~
I fled. After retrieving my things from the house I walked directly to the bus station in the centre of town. I would leave Bandung. I did not teach on Fridays. I would spend three days as far away from this place as I could.
Emile had once taken me to a strange beach on Java’s southern coast. With the last of my wits, I set about repeating this trip. The bus station was a dusty block in the centre of town. Even at this late hour fleets of vehicles revved impatiently. We set off the moment our full complement was made; soon I was the only passenger awake, watching dark heads loll in the low light.
Sooner than I expected forms were hardening with morning. Yes, I had been this way before. Mountain peaks above rafts of cloud, red rivers far below, faces ballooning up to the windows, palms spread upon greasy glass.
‘Don’t wear green if you’re going to the beach,’ the man sitting next to me suddenly volunteered. I had thought he was asleep. ‘The goddess will eat you.’
He began tucking in to his breakfast, arranged in a partitioned plastic box, but not before insisting I eat half, seeing I was so unprepared for the journey.
‘What goddess?’ I asked.
‘The sea goddess. A young and handsome man like you, she’ll gobble you up!’
Soon the man went back to sleep, using my shoulder as a headrest.
In the afternoon I sensed the approaching ocean. Yes, I remembered this, too – the trees squatter and scrubbier, the sky paler, the air saltier. Emile had described the place in a letter home, before the letters dried up.
The road ended in a dismal, windswept village behind black dunes. After booking into the little losmen I went straight to the beach. I’d been missing the ocean, I realised: I must be a coastal creature. A herd of goats nibbled on the dark dune ahead, kids sliding in the sand. Two monkeys, a third, then a fourth, came leaping and slipping down the slope, edging past me with sideways movements. Beyond the dune’s crest ran the ocean, moving rapidly shoreward from several directions at once. It seemed to move in shallow but surging sheets, the foamy crests crisscrossing. The thin strip of dark beach curled, deserted.
I sat watching the water, while the land behind grew sepia in fading light. On the low headland to the left, stooped figures capered at the jungle’s edge.
The other headland rose high and rocky.
A large figure torpedoed in on a wave. The water dispersed, leaving an enormous man in its wake, a man all torso. He walked straight at me, heavily muscled and tattooed, some kind of Islander, no doubt. I thought he was going to walk straight over me, but at the last moment he swerved, saying nothing, only disappearing over the dune.
I took off my shirt and walked into the water, up to my knees. A swim, the ocean – that was what I needed. To have my head cleared. Noticing a line of foam baubles leading out from the shore, as if a net travelled under the surface, I followed from bauble to bauble, venturing in up to my waist. The waves leapt over one another, low, almost triangular. I looked over my shoulder. From this angle, the low headland seemed familiar.
I looked back as two waves ran seething toward me. I was standing at the apex of the two walls of approaching water, suddenly able to calculate their power. Then it was done, and I was under, bouncing along the bottom, over sand, over rocks, perhaps I was being swept to the headland … I was driven to the frothing surface, an element half-air, half-water, then dragged down again. I had glimpsed a line of spotted deer, small and delicate, moving along the beach, monkeys knuckling along after them. Up in the other element the sun flamed. But a hand was holding me under. Suddenly sure of this, spite surged in my gullet and I swept aside the hand, driving myself up toward the air, really struggling for the first time. But a body had joined mine, fighting to keep me down. This body’s weight was my weight, it fought as I fought, yet its flesh was softer than mine, and it had full breasts, and its long hair whipped my face. When its fingers pressed against my mouth, I bit them. Then I had found the creature’s throat, and squeezed it, until I could feel its weight separating from me, and bumping away over the sand. It was swept back and down into the ocean, as I was borne to the surface, and by stages out of the water, onto shore.