Jalan Jalan (23 page)

‘I have more recent photos,' I say, ‘I'll send you some.'

‘That would be kind. This is too old. Why don't I have any of her as she is now? Was, is, was, now?'

I have the answer, but I don't give it. Children become adults; they aren't under the care of their parents anymore. They aren't sweet and cute, they are problems, and worry, and sometimes only distant acquaintances. There is no time to photograph them when there is so much adult discussion to be made, so much disagreement and tongue-biting. The parents don't understand their children and children don't understand their parents. Everyone is too embarrassed to ask for a photo. If a photo is taken it isn't a smiling, relaxed face that is captured, it is one which is full of age and concern and vanity. It's easier and safer to look at the old photos, from a time when each was needed by the other.

Laura: vain, independent, beautiful, with a phobia of cameras.

‘Is there anything else you'd like from me?' I ask.

Jane's eyes squint, then glance around the room as if it is alien to her.

‘I have her clothes, I have her…' What do I have? Now it is me who is lost. My mind goes through my apartment, through the bedside cabinet, pulling open drawers, flinging open the wardrobe and finding a winter coat and an over-sized nightshirt. It searches under the bed, slippers with holes where her big toe used to poke out. Into the kitchen, mugs, glasses, my mind pulls the kitchen drawers onto the floor. From the bottom one spills out all the detritus accumulated from broken things, spare things, things that are too good to be thrown out but too useless to be used. I kick it all across the floor. There is something, it is shining. What is it? It is broken, but it is her…

‘Necklace. I have her necklace.'

‘Necklace? Which necklace?' Jane looks at me now. Her fingers still stroke the frame.

‘It's silver. The chain's broken. It's got Minnie Mouse on it.'

‘Minnie Mouse?'

‘She said she used to love Minnie Mouse.'

(I used to love Minnie Mouse. My mother used to buy me Minnie Mouse stuff…)

‘I used to buy her Minnie Mouse stuff all the time.'

(But then I threw most of it away, when I started secondary school)

‘She threw it all away.'

(It hurt her)

‘It hurt me.'

(I kept this though)

‘She kept a piece?'

‘Yes. I'll send it to you.'

(I keep meaning to tell my mum I've still got a bit)

‘She kept it because of you.'

Her eyes search mine.

‘I'd like it. Please.'

‘OK.' But I want it. I want it all. I want to hold it all and feel it in my hands and against my face. I want to sleep in her nightshirt and under her coat, I want her slippers to put my hands in, to smell, I want her necklace, to feel its weight in my palm. She is my Laura. They are my things.

‘My little Minnie Mouse,' whispers her mother.

‘I'll bring it tomorrow.'

IN THE MOUTH
OF THE VOLCANO

B
eing
alone is a precious thing. It gives you time to be you. No outside influences can blur your personality into one of the mishmash of personas that you subconsciously create for the people you're with; the personality you make to please the person of the moment.

I don't know who I am with these who sleep around me in this hostel room. Is it the real me, or is the real me someone who is in all those other moments, in that spinning world of moments with Laura that are sometimes so hard to grasp and which, at other times, appear without summons or desire? Or am I, the pure and base me, here only inside my head when I am alone?

As I stare at the grey ceiling of this hostel, just awake, I wish that all of today could be mine and mine alone. I want to be me without using exhausting self-control in order to smile and laugh and even just talk to these others. Others who all have issues of their own, whether they realise it or not.

Here, alone, and so grateful to be alone, the one thing I do that contradicts my need for solitude is to examine Laura's face. I pull it out of its hiding place and piece it all back together. The curl of her hair over her brow; the small, near-invisible mole above her lip, on the right side. I know it's the right side. I've heard say that when someone is no longer, it's hard to remember how they looked, or even the colour of their eyes. But I know her face. When I have these moments alone, I can put her back together and know that is exactly how she is. The light-brown flecks in her green eyes. The soft downy feel of her ear against my lips. The smell of her cheek against my nose. The hardening of her nipples against my palm. The taste of her mouth in the morning when we kiss. It is all there.

I shouldn't be thinking of her; it should be Eka I think of, with her warm and giving body and her thick dark hair and lips that are soft and violent at the same time. Perhaps I should be thinking of the nights together when our bodies blur into each other's in a ritual of forgetting all but that current sensual moment. As much as I try to move my thoughts to Eka and the sensations we feel as we melt into each other, it is still Laura who I give my mind to in these rare snippets of solitude. I know Laura knows this; that is why she isn't tormenting me with my broken promise of no pom-pom. She knows I think of her and not Eka. Infidelity of the mind is so much more damaging than infidelity of the body.

So now who am I? Is this what I have become when I am alone? A shrine to Laura. A soul desperate to be alone in order to be with my soulmate. I want me back. Not Old Me
,
not New Me
,
just me. I want me, so I can think empty thoughts that mean nothing or deep thoughts that mean so much.

I expect someone will wake soon, so I sit up and push the thin clammy sheet off me. We're all in one room together, on low-to-the-ground beds, except Jussy, who is curled up under a couple of Julie's sarongs on the floor. Not enough beds to go around.

Pulling on my shorts and T-shirt I can hear the sounds of engines and chatter coming from outside. The light coming through the thin curtains feels adolescent, as though it isn't early morning, but it's not late either. It feels about eight. I shake my sandals and put them on, then walk quietly to the door.

I like being up when others sleep; I don't have to play the interacting game.

Down the concrete stairs I go. The wall feels surprisingly cool as I run my hand along it on my descent. The light that comes in when I open the door is alive. It almost burns Laura's image off of my retinas. It is a day untouched by the heavy hand of pollution. It is crisp, clear and revitalising. The sun shines down from where it hangs on the sky and warms me. I wait in the doorway and breathe in the morning. In front of me a market is coming to life. Blue tarpaulins provide roofed cover to arrays of stands of fruit, spices and vegetables, tended by mostly older women, who sit on the ground wearing colourful rectangle-shaped headgear and vivid sarongs. Some of the women are shaking and sifting large trays of seeds, others just sit and wave flies and the growing heat away. Around them locals walk and look and weigh and smell the goods. Beyond the market the blue of Lake Toba shimmers in the sunlight. I step out of my doorway and join the scene.

I feel less conspicuous here. For once people seem more interested in the colours and buzz of the market than the plain white man. I guess it's because we're on the backpack route and whites aren't so unusual. Parapat is the port where the boat leaves for the Tuktuk Peninsula on Samosir Island, where travellers apparently relax, watch the lake, and probably smoke a lot of grass.

I wander around the market and pick up fruit I've never seen before and some I know well, but have never seen looking so mouthwatering: yellow bananas, green bananas, mangosteens, rambutans, apples, limes, tomatoes are laid out in piles on the floor, fighting for space with chillies, beans, herbs, and mushrooms. There are buckets of small dead silver fish and larger buckets with huge, live goldfish fighting for space within. I watch as one is bought and killed on the spot. There are so many stalls I don't see how people decide from which vendor they should buy. Everything looks perfect, like a living impressionist painting. Every small piece of fruit or vegetable or bean is placed precisely to make a scene to look at again and again, full of vivid colour and life.

The smell of the spices grows with the rising temperature and mingles with the sweet scent of the fruit. A day has never smelt so edible. I could bite chunks out of the air. It makes me hungry. I ask for a bag of mangosteens from a woman who smiles through red-stained teeth and head up a side street. The stalls have spilled up the narrow lane, but here are clothes and sarongs for sale, decorated with un-faded colours taken from every part of the spectrum. I sit on a wall and watch as people wander around.
Dangdut
plays from a radio somewhere. In another part of the market someone is singing and playing a guitar.

I dig my thumbnails into a mangosteen and twist it in half. The colour within the fruit bursts out at me. Purple juice splatters on my t-shirt, my fingers are stained by one of nature's most resilient dyes. I pull the fleshy white fruit from its pulpy purple cocoon and it slides into my mouth like an oyster. Sweeter than lychee. My eyes close. The sun's warmth is on my face. The day is beautiful.

‘Fucking mangosteens, man. My favourite.' Kim's fingers tear out a segment of my fruit. It sits in my hand bleeding purple over my fingers.

‘You're up pretty fucking early. Why didn't you wake us?' he asks while licking juice from his fingers.

There I go, born-again true me is pushed back up into the womb of pretence. Here comes the act, here comes the finest performer in the art of socialising and getting on. Here comes the character actor, the gently offensive one best suited to Kim.

‘You all looked so peaceful I didn't want to disturb you. Thought I'd leave you to your morning glories and dirty dreams.' I drop the fruit on the ground.

‘Fuck, did you.' Kim rubs his eyes and blinks. ‘You just wanted some alone time. I don't fucking blame you. We're hard fucking going, us lot.' He pats me on the shoulder. ‘Enjoy your fruit, man. It's too fucking bright for me out here. Got to shower.' He runs his hands through his hair. ‘Fuck, it's going to be hot. Come find us when you done being alone, the others are just getting up. Boat's in an hour. Don't be late, lonesome boy.'

He walks back through the market nodding, laughing and saying ‘
Pagi
' to everyone, his brown hair flopping from side to side as he moves his head.

My actor hasn't even left his changing room. Kim sees he doesn't want to come out.

It is still a beautiful day.

We leave Parapat on a hand-painted boat. It is green, red and blue in fading, peeling shades with a canopy over the top deck. The chairs are like metal garden chairs, painted white and screwed to the floor. There are about twenty people on this deck and more below.

I lean over the rusty handrail and watch as Parapat recedes behind us. The boat seems to glide over the clear blue-green water leaving hardly any foamy wake.

‘We're on the largest volcanic lake in the world now, did you know that?' Julie is at my side, sunglasses holding her hair back. She looks relaxed today; even her hands are still, almost: only her small finger taps on the rail.

‘I had heard something like that.'

‘It's a hundred kilometres long and over four hundred and fifty feet deep.'

Looking down into the water I get a slight feeling of vertigo. What's at the bottom? What animals lurk down there? The child in me feels uncomfortable.

‘They think it was the biggest eruption in millions of years and sent the planet into some sort of nuclear winter.'

‘Maybe a volcanic winter?'

‘Don't be a smart arse. Anyway, imagine if it went up now. We'd be fucked.'

‘We would,' I agree.

Singing, loud and sudden, has started on a high note behind us. Three boys no taller than my waist stand in a row and are singing in complete tuneful harmony. In cut-off shorts and grubby T-shirts they look like they've come off the street, as they probably have. Their sudden and perfect voices make the rest of the boat go silent for just a few seconds. Kim, Jussy and Marty sit and watch like the three wise monkeys on a break.