he wanted. His appointment with General Witono was not until the next morning, so Ab spent the afternoon swimming lap after lap at the hotel pool and then wandering the neighbourhood.
The neighbourhood around the hotel was a mixture of open-sewered filth and poverty, hawkers selling fake blowpipes from Kalimantan and fake masks from Bali, small shops and warungs, and middle-class department stores. Ab walked the streets until he found himself, without having planned it, in a pub that served Mexican food, with a live band that played and sang country and western music. He drank beer and nibbled and watched a prostitute trying to hustle a customer at the bar, fighting off the deep gnawing darkness that prowled just at the edges of his thoughts.
Back at the hotel, he flicked between channels offering the movies Death Wish I and Death Wish II, Charles Bronson dubbed into Bahasa Indonesia. Finally, mercifully, he fell asleep.
The next morning he put a navy sport coat over his cotton batik shirt. He didn’t want to take any chances now about maybe not getting out of the country. He ate a big buffet breakfast, three different kinds of rice and a dozen different stir-fried vegetables, chicken and beef saté, stews and fresh pineapple, bananas, hairy-fruits. Typical Indonesian Breakfast, said the sign over the table, but he had seen typical Indonesian, and this was not it. Nevertheless, it tasted good and was filling. He checked out and went to catch a cab. If everything went according to plan, he would visit Witono, deliver Sani’s documents, pick up his own exit papers, and head right out to the airport. He would be out of the country by nightfall.
When the taxi driver finally pulled up in front of the complex of scummy-green government buildings they had been looking for, Ab was sure they had passed it twice before, but it seemed pointless to say so. He considered asking the driver to wait, but decided that it would be easier to flag a new cab than to explain something to this particular driver.
He signed in at the front table. Then, dragging his two hockey bags, and the leather folder from Sani tucked under one arm, he went down the hall, turned left and up two flights of stairs to Witono’s office. The male secretary made a note of his presence, but indicated that General Witono was busy just now and Ab would have to wait. Ab sat in the cramped waiting room, staring absent-mindedly at the mildew in the corner and the portraits of the president and the vice-president. He noted that his name was written on a small chalk board beside Witono’s office door. A slow fan circulated the warm, clove-scented smoke-filled air around the room, as nearly everyone who came or went with various bundles of paper and the ubiquitous green file folders was puffing on a kretek.
After about half an hour, the door to Witono’s office opened and the General came out to welcome him. Mr. Witono was about Ab’s height, which, for an Indonesian, was tall. Although he was not in military uniform, his bearing and manners betrayed his background. He was a muscular man, with short black hair and a clean-shaven, even shiny, square face. His eyes seemed to have a permanent squint to them. He took Ab’s hand firmly and without hesitation and asked him in.
Ab gestured towards his bags. “Will they be okay here?”
Witono looked past him to his secretary. “These bags will be guarded,” he said to the secretary. Then he flashed a quick, superficial smile at Ab. “Yes, the bags will be fine here.”
He carefully pushed the door shut after them. There was no one else in the office. Witono’s “busyness” was no doubt intended to serve a social function. It is good to keep your subordinates waiting. He pointed Ab to a chair. “Dr. Abner Dueck. Finally I have the pleasure to meet you.” He went around behind his big desk and sat down. “I have heard many things about the good work that you are doing in Java.”
Ab sat formally with the leather folder in his lap. “I have only been trying to help the small farmers. I do what I can, that is all. I think perhaps I have learned as much as I have given.”
“Ah, yes. It is good to learn from each other.”
They were silent a moment, and then Ab partially stood up to hand the folder to him. “I believe that these documents are for you.”
Witono, who had begun to lean back in his swivel chair, tilted forward to take the folder. Then he sat back again and opened it. Very carefully, he paged through the documents. A smile played at the corners of his thin dark lips. “Yes, yes. Everything is in order. Order is important, yes?” He flashed his white teeth at Ab. “Especially in so big a country as Indonesia, so many peoples, so many languages, so many difficulties. We are not all so fortunate as Canada, to have order come so easily. Here, we must work at it.”
Ab eyed him. So this was the man signing the papers and giving the orders. He felt the bitterness well up within him as he thought of the blood that had been shed, for what? To get a piece of land? To get back at an old Chinaman? He couldn’t hold his tongue. “One must not let the Chinese get the better of one, must one?”
But Witono seemed to take the comment at face value, in stride. He laughed. He leaned across his desk as if Ab were a fellow-conspirator. “They eat pigs, you know, and how do you say in America, you are what you eat?” He laughed again, heartily. It was apparently a joke he had told before. Ab felt sick to his stomach.
“I believe you have some papers for me as well?” Ab asked, standing up.
“Oh, yes, I have them right here.” He opened a folder in front of him, pulled out two sheets, and handed them to Ab. “I am so sorry about the problems with your visa. That you must go earlier than expected. These decisions are made elsewhere, you know.” He gestured with his hand to indicate a non-specific elsewhere. “But we are very pleased that you could come to our country. You speak the language so well. We hope that you can come again, perhaps for a visit.”
Ab recalled the visiting Dutchmen. Come back, but don’t tell us what to do. He folded the papers and stuck them into the inside pocket of his jacket. They shook hands at the door, and Ab dragged his bags back down the hall to the staircase. Outside, the sky was suddenly overcast, and a few large rain drops splattered against him. He waved down a new-looking taxi and was relieved to discover that it had air conditioning.
They had only gone about a block before the rain hit with full force. It was as if they were in the middle of a thundering waterfall, huge grey sheets of water slapping over the car. Within minutes, the side street they had turned down became a torrent, and the taxi driver, with a shrug of despair, pulled to the side and stopped. Visibility was zero.
“It is not the right time of year for this, is it?” He wondered about the time. His flight wasn’t for several hours, but the airport was a long way out.
The taxi driver turned. “It is never the right time of year for this,” he said. “And it is always the right time.” He laughed, as if this were a joke or a riddle he told often.
Watching the children wade through the filthy water, wondering how many would die from enteric disease, from the effluent washed down from the slaughterhouses and in-city farms—fifteen percent?—Ab suddenly remembered his baptism, the going under and the coming up to new light. And what was lost in that transition? Momentarily, it had all seemed so clear, and yet, he thought, where most of us live it’s not quite all under, and not quite all the way up, just wading around in the half-divine half-mortal monsoon thick of it. The rain thinned a little, and he could make out other cars and motorcycles pulled to the side of the street. People were crouched under plastic sheets and storefront awnings. The open sewers at the edge of the street swirled and overflowed, and bits of plastic, plant debris, pieces of wood and feces sloshed along the centre of the street. Three small naked children splashed each other and danced around the taxi. God, Soesanto, I hope they didn’t kill all of you guys. I hope there are a few of you left, the optimists, the quiet activists. I hope the good policemen survive. The good businessmen. The people who ask questions. When Suharto dies, Indonesia will need you more than ever.
In another fifteen minutes, the rain had stopped and the filthy stream down the road had leaked away, back into the sewer system, into small streams, and into the make-shift shanties along the edges of the larger sewers and streams. The taxi driver started up the taxi, and they moved back out into the flow of people, cars, and motorbikes once more.
They made it to the airport an hour before flight time and Ab waited impatiently in the check-in line. A student in his white shirt and blue trousers and a middle-aged gentleman in a blue batik shirt tried to elbow and push their way past him when he finally got to the head of the line. They held out their tickets into the face of the man behind the counter. Ab very firmly took the arms of both of them and forcefully pulled them back without saying anything, then laid his own ticket on the counter. Ah, the politeness of big city people, he thought. New York, Jakarta. Paris. Wherever. Fuck them.
There were no problems with the papers. In fact, it seemed that things went smoother and faster than normal. Walking out the open-sided breezeways to the departure lounge, looking out at the tropical trees and flowers, he felt an odd combination of light and free, and very sad, and caught. No matter where he went, his whole life, there would be this feeling. What was it? She loved him. Better get away while you can, she had said. But Soesanto didn’t have that choice. Like old Job, in his afflictions, Ab felt caught in the middle of a bet between God and the devil: Though she slay me, yet will I love her.
A caged bird, hanging in the airport gardens, filled the air with its loud, plaintive cry.