Ramadan Sky Part 5

She asked me to meet another time.

Why you are so impatient to meet a man without a job? I asked.

Never mind about job. I still love you, that is all.

I became confused and told her: I have begged you not to break with me and now you see I still have the bike and you love me again. Ini melayani anda benar sayang! It serves you right my darling!

She began to cry: I don't care about bike or job. I just want to be with you as we planned.

It was hard to believe that it could be happening like this that she could be calling me and I could be refusing her and telling her not to call me again.

A few weeks later my mother invited Aryanti to our house for the cutting ceremony of my nephew. His p.e.n.i.s was cut at the same time as his smaller brother. Both boys cried, but we laughed because the oldest one cried harder and longer. We gave them sweets and drinks to cheer them up. The nephews and nieces all wanted to know about the bule I had been driving. My mother frowned and clucked at them, but they wanted to know everything.

What does she eat, this bule? Hamburgers?

Not hamburgers. She eats soto ayam, and for breakfast bubur.

This made them laugh, so I chided them.

Why is it so strange that a person eats rice?

Vic is a very good cook but I didn't tell them this because they wouldn't understand. Why should this rich bule woman without a husband know how to cook?

Actually, I could not tell them about the food. They would not believe the price, and, of course, they would be even more suspicious than my mother already was. We have been to so many restaurants and eaten food that makes me soft and sleepy. She likes to order, but always checking with me first. We eat slowly, sometimes Indonesian food, but also many other kinds a special kind of duck rolled into pancakes with soup (which we ate on Valentine's Day), and also rich creamy Italian food, and sweet and spicy Thai. Any food has to be taken with wine. I never had wine before I began driving for her, but I liked it straight away a delicious drink that was completely new yet strangely familiar. We go to these expensive places but as often as not we will get rice or gado gado from the street and take it with tea or water. People are always looking at us because, whichever kind of place we go, one of us doesn't fit in.

She is very tall. How much does she weigh? How much does she pay you?

Trust in G.o.d but mind your own business, I growled.

I stopped the talk about the bule by showing them a new game on my mobile phone. Aryanti was helping my mother to give food to the guests but had been listening to everything. She came towards me with a tray of sweets and asked me very softly: Are you loving another woman now, Ahmad Fajar?

But I declined the sweet and walked away without speaking with her further. I reminded myself that she had refused me four times. How could she ask me such a question when she no longer had any right to know?

The same week as the cutting ceremony there were three funerals in our street. Two boys from our street had been drinking arak, which they had made themselves from scratch in their bedroom; they were later found lying in the street, unconscious. They were taken to hospital and seemed to get better, at first, but the first boy died two days later and his brother the next evening. The young husband of a neighbour also died after going to hospital for a problem with his stomach. They wrote the same thing on all three death certificates: Cause of death komplikasi' .

When I told Vic that three of my neighbours had died of komplikasi, she would not accept the idea. She was sitting at the dressing table and I was standing, brus.h.i.+ng her hair. She stared in disbelief at my reflection in the mirror.

What the h.e.l.l is that? Complications are not something that the hospital can say you died from.

Maybe it is different for Indonesian people, I said.

But she waved the suggestion away like it was smoke from a cigarette.

Of course it isn't different. They can't just tell you that they died of komplikasi. It means that the hospital stuffed up. They need to get a lawyer in there.

I wanted to slap her with the brush, all of a sudden, or wind the beautiful long hair around her neck and pull it as tight as I could.

There is no lawyer for us, sayang. Not in Indonesia, unless we have a lot of money.

But she kept on going, her face turning pink and her voice rising.

In my country, everyone has access to a lawyer. And a hospital can't tell fairy tales when somebody dies.

Your country, where everyone is perfect and rich, I thought.

She had that look that she gets as if it is a terrible shock to her that the world is not fair. Better, I think, to keep silent, and not have all that angry red noise.

Sayang, I said to her. Why all this angry? These peoples are already dead!

She opened her mouth to speak and then closed it again, and we looked at each other in the mirror for a minute. She took the brush from me and stood up and I kissed her mouth very softly. We stopped talking, and I was careful not to mention that story afterwards.

Also, I didn't tell her the rest of it that there was probably nothing the hospital could do, and no wonder that they could not find a cause for the three deaths. Aryanti's friend had already told us that they had all three been killed by black magic. She suspected the boys' auntie, who had gone away to her home village some weeks before. That village is famous because there are many magic men there, who we call dukun, who will make any spell you need. If I told Vic about the dukun, I am sure she would only laugh in her mocking way, or perhaps begin to tell me that there are no such things in Australia.

Australia.

I have seen it on television. When I think of it, I see a big blue ocean full of sharks, and small cities where bule drive around in cars that are as fast and smooth as aeroplanes. They raise their scornful eyebrows at the beliefs of the dukun, and even at the words of the Imam, and they live in big houses with vacant eyes that look out onto the empty streets.

Chapter Six.

Aryanti

After some weeks, Fajar didn't call me anymore, and life became almost normal again. Then, one day, he drove past me three times, each time driving the bule, her crazy red hair flying out from under her helmet. I called Chitra, who told me the story that this woman had asked him to be her driver because he can speak English well. That she was not a patient woman and wanted him always to be on time and not even five minutes late. She had given him a new telephone, in order that he could read her messages properly, and she could call him and ask him to drive her whenever she needed to go somewhere.

I did not like this news. This woman looked older than Fajar, but it was clear that she had no husband. And he seemed to almost disappear off the streets around this time. Before I would see him outside from time to time, with his friends, but now if I saw him at all, he was on his bike, driving somewhere. He seemed always to be wearing some new thing, and usually driving her. Then, one day, I saw her getting onto his bike and I noticed that her long fingers pulled very gently at the bottom of his s.h.i.+rt, in a sneaky way, because she thought no one was looking. There was no reason or excuse for a teacher to do this to her driver. A week or so after I saw her do that, I was standing at the Chinaman's shop, waiting to buy some milk, and Fajar walked straight past the entrance without turning his head, as if I wasn't there.

I wanted him back. I took the great risk of calling him to ask him to come back and marry me after all. But his refusal was clear and cold over his brand new phone. Then I tried to ask for Chitra's help. She promised that she would ask her mother to invite me to their house for a small party. But when the day came he would not look at me, and walked away when I tried to talk to him.

I started going crazy thinking about this bule woman. Perhaps she would take Fajar away from me to another country and I would never see him again. I hated her ugly white skin and fat body and red devil's hair, and the way she would stand in the street, arrogant, her hands on her hips, and with the cleft of her bosom on show like a perek.1 How could she think of having Fajar she was not even a Muslim woman? When I thought about that I felt relieved. Fajar would not marry somebody who was not Muslim. His family would not allow it. And he would never leave his family.

A few weeks later, they both disappeared completely. Chitra told me that Fajar had gone to train for a job in the mountains, but she could not find an answer when I asked her about the bule.

If he is in the mountains for training, then where is Vic? And who is driving her?

She looked at me for a minute.

Do you think I should tell my mother? she asked.

But I said no. Better to wait and see who comes back when.

A week later, the bule appeared again on the street, moving in her way, like a wooden toy on strings. I called Chitra to tell her and her voice came out in a shocked whisper.

Fajar has come home, she said. He arrived last night. He has failed in the training.

So, Chitra and I knew that they had been somewhere together and Chitra made up her mind to tell her mother about it. But she made the mistake of telling Fajar first, when they were alone.

He shouted and screamed at her and told her to be careful she would be very sorry to start watching him and telling stories. He also thought it was my fault, because Chitra is my friend, and even gave her a message for me.

Tell that woman she must keep her eyes off my business, or I will tell her myself and she will be sorry!

Chitra did not pa.s.s on what she knew about Fajar and Vic to her mother that day, as she had promised, because she was afraid.

After that, I was no longer feeling crazy, just sad. How could he be so angry, as if we had never shared anything or felt anything about each other? I remembered all of his words of love and all of his kisses, and felt that every single word and kiss had been a lie. My mother saw that I was very unhappy and she did not say I told you so' and we became friends once more, after the long period of silence before.

Father was sick again, and grumbling all the time. It seemed that the days were full of listening to him complain, and of the rain, which had been falling every day for weeks, but not really making anything cooler. Life was stretching out its many long fingers of afternoons and evenings going nowhere and becoming lost forever, without a chance to mean anything.

When March had gone, and April, and it was dry and sunny on most days, I was on my way to the factory, when I saw Fajar and three of his brothers standing with hammers and saws, surrounded by a small crowd. A truck was backing into a tight spot next to them, and a parking man was blowing his whistle short-short-long, go-go-stop to direct them. When the truck finally stopped, two men got out, carrying a big gla.s.s case, as is used for displaying things to sell. Fajar was waving his arms and showing them where to put it. Satiya was there, with his sleepy eyes, not really helping, but looking on. He spotted me and greeted me warmly.

Fajar is opening a coffee shop, he said. This was a strange enough thing, because I had known that man for more than two years and had never in that time heard him speak a word to anyone, and certainly not to me. Even stranger was what he had just told me that Fajar could be doing such a thing.

Did he win the lottery? I asked.

The bule has loaned him the money, Satiya explained.

I waited for the sky to fall down, or to wake up in my bed to find I had a terrible fever and was dreaming crazy dreams, but it didn't happen. The truck started beeping to reverse out of the crowd and the parking man began his unnecessary whistling and the brothers banged nails into posts that were to make a frame around the shop.

Fajar could not contain his excitement. He even smiled at me, for the first time since I could remember, but then turned away immediately and began to shout instructions at his second oldest brother. The ojek men were watching and mocking him in small voices to each other, but they did not quite hide their curiosity and admiration. I could not stand there any longer without looking very foolish, so, slowly, I made my way down the street.

Later that evening, I made an excuse to walk past again, and saw the sign hanging there: WARUNG FAJAR. There was a small table and a wooden bench, with a stove and gas bottle, wrapped up in plastic wrap and chained to a light post.

The day after, there was an electric bulb swinging from the wooden beam, and the next evening, there was Fajar, standing under the naked light with three customers underneath it, drinking coffee. He didn't notice me watching him and I moved away and decided to forget all about him.

I tried not to think about Fajar at all and I did not even walk along that street for many weeks, until one evening, a short time before Ramadan, I found myself leaving my home, as if ordered to by some invisible force, with no idea where I was going. I did not bother about anyone looking at me and asking themselves, silently or aloud, if I should be walking alone. I arrived at the Warung Fajar.

There was a customer in front of me, so he did not see me at first. Then he looked up and saw me and pointed to a plastic stool. He seemed taller and more handsome than the last time that I had seen him. He was pleased to see me and asked many questions about my family and my life. I felt very small and uninteresting next to him with his new shop. It was only an outside stall, he told me; too hot for selling in the midday sun, so it was to be open in the mornings and the evenings. He would go home in the middle of the day and sleep.

I asked him who would drive his girlfriend to work in the mornings.

Aryanti, she is not my girlfriend, he replied.

I was glad to hear his answer, but tried to hide it by asking again how the bule would get to work. He answered that she would take a taxi. She was now living further away, in Tangerang; she was tired of sitting on the bike in the smoky traffic and trying to breathe.

As we talked, we were interrupted by customers coming to buy coffee. He was very businesslike straight away writing down in a book everything he had sold. I picked up the book and turned to the first page, which had been divided into columns with headings in English and Bahasa, printed in a delicate hand.

From Vic, he told me. She is showing me how to keep everything.

She is very kind to you, I said and, picking up his pen, I drew a small flower on the top of each heading. It looks prettier now.

He leaned over to look and I smelled the familiar mix of tobacco and perfume, which reminded me of our first night in the park. It seemed a long time ago, so many unexpected things had not yet happened, and I felt a wave of sadness come at me and try to knock me down. I stood up, ready to go home, but he pushed me back down, gently by the shoulders.

Stay a while and talk.

I did not stay long. I thought it better to let him wish I were still there with him than stay too long and have him wish me gone. I did not tell him that the next day I would travel with my brother to my father's village to get some medicine from the herbalist. Let him look for me in the evenings and wonder why I did not walk past. Just before I left, an idea came to me, quietly, like a small insect suddenly landing in my lap. I took Fajar's pen from where it rested in the pages of the book and secretly placed it in my purse before taking leave of him.

Chapter Seven.

Vic

20 September It is two days before Ramadan. He came over this afternoon, bringing mangoes and young rose apples that looked like pink candy hearts. We perched on the bed, trying not to let the sweet mango and chilli water spill onto the sheets, and stared absently at the TV.

Fresh, he said, tasting the mango and pulling his lips back over his teeth.

It was fresh, and the room was cold. A crisp seventeen degrees, while outside the city blared with noise and heat.

He was eating the mango and stroking my knee and I was admiring his powder-blue T-s.h.i.+rt, which had gone out of style many years earlier back home. It had a streetscape on the front something Greg Brady might have been comfortable wearing, and with Fajar's brown skin it was vaguely reminiscent of the Afro haircuts and cool-cat New York bars of TV yesteryear. I almost expected to look out the window and see a line of station wagons parked outside, but instead there would be Kijang Jeeps with plastic Arabic signs reading the name of Allah and cardboard scented pine trees hanging from the rear-view mirrors. Despite his age and seventies wear, he always had a vaguely neo-cla.s.sical Count-of-Monte-Cristo air about him probably because of his quaint textbook English and the exaggerated rolling r's they use here.

He was sitting cross-legged on the bed, with his shoulders slightly hunched, translating the dialogue for me. I marvelled at the television women, who fall to pieces in any kind of crisis, crying like helpless, hysterical children. They are nothing like the women I've actually met here, who seem to be capable, strong, just as smart as anyone else. The real women are hard workers and, despite being covered from head to toe, they are hara.s.sed by groups of men on buses and street corners and at work. We were watching a drama about a girl who is chased out of the village by stone-throwing maniacs because she is pregnant and unmarried. I tried not to notice Fajar's look of immense satisfaction as he watched her stumbling along the road, her forehead cut and bleeding. I wanted to ask him where he had been the night before when he had promised to visit, but I didn't want to risk it; he was easily offended and given to temper tantrums, stomping off and turning off his mobile phone the phone I gave him for two or three days at a time. Wiping the last of the mango off his fingers, he leaned over and kissed me on the mouth and whispered softly: Just a moment, Vic. I must defecate first.

I have not been able to train him out of this habitual announcement. He will take his jeans and high-waisted underpants off by the bed and then wander off into the bathroom. Then there is the sound of a cigarette being lit and a bit later, frenzied bidet and shower noises, before he strolls back, takes off his T-s.h.i.+rt and slides under the covers.

21 September Tonight there was an eclipse of the moon. It slowly turned dark red and then completely disappeared above the mosque where the men were praying, their low voices floating up into the stratosphere. I watched it from a rooftop swimming pool where earlier in the day I had offended a group of Saudi women by going for a swim wearing only my bathers. They had been sitting under the midday sun, their squat, fat bodies like perfect cubes draped in black cloth, watching over their children who were splas.h.i.+ng and laughing in the water. They were like five angry ravens, perched on banana lounges, scowling ominously as I stepped out of my towel to reveal a very modest one-piece bathing suit. I wondered why they couldn't swim when it was so hot and what other physical pleasures they were denied.

They were not there this evening to witness the display of b.l.o.o.d.y might from the ancient G.o.ddess, but I watched it, and this time, as I was all alone in the dark, I swam naked. The moon disappeared and then slowly re-emerged like a magic trick. The cool water was like silk on my skin and I floated with legs and arms stretched out, watching the sky. I imagined those women from earlier in the day were at home, with the children already in bed, watching television and secretly scoffing down kulfa and bars of pink and white nougat, bathing their fat bodies and applying cloying, scented oils against the heat.

As the last little semicircle of moon was coloured in, Fajar arrived in a cloud of excitement to take me home. I could feel the warm energy emanating from his back and thought it had something to do with the eclipse, and the sprinkling of stars that had also made a rare appearance that night.

As soon as we got off the bike he presented me with a box of deep fried biscuits with small goldfish pressed into them and a clear plastic bag of wine tied in a knot at the top. He had hunted down these treats for me as a way of saying thank you for our Bali trip, and because it was the last night he could see me before the fasting month began. After the last supper, he laid down the law it was to be no s.e.x for a month. I listened impa.s.sively, secretly struggling to dislodge the goldfish bones from the roof of my mouth with my tongue. He looked particularly young and sure of himself and his place in the world, and, for a moment, I wished I could join in and maybe even belong there. The magnitude of eight million people in one city partic.i.p.ating in a shared ritual that went on for a whole month seemed rea.s.suring and profound.

6 October My enchantment with Ramadan has not lasted. The outside changes that have been taking place are subtle, but they have grown on me like a fungus. At first it just seemed that the mosque noises were getting louder and the prayers a little more frenzied; there were no food stalls open in the streets, but everything else was business as usual. Then I began to notice they were no longer playing Whitney Houston on a loop in the supermarket but some new songs that I suspected might be hymns. Mysteriously, wine disappeared from the supermarket shelves but not beer, the beer was still sitting there happily for sale.

Wine is stronger, the supermarket girls explained.

What's the difference? The rule isn't don't drink strong alcohol', the rule is don't drink alcohol'. What the h.e.l.l is the difference? If you're selling beer, you can sell wine.

It has been a resolution of mine to refrain from shouting at people in this country, no matter what the circ.u.mstances. Also, to control my urges to pontificate or point out why, exactly, another way would be more efficient and sensible; to, instead, smile calmly as someone chases me down the street waving something at me that I definitely would not buy; to refrain from sarcasm when asked rude personal questions by taxi drivers or when told by perfect strangers that I am fat. This time I didn't manage it.