It is almost six in the evening, and I'm sitting on Legian beach in Bali, watching the sunset unfold, in a haze of slow pink and purple. The beach is awash with people, of all sizes, sexes and colours.
Two soccer games are on simultaneously, back to back on fields of chopped sand. About twenty skinny youngsters in one game and fifty in the other.
"How do they know who's in which team?" Asks Oliver, my ten year old son,
watching before he heads into low tide small waves with his boogie board.
"Well, when you're with your friends at school, and you're playing, you
guys know which is which." He nods in uncertain agreement, watches a moment
longer, and runs down to the sea.
On a patch of hard sand to my left, a tanned young man in tight jeans is leaning over backwards, attempting to pick up a black frisbee with his teeth. Without success.
"Hello." His voice a warm caress, yet another beach salesman approaches,
waving a bundle of rattan shoulder bags at me. His thin shoulders are covered by a
bright Aussie t-shirt.
"Already have. No thank you." I am terse, unfriendly, wanting to watch the
sunset in peace. But no.
"How much you pay?" He sits down close beside me, leaning across to touch
the bag I've bought.
"Cheap. What's your name?" Maybe if I get in first it'll be easier. I pull out my
notebook and start writing, describing the scene around me. The notebook is
tattered, curling upwards at the edges like a bunch of old leaves. I'm on to my
third one, having written my way all through Java and Thailand.
"Ketut. You want another one? Cheap? For present?" He holds his selection
under my nose, stroking them, and turning inner edges out to show quality. I shake my
head and continue writing.
The soft tropical light fades quickly, people are leaving in twos and threes. Above my head a triangular kite with a long black and white tail swoops and leaps, not enough wind to set it spinning upwards. It dives down to where Oliver's head is a shadow against the surf. I wave at him to return, then glance sideways from my writing.
Ketut is still sitting beside me, now joined by two others who have appeared silently out of the dusk. One is loaded down with clusters of bright ceramic beads, the other holds an ebony carving of an eagle atop the globe. They puff on clove cigarettes, and skip jagged phrases of Indonesian between each other. I am feeling relieved that he has given up on me, but this is tinged with guilt because I've been abrupt, unfriendly. There are so many like him, trudging up and down the beach, that rudeness is the only way to achieve any peace there.
A few metres along, the group of young Spanish mothers are putting on clothes, shaking out sarongs, and collecting sunglasses and children. Their language sounds especially soft, flowing and foreign here. They trudge up through the loose sand towards the road.
Oliver and I follow them slowly, leaving Ketut and the others to the dusk. The boogie board slithers like some animal on the sand behind us.
"Just like home, isn't it?" I am thinking out loud, glad to be here, yet
missing our garden after a month away.
"Not much. What do you mean?"
"Oh you know, all those days at Paekak
last summer, walking back to the house after we'd been watching the sunset. This is a
bit like that."
"Suppose. I'm thirsty."
The dim lights of Blue Ocean restaurant are hazy under their bamboo shades. As we cross the cobbled parking area, a squat Indonesian nearby waves, and calls out.
"Hello my friend! Just look, no problem." He knows we're going to sit and eat,
so we're a captive audience anyway. I smile and wave, but hope that he'll leave us
alone. The searing tropical heat leaves us wilted like jellyfish at the end of each
day.
"Who's that guy? Do you know him?" Oliver studies the menu intently, even
though we've eaten here almost every day since we arrived.
"We call him Blankets, yeah, I bought a few bits and pieces off him last time I
was here."
"Blankets, that's a funny name. Not Balinese?" He orders lemon juice. Again.
He has never yet managed to finish one completely.
"Well, look at his motorbike over there." The rusty old Binter leans against a
gnarled frangipani tree nearby. Front and rear it is piled high with coloured ikat woven
blankets, tied on with criss-crossed blue plastic string.
I lean on the rickety bamboo table and drink my first beer of the day with silent relief. Blankets' sad round face silently pleads with me as he holds up hands-full of chunky bead and glass necklaces, and small wooden pendants. I shake my head without speaking, look around for the young waiter, my hand in the air. Blankets nods, still with his expression of eternal sadness, and piles the necklaces on the table, then bends down to rummage in his bag.
"Your wife not come this time?" He thuds a series of small parcels on
the table, wrapped in grey cloth and old newspaper. Oliver glances sideways at
me, then turns away waving his arm up. The only person serving is a small
girl with a round tray full of frosted beer bottles, down the other end where
there are tables set out under spreading pepper trees . "No." The music surges
over us in a sudden mushroom of sound. Blankets begins to unwrap the first
of the parcels.
"So - she is maybe looking after the shop?" He nods at Oliver then me,
his fingers busy with rubberbands and wrapping.
"No, she died." I can feel the beer glass cool under my fingertips.
Blankets swallows, his hands suddenly still.
"I am sorry, truly sorry my friend." He looks at Oliver, who is sitting
turned in his chair, watching the activities at the other tables. Blue Ocean at
this time of night is very often full.
"Thank you." I don't know what else to say, so gesture for him to
continue. Blankets takes a slow deep breath, and smoothes flat a piece of
paper.
"My friend. Just you look, looking is free." His hands spin in small
circles above the clutter on the table. "These are special pieces, like you buy
before." He produces a fist-sized brass dragon curled in a tight spiral, a silver
frog squatting on a lotus leaf. Numbers of small primitive bronze and silvery
figures appear. They are inexpertly cast and rough finished, often it is impossible to
stand them upright. Yet their charm is obvious, and his sales pitch, apart from the sad
face, consists of muttered place names, "Kalimantan" or "Timor" denoting their origin.
But we both know they probably come from some tiny factory in a noisy suburb of
Surabaya or Bandung.
"It's OK. No problem." Blankets is undeterred by my headshakings. He
continues to ferret out brass mamulis from Toraja, and perfectly carved small bone
skulls, pierced with holes, so they can be worn as pendants by the Buddhists and
punks of the West.
"This one, I bring for you. Special. Only one." He unwraps a miniature totem
pole about ten inches high. "Timor." He mutters, pushing it across to me. Small
grinning figures squat on top of one another, there are snakes, lizards and frogs
intertwined between them. It is difficult to tell what is eating what. The top one has a
round goblin head, eyes closed and tongue protruding.
"Silver. For sure. Really." He nods his head vehemently, and holds it up to the
light, as if to glimpse its quality.
"Yeah, right, of course." It is easier for me to agree, rather than argue at this
point. I feel I've heard all this before. "OK. How much?" This is really the crux
question. He knows I'm absolutely not interested until I ask this.
"For you my friend." He stops, and rubs at one of the figures with the grimy
cloth that it was wrapped in. "Only two hundred." There is a silence, except for bursts
of laughter from a nearby table, and the bass thump of the restaurant stereo. Blankets
turns to scrounge a clove cigarette off a loud American lady nearby. This is about a
hundred and seventy NZ dollars, a huge amount to him.
"Mmm." I hold up the totem, then carelessly push it back across the table.
"Well, maybe fifty, and I think you'd be lucky at that." In fact I like the small totem,
I've never seen one quite the same before. He patiently pulls out the grey cloth again,
and begins to wrap it up. But slowly.
"My friend, I think perhaps you are joking with me." His face is sadder than
ever. "Indonesian people also like joking. Sometimes." He unwraps it and polishes it
all over. "No less than one ninety. Silver, very good carving. Best quality." I'm not
altogether sure about any of these confident statements, but I do like it, and I know I
can sell it back home if I want to.
"OK. I'll go to sixty-five. Since you're pushing me so hard." He waves his hands
in the air with exasperation. Cigarette ash scatters on the table. Oliver blows at it
through his straw. The bargaining continues, throughout our meal of mie goring, and
fish charcoal grilled, with avocado salad on the side. My stubbornness increases as
I work my way through the meal. Never go to the supermarket on an empty
stomach. I read that in Consumer once.
Half an hour later, I pay out one hundred and ten thousand rupiah (NZ$90), and pocket the silvery totem. Blankets is no more cheerful than when we first saw him. He scrounges another cigarette, and starts his motorbike, after checking all the pieces of blue string. I am feeling exhilarated by the weight of the totem in my bag, but drained and exhausted by a long day of heat and bargaining.
We wave as he roars off down the narrow lane - scattering plastic and leaves. There are shifting piles of plastic everywhere here, mixed with rotting vegetation and old offering baskets. This morning I watched the rubbish truck, manned by men wearing bright yellow overalls and white surgical masks. In the early morning squads of workers rake the beach, digging holes for the previous day's rubbish.
I'm carrying the boogie board for Oliver as we walk back to our hotel. There is
a half-moon shining metallic overhead, and the sky is bright with unfamiliar stars.
"We're a long way from home, aren't we?" His sandals scuff on the sandy path,
as the geckos call goodnight.
"Yep. We sure are."