ROLLING,
BREAKING, ROLLING

‘W hat day is it?’
     ‘Monday.’

‘What? Shit.’ I sit up and my head is whacked by an invisible baseball bat. ‘Shit.’ I lay back down to avoid more hits. ‘I need to get a bus.’

Eka pushes a bottle of water against my lips.

‘No. You do not.’

‘I do. I have to meet a dukun. In Aceh.’

Eka stands up. She is naked. Her hair falls down across her breasts, perfectly placed by gravity and nature to cover her nipples. She is beautiful.

‘Dukun? To get rid of her?’ She waves a hand around the room. What room I don’t know. ‘She was here a lot. You talk to her too much. Maybe he get rid of her. She should go. She not good for you.’

‘Yes she is.’ I think again. ‘No she’s not. I don’t know. Where am I?’

‘Hotel. Do not worry. You were very sick. I look after you. Not her. She make you bad. I care you.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You still sick. You should stay.’

‘I promised Charles I would go. It was the deal.’

‘And I think you need special medicine from special doctor. Perhaps he is right. So you go to dukun. Go wash now and get ready. I help.’ She yanks the soggy sheet off my naked body. ‘You too thin,’ she says, looking down at me. ‘You should eat meat.’

I should probably just eat.

This feels familiar. A familiarity that I don’t like, a sign of Western comforts. The bus is modern, not like most I’ve seen here. Even the windows are tinted. It idles next to us.

‘Take care, Crazy. Dukun sometimes good dukun, sometimes bad, sometimes lie.’ She is stunning. Jeans tight around her legs like a second skin and a batik shirt the colour of light coffee, highlighting her natural beauty and skin tone.

You could have been somebody. You should have been somebody.

I force a smile for her.

‘Here are pills for head.’ She taps me in the centre of mine, where there is still a gentle throb. Although gentle is a stupid word to describe a headache.

‘Thank you.’ I hold her hand and she pulls it away.

‘Not on street.’ She runs her hand through her hair and I remember how it feels. ‘People don’t like see affection.’

‘Thanks for being a good nurse.’

‘Not nurse. Doctor. Now go.’ She blows me a kiss. ‘Go. Be careful. Fix your ghost.’

I board the bus and air conditioning hits me, drying the still-fevered sweat as it seeps from my pores. The seats are all fully reclining with a blanket folded on each. Unexpected luxury. I sit in my seat and look for Eka from the window, but she is gone.

Lying back, sweat prickles up on my forehead, beating the conditioning. I pull the blanket up over my head, close my eyes, and spin slightly. And then I’m gone.

The restless night passes in half-consciousness, flashes and slits of light cutting through the darkness. I peer from the window in one of the flashes. A checkpoint. A man peers back at me, machine gun over a shoulder. Aceh? The border? Probably. The bus is waved on. Eyes close and darkness floods in. A flash of light again and I see flames burning, reflecting in water. Oil rigs? Burning ships? Dragons? My mouth feels like blotting paper, but I have no energy to reach for my water. Blanket back over my head. My eyelids fall closed. Images flash through my mind, all forgotten as soon as they pass.

Then blackness and nothing. Peace and complete sleep. Like death should be.

‘Eh, man. Wake up. Banda is here.’ Blackness is wrenched from behind my eyes with the blanket. I try to yank it back but someone is stronger.

‘No more sleep. End stop. Terminus, man.’ The driver is nearly straddling me. He throws the blanket over the seat behind him.

‘Alright. Alright.’ I blink away the night and day slashes its way in. My face feels stiff so I rub it and dry salt sticks to my palms. Christ, I must have been sweating rivers, but now I feel almost normal.

‘Off bus. Come on, man. Off bus.’

I pick up my bag and stagger down the aisle on legs deprived of blood and movement for too long. My fitful sleep has lasted the whole journey, about ten hours, maybe. I remember the oilfields and border but the rest is just the nothing of deep, deep sleep. My body is almost creaking with dried sweat.

I step down from the bus into a bustling, noisy and parched-dry square. People are walking in all directions around parked and moving buses. The square is alive with colour and the smell of ripe and overripe fruit. The near-invisible film of exhaust taints the air. The heat is stifling and the sun is falling on my head like hot hailstones.

It must be the start of the day. People still have energy. I’m centre of attention again. Taxi drivers surround me on the dusty road.

‘Come, come. I take you to Pulau Weh. I take you to boat for Pulau Weh,’ says one of three drivers jostling for my business. They are all in grubby trousers which hang above their ankles and sandaled, dusty feet. Two wear wool hats and one a baseball cap. How can they still be standing in this heat?

‘No. No taxi. Go. Leave me alone. Go.’

‘No, come, mister. Taxi now.’

‘No. I want coffee.’

‘Come.’ One of them is tugging at my shirt. ‘My taxi here.’

‘NO.’ I yank my arm away

That shuts them up.

‘I don’t want taxi, I want coffee. Kopi susu. Mengerti?’

‘Ah. Kopi,’ says one of them, the baseball cap. ‘Mengerti. Understand good.’

‘Dari kopi susu?’ I ask in a quiet voice, rubbing my dry eyes.

‘Disini.’ The scrawny hand of Baseball Cap points to a building just in front of us with a wonky table and two feeble-looking chairs outside.

‘Thank you.’ I sit at the table. The taxi driver stands next to me while the two with winter hats wander off kicking up dust.

‘No taxi. I don’t need now.’

‘OK. No problem. Tidak apa-apa. I wait you kopi.’

‘No. Look. I don’t want taxi. OK? No Pulau Weh. No ferry. Lampuuk, OK. I will take bus. Now go.’

The owner of the one-tabled coffee shop moves a dusty old Coca-Cola umbrella so that the sun doesn’t kill me.

‘I wait. Take you where you want.’ He adjusts his sweat- lined cap.

‘OK,’ I sigh. ‘Please sit.’ If you can’t beat them and all that. ‘Have a kopi.’ I point at the other spare chair. The café is full with its two customers and I give up. A crowd has started loitering near us, so I decide it’s best just to be calm, drink kopi, and take his taxi. I’m risking being late for Teddy anyway, although I have no idea what the time is, and my fuzzy brain isn’t even sure of the day of the week. I’d ask Laura, but she must be off in a sulk somewhere. I’m starting to think she is jealous of Eka. No contest, Laura. You’re a part of me that Eka could never be. You’re like an amputated limb; you’re gone but you still itch like mad.

No. Even that won’t raise a conversation.

Lampuuk Beach is at the end of a path which passes through sand dunes and occasional palm trees. I walk past a never-completed hotel of grey concrete walls with gaping holes where doors and windows should have been. It never made it past the first floor. A childish stick drawing of a naked woman with fuzzy genitals and big breasts is daubed on one of the walls. Next to it is written, ‘Fuck me. I am British whore.’

There is a whumping sound every few seconds that grows louder with each step. I follow the path around a grass-mottled dune and stop. The noise comes from massive waves which rise and curl and crash into the shoreline. The beach runs off to the left and gently curves round to a point about half a mile away. I can see fishing boats bobbing on the shoreline in calmer waters at the farthest point. To my right is a high rock outcrop that must divide this beach and the one where I’m due to meet Teddy. The outcrop is steep and high and full of caves and jagged holes. High waves break in white frothy curls around its base.

I walk further onto the beach, and to my left, set back a little on the brow of sand dunes, is a row of three bamboo-built restaurants and a few huts. Three sleepy white people sit in the shade under a bamboo shelter in the restaurant nearest me, reading books and staring out to sea. A hand-painted sign saying ‘Jack’s Bungalows’ hangs from weathered rope attached to the bamboo roof.

My stomach suddenly takes a turn again and a slight cramp kicks me. I decide Jack’s will do. It’s the nearest.

The bules nod and say hi, but I get the feeling they aren’t happy to see another of their race. I can understand that. They’ve come a long way to this tip of Indonesia to escape the West and its people.

Behind the bar-cum-reception counter is a young Indonesian who introduces himself as Jack. He has long curly hair and a permanent smile. I tell him I need a room and he takes me to a hut that is set slightly further back, but still has a sea view. It has an uneven balcony and a hammock strung across it. Laura is lying in the hammock, eyes closed, smiling. She’s wearing a bikini that she wears in other moments on other less-exotic beaches, when stones explain the layout of time and death is happy being ignored.

‘You like it?’ asks the smiling Jack.

‘Very much,’ I say, looking at the very clever girl in the hammock, whose fingers of one hand are placed in the top of her bikini bottom.

My gut suddenly churns and I bend over. Sweat is on my forehead again.

‘You OK, man?’

‘Yeah,’ I moan, ‘just getting over something. Where’s the…?’

‘Over there.’ He nods to a wooden outbuilding. ‘And the wash place is the well, just in there.’ He points to a chest-high walled enclosure. ‘Use bucket from well. No soap in well, OK? It pollutes the water.’

‘OK.’ And I run to the wooden loo and am overjoyed when I see it is one I can sit on and not squat over. My body lets go. A mouse sitting in the rafters watches without comment, just twitches his nose, as well he might.

—You really aren’t well.

—Because I have the squits and a temperature or because my super-dead girlfriend is lying in my hammock?

—Possibly both. Although I know I’m here, so therefore I exist, which means the squits is your biggest problem.

I place my hand over her stomach, which quivers.

—Mmm.

—Don’t tell me you can feel that?

—OK, I won’t.

—I’m not going to shag a dead person.

—OK. But your touch feels good.

—I’m not touching you.

This is crazy. I take my hand away and look to the sea rolling and crashing relentlessly onto the beach.

—Ever wonder where all that energy comes from? she asks.

She has turned her head to the sea.

—The moon, wind, turning of the earth, I reply.

—And ever wonder where all that energy comes from?

I look back to her and shake my head.

—All I wonder is where all your energy went. All your life force. I say.

—I’m still here.

—No, you’re not. You’ve gone. All you are is some electric spark fluttering around my brain, fucking me up.

—Am I?

—Yes.

—All those moments are still there, numbnuts. They’re all still there and I’m in every one, still with you. All lying there waiting to be found.

There is an Indonesian family playing in the sea. Mother covered from head to toe in clothing, but still in the water up to her waist. Dad is bouncing a toddler up and down at the water’s shallow edge.

—You really want to see this dukun?

—I’ve got to. I promised Charles.

My head does a sudden turn and my mouth goes watery. I can feel sickness rising.

—Do you really want to? He might magic me away.

—You’re not here anyway, so…

I swallow the excess water and shake my head.

—Want to be fixed, do you? So you can go off and be an angry New You with a massive chip on his shoulder for the girl he lost?

Wumph. Wumph. Wumph. Three waves collapse in on themselves, heavy and slow and powerful, before I answer.

—No. I don’t want to be fixed. I just want it all back. All those moments with you. And all the moments we never had. I want them back. I don’t want this hurting teasing you give me now.

Laura sighs and puts an arm over her eyes. I go to touch her but I can’t. All I feel is the rough cloth of the hammock. I’m so tired.

—It’s nearly time you went, then. Go see the magic man. Let’s hope I’m waiting for you when you get back and he hasn’t ghost-busted me away.

—I love you, Laura.

—I love you more.

—Not possible.

I look down at her and she is gone. There is just a hammock, torn and stained. Pain, intense and raw, jumps up behind my eyes, and I turn just in time to vomit over the side of the balcony. My hands hold on to the wooden rail and it wobbles with each spasm of my stomach. When my body has finally finished doing its thing, I rinse my mouth with water. I go to find smiling Jack and ask him where the path to the next beach is. He points to a gap through some ferns that grow at the rocky outcrop’s base.

‘You OK, my friend?’ he asks, the smile giving way to a look of concern. ‘You not look so good.’

‘I’m good, thanks. Small headache from a long journey. I’m just going for a walk. Clear my head. Jalan jalan.’

‘OK. Take it easy. Jalan jalan is good for a man with troubles.’ He nods at me and winks, then the smile is back and he starts wiping the glasses on his bamboo counter. ‘Eh, anyone want a drink?’ he shouts to his three residents in the shade. They are all grunts and pleases.

‘Eh, man. You want fish with us tonight? Fresh fish I catch this morning?’ Jack asks me as I start walking away.

My stomach wants nothing at the moment. Not even to think about fish.

‘I’ll let you know later. Is that OK?’

‘Yeah. OK. No what what. Happy jalan jalan.’

The path leads around the land side of the outcrop. It is overgrown and hard to follow in places. It takes me through a grove of coconut trees, then along a small fenced-off area with a solitary water buffalo in it.

‘Hello, water buffalo.’ My throat hurts. ‘Seen any witch doctors in these parts?’

He looks at me, ring through his wet nose, as though considering whether he has. He looks away without comment.

The path carries on; grasses and ferns tickle my bare legs as I try to follow the thin indentation through the undergrowth. I’m mostly in the shade here. My head feels better, but someone with a small hammer still taps the back of my eyeballs with each step. My heart is also beating hard in my chest. Hard and fast and uneven.

Why am I going through this for some crazy old walnut? Why is he so interested in me? Jesus Christ, I’m bloody mad. Why am I here? Even in this country? I should have just stayed in England. Got on with life. Things would have got better. I’d have met someone else. Life would have become normal.

I shake my head and my eyes nearly fall out. Nothing would ever have been normal. I’d just be a different mad.

The path starts widening out and turning sandy again. The sound of the sea beating the land returns and then the path spits me out onto a cove. It is about six hundred metres long and enclosed on both sides: the rocky outcrop to my left and a hill covered in trees and bushes to my right. A thick line of driftwood curves along with the beach. At the rocky outcrop the waves are breaking with double the size and force of the waves on the other beach. They spit white foam as they curl and crash on to the point.

There is no old man. There is nobody. I am alone here.

I wander to the water’s edge. Sweat runs down my cheeks and around my eyes, but I can feel the heat drying it quickly. I’m not in the shade here and I can feel the sun searing my flesh. I throw handfuls of seawater over my head. God, it feels good. I’d attempt a swim but the waves are too big and I feel too weak. They’d smash me to pieces or drag me out to sea.

Or perhaps that’s the way to go. Perhaps that’s why the dukun wanted me here. Sacrifice me to the sea for some strange spell of his.

I kick my sandals off and step into the water. I can feel it pulling me backwards and forwards as the waves break just a few metres in front of me. This is a strong old boy, this sea. Been pulling people in and under since its birth. I step in a little more. It’s knocking my knees, trying to push me over and then it’ll have me. Eat me up and turn my bones to driftwood.

I stand here in the sea, feeling its power, listening to its booming voice, while the sun bastes me with its heat from the eternal white-blue of a cloudless sky for a long moment, or string of moments. Staring at a horizon which leads onto other horizons. Horizons which continue all the way around the world until they come up behind me and poke me in the back.

I smell something. Burning wood. Smoke floats around me. I turn. Walnut Teddy is sitting cross-legged on the beach. Little coloured bag over his shoulder and a small fire burning in front of him. A small metal pot sits in the flames. His one good eye is looking at me, his one cloudy eye seeing me.

He smiles and pats the sand next to him. Feeling too exhausted and ill to protest, I leave the sea and sit where he tells me. I watch the hairs dry on my legs, waiting for him to make the next move.

‘You have fever,’ he tells me.

‘Yes.’

‘I have something for you to help one of your sickness.’ Teddy fumbles in his bag of tricks.

One of my sickness? Crazy old nut. I wonder what he’ll pull out. Am I about to go on one of those Jim Morrison in the desert find-myself trips?

‘Somewhere here.’ He is still fumbling, the creases even deeper around his face as he frowns. ‘Ah.’

Snake’s head? Bottle of gnat’s piss?

‘Take one very four hours.’

A blister pack of pills.

‘Oh. Thanks.’ I pop one and swig it back with water he also gives me.

‘It will help with stomach and fever a little, but of course bad drugs you must sweat out. I tell Charles he should not sell bad drugs at club, but he like his money.’ Walnut laughs and punches my shoulder. ‘But he is good man in other ways. And he likes you and you have problems. So I help.’

I peer at the tarnished pot and see that about a cupful’s worth of watery liquid is starting to bubble in it. There are broken pieces of leaf in it.

Laura leans over my shoulder to take a look.

—Mmmmmm. Yummy.

‘Tea?’ I ask.

‘Special tea.’

Aha. Here is the ‘find yourself’ trip.

Teddy fumbles in his bag again.

Laura sits next to him and rubs sand from her feet. She’s still wearing her bikini. I chew my lip and swallow.

‘It just needs one more ingredient.’ His hand brings out some brown nuts. ‘Areca nuts. Some people call betel nuts.’ He smiles a wide smile and shows me his red-stained teeth. ‘I like very much. Very good for many things.’

He pops them in his mouth, chews them for a second or two, smiles again, and then spits them into the potion. I’m not so sure drinking that is going to improve my stomach. I might leave after all.

—Perhaps you should. That’s going to taste awful. And I don’t want him to disappear me for good.

‘Now we smoke and wait.’ He pulls a long pre-rolled joint out of his bag. He sniffs it like a cigar and then puts it between his gritted red teeth and grins.

I decide to stay.

—He won’t disappear you. I’m just humouring the old walnut. You’re too much in my head to be disappeared.

—I hope you’re right.

—I don’t know what I hope.

He pulls a piece of burning driftwood from the flames and lights the reefer. A pungent puff wafts into my face.

‘Here,’ he says while holding a lungful down.

‘Thanks.’ I draw on it and cough. ‘Whoa, Teddy.’

‘Good shit, as you bules say, ya?’

‘Ya.’ There isn’t one strand of tobacco in it. Just pure grass from the jungle. I take another drag.

He is nodding away, watching the fire. His smoky eye nearest me. I wonder what things it can see.

He smiles at me and winks. Then he turns towards Laura and nods. She raises an eyebrow and there is a fleeting glint of fear in her eyes.

—No way can he see me, right?

—Of course he can’t. You’re in my head. You don’t exist. You’re not even on the beach.

—You think. Then how come the sand’s burning my bum?

I don’t know what I think. I don’t want to think.

Teddy looks away from Laura and into the flames.

‘Not matter how many wrong turns a man take, he end up every time where he should be.’ Sudden wisdom from my new friend. ‘You have taken many wrong turns, but you will end up in the right place, the right moment. And so will your demons.’

‘My demons?’

‘You know who I mean.’

—Is he talking about me?

—He’s just playing with my mind, that’s all. Relax.

—I can’t. He’s freaking me. I’m going for a walk.

I watch as she walks along the beach towards the trees that line it. There are no footprints in the sand behind her.

He looks at me, eyes study my head. ‘No, no. Your brain will shrivel in this heat.’ He pulls a square of coloured old batik cloth out from where it is tucked into his woven belt, shakes it out and puts it over my head.

I offer the joint back to him. He shakes his head. Fair enough. I carry on with it.

Laura is studying the leaves and trees. She looks like she’s spotted something in them and leans in. Then she parts a big fern, looks back towards us, and steps into the forest.

Something moves in my chest.

‘When you get in car, or on bus, or plane, you travel away from some place. You think that place has gone? You think you can’t get back there?’ He pokes me in the side. ‘Eh? You think it is “poof ”?’ Now he opens his hands in the air like a magician. ‘Gone?’

‘Er.’ Fuck. Both his eyes have clouded up. Ganja. Strong ganja is all it is.

‘Tell me? Is it gone?’

I look to the forest to see if Laura has come back out. She hasn’t.

I open my mouth but he cuts me off.

‘No. It is still there. You can take another bus, plane or drive car back there. No problem. Maybe the ticket costs more, or there is diversion on road. Maybe how you get there has changed, but the place has not.’ He nods his head and is silent again. ‘Like time, my friend. Like time.’

I look at the potion steaming in the fire. This mad old walnut must have gone to the same school as Laura. I picture them sitting at desks next to each other, studying quantum physics.

Walnut in school uniform. I giggle.

‘Mmm. Get high. Good. Time for drink.’ He puts his hands into the smouldering fire and lifts his dish up with bare hands. He puts it quickly down on the sand and blows his fingers.

‘Shit. Is hot.’

‘Of course it is. It’s a fire.’ I giggle more.

He stirs the potion with a stick and mutters some words I don’t understand, then he scoops up some sand and throws it in my face.

‘Ow. Fuck.’ I shake my head and blink my eyes. For the first time I notice my headache has gone.

‘Shh. Drink.’ He pulls the cloth off my head and uses it to pick up the soup.

‘No thanks.’

‘Drink. It is sweet. Drink slowly. But leave a little.’ His eyes narrow and he stares out to sea, as if trying to find something under its surface. ‘While you drink, listen to the great water, watch the waves. Rolling. Breaking. Rolling.’

I sniff the liquid. It smells of sweet berries and cardamom and something musky, like the weed I’m smoking. Oh, the weed I’m smoking. I look at its black-brown and glowing end and take a long last drag on it. I push it into the sand and take a sip of the soup, or whatever it is. It is sweet, slightly sickly, but I like it.

‘Rolling. Breaking. Rolling. Look.’ His scrawny dirty finger points out to the sea. ‘The waves.’

Is this going to be the trip? Is he going to mind-fuck me? Oh well. I sip more and more, watching the rolling, breaking, rolling waves. White foam spilling. Blue. Emerald green. Azure. The colours of the unseen world beneath.

‘Rolling. Breaking. Rolling. The wave, she comes in, she goes out, hiding under the next wave as she comes in. All of them rolling, breaking, rolling, over each other, then back out to great ocean. But they will return again in another time, or on another shore.’

My eyes are becoming heavy. My fingers and toes tingle and quiver where stress is leaving me. Down my arms and legs and out of my fingers and toes.

‘Rolling. Breaking. Rolling.’

If only Laura were here. If only she…

‘Forward and backward. Rolling. Breaking. Rolling. Retreating under the next.’

If only she what?

‘The places we have come from are still there. They are still there. We just have to find them.’

Laura. She is still where? Where is she? Why have I come here, without her?

I can’t remember. But it’s alright. I’m not scared. My Laura. Somewhere. Still somewhere. In some moment.

‘Rolling. Breaking…’

My eyes are drooping. The warm dish is still in my hand, nearly empty.

Relaxed. I am so relax—

‘Buuuuuurrrrrrrrppppppp.’ The sound is deep and guttural and comes from the depths of Teddy.

I jump.

‘Bloody hell, Teddy.’

He is up on his bent old legs.

‘It is nearly finished, now give me the dish before you drink it all. You greedy Westerners always drink up all that is offered to you. And sometimes all that isn’t.’

I hand it up to him and he carries it into the sea. He wades in up to his thighs. I watch as the waves smash down in front of him. I’m amazed his flamingo legs can handle the force. I stand unsteady but ready to rescue him. I can tell he is saying something to the sea, but I can’t hear over the crashing of the waves, which have become bigger, more violent.

Teddy throws the metal dish into a collapsing wave. It swallows it whole. He rubs his hands then holds them open-palmed up to the sky and says more words, unheard in the roar of the sea. He turns and starts to wade back. Suddenly he loses his footing and falls over in the shallower water. I splash out to him, but he holds up a hand.

‘I am good. No what what.’

Dripping, he stands next to me, and we stare at the sea together. I admire its strength, but don’t quite understand its power.

‘It is done. Go home, my friend. Go and return to the old places. See what is still there. Waiting for you.’ He looks sideways at me and winks with his one cloudy eye. ‘Good luck.’

He squeezes my shoulder and walks back to the fire, kicks sand over it, picks up his bag and wanders along the beach towards the hill and trees at the far end. Bent legs and scrawny arms hanging out of colourful clothes. I watch until he clambers into the foliage, like an orang-utan, and disappears.

The sea has calmed again. And so have I. I’m not high, either. I’m not anything. I’m not Old Me. I’m not New Me, I’m just me, and relaxed and happy about it. Calm and happy. I try to think about why I would be any other way and I’m not sure.

And why isn’t Laura here?

Because she’s dead. Isn’t she? She was on a bus and she…

She what?

What?

She is dead. By a car. But she arrived, too. Didn’t she? I remember her calling me from Prague. To say she arrived.

No, her mother’s phone call. She is dead. Dead. Of course she is.

She is dead. I know she is dead.

What has that old fool of a walnut done to me? I must be high. I must be. But I feel so alive. I’m so vivid and clear. I am here.

Mad fool. Mad drugs.

But there is something else. Itching up the notches of my spine and in the curls of my stomach. And I think, but I’m not sure, that it is hope.