Troppo (7 page)

He shifts in his seat. A giant hard-on swells against the fluoro polyester of his board shorts.

‘Those legs, those firm little breasts, that hair!' His voice is husky. ‘But all they want's your money. You're not a leso?'

‘No,' I manage.

‘Well, alright.'

‘So if it's all that bad, why do you stay here?' I can't quite keep
the challenge from my voice, can't quite keep my eyes from sliding back to his crotch.

Rain starts to fall. There's the gentle splash of rain in gin. The palms chafe, necks stretched tall in sacrifice, fronds ragged as the heads on effigies. He says nothing for a long while. Then, just at the point when it seems he's forgotten what I asked or has chosen to ignore me, he answers simply and without self-pity.

‘Got nowhere else to go.'

I drain my gin.

‘Kristi! More drinks!' The rain comes down heavier. ‘Move ya chair.'

We resettle under a red and white Bintang umbrella. I wonder how I'm going to get home. Knowing my luck, I'll probably end up falling through one of the holes in the bridge, land in that slow-moving river churning with dysentery, typhoid, catfish fat on turds.

‘You can stay tonight,' Shane says. ‘I wouldn't be driving back in the dark if I were you. And this,' he gestures to my empty gin glass, ‘this is all on me. I'm happy for the company. Can get pretty lonely out here this time of year. There's the occasional Euro backpacker who comes through, clutching their fucken
Lonely Planet
s and water bottles. All they do is complain about the bloody price. “Vair is the cheapest nasi campur?” I usually dump them in the dorm. The other crew are the Aussie surfers. Rough cunts. No conversational scope.'

I bite my tongue. ‘If you don't mind me asking, what did you do at uni in Jogja?'

‘Language, arts, the usual. One of those exchanges. Wasn't at uni much though. Spent a lot of time down around Pacitan surfing spots that weren't even on the map then. Outrageously heavy spots.'

Rain drops a pale screen in front of us. ‘So, Shane, I mean, I
haven't seen the rooms but from what I have seen the place looks great, it looks like it's being managed really well. Sorry if this sounds like a stupid question, but why did you hire me?'

‘Jeez, I'm starting to wonder that,' Shane teases. ‘Basically I need someone in here I can trust. Someone who's not gunna steal money from my guests or take weeks off because their uncle or great-grandmother's sick.'

Kristi arrives with our drinks.

‘And I hired you because you were the only chick who applied. Didn't want some hungry young gun in here from the Goldy who'd end up competing with me and my guests for waves.'

Shane doesn't seem like a guy who would get on too well with other guys. He might have a few close mates, bonded by stupidity and youth, but it seems more likely that he'd stockpile women. If he had men around him it would be omega men, malleable and docile.

‘So … I know you said in the ad on the internet that the starting rate was –'

‘Yeah, yeah,' Shane cuts me off. ‘You want me to tell you about the benefits, right?'

‘Right.' Already the starting rate was reasonable. More than reasonable, in fact, it was almost as much as I was getting paid at the backpackers and the pub combined. Given that the cost of living here was a tenth of the cost of living in Australia, I stood to save some serious money.

‘Like I said in the email, you've got free accommodation. You can have any guest room of your choice – except for the bungalows. Free food. A lend of one of the motorbikes provided you pay for petrol and maintenance. I'll pay you every fortnight. And …' he pauses, his trump card. ‘If you stay for six months, I'll swing you an extra five grand.'

The glass nearly slips from my fingers. ‘Are you for real?'

‘I've had a high turnover of staff. I need someone steady who'll help lift the profile of this place in the community, who'll be on the internet putting ads on Wannasurf and Magicseaweed, do some guerrilla marketing, basically work their guts out. I want this place fully booked from May to September. You work your guts out, you stick around for six months, the bonus is yours.'

A cool five, plus free creative reign over the marketing side of things. That's a challenge. That's another trip. That's freedom.

Shane also doesn't seem anywhere near as bad as the stories would suggest. Matt probably badmouths him because he's an alpha male. Ibu Ayu and Bapak Joni are probably concerned because Shane's Sumatran Oasis is the only real competition. But although he certainly has problems respecting the local culture, I can't imagine him cutting the fingers off his staff.

My gin swallows an insect.

‘Sounds unreal,' I say.

He responds with an almost imperceptible wince. His hand goes to his stomach, where once-chunky abs are slack from misuse.

‘Well. Thanks for an awesome night. I'm looking forward to having you on board. But for now, I reckon it's time for me to hit the sack.' He puts down his beer. His hand trembles. ‘Kris –' She's there before he squeezes out the last syllable.

Kristi draws him to his feet.

‘Night, then.'

‘Night.'

They walk together down the wooden corridor, past the guestrooms to the private arm of the resort. She doesn't come up to his armpit. His fingers slide down her spine, edge between her bum cheeks.

After a while, the girl emerges.

‘Is he okay?' I ask her. ‘Is he crook?'

‘Nggak,' she says, ‘ 'gak begitu.' It's not like that.

‘So what is it?'

Those blank eyes register distrust. She shrugs. ‘He's not sick.' Then, with a haughtiness, a disdain she wouldn't dare display around Shane, she asks if I'm staying the night.

‘Yeah, I guess so.'

She throws me the key to room twelve. It lands at my toes.

‘Matt already come looking for you,' says Ibu Ayu. ‘He say he come get you for the dawnie. I tell him you didn't come home last night, that you probably stay with some local boy.'

‘You didn't!'

She gives me a wicked grin.

‘You did!'

‘Iya! Anyway, where you sleep last night?'

‘Shane's,' I tell her.

‘Kenapa kesana? Why you go there? You not happy here? You no like your bungalow? Still over a week, no, before you start?'

I laugh. ‘Your bungalows are fine, Bu. I just went to Shane's to check the place out.'

‘Ahh.' She changes the subject. ‘Mau kopi?'

‘Sure.' I pull up a seat and rest my forearms on the table. Anaemic sunlight leaks through the palm fronds. When I left Shane's earlier, the place was still damp with shadow. I couldn't find the girl, Kristi, and I wasn't keen to go poking around for Shane just to say goodbye. He wasn't at all like I expected; I was imagining a psychopath. Instead, he seemed reasonable enough, for a drunk.

Ibu brings out my glass of coffee and sits opposite me. She's silent for a while. Then all of a sudden she asks, ‘So how come Matt looking for you here? Penny no have boyfriend in Australia?'

‘Yeah, sort of. But we're having a break.'

Ibu looks perturbed. ‘A break?' She shakes her head in incomprehension. ‘Anyway, I don't know why this Matt always visiting you. He already have wife!'

‘
What
?' I blurt. Then to cover my shock, ‘Yeah of course. I know that. We're just mates. You're allowed to be just mates in Australia, it doesn't mean that …' I trail off.

Satisfied she's warned me, she switches topic, asks me a question that makes me feel even more uncomfortable.

‘So you already here one, maybe two week. What you think of Lampung people?'

Under the cap of her jilbab, her eyes are sharp as kitchen knives.

I think about the men in the bushes, the stalker on the beach. Similar things have happened to me in other parts of Indonesia, and in Mexico, Sri Lanka. Nothing ever really happened in Fiji. And the last time something happened in Indonesia, it wasn't a local at all, it was another traveller. It was the year after I finished high school and it was my first time back in Indo since I was a kid. I decided to go to Kalimantan, where there were rivers and gorillas and no chance of getting distracted from travel by the surf. On the flight from Denpasar to Balikpapan the only other bule was an American in his forties. We got chatting. I must have intrigued him, entranced him, naively. Do you want to get a taxi together to look for some accommodation? Sure. Cut the cost. Why not? We found a road of ‘cheap' accommodation. Everything was overpriced. And at every intersection there were whores in bras and undies, jutting their hips, half-covering their faces with cloth. I had never seen this in Indonesia before; even in Kuta the girls were usually wearing dresses, were propped up at bars. It filled me with apprehension. In one losmen, the rooms glowed red from the lights of the Chinese brothel opposite;
cigarette butts were compressed onto the concrete floor and the bin was still overflowing. The staff didn't plan to clean it. Shit, let's step it up, said the American, so we did; agreed on sharing a room at a reasonable hotel. The American didn't speak Indonesian. Tempat tidur terpisah, I stressed more than once to the receptionist. We need a room with separate beds.
Please
, two beds.
Please
.

In the middle of the night the American tried to edge onto my single bed. I wasn't scared. I had my knife under my pillow.
Fuck off!
I unflicked it. That first knife was a beauty. A blade that could've halved a tongue. ‘I thought you were masturbating,' he said. ‘I thought you were masturbating over me.'

He slunk back to his bed.

I learnt a valuable lesson: never trust a bule just because you're also a bule in a foreign country.

Anyway, this incident was so much heavier than the man on the beach, so much heavier than the guys behind the trees. And situations like these are never necessarily indicative of the character of the people. So Lampung people … I think of my encounters at the markets, in the warungs and wartels. Push from my mind the fearful warnings of the expatriates, the rocks at Franz's the other night.

‘They seem a little more guarded than people in other parts of Indonesia,' I say to Ibu, ‘but on the whole, the people here are really friendly, much more friendly than in Australia!'

She's frowning, waiting for something more.

‘I guess there's also the perception – and this is not just about orang Lampung but all through Indonesia – that the country is becoming more conservative.'

Ibu straightens her spine. ‘How do you mean conservative?'

‘Well,' I falter. I haven't really thought it through. ‘Well, there are more women choosing to wear the jilbab than there were,
say, fifty years ago. I've talked to Australian women who were travelling here in the sixties and seventies and had no problem wearing singlets and shorts. You wouldn't dare do that now. You definitely wouldn't do it here in Batu Batur.'

Ibu appears unconvinced. ‘But what you mean when you say conservative?'

‘More Islamic. More strict. More taat.'

Ibu shakes her head vehemently. ‘Penny forgets. We've always chosen to dress like this. For Indonesian people, Islam is a symbol, not an ideology. Go to the village and you will see many traditional belief, traditional culture as well as Islam. A mix. But here, no, the problems have nothing to do with Islam.' She drops her voice. ‘My father orang Madura, my mother orang Lampung. When I was small, my father warned me that Lampung people are very sneaky. In Madura if you have problem with some person you say okay, we fighting tomorrow three o' clock with kris knife. Fighting, fighting, no more problems. He die. But here it's different, ya? If a Lampung person doesn't like you, on a dark night with no moon he'll follow you home and arghh!' She makes a stabbing gesture with her hand. ‘Knife in back. Finish.'

I place down my coffee. I've drunk too quickly and now my tongue is furry with burn. If orang Lampung would do this to orang Madura what would they do to Westerners who acted like cowboys? Then again, everyone gets tarred with generalisations. On my way here I had a night in Jakarta on Jalan Jaksa. Nigerians sailed past in immaculate white pants. Old bules with gravity-stricken guts were led quietly by pretty Sundanese girls. Backpackers with towering old-fashioned rucksacks and dirty clothes clutched brand new laptop cases. Inevitably, I ended up in a bar. Got yarning with an American bloke and a Javanese madam who'd worked in Bali for years. When they learnt I was Australian, their mouths became chisels. The madam told me of
the appalling way Aussie blokes treated Indo women on hotel beds in Kuta. About how slovenly and stingy and dumb we were. ‘And all you damn Aussies,' concluded the American, ‘you all act as if you own the place!'

Ibu Ayu's generalisations remind me of this. Half-truths.

Mmm. So the Lampungese are quick-tempered.

And Matt's got a wife.

The wartel owner doesn't acknowledge me when I duck through the doorway and into his shop. He's reading a paper behind his bench.

‘Can I use the phone?'

He doesn't look up.

‘Thanks.' Perhaps his wife is giving him a hard time.

Josh picks up the extension straight away.

‘Penny!' he says, ‘Long time no hear! How've you been?'

That's the thing about Josh. He gets over things fast.

I try to match his brightness. ‘Pretty good! I met my new boss yesterday. There's a five grand bonus if I stay six months. And guess what? I'm going surfing in the next few days!'

There's that three-second pause that makes spontaneous conversation impossible on long-distance calls. It's just long enough to start thinking about something else before the other person has a chance to respond.