RAMADAN SKY
a novella
Nichola Hunter

authonomy

by HarperCollinsPublishers

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Preface

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

About Authonomy

Copyright

About the Publisher

Preface

I thought about leaving the phone, complete with an entire story in text messages, on a seat at the airport. Perhaps some stranger would pick it up and have something to read on the plane. I thought about snapping that little sim card in two, as I had seen Fajar do in one of his sensational fits of rage. But, when I arrived at the airport, I just turned off the phone, put it in my bag and walked towards the gate. A sales assistant raced out of a souvenir shop and waved a set of postcards in my face, but I hardly glanced at her. I went through the boarding gate and got on the plane.

Chapter One
Fajar

It was early afternoon. I had suffered through all of my morning lessons almost screaming with pain when the teacher called me into his room and ordered me to sit on a plastic stool. My tooth was abscessed and swollen, and I felt like one side of my head was light as air, and the other side made of bricks. Even though my tooth was throbbing, I was curious. I had never been in a teacher’s room before. It was neat and bare, like the dormitory that I slept in at night with the other boys. A plaque bearing the ninety-nine names of Allah was hanging sternly on the wall above the bed, and there was also a washbasin, and a number of books were lined up along a shelf.

The room was not right for the teacher’s large body and kind face. I wondered if this man, whose name was Dedi, would not like a wife and perhaps a young son, and also why he did not have a television. He washed his hands at the basin and then shocked me by putting one fat hairy finger right inside my mouth.

Bite.

Against my beliefs regarding the biting of a teacher, but in accordance with the laws of obedience, I clamped down on his finger as hard as I could. A shock of pain was followed by a burst of warm, foul-tasting liquid, which I spat into Dedi’s handkerchief.

Bite again.

After that he tied one end of a piece of thread to my tooth and the other end to the handle of the door of his room. I felt the blood drain quickly from my face and I tried to tell him that I would ask my family to send money for the dentist, but his arm moved swiftly to the door and it was over. He gave me some medicine to take, and then he was showing me out of the room when the headmaster found us, approaching with his nervous, birdlike manner, head cocked to one side as if testing each word.

Your father has gone to Allah, Fajar.

Both men turned their eyes on me, thoughtfully, as if they were weighing up all of the consequences of that one piece of news – the way that each difficulty would now line up against the next and crash down on my small frame.

Within the hour, Teacher Dedi walked me down the road to the bus stop. His large hand rested on my shoulder for a moment before I got on and paid the driver and found my seat. I turned to wave, but there was only a square white back bobbing along the road in a cloud of smoke.

As the bus started moving, my tongue sought out the place where the rotted tooth had been so cleverly removed, leaving a satisfying new gap. Then I turned my attention to a rooster that was staring at me from its seat on the lap of a young woman. Rain began to strike at the windows of the bus, but then stopped as if changing its mind. I looked at the chicken and pretended not notice the woman, who had a large birthmark on her face and sat staring out at the grey, threatening sky. I was trying to think a clear path through the fuzziness of the medicine.

My father has gone to Allah. But how? Is he in Paradise already? Doesn’t he know that he is urgently needed at home?

The concept of death had not taken a definite shape in my mind, although I had seen it before in the form of a motionless, doll-like form that had once been the next-door-neighbour’s baby. But I couldn’t see that my father had anything to do with that. A tiny voice crept in to offer some advice.

It might be a mistake, it whispered.

I watched the people getting on and off the bus with their children and animals and packages, as the journey passed slowly, with many stops.

As we neared the centre of the city, the buildings grew taller and the sky became dirty with smoke from the traffic. I got off the bus on a side road. There were scraps of rubbish blowing around in the street as the wind was picking up for a storm. My eyes began to sting with grit and heat.

I crossed the high bridge over the motorway, which was swarming with beeping cars and motorbikes and people heaving carts through the murky air. I was home. I could hear the praying coming from our house as I went along the back alleys until I saw that some relatives of ours standing in the front yard. A flash of lightning gave them a strange yellow glow for a moment and then the youngest boy began waving and shouting to me. My father should be greeting them, I thought stupidly, and my mother, and they should not be standing there in the heat and wind with the storm coming.

In truth, our house is not large, and inside was full of other relatives. I could not find my mother, but my eldest sister came forward to greet me. I saw that she had been crying – but my own eyes stayed dry. Even when I saw the white shroud that tightly held my father’s body – when the thunder and rain came shouting, banging and smashing on the roof, and when we took him to be buried the next day and I watched my grown-up brothers carry him without stumbling to the car. Even now, so many years after, as I am remembering, it feels like it felt then. Inch by inch, I turned to very cold stone – the feet first, followed by the hands and chest. The cold feeling crept along the veins in my arms and ran like ice down into my fingertips. I became very quiet and still. I went through all of the prayers and rituals with the spice of incense burning at my nostrils. I did not want the green and pink cakes that my sister offered to the neighbours.

More than anything, I was disappointed to find that this is what happens in spite of everything, to change colour and shrink, and to be wrapped in white cloth like some terrible gift for the earth to receive. Even to men like my father, who had a reputation for being very lucky and was able to steer his large family away from trouble and into prosperity.

After most of the people had left, my mother made me a place to sleep on the floor by the window, next to my small cousin. I lay looking out at the darkness through a gap in the curtains, listening to the clatter of cups and plates being washed and stacked. The big rain turned into smaller rain and finally disappeared. The grown-up men of the family would take him very early, at first light, and then come back to help my mother receive visitors and to observe the three days of mourning. I wondered who would now catch and tend the doves that my father used to sell at the markets and who would raise the rabbits and chickens and go around buying and selling all kinds of useful things in order for us to live.

For the next few days it seemed that everything in our house had changed, but around us the streets continued their song as if nothing had happened. Children rose like ragged birds in the mornings and chirped and screamed and laughed on the roadside where they always played. Women carried baskets of cakes through the neighbourhood and men pushed their breakfast carts selling bubur ayam and coffee and fried snacks. The ojek drivers watched the street and smoked and gossiped and waited for customers.

I wanted to stay there amongst the cheerful noises and the quiet shadows of our house, where my father’s presence could still be felt in the corners and around the windowsills, but my lessons had already been paid for the next two years and my mother was anxious to begin honouring my father’s wishes straight away. So, a week after the funeral, she packed my things. This was not an easy task as I had made up my mind not to return to school, so as soon as she had finished packing the case, I took everything out again and returned the case to the shelf where I kept my things. After I had unpacked for a third time, my mother called two of my sisters to help her. At the sight of me standing there, glaring fiercely, in front of the neatly stacked clothing, all three of them started giggling. That was an insult I was not prepared to take. I was surprised to find my legs moving of their own accord, and a loud screaming noise coming out of me.

You think it’s funny! Why are you sending me away from my father’s house? I started kicking at the case and then picked it up and threw it across the room. Unluckily, it hit my mother’s shelf of special family things, including flowers and photographs of my father, which came crashing down from the wall.

Suddenly nobody was laughing.

Fajar, I thought you were a good boy, said my mother, in a shocked voice.

My eldest brother, Rhamat, came running downstairs to find me standing amongst the debris, breathless and defiant. He swiftly grabbed me by the shoulders and then pulled down my trousers and took off his belt.

My mother tried to intervene.

Rhamat! No!

But Rhamat would not listen.

This kind of temper shows a very bad character, he said steadily, waving at them to stand back. Best to catch it early.

He pinned me down on the table with one hand and thrashed at my legs and buttocks many times with the belt, while my mother and sisters stood and watched him. That is the way it would be from then on: Rhamat taking over my father’s position in the family before we even had a chance to get used to his death, but unlike my father, Rhamat did not hesitate to use force. He would beat any of us, especially the boys, while the women would stand there like stunned deer, staring wide-eyed, and doing nothing.

I did not give Rhamat the satisfaction of crying out when he beat me. I kept silent, and afterwards walked out of the house without looking at any of them. That night when I returned, I lay awake with the red welts stinging, my skin itching, but I was determined not to show any feelings, even to myself.

The next morning, I ate the breakfast that my mother cooked for me, and then the two of us walked, without speaking, to the bus stop.

You must work hard and try to be gentle, she said, as she hugged me goodbye.

I did not answer. She looked small and worried as the bus the bus pulled away, but I did not return her wave.

On the way back to school, I stared out of the window, barely noticing the other people riding on the bus. I watched the sky change from dirty brown to pale blue and the tall city buildings dwindle into the distance. Nobody was waiting for me at the bus stop, so I walked down the laneway alone and found the latch on the gate at the back of the school grounds. I returned to my classes without any fuss – a cold stone boy, but nobody seemed to notice any difference.

Chapter Two

All that was more than twelve years ago. I am not a child anymore, but that’s not easy to explain to five older brothers and six older sisters. Rhamat is still the bossiest and the worst. Although my mother is the head of the family, and she still tries to do things according to my father’s directions, Rhamat argues with everything and always wants the best of everything for himself and his dog-faced wife.

He is twenty years older than me, and all of us hate him. We wish he had not taken the place as the first man of the family. My mother has said that perhaps one day he will be run over by a bus. When she said that I told her that he is our brother and we must try to love him, but in my secret heart I was glad to hear it spoken.

Our mother works very hard and watches over us, especially me because I am the youngest, and my next brother Satiya because he is lazy and will not settle down to a wife or a job. He is ten years older than me and we have four sisters in between.

Everyone says that Satiya and I are the handsome ones in our family and also that we could be twins, but I don’t think so. For a start, he is shorter than me, and he covers his face with a beard. I can see that his eyes are dark like mine and he has high cheekbones and curly hair that he grows long and ties with a red bandana. I keep my hair short and my face clean-shaven. Satiya stays out most nights and refuses to answer to anyone when he comes home in the mornings. He eats and then goes off to work, his eyes sullen and drooping from lack of sleep. He did not like school and cannot speak a word of English, whereas I still have the certificates that I won in high school for best English student two years in a row – the year my father died and the next year. After that I came back home, to Jakarta, as there wasn’t any money to keep me there.

Night is the best time for Jakarta. Our houses are small and hot, so we hang out in the street or down by the river, where there are a few scraggly trees and a warung that sells tea. We also buy snacks there, and sometimes a little vodka, and other things if the right person is buying. There are piles of rubbish along the street and clouds of insects rising from the river, and a straight stretch of road that is good for racing. Our motorbikes roar like stallions, kicking up dust over the oily moon. There are no women here – all wives, mothers and sisters are in the homes that they are constantly spinning for us, like spiders. When we return at dawn, wives will be sulky and silent, mothers will scold.

Everyone who has a bike comes down here to try to earn a little extra money by racing and betting at the balap¹. We do this every Friday and Saturday night – unless the police come. Then they take whatever they can get out of us and send us home. Sometimes there is very big money to be won at the balap, and then the police will allow it, for a share of the prize money. If you want to win big, though, you have to put up top money. This is why you must be very careful about lending money to your friends. They will sometimes borrow from many friends on the same day, in order to do this racing. When they lose, they will have no way to pay anyone back.

One night I won three races, all of them against the second brother of my street enemy, who had cost me both my girlfriend and my job. My friend Budi was there, and he told me:

Take this bastard, Fajar, and show him who is the winner and who will be the winner, always, in the end.

We had put two hundred thousand rupiah on the first race. They called the start and from the beginning I felt the bike rush out fast and straight and I beat him easily. His face was blank as he called for another race. We always double the money if another race is called for. I told him he would be very sorry to lose four hundred thousand more. I could still feel the magic coming from my jeans and the warm seat of my bike, so I agreed and again, I beat him easily. This time he was sweating and showing his teeth after the finish.

He slowly walked over to where his friends were standing and talked for a minute and then returned. He wanted to race for eight. I had already won six and Budi was telling me to stop, but I was looking at the sweat forming on his forehead and I knew I would beat him again. Give me two hundred thousand, I told Budi – I knew that he had some money, although he had lost his job at the same time as me. This time he wanted to double the distance but Budi said:

No. He will run off the end if he loses.

Leave my eight here, my opponent said, and nobody runs anywhere.

So we raced with two men from each side at the finish line and I beat him again. I was happy to take his money, although we never usually race for this amount and I surely knew he would have to borrow to live and would struggle to pay back his friends for a long time.

The next night he wanted to race me again, but I refused.

You are three times the loser. I won’t waste my time racing such a rider.

His body stiffened and he glared at me for a moment but said nothing, and after a few seconds he got on his bike and drove away into the night.

My blessings to your brother, I called after him.

I was relieved to see him go. In truth, I couldn’t feel the magic in my body that night and I was sure he would have beaten me.

In the daytime and some nights I had been working as a security guard at KFC. I had a uniform and was earning one million rupiah per month. There is a trick to that job that not everyone knows: you can take your free meal, which you are given every day, and sell it outside for half price. You take the back lane, or the car park, and there is always someone who will buy it. If you can find a way to get two meals out, and nobody notices, it is even better. In this way you can increase your salary and that is how I could get a deposit for my motorbike.

Aryanti was my girlfriend at that time. I had told her that as soon as I paid the bike we would be married, but soon after that I became impatient and did not want to wait. Aryanti’s mother was the one who refused.

He can wait and pay the bike first, she told her. Have an umbrella ready before the rain.

My own mother was not in agreement because she did not want me to follow in Satiya’s footsteps. I was already twenty-four and she was anxious not to have a second son in his thirties with no wife, but she told me to respect the wishes of Aryanti’s mother without argument.

It was some time later that I lost the job. Remi, the brother of the man I later beat on the bike began telling stories about me and Budi. First he told them that we were smoking ganja when working, but he could not show any proof. We were called into the office, where Mr Iskandar, the boss man, looked into our eyes for signs of drugs. This was the same man who had squeezed our testicles at our job interview, in order to check that we were virgins. I had shaved all the hairs from around my penis and testes, as I had seen done in many porn movies, and he was very surprised to see this.

What is this for?! he demanded.

I was standing with my pants around my ankles with everybody looking at my poor exposed bird.

Do you have the crabs? Or are you some kind of perverted infidel?

I wanted to tell him that he was the perverted one to lay his hands on my private parts, but instead I told him about my terrible heat rash, from riding the motorbike and wearing jeans. I quickly showed him the bribe money and he told me to do up my trousers.

There had been three of us on that day and we all got a job, but the third man died soon afterwards in a traffic accident. He was run over on his motorbike on the way to work, and somehow never replaced. I wondered if Iskandar had continued to take his pay, because we had to cover three floors between two people, when it should have been one floor each. Budi and I had worked together like this for two years, when the same boss again called us in to the office. This time he looked into our eyes, instead of other places, to see if we showed any signs of smoking drugs. I could see that he had not gotten over his earlier dislike of me. He let Budi stand to one side and tried for some minutes to get a confession from me, but I held firm and he did not fire us.

The next day we brought cigarettes to his office, with Budi leading the way.

Please accept this small gift from my father.

Iskandar gestured for him to put the carton down on the desk and then turned his eyes on me as I produced an identical package.

Do not let me hear any more tales about either of you, he scowled.

We closed the door and immediately began mocking him as we walked away.

Please accept this gift from my father and please kiss my biji.²

Does this man’s mother have a penis?

No, his wife does; may she smoke him while he smokes our cigarettes.

The truth is, everyone takes a little ganja when they can get it, even Remi, our accuser, and especially when working at night. That first time we did not get fired, but some months later Iskandar began to complain about other things – twenty minutes late and such. It all ended in a bag search where he found some money, which had been placed there.

It is hard to prove you have not stolen money that is sitting right there in your bag, and if you make a fuss they can call the cops and then you have your hands in your wallet until they bleed. Iskandar told us we were fired. I had the feeling that only he could have placed the money there, because only he could have a spare locker key. This time I talked straight.

Are you sure it was us, you old spider monkey? Do you want another look at our eggs before we go home? And then you can go and spank yourself!

For the second time I stood before him with my trousers down, while Budi laughed hysterically and gathered our belongings.

Fajar, you are the craziest son of your mother, Budi spluttered, when he had pushed me outside.

And he was right. I am famous in my family for having a very hot temper that makes me do crazy things.

We got on our bikes, but did not go home. Instead, we rounded up some friends and three of my brothers and went to find Remi. We caught him by surprise – although he surely must have expected us to act against him, but perhaps not so quickly.

Our jobs were taken by his brother and nephew, but Remi himself found that he was unable to work for several weeks, as he fell off his bike that night and broke his arm and smashed up his face.

For the first month without a job I was looking everywhere for work. My cousin wanted to sell me a job as a ticket conductor on the train to Surabaya. He told me that I should pay two million rupiah. It is not permitted to buy a job in this way, but many places will not employ you unless you do so. We cannot ask for our money back if they decide to take the job away later; they will simply deny that any money ever changed hands. This time my mother said that we would not pay, as she had already laid out money for my first job and the man had seen fit to fire me anyway. So I kept looking. I still had a little money and I told myself that everything would be okay.

My father was the lucky one, who could do magic with money and animals. He could buy small things and sell them to people at a higher price. In his memory, I tried to do this myself with the raincoats. I drove a long way to the markets and bought ten raincoats at a cheap price. I tried to sell them to the other drivers in my street, but they all looked at me suspiciously and asked many questions. How much did you pay for this? Why do you want to go shopping for us like a woman? After that I tried at many places for every kind of job. I still had the bike but the payment was two months late. We should pay every month, and if we pay late, they will take extra interest from us. If they don’t get a payment for three months, they will come and take the bike.

One day, on the street, when I only had one week left until the third payment, I met an old friend from my high school. His name was Hidayat, and he was not exactly a friend, but someone who had been in the higher class than me. I only knew him from playing football a few times, but he was easy to recognise because he had a wide forehead and very large ears for which he had been teased by many of the boys and even some of the teachers. I noticed that his ears had not grown smaller with time, as he held out his hand in welcome.

Assalam alaikum, he gave me the greeting from our school times.

He was drinking tea and asked me to join him and after a short time I found myself telling him of my recent troubles.

What if I told you I have a way to give you one hundred thousand right now? he asked.

I protested that I could not borrow any money, but he stopped me before I could finish.

It is not a loan, he said. You will have to earn it, but it will only take a few minutes. We’ll take your bike.

So I drove, while Hidayat sat behind me and directed me to a money changing shop a few streets away. Then he took a twenty-dollar bill from the United States of America from his wallet, and handed it to me. I had never seen one before and I was turning it over in my hands when he said quietly:

Stop acting like a hillbilly or someone will notice. Leave the keys in the bike. Go and change the money and then come straight back.

For a moment, I thought it was a trick, and that he would run away on my bike. He looked at me with impatience.

What are you waiting for?

Hidayat had said that the moneychanger would ask for my ID and then give me the two hundred thousand and some small notes in exchange for the twenty and that is exactly what happened.

When I got back to the bike, he was sitting in the driver’s place with the engine running.

Get on! he hissed.

We drove back to the tea stall where he handed over my share as promised.

Come again tomorrow, he told me. We will try a fifty, but not at the same place.

I told Hidayat that I did not understand why he would want to give me this money. He looked at me for a moment and then spat on the ground and shook his head.

I thought you were the clever one in school, brother, he said. The money is not fucking real. My job is to give you this money, and yours is not to ask me where it comes from, and to get it changed.

This information worried me, because I had used my ID to change the money. What if they found it was a fake later on?

They do not write it down like that, he said, on each note. There is no way for them to do anything now.

We arranged for him to text me in coming days to try again, and I left.

I drove through the heavy afternoon traffic and went straight to pick up Aryanti, to take her for ice cream. I was eager to tell her the whole story, but she was not pleased.

Tell me, she asked. You were not good friends with this big telinga³ in school? Then why does he want to give you all this money? Are you suddenly a brother to him?

I do not know, I replied.

Well perhaps you can tell me this, she said, and she looked very stern, despite her tiny build and the glass of strawberry ice cream she was eating. Who is the person who will be caught with the fake money – you or him?

I did not answer.

If they catch you, you will not find him anywhere. He will drive away on your bike.

You are very clever, I told her, and it was the truth, especially as she was only nineteen years old.

Yes, I am clever, she said. Fajar, please don’t see this man again.

Hidayat sent me many texts the next week but I did not answer any of them, as promised, and after a short time he didn’t send any more. But time was marching past me and there didn’t seem to be any way forward.

Chapter Three

Another six weeks had passed without work when, on a steamy Friday afternoon, Aryanti came and asked for me. My heart jumped up when I heard she was there and I hurried outside to find her unsmiling at the gate. I was worried straight away because normally a young lady would never call at a man’s house, especially unaccompanied. She looked pale as she delivered the news: her mother had asked her to break with me because I still didn’t have a job.

I drove her to a place where we could talk without interruption and tried to get her to see sense. Her small brown hand held firmly onto the tea glass and her pretty face was quiet and sad, but she was insistent.

Finally I said: It is you who wants to break with me, not your mother. Lempar batu sembunyi tangan¹ Why are you telling me these lies? Who do you want to marry instead of me?

She began to cry a little but did not answer. Then I changed tack and told her I would not accept her request to cut our relationship, because it was a mistake. I would call her the next day after she had informed her mother of this.

Rhamat saw me come in that afternoon. Earlier he had seen Aryanti at the gate and I knew he would be full of questions. He can sniff out bad luck like a cunning dog and would be delighted to rub my face in it, while admonishing Aryanti for her lack of decorum. Only worse would be the kindly advice that would be given by his scornful wife who was holding his arm as I entered. They watched me together, like a vicious animal with four eyes and many claws waiting to pounce.

Even our hopelessly small house was against me as I tripped over an electric cord that someone had forgotten to put away and a plate came crashing down from the table and shattered onto the floor. I tried to find a reason not to smash it all down with my fists: the worn-out furniture and cracked dishes and the toys and clothes that had been carelessly tossed all over the couch where I slept. As soon as Rhamat began to scold me about the plate, I picked up a cup from the table and sent it flying past his ear and into the wall. Then I went out, quickly, kicking over a pile of sneakers at the door. The voice of Rhamat’s wife followed me like a chattering ape as I got on the bike and pulled out past a group of curious children. My throat was strained and tight and I realised that I had been shouting and my face was streaming with tears.

I drove through the traffic for several hours until I was tired and had to stop. I was nearly on the edge of Jakarta by then, at a small warung² by a river. The people were speaking the language of the Jakarta tribe who were here before everybody else. These people are very rough and many are bandits, but I am curious about them. I smoked and drank coffee and tried to understand a woman who was barking out instructions to her husband and children through the thick smoke of fish grilling over coals. The moon was small and faraway in the sky when I finally arrived home. The house was silent, full of people sleeping as if dead.

The next day I called Aryanti, but her answer was the same. Four times that same week I asked her not to break with me. I begged her to believe in me. I would get a job and pay the bike and we could get married as planned. But she did not change her mind.

I had been working in the street as an ojek driver for some weeks, but the money was small. Every man who has a bike and doesn’t have a job will be an ojek, and so you must wait in line for the jobs that come in slowly. Wait and smoke and talk. Sometimes Aryanti would walk past while I was there. I did not offer to drive her as I had done in the past, and she did not turn her head my way.

I was making very little and spending it every night, drinking and smoking kretek³ on the street with my friends.

Two more months went by like this. I had borrowed heavily from my mother, and my sister, who had borrowed herself to help me, and still I had not found any work. Then, one day, Budi came to see me and he was very excited.

Forget about the raincoats – this they will line up to buy from you!

He had begun selling ganja, which he bought from a guy from our old workplace. At first I thought it was a crazy idea and I told him so. He was a very small fish, and would get someone upset with him. But after a while I could see that he was making a little money without anybody bothering him, and I started to think about it more seriously. The problem was that I would have to borrow in order to buy the first ounce. I was still making my mind up when the police came.

In the street, opposite the ojek stand, there is a small petrol shop where they will sell you petrol and also fix your bike. Budi was there drinking coffee while someone was mending his tyre. I was in line at the ojek stand when I heard the alarm ring out:

Plokis! Plokis!

That is our name for polisi. Straight away I saw three pigs moving quickly towards the petrol shop. I was close enough to see a look of panic run across Budi’s face. The coffee was knocked from his hand, and then I nearly shit as I saw one of them push him onto the road, put his boot down on his face, and pull out a gun.

The street was suddenly electric watching the policeman scream and point the gun at Budi’s head.

Who told you to come here and sell that fucking shit on my street?

He gestured to the two others to stand Budi up and search him. He didn’t have anything in his pockets but a wallet, which they threw on the ground, after removing his money. He was standing there with two cops holding his arms and the other pointing the gun straight at his face. That’s when the silence froze everything for just a second. The whole scene seemed to shrink and get very far away. The little toy policeman pulled back the hammer on the gun and then leaned forward and Budi crumpled to the ground, like he was only a pile of clothes with nothing to hold them up.

It took a minute to realise that the policeman had not fired the shot, and that Budi had only fallen down with fright. The three men laughed in surprise when they realised what had happened. The one with the gun put it back in his holster, and they all returned to regular size and walked, slowly and still laughing, back to their car. Budi was lying down on the road holding his head in his arms.

After that I forgot about the idea of selling ganja. Rhamat told me not to see Budi any more, but I told him to mind his own fucking business and see what he would do if he suddenly found himself without a job.

A man slips and the ladder falls on him.

After the trouble with the job and Aryanti and Budi, I wondered what would come next. It already seemed that my bad luck would last forever, but late one afternoon a small change did come. Like other times before and after, it didn’t seem like anything special. I really only notice it now that I’m thinking about it. The beginning of change is a narrow laneway that opens like magic onto a large field of rice.

Chapter Four
Vic

2 February

I’ve been upgraded to First Class. That never happens. I’ve tried to sneak in there before, though. A friend’s brother does it all the time. He just walks into First Class from Economy, finds a spare seat and sits in it. The only time he’s ever been moved back to his seat was when he complained about the food. After I heard that story I tried it for myself, the very next time I flew. They frogmarched me back into Economy so fast I didn’t have time to put my seatbelt on. I’ve never tried it again, although I’ve flown to a lot of places since. Anyway, the upgrade today is simply due to an error; somehow they have overbooked and don’t have enough seats. I am choosing to see it as a good omen.

Looking out the window, everything is as empty and clean as I feel. It’s one of my favourite places to be – on a plane at the beginning of a long journey. For once you can focus on one simple objective – getting there – and that’s really the pilot’s job anyway.

But there are still a few things that can go wrong. It seems my good luck has not extended to getting an empty seat next to mine. A man exposes his large hairy stomach as he reaches for the overhead locker, like he’s saying hello in gorilla, and then plonks himself down next to me. He doesn’t look like First Class material. I wonder if he is in on my friend’s secret, or if he just got upgraded as well. He’s wearing shorts and rubber thongs – as though the plane is going to Bali, not Jakarta – and has one of those noses that could be made of soft, red putty. I can tell he’s on for a chat and am happy to oblige, until he spies my unadorned hand and asks:

Are you married, or are you a career woman?

This makes me jump. I have been asked this question in exactly the same words before, by a work colleague.

Are you married, Victoria, or are you a career woman?

At the time, I thought he was trying to insult me.

I give this man a Mona Lisa smile and ask him:

Are there any other alternatives?

Unfortunately he takes my discomfort as a slight. His shoulders stiffen and he shifts his attention to his in-flight magazine. I could try to make it better, but, instead, I decide to look out the window for a while.

To answer his question, I couldn’t say I’ve traded it all in for a career, because, after all, teaching English as a Second Language is more of a joke than a career, especially when it comes to salary, and some of the other people who are doing it. Still, I tell myself, it is a good job if you want to travel. And I do. Want to travel. I love being in new countries and finding out about different people and writing long letters home to people that I dearly miss but don’t seem to be able to live around.

The single most common question I have been asked in the last ten years is that one. Are you married? I can tell you how to say that in five languages. I have been asked this question by taxi drivers, tuk tuk drivers, shoeshine boys, businessmen, women selling me perfume, students, strangers on the street. In South-East Asia the standard response is ‘not yet’, as if it’s just developmental delay or a run of bad luck standing in the way, and that soon, please God soon, one’s luck will change. Sometimes I say, ‘Yes, I am married’, just to avoid the look of disappointment that I know is coming my way, and the feeling that I’ve let the nice, friendly stranger down somehow.

Actually, my parents’ marriage put me off the idea for ever and ever, amen, till the socks do us darn, till the laundry floor do we accidentally flood, till the children do we humiliate and betray, till the hidden beatings and vivisections do we blow the whistle on, screaming, finally, plastic boiling suburban rage and tearing it all down while still in brown school shoes.

I was not like my little school friend Annette Hume, who, despite years of living with her mother’s sour disappointment, spent a portion of her time daydreaming about her wedding day and smiling a knowing smile as she promised to be a bridesmaid at mine.

First of all, I told her, I wouldn’t have that kind of wedding, even if I did get married, which I never would.

I thought having bridesmaids was a stupid idea and a crappy word, even. It sounded like some weird cow-milking virgin from times of yore. If I did get married it would be in jeans, and not in a church and not with all of the hideous frosting, the flouncy dresses, the bows and ribbons, the men standing around in powder-blue tuxedos, hands folded awkwardly over their balls for the photographs.

And that’s just the wedding. Then there’s the children. I have six aunts with an average of 7.4 children each. Curly-headed balloon women with cotton tent dresses. Hello now pet, how are ye? High, tense Irish voices. Pulling up in the driveway in Holden station wagons loaded up with bouncinettes and bassinets, big tubs of talc for the chafing, and each year another one in the oven, all respect and thanks to the great Holy Father, divinely inspired leader of the Catholic Church.

When I was young, I divided my many cousins into ‘reds’, ‘dark reds’ and ‘oranges’ – referring to their hair, of course. I’m a dark red, which made me a commoner in my family growing up. There was one blonde, who might as well have been the Queen of Sheba, and a few smug browns and blacks. The lowest of the low were the lemony-oranges, with their big square freckles that piled up on top of each other, and their inability to go to the beach. When I was seven, my mother had my dark-red curly hair cut into a boy’s crew cut ‘for the convenience of it’. I looked like a boy, and instead of ‘Victoria’, my brothers started calling me ‘Victor’, which eventually became ‘Vic’. There’s nothing else to say about that, except that my freckles disappeared in adolescence and, these days, my hair comes down to my waist.

Now that I’m writing this down, I can see that it’s possible that I have overreacted. Not to the haircut but to the other things. I ran away from two men who tried to marry me, and no matter how careless I was with my life, which was pretty careless, I never made the mistake of falling pregnant. When I was thirty-five, I started to panic a little, but told myself there was still time to seize the bull by the horns (so to speak) and have a baby. I was a bit averse to sharing it with anybody who might scratch his arse on his way to the kitchen, growing less and less attractive to me as the weeks rolled into months and into years. On the other hand, I could see the steep, narrow road of the older, childless woman stretching out in front of me and it didn’t look all that enticing. But I’m only thirty-five, I thought. No need to rush into anything.

One thing I’ve done is travelled a lot. I’ve lived in a lot of places, but strangely, I’ve never been to Indonesia, even though (or maybe because) Australians flock to Bali the way the British overrun Spain. But I’ve found a job that looks pretty good on the internet. So, finally, in my thirty-ninth year of not yet being married, I’m going to Jakarta, the capital city of Indonesia, to work for twelve weeks.

The first glimpse of the city is a shock, even at ten thousand feet. We are descending into a filthy grey haze with the light falling flat on a brown ocean that is choked with ships and prawn farms. It is a sunny day, but nothing shimmers or sparkles.

The plane doesn’t quite make it to a gate, but comes to a stop in the middle of the tarmac, and we pile on to a bus that crawls off towards the terminal. Outside, the buildings struggle up through the stifling air. Bougainvillea droops dejectedly over the gateway as the taxi leaves the airport. Welcome to Indonesia. Jesus Christ.

Something happens when you arrive in a place like this. It’s like meeting an old interesting friend that you haven’t seen for a long time and realising they are dying. You want to cry out: My God, what’s happened! Who did this to you? But everyone around is you acting as if the situation is perfectly ordinary and acceptable. The strange thing is, you can feel it even when you have never even set eyes on a place before. It has happened to me in Saigon, Delhi, Guangzhou, and here it is again. On arrival, the filthy sky and the sad trees tell the same terrible story.

A taxi driver takes me on some crazy rampage through the traffic, past depressed people sitting by dead rivers. When we stop for a red light, children rap at the windows trying to sell small toys and newspapers and foam aeroplanes.

I get to the hotel at sunset – the burnished light has softened the initial shock of smoke and I am in a tree-lined street. The call to prayer is ringing out across the city – it’s the first time I’ve heard it and I am enchanted. The hotel is a modest, three star affair – far superior to the noisy kost the company will shift me into the next day.

I get the money mixed up and tip the doorman and the man who brings me a coffee and some clean towels about twenty dollars each. This brings a string of smiling hotel staff knocking at the door at fifteen-minute intervals to ask if I need anything. Gado gado is the only Indonesian meal I know, so I order that and, after double-checking my calculator, tip a severely disappointed maid a couple of dollars.

The call to prayer comes back again at about eight o’clock. Next morning I am woken at five by the same call. I have never lived in a Muslim country and, before I even step out onto the streets, I have been reminded three times. After a few weeks, the call will be etched into my mind like a tattoo – the male voice proclaiming the greatness of Allah. The Arabic prayer ringing out over the Asian city, seeming to claim dominion over everything. I walk to the breakfast room where about fifty men are smoking clove cigarettes, and decide to go outside and find breakfast somewhere that I can breathe.

The first thing I notice is that the streets are dotted with clusters of shabby men, who stare at me as I walk by. I’ve been travelling a long time, but I still get a rush of fear and embarrassment when people are staring at me en masse, especially a group of men. I wonder what they see. Once, in Saigon, a man who had been watching me said:

You are quite nice, but not as beautiful as some Hollywood movie stars.

Is that what they are doing here? Comparing me to a movie star? Or are they just looking at my breasts, large by Western standards, bazookas over here in this country?

The only way for me to feel better is to walk up really close and smile and say hello. The men transform from a belligerent mob into some people that live nearby and are curious to find me walking through their streets. Handshakes all round. Contact.

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