Her Master's Voice (3 page)

“Papi says he is pleased with your progress and is happy to have you in our community,” Ranji translated. Sherry lowered her head and blushed.

“He says you are a very proper student, and so he has decided to bring you here to allow you to take his blessing.”

“Thank you,” said Sherry, wondering what would happen next. A long silence followed, until Papi gave what seemed to be an order to Ranji. Awkwardly she leaned across Sherry’s lap and reached into Papi’s clothing. Sherry’s mouth opened in shock as she watched Ranji’s hand delving in the silk folds until it returned with Papi’s erection. Her ringed fingers clasped the growing shaft as she moved her hand gently up and down. She reluctantly let go and resumed her place. Sherry stared at the dark pole with its moist, half hidden, purple head that stood pulsing in front of her. It was long, slim and beautiful.

Then Papi spoke to her directly for the first time. “Drink, Little Sister. Kiss the stamen of the lotus and drink its blessing.” She did not know what to do. She was confused. She had not known he could speak English. Ranji rescued her with a hand on her shoulder, easing her firmly forward. Conscious now of her duty, and of Papi’s generosity and affection, she bowed her head into his lap and dropped her mouth over the head of his erection. He smelt clean and spicy. She used her lips to push back his foreskin as she took his hot plum into her mouth. The smooth leathery texture felt divine as she explored it with her tongue. She sucked in hard and held him still. A feeling of immense contentment washed over her as if she had permission to suckle on Mother Earth herself. Then she felt Papi shift slightly and she realised that she had to give something back to him. She started to bob her head up and down, sucking all the time and waiting to receive his blessing.

After a few moments she felt his gentle hand on the side of her face easing her back up. She let him slip from her mouth and stared at the wet pole swaying in front of her.

Papi said something to Ranji and she pushed against Sherry’s knee. “Move over,” she whispered. “I’m going to do it now.” She shuffled sideways to let Ranji sit in front of him and watched as she reached confidently for Papi’s staff.

Ranji brought energy as well as skill to her work. With one hand deep in Papi’s clothes, presumably clasping his jewels, she worked the other slowly up and down his shaft. Her mouth and tongue were never still over the head of his sex, licking and sucking in a frenzy, and moaning with delight as she did so. Her hand set up a steady rhythm and she occasionally dipped her head to take more and more of him into her mouth. Papi closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall.

Sherry watched in fascination as Ranji’s sucking and licking became more and more frantic, and the stroking of her hand faster. Her swoops down his shaft came more often and she seemed to take an impossible length of him into her mouth. Sherry became conscious of Papi’s breathing and a growing stiffness in his body. Picking her moment exactly, Ranji put her hands on his knees and dived into his lap. She hung there, still, tense and rigid, her face buried deep in his clothing. Papi and Ranji formed a stone statue, the master with his beautiful female student worshipping at his root. The room had fallen silent and the only movement Sherry could see was the rhythmic swallowing of Ranji’s throat as she received her blessing. Then they both relaxed. Ranji pulled back until only the plum remained in her mouth. She breathed deeply. Papi put his hand to her face and guided her upright. She let his sex fall from her ripe lips and it lay in his lap, wet and shrinking.

Ranji put her hands together and bowed. “Thank you, Papi, for your blessing.”

Papi touched two fingertips to the centre of her forehead. “You are a good student, Little Sister. You have truly been blessed by the Goddess Rati.” He turned to Sherry. “And you, Little Sister, have much to learn. Ranji will teach you. It will be her duty to you and the rest of your sisters. Listen to Rati, Little Sister, and learn to become a woman again. Let your hair grow long, decorate yourself with paint and gold, wear the clothes that show you love Rati, and when you are worthy, you may come again for a blessing.” He touched her forehead also and dismissed them both.

When they left Papi’s office, Sherry had been glad that no-one was in the main room and only Ranji saw her tears. She was lost and the feeling of having let Papi Bombar down overwhelmed her.

“Why did he ask me in?” she had asked through her tears. “He must know I’m not good enough. Why didn’t he leave me alone?”

Ranji had an arm around her shoulders. “Don’t cry, Sherry. Everything Papi does has a purpose. Perhaps he just wanted to show you that you must study more. Learn to live more like Rati.”

“But I can’t do that! I’m not, I’m not pretty enough. I can’t be like he wants me to be.”

“Now you’re being silly,” Ranji had said. “You’re the prettiest girl here. We would all like to have a figure like yours and blonde hair, but your spirit is sleeping so you are not beautiful.” Ranji could be very brutal sometimes. “Sometimes, when my spirit is correct, I can be very beautiful. When I feel I am truly Rati’s servant, I am beautiful even if I am fat.” And then she had taken Sherry shopping for jewellery. The flute playing lessons had come later.

The chanting stopped and Sherry jerked back to the present. Papi Bombar started his address. Today he spoke in English, something he had done more frequently recently. When he did, she felt he spoke especially for her. His topic today was the importance of morning and evening, dawn and dusk as the juncture times for
sandhya
meditation. He told how the Vedas sing of the half-light pair being like two boats coming to take the devote practitioner across. These two made the ideal times to recite the
gayatri
mantra. He made them all recite the mantra with him, even Sherry, and she tried her best to fix the gentle sounds in her mind.

At last Papi’s assistant came to them in turn, bowing and presenting a photocopied sheet containing this week’s homework. Then Papi stood, pressed his palms together and bowed. The women returned the gesture and chanted “Thank you, Papi Bombar” as he left. Teri, a slim Malay girl, followed him into the office. She was the lucky one today.

The chattering started immediately as the women got up and went for their clothes. Ranji took Sherry’s arms and called out “Girls, Girls! What do we think of Sherry this week?”

Sherry hated this ritual. Once a week, ever since Papi had criticised her, Ranji called all the women to criticise her as well.

“Her hair is too short!”

“Yes, yes. I know that, Rossi,” said Ranji. “I cannot make it grow any faster, but what about her face?”

“Better!” said one. “She is too thin,” said another voice. “Not enough having love with her husband, of course she is thin!” “It is true…” “Yes, look at Ranji…”

“Stop, stop!” called Ranji. “You are like market women. Tell Sherry she is beginning to look beautiful. Look at her new rings!”

“Yes, Sherry, soon your beauty will come.” “Soon, your hair will grow, Sherry.” “Yes, soon, but you must eat more and make more love.”

None of the voices sounded malicious. They thought no more of criticising her than of telling her it was raining outside. Sherry shrugged her shoulders in frustration. She really did not know what they expected of her. She could no more be like Ranji than she could fly to the moon. She could not help it that Ranji was a
woman
, a real, fertile, voluptuous, pleasure-loving woman. Even as she started to hide her generous curves under her long shirt, she still looked as if she might tear her clothes off and run out into the tropical rain to grow food and babies under the coconut palms. She had the divine gift of creation, and Sherry did not.

“Come on, Sherry. We will go for lunch and then we will buy you a new leotard and new earrings. No flute-playing today. I’m too busy and I couldn’t organise a flute. Tomorrow, I will call you on the telephone. Now we will eat lunch.”

Chapter 3

 Tim scrambled through the railing in the dawn half-light to join the crew in the whaler. Raymond fired up the motor and the over-burdened boat slid out into the river. The air was still and a morning mist obscured the far bank. The nipa palms loomed larger and, alone in their sphere of mist, the journey to CampDua for breakfast seemed longer than normal. Tim went first to the radio room for the mail and came back with the program for the next operation. They would be busy today after all. He read it as he sat over breakfast in the crowded mess hall. PetroFrance wanted a big, slow acid job as soon as they could get ready. Mixing the acid would take them most of the day, and then tomorrow after breakfast they would start pumping, probably for seven or eight hours if the well proved as tight as most of them were on that side of the field. Oh well, he thought, it beats having a proper job.

He nodded to the other expat workers on his table, and walked back to the jetty. Raymond sat waiting at the boat, together with a large box of packed lunches and another of canned drinks, two cokes each for the crew and a couple of beers for Tim. One of the fine things about working with Raymond was that he always seemed to know the daily plan before Tim did, and he felt confident enough to organise the necessaries. Working all day meant no time to come to the canteen for lunch, so he had asked the kitchen for packed food. Raymond made life easy.

Back on board, Tim started his calculations while the men went through the daily oil and water checks on all the equipment. Then he walked around the mixing tanks with Raymond, chalking on each one the amount of clean water they would need. The supply barge would soon bring them the chemicals and acid. Tim went back to his accommodation for a coffee. He was free to read a book until the supplies got in.

The hoot of a tug’s siren woke him from a doze. The tall pusher tug was nudging a loaded barge in beside them and Raymond stood on the crane platform to guide it in. The barge carried stacked pallets of concentrated hydrochloric acid and drums of additives. Tim went to the end of his verandah to watch the crew secure the barge.

Abdullah, the smallest and slowest crewman, stood just below him and waited to moor the cargo barge. He jumped onto it and, pulling a painter over from
Sea Sprite IV
, he took a turn around a mooring bollard. He slowly took the line in as the barge slid into place. Then he quickly doubled the rope back on itself in an ‘Indopet hitch’, the common local way to secure lines. Tim coughed and Abdullah looked up in surprise. Sheepishly, he undid the hitch and rearranged the rope in figures-of-eight around the double bollard. Turning the locals into anything like bargemen was a slow job. Tim pulled on his boots and went down to help Raymond check the shipment.

The crew dragged a Wilden air pump across and soon the pump was chugging and spluttering as it emptied fifty-five gallon drums of acid inhibitor, surfactants and demulsifiers and pumped them across into the mixing tanks aboard
Sea Sprite IV
. The men stacked the empty drums on the far side of the barge, ready for collection. Tim left them to their work and went off to check the spares inventory.

By the time he had finished, the men had brought the air pump back on board and started emptying the small acid jerry cans using a steam-age peristaltic pump from France. It was slow, irritating work bringing each heavy plastic container down onto the barge deck and holding it tipped as the pump sucked it empty.

When lunchtime came, Tim grabbed his sandwiches and told Raymond he was going for a walk. He climbed through the railing onto the wellhead platform and then out onto the cable tray. He walked into the swamp and turned right along the pipe racks as they followed the shoreline. The noise of the
Sea Sprite IV
generator died away and he walked on in peace accompanied only by birdsong and cicadas stridulating.

Eating his sandwiches as he walked, Tim strode on with a purpose. No stopping to sit on the cable tray today to wait for any passing wildlife. He had a meeting to attend. The air hung heavily around him and directly overhead the mid-day sun was uncomfortably hot. He walked for half an hour before he came to Darti’s rickety jetty and the duck-walk snaking into the swamp. He swung down from the cable tray and started cautiously along the split logs. Down at the swamp level, the path led inland away from the fringe of nipa palms that lined the riverbank. Tall trees with grey trunks and small round leaves towered over him. The sun could not reach the floor of the swamp and this was the shaded world of insects. Tim walked briskly to keep some of the mosquitoes off his face.

Suddenly he stepped back into the sun again. A clear pool lay at his feet, a contrast to the muddy waters of the Mahakam. The vegetation had been cut back and here the way ran along a beaten earth path worn in the grassy bank of the pool. He passed a vegetable patch rich with corn, tapioca and plantains, and stoutly fenced with split poles against the wild pigs. Just beyond it stood Darti’s house, raised on stilts and roofed with dried leaves. The walls were grey weathered clapboard. Smoke rose from behind it where Darti did her cooking. Tim called out to warn her.

She came clattering and rushed out onto the verandah. She wore just a faded sarong and a flower in her hair. “Timmee, Timmee!” she shouted, “I know you come today! Before I come to find you.”

Tim picked his way up the notched log that served as front steps and sat at the edge of the verandah to pull off his boots and socks. Darti threw herself at his back and started licking his ear. “Wait, wait,” he said as he struggled with his boots, “Wait, I’ve got something to show you.”

He pulled two small gift-wrapped packets from his coverall pocket. She looked at them in awe for a moment and then started to tear them open. Crescent moon earrings in white gold. She rushed to a broken shard of mirror glass wedged in the clapboard wall and held them up to her ears. They shone in the black velvet of her hair. Setting them carefully on a shelf near the mirror, she tore open the other packet. Two tiny lace panties, one black, one white. She held them up and laughed. “Very small! I think too small! But I try. We go for mandi, OK?”