Island of Demons (15 page)

“Niemeyer? But that was nothing to do with me. I don't … didn't. I suggest you look elsewhere for the penetrator … the perpetrator.” I blushed.

He blew slow smoke. “Thing is, a complaint's been made and it stays on your file. Now Niemeyer, being Eurasian, is not, strictly speaking, a native and I'd be the last to begrudge a young man the right to give his tubes the odd blow through, just for his health's sake if nothing else. Nothing wrong with a bit of brown. Stimulates the appetite. We all like a bit now and then. We don't ask you to be a saint, just to show a little discretion, old man, keep up a bit of front, if you see what I mean. If you can't control which way you point that thing, I suggest you get yourself a Johnny Hancock.” I was back with my father on the docks, engaged in embarrassing intimacy, or at school learning about rutting rabbits. At any moment, he would move to the blackboard and draw diagrams. His wife, I knew, was an aridly Christian creature. I wondered how she would take his advice.

“Is that what
you
do?” I snapped. “Thank you,” I said stiffly, “I have already made all necessary arrangements.”

He got up and began to inspect the furniture and fittings like an impertinent prospective tenant, then went and stood on the terrace, looking down at the river, thrust his hand deep into his pocket and juggled his balls as one might a handful of loose change.

“You know why this house is here, don't you? It's not for the view or the peace and quiet. They gave Walter this land because it's near the graveyard and in the river valley, both areas for demons, witches, that sort of thing. Makes you wonder just what they think of him, doesn't it? It's the sort of place they chase off lepers to live in. No Balinese would ever live here at any price. Be scared to death and get ill just from the worry, like as not. Seen it happen loads of times. How does he get his boys to stay, I wonder? What is it he's got?” I thought maybe I knew precisely what it was that he had but wasn't about to tell Smit. He returned to the table and drained the now-cooled coffee and turned on his heels with a smug driven-by-duty look on his face. As he reached the door, he turned.

“Of course, it cuts both ways,” he remarked as if the thought had just struck him. “With your record, I mean. Records out here often get lost. I often wonder exactly what goes on this household.” He waved his hat around the room. “As a loyal Dutchman, I'm sure you'll let me know of anything untoward.” He did a bit more of the ball juggling and clapped his hat on his shaven head. I shook his proffered hand with deep reluctance and his feet clumped up the steps, leaving me feeling defiled and demeaned.

Resem returned to clear the cups with deft, coltish motions. I was aware of the exaggerated tilt of his thigh, the extraordinary length and thickness of his eyelashes.

“Resem is a dancer?” I asked.

He smiled with downcast eyes. “Before. Now I am too old.” Bali, it seemed, was full of elderly youth. I offered him one of Walter's cigarettes, a Mascot No.7, from the elegant sandalwood box on the table. He hesitated, then accepted, received the light with grace. I did not smoke myself, but took one and lit it and mimed smoking for companionship's sake.

“Has Tuan Walter ever painted Resem?”

He exhaled through dilated nostrils and looked at his cigarette in appreciation. “He does not paint people, only places, fields, volcanoes. Sometimes there are people there but not real people, people from Tuan Walter's head only.”

“How would it be if I drew Resem's portrait?”

He was aghast, hand to bare chest in a gesture from the silent films. “Why would Tuan Rudi want to draw me? I am ugly.” He held out his forearm in proof. “I am dark.”

A simple, flat statement. This was no coyness on his part. He genuinely did not know he was beautiful. Now it was I who was aghast. I carried a bamboo chair out onto the terrace, arranged it in the light, dragged over one of the slender, fluted, but solid wood Nias stools for myself. I arranged him in the chair, one arm behind his head, one leg drawn up, looking down at his own knee.

“Loosen the sarong a little.” It sagged sufficiently to show strands of incredibly shiny, black, pubic hair below the navel. I settled, my pad on my knee and drew a few swift, defining strokes with dark pastel fixing the basic contours. I formed the elfin face, softened the chin with a rubbing finger, placed the huge eyes, gave them direction, caressed the curved neck, the soft, full lips with a suggestion of pink tongue, the lift of one shoulder. The chest was strong muscles on light bones.

“Tuan Walter,” I said. “Is he good to you? If you smoke please move nothing but your arm. Don't change your expression.”

He stole a swift drag. “Tuan Walter is very kind. He takes us with him when he travels. He never beats us. He is teaching us to read and write because the Dutch do not allow us to go to school. He is funny. He makes us laugh.”

I began to shadow the neck, bring out the cartilage of the nose, the provocative, bobbing Adam's apple. The hair was a tangle of blue highlights and deepest black.

“Does he play with you?”

He paused on the way to another drag and looked cautiously at me. “How do you mean?”
Main-main
is “to play around”, “to engage in social chit-chat”.
Main
is “to play a game or instrument” but also “to have sex”. I opened my eyes wide with innocence and coaxed a slight puffiness from under his own in dark red. My hand was shaking.

“Tuan Walter is a friendly man,” I said. “He likes to play in all sorts of ways. Sometimes he plays at night.”

He looked up sharply, then remembered he was not supposed to move and looked down. I raised the cheekbones, curved the upper lip with its hint of a moustache.

“Sometimes,” he said carefully, after a short silence, “he asks if we would like to play any game with him and then we must tell him what game.” He stole a glance at me through lowered lashes. I shaped the tendons in his neck and stroked them into a blur.

“There is no harm in that,” I remarked casually. “In Bali, I have heard that, before they are married, friends often play games together.” I slipped off my glasses and held up the portrait. He cried out in delight, stubbed out the cigarette and stood up to touch it. As the loose sarong dropped, I saw that he had risen in every sense.

I shall not detail further our shameful activities of that late morning except to say that it was then and there that I convincingly entered Bali and it me, that I drank its very essence and I understood Walter's engagement with the whole island. Resem incarnated for me the whole of that ancient culture. As we bathed together and Resem gently washed my back, it was not a personal act. It was the whole of Bali cleansing me in holy water, a baptism. As Resem curled up soft and warm on my bony lap, the last afterglow of our lust crushed out, and rested his head against my chest, I felt … what? Gratitude, affection, compassion, an urge to protect, the feeling that human kindness and simplicity were raising my estimation of what a person should be, were making me a better man. We agreed at once that what had happened should remain a secret between us. Walter might be angry, would certainly be offended. We ruthlessly expunged all signs of our debauch. I picked up the crushed hibiscus, trodden underfoot in our passion, and refused to see it as a too-obvious painterly symbol. The furniture was rearranged and polished, the floor washed, the tools of my art hidden and when the car finally returned at dusk I was sitting innocently at the table reading Nieuwenkamp's book as Resem bustled far away in the kitchen.

Walter burst in with his arms full of parcels, like a dog bringing a stick. On his head, he was wearing a navy brown beret edged with leather, perched aslant over one ear. It looked silly, the mark of urban bohemian affectation or a Garbo fan.

“Why,” I asked cattily, “are you dressed as an artist?”

He adjusted it, with fake pride, into a sort of halo and posed in the mirror. “Do you like it? I was at Lee King's, you know the big shop by the market, and I saw it. It spoke to me.”

I indicated the heap of parcels. “For a man who left here with no money, a lot of things spoke to you. It must have been very noisy in that shop.”

“Yes … well … egg cups, a toast rack. Whenever I have British guests they do so go on about breakfast. Anyway, the boys will love these odds and ends for the morning. Lee King's does credit.” He came and perched at the end of the table. “So. What did you get up to while I was away?” He stared me in the face and I saw, as in slow motion, how a slightly puzzled expression came into his eyes as he looked around the room and then his jaw dropped in delight and he pointed and laughed. “You had sex with Resem! Ha ha ha. Good isn't he? A sweet, affectionate lad.”

I blushed. Blood roared in my ears.

“No … yes … how the hell? Aren't you upset?”

He looked at me in genuine surprise. “Why on earth should I be upset?” He touched my hand, a joke slap.

“I thought you might be – sniff – jealous.”

“Why jealous? I think it is lovely when two people make each other happy. Better a blunt knife than a fork with no prongs.”

“What?”

“It is a saying in the Urals.” As if on cue Resem could be heard singing, with a soaring voice, in the kitchen. “Sex is magic because it conjures up solid happiness out of thin air. The only reason I would be upset would be if you were not nice to him and I know you wouldn't do that. What did you give him?”

I bristled. “Give him? Nothing. It was not,” I said primly, “a commercial transaction.”

He shook his head sadly. “Oh Bonnetchen. Sometimes you are so stupid. When a man gives his wife a bunch of flowers or a bottle of perfume does that make it a commercial transaction? Quite the reverse.” He dug in the pile on the table and pulled out a flat, brown-wrapped package. “He is a poor young man who has given you everything he had to give, now you must give something back. Here is a nice new sarong. I bought it for myself but one of the good things about a sarong is that it fits anyone. Don't do it in front of the other boys – who all know by now by the way – he would be embarrassed. When he is alone, give him this, say something nice and – for God's sake Bonnetchen – smile! Then he will know you genuinely like him and respect him and you will be real friends. There is another advantage to giving Balinese cloth. Though the Balinese are scrupulously clean about their bodies, they never wash their clothes. Those gold-leaf costumes of the dancers for example,
prada
, can't ever be got near water, though they get soaked in sweat at every performance. You mustn't, of course, ever mention it but a new sarong, from time to time, sweetens them up in every way.”

I was touched. Walter was not concerned that others were fishing his pool or that Resem might prefer me to him. He just wanted everyone to be happy and feel good about themselves. There were tears in my eyes.

I said grudgingly, “I like the hat.” I shuffled my feet under the table. “It suits you.”

***

“The Lord giveth,” said Walter, waving a brown official envelope triumphantly over the new toastrack, “and the Lord taketh away.” It had been a special breakfast, fuelled with treats from the city, oranges, cheese, relatively new newspapers, even butter from a tin made irresistible to the customer by images of Dutch milkmaids in clogs. Walter always believed that as long as he had the luxuries, the necessities would take care of themselves. “You did not tell me Smit had called. Perhaps your mind was distracted by other things.”

“Perhaps. But I don't think he's any friend of yours.”

My first thought about such an envelope was “bailiffs” but then even Walter would have been less cheery. Mas came in with fresh coffee, displaying in smiles the gold incisor that must be the origin of her name.

“Well, he's done me a kindness. He sent this across from the resthouse. You are looking at an official state artist of the Dutch East Indies administration.” He poured for both of us.

“You must have known. Psychic. And that, surely, is why you bought the beret. Isn't that part of the uniform? But you forget, I have still not seen any of your work. You have seen all of mine.” I sounded like a disappointed schoolboy behind the bicycle sheds.

He made his crooked face. “You would not like it. I have told you that I paint to rid myself of bad things inside me, like er, fallthrough …” Fallthrough? He distractedly mimed face and stomach pain, crouched like a man relieving himself, blew a raspberry. Oh, diarrhoea. “… and then I get it out of the house. I have several commissions waiting but I hate to paint for money. That is the difficulty here. The worst is when I have spent the money and still not done the painting, then I am like a man in chains, walking around, hearing them rattle.”

He raised his arms to demonstrate his shackles and groaned with pain, then passed me the letter. It was from Dr Stutterheim, the famous archaeologist and head of the Archaeology Section of the Antiquities Service. Walter was to paint a whole series of twelve pictures of past life in the Indies for an official publication. At 800 guilders a picture, it was a life-saver.

“Walter!” I said. “You'd be crazy not to do this. Think of the money in terms of berets or toastracks. And think of the fun you can have. You could put Smit's face in it and give it to a monkey or a cannibal. You could make us both kings. Resem,” I said tenderly, “could appear as some great hero.”

He brightened. “I could put the ladies in breastholders and the men in sportsupporters and who is to say the builders of Borodur were not covered in tattoos?” Then a sideways leap, a suddenly serious voice. “I see Badog has a new cloth and I hear you have been sketching him, too. Is everything all right there?” I blushed. It was true. I had been making him a model by slow steps.

“Resem is happy,” I said. “Badog is happy.” It was all he wanted to hear but I could not leave it there. “The problem is Oleg. The others tell me he, too, is eager to be stretched – sketched – but …”