Sailors on the Inward Sea (24 page)

He took off his spectacles and pinched the red places on his nose where they'd bitten into the pale skin. Then he put them on slowly, carefully adjusting the wires behind his ears.

“Look.” He held up his watch, an old, much-banged-up silver
thing. Engraved on the back were two serpents, each swallowing the other's tail. “You are so close as this. So we take care of friends. He feels like his world is a little hole in the ground that somebody may look into and see him for what he thinks he is. You can do nothing about that except understand. In time something may change. If it doesn't. . . well, at least you are not him.”

Viereck had confirmed some of my own feelings—how we dote on those who agree with us! As we sipped our drinks, I said I was not so sure that I was lucky not to be Conrad. It seemed to me that to be able to write as he did might be worth the anguish.

“You feel that is so,” he said, “or are you musing?”

“A little of both.”

“You are right. It would be fine to see something that has not existed come to life at the tips of your fingers. But the cost. These are lonely people. I know writers, painters, musicians, here and back in Europe, lonely men and women shut up in their rooms, coming out from time to time for a breath of air. They do what they do because they must. They have no choice. For them, life is a dream, the best of life. They only feel alive when they are dreaming.”

“We're back to your impression of Jim,” I said. “Conrad's not like him in that regard. He's always had his feet on the ground.”

“I have not been talking about his feet.”

“Well, it's complicated.”

“Everything is complicated. Listen, what I heard is this. You do not hear him, not clearly. You talk of his fear of others discovering that he borrowed your life, your voice. That of course worries him. I understand how he would be humiliated. But you do not hear what is under the words, maybe the most important thing, his concern about you, Jack, how terrible it was for him to learn that you knew about the books. Think. A man sleeping wakens at a sound and discovers
a thief. He felt just like the thief, caught, naked, his friend's possessions in his hands, stuffed in his pockets, someone he admires who is important to him. But you are more than that to him, more than a friend. By accident or luck in those years he wrote of Marlow you were both the source and medium of his imagination. You were the puppets whose shadows his fire cast upon the screen, giving shape to what was in his soul. The humiliation he feels for offending you is boundless.”

“I said I forgave him.”

“That word means nothing until one can accept it. Now it is like salt in a wound. Almost better to rant, accuse. Think. He is beholden to you through an act of betrayal.”

“It wasn't betrayal,” I said. “He borrowed something of mine.”

“Of course. I am speaking of how he sees it. To him he has betrayed more than a friend. He has also betrayed his imagination, the source of his work. It is a terrible paradox. There is only one thing that will help. Silence, your silence. Every time you see him, in every letter you write, I think you must reassure him of your silence.”

“I'm talking to you.”

“Because you have to.”

“Breaking my word.”

He gestured impatiently and looked at me as if I were hopeless.

“Only a fool lets his life be governed by absolutes, thou shalts, thou shalt nots. To keep your word you had to break it this one time. I see how it will go with him. Whenever you meet he will ask if you have spoken. He will have to. And when you say you have not, he can be himself again for a while. And I say this will be good for him. Every time you leave he will sit down at his table and hear this Marlow's voice in his head, like the Sirens' song, yes, just so. And he will resist. He will tie himself to the mast like Odysseus, speak in the
voice of someone else. He will be hard on himself for fear of backsliding, harder than he would ever have been otherwise. It will make him a better writer.”

He then asked if I could stay the night and I told him it was impossible.

“Well, then, a little dinner before you go.”

Viereck rang the little silver bell on the table and a young woman appeared in a moment who bore such a stunning resemblance to Ayu that my heart leapt in my chest. He spoke to her in the local dialect and she went back inside and returned with the boy, who helped her set the table at the far end of the veranda. From the way Viereck looked at her it was clear that my old friend had found love in the twilight of his life. Throughout dinner I waited for him to say something about her. I wasn't surprised that he chose not to. Viereck was always a contradiction, startlingly candid and mysteriously aloof, holding back when it came to his own life while he gave himself over completely to yours. I reckoned he was entitled to his mysteries and I didn't mind being kept in the dark. With nothing left to do, most old men I knew would serve up their lives on a platter to anyone who'd listen. Viereck's was a more vigorous old age, an example of what could be and one that I have tried to emulate.

I had coffee afterward to clear my head for the walk back. He offered to send the boy with me but I said I knew the way well enough. I did not want to go. He did not want me to go. When I stood up he said, “Wait a minute,” and went over to the corner of the veranda for a lantern, which he lit and held out to me.

“So you don't wander off the path,” he said.

I thanked him.

“You seem happy,” I said.

“Yes, I am. Quite happy.”

We walked down to the gate, where he patted my shoulder.

“I will send to an associate in London for the books,” he said. “These fellows Stein and Marlow, I want to make their acquaintance firsthand.”

Behind him I could see the woman on the veranda outlined by the faint glow of the house lights, watching over him. It made me feel good.

S
OON AFTER DAWN
I was standing in the company's sweltering, low-ceilinged warehouse, encouraging half-naked men glistening with sweat to haul heavy bags out into the sun and deposit them on a pallet that was lifted periodically by an ancient crane to the
Korimatsu.
Toward noon the loading was completed and I escaped to the ship's deck. The unremitting heat was taking its toll on everyone and the work proceeded in slow motion, men and objects distorted by the shimmering, waving air that engulfed us. But a freak of nature made it tolerable: Once the temperature rises something happens to the island's vegetation and the most amazing scent is released from the plants and flowers into the air. Moving like smoke on the slight breeze, the voluptuous, calming, narcotic perfume made it possible for us all to continue working.

Midway through the afternoon, I had a vision of Viereck's shady veranda. The scent would be concentrated by the low ceiling and overhanging roof. I wished that we had been able to spend more time together—not talking about Conrad, whose situation had at least been put to rest to my satisfaction—but about Viereck's companion. I wanted to know something about her the better to appreciate Viereck's happiness but more importantly because she put me in mind of Ayu. I was feeling melancholy, wondering for the thousandth time why we had been allowed to become so close only for her to be taken away. I thought of this woman without a name as I sweated through the day, endowed her with Ayu's spirit.

Later I lay in a cool bath in my room, exhausted enough to go to
bed right after dinner. I might have done so if I'd had a few more days to spend in Denpasar, but since I wanted to see a performance of the shadow theater, I got myself together, went downstairs, and had a fine curry. As it was still too early to head down to the square, I went into the bar for a drink and found the place deserted except for the bartender. Over the next few hours it would fill up with guests staying at the hotel, then locals and later the bar girls would start trickling in. The cliché of Eastern eroticism misses its naturalness, Ford. I don't know how else to put it. I suppose it's rather like comparing Soho to a white sand beach.

Once it was dark I drifted along the streets, passing by dimly lit food stalls and shops crammed with goods from floor to ceiling. Music came from every direction but somehow never got mixed up, one melody giving way to another in neat succession. It was a fine way to get in the mood for the shadow theater, which probably strikes you as an Asian version of Punch and Judy. In truth, there's no comparison. The
Wayang
has its lighter moments, comic relief supplied by a variety of characters, often the dwarf Semar and his clowns, but its spirit is closer to the mystery plays. Of course the stories are vastly different, taken from the great epics, the Ramayana and Mahabharata. There is no cathedral for the
Wayang
but the vault of the sky, no pews but the earth. It is the simplest kind of theater, which requires only a gathering of people in an open plot, a square cloth lighted from behind by a lantern, a willing imagination—and presto! the ancient world comes to life in shadows that speak and sing and dance, shadows that fight and kill and make love to the pervasive liquid sound of the
gamelan.
And there is another difference worth mentioning: Your Punch and Judy puppeteer only comes before the crowd at the end of the play for his round of applause, and sometimes not even then. In the
Wayang
you can see the
dalang
throughout the performance if you sit behind the screen, which is what I did that night.

I want you to imagine an old man wearing only a sarong and a tight-fitting skull cap sitting cross-legged, back straight. Arrayed before him are dozens of leather puppets resting like so many butterflies on the ground. Sitting cross-legged, he dips their handles in a bowl of holy water, chanting mantras to purify them, a necessity before the play can begin. Suddenly he claps a wooden cymbal, the
gamelan
players begin, and two young women in ornate costumes come out to dance. When they finish, the puppets come to life, darting back and forth between the lamp and the screen while the old man tells their story in a high-pitched, singsong voice that mingles with the applause and laughter of the audience he can't see. The business of the shadow theater is with bygone days, but in the skills of the
dalang
who fills his hands with puppets and curls the tips of his fingers into strings that open and close their eyes and mouths, in the presentation of these shadows that requires touching the puppets to the screen for their features to come into focus, in the way their bodies blur when he twists them to signal arrivals and departures, I could see a parallel to Conrad's work and knew that if he could have been there he would have seen it even more complexly. I understood that what matters, all that matters, is the story unfolding on the screen. The
dalang
is only the medium through which it passes and comes to life.

Later, on the way back, as I turned into the hotel from the street, I could hear music from Dykinck's bar, a Western tune that sounded watery and washed out after the
gamelan.
When I walked in, the sound grew suddenly louder, almost deafening, the atmosphere of the room had changed, its gloomy quiet replaced by a nervous erotic mix of music, the perfume of the bar girls, and the sharp scent of liquor. The tables surrounding the dance floor were all full but I saw an empty stool at the bar next to two women, one in a bright yellow sarong, the other in green, not the only prostitutes in the place by
any means, but to my eyes the most appealing. The moment I offered to buy the woman in yellow a drink, her friend went looking for other fish to fry. When I told her I'd like her to go upstairs with me she smiled and told me how much it would be and I paid in advance, that being the custom of the country.

Hand in hand, we went up to the second floor and stopped on the veranda to watch the punts with lanterns dangling from their bows glide by like so many fireflies. I remembered standing just like that with Ayu, both of us half-drunk on the wavy colors reflected on the water, and I was still thinking of Ayu when we went inside. The woman disrobed as she walked around the room and then stood outlined against the open window, beautiful in the way Balinese women are, her body glowing bronze in the lamplight.

We made love in the tent of the mosquito netting, which made the bed seem like a bower, the thin shadows cast by its strings patterning her face and shoulders, disappearing in her black hair fanned out over the pillow, raven-black hair, the color of Ayu's. I closed my eyes then, and the feel of the woman's hands on my shoulders reminded me of Ayu's touch as did the sound of her breathing. There were a few moments when Ayu seemed to have returned to me and her spirit inhabited that other woman's body—moments when the dream of her seemed to become a shadowy reality. But I could not hold on to Ayu no matter how hard I tried and she left me with this woman in my arms, this woman and her discarded yellow dress that lay like a tired ghost on the floor.