~
Mangy, skeletal cats were picking over the garbage in the street. These local cats were small and ringwormy, with knotted tails. People stood in doorways, murmuring low and sweet, little slow-moving musical people with naked children on their hips or knees. But I could not take in as much as I had going down. My thoughts kept circling back to Lisa and the boys. Some of the things Lisa said were strange. Yet strangest of all was that she described how I felt: something of me was in this place, but I could not say what. Not yet.
I arrived at the school as the last night classes were finishing. Georgie was visible through the glass of the foyer, talking animatedly to someone unseen. She raised her arms to adjust a comb in her coppery hair, then returned to her silent gesturing.
‘Here you are, m’laddie!’ she cried, jumping up as I pushed open the door. ‘A quarter to nine on the dot! Just in the nick of time, young man, just in the nick of time. Off we go to the disco then.’ She peered at me. ‘Is something wrong?’
‘No. Just – taking it all in.’
‘Well, look sharp, m’laddie, and smile please, no shirking now. We thought you’d deserted us, let the side down. You don’t know what you’ve let yourself in for working at this school, Mr Joe, that’s all I can say.’
Georgie had somehow managed to commandeer the school’s vehicle to drive us to the nearby disco. She perched by the driver, giving him directions in a slow, deliberate voice. I sat in the back beside an unwholesome-looking Englishman named Tom. Tom had a huge hooked nose and an abstracted air. He was perhaps forty. He announced he was looking forward to getting smashed tonight, really smashed.
‘More people are coming to the disco later,’ Georgie said, her talk abruptly accelerating as she turned to face us. ‘Martin’s meeting us there, if he feels up to it. I’m so glad you could come, Mr Joe. Now, tell us all about it, then.’
‘What?’
‘Your life, of course!’
‘At least wait till we get smashed, Georgie,’ said Tom. ‘Take no notice, Jim.’
‘His name’s Joe, Tom.’
‘Sorry, they come and they go, you know.’
‘We’re not forcing you to talk, m’laddie! But you’re part of the gang here now – be grateful, that’s what I say. It’s lonely here otherwise.’ She turned to talk to the driver, slow again.
‘The expat community’s like that,’ Tom explained to me, paternal, ‘it’s small. Yeah. They latch on to newcomers like you, you’ll find. You’ll have to have good boundaries.’
‘What are you muttering about in the back then, Tom?’ asked Georgie, whipping around again, fixing us with fierce, deep-set eyes.
‘Nothing, nothing.’
‘Oh come on, one for all, all for one, you know.’
I saw Tom ignoring her, holding his head back, accentuating the beak of his nose.
The driver negotiated the bumping beeping traffic with preternatural calm. Through the window came night layered with magnolia, incense, sewage, piquant durian, gasoline. Old plane trees crossed above the road, their thick limbs feebly lit from below. Georgie stared into the dark, telling us of a childhood in Liverpool, Glasgow, Frankfurt, Cologne …
We stopped to pick up another reveller, Aki, who squeezed in alongside Georgie. Aki was about my age. Georgie, chattering away, tugged at her sleeve and ran her hand along Aki’s arm. Aki kept nodding and smiling.
Driving around the corner, the driver halted the van, rested his forehead on the wheel, and whispered, ‘This is it.’
‘Here we are then!’ cried Georgie. ‘Out you get, out you get! Don’t just sit there, Mr Joe, wake up sleepyhead, full steam ahead.’ Then she trilled. She trilled when excited.
In the gutter a man sat holding a tin with the smooth shining stumps of his arms. Georgie leapt over him, leaving a coin rolling in his tin, and scurried bent toward the disco, holding up her skirt above the path.
We found ourselves in a hall decked with angled mirrors, the glass presenting different aspects of our group. Parts of me moved – a hand, which I then felt smoothing my hair. I stood about with the others, laughing at the effects – the back of me talking to the side of Aki. Then we entered an interior booming with music, and climbed three flights of chrome-railed stairs. Even the far tier was crowded. We sat at a low table in the dark while Georgie went to the bar along the wall.
‘Just arrived?’ Aki shouted in Bahasa over the dance music, her face close to mine.
‘A few weeks!’ I shouted back.
Aki nodded, considering. ‘Like it? Suka?’
‘Suka! But it’s a bit confusing.’
‘What?’
‘Confusing! It’s confusing!’
Aki only laughed. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not you, it’s them! Always remember this is a strange place. And –’
Aki’s eyes rolled up in her smooth, elliptical face. Smoke began billowing from the roof. Dance music morphed into the deafening strains of a galactic overture. The ceiling opened up and revolving racks of lights descended toward us, snowing discs of strobe light. Aki’s face turned red, blue, orange, and she leaned back in staggered stages, laughing from an orange-lit distance. The flesh rose in orbs under her eyes, and her unusually large hands, spreading over her designer-ripped jeans, continually changed colour.
‘Why do they have this smoke and light show?’ she laughed, ‘why do they do this?’
Tom slapped his knee, and guffawed like a toucan.
The locals were not laughing. They watched the light show sombrely.
Dance music started pumping again.
‘I’ve been here three years now,’ shouted Aki, ‘a bit too long. Do you like the girls?’
I kept being asked this. ‘Very pretty!’ I shouted back.
‘But the local girls,’ she said, ‘they aren’t – what can I say? They don’t often do much!’
In a sudden lull between songs Aki was caught yelling. She widened her eyes in surprise, then went on rapidly in a lowered voice: ‘Do you know you can be divorced here if your husband discovers you’re not a virgin on your wedding night?’
‘That’s right,’ said Tom, ‘it’s grounds for divorce. How are you finding the place, mate? A bit overwhelming at first. All the sights and sounds. But lots of wonderful things about this country. Sound English, don’t I? Truth is, I’ve only got an English accent because my parents were English. Actually only ever lived in England for eight months. Father was in an oil company. Always moving around. So you see I’m not really English at all. Not sure what I am, really. Never really got on with my parents. Might as well tell you now, my father was a very violent man.’
‘Really.’
‘A very angry man, you might call him. You’ve no idea how he abused me. A bit kinky, you know. Yeah. I was always picked on at every school I went to, always the new boy. Always shifted around. No one ever really got to know me. I’ve lived in seventeen countries. Know what?’
‘What?’
‘Of all the countries I’ve lived in, this country is the one I like most. Really saying something, isn’t it.’
Lisa appeared, climbing the stairs, boys in tow. I watched her pushing toward the bar, where Georgie still waited for drinks.
‘Been here three years now,’ continued Tom, rolling a cigarette, ‘I could show you around, if you like, Joe. See the sights. I know quite a lot about this place. Picked it up, over the years.’
Georgie and Lisa were talking by the bar.
‘I could show you the things people don’t usually see.’
‘Okay.’
‘No problem. Love it here, easiest place in the world to live. I’ll tell you something: Indonesians are the friendliest people on the planet. Always got a smile. Tasted any of the local delights yet?’
‘The food? I’m still getting used to it. I like it, though. It’s spicy.’
‘No, not the food. The women.’
‘No.’
‘You do like women, don’t you? I mean, it’s no problem if you don’t.’
‘I like women.’
Georgie and Lisa had begun gesticulating at each other. Locals were stepping back, staring.
‘This might be an Islamic country, but I know where you can find plenty of – yeah. So, do you want to go later? I know a place down the road, come to think of it. Don’t have to stay long, we can just drop by. It’s not far, and not at all expensive, in fact it’s very cheap, as you’d expect. All the men do it here, you know, it’s part of the culture, it’s normal, although no one really talks about it. So there’s no need to worry. Actually, you can get away with most things here if you’re a Westerner. The locals are a bit frightened of us whities, deep down, I’ve discovered. And the ladies need the cash. You’re doing them a favour, in fact, keeping them employed. Come on, let’s go – it’s not as much fun going alone.’
Lisa had stormed away from the bar. Adi, Clive and Budi followed, looking angry too, but also embarrassed. They stomped down to tier two.
‘Every girl here wants to go out with a Westerner,’ droned Tom, exhaling smoke, eyeing figures in the shadows, ‘they assume Westerners have money, and it’s a status thing for them, you know, to have a Westerner. Be seen with a whitie. And they’ll do whatever you tell them to, they’re not like Western women –’
‘That fucking bitch!’ yelled Georgie, back from the bar, ‘she sees Martin downstairs, sees me, puts two and six together, and comes marching over to warn me off him. I tell you! What a hide! Lisa telling me what I can and can’t do with her ex-boyfriend! Lordy lordy! She’s fucking those three boys, you know: one, two, three. God knows how old they are. It’s sexual exploitation, as far as I’m concerned. You wouldn’t condone that kind of behaviour now, would you, Mr Joe?’
‘I –’
‘Oh yeah, the poor things!’ snorted Tom, ‘she feeds them, she gives them a bed and a roof over their heads. She even buys them clothes. It all adds up to more than they’ve ever dreamed of having. And to cap it off they get to go to bed with a white lady. They’re from remote villages, now they’re in clover. What are you talking about, Georgie?’ He relit his cigarette.
‘And that little witchdoctor, Adi, he gives me the creeps. A little shape-shifter from the village.’ Georgie shuddered, then suddenly calmed and focused on me. ‘Now, Mr Joe, I’ve been meaning to ask you: what brings you to this neck of the woods?’
‘Bandung? Everyone’s heard of Bandung, Georgie.’
‘No, really, out with it.’
‘My brother used to live here. I visited him once, years ago.’
‘What’s his name? Tom’s an old timer, he might remember him. All the expats know one another here – there aren’t that many of us, are there, Tom? Come on, then: when was your brother here?’
‘Six or seven years ago.’
‘Before my time,’ said Tom. ‘I was in Samoa then. Now, the women in Samoa –’
‘The only person left who might remember him,’ said Georgie, ‘is Babette.’
‘I remember her. An Englishwoman. Babette was a friend of my brother’s.’
‘That’s her!’
‘Must be thirty by now, long golden hair, fair, blue eyes –’
‘Yes, that’s her!’
‘Quite a looker,’ said Tom, ‘works for the competition here, the other English school in town. Bit of a recluse.’
‘And she’s got two kids, although no one ever sees them.’
‘She stays out of all the backbiting and that sort of stuff.’
‘She won’t gossip.’
‘She’s got good boundaries. Not many stay as long as she has. They come and they go.’
‘Aye-aye,’ said Georgie. ‘Well, here’s to you, Bright Eyes.’ She watched me over the rim of her glass.