Chapter One - Richard Lewis

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THE BONES OF THE NEW MOON
A novel of Bali's 1965 massacres
By RE Lewis
1

AUTHOR'S NOTE
Apart from certain and self-evident historical people, the characters in this novel are
fictional, as is the Balinese village of Batu Gede. Regarding the events of 1965, I have
scrupulously kept to the well-known historical facts (analyzed by scholars into wildly
different interpretations of the whys and wherefores), weaving my own story around
them, except for a few minor instances where I have invoked the writer's privilege of
creative license.
2

Chapter One
The backhoe operator didn't notice when the bucket ripped through the first of the
skeletons.
With the villa construction behind schedule, he'd climbed into the cab shortly
after dawn to start excavating the seaside pool. The sun rose plump as a tangerine, orange
light spreading across the ruffled waters of the Bali Straits and into the calm lagoon.
Upon the beach, a Balinese woman led four pale tourists in meditation.
The operator was a Javanese Muslim, and there was no God but Allah, but he
respectfully waited for them to finish. He smoked a clove cigarette, yawning plumes,
tired after spending half the night in a whorehouse, where his favorite girl was more
interested in the radio bulletin about former President Soeharto being rushed to the
hospital than she was in her client.
"I don't care what people say, he was a good President," she said. "He did a lot for
my village. Habibie took over and the first thing he did was give away East Timor."
"I'm not here to talk politics," the operator complained.
She shucked off her dress. "Never let a rocket scientist be president, that's what I
say."
The operator startled as the supervisor rapped on the side of the cab and gestured
for him to start digging. He fired up the engine, which belched smoke that drifted through
the few palms the landscaper had left standing in the last of Batu Gede's beachfront
coconut groves. Some lucky villager had struck it rich. What had been arid land good
only for a coconut plantation was now some of the island's most expensive real estate.
The bucket scooped through a bed of loose sand and bit into hard volcanic loam.
Several scoops later, a pale round object tumbled loose from the dark loam and lodged
against the bucket's teeth. The back of his neck prickling, the operator shifted the bucket
close to the cab window.
A hollow-eyed skull grinned at him.
"Iyallah," he breathed. He rested the bucket on the ground and jumped out of the
cab. Gingerly picking up the skull, heavy with clogged dirt, he noticed on its rear a
depressed fracture the size of his thumb, as if from a heavy blow. In the mound piled to
the side, what the operator had first taken to be broken driftwood and decayed roots were
yellowed bones. Using a bamboo stake, he dug away soil from what appeared to be a
clam shell but was another skull, with a similar fracture.
At the bottom of the pit were more bones.
3

More skulls.
Iyallah. The operator was pretty sure what this was. Old history, come to light.
History never taught in the school books, but known nonetheless by whispers in quiet
corners. Nobody dared speak louder or more openly, not when Soeharto could be
listening. He could be listening yet from his hospital bed.
There was a Javanese saying: Carry your kings high and bury them deep. As for
the king's victims, the operator reflected, they should be strung up even higher for all to
see or buried too deep to find.
These bones hadn't been deep enough.
The supervisor stomped over. Before he could start yelling, the operator nodded at
the skull.
"I think you have a problem," he said.
4

Chapter 2
The previous evening, Madé Ziro, known to all as Nol, sat down in his parlor to
watch the news with his wife and his mother.
Suti sold T-shirts and knickknacks at her shop on beach arcade, and this morning
Nol had borrowed fifty million from the bank to renew the shop's lease and promptly lost
every single rupiah at the cockfights. He hadn't told his wife and wasn't going to tell her
and so pretended nothing was wrong as he turned on the TV, prepared to fake a serene
interest in the country's troubles while frantically wondering how to wiggle out of his
own.
A reporter prattled breathlessly that former President Soeharto had been rushed to
the Pertamina Hospital in Jakarta. For years Soeharto's lawyers had claimed he was too ill
to leave his house on Cendana Street to attend trial for corruption and human rights
abuses, and now he truly was sick.
The television switched to shots of the Cendana Family and close associates
hurrying through the hospital doors.
"All that money he stole can't help him now," Suti said.
She was repairing one of the reed coasters she sold in the shop, peering over the
rims of her reading glasses at the TV. Nol's mother, Wayan Arini, perched on the edge of
a chair, her white hair coiffed, her slender back erect, her elegant hands folded in her lap.
The evening's news had drawn her like a judge to her court, and she watched the reporter
with a stern gaze, ready to catch him out on a lie. Suti relaxed in sarong and blouse, but
Nol's fastidious mother had put on a freshly ironed dress to sit in his parlor as if she were
a guest.
As a panel of analysts discussed the state of Soeharto's kidneys, Nol slumped
lower. Why oh why had his friend Sudana called him about the cockfights just as Nol
was leaving the bank? Why oh why had the cockfights been at the Renon cockpit
pavilion, right there on the way home? Why oh why, after Nol vowed to drive past the
arena, had there appeared a single parking space on the side of the road?
Why oh why had he stopped?
He vowed he'd only gamble a million.
But the entire fifty million vanished like a magic trick, leaving Nol holding an
empty leather satchel. Angry and disgusted, Nol threw it out the window as he drove off.
But it was a perfectly good satchel, and he sped around the one-way block to retrieve it. It
was already gone. Some lousy thief had taken it.
The reporter popped back into view, a weedy young man who must have been in
short pants when Soeharto abruptly resigned during the 1998 riots. The question now, the
reporter said, is whether the president would be leaving the hospital alive.
5

"He'll never die," Arini said evenly. "He's too afraid, all those sins of his."
Having pronounced her judgment, she rose and glided out the door, heading
across the courtyard to her own house in the compound.
Nol and Suti exchanged a glance. On December 9, 1965, more than two months
after a failed Communist coup, Red Beret commandos loyal to then Major General
Soeharto had hauled Nol's father out the gates for questioning. Madé Catra was a grade
school teacher and scholar. Before he had a chance to clear his name, he was executed,
leaving behind his four-year-old daughter and his pregnant wife.
It was something Arini never talked about.
Nol's teenaged daughter Dian burst through the door, a sarong wrapped around
her, damp hair caught up in a towel. She reached for the remote, but Nol held it away
from her. "You have exams. No TV."
"But my favorite show is on! Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire. And it's not TV
anyways."
"Oh, really? What do you call that thing right there if it's not a TV?"
"It's a reality show. It's real people, not actors, so it's not really TV TV—"
"Go. Study. Now."
Dian flounced out with a scowl. Her bedroom, decorated with posters of Jakarta
boy bands, was the closest in a row of three rooms that shared a long porch. Nol kept a
constant and stern eye on her guests. Her older brother Putu had the far room, which Nol
kept locked, as his son was finishing up his first year at university in America. Not just
any school, but Stanford University, one of the world's best, to which Putu had won a full
scholarship.
"You've been grumpy all day," Suti said, her attention returned to the coaster.
Grumpy? Well, yes, and he had fifty million reasons why.
"Well?" Suti prodded.
"That Frenchman who looked at the rental last week? He took a place in Canggu.
Why do all the white people want to live in Canggu? The traffic's horrible, the beaches
are dirty, the rivers polluted."
"It might help if the pool was clean."
Nol kept silent. All during the villa's construction, they'd argued about the pool.
Suti had a knack for selling T-shirts and souvenirs to tourists, but she had little
understanding of Westerners' love for bodies of artificially blue water. And keeping water
blue was much more difficult than she realized.
He flicked through the channels, settling for a moment on Who Wants to Marry a
Millionaire, some handsome but penniless Balinese surfer living in an Ubud estate the
producers rented, pretending to be loaded with money for a bunch of pretty Jakarta girls
who were dumb enough to believe this was all for real. He jabbed the off button. "Kids
these days. They think it's so easy."
Suti dropped the mended coaster into a plastic bag. "Did you get to the bank
today?"
He scratched his armpit. "I forgot the bank book and they wouldn't let me take out
the money. I'm me, I said, you know I'm me, but no, I'm not me without my bank book.
I'll go tomorrow."
Suti brushed trimmings off her lap. "You had coffee with Anak Agung Mantera
this afternoon."
6

The abrupt change of topic made Nol suspicious. Suti had a knack of discussing
this and that and the other thing, and without warning you found yourself trapped. "He
was having coffee with Mother, and I was just being polite."
"What did he want?"
The village's leading aristocrat from the puri, the palace on the north side of town,
Mantera was of minor but still royal blood. Not to mention rich. Lately he'd been by a
few times to visit Mother, which was odd to the point of suspicion, and which was why
Nol had joined them at the garden pavilion. "They talk about old times," he said. "They
went to school together when they were children."
"Your mother is very gracious."
"And why shouldn't I have coffee with him?"
"Because you don't like him. You call him a skinny weasel. You want to borrow
money from him, don't you?"
Borrow? The idea struck Nol like a mallet to a gong. He hadn't thought beyond
his suspicions of Mantera to regard him as a possible solution for his predicament, a most
shameful oversight for someone of Nol's acumen.
But what was this look Suti was giving him? Had somebody told her about the
cockfights? "Why would I want to borrow money?"
"For one of your schemes to get rich quick."
Immensely relieved, Nol put on an offended scowl. "I don't have schemes. I have
good ideas that others steal." He lumbered to his feet. Conjuring a yawn that turned into a
real one, he said he was going to bed.
7

Chapter 3
Reed Davis, aging roué and eternal raconteur, demi-god of the Ubud expat tribe,
had made his first fortune in Balinese hair.
"I was dabbling in the usual, antiques and art," he told Tina Briddle. "In
Singapore I met this Chinese guy from New York who traded anything, including hair.
Said he'd buy all the hair I could get. I'd never heard of such a thing, but when I put the
word out, I had people coming to me from everywhere."
The two reclined on rattan couches on the verandah of the bungalow that Reed
had called home for the last forty years. Overlooking a lush ravine, with a stream
gurgling through volcanic boulders, the bungalow had been one of the first expat
residences in the hinterlands of Ubud. Now, Tina thought, the bungalow felt cramped,
hemmed it by the spa resorts and grand villas sprawling upstream and down. The
verandah melded into an elevated, open-air living room decorated with an eclectic mix of
antiques and art and plants. On the walls were several of Reed's famous photographs, of
palm-fringed shores and terraced fields and majestic volcanoes. One of the few portrait
shots was a black-and-white of two girls in school uniforms playing hopscotch, the boxes
chalked on an asphalted road. One of the girls was caught in mid-jump, her pigtail flying,
her long afternoon shadow trailing after her.
These days of computers and iPods and X-Boxes, Balinese children no longer
played hopscotch. The photo, and the landscapes, was of a long-ago Bali that Tina only
knew as romanticized myth. When she first met Reed as an anthropology graduate
student doing field work for her doctorate, that Bali had already faded, although not Reed
Davis. He was now seventy or so and still a handsome man in a salted cod sort of way, if
a cod could be said to have strong patrician features.
"It was the best hair in the world, no chemicals, no dyes," Reed said. "Some
women had their hair to their knees. My God, it was like chopping down two thousand
year old redwoods. I begged them not to cut it, but I was paying good money, more than
their own wigmakers, so they insisted on selling it."
Tina patted her hair, which frizzed like copper wire. "Mine's all natural," she said,
"but I don't think I'd get much."
"I told Harry I wanted a premium. This was Balinese hair. He told me it wasn't
any different than other Asian hair but I said, man, it's the name. Bali. Genuine Bali hair.
The cachet, you know? His big clients were Hollywood and Broadway. It was just the
craziest improvised business. Nothing I went to Harvard for, that was for sure, but I was
making money hand over fist." He hoisted the vodka bottle from the coffee table.
"Another drink?"
Tina had barely touched her first. "I have to drive back to Batu Gede. The traffic's
already crazy enough without me being tipsy."
8

An assistant professor at Stanford, Tina was coming to the end of a productive
sabbatical, studying the cultural differentials between Balinese in their home island of
Bali and the Balinese community who'd lived for centuries on the Muslim island of
Lombok. The Balinese had been gone over and over again with a fine-toothed
anthropological comb, but this was original work she was confident would clinch her
tenure.
"You heard about Soeharto being taken to the hospital today?" she asked.
"The Smiling General. I have indeed."
"I'm thinking of doing a side paper. On 1965. The failed coup attempt and the
subsequent mass murders."
Reed slopped a couple more ice cubes into his glass and a heavy dose of vodka
"You were here," Tina said, coming to the point of her visit. "In Bali."
Reed swirled the cubes. "Yes, I was."
Reed had a dozen stories of how he'd come in Bali in the early sixties. He'd been
kicked out of Harvard for gambling. He was a disinherited scion of a banking family. He
was a sailor who jumped ship. He'd worked in Hollywood as a bit actor and heard of
Bali's charms from Charlie Chaplin.
Reed never said anything about the CIA, but Tina had heard persistent rumors that
as an art dealer and photographer and general all-around foreign dabbler, he'd also
doubled as a deep cover agent, that he'd been involved up to those devil eyebrows in the
1965 Communist coup and counter-coup that resulted in the systematic extermination of
the Communists. The killings began in Java, and took two months to start in the
neighboring island of Bali, but when they did, it was to new heights of thoroughness and
savagery, with over 50,000 Balinese killed by other Balinese.
"Can I pick your brain? Put you on tape?" Tina asked.
Reed grinned wryly. "Bali. Shake a bush and out pops an anthropologist." His
grin died into a sigh. "You don't need to talk to me, Tina. Everybody of a certain age has
a story to tell about that time."
"Nobody wants to talk about it."
"Well. You know how small this place is. Everybody still has to live together, tied
to local community and village temples, a widow still has to attend festivals with the man
who killed her husband. Of course, this being Bali, things could blow up all over again
when Soeharto dies." Reed crunched an ice cube. "You either killed your neighbor or
your neighbor killed you. That's how it was. In 1965 we got right down to the
fundamentals of human nature."
"That's rather pessimistic."
"Christmas Day of '65 I went to Mass with a Red Beret officer. The majority of
the killings on Bali were done by the taming, the Black Shirts, but the Red Berets took
care of special targets. He told me how he and his men entered a Communist hamlet the
Black Shirts had been through. A boy of about nine came up to him and said, sir, they
have killed my mother and father so please kill me too. The officer told me, 'I felt sorry
for the poor boy so I pulled out my pistol and shot him.'"
Tina glanced again at the photograph of the two girls playing hopscotch. An old
ache rose like a muddy whirl. When Tina was fifteen, her twelve-year-old sister Nancy
had been abducted from the scrub brush behind their California home and was never
found.
9

"Over fifty thousand were massacred in Bali alone," she said. "For being members
of the Partai Komunist Indonesia or affiliated organizations like Gerwani, the Gerakan—
"
"Gerakan Wanita Indonesia," Reed interrupted. "The Indonesian Women's
Movement. I know who they were."
"Completely legal organizations. One day you were a law-abiding citizen, and the
next day you were killed."
Reed tossed back his drink and stared at the setting sun with a hooded gaze.
"Like you say, Bali's a small island," Tina continued. A certain momentum had
built up. "Whole families, entire hamlets wiped out. That's the equivalent of what, twenty
million Americans taken out and slaughtered? The Nazi Holocaust, the Khmer Rouge
horror, the Rwanda genocide: all imprinted on the human consciousness but the
Indonesian killings, hardly a blip. I find that astonishing and depressing."
Above the ravine, pigeons circled in descending flight to their coop, the whistles
attached to their feet sighing in an ebb and flow of a mournful music for the dying day.
From the side pocket of her bag, Tina took out a folded sheet of paper. "When I
was in Lombok, and asking around about 1965, a woman I don't know came by and
handed me this and left without a word." Unfolding the paper, she cleared her throat and
read the typewritten lines:
We Gerwani women were called immoral, lascivious, depraved. They said we
danced naked and seduced the men and had orgies. Lies! Tell me, what is so immoral
about teaching children working in the fields how to read and write? Tell me, what is so
lascivious about insisting a man have only one wife? Tell me, what is so depraved in
demanding that a poor farmer be allowed a small part of land to call his own? If you can
tell me this, then fine, we deserved to be hunted down and killed like dogs, to be kept like
dangerous beasts in prison cages, to be tortured and raped.
Reed unfolded his long legs and hitched up his sarong, revealing bare bony feet.
He brooded into the stream a hundred feet below, dark water whisking through the rocks.
What was he thinking? The rumors said he'd collected names of Communists that the
CIA had deemed worthy of special attention, a list that he'd slipped to the nationalists.
The rumors said he handed over briefcases of cash to cover organizational costs of the
killing teams.
"I can tell you any number of stories, like the one I just did," he said. "Bodies
floating down rivers out to sea and to the sharks. Women and children. Is that what you
want?"
"Whatever you think can help me."
He picked up the bottle of vodka and slugged a straight shot, wiping his lips with
the back of his hand. "Maybe you should start asking questions right there in Batu Gede."
"Why is that?"
He lowered the bottle and watched the last pigeon disappear behind the tree line.
"That's where it started. Batu Gede is where the blood began, a trickle that turned into a
flood."
10

A good host, Reed saw his guest to her rental car, a rusty VW Safari. She drove
off with a final wave, the car trailing plumes of exhaust. Reed shuffled back to the
verandah, feeling his years, the weight of them layered on his heart like sediment, an eon
compressed into an inch. He sat down to polish off the bottle of vodka that he'd opened as
a courtesy.
Tina. Not a bad sort for an anthropologist. She wanted to get her teeth into 1965,
did she? He should have kept his big mouth shut. Or sloughed her off onto Dominick
Legard, that excitable man who'd be happy to talk her ear off on the treacherous
machinations of the CIA. Oh, she'd said the politically correct things about justice, and
she did have a point there, but Reed would bet his knobby knees that she was in it for the
paper. Publish or perish.
As for himself, rot and perish.
Godalmighty, he was getting tired of Bali, of what it had become. Nothing stayed
the same anywhere, but too rapid and ugly a change was called a malignancy. He was
weary of how noisy and polluted and overcrowded the island was, everybody cramming
into a paradise that was getting seedier by the day, timeshare salesmen and dull arrivistes
and air-headed spiritualists getting high colonics with sacred spring water, trying to find
in Bali what they couldn't find at home.
After the terrorist bombs of 2002 had ripped through the Kuta nightclubs,
foreigners had fled the island as fast as Red Sox fans abandoning Fenway Park after a
Yankee thrashing. Even the expats who'd blathered on and on how they'd found their
home on earth had bailed as soon as they could book a flight. You could walk from one
end of Ubud to the other on the actual goddam sidewalk. It was a bad time for the
economy, sure, but people slowed way down and talked to each other without the hustle.
You could hear the birds. The band of smog that thickened each year had lessened until
one could see again the sharp silhouettes of the far hills. It reminded Reed of the Bali he'd
once known.
Maybe the island needed a good massacre every so often. Feed the gods, give
Siva his destruction and Durga her blood.
His housekeeper Komang appeared on the verandah. "What time do you want to
eat, Pak Reed?" she asked.
"Thank you, but I'm not hungry tonight, Komang," Reed said. He spoke in
Balinese, his teeth tight with the vodka. "You can go home. I'll clean up
Komang took the empty bottle and glasses and ice bucket anyway, a strand of hair
slipping out of her pinned coil.
"You know, Komang, if you sold your hair, you'd make a lot of money."
She chuckled. "My husband likes it how it is."
"How's the salt harvest coming?"
Several years previously, Komang's husband Ruda and several progressively
minded Balinese had bought several hectares of destroyed mangrove swamps out by
Tanjung Benoa from underneath a Jakarta consortium planning a landfill and a golf
course. Reed had helped with the planning and financing. Ruda had replanted most of the
swamp with mangrove seedlings, but at Reed's urging kept half an hectare as a salt farm,
with the idea of selling organic sea salt to help fund the operation. It'd taken a while to
clean the fine black sand of pesticides and chemicals, but now the first batch of coarse
sparkling salt crystals was being processed and packaged. A French company had been
11

already bought the whole crop at a good profit. And to think that when Reed first came to
Bali, organic sea salt was the only salt around, sold by the basketful, cheap as dirt.
"We're having a celebration party next month," Komang said. "You'll come and
dance for us?"
"The bumbling bulé? Sure. But only if you make your spicy turtle lawar."
"You know turtle's illegal," Komang scolded.
"I have connections. I can get you a couple."
"I wouldn't mind," Komang said with a laugh, "but Ruda would be very angry."
After Komang left, Reed sat in the gathering dark for awhile longer and then rose
with a creak of knees. In his airy bedroom, open to a private garden, he turned on the
overhead lights. By the canopy bed stood an antique Ming cabinet. Reed opened the
polished rosewood doors and felt underneath a dresser panel for a latch. Releasing it, he
pulled out a hidden drawer.
Lying on the wood was a back-and-white portrait photograph. A young
Indonesian woman in a white blouse, half-turned to glance over her shoulder at the
camera with a flat, almost hostile, look. The afternoon light caught her high cheeks and
sparked the black irises of her upswept eyes. Her long black hair was coiled up and
pinned with a barrette, a loose few strands loose dipping into the shadowed hollows of
her neck.
Behind her was a village square, and standing upon the weedy grass were rows of
cadres in black trousers and white shirts, blurred together by the camera's short depth of
field, but on the fringing banners, flapping in a stiff breeze, the hammer and sickle were
clear enough.
Soon enough those banners would be torn down and burned. Soon enough those
cadres in their proud ranks would be cowering in fear, waiting for the death squads to
haul them out of their hiding places.
Reed held the photograph with a trembling hand as he studied the woman's face.
He tried to think of the good things, her laughter, her black tresses spilled around her like
a holy aura, her eyes pure as spring water. But on the sway of vodka there crept other
memories, the foul stink of raw human fear, the pall of smoke and stench of burned flesh,
the hacked bodies in the ditches, the grim Black Shirts silently and swiftly marching.
His jaws flexing to hold back a groan, Reed slammed the drawer shut.
.
12

Chapter 4
The VW Safari's headlights skewed to the left, and the steering had an alarming
tendency to follow suit, but despite the concentration this required, Tina Briddle reflected
on her unsatisfactory visit to Reed, which had left her more curious than before.
After her field work in Lombok, Tina had rented a bungalow in Batu Gede, a
beach town that played second fiddle to its larger and more famous neighbor of Sanur.
The rent was cheap, and she had no friends there who would distract her as she collated
her field notes and data and started work on her paper.
Batu Gede is where it all started, Reed had said, deeply pricking her interest, but
then he annoyingly sidestepped her subsequent questions, saying it wasn't a time he liked
to think about. If Balinese of a certain age had their secret stories of that time, then what
was Reed's?
Perhaps there was something to Reed's hint. The woman who cleaned Tina's
bungalow often brought her child, a sparkling-eyed girl who tried to get into everything.
In frustration one day the mother scolded her daughter, saying that if she didn't sit still,
the wicked communist and leyak witch Luhde Srikandi was going to steal her away and
turn her into a lifeless toy for the communist children. The shapeshifting leyak, the
Balinese version of a vampire, was standard black magic fare, but Tina had never before
heard of a communist one. Curious, she asked the mother, who embarrassedly replied it
was just a local tale. Keeping her ears open, she heard whispers of Luhde Srikandi
elsewhere in the village, but when she asked about her, the villagers either gave her a
blank look or changed the topic.
The 1965 massacre in Bali was of course not ignored by Bali scholars, but was
most often dismissed as either an unique aberration due to historical contingencies or as a
grotesque monstrous version of the 'Balinese-run-amok-with-a-knife' trope.
Tina wasn't so sure.
Should she stay on for another month or so? But what could she do in one month,
or even two? She had a major paper to write. She had to return home and prepare for the
start of term and her shining eager students, many of whom who were downright scary
with their savage smarts and naked ambition. The bungalow's rent was up in a few days,
she was nearly packed and ready for the cargo shippers, and her flight to San Francisco
was booked.
Ahead on a sweeping intersection, Big Baby glowed under spotlights, an
enormous and cherubic limestone infant, one of Bali's more whimsical statues. He often
reminded Tina of a diaper commercial, and now brought to mind all the hassle of
changing bookings and finding a new place to stay and moving house. She decided there
13

was little benefit to staying on. She had enough to do. She'd finish the packing and call
the cargo people.
14

Chapter 5
Fifty million nightmares nibbled at Nol's sleep, and he finally woke for good to an
early rooster's braggart crowing. Let's see how well you do in the cockpit, Nol thought
sourly.
He was a good man, and a humble man who didn't trumpet his virtues, but there
was nothing wrong in a private and reassuring listing. He was a reliable and respected
member of his community who faithfully carried out all obligations towards village and
temple. He wasn't afraid of hard work. At forty years of age, a time when men began to
lessen life's labors, he put in two days a week as security guard at the Japanese-owned
golf course up on the hill overlooking the town. He checked all suspicious packages, and
suspicious people too, figuring if he was going to get blown up then it was his fate to be a
posthumous hero. His bravery was beyond dispute. Consider that time he chased away
the thieves who thought they could steal grass from the putting greens.
What else, what else. Possessed of vision? Indeed. Consider his concept for a
submersible glass-bottom boat, long before such machines appeared in Bali's water sports
companies.
A man of the times? Without question. Take, for example, the occasion when he'd
escorted Dian and her classmates to Serangan Island to release baby sea turtles into the
ocean. In the feasts of years past, turtles were turned into turtle satay, and Nol's taste buds
quivered at the memory of such succulent treats, but now turtle meat was illegal and there
he was releasing baby turtles with his beloved daughter. When he mournfully observed
that all would be snapped up within hours by ocean predators, Dian fiercely shushed him.
Nol was healthy, with a small paunch that spoke of a sound diet, and his teeth
were stout. He was a faithful husband and loyal to his wife. He didn't drink. He didn't
smoke. He was honest. He did not let any merchant or salesman get the better of him. He
was a safe driver with excellent traffic sense and swift reflexes who knew how to hit the
accelerator when a red light turned green and beat oncoming traffic to the intersection.
15

All in all, losing 50 million at a cockfight was a small thing that really shouldn't
be held against him.
Suti flicked the light switch as she entered the room, and the overhead neon flared
brightly to life. She was dressed and ready to leave for her shop, which she opened early
for the domestic tourists who flocked to the seashore to watch the sunrise. "Time for you
to get up," she said, draping Nol's green uniform on the wicker chair. Nol was a volunteer
member of the civil security force, another one of his virtues, and the administrative
district had planned in military detail a coordinated dawn raid on a local whorehouse,
when the girls should be done with their evening charms and asleep in the rooms.
He swung grumpily out of bed. "All we're going to find are empty rooms," he
said. Word of a raid was always leaked, because men in high seats owned the
whorehouses in the first place. He struggled into his trousers.
"You're putting on weight," Suti observed, sitting down to the bedside desk and
turning on her computer.
"Good health," he grunted. He opened his mouth wide. "Sound teeth. You know
how much Sudana paid for his last dentist visit? It's all the tourists coming here for cheap
root canals and driving up the prices for us."
Suti clicked keys, engaging in the arcane rituals of this Internet technology. Nol
was of the opinion that the cell phone was enough modernity in one's life. He still didn't
know half the functions of his Nokia. His daughter Dian had explained some of them.
Later, as he was driving his uncle Dharma to a meeting, the cell phone had gone off in his
trouser pocket, and he thought a creature had snuck into his pants and was going wild
trying to get out. He nearly shot through the roof of the car and about hit the bus in front.
"It's called vibrate mode, Bapa," Dian later explained with longsuffering patience,
and he ordered her to turn off this vibrate and just stick to ring tones.
Suti squinted at the computer monitor and harrumphed unhappily. "Still nothing
from Putu."
"He's probably too busy studying. A top university like Stanford, you have to
keep at the books."
"How long does it take to send a quick email? Is this what they learn in America,
how to ignore your parents?"
"My sister complains she never hears from her son, and he's just up in Tabanan."
"Have you talked to the golf course manager?"
Suti wanted Nol to work full time at the golf course, but two days was enough.
Nol made good money, untaxed money, running errands and driving foreigners and oiling
land deals for Dharma. Suti never really warmed to Nol's uncle, making snide remarks
that Dharma should have all those gray hairs in his ears trimmed so he could listen to
other people. She didn't like how Nol was at Dharma's beck and call.
16

"The personnel manager said she'd let me know next month," Nol said. "I'm not
hopeful. They hire a whole bunch of part-time guards so they don't have to have as many
full time guards who get full benefits."
In fact, thinking about it, Nol became offended. Who wanted to work for such a
cheap company? Why should he constantly risk his life for such ungrateful management?
After Suti puttered off on her scooter, Nol wandered across the courtyard to the
kitchen hut. Suti was a good cook, but the kitchen was still Mother's domain. She'd
already left for the central Denpasar market to buy fresh food for the day, but she'd lit the
hearth fire. The rice pot steamed with newly cooked rice, and the kettle hissed over the
glowing coals. Nol made a glass of coffee sweetened with condensed milk, and squatted
on the steps of the hut to slurp it, pinching the glass around the rim.
On the other side of the garage wall, the rental's thatched roof rose in silhouette
against the dawn sky. Thatch had once been the cheapest of roofing material, used by
farmers, but now it was the most expensive, because all the Westerners wanted the native
look. The rental's plunge pool, another tourist must, allowed Nol to advertise the place as
a villa. The villa also had a view of the rice fields, another important selling point, which
Nol had learned from his Uncle Dharma, who was a master at what Westerners liked. Nol
wasn't quite sure he understood what a "view" was, because if you were able to look out
at rice fields then those working in the rice fields were able to look back at you. But
apparently that didn't bother Westerners, who were willing to pay more to be looked at.
Originally, Nol had wanted to build an empty shell for the swallows that swooped
around the rice fields. Such birds needed nesting places. He told Suti, do you know how
much a kilogram of birds' nest sells for? To which she replied, do you know how much
they stink and how much it costs to get all the permits?
About the same time, on the other side of the rice fields, a man had built a
swallow house and in a year had earned over a hundred million. Of course, he'd also been
arrested for violating zoning laws, paying two hundred million in bribes to avoid jail, and
the swallow house had been demolished, oh unlucky man, but still, that had proven the
soundness of Nol's idea.
A young Australian couple had leased the villa. They had tolerated the first rice
field cobra they found in the kitchen, but they'd left when they found the second in the
baby's bedroom. Nol had refused to return their money, and the couple must have spread
rumors about snake infestation, because the place had been empty since. True, the
Frenchman had looked but he'd frowned at the water in the pool and said no on the spot.
Out of the dark shuffled Nol's great-aunt, a gaunt and withered crone. The tattered
scarf slung over Mak's neck didn't cover her shriveled breasts, dangling like empty
pockets. Gray hair wisped about her head. She lived in the banana grove out back, in a
shack of woven bamboo walls. Nol scooted over on the steps so she could wobble into
the kitchen, where she would take some of the cooked rice for morning offerings. In her
youth Mak had been a fierce revolutionary, a member of the peasants front in their
struggle against the colonial Dutch authorities. After Independence, she wove songket
cloth, selling the glittering brocades all over the island, riding packed buses and horse
carts. She haunted the few hotels and was allowed into the residences of the rich and the
powerful. Her weaving had been famous and sought after. When Nol was younger she'd
still been sharp as a cockfight blade. But now she was lost in her own world, which each
day was getting closer to the unseen realm of the gods.
17

Outside the gate, a car honked. Nol gulped his coffee and rushed out, jumping
onto the back of the Civil Defense pickup. Men in green uniforms lined the two benches
placed back to back. Nol squeezed in between his cousin Timon and his friend Sudana.
As the pickup bounced down the lane, he brooded on his money troubles.
Uncle Dharma sat up front in the cab, tufts of white hair banded about his bald
scalp. Most men Dharma's age took it easy, lolling at the coffee shops or piddling around
with hobbies, but Dharma was a community stalwart and leader of the local Civil
Defense. He'd worked hard as sharecropping farmer when he was a young man. By the
time Nol entered grade school, Dharma was no longer farming but was brokering
harvests from around the island. When Nol graduated from high school, his uncle was
brokering the fields themselves to big money from Jakarta and abroad, but first fortune
had come from developing the Batu Gede mangrove swamps into warehouses and
factories.
Dharma had money coming out of his thick, hairy ears. But Nol wasn't about to
ask him for help. His uncle didn't approve of gambling.
Yet Dharma wasn't without his own vices. He had an eye for pretty women and
kept several mistresses in various luxury houses. Such a man was theoretically open to
blackmail, but Nol resolutely refused to think of such a thing. His uncle had been like a
father to him, and was still the head of the family. Not only that, but you didn't mess
around with Dharma. He had a temper and strong opinions. One of his favorite peeves
was the laziness of his fellow Balinese. "We've been spoiled by tourism," he'd say. "Who
wants to work the fields anymore? All that hard work, planting and plowing and getting
dark from the sun. Heaven forbid one of our young men should work in the fields when
he's dreaming of an office and a secretary. So who comes in to take over working the
fields? The Javanese. And we complain that they're overrunning our island."
The pickup turned into the 24-hour Pertamina fuel station. An old woman stalked
along the pavement, muttering to herself. Men Djawa was neatly dressed as always in
sarong and kebaya blouse, her pink sandals garish under the yellow street lights. The
arthritis that twisted her fingers also hobbled her knees, putting a wobble into her stride.
She sold delicious homemade cakes in the morning market, but during her bad days
wandered the village, looking for her two young daughters who'd gone missing during
her twenty years in a political detention camp in Java.
She veered into the gas station after the pickup.
"Oh-oh, here she comes," Sudana announced.
She glared at the men in the back. "Where are my daughters?"
"Probably old hags at Dolly," one muttered, referring to the notorious red light
district in Surabaya. The quick grins of the other men quickly withered under Nol's glare.
Men Djawa thrust her face against the closed passenger window. "Where are my
darling girls?" she yelled at Dharma. She pounded her hands on the glass, her arthritic
fingers crooked like claws.
Nol jumped off the pickup and put his arm around the bent woman. "We're
looking for them, Grandmother. Don't worry. We'll find them and bring them back to
you."
This wasn't the first time he'd calmed her down. He had a soft spot for her and the
traditional cakes she made.
18

"I'll be at the market," she said. "I have some of that kue lapis you like." She
pinched his cheek and tottered down the road.
After fueling, the pickup zoomed past the Technical High School and turned into
an empty lot used as garbage dump, its headlights catching tattered plastic bags thick on
the ground. Nol recognized a few that he'd tossed there himself. Too bad none could be
magically transformed into cash. He rubbed his face. Fifty million.
His older sister Wayan was a well-to-do lawyer in Denpasar who handled Uncle
Dharma's land transactions, but he couldn't approach her either. She'd invested in his
submersible glass-bottom boat. The idea was sound, but unfortunately not the boat, which
on its first sea trial sank within minutes. Fortunately, Sudana, Nol's test pilot, got to the
surface of the shallow lagoon without trouble. No's sister demanded her money back.
Deeply offended, Nol explained to her that she'd only risked her money but Sudana had
risked his life.
There was the empty villa, but even if an rich Westerner handed over a full year's
lease without haggling about curtains and furniture and mosquito screens, that still
wouldn't come close.
Two more civil defense pickups pulled into the lot, as well as a police bus with
wired windows to carry away the girls they weren't going to catch. Dharma checked his
watch and gestured for his men to get ready. Their target was a mansion across the road
where the girls worked. During planning, floor plans and room diagrams had been
handed out, and men assigned to halls.
"Here goes nothing," Sudana said.
"At least we get to blow our whistles," Timon said.
"Stop yakking," Dharma snapped. "Everybody ready? Go!"
Nol raced through the gate with his squad, blowing his whistle. Dogs barked,
chickens squawked, half-naked men burst through various doors with clothes in hand and
sprinted for the walls. The screams of girls added to the cacophony. Nol ran up the side
stairs to the third floor thinking with some surprise that this raid was apparently going to
be a success. At his assigned room, he gave the locked door a solid kick, which didn't
yield. Nol hobbled in pain, cursing under his breath. Sudana kicked it open for him and
raced on. On the bed within, a girl jerked upright in shock, her eyes two big circles
above the white sheet she held up to her neck. Beside her a middle-aged tourist squinted
blearily. "What? What?" he squawked.
Why, the girl hardly looked any older than Dian, Nol thought as he limped into
the room. "How old are you?"
She coughed and whispered, "Nineteen."
"Where are you from?"
"Madura."
Her client reached for his glasses, a wedding ring glinting. He put on the glasses
and peered at Nol. "What? What?" Then a groan of "Oh, Christ."
Nol snatched the man's trousers, draped on the edge of a chair. "How long have
you been here?" he asked the girl.
"A week," she whispered.
"You should go home."
"I want to." Tears welled out of her eyes.
19

One had to be careful, for many of these girls were consummate actresses, but her
distress seemed genuine. Nol extracted the man's wallet from the trousers and pulled out
a hundred Euro note.
"Hey!" the man said in outrage. "I already paid! What is this? Extortion!
Corruption! I'll report you!"
Nol pointed to the photo in the wallet, a pleasant looking woman and two
teenaged sons. "And I report you?"
The man slumped sullenly. "I'm here on business. This is just a wee bit of
harmless fun."
Nol tossed him the wallet and trousers. "Get out. Go. Next time I arrest you. TV
camera."
The man hurried into his clothes and out of the room, shirt tails and shoelaces
flapping.
Nol gave the girl the hundred Euro. "This should get you home. Change it at the
Majapahit money changer on Market Street. They're honest. The others will cheat you.
Now hide in the closet."
The girl took the money. There was a crack in her eyes, a little glint in her tears
that could have been gratitude but could also have been greed. Nol raised his baton. "If I
see you again, you get this."
She pressed her hands together. "Oh, thank you, older brother."
A short while later, the HANSIP men crowded around a local coffee stall down
the road, joking and laughing and celebrating the raid. Success at last!
Dharma's cell phone buzzed. With a finger stuck in one ear, he listened and then
hung up and clapped his hands. Everyone fell silent. "We're not done yet, men. We have
to go the beach. Somebody found some bones."
In the last of the seaside coconut groves, police had cordoned off the entrance to a
construction site. Two cops blew whistles and kept the early morning rubberneckers
moving along road. Once through the cordon and gate, the pickup rattled down a long
driveway. A two-story mansion was still under construction, sprouting pipes and wires,
and the grounds were raw with unfinished landscaping. The pickup stopped by a
backhoe, its yellow arm crooked like an insect leg. Dharma ordered his men to the
beachfront boardwalk to help the police hold off a crowd of onlookers. Nol gawked as he
walked past a large hole in the ground, where two workers with shovels were clearing
soil away from a jumble of bones. More bones were gathered on a plastic tarp, with
several skulls lined up in a tidy row, their hollow lifeless sockets giving Nol an uneasy
pricking.
By an ambulance backed up to the tarp, several men stood close in quiet
discussion. Anak Agung Mantera leaned on his black ironwood cane, a towel draped over
his bare thin shoulders, his long shorts still damp. He and several cronies his age often
swam in the lagoon for the exercise and to warm their blood in the rising sun. Two of
those cronies were wrapped in towels, one a high caste Brahmana and the other a low
caste but powerful member of the local parliament.
Dharma approached the group, which widened to accept him. Mantera asked him
a soft question that Nol didn't catch, and he couldn't make out Dharma's rumbling reply.
20

By a renovated rice granary that was intended to be a poolside hut, an agitated
Australian with a sweaty pink face and a sweaty red scalp waved his arms at the general
contractor.
"Jesus Bloody Christ," the man bellowed. "You're already three months late. How
long of a delay is this gonna be?"
The contractor glanced at the bones and the small gathering of the elite. "One
hour," he said soothingly.
"An hour? Are you crazy? This is a killing field. You see those skulls?" He made
a vicious chop to the back of his own head. "Bam!"
"No problem," the contractor said. He caught Nol's eye, his expression somber.
Both of them knew that history best left forgotten had been accidentally dug up.
Considering that tight circle of powerful men with faces like closed doors, it was evident
the history going to remain forgotten. Nol joined his comrades at the boardwalk, his
uneasiness spreading to his liver and guts.
When Nol's father was executed, the Red Berets refused Dharma permission to
retrieve his brother's corpse. For the cremation rites, Dharma had made an effigy, as did
many other families for their disappeared ones, but those families had carried out the
cremations in secret. Not Dharma. He roared and bellowed his brother's innocence and
bullied the village into letting him use the pura dalem, Durga's temple for death rites.
Even so, there'd been no body, only an effigy, and the cremation had left everyone
unsatisfied, as if they'd eaten a cardboard photo of meal instead of real rice.
A slender man in a fine suit cut through the crowd on the boardwalk and ducked
under the police tape. The police stepped aside, for this was none other than Anak Agung
Gdé Raka, S.H., B.A., M.B.A., Mantera's son and scion of the palace, recently returned
from some fancy business school in America. Raka carried his usual air of having been
anointed by the gods, and if the gods happened to be too busy that day, then no problem,
he would anoint himself. He'd been this way for as long as Nol had known him. They'd
gone to grade school together.
Raka's gaze swept down Nol's green uniform and past his bulging belt to his
ponderous black boots. Amusement curled across his handsome face. "Hello, Nol, been
busy catching dangerous men?" he said as he passed.
Nol ignored him to push back at an eager Balinese teen trying to get a look at the
bones, his eyes wide with avid curiosity. The kid was a local surfer who worked at a
jetski operation, a beach boy who had no idea, no idea at all.
But there were also present men and women of an older generation. They knew,
oh yes they did. Nol saw on their faces a mix of grim determination—it was distasteful
but it had to be done—and righteous pride— I did my part to save my country.
But a few had a stunned and terrified look, as if something hideous had slithered
back into their lives. One crooked street sweeper was panting and sweating, having run
here from the main road. Tears suddenly filled his haggard eyes and he turned away.
There rose a screeching voice. "Let me through! Let me through!" Men Djawa
scratched a path through the throng. Her lips worked furiously, and her eyes were razors
under white brows.
One of the tourists holding high a video camera said, "God, look at that, a skull."
21

And levitating above the hole in the ground was indeed a skull, held up by a
worker's dirty hand. The skull slowly rotated, as if its empty sockets were surveying the
crowd before stopping to gaze at the men by the ambulance.
Men Djawa shrieked. Bolting under the arms of a cop, she raced on bandied legs
toward the men, her pink sandals flapping, and threw herself at them with hands
outstretched like claws. Mantera jerked back in alarm, but before she could land her
attack, Dharma and a police officer had grabbed her arms. The prince's imperturbability
reasserted itself. He stepped close to Men Djawa and said something as her shrieks
quieted to incoherent babbling. She didn't resist as two policemen marched her off.
Nol's uneasiness was now burbling through his marrow. Marching over to the
tarp, he squatted on his haunches to inspect the skulls, careful not to touch them. He
noted the depressed factures, but did see a single bullet hole.
A shadow fell across the skulls and there entered into his field of vision a pair of
polished black shoes and immaculate trouser cuffs. Nol lifted his gaze up to Raka,
surveying the bones. His heavy black eyes turned to Nol. "Communist scum," he said
and strode off.
Nol stood to go, but the skulls held him in place.
Dharma came over and put a hand on his shoulder. "You know he's not here," he
said. "This will do you no good."
When Nol was school, after his last class of the day he'd go directly to his Uncle
Dharma's compound, always bustling with activity, unlike his own house, where he had
to tiptoe around his mother. With his cousins and friends, he played tops and gambled
marbles and flew kites and hunted in the fields for snails and eels. He'd grab a meal out of
the kitchen and sleep over, a ragtag assembly of cousins all tangled up on a single bed.
Uncle Dharma loved to tell stories to the boys, recounting the heroic deeds of the
warrior king Ken Arok and his powerful and yet tragically cursed keris blade that gave
Ken Arok his kingdom and in the end took his life. Many an evening, Uncle Dharma
spirited Nol away into the jungles where Hanuman the Monkey King fought the Demon
King who'd kidnapped the lovely princess Sita. Nol laughed until he cried at the antics of
Pan Balang Tamak, the village trickster who always found a clever way to weasel out of
temple dues and village duties.
On the dark of the new moon, when dangerous spirits roamed, Nol and the others
would huddle on Dharma's porch, shivering to his tales of the leyak called Luhde
Srikandi, a fanged witch disguised as a beautiful woman, an agent of the evil
Communists who lured honest patriotic men to their horrible deaths.
"One night of the new moon," Uncle Dharma said, "I heard outside my window
the sweetest voice asking me for help. But I knew Luhde Srikandi's tricks and I closed
my ears. Not everyone did so. The next morning, we found at the pura dalem a man with
his half-eaten heart on the ground and his entrails pulled out and arranged in the
communist hammer and sickle."
He would end these stories with reassurances. "Don't worry, boys, we trapped her
and killed her. How beautiful she was! But when we cut off her head, it became her real
self, with red bulging eyes and sharp bloody fangs."
But the stories Nol loved hearing the most were the ones Uncle Dharma told him
in private, about his father. Madé Catra was smart and kind and cheerful and famously
22

absentminded. In high school, Catra spent a whole day planting rice seedlings in
somebody else's paddy. Catra would read books while walking and one time with his
nose in a book walked right into an irrigation ditch. A champion whistler, Catra was such
a good bird song imitator he could stop a bird in mid-flight and charm it into his hand.
Bird lovers were always begging him to go into the woods to whistle them down a bird,
Dharma said. Catra was also brave. He once stopped a mob from attacking a simpleton
they thought was a sorcerer. He told them, "If you want to kill an innocent man who can't
read or write then you must first start by killing me, a sinful man who teaches your
children the sorcerer's knowledge of words and writing." And the crowd melted away.
It wasn't until Nol was married and had a son that he realized Uncle Dharma
wasn't simply telling him about the father Nol had never known. Dharma was also
remembering a brother he loved.
"I still miss him, even after all these years," Uncle Dharma said, and Nol's heart
was a full moon reflecting his uncle's pride and love and grief.
23

Chapter 6
When Nol returned home, he changed into his favorite sarong, the frayed one with
the tattered hem he refused to let Suti mend, or wash for that matter, for part of its
comfort was its familiar odor of sweat and spices and farts. In the screen kitchen cabinet,
his mother had put spiced fish and vegetables to go with the rice. Nol wasn't hungry, but
he dished up a plate and squatted on the front steps to eat with his fingers. Dharma had
ordered Nol to pick him up at seven for a meeting at the Empress Gardens, a tour group
restaurant on the main road. Dharma hadn't said what the meeting was about, but Nol
had no trouble guessing that the main topic would the discovery of the bones. He thought
about them and he thought of his father and he thought of his mother, who was seated on
her porch, reading a book while a radio on the porch banister played Javanese flute
music. She was the most prodigious reader Nol knew. Every few weeks he drove her to
the public library, a deserted, dusty, almost spooky place, where she perused the scanty
shelves for something she hadn't yet read.
Suti wanted a fridge and a microwave for the kitchen but Arini did not, and what
Nol's mother did not want, Nol did not get. Why does she insist on living in the old days,.
Suti complained, referring to the time when only lanterns lit the village homes, when
stoves were fueled by wood, when the markets were held every three days, when after
dark the roads were abandoned to the low lords of the night, with only an idiot daring to
go out alone upon his bicycle. Nol had to admit Suti was right, for his mother's life
seemed to have stopped on December 9, 1965. She always wore those old-style dresses.
On the rare occasions she went to a salon she came back looking as if her hair had been
styled by a bicycle pump, all high and fluffy, how women wore their hair forty years ago.
Nol's mother refused to talk about his father. Her sorrow weighed down all her
words. Nol's older sister Wayan once whispered there had been photographs of their
parents on their wedding day, dressed up in fancy Western gown and suit, but their
mother had burned them. "She was angry," Wayan said. "She was furious at him. Called
him a fool."
Madé Catra's stupidity had been writing a letter to the Communist newspaper, the
Harian Rakyat, which the paper had printed. That was enough to have branded him a
Communist. That's what had gotten him killed, his bones never to be found.
On a hot dusty day when Nol was ten, he was fishing for ant lions by the kitchen
wall, twirling a bit of string in their holes and yanking them out as their pinchers seized
the thread. He became aware of somebody watching him, or perhaps a something, Luhde
Srikandi herself, and he whirled around, ready to scream, but it was only his mother, her
arms crossed on the bodice of her dress and looking at him with an expression that Nol
later decided was puzzlement. As if she wasn't quite sure who he was, as if the Red Beret
24

captain, having taken away her husband, returned months later to shove a strange baby in
her hands. This troubling image was so sticky that he asked his sister if he was really
Mother's son.
Wayan was cleaning rice, twirling and snapping a bamboo tray of grain to send
the chaff drifting away on the breeze. She dragged him to the frangipani bush by the front
gate. "That's where your placenta is buried," she said. "She is your real mother."
Nol's mother cooked and washed but ignored the daily offerings and the
household rituals. It was great aunt Mak and Wayan who made the daily offerings and
placed them around the compound. For the bigger occasions on the holy days, Nol's aunts
came over to help.
Arini dutifully joined the other women to prepare for village ceremonies and
community rites, but her presence made them uncomfortable. She was a reminder of
terrible times nobody wanted to remember. The whiff of Communism clung to her. If her
husband had been so innocent, then why would the Red Berets have executed him?
A few of the village women were nasty to her, but Mantera's wife had been the
worst, sweetly polite on the surface but spreading the most vicious of rumors of how she
went to the library in town not to read books but to have lovers.
Arini stopped helping. She ignored major temple ceremonies.
The gossip grew more thorns.
On a moist evening full of flying ants and stalking geckos, Uncle Dharma stopped
by. Nol was with his mother in the garden pavilion, lit by a single bulb dangling on a
wire, for the village now had electricity in the evenings. Nol was doing his math
homework, and his mother was listening to the BBC Indonesian shortwave service. In
those days, TVs and radios were supposed to have licenses, but Mother's was
unregistered.
Uncle Dharma handed Nol the radio and told him to go to his room.
Nol put the radio on his dresser, turned up the volume, and crept out to eavesdrop.
He'd never heard his uncle so firm and serious. Dharma told Arini that other women in
her situation lived in poverty and constant fear of detention. A simple thing like an
unlicensed radio could spell disaster. He emphasized the enormous risk he'd taken to
make good the family name. How dare she be so proud to ignore community duties after
all he had done for her? How dare she sideline her children from full participation in
village life by her own selfish behavior?
Arini did not speak.
The next temple festival, she joined the village women in making preparations
and attended prayers with her two children.
Once Nol married Suti, though, his mother receded from public view and let her
daughter-in-law take her place. Arini kept to herself and to her own thoughts. Her shadow
fell into a different world.
On her porch, Arini closed the book and stared into space with that lop-sided look
she got when one of her migraines was coming on. The radio sounded the twelve gongs
of noon, and a priest chanted the holy mantra, the sacred aum floating out into the heat of
the day. Arini turned off the radio and entered her room, shutting the door behind her.
Nol rinsed his dirty plate, his thoughts turning away from the mystery of the
newly found bones to the problem of the missing fifty million. The shop rent was due in
two days. He recalled the granary he'd seen at the beachfront mansion, and thought of the
25

ancient granary at the back of the banana grove, a genuine antique, not faked and aged in
a furniture factory.
A hibiscus hedge separated the main compound from the banana grove and Mak's
shack. Nol pushed through the bamboo gate. Mak kept her yard the old style, a patch of
pure groomed dirt, not a single growing blade upon it, and she was presently sprinkling
water upon it from a can to keep down the dust. Nol made his way through the banana
grove, full of cool green light. On a patch of weed and dirt loomed the granary. Four stout
hardwood posts rose from a flagstone base to support the elevated grain room, its thatch
roof badly rotting. A flight of steep wooden stairs still in excellent condition led up to the
granary's small doors, two carved panels bearing their original red and gilt paint. On the
flagstones under the grain room was piled a mound of junk, moldy bamboo and broken
earthenware jars and cracked plows, glued together by thick cobwebs.
To Nol as a boy, the granary, long disused even then, was the spookiest place in
the village. Its shimmering quiet held menace, as though the witch Luhde Srikandi herself
lurked behind the curtain of light and shadow. For the longest time, Nol believed that
when she was alive and stalking the lanes with her fatal beauty, she'd lived in the granary.
It made perfect sense to him: the village's evil witch in residence under the village's
spookiest roof. The only person he ever mentioned this to was his good friend Sudana,
who knew how to keep his mouth shut.
One day shortly after the start of fifth grade, Sudana stopped by as usual on his
way to school. Both boys wore their uniforms of red shorts and white shirts and had their
whisk brooms with them. It was Saturday, clean up day at Grade School Number Two.
On Saturdays after school, the boys gathered at the acacia tree by the irrigation canal,
where they gambled candy money on crickets, two of the insects put in a bamboo cage, to
see which cricket attacked first and thus win. Nol had woken up that morning with a
thrilling idea. Instead of dashing off to school with his friend, he grabbed Sudana's arm
and tugged him into the banana grove.
"I had an idea listening to crickets last night," Nol said. "We'll find a really
powerful cricket, but not to fight. We'll show everybody how big and ferocious it is, a
true champion, and we'll sell shares and take it to fight at the other schools."
"I don't know," Sudana said dubiously.
Nol pointed at the granary. The debris gathered underneath the grain room was a
perfect breeding ground for monster crickets. "We'll find it there."
Sudana halted in his tracks. "We better get to school. We don't want to be late."
The new school year was only a week old, and the new teacher had already rapped half
the knuckles of the fifth grade class with her metal ruler. Not Gdé Raka's knuckles,
though. In five days, he'd become her favorite student, who each morning made sure a
glass of sweet tea was on her desk.
"Even if the cricket loses," Nol said, "we'll still have money in our pockets from
selling the shares."
"Raka won't like that."
"He wants to buy a share, he'll have to pay double."
"Then he'll get twice as mad, and he'll send Gong to beat you up twice as bad."
Gong was a sixth year thug. Raka never got his hands dirty or risked his pretty
face. He ordered others like Gong to harass Nol and in return allowed them the pleasure
of his company and his money. From the very first day of first grade, Raka had picked on
26

Nol. Nol didn't understand why. One day when Mak was helping him with his
homework, for Mother never did, Mak finally explained that there'd always bad blood
between Arini and Raka's mother, the prince's wife. "Your mother is beautiful, she
danced with Mantera in the school troupe, and Raka's mother has always been jealous of
her," Mak had said.
In the grove, Nol pushed Sudana forward to the granary. "Check that bamboo by
the plow."
Sudana reluctantly lifted a half-rotten piece. A mouse squeaked and scurried
away. "I don't see any crickets—" he said, but was interrupted by the unmistakable sound
of several crickets rasping all at once.
Coming from overhead. Inside the granary room.
"Let's go up," Nol whispered, shoving Sudana toward the first step.
Sudana held his ground. "You go up."
Nol gathered his courage and climbed the first few steps. He felt faint-headed but
also resolute. Luhde Srikandi was dead, her head cut off, Uncle Dharma said so—
"What are you boys doing?"
Nol whirled around and flailed for his balance.
Old Mak had silently appeared and stood there scowling. "Get down. There's
nothing up there. And go to school. You're going to be late."
Now decades later, a grown man, Nol smiled fondly at the memory. And by the
gods, were those crickets he was hearing, the rasping sounds coming from the granary?
He took a step forward, and then froze. Somebody was in the grove. A shadowy figure
moving through the green light. Luhde Srikandi, risen from her grave—
Nol gave a little shriek as old Mak popped into view, like a cricket herself. She
glowered at him and put a gnarled hand to the granary steps. "This is mine," she snapped.
Nol's relief turned into irritation. This wasn't the first time he'd thought of selling
the granary, but Mak thwarted him at every turn. She maintained a keen vigilance over
her shack and the granary, fiercely proclaiming ownership.
"I was just checking," Nol said indignantly. He nodded at the accumulated junk.
"Perhaps we should clear that out. It's a fire hazard." At the golf course, he'd been well
trained in fire hazards as well as bomb detection.
Mak stepped closer, her shrunken eyes glittering. "Did you see their bones?" she
whispered.
Village gossip must have run fast and deep this morning if Mak knew. "Don't fret
yourself, Mak."
"I remember it clear as yesterday." Her whisper was softer yet, and more piercing.
"The taming gang came in the middle of the night. They wore black shirts. Out! Out! they
shouted. I could hear the women screaming and the children crying. The dogs howled.
They were loaded up into a truck. It was raining. Splash, splash the tires went. Splash
splash."
The back of Nol's neck tingled. He said, "Shouldn't you finish watering your
yard?"
"They were the first," she said. "Then the commandos came for Madé Catra. Oh,
such fine red berets they wore! So handsome and dashing. They took him away. And
your mother crying at him, what have you done, what have you done?"
27

The clarity of those eyes...then Mak blinked and her gaze dulled and her face
slackened. "I must finish watering my yard," she said.
In the three-room grade school, by his desk in the second row, young Nol stood
ramrod straight with his chest puffed out as he and his classmates chanted the Five
Principles of the Pancasila of the Republic of Indonesia. One and only one God! A just
and civilized humanity! The unity of Indonesia! Democracy by deliberation and
consensus! Social justice for all!
From the classroom wall there smiled upon them the paternal visage of President
Soeharto, the Guardian of the Pancasila, the Father of National Development, the patron
of the Golkar ruling party, the courageous general who had saved the country from the
wicked communists and was now leading it with vision and wisdom.
There also hung on the wall the portrait of the vice-president. What that man did,
Nol wasn't sure.
As Nol bellowed the principles, patriotic pride suffused his heart. He was a true
son of Indonesia. When Uncle Dharma went campaigning for the Father of Development,
Nol was there beside him, waving a big yellow Golkar flag. In this era, all things were
possible. This is what Uncle Dharma repeatedly emphasized to Nol: All Things Are
Possible. Oh, the glories of unlimited opportunity!
Patriotic and optimistic: that was why, in the spirit of all possible things, Nol had
in his school bag a bamboo tube containing an ordinary rice field cricket for the afternoon
fights under the acacia tree. The cricket was small and didn't have the looks of a
champion, but Nol had the spirit of optimism.
"Very good, class," the new teacher said. She had shiny black hair stiff as a
helmet. "You know, my father was an army officer loyal to General Soeharto. He helped
pull the murdered generals out of the Crocodile Well."
A murmur of awe rose from the children. Every year, on Pancasila Day, the
students watched a movie of those terrible and stirring events, when the Communists had
kidnapped loyal army generals and taken them to the Halim Air Force Base. There the
Gerwani communist women did unspeakable things to them and then callously dumped
their mutilated bodies down a well. Revulsion had swept through country, and people's
eyes were finally opened to the true nature of the wicked Communists. This was the event
upon which a revolution turned and the country was saved.
"I became a teacher to help this country develop its young citizens," the teacher
said. "To guide you children to the truth of the Pancasila."
From the front row, Raka said, "Nol's father was a Communist."
"Now, Raka, we don't say things like that. That is not polite."
"But he was."
Nol stepped forward with clenched fists. "He was not."
With stern command, the teacher at once ordered the class out to the yard for
clean-up. Nol swept the grass with the others. Raka sidled close to him and said in
singsong voice, "Your father was a Communist, your father was a Communist."
"Ignore him," Sudana whispered to Nol.
Nol did, even when Raka began accidentally-on-purpose flicking dirt at him with
his whisk broom. Gong appeared by toilets holding Nol's school bag. "Look what I
found," he said to Raka, pulling out the bamboo cage containing the cricket.
28

Nol tried to grab it, but Gong tossed the tube to Raka, who uncapped it and peered
inside. "Why, it's a Communist cricket," he said.
"Give that to me!" Nol said, but Gong threw out a fat arm and held him back.
Raka shook out the cricket to the ground, and stomped on it. "That's what we do to
Communists."
Nol lunged at for Raka. Gong intercepted and slapped him down. He turned his
fury on the bigger boy. They grabbled and fell, throwing punches as they rolled in the
dirt. The teacher rushed over and grabbed both boys by an ear and marched them to the
toilets. She shoved Nol into one and Gong into another. Tossing them brushes, she
snapped, "Scrub them clean."
Nol fought back tears. Everyone knew his father had been arrested by mistake.
He wasn't a Communist. The Red Berets had put him on a truck and driven off and then
killed him before anyone could explain. It had all been a terrible mistake. In those bloody
days of upheaval, a single lie could send an innocent man to his doom.
That afternoon, Nol didn't go to this uncle's compound to play but headed straight
home, where he found his mother sweeping the kitchen floor. She eyed the rash on his
cheek from Gong's fist but said nothing.
Munching on a snack of cold banana fritter, Nol asked, "What was my father
like?"
"Don't talk when you're eating."
Nol swallowed hard. "My father. What was he like? What did he do in the
evening? Did he read books? Listen to the radio?"
"Do you have homework?"
"Mother. Tell me."
"And last night you kept the porch light on all night. Turn it off. It all helps save
money."
"Tell me."
"Be quiet."
"Tell me!"
Without warning she whirled on him and beat him with the broom handle. Her
instant rage terrified him. He raised his arms over his head and tried to run away but she
grabbed him by his shoulders and swung him around to hold him before her. Oh, that
look she gave him! No longer angry, not stern, not puzzled, not anything. It was
bewildering and not at all reassuring. Then she gently cupped his face with her palm and
smiled.
"Go do your homework," she said.
He never dared asked her again about his father.
The following week, the school announced the preparations for the Independence
Day parades, and the teacher told the class that Nol had been selected to carry the flag.
Sure enough, Nol got into a fight with Gong, who said Raka should have that honor. This
time, suffused with the patriotic spirit of All Things Are Possible, Nol won.
29

Chapter 7
In the back of an arty crowd packed into the lobby of the Bali Hotel, Reed Davis
sipped a mango and banana juice, spiced with a dash of Tabasco.
The occasion was a book launch and literary luncheon for a novel written by one of
Reed's acquaintances, an Australian diplomat turned yoga guru. The downtown hotel, a
faded relic of its former colonial glory, served as a principal setting for the novel, set in
the 1930s. In the oddball story, the German artist Walter Spies spied upon a secretive
band of murderous Nazis roaming about Bali, from whose culture they stole the Hindu
swastika.
A Balinese journalist was presently addressing the guests, raising his voice
against the din of traffic. A bright young man, Agus often said what officials and Baliphile
foreigners didn't want to hear. Flicking back his ponytail, he leaned over the
podium to reply to a question posed by none other than Tina Briddle. Reed had been
surprised to see her. Anthropologists tended to avoid gatherings of expatriates, especially
the beautiful scarf people who gulped madly of the free wine before it ran out.
"If there is another terrorist bombing here," Agus said, "there is no telling what
we will do to our Muslim residents. We Balinese are not the peaceful people of the tour
books. Our own history bears this out, full of wars and massacres."
Sure enough, a watery European who was one of the yoga master's students raised
his hand. "I don't believe that," he said. "Nowhere in the world is there a place like Bali,
the people full of peaceful spirit and tolerance."
The journalist nodded thoughtfully. "Earlier a friend called me from Batu Gede.
This morning a contractor dug up a dozen skeletons buried by the shore."
It felt to Reed as if a vacuum had suddenly sucked out his heart, leaving behind a
bottomless ache. Across the lobby, he saw Tina perk up with abrupt alertness.
"Killed in the 1965 pembersihan," Agus said, "the cleansing to rid the island of
Communists. My friend asked me if I wanted to write it up. I said, what is so special
about this news? Bali has hundreds of these unknown graves. In my village, my uncles
tell me that we traded our Communists with those of another village. The army trucked
theirs to us and ours to them, so that we killed strangers, not our neighbors. Yes, that was
peaceful and tolerant of us."
Reed put down his drink, watching with detached interest the shaking of his
hands. Tina had turned to look at him. He vaguely wondered what man she was seeing.
Calm and composed? Or had the aged contours of his face darkened and deepened, his
eyes gone hollow and haunted?
30

1965
The Den Pasar ice factory that supplied the hotel's ice had broken down again for
want of spare parts, and so Reed sipped a tepid lime juice as Father Louis Leekens
poured himself a cup of tea. How the priest could stomach hot drinks in this heat was
beyond Reed. From the sleepy street beyond the hotel's garden drifted a horse cart's
clopping, and from the corner of the lobby there rose a babble of gossiping women, the
good ladies of the Indonesian Women's Movement gathering for another Gerwani social
meeting.
"In the 1920s there was serious discussion among the Dutch authorities whether
to Christianize Bali as a way to stop the spread of anti-colonial Islamic fanaticism,"
Father Leekens said. The Belgian priest's blue eyes twinkled behind his glasses, which
sat crookedly upon his bulbous nose, centered between two red cheeks. He looked like a
bespectacled, if somewhat disheveled, cherub in need of a haircut and a clothes brush.
A scholar of Balinese culture, equally and cheerfully at home in a peasant's hovel
and a king's palace, Father Louis collected palm-leaf writings called lontars. Reed
wanted to buy some on behalf of a rich East Coast dilettante, a selection of black magic
texts prescribing rites that Balinese leyak witches used to transform themselves into
various animals or even riderless bicycles and driverless cars. No Christian priest should
own such things, Reed jokingly argued, and more seriously added that the purchase
would considerably help the finances of the good Father's chronically under-funded and
overcrowded orphanage and clinic on the outskirts of Den Pasar.
"Several Dutch scholars proposed sending Catholic missionaries to convert the
island," Father Louis continued. "They argued that the hierarchical and ceremonial
elements of Catholicism would appeal to the Balinese. Similar to their own religion. The
proposal did not make it out of committee, praise be to God, and the no-proselytizing
policy was maintained."
"You weren't in favor?"
"Faith comes from within, it cannot be imposed from without."
"You're always trying to proselytize me." Reed was a lapsed Catholic, a condition
that Father Louis was determined to rectify.
Father Louis bit into a tinned biscuit. Crumbs fell onto his lap. "You can take the
boy out of the Church but you can't take the Church out of the boy."
"It's called Catholic guilt."
Father Louise chuckled around a mouthful of mashed cookie.
"About those lontars," Reed said, into the breech one more.
Father Louis wagged a finger. "They shall remain in my safe-keeping. I do not
want some American millionaire accidentally turning himself into a Volkswagen."
Or a Chrysler, Reed thought, watching as the only one on the island, the Major-
General's personal car, slid into the hotel's parking lot. The uniformed chauffeur jumped
out to open the rear door, and there emerged the General's wife, chairwoman of the
island's Gerwani secretariat, a position befitting her status as consort of the island's top
military commander. With her was another high-ranking Gerwani matron, an aristocratic
Balinese married to one of the Governor's right hand men. Reed had purchased from her
31

a fine 18 th century keris with gem encrusted handle that now resided in John D.
Rockefeller's Asian art collection. The two women wore traditional dress of sarong and
kebaya blouse, their hair gathered in smooth buns, their faces pink with thick cosmetic
blush.
A third woman exited from the front passenger seat, straightening her black skirt
and smoothing her white blouse. Her sensible canvas flats were well-worn, and her calves
were ridged with muscle, suggesting someone who regularly bicycled for her transport.
Her hair was pinned up with a barrette, revealing a slender neck with pale brown hollows.
There was no touch of powder on those high cheeks, and she wore no lipstick, either.
Reed kept tabs on who was who among Bali's elite and powerbrokers, but he had no idea
who this young woman was. He'd never seen her before.
She respectfully followed several steps behind the two older women as they
entered the lobby. The matrons nodded at Reed and Father Louis, but the young woman
gave the men a glance that was as cold as it was brief and strode on, her canvas shoes
silent on the black-and-white checkered tile. She stood quietly in the background the
other Gerwani ladies loudly greeted their chairwoman.
Reed couldn't take his eyes off her. "Do you know who she is?" he asked his
companion.
"She's lovely, isn't she," Father Louis said with guileless pleasure at one of God's
wondrous works. But no, he didn't know who she was.
Wayan Arini, the hotel's assistant manager, stopped by the women's table to make
sure everything was satisfactory and then made her way over to Reed's, her professional
smile acquiring a depth of friendliness. A classic Balinese beauty, Arini was intelligent
and pleasant and happily married. She lived at Batu Gede, where her husband was the
grade school headmaster. She commuted each day to Den Pasar on her Lambretta
scooter. Spare parts were getting impossible to find. Last week Reed had wired a friend
in Djakarta to courier over a gear cable and replaced it for her.
"Good afternoon, Pastor. Good afternoon, Reed. Is everything A-OK?" The slang
tripped naturally off her tongue, although Reed had only taught it to her the other day.
"Sit down, why don't you?" Reed removed his ever present Nikon from the table.
He wasn't a professional photographer, but on the other hand, his photographs of Mount
Agung's eruption had been published in several international magazines.
She glanced at her watch and elegantly folded herself onto the edge of a chair.
There weren't many native English speakers living in Bali, braving its revolutionary
tumult, and she appreciated any opportunity to practice her conversational skills. As for
Reed, he not only enjoyed her company, but she was a mine of information on the
bigwigs staying at the hotel, on the politicians and army brass having meetings in the
conference rooms. She also had other means of ferreting out details—for example, her
husband's aunt Mak Jangkrik, a nickname meaning Grandmother Cricket, wove and sold
the brocade cloth that was presently a-glitter on many of those Gerwani women's
shoulders, including the two senior matrons. Mak was often invited into the homes of the
mighty muck-a-mucks to show her cloths.
Reed leaned close to Arini and asked, "Say, who's that girl with the ladies?"
"Girl? There is not any girl."
32

Was she teasing? Reed couldn't tell. "The younger woman. The one not all
powdered and dressed up."
"Oh, Naniek. She's twenty five. That's not young."
Twenty five? She looked like a university co-ed. She flicked Reed another cold
glance and scooted her seat forward, out of his line of sight.
"She's a Gerwani activist," Arini said. "From Java, assigned to Batu Gede. She
was in the same university as my husband, several years behind. She works with saltfarmers
and other poor people. Teaches the women about health and children care."
"Ah," Reed said. "One of those trouble makers."
Father Louis finished his tea. "The Church could use more like her."
"You're a trouble-maker, too, Father," Reed said. "In your own way."
"I must be going. Hospital visiting hours. Thank you for the refreshment, Reed. I
shall see you at Mass this Sunday."
"Sell me those lontars, and I'll sing in the choir."
The priest waddled off to his motorcycle kept on the road by only his prayers,
Reed was sure, because the jury-rigged contraption was now beyond the ministrations of
earthly man.
Arini glanced at the women's table as they tittered about something. "I hear the
General is stalling on having political indoctrination sessions in his military units."
That wouldn't make the Communists happy, Reed thought as he filed away this
nugget of information. He imagined Mak Jankgrik squatting in the corners of the
General's house, overlooked like a cricket, nibbling at crumbs that all added up to
valuable information. He fiddled with his glass. "Is—what's her name, Naniek?—is she
married?"
Arini smiled, her eyes twinkling. "She is alone."
"Single, you mean?"
"Single. She is pretty, yes?"
"In an icy sort of way."
"In three days we have a big PKI rally at Batu Gede. You must come and take
pictures." The smile broadened a touch. "Maybe you see lovely Naniek."
Reed hated sand and hated sea. Instead of rotting as a beachcomber at Sanur or
Kuta, he rotted in the verdant hills of Ubud, in an open-air bungalow on the edge of a
deep jungle ravine right out of Eden. The Balinese thought he was crazy to live there,
exposed to the elements and bad spirits.
His housekeeper and cook Mrs. Nyoman placed offerings like mad around the
house and garden to protect Reed from bad spirits. Even Reed's short wave radio got its
daily offering, which didn't seem to lessen the alarums of national and world affairs that
crackled from its speakers, morning and night. Occasionally her daughter came in to help
with chores, and as she was a high school graduate who could read and write and had
good penmanship, Reed sometimes put her to work in the room underneath the elevated
verandah that he used as a packing and shipping office.
Reed also had a gardener who doubled as night watchman. A dour ex-con,
Ompreng had arm-twisted Reed into hiring him, saying Reed needed a watchman who
knew the area's thieves, the implied threat being that if he wasn't hired, he'd be the
33

iggest thief of all. The gap-toothed fellow was also spying on Reed for the PKI. This
worked to Reed's advantage, because Reed had warned Ompreng that if anything went
missing in his house, a plate or a lantern or a towel, he'd march right down to the PKI
office and tell them. The Reds might be back-stabbers, but they could also be fussy
puritans. Ompreng scoffed at the cops, but he was in fear of his bosses.
Ompreng was the in-house spy, but whenever Reed left the house, another man
named Rustaman, or Rusty for short, had the duty of tailing him. As scrawny as
Ompreng was muscled, Rusty lived in a shack right across the road. Whenever Reed
took off in jeep, Rusty hopped on a motorized bicycle whose toy engine couldn't handle
the hills. Rusty had to pump hard on the pedals. It was easy enough to lose him, but more
often than not Reed would kindly wait for him to catch up, panting and sweating.
Today when Reed eased his jeep down his dirt lane to the main road, Rusty was
sleeping in his hammock. Reed honked his horn. Rusty jerked awake. Spotting Reed in
the jeep, his eyes widened in alarm, and he swung out of the hammock, tripping over his
feet.
"I'm going to Den Pasar," Reed called out. "Buying coffee and butter at Hwa
Chen's. Maybe some illegal Coca-Cola, but don't tell anybody about that." He trundled
off with a wave. He wasn't exactly lying, because he did plan to go shopping, but his first
stop was Batu Gede, and he didn't want Rusty tagging along.
Reed's jeep was a World War II Willys with left-hand steering that made for some
excitement when Reed overtook lumbering buses on the narrow lane winding through the
terraced fields. A few times he'd barely escaped a head-on collision from an oncoming
vehicle. His friend the artist Tjok Arsana had painted the jeep front bumper to back with
a landscape mural of Mount Agung and rice fields and jungle. Prominently featured on
the hood and half-doors were long-nosed foreigners as monkeys, Tjok having using Reed
as a model.
Beyond a village of basket weavers, Reed turned off the main road for Batu Gede.
The name meant "big rock", and Reed assumed it came from the volcanic hill
overlooking the village, its peak swaddled with mature teak trees. Reed passed through a
leafy corridor and down switchbacks to the edge of a mangrove swamp, the bushes a
rumpled carpet of dull green giving way to sparkles of blue sea. A community of saltfarmers
had long eked a living in a corner of cleared swamp, where evaporated salt pans
glistened with crystals. In the past two years, more mangroves had been cleared by
refugees whose villages and fields had been destroyed by Mount Agung's 1963 eruption.
They lived in a ramshackle camp, their hovels constructed of whatever they could
scrounge, from driftwood planks to rusted tin. Several men were chopping mangrove
branches into firewood, and they stopped to stare at Reed's passing jeep with dull eyes.
A rocky ridge flanked by an irrigation culvert separated the mangroves from a
reef-protected lagoon and a white sand beach. The coconut groves fronting the beach
gave way to rice fields. In contrast to the salt makers' hardscrabble lives, the rice farmers
of Batu Gede lived more prosperously, or at least without the continual threat of
starvation. The worst of the potholes on the road here had been patched with tar and
crushed rock.
On the outskirts of the large village was an old colonial house once occupied by a
minor Dutch official. The house had a central hall with two wings, all three sections
connected by a common porch. The left wing was evidently a private residence, with a
34

formal sitting parlor visible through the bay window. Pegged to a laundry line strung
across the empty carport were several dresses, a mamma sized one and two smaller
frocks, along with a black skirt and blouse.
A sign on the porch of the central hall announced it to be the Secretariat of the
Batu Gede branch of the Gerakan Wanita Indonesia. The right wing had been converted
into a day care and women's center, closed for the day.
Reed didn't see anyone. He pulled over to the side of the road and from behind
the wheel took a few photographs, using the elegant porch pillars to frame the sign. The
dresses flapped in the wind, and he studied for a few seconds the black skirt and blouse.
Around a bend, the road turned into Batu Gede's main street, flanked by two-story
shop houses, closed until evening. One shop was still open, and a bare-footed woman
with a dirty towel draped over her breasts bargained with pleading gestures with the
Chinese merchant, trying to trade a basket of sea-salt for a few cups of rice grain.
Reed parked by the police station and strolled to the village square that also
doubled as a weedy soccer field but was today set-up for the Communist rally. Trucks
were pulling up and disgorging Communist cadres. On the platform a technician
conducted a loudspeaker sound-check. Posters depicted the stirring visage of President
Sukarno, the Great Leader of the Revolution who had wrested independence from the
Dutch and was now leading the country under his Guided Democracy. Sukarno was a
great one for slogans, some of which were printed on banners rippling in the wind.
CRUSH THE SEVEN VILLAGE DEVILS. SEIZE LAND FOR THE PEASANTS.
DESTROY THE NEKOLIM. The Nekolim were the bad guys, the neo-colonialimperialists.
The good guys were the Nasakom, the religious nationalist Communists, a
combination that didn't make much sense to Reed, but that was the thing about Guided
Democracy. It didn't have to make sense.
Across from the square, in a patch of wild bushes, a skinny boy stalked
dragonflies with his tar-tipped pole. Tied to the loop of his dirty shorts was a string of
threaded dragonflies, some still buzzing, soon to be a tasty nutritious snack. A fat green
dragonfly lighted on a stalk of weed. Oblivious to the commotion on the square, the boy
crept closer with his pole.
The afternoon light was just getting good, slow and lazy and rich. Reed aimed his
Nikon and zoomed in on the boy, waiting until the bamboo tip was only an inch away
from the insect before pressing the trigger. The clack of the shutter startled the boy, and
the tip jerked off target as the dragonfly flicked away.
"Mbeh, orang blanda," the boy said, calling Reed a Dutchman, the common term
for any white man, his black eyes round with curiosity.
"Ma'af," Reed apologized. He fished in the pocket of his vest for a rupiah note.
"Here."
"Don't take his money," a voice snapped.
Reed turned, a diplomatic smile at the ready.
Naniek held a clipboard in her hand as though to ready to whack Reed. Her
slanted eyes were steeper yet with suspicion. Strands of coiled hair had fallen loose
around that slender neck.
"I think it's up to him, don't you?" Reed said.
"Don't take it," Naniek repeated to the boy. "He's Nekolim."
"I am not!" Reed protested. "I'm a good Nasakom." .
35

The boy bolted. Reed watched him go and said with faked exasperation, "You
scared him off. Thanks a lot."
"You are not welcome," Naniek said curtly English and turned away.
"Hey!" he called out. "Hey, Miss, excuse me!"
She looked over her shoulder. He had the Nikon up to his eye and snapped off a
shot. Lowering the camera, he asked, "What's your name?" He wanted her to tell him.
She put her clipboard up to the back of her head, as if to ward off his evil eye, and
stalked away, her canvas sneakers streaked with dirt. Practical shoes, Reed thought, and
my God, those impractical eyes.
More trucks unloaded their cargo of cadres. Naniek consulted her clipboard and
directed them to their places. When the rally finally started, Reed climbed up to the first
branches of a banyan to get a better angle of the dignitaries on the platform. Naniek sat
upon bench with others in a section whose aisle placard read "Batu Gede Gerwani." Their
chairwoman, Ibu Parwati, a small tidy woman with a big loose voice, thundered into the
mike that ninety percent of the Batu Gede rice fields were owned by one percent of the
villagers, an injustice that must be corrected, with fields seized and given to those who
had none. She called one of the women on the bench to stand up. The woman shyly rose,
hands clasped tightly, her head ducked down between her shoulders and her gaze fixed
on the floorboards, scrawny arms and legs poking like sticks from a donated khaki dress
much too large for her.
"This is Ibu Desak," Parwati said. "A refugee from the volcano who lives in the
mangrove slum. She has nothing except what she and her husband can scrape together
from the salt fields. Salt is worth almost nothing. It takes ten kilograms of salt to buy half
a kilogram of rice. Here before you," Parwati thundered, "is a living example of injustice.
Seize the rice-fields for Desak!"
The cadres roared their approval. Reed snapped photos. The PKI was obviously
turning Batu Gede into a showpiece, trying to shove a Red wedge into a staunchly
nationalist area. A boss cadre stomped around the far side of the ranks, pointing at Reed
in the tree and barking an order to six stout juniors. Reed quickly rewound the film,
dropped the cartridge into his trouser's hidden pocket and reloaded with a fresh cartridge,
quickly snapping off random shots. The cadres surrounded the tree and shouted at him to
get down. He showed them his international stringer photojournalist ID, but that didn't
impress them. These guys were well-trained, and Reed suspected that the boss looking on
was a BPI intelligence agent. The goons eyed his camera, but before they could snatch it,
Reed sighed with theatrical annoyance and opened the back, exposing the film. He tossed
the cartridge at them and strode off. They didn't follow.
Reed looped around an unpaved back street, lined by the mud walls of Balinese
compounds. Children pranced after him, giggling and laughing. Many were stark naked,
apart from ankle amulets, but they seemed healthy, without the bulging stomachs of kids
in poorer hamlets suffering crop failures.
At the village palace, a sprawling compound of eroded red-brick walls and
fronted by a towering gate that looked on the verge of collapse, three bare-chested lads
wearing sarongs sprawled in a courtyard hut. They broke off their conversation to stare at
Reed. "Why aren't you at the rally?" Reed asked.
One of the guys lifted a leg and broke sonorous wind. "That's what Communists
have to say," he said as the others laughed. "Come sit, talk with us."
36

"Nothing would give me greater pleasure, but I have made a promise to see Bapak
Wayan Dharma. Do you know where he lives?"
The young men escorted him, asking the usual litany of question of who and
where and why, and what he thought of the local girls. He'd gotten good at this, answers
coming automatically and pleasantly. From their high caste names and expensive Kansas
cigarettes, Reed figured they were small fry royalty attached to the palace in one of the
many ways of Balinese kinship.
They strolled through the cathedral quiet of a shady bamboo grove to a compound
of brick wall, with a door of two panels set into a gilt-painted frame. A sign announced
that the residence was also the local secretariat of the Indonesian Nationalist Party. One
of the boys pushed open the swinging panels, and they entered. By the kitchen hut, a
bare-breasted woman was husking rice in the pestle. She threw on a blouse and went to
fetch her husband. Wayan Dharma looked more like a farmer than a party bureaucrat, a
square block of Balinese in a tattered shirt and sarong, bare feet resembling bricks of
earth. He ushered Reed to the pavilion in the small garden, where they sat cross-legged
on mats.
Dharma's wife hurried off to buy banana fritters from the neighbor's food stall
and rushed back to serve them with coffee, pure coffee and not cut with corn powder. For
a half hour Reed chatted with Dharma in the expected circuitous manner, introducing
himself as a American, a bum wandering the world and getting sidetracked here in Bali
which he was finding impossible to leave, and that was sure an interesting rally on the
public square.
"Communists," Dharma said, his rumbling voice thick with contempt. "They are
like rats in the field."
"My father's a lawyer," Reed said. "He was on a government commission that
studied the Communist aftermath of World War II. He told me stories of how the
Communists wiped out all resistance. I hope it doesn't happen here."
"We'll make sure it doesn't, Tuan Reed," Dharma replied.
That was what most everyone called Reed. A democratic American, he had a hard
time with the Tuan, as if he were a dissolute colonial master out of a Conrad novel.
Reed patted his camera. "I take photos as I travel, sell some of them to agencies. I
do some trading of arts and antiques, if you happen to know anyone with anything for
sale. But I'm interested in something else. My uncle is a wigmaker in America, and he
told me that he would buy all the hair I can get. I've noticed in Batu Gede that the women
have lovely hair, clean and healthy. If you can provide me with cut hair, I'll buy from
you."
Dharma probed his teeth with his tongue, sucking loudly. "Why come to me?" he
finally asked.
"I've heard that you are somebody who can get things done."
Dharma slowly nodded. "If I have hair to sell, should I sell to you? We have our
own wigmakers."
"Because I will pay you in US dollars," Reed said.
Dharma's interest tightened but he did not speak.
"My uncle in America," Reed said, "is quite generous. Especially to somebody
who is a staunch anti-Communist like yourself. If he could meet you personally, he'd give
37

you a donation for your activities, but as it is, well, people would probably talk. Best to
stick to business."
"And you wish to buy hair."
"It is a good business," Reed said. "Some villages have silver, some villages have
carvings, some villages have textiles, but all villages have hair."
Dharma nodded. "Your uncle is a wise man. I'll see what I can do."
A week later, Reed attended a high caste wedding of important royals. Rusty sped
after him as usual, but the tiny engine on his motorized bicycle seized up. Reed braked
and backed up and told his minder where he'd be. When Rusty showed up a half hour
later at the palace, Reed smuggled his bemused minder into the back garden where the
younger men were drinking moonshine arak. There he introduced Rusty as his good and
quite thirsty friend. By the time Reed finally left, Rusty was baying songs with the others.
When he got home, he found Dharma waiting on the steps to the verandah, a large
basket at his feet. Greeting his guest, Reed invited him up for coffee. Dharma glanced
with alarm over the railing at river rocks far below. His curiosity overcame his manners
and he asked, "Forgive me for my rudeness, but why do you want to live on such
worthless land, so exposed to all this open air?"
"The view," Reed said. "The river and the rice fields."
Dharma gave him a blank look, swung around to look again at the ravine and at
the carpet of rice-fields on the other side of the ravine, and back at Reed. It wasn't the
first time that this concept of view had perplexed a Balinese, so Reed moved on and
asked his guest about his family and their health. When finally the niceties were done and
the bushes well circled, he nodded at the basket. "And what is that you bring, my
brother?"
"Oh, this? Just some worthless hair." Dharma opened the top. Within were curled
long strands of gleaming black hair. Neat and tidy, bundled with bamboo twine. "If you
don't wish to buy, it is of no great matter," Dharma said.
Reed got out the flour scales and weighed the hair, which he jotted down in a
black notebook. Excusing himself, he entered his bedroom and put on canvas gloves. He
kept under his bed a decoy cash box with a few bills, but his real stash was up in the roof.
Standing on the headboard of his bed, he thrust a hand between the third and fourth
overlapping leaves of the thatched roof. The other week he'd been stung by a scorpion,
hence the gloves. He pulled out a manila envelope of hundred dollar bills, took five to
slip into a smaller envelope, and shoved the cash back into hiding. Dharma accepted the
envelope with his right hand supporting his left hand, a gesture of humble gratitude that,
Reed thought, didn't diminish on whit the back-bone pride of the man. Dharma didn't
bother checking the amount but tucked the envelope into the waist-fold of his sarong.
Reed also had in his hand a photo album, black-and-white pictures taken at the
Batu Gede rally and which he'd had developed in a Den Pasar studio, a darkroom he
rented by the day.
"Who are these people on the podium?" he asked.
Dharma looked through the photographs and named them. The assistant chairman
of the Communist regional party. The chairwoman of the Batu Gede Gerwani. The leftist
information officer from the Udayana military command who often had coffee at the Bali
38

Hotel. The officers liked to flirt with Arini. Reed wrote down the names that Dharma
gave him.
"Why are you writing their names?" Dharma asked. "We know who they all are.
We won't forget."
"I might," Reed said. He flipped to a photo of a young woman glancing over her
shoulder, her slanted eyes cold and unfriendly. "And who is she?"
"Comrade Naniek. She's half-Balinese, half-Javanese, a Gerwani activist sent
from Djakarta to Batu Gede. As if we don't have enough Gerwani as it is." He returned
his attention to a photograph of Chairwoman Parwati with Desak the salt-farmer's wife
and stabbed a thick forefinger at their faces. "They want to take our land," he said. "I
have told them, I have said directly to their faces, we will fight you to the death."
After seeing his guest to the gate, Reed gave the basket of hair to Mrs. Nyoman's
daughter to clean, process, and package. Soon there would be enough for another
shipment to Harry Chen in Singapore.
Late that night in his bedroom, Reed typed up the coded lists, pecking on his
lightweight portable, by the light of the kerosene lantern. Drops of sweat ran down his
bare chest and into the waistband of his sarong.
When it came to Comrade Naniek, he paused. Not yet, he told himself. He needed
to get more information.
39

Chapter 8
On the way to pick up his uncle for the evening meeting, Nol first stopped for
Sudana and Timon, waiting at the salon that Sudana's wife owned. She sometimes
grudgingly gave Nol a free haircut, but he hadn't asked for one in a while, didn't like how
she dug into his scalp with the comb that last time. Damn painful, but he just sat there,
refusing to give her the satisfaction of wincing, and so she dug harder yet.
Nol turned onto the narrow lane that looped past the pura dalem. Durga's death
temple stood in its own lonely space on the edge of the rice fields, wild grass separating it
from the manicured paddies. No streetlamps illuminated this curve of blacktop. The
shaggy branches of the giant banyan tree draped over the very same burial ground where,
Uncle Dharma said in that big rumbling whisper of his, Luhde Srikandi had left her
mutilated victims.
Beyond the banyan was the sunken natural pond that had been there since time
before memory. No crystal waters, no blessed spring, but a scummy stagnant pool of dark
ground water, wads of algae floating on the surface. A cement post and rail circled the
pond. It was said that that witches crept here on the dark night of the new moon to steal a
bottleful from which to make their own unholy waters.
Nol dropped to second gear and slowed. "Remember when we were boys, how we
used to dare each other to jump into that pool?"
"We did a lot of dumb things," Timon said, "but we weren't idiots."
"I never told you this," Nol said, "but I once took a piece of bamboo and felt for
bottom."
"And?" Timon said, interested despite himself.
"I felt something grab it," Nol said.
There was a reflective silence and then Sudana said, "It could have just been the
mud bottom," but he didn't sound entirely convinced.
Nol nudged the accelerator, and the headlights swung clear of the temple. Timon
said, "I hear they're having a big cockfight at Sanur. Maybe you can recoup some of the
100 million you lost."
"Fifty," Nol said automatically. Then, "How do you know?"
An embarrassed silence rose from the back seat. "Sudana, you promised you
wouldn't tell anyone," Nol snapped.
"I only told Timon."
"That's like telling the whole village!"
"I haven't told a person," Timon said.
"Your wife?"
Silence.
Nol groaned. "That means Suti's going to find out."
40

"You know," Sudana said, "I have a cousin whose nephew makes very good
money on the Internet. On e-Bay."
Nol's interest pricked. "What's that?"
"An Internet auction site. You know what he sells? Old lontars. He goes up
buying them all around the island and sells them online. Amazing how much money he
makes."
"E-bay," Nol said.
"Now the kid's found somebody to make fake lontars—oh, it’s real palm leaf and
inscribing and rubbing in carbon and all that, but they aren't antiques. He ages them in
tea. Provides an English translation. The Kama Sutra is his top seller."
Stopping at Dharma's front gate, Nol intended to step inside and announce his
arrival, but there erupted over the walls a terrific shouting match between Dharma's two
wives. A moment later, Dharma marched out the gate, chin tucked down to his chest and
eyes narrowed as the screaming and weeping continued. He flung open the passenger
door and barked, "Go."
Nol sped off. Dharma ran his palms along his hair. On his finger was the plain
silver ring with the black agate stone, a powerful amulet that he wore to temples and
other spiritually charged places. But to the Empress Gardens? A restaurant for tour
groups? "A word of advice, gentlemen. If you marry a second wife, do not put her in the
same compound."
"And one's mistresses?" Sudana asked slyly. "How far apart should they be kept?"
"The trick," Dharma said, "is to keep your cell phone clean as a priest's bell. Erase
at once all text messages and phone logs."
"I get home," Timon said, "and the first thing my wife does is scroll through my
cell phone."
"Suti never checks mine," Nol said.
Sudana chuckled. "Maybe you should be checking hers."
"Enough," Dharma said. "Now, this meeting. Nol, don't say anything about your
father. Is that clear?"
"Is this meeting about the bones?" He added, after a brief silence, "Who were
they?"
"That's another thing you do not say."
"It's only natural to wonder," Nol said, a bit put out.
Dharma was silent, his thumb caressing the black agate. "All our deaths are
inevitable," he finally said, "but they had the rare grace of knowing when theirs was at
hand. They were given a chance to repent."
A gloomy cavern with fake cement waterfall, the Empress Gardens catered
lunches and dinners to tour groups. This evening, the dining tables in the main hall were
pushed together in a large square. Nol was astounded to see present the island's Chief of
Police and the Governor's representative, dressed in civilian clothes, holding somber
conference together. Just how important were these bones?
Then he realized that the bones were important mainly by the timing of their
discovery. Soeharto was presently between the living and the dead, his doctors making
guarded statements, and once the wily puppet master was gone, who knew would
happen?
41

The elders of the village, including A. A. Mantera and Dharma, took seats at the
head table, near the gurgling water fall. A.A. Gdé Raka sat by his father. There was no
reason that Nol could see for Raka to so arrogantly assume such a seat of honor. Why,
people would start talking how Raka wanted to shove his own father out the picture and
take over the family empire.
High overhead, florescent lights buzzed, casting Nol's shadow before and behind
and to the side, as if three of the four guardian spirits that had been born with him were
made visible. If this was so, then where was the fourth? It was a silly notion, but
nonetheless Nol felt unsettled and vulnerable.
Several men scurried in late, taking the last of the open chairs. Beyond the open
windows, people had gathered in the night shadows, figures in the dark.
Mantera rose, his cheekbones shiny triangles of thin flesh. "Now that the chickens
are all down from the trees, we can start," he said.
Mantera had five shadows around him, Nol noticed. As if he had stolen one of
Nol's.
"We have among us at this table honorable men who speak wisely," Mantera
began, "but I hope you will kindly listen to an old man like me." With formal courtesy, he
thanked the VIPs by name for being present. He also acknowledged the sole woman at
the head table, her eyes big behind thick glasses, mentioning her as Dr. Professor of
Archeology at Bali University and board member of the Historical Museum.
"This is an open meeting but it is off the record," Mantera said. He lifted his gaze
and addressed the lurkers beyond the windows. "This includes those of you who do not
wish to join us openly."
Before Mantera could continue, there was a heavy slap-slap of sandals in the hall,
and everyone at the tables turned to look. A Western woman was carrying a stool from
the kitchen, which she placed off the table's corner nearest Nol. Her frizzy hair looked as
if a child had drawn it around her head with an orange crayon. She sat down, dipping her
head in apology for the interruption, and folded her hands in her lap.
The interrupted moment closed in over itself like water, and Mantera continued.
"As we all know," he said, "this morning, twelve skeletons were discovered at a
construction site. This is not an archeological find. Am this correct, Dr. Professor?"
The archeologist adjusted her glasses on her nose and agreed that it was not an
archeological find. She said that for accuracy's sake, twelve skulls had been found but she
had identified at least thirteen skeletal remains. She added that it was common to find
incomplete remains at mass burial sites
Mantera smoothly asked the Chief of Police, "And the police are not processing
this as a murder?"
"Not at this time," the Chief said, a nice political hedge against the uncertain post-
Soeharto future.
From beyond a window a man said, with a belligerent tone, "Where are the
remains now?"
Mantera was unruffled. "For those of you who wish to speak, please do join us
here in the light so we can know who you are. There is room enough to stand."
Nol had to admire this, the way Mantera so politely gave warning.
42

"What was found is in safe keeping for the time being," the police chief said. How
long a time he did not say, nor mention the bones' possible fate, another fine equivocation
that left room to maneuver.
Mantera acknowledged this with a dip of his head before continuing his speech,
his tone rising not too high nor dipping too low, a lulling rhythm to his words, defining in
circles those bones and those shattered skulls by what they were not, and not by what
they actually were. He dipped into village history and spoke of its founders and of its
heroes, including those who stabbed themselves with their keris blades instead of
surrendering to the invading Dutch army. Mantera spoke of those heroes as the heroes of
all who were present, and there rose in Nol's breast a sense of pride, of common bond
between him and those heroes of old, including one of his ancestors, a bond that neatly
skipped over the events of 1965.
"Each of our fates is as varied as life itself," Mantera said, "and for those of us
who feel we have in the past lost family members, let us remember our heroes, let us be
one with them."
And this then was reburying of the bones, in the remembrance of the heroes let
the bones be forgotten. Nol felt himself nodding with the others, ready to give his assent.
The white woman rose her feet and said, in fluent Indonesian, "But surely the
bones should be identified. So that some of those who feel they have lost loved ones will
know what has happened to them? That is all, simply to know. There is so much peace in
finally knowing."
Mantera smiled, a thin stretching of lips. "Excuse me, madam," he said in
English, "but may we know who you are?"
"My name is Tina," she replied, still speaking Indonesian. "Forgive my bluntness,
but I believe what you are really wondering is what right do I have to speak here. I speak
as a sister to a girl who disappeared when she was twelve. I know what it means to not
know what has happened to a loved one."
"I am sorry for your misfortune," Mantera said, "but such misfortunes as fall our
village are ours to take care of. Thank you—"
"There is a saying in English," this Tina woman said quickly. "About the
elephant in the room that everybody is ignoring. And there's an elephant in this room.
The massacres of 1965. One of the worst in modern times. Over fifty thousand Balinese
killed. We all know this. I am not speaking here of courts or tribunals. I am only speaking
of the simple right to know. To know who these victims were. Grief can never be healed,
but we can give their families some peace."
Nol found himself nodding, but Dharma cut a sharp glare at him that stilled his
head.
"Arrogant American," somebody else muttered.
But others beyond the window were accepting the interloper's words with a louder
buzz of appreciation.
From his seat at the end of the head table, Dharma slowly stood. It wasn't an
ordinary standing, but a dramatic actor's majestic arising with the arms spread just so, the
back imperiously straight, the serious mien, the stalwart bald head crowned with a strip of
white hair.
"Honored guest, you speak of 1965. Forgive me, but I do not think you were born
then, you are too young, your skin too fine and untroubled. But I was a young man during
43

those years, a terrible time. Poverty clenched this island like a fist. Our crops failed. We
could only afford a single meal a day of rice, mixed with corn and coconut. We wore rags
made from flour sacks. Boils pierced our skin.
"And then, Honored Guest, the elephant. I know this elephant. I am one of those
who has lost a close relative. He was my younger brother and the father of my nephew
Madé Ziro, who sits there close to you. I gave my nephew his name, and I named him
Ziro, for his life was starting from nothing. His father, Madé Catra, should have named
him, and give him a name more than Ziro, but Madé Catra was killed. What was Catra's
sin, that the Red Berets should take him away and shoot him? This was his sin: Catra, a
schoolteacher and a scholar, had written a letter published in the Harian Rakyat,
Communist newspaper. That was all. And what did this letter say? Was it praise for
Marxism-Leninism? Was it traitorous to the Republic and the Revolution? Why, no. This
letter cautioned the Communist Party on land reform, it said that any social reform should
be honest and transparent and not based on politics of greed. A single letter warning the
Communist Party! And for this sin, Madé Catra was taken away and shot to death without
trial."
Dharma paused and let his words echo.
"Honored guest, you speak of justice. If there is anyone here who deserves justice
it is my nephew, Ziro, who never knew his father. Who was it who whispered to the Red
Beret commander that Madé Catra had published a letter in a Communist paper? That
was all it took. A single whispered word. Communist. Words can have a terrible power,
and with just one word, my brother's name was put on a list to be killed. Justice, Ibu?
What justice shall there be for Madé Catra or his son Madé Ziro?"
Nol's fists clenched. Who indeed? Who doomed my father with a whisper and put
his name on a list? Who was the bastard? Is he here tonight?
A sudden light smile creased Dharma's face, and his tone grew lighter. "Ziro's son
Putu is studying in America, at a fine school there—"
A sudden stirring of pride cut into Nol's brooding thoughts. "Stanford University,"
he interrupted loudly, for all to hear. "One of the best in the world."
This Tina woman shot him a surprised look.
"Putu is smart and handsome and diligent," Dharma said. "He could read before
he could walk. He won the district math championships many times. He mixed powders
and chemicals and once blew up the community hall kitchen. Oh, such smoke and chaos
and screeching women and Putu saying aduh, aduh, I didn't know it was going to be that
big."
Nol laughed with the others. A famous village incident.
"And he could be as naughty as any other boy," Dharma said. "Once he gave his
classmate Anak Agung Wulandri a bar of Lux soap, still in its store wrapping, to wash
her hands after Saturday clean-up, and her hands turned blue for a week. My, how furious
she was!"
Now why was Dharma mentioning this? Wulandri was Mantera's granddaughter,
and the old man was laughing, but not her father Raka, whose pink lips twitched with
forced humor.
"In a few days, Putu will be home on school holidays, and he will have his tooth
filing ceremony," Dharma said. "It is one of our essential rites. But you must know this,
you know our culture, you know what a joyous time this will be. So, in my family we
44

have the bitter past full of injustice. And we have a bright future full of happiness. To
which direction shall we look? To the unalterable past, which karma will judge more
fairly than man? Or to the future?"
Dharma lifted his gaze and surveyed the others at the tables and those gathered
away from the lights. He did not say more, for nothing more was to be said, and he sat
down with as much of the dramatic art with which he had risen.
The American woman had no reply, and on her freckled face Nol thought he
detected a faint rise of blood.
Nol's roiled emotions about his father had calmed. He felt like he did after
prayers at temple, his life restored to balance and harmony. How wise his uncle was! Yes,
yes, put the past behind and look forward to the future.
Nol's future required 50 million rupiah. That worry was still there, but it was a
worry Nol could deal with. In fact, after the day's emotional tumbling, it was a relief to
have something so superficial to trouble him. He decided firmly upon a plan. He would
ask Anak Agung Mantera for a loan. How could his mother's old childhood friend refuse,
especially after today's events?
When Nol got home, Suti and their daughter Dian were resting in the garden
pavilion, sipping tea in glasses as night-blooming jasmine cast its scent. Suti looked like
an exotic flower herself in her tight purple and green aerobic leotards. She attended a
class three times a week, and a faint sheen of sweat still glistened on her forehead. Over
the rim of her glass of tea she gave Nol a glance that warned caution, daughter.
Dian jumped to her feet. She was still in her school uniform, gangly limbs
akimbo, but other parts starting to assume their womanly shape. She was already a
beauty. Nol's heart lurched with pride and anxiety…all those boys out there. He knew.
He'd been one.
"You want some tea, Bapa?" she chirped.
Ah. That tone. She wanted something.
"And how was your day?"
"I got a ten on my math test."
Nol sat down on the pavilion's step. "A ten?"
"Don't sound so surprised. I can get tens. I was just telling Mother I need a laptop
computer. And Internet."
"You can use your mother's computer."
"You don't understand. I need my own. So I can be on Facebook with my
friends."
"Facebook? What is that?"
A long dramatic sigh. "Father, don't you know anything?"
"It's an online social club," Suti said, putting down her glass with more force than
was warranted.
"And how was your day?" Nol asked his wife.
"A lot of lookers, not many buyers. A man joined my aerobics class, a
Manadonese accountant. All the women were giggling." As she said that, the cell phone
by her side buzzed. She glanced at it and put it aside.
"Manadonese," Nol said. Manadonese were a handsome people.
"A Mac," Dian said.
45

"A what?"
"That's the kind of laptop I want. A Mac."
"Do you know this thing called Eh-Bay?"
"It's E-Bay. A Mac, Bapa."
"Well, love, that sounds expensive, and money is tight."
"That's right," Suti said. The way she said that, she might as well have crossed her
arms across her chest.
Nol flicked a beetle off his knee. She knows about the cockfight. That damned
blabbermouth Timon.
Dian shoved a sheet of paper at him. "Here's the math test. A ten."
Nol frowned at circled red number. "But it says a nine."
"I know, but it's really a ten."
"Look." Nol pointed. "It's a nine. And circled. How can that be a ten?"
Dian gave another long sigh. "Because I talked to the teacher afterward and she
said I was right and that it should be a ten."
"Then take this back and have your teacher put a ten on it, because all I see right
now is a nine." His daughter's brows lowered and her jaw tightened. "Don't get me
wrong, a nine is wonderful, it's terrific, I'm very happy, aren't we, Suti, we're very happy
with a nine."
"But it's a ten!"
"Putu got elevens," Suti said. "The teacher had to give him extra hard problems."
"I'm not Putu, all right? And you gave him a laptop. I want a Mac. And that is too
a ten!" She tossed her tea into a jasmine bush and stalked off to her room.
Nol grinned. "I think Dian has the talent to be a lawyer."
Suti's mouth remained flat. She looked lovely as ever, but he would have
preferred a smile that showed her crooked eyetooth, the one that had snagged his heart
when he first met her, all those years ago at the warung after a cockfight. She helped her
mother run the stall and she'd served him coffee. He had won all his bets, and when she
smiled at him, he placed another bet with himself that he would win her, too.
"Why didn't you tell me?" she said.
So there it was. Maybe it was better to get this all out in the open. He never did
like keeping secrets from her. It wracked his nerves and his twisted his conscience. "You
know how it is," he said, trying to find the right words that would dampen her imminent
explosion.
"My friends, the other women at the arcade, they were all talking about it, and I
had to ask them, what is it? Do you know how embarrassed I was, that I'd be the last to
know?"
Nol raised his hands. "Suti, I'm sorry. It was an awful moment. I was weak."
Her face softened, her mouth relaxed. "I understand. It must have been terrible for
you."
Nol lowered his hands, confused. She understood? Well, by all the gods, this was
a change.
"But you could have at least sent me a text message," Suti said.
A text message? What was this? First she'd threatened to leave him if he ever
gambled again, and now she was complaining he hadn't sent a text message after losing
50 million? Actually, come to think of it, that was a clever way to break bad news.
46

"Your mother's never gotten over it. And I live here, your family is now my
family. You should have told me about the skeletons. At least before all the other women
down by the beach found out. I should have told them instead of the other way around."
Ah. Confusion cleared. This was not about the lost money, but the found bones.
"It was a crazy day," Nol said. "First the prostitute raid and then we were called out of the
blue to control this crowd at the beach—and by the way, the raid was a success. All the
girls were there. Amazing. I don't know who was more surprised, them or us. We must
have rounded up twenty of them." He added, teasing, "The girl I arrested promised to
show me a trick and make me happy if I'd let her go."
"I'd better shower," Suti said, with a lazy, coquettish stretch, her breasts straining
the tight fabric. "And then I might show you a new trick myself."
Nol's grin about floated off his face as he watched her sashay to their bedroom
pavilion.
A new trick. Little flutters of anticipation.
But what new trick? And where would Suti have learned it?
Why would a Manadonese man join all those women in an aerobics class?
Suti had left her bag and cell phone on the pavilion. Nol picked up the cell and
thumbed it to the message menu. He hesitated and then came to his senses. What was he
doing? It'd be a terrible breach of trust. He resolutely chucked the cell phone into her bag
and zipped it shut.
"A Jakarta tourist left behind a copy of this new women's magazine, called
Kosmopolitan," Suti said, snuggling up to Nol after they'd caught their breaths. Outside
the bedroom window a moon glowed and Nol felt like he was floating on a cushion of its
light. "It's an American magazine," Suti said, "but it's now published in Indonesian. I
couldn't believe how naughty it was. All these, well, tricks. We were all giggling like
crazy."
"Keep reading it," Nol said.
"Tell me about the meeting. How did it go?"
"I tell you what, that Raka, he's so full of himself. People are starting to talk, you
know, how ambitious he is, how he wants his father out of the way so he can take over."
"I haven't heard that."
"Well, he does."
"You better be careful what you say about him."
"There was this American woman there, too."
"What did she want?"
"An argument. Those Americans. Dharma really put her in her place."
"Mr. Bombastic," Suti said. She slipped on her nightgown to sit at her computer
and complained that there was still no email from Putu.
Nol abruptly sat up. "Can you check this E-Bay thing for me?"
She clicked her keys. "Here," she said.
He looked over her shoulder. "It looks complicated."
"It's easy. You can sell all kinds of things on the Internet. I'm wondering if I
should make my own on-line shop."
"How do you do that?"
47

"Yanto designs all kinds of web sites. You know him, Ketut Sarini's brother."
Nol scratched his cheek in meditative silence.
Suti glanced at him. "Why? What good idea are you thinking of now?"
"Just curious. Have to keep with technology. Don't want anyone thinking I'm an
ignorant village peasant."
48

Chapter 9
In the hallway of Tina's rented beachside bungalow, labeled cartons and a wooden
crate were ready for the shippers. Crickets tickled the quiet, and from the offshore reef
came the rumble of waves. Tang of salt mixed with the stink of plastic burning
somewhere upwind. The smells of modern Bali.
Tina got up to shut the window against the acrid smoke and sat back down at the
table to watch again the Youtube video on her laptop. The anonymous tourist had caught
a perfect vignette of a construction worker in a pit holding up a dirty skull, topped off by
a highly distraught white-haired woman in pink shoes charging through the police line
with uneven gait but determined force.
After hearing at the literary luncheon about the bones being found at the Batu
Gede beach, she'd gone straight to the construction site, where work had resumed. The
general contractor brusquely told her that he had nothing more to do with the bones, and
if she was interested then she should go to the evening meeting at the Empress Gardens.
She hadn't intended to speak. But as she listened to Anak Agung Mantera, she kept seeing
this old distraught woman. The prince's glib sidestepping provoked an old familiar
emotion of loss and anger, and her words rose unbidden.
She shut down her laptop and got out her cell phone. This time of night here was
office hours at Cornell University, and she got through to a colleague who was an
Indonesian specialist there.
"The Harian Rakyat?" he said. "Communist documents were all pretty much
destroyed. We have archives here of some material, including the newspaper. I believe
we've donated a microfilm of the Harian Rakyat to the Bali University."
Bali University. Tina had some contacts there, including an political analyst,
Professor Oemar, a well-known night owl who'd be up and alert at this hour. He
cheerfully answered her call but tsked doubtfully when she asked about access to the
newspaper at the University library. "It's restricted material. Anyone who applies to see it
becomes automatically suspect, and as far as I know, no one has done so."
Tina asked about Wayan Dharma, of Batu Gede.
"He was PNI, a powerful nationalist," the professor said. "One of the mysteries of
the post-coup politics is why he didn't go further. Perhaps because his brother was a
Communist, and that surely tainted him. He was lucky—most relatives of Communists
were ostracized and marginalized, fired from jobs, kicked out of schools."
"Do you know anything about the first of killings starting in Batu Gede?" Tina
asked.
"After 30 th September 65, the tension in Bali grew like a balloon about to burst.
I'm not sure you can isolate the prick that made it explode."
"This friend of mine, Reed Davis, he thinks it started in Batu Gede."
The professor turned cautious. "You're a friend of Reed Davis?"
"I know him, yes."
49

"Be careful. It's said that 1965 he bought human hair from the military and the
nationalists and sold it for a pretty profit. Victims' hair, Tina."
Now this she hadn't heard before. It was possibly true. She hung up, deeply
troubled, but telling herself to give Reed the benefit of the doubt until she knew for sure.
After Gestapu, the unofficial order of the military was amankan PKI sampai akarakarnya.
Secure the Communists to their very roots. A nice euphemism. At least thirteen
had been "secured" just down the beach from this bungalow. Only a very few out of fifty
thousand slaughtered, but then again, thirteen skeletons made it very real and very close.
From the living room sideboard, Tina picked up the one object she had not yet
packed, which would go in her hand luggage. It was a photo of her and her sister, framed
in a folding case, which carried around with her like a talisman. It was a casual backyard
shot taken a month before Nancy was abducted from the scrub brush behind the wall
visible in the photo. Tina was fifteen, and just finding out about boys. She had her arm
slung over Nancy's thin but staunchly squared shoulder. That was Nancy, who even at a
young age was always ready to take on the world's injustices.
The photograph was the only one Tina had of her sister. She couldn't remember
the occasion when the photo was shot. With her arm around Nancy, Tina looked
protective, like a big sister should be.
She'd certainly failed, hadn't she?
At that moment, she made up her mind. She'd wouldn't leave. She would stay and
try to find out what had happened in Batu Gede.
For those anonymous dead.
For her missing sister.
50

Chapter 10
An elderly Dutch couple looking for a three month rental with pool had contacted
Dharma, who told Nol to show them the available properties. After inspecting each
house, the husband and wife put on their bathing suits and bathing caps to try the pool,
swimming back and forth with stately breaststrokes. In one pool, the old man lingered
with a blissful expression, and Nol suspected he was relieving his bladder.
As they poked around one furnished house, a sweaty salesman pulled a suitcase
on wheels to the door. He was full of hope and wide of smile "House products," he said
to Nol who answered the knock. "Shampoos and detergents cheaper than what you can
get at the discount stores."
Nol went through the products, asking prices, asking questions: You go door to
door? How many sales do you get? How often? Where do you get your supplies from?
The salesman's answers came slower and turned truculent. "Are you going to
buy?"
"Oh, I don't live here. I'm just a driver."
The salesman packed up and left in a huff.
The Dutch couple wandered out of the kitchen, looking pleased. "It's very nicely
furnished," the husband said.
It occurred to Nol that the house was too nicely furnished, with family photos on
the fridge. He texted his uncle. "Are you sure this house is available?"
Dharma replied: "Renters are out of the country for six months."
Nol imagined them coming home from the airport late one night only to find a
strange couple in their bed. Before the Dutch clients could put on their damp bathing
suits, he pointed to a thick hibiscus hedge. "Many snakes live there."
"Slangen!" the woman said with a shiver. She couldn't leave fast enough.
Nol again texted his uncle, informing Dharma that the couple were having an
island tour at his expense. Dharma said he'd meet them at the last house on the list, and
there he was, exuberant and charming and speaking Dutch. He could talk real estate in
English, Japanese, German, French, Dutch and was getting proficient in Russian. The
couple beamed with pleasure, and after Dharma showed them the house and pointed out
the view they had of the top of a temple across the road, they handed over a thirty percent
deposit on the spot.
"You can put a hen in a cage," Dharma said to Nol, "but the trick is to get it to lay
an egg."
"Uncle," Nol said, "you have a smudge of lipstick on your ear."
51

When Nol got home, a black Mercedes from the palace was parked outside his
front gate. Mantera was evidently paying Nol's mother another visit for coffee, yak, yak,
yak, slurp, slurp, slurp.
Still, this was the perfect opportunity. Nol would pull the old man aside and put it
to him straight. As long as you're here talking old times with my mother, I need to borrow
50 million.
Arini was entertaining Mantera on her porch, the coffee accompanied by a plate
of imported Danish butter cookies. The tin was right there. A gift from Mantera, Nol
assumed. Why his mother had actually opened the tin, Nol didn't know. A man like
Mantera should be kept at a certain distance. Surely Mother knew that.
Nol greeted the prince and sat on the porch's cement rail, wide enough for potted
plants, putting him higher than Mantera. If the prince was bothered by the insult, he didn't
show it. Dressed in light trousers and simple batik shirt, he had his cane propped between
his legs, both hands cupped on the handle, its delicate silver work oddly matched to the
length of rough, heavy ironwood. It was, come to think of it, an odd cane, but that was
Mantera for you.
"Don't sit there," Arini scolded Nol. "Here's a chair."
The corner of her right eye fluttered, a sign that her migraine was still clinging.
Why was Mantera bothering her?
Nol grudgingly changed places.
"Your mother and I were just talking about the time our dance troupe danced for
President Sukarno at his palace in Tampaksiring," Mantera said. "Afterwards he pinched
her cheek. She didn't wash it for a week afterward."
"Pak Mantera exaggerates," Arini said coolly.
Mantera tapped his cane on the floor, smiling. "Oh, Arini, I almost forgot. I was
recently reminded of the time your grandson Putu tricked my granddaughter Wulandri
with soap that turned her hands blue. Oh, my, she truly was furious. She told me to report
Putu to the police. I said it ran in the family. I told her about the time when you glued the
pages of my school note book. Remember that? The teacher asked me to read my story,
and I couldn't open the pages."
Arini smiled. "You ripped them up and threw them at me. But I must confess. It
wasn't me. Catra glued the pages."
"Is that so?" Mantera said. The mention of the Nol's father's name lingered
uncomfortably. The prince's hands tightened on the cane's handle and he rose creakily to
his feet. "I must be going. No, no, please don't bother, your son can see me to the gate."
Nol followed a step behind and at the gate slipped in front, as though to politely
usher him out of the compound, but intending to block him and spring the request for a
loan.
Mantera lifted his cane and tapped the silver handle on Nol's chest. "I would like
to see you at my house this evening."
Like an outrigger whose sail had lost all wind, Nol could only sputter, "What
about?"
"A private matter," Mantera said and took his leave.
Nol hurried back to his mother's porch, where she was gathering up the cups.
"What was all that about, Mother? Why is he bothering you?"
52

"Some American woman came by earlier looking for you."
"What? Who?"
"This lady with strange hair. She wants to ask you about the rental. She said she'll
stop by tomorrow again." Arini closed the cookie tin.
"You know, Mother, you don't have to receive him. Just send him away."
She paused with the cookie tin in hand. "Mantera's glued notebook," she said,
with a little smile. "Catra did it, but I told him to. We had slates and chalk back then, only
the rich children could afford paper notebooks and pencils. Mantera was always so proud,
his nose up in the air. God forbid he should get his hands dirty with chalk. But," she
added, "he really was an excellent dancer."
After showering, Nol drove over to his uncle's house with some routine
paperwork, taking lane by the temple. Swallows flitted around the temple's banyan tree,
the same swallows whose nests could have made Nol a rich man. Their darting flight
made everything else seem especially still. The tree and temple and pool were trapped in
honey sunlight and chocolate shadow.
Thirteen skeletons but only twelve skulls.
We cut off her head.
Just a shivery children's story.
At his uncle's house, Dharma's two wives harmoniously wove offerings together
in the garden pavilion. By the family shrines, Dharma hunkered in a white plastic chair in
the shade of the frangipani tree. In his hands was the heirloom family keris, named Ki
Poleng, whose blade he was cleansing with lemon juice.
Nol halted in alarm. Apart from ceremonial occasions, the knife was brought out
only if there was trouble. Dharma held up the blade and peered at it. The metal's
damascene pamor rippled like polished water. Noticing Nol's alarm, he said, "I had a
dream." This was explanation enough. "Here, give it a good wipe."
Nol gingerly took the knife's handle. This was the very same dagger whose tip
had pierced the heart of the family's deified ancestor, the hero who stabbed himself rather
than surrender to the Dutch. A simple keris with a plain scabbard, Ki Poleng had a
wooden handle and a straight instead of a wavy blade. Nowhere near as fancy as other
kerises, but Ki Poleng was famously volatile and unpredictable. When it sensed danger to
its owner, it would rattle in its sheath.
"I've decided that your son Putu will wear it during the toothfiling ceremony,"
Dharma said.
Pleased by the honor, Nol carefully worked lemon juice down to the hilt. The
handle felt warm in his hand, almost alive. His fingers instinctively tightened around it.
"One night, in November of 1965," Dharma said softly, "I heard Ki Poleng rattle
loud enough to wake me up. When I entered the room, it had fallen from its stand. The
blade was out of the sheath, as if a hand had pulled it."
Nol stopped rubbing in astonishment. "You've never told this story."
"It gave warning, but I failed to heed it properly. But next time…" Dharma's voice
trailed away.
Next time. The words burrowed into Nol's nerves, unsettling him. What next
time? He handed the dagger back to his uncle, who patted the blade dry.
"I hear you've been spreading rumors about Raka and his father," Dharma said.
53

"I've been hearing them, too," Nol said.
"Perhaps he will die soon, but naturally, not murdered by an impatient son."
"Why, who would say such a thing like that?"
Dharma grunted. "Not that Mantera doesn't deserve his karma."
The cryptic comment hung in the air.
"He's been coming around and having coffee with Mother," Nol said. "Did
President Sukarno really pinch her cheek?"
"Sukarno had an eye for pretty girls, and your mother was the prettiest girl in the
village. What do they talk about?"
"Old school days. He talks, she mostly listens. You've been close to Mantera for a
long time. What do you see in him?"
"Money. He's a man full of clouds who changes directions with the wind, but he
has working capital that floats with him. Over the years he's financed many of my
projects, and I've made him more money."
"You just go up to him and ask to borrow?"
"Are you getting ideas, nephew?"
"Me? Why, if I wanted to borrow money I'd ask you first. But I'm not, am I?"
Newly renovated with limestone and chrome, the palace's stout outer walls
glowed in the afternoon sun. The gilded doors to the towering main gate were shut, but a
male servant showed Nol through a side gate and guided him to a distant corner of the
compound, where flourished a patch of jungle right out of a Balinese legend. A mossy
brick path led through shaggy trees, and a stream gurgled pleasantly. At the head of the
path, a lovely young woman in a sarong and blouse knelt to place a flower offering on the
brick. She stood to the side to let Nol pass with comments, her eyes black as seeds and as
unreadable.
Rude to just stare at him like that. Why, she couldn't be any older than his son
Putu. Kids these days, losing respect for their elders.
The path opened up to a clearing, the sky overhead radiating a luminous glow that
bathed a simple wooden hut with a thatched roof. From the hut's eaves hung varnished
bird cages, and the birds within trilled their songs. Nol might have believed that he'd
slipped to a time long past if it weren't for the red-tailed Qantas jet passing overhead with
a whine of engines.
Mantera peered into one bird cage. A sarong hung perilously loose on his thin
hips, and his ribs were visible in the sagging arm holes of his undershirt. On his feet were
cheap rubber bathroom sandals. "Ah, Nol, would you give me a hand here? I need to
switch the cages around."
Jarred by this unseemly informality of dress and manner, Nol wordlessly switched
two cages. Mantera frowned at one bird, which remained obstinately silent, orange head
hunkered down into its dull grey body.
"Paid five million for it," Mantera complained, "but it won't sing."
"Could be sick," Nol offered.
"A vet's already checked. Ayo, ayo, sing, you damn bird!"
54

Nol knew next to nothing about songbirds. But if his father could whistle and
charm them, why couldn't he? He pursed his lips and produced a ragged chirp. The thrush
postured aggressively on its branch and burst into livid song.
Nol hid his amazement and delight. "There you go," he said blandly.
Mantera shook his finger at the bird in mock exasperation and invited Nol to sit
on the porch's rattan chairs. Dusk was thickening quickly, and hidden garden lights
sprang to life. The young woman Nol had seen earlier appeared, bearing a tray of coffee
and cakes.
"Thank you," Mantera said. "Wulandri, you know Putu's father?"
Ah. Wulandri. Of course. "It's been a few years," Nol said. "Do you still want to
have my son arrested?"
Oh, such a long cool glance! "Why, what trouble is he in now?" A voice to match
that glance. Very much a young sophisticated woman of her caste.
"He's a student at Stanford University, in America. One of the very best ones. Full
scholarship. You remember how smart he was in class, don't you?"
Mantera said, "Wulandri's also studying abroad. Australia. Business
administration."
She took the shirt hanging off the back of his chair and held it out. "Grandfather,
put this on, please. It's rude, being dressed in an undershirt when you have guests." The
emphasis she put on guests suggested unwanted ones.
Mantera grumbled as he donned on his shirt, but watched fondly as his
granddaughter slipped away into the evening. "She could boss a barrack full of generals,"
he said. "Stanford, is it? What is young Putu studying?"
"Architecture and engineering," Nol said.
Mantera slapped the arms of his chair. "A boy the village can be proud of. He will
start a new school of tropical architecture. Why should it be foreigners who are famous
for the so-called Bali style? Please, drink your coffee."
Nol waited until his host picked up his cup. Mantera pursed his thin lips and
sipped delicately.
"My mother has migraines," Nol said. "She is in a delicate state. She should not
be receiving guests." He'd get this cleared up first before asking the prince for a loan.
"I know she does," Mantera said with a cluck of commiseration. "I gave her the
name of a good balian who does well with migraines. My wife had them, especially
toward the end, but the balian helped."
Mantera's wife had died at the previous year. What a grand cremation that had
been. Entire streets had been closed, electricity shut off and power lines lowered for the
cremation tower's procession.
"I understand your children will be soon have their toothfiling ceremony with
Dharma's grandchildren. Please, please, have a cake."
"Inggé," Nol said, picking up a fat sticky cake. "That is one of the purposes of
Putu coming home." He nibbled. Brown sugar syrup oozed onto his fingers.
In the trees floated little pulsing pinpricks of light. Fireflies. It'd been years since
Nol saw so many. Crickets chirped. Mantera looked like one of his birds, small and
fragile with sharp black eyes. He said, "Wulandri and various cousins are having theirs as
well, after next kajeng kliwon. You are invited." He smiled. "It will be interesting to have
Putu and Wulandri together again."
55

Cake got stuck in Nol's throat, and he coughed hoarsely as syrup dripped onto his
fingers. He licked his forefinger. Mantera leaned across, handing Nol a paper napkin.
"Excuse me for a moment." He disappeared into the hut's front room.
Nol wiped the syrup from his fingers and flicked the used napkin over the side of
the porch. Give Wulandri something to sweep up later.
When Mantera returned, he placed a thick manila envelope on the table. "This is
for you. Fifty million cash."
Nol heard the words, but it took a moment for understanding to catch up. He
stared at the plump envelope.
"For getting the bird to sing," said Mantera with a small smile.
"I can't," Nol managed to say. He had his pride. To borrow money was one thing,
but just to be given it, like he was a poor man, was another.
"For your mother's sake."
"Please keep my mother out of this—"
"Unless you want her to find out about the bank loan you lost at the cockfights?"
Nol didn't have the energy to conjure up either outrage or surprise. The envelope
seemed to swell. Fifty million. Nol resisted an urge to stroke it. "I will accept this but
only as a loan," he said stiffly.
"As you wish, but as far as I am concerned, it is given as a gift." The crickets had
fallen silent, and Mantera looked like the bird who'd eaten them all.
The envelope clutched under his arm, Nol slid out of the palace gate into the
night shadows. Behind him, steps sounded. He whirled, his heart thumping like a struck
drum.
An overhanging neon flickered to life, the sharp brilliance falling like a spotlight
upon Raka, casually dressed in a sarong and shirt. Nol relaxed. Raka held out a pack of
Marlboros. "A cigarette?"
"No, thank you. Don't smoke. Quit. Bad for my health."
"But you're still betting on the cocks?"
Acutely aware of the envelope under his arm, Nol said, "Now and then."
Raka flipped open a gold lighter and lit a cigarette. He inhaled deeply and exhaled
briskly. "So your son is at Stanford University."
"A full scholarship."
"I went to Harvard for my MBA. Two years. I worked in Jakarta for a while, but
now I'm helping my father. Ever since my mother's cremation, he's been pulling back,
and I've been taking over, expanding the family businesses, starting new ventures. You've
gotten a job at the golf course, haven't you?"
"Security guard. They want to promote me to assistant chief."
"It's funny. All those years in school together and then we went our separate
ways. I never really gave you much thought since. No, I haven't thought about you at all."
"Forgive me if I sound disrespectful, but I haven't thought of you either."
"My father's done a lot of deals with your uncle. My father's always appreciated
his peasant's shrewdness. But times change, don't they?"
"Technology," Nol agreed. "Websites and E-Bay."
56

"Your uncle put together the deal on that beach front property. I wonder if he
knew what would be dug up."
This was news to Nol, but he didn't know about every deal his uncle did. "I don't
think he told anyone where to put a pool."
"What's done is done," Raka said reflectively. "Those Communists deserved their
fate. It was either them or us. Did you know they had my family on a death list? I was a
baby at the time. If Communists like your father had won, we'd be buried somewhere, our
bones forgotten. Every time I look at you, I think to myself, I could be dead."
"He was not a Communist," Nol said evenly.
"What did my father want with you?"
"An invitation to your family's tooth filing."
"What is that you have there?"
Nol tightened his grip on the envelope. "Papers for Dharma."
"Nol the Errand Boy." Raka squished his cigarette under the toe of his sandal. "I
hear you've been telling rumors about me."
"I've heard them myself," Nol said. "But you know rumors. They're like the wind,
whirling every which way."
"I hope you don't become a problem, Nol. I'm good at solving problems."
Nol smiled, suddenly at ease. "You're good at telling others to solve them for you.
Like Gong. Remember him, that stupid fat boy you always sent to beat me up?"
Raka returned the smile. "He was stupid and he was fat but he was loyal. Let me
tell you something they don't teach you at Harvard. A man who's loyal is worth a hundred
times someone's who's smart." He turned off the light and slipped through the side gate,
the scion of the palace blessed by early starlight and blossoming jasmine.
In his bedroom, Nol opened the unsealed envelope and shook out bundles of crisp
hundred-thousand rupiah notes. He counted them twice. Fifty million exactly. He put the
bundles back in the envelope but then withdrew five of the bills, which he stuck in his
wallet. A small tax for the next cockfight, an offering for this unexpected fortune, which
Nol wasn't quite willing to call good but was certainly timely. Nol stuck the envelope
under the mattress, then in shoe box in the bottom of the closet, then between two temple
sarongs in the top drawer, and finally in a painted offering basket on top of the wardrobe.
Suti's scooter puttered into the garage. Nol heard her footsteps, the vigor of doors
opening and closing, the hard rattling of cups and pans in the kitchen. He knew her many
sounds, and right now she was very angry about something. He sauntered over to the
kitchen, where she was eating a bowl of noodles. She glared at him over the steaming
bowl.
Nol peeled a tangerine. "And how was your day?" he said pleasantly.
"Fine. And yours?"
Oh, she was furious. Nol could tell by that controlled tone. He popped a tangerine
slice in his mouth and spat the seeds out the door. "Not bad. Sweet talked this Dutch
couple into renting one of Dharma's houses. They were very fussy, but you know me."
"Yes, I do know you. You can lose a fortune at the cockfights and come home
whistling."
"What are you talking about?"
57

She threw her fork at him. "The rent money that's due! The fifty million you lost
gambling!"
Nol put his hands on his hips and glowered. "Listening to gossip again, are you?"
"Gossip! Where's the money, then?"
"Come here." Nol grabbed his wife's arm and tugged her across the yard and an
into the house and through to bedroom. He flung the top off the offering basket and
gestured to the envelope.
"Fifty million," Nol said.
She tipped the envelope to empty it, but Nol snatched it away from her. "Now you
want to count it?" he said. He threw the envelope into the basket and kicked the basket
under the bed and glowered at her.
Suti sat down on the bed, hands clasped in her lap. She stared at her husband and
then began giggling.
"This is funny, is it?"
She reached out a hand to him. "I read some more of that Kosmo article," she
said.
Later, sitting at her computer, she called out, "An email from Putu. My friends
will be picking me up at the airport. Don't worry about meeting me." She sat back. "Well.
Can you believe that? Worry! Why would I worry? I've been looking forward to this
weeks."
"I wonder what friends," Nol said. "Probably those rascals from his school, those
guys who didn't get into Bali University, much less get a scholarship to Stanford
University."
"We are going to the airport."
"Of course we are. We're his parents. He can go see his friends any time. Tell him
that."
Suti typed a reply. "Worry," she muttered. "What a thing to say."
58

Chapter 11
Nol and Sudana took turns driving to work at the golf course, and this morning
Sudana threaded his burpy Daihatsu pickup around the market-goers jamming the narrow
street.
Nol was telling his friend about his new idea, a website and online store where
people order things. "Sarini's son Yanto is designing mine," Nol said. "Product Ziro.
Daily necessities that can keep a long time, rice and noodles and oil."
"See that over there?" Sudana said.
"What?"
"It's called a mini-market. See all those sacks of rice displayed in the window?
And those boxes of noodles? And look! Right there, across the way. Another shop that
sells the same."
"So?"
"Why should anybody go to the trouble of ordering on the Internet when they can
just pop down the street?"
"Because of home delivery!" Nol said triumphantly, unveiling the core of his
grand idea. " They'll order online from their homes, and I'll deliver it right to their door.
They don't have to step foot out of their house."
"You'll deliver it?" Sudana asked skeptically.
"Not me personally. A team of salesmen. You're going to be the first. You get a
cut of sales. You can have a sales team underneath you, and get a share of their cut.
Multi-level marketing and a website! Why, you'll be rich, Sudana."
"Last time you talked into that wind electricity generator, I lost a lot of money."
"And the government is now using that exact same idea."
"But their windmills have hi-tech plastic propellers, not wood."
The pickup rattled out of town past the remnants of mangrove swamps, now
converted into the warehouses that had made Dharma a fortune. Nol's uncle had also
helped secure the hill and land behind it for the golf course. The wide new road curved
around the back side of the hill, on whose top perched the clubhouse, with a panoramic
view of sea and mountains. As Sudana drove through the gates, Nol's thoughts turned
from the happy prospects of Product Ziro to the roll of woven bamboo matting in the
storage shed. The matting had been there ever since Nol started work at the course, a
leftover roll that Nol needed to fix up Mak's shack, which was tilting more each year,
rather like Mak herself.
59

Sudana parked behind the sleek clubhouse. He and Nol straightened their blueand-white
uniforms with the embroidered golf ball logo and joined four of their
colleagues out front for the flag raising, standing at attention as the Red and White slowly
rose into the breeze. The chief of security, a former East Timor militiaman who was as
thin and sharp as a thorn and possessed of as much cheer as one, ordered them to parade
rest and gave them the instructions for the day.
"If you bring lunch from home, it is to be eaten in the staff canteen," he said,
giving Nol the thorny eye, "not to be eaten with fingers in the shade of the rain tree as
guests tee off."
I put my life in danger by sticking my nose into car trunks that could have bombs,
Nol thought, and here I am getting scolded for how I eat my lunch.
A black Mercedes with dark tinted windows rolled through the gates and halted in
the club house's grand portico. From the driver's side oozed a fat chauffeur who was
remarkable flexible for his girth, a terrifically rotund fellow with a moon face. He opened
the rear door, and there emerged Anak Agung Gdé Raka and the district Police
Commander. Two of the prettiest female caddies grabbed the golf bags out of the car's
trunk. The chauffeur squeezed back behind the wheel and parked the car in the adjacent
space reserved for the President Director, a Japanese man with a missing finger, a fellow
whom Nol had seen precisely once.
After the chief dismissed the guards to their posts, Nol marched over to the
chauffeur, who squatted by the front wheel, using paper tissue to wipe a splatter of mud
from the hub cup. Amazing he could squat like that. He looked like a stack of meatballs.
"You can't park here," Nol said. "This is for the President Director."
The fellow stood. "Ziro divided by Ziro is Nol," he said, his voice high and soft.
Nol stepped back, mentally trimming off some of the weight and slimming down
the face, not much, but enough to bring back the boy. "You'll have to park over there,
Gong." Nol nodded at the visitor's lot.
"Didn't you see who came in?"
"I don't care if it's the Governor himself, this space is for the President Director.
You go park over there."
Gong pressed the dirty tissue in Nol's hand and said mockingly, "Yes, sir! Right
away, sir!"
Nol chucked the tissue into the bin and took his post with Sudana at the gates.
There was a rush of cars to process, a few businessmen and lawyers and two foursomes
of Japanese tourists. Nol checked the vehicles' undersides with a mirror on a pole and
inspected their trunks and peered into the golf bags before giving Sudana the go ahead to
lift the heavy boom pole.
Gong idly watched from the shade of the guardhouse. "These checks are useless,"
he said. "A terrorist with a car bomb is going to stop? He'd just run you down and plow
on through."
"Not if you stand there," Sudana said. "You'd stop a truck."
"Haven't seen you around in awhile," Nol said.
"Been out of circulation. Kerobokan Prison. Manslaughter. I stomped on a guy
with more emphasis than needed."
Nol vividly recalled Gong's kicks, and this when Gong was only a chubby boy.
"Now why would you do that?"
60

"He was a surfer punk harassing Miss Wulandri. The boss's daughter. Teach him a
lesson, the boss said, so I did. But a lesson is only a lesson if you get to learn from it. A
rib punctured an artery. I got eight years."
"Doesn't look like they starved you in there."
Gong patted his stomach. "Boss took care of me. He told me you called me fat
and stupid."
Nol casually held his mirror stick in front of him, ready to whop it down across
Gong's head. "You're not exactly skinny."
"And you're right, I'm not really smart either. But I'm loyal. The Boss tells me to
teach you a lesson, I'll try not to kill you." He waddled across the road to a coffee stall.
Three hours later Nol and Sudana were relieved for an early lunch. First things
first, though. The bamboo matting. Nol retrieved from the back of Sudana's pickup a ratty
golf bag and casually strolled toward the storage shed. Due for demolition, it slumped at
the end of the staff parking. Nol climbed through the side window as Sudana stood watch
for any busybodies. Nol wasn't really stealing—the roll of matting was just sitting there,
gathering cobwebs. The crime was letting it go to waste. Or, what was worse, letting a
Javanese garbage picker get his hands on it.
The roll fit perfectly into the golf bag, which he tossed into the back of Sudana's
pickup.
"You think anybody's going to steal it?" he fretted.
Sudana shrugged. "Easy come, easy go."
"Anybody does, I'll find out who," Nol growled.
In the staff canteen, Nol ate with his fingers, disturbing not a single delicate
foreign soul.
At Nol's insistence, Sudana volunteered to help fix up Mak's shack after work.
Together they rummaged through the junk collected under the granary, looking
for wood to use as a frame for the matting. Mice scurried and crickets jumped. Nol
snatched a big one and held it in a cage of cupped fingers. "Remember when we were
kids, that idea I had to sell shares in a champion cricket?"
"I wonder what happened to that teacher," Sudana said, wiping a strand of
cobweb off his ear.
"Probably in Jakarta office making up National Exam questions."
"Here's some bamboo. Kind of bug eaten, though."
Nol looked up the stairs to the granary's closed doors. "Could be something up
there."
"I don't know," Sudana said reluctantly.
"We're not kids anymore," Nol said. "There's no Luhde Srikandi up there."
"That old story?" Sudana said with a laugh.
"Go on, then, you have a look."
"I'm not the one who needs the wood."
With a sigh, Nol started up the stairs. The two panel doors to the storage roof
squeaked on rusty hinges to Nol's tentative push. With the back of his neck tingling, he
stooped through the opening. The stuffy air clogged his throat, and he coughed as his
61

eyes adjusted to the gloom. Cobwebs dangled from the rafters, and dust layered the
planking. In the space was an ancient wooden loom, and by it a lumpy mattress, its fabric
yellowed with age and kapok stuffing leaking out of holes.
"What are you boys doing up there?"
Nol startled at Mak's annoyed, scratchy voice and stuck his head out the door. His
great-aunt was at the bottom of the steps, fists on her scrawny hips, her neck cricked to
glare up at him.
"Just looking for some wood to fix your place."
"Get down. I don't want you boys playing up there. Don't you have school?"
Before Nol could reply, Mak was floating off at a half-tilt like a kite in a breeze.
Irritated that he had to buy wood for the frame, Nol grumpily measured the wood
with a tape measure and supervised as Sudana, always clever with his hands, did the
cutting and nailing. Both men squatted in Mak's dirt yard as they worked.
From behind them, a woman said, "Excuse me? Are you Bapak Ziro?"
Nol swung around on his haunches. Why, it was the American woman who'd been
at the bones meeting. Several strands of her frizzy, crayon-colored hair stuck out around
her small pink ears.
Nol rose to his feet. The woman stuck out a hand, which he gingerly shook.
"I'm Tina Briddle. I'm looking for a new place to stay, and somebody told me you
have a house for rent?"
"You're in luck," Nol said, hiding his surprised delight. "The villa just became
available. It has a plunge pool fed by a natural spring. And a view of the ricefields."
A curtain in the warped window flapped aside, and there suddenly appeared an
ancient pistol, its grip clenched in two withered hands. Mak squinted down the quivering
barrel.
"Whoa," Tina said. She switched to Balinese to ask, "Are you pointing that at
me?"
"Mak! Stop that," Nol yelled, stepping between end of wobbling barrel and
beginning of prospective renter. He added to Tina, "Don't worry, it doesn't work."
"Is she Dutch?" Mak demanded. "Bastard Dutch."
"I'm American," Tina said.
"Ah! A CIA spy."
"Just a tax payer."
The pistol withdrew, the eye of the barrel replaced by Mak's beady one. "Do you
know JFK?"
"My grandfather shook his hand."
"He and Sukarno are wonderful friends," Mak said, and she stepped back and
vanished.
"My great-aunt," Nol said to Tina. "She's getting senile."
"She sure knows how to hold a pistol."
"Trained in the Revolution." Nol hustled through the gate to his compound. "You
speak Balinese very well."
"I should hope so. I've spent enough time trying to learn it."
No's mother was ironing laundry on her porch in the cool of late afternoon hour.
Tina smiled pleasantly. "Hello, Ibu Arini."
62

Arini replied with a nod, tucking the shirt's sleeve onto the ironing board's arm.
She ironed with quick strokes, the heavy iron clanking.
Tina halted. "Is that a charcoal iron?"
"We have electricity, but my mother insists," Nol said, embarrassed at such
antiquity in his house.
Tina marched over to the porch. "This brings back memories. My grandmother
ironed with a charcoal iron. And you know what, I always thought those clothes had this
special softness you can't get with electric irons."
"In America?" Arini said skeptically.
"They were artists, lived out in the desert. But when I tried to iron with it, I'd get
charcoal streaks all over the clothes. What's your secret?"
"Hardwood charcoal, the same wood they burn for distilling arak."
"Can I try?"
She put Nol's wrinkled green Hansip shirt on the board. "This one is safe to
practice on."
Nol was at first annoyed at this detour, not to mention his uniform being practice,
but then he realized that the old fashioned iron might actually be a selling point—Miss
Tina, you want your clothes ironed with the charcoal press?
"This is your Civil Defense uniform, Pak Ziro?" Tina asked.
"I'm a squadron leader."
"Then I should feel safe renting here. Phew, this iron really is heavy. You must
have muscles in that arm, Arini." She put the iron on its base, relinquishing it to Arini.
"I'll have to come over here whenever you iron and exercise more."
"I'll be happy to let you do it all."
She would? Nol's mother never let anybody do the ironing. Suti had once tried to
take over a year after they were married, using a Sanyo electric iron, which resulted in the
first confrontation between wife and mother-in-law. This was not a typical screeching
shouting affair. Arini retreated without a word, but she would sit silently by, and her
coldness became so steadily oppressive that it weighed on everybody. Suti could be
stubborn too, and for a while she tried to outlast her mother-in-law with increasingly
faked warmth and chirpiness, but finally she gave in and said fine, you iron the clothes.
And now this American woman had in a few minutes charmed Mother, just like
that? Must be that hair.
Nol stretched out his arm to herd Tina along to the villa. "And what is you do, Ibu
Tina?"
"Just Tina. Right now I'm on a research trip, but I teach at a university. Stanford.
The one your son attends."
"Really!" Nol exclaimed in delight. "Do you teach him?"
"What's he studying?"
"Architecture and engineering."
"I'm in a different department."
A flagstone path by the garage led through the private gate and around a hedge to
the front garden.
"My, how lovely," Tina said. "That lawn looks like a putting green."
"It does, doesn't it?"
63

"And look at rice fields!" For a few moments she admired the fields, green stalks
rippling in the breeze.
"We Balinese are getting lazy," he said. "Tourism has spoiled us. See those
farmers over there? Javanese. "
She turned to him, greenish eyes turning bluish as her face moved from shade to
the last strong light of the setting sun. "Oh, come on. There are many hardworking
Balinese."
"Kids these days wouldn't even know a plow from a hoe. They just want to be
professional surfers or models."
Nol showed Tina the house, two bedrooms, sitting room, kitchen and dining
room, and a garden bathroom that was turning wild, bougainvillea vine snaking toward
the toilet. But Tina loved it, exclaimed that she adored outdoor bathrooms. Nol mentally
added another fifty dollars to the rent.
Tina inspected the pool, three meters by five, a foot of scummy water on the
bottom.
"We're draining it to do some cleaning," Nol said.
"Don't take too long," Tina said. "It's not good to keep a pool empty for long."
This was news to Nol. "Excuse me?"
"The water table around here is pretty high, and the pressure below can pop out
your concrete."
"Oh, that, yes, of course. No, we'll fill up as soon as we're done."
"With natural spring water."
Nol put extra regret into his sigh. "It's the dry season and we're not getting as
much. I think the spring's drying out." She began to frown, so he hastily added, "Don't
worry. This pool will be full of spring water by the time you move in."
"How much is the rent? I'll only need it for two months."
"Only two months? Then I'll have to ask for a premium."
They sat down at the porch table. By the time dusk had settled, requiring Nol to
reluctantly turn on the porch lights that would still be on his electricity bill, they'd settled
on a price. Nol agreed to fix the mosquito screens and the kitchen drawers that wouldn't
tug open. He was pleased, having gotten the better end of the bargain, but she looked
pleased, too, which made him worried that he could have done better.
"By the way, do you get snakes here?" she asked.
Nol's heart sank. "Well, we are on the edge of rice fields."
"They help keep down the rat population," she said. "I think it's a shame how
everybody kills a snake the moment they see it."
"A shame," Nol agreed. Then, curiously: "And what do you do if you see one?"
"If it's where it should be I'll leave it alone. If it's in the house I'll put it out where
it belongs."
"How?"
"Easiest way is to sweep it into a garbage bin."
A university professor who caught snakes and then let them go? Nol thought that
there was more to this woman than met the eye.
64

Chapter 12
After early morning flag raising at the clubhouse, Nol asked the security chief if
he could have the afternoon off. "I'm picking my son up at the airport," he said.
"Why didn't you ask me yesterday?"
What was this, Nol had to plan all the details of his life in advance? But he
prudently replied, "Last minute change."
"You can go ask the personnel manager. She wants to see you in her office at
eight anyways."
There it was. She had reviewed Nol's application. He was going to be put on full
time. Suti would be happy, but Nol wasn't so sure about this. Still, it'd be a good way to
soak up the days until Product Ziro took off. Then he could quit.
At eight, he knocked on the personnel manager's door and entered at her brusque
reply to enter. The manager was a Javanese woman, a girl really, wearing a business suit
and a severe expression. It baffled Nol that they'd put somebody so inexperienced in life
in such a responsible position. Why, she wasn't even married.
"You're late," she said.
He glanced at his watch. "It's eight o'clock, Mbak Lena."
' She pointed her pencil at the clock on the wall. "Ten minutes past."
Ten minutes? What was ten minutes? "Excuse me, but before we get going here, I
need to ask for the afternoon off. I'm picking my son up at the airport."
She put down her pencil in the center of his personnel file, and cupped her hands
to look at him, her back as straight as straight could be.
He put on a sheepish look. "I know. I ask for full-time work and now I say I need
the afternoon off. It's just one of those things."
"Oh, I'm used to staff asking for time off at the last moment," she said. "This
ceremony and that. I don't mind. I get invited."
"My children are having their tooth filing soon. And of course you're invited."
"That's kind of you. You can leave now, Pak Nol."
"That's okay, I'll work until noon."
"We're letting you go."
He wasn't sure he heard right. "Excuse me?"
"You can pick up your pay through today at the accountant's office."
"You're firing me?"
"We're letting you go, yes."
"Why?"
65

She lifted her pencil and pointed the tip in the air. "My new boss. Anak Agung
Gdé Raka."
"What? Who?"
"The new President Director. He orders, we obey."
"Raka? When did he become President?"
"When he bought the company's shares."
"You can't fire me," Nol said, rising to his feet. "I quit."
Mbak Lena sighed. "This is one part of the job I really don't like, Pak Nol."
Nol looked at her and saw her then as a young woman far from home, trying to
make something of her life. "It's okay. I understand. Bosses are bosses. You're still
welcome to my children's toothfiling."
It seemed to Nol that half the world was pouring out of Ngurah Rai International
Airport's customs hall, and the other half was waiting for them. The arrival board
announced flights from a dozen different countries. Nol imagined himself upon a camel
in Dubai, hopping with the kangaroos in Sydney, and boarding the underground train in
Tokyo where men in white gloves crammed you in like match sticks, but what did one do
in Seoul?
Uniformed greeters held up hotel signs, taxi touts waited to pounce, friends and
family impatiently strained their necks for the first glimpse of loved ones. Each time a
passenger appeared through the doors, the waiting crowd surged and stretched.
"This is a mob," Suti complained. "Where is Putu? His flight landed an hour ago."
She was standing on tip-toe, trying to see around the shoulders of an American surfer,
skin blasted dark by the sun, salt-crystals still in his shaggy hair. Nol \hadn't told her
about being fired. He'd let her bring it up. Aren't you supposed to be at work? she'd ask
one day, and he'd say, oh, haven't I told you?
Another scraggly surfer sidled through the waiting crowd, swigging at a large
bottle of Bintang beer. With him was a blond girl, barely dressed in short shorts and a
bikini top. Several Balinese boys snapped ribald comments. Were they Putu's friends,
here to meet him? Nol didn't recognize them, but they looked the type, well-dressed and
in high spirits.
One of the Balinese lads called out, "Do you bleach your pubic hair, too?"
The girl whirled and said in passable Balinese, "Is your brain down in your
balls?"
The crowd hooted at the boy, who shrunk embarrassedly away.
"Oh, there he is!" Suti cried. She jumped up and down, waving madly, but then
came to a sudden, puzzled halt. "That is him, isn't it?"
A year ago Putu had left with shiny black hair and unmarked golden skin, wearing
new jeans and shirt and blazer. This Putu had spiked hair that was rusted a reddish color
from sun, his face and arms were almost black, and a tattoo raced down the length of the
bare leg poking out from underneath baggy shorts. The shorts looked a millimeter away
from slipping entirely off his hips. And why was he hauling a heavy surfboard bag?
"Yo, dude!" the tall American surfer yelled, waving his hand, and Putu's face lit
up with a smile.
66

The blond girl shrieked and ducked under the bar to fling herself into his arms.
Nol watched as Putu returned her kiss enthusiastically—lustily, one might say.
Suti grabbed Nol's hand and together they marched around the crowd and up to
Putu, who was still clinging to the girl. He spotted his mother and immediately let go, his
face smoothing into a blank. "Mother," he said. "Father. Didn't you get my email? I said
my friends would meet me."
"These are your friends?" Nol asked.
"From college. Visiting Bali. They got here before me." He switched to English.
"Zoe, this is my mother and father. Mom, Dad, this Zoe. And this is Stan and Jim. Jim's
my roommate in the dorm." Which he explained again in Balinese.
The girl Zoo, the English a name for caged animals, this Zoo girl waxed
enthusiastic in a mix of English and Balinese. "Putu's been teaching me Balinese. I'm so
happy to meet you."
Nol ignored her to say to his son, "What happened to you? We send you away a
nice Balinese boy and you come back looking like one of those beach gigolos."
Putu's smile was more of a grimace. "Anyway, I'm back. Thanks for coming out,
Mother. Father. I'll be home later this evening. I'll get a ride—"
"You're coming home with us," Nol said.
Suti cupped his cheek. "I made you all your favorite cakes. And your
grandmother's waiting too." She laughed and wrapped her arms around him. "It's so good
to have you home."
Nol caught the slight rolling of eyes that his son gave this friend…this Jim…this
surfer. Drinking beer at noon. Could crystal meth be far behind? What was his son
learning at Stanford?
"I better go with them and call you later," Putu said to the girl.
Speaking as if we're not here, Nol thought. He took his son's duffel bag, and Putu
hustled his surfboard bag out to the parking lot. Nol hadn't any brought any rope to tie
Putu's the long bag to the top. "Why surfboards?" he growled. "You never surfed."
"I did too. At Kuta, Serangan. You weren't paying attention."
Nol opened the tailgate door and shoved the long bag over the left-hand seats,
which meant that Suti had to sit behind him and Putu in the rear, all in a row. On the
drive home, Suti barraged Putu with questions about America and school and his flight
and where was this Zoo animal girl from?
Putu stared sullenly out the window at the billboards—Ronald McDonald
Welcomes You to Paradise! – Complaints about the Police? Call our Police Complaint
Hotline! — and grunted short replies. Zoo girl was from some place called Pacific
Palisades.
"She looks like a nice girl," Suti said.
Nol didn't like hearing this at all. It sounded as if Suti had accepted the fact Putu
had a blond bulé girlfriend. Better than a Javanese Muslim girlfriend, but not by much.
Nol honked his horn at a pedestrian who was trying to cross the road and swerved
past her.
"You try to do that in America," Putu observed, "the cops will pull you over."
"She can call the police complaint line," Nol said. "Did you bring your report
card?"
67

"You can check my grades on-line. And I have a four point oh. That's the same as
top tens here." He yawned hugely and said in a gargle something like I want to change
my name.
"What'd you say" Nol said, wondering if he'd heard right.
"My name. Putu Swastika. It's on all my documents. I have to change it."
Nol turned to look at him. Suti put a palm to his chin and forced it straight. "Eyes
on the road," she said, and then to Putu, "What's wrong with your name?"
"Swastika, Mother. That's what's wrong. It's a Nazi term. I'm getting tired having
to explain it's also Hindu."
"It was ours before the Germans took it," Nol said. "It's ridiculous to change it."
"I get hate mail," Putu said. "Everybody thinks I'm a Nazi. I need to change it.
That's one thing I have to do this vacation."
"You're having your tooth filing, that's what you have to do," Nol said. A major
life cycle ceremony, and here his son was, wanting to change his perfectly good Balinese
name.
Putu lugged his surfboard bag through the garage while Nol wrestled with his
son's duffel bag, which by its smell was full of clothes in desperate need of laundering.
Dian had exams that day, which was why she hadn't gone to the airport, but she was
waiting impatiently at home, and pounced with glee and loud noise upon her brother.
"Look how much he's changed," Nol said to her when she'd calmed down a little.
"Aren't you shocked?"
He meant it teasingly, but Putu rolled his eyes while Dian seemed puzzled. "He
hasn't changed."
"Compared to when he left," Nol prompted.
"Oh, that was a long time ago. We're Facebook friends, I see Putu all the time."
It was Nol's turn to be puzzled. What was a Facebook friend? But he had no time
to ponder this, because Suti was hauling Putu over to his grandmother's pavilion, where
Arini was waiting on her porch. With her was Tina. Arini hugged and kissed her
grandson, her joy more stately than exuberant, but happy nonetheless. She said nothing
about Putu's change of appearance.
Putu looked quizzically at Tina, her orange hair sizzling.
Nol introduced them. "This is Miss Tina, she's renting the villa. Miss Tina, this is
my son, Putu Swastika." He put a little emphasis on the last name. "Our Stanford
University scholar. A four point oh average."
"My, that's something! I teach at Stanford. What are you studying?"
Nol answered for his suddenly frowning son. "Architecture and engineering." He
nudged Putu. "You don't have to be so shy about your accomplishments."
Putu's sun-blackened cheeks were flushing darker yet. "Bapa," he said, "I go to
Sanford University. Not Stanford. Sanford's down in LA. It's a small college." He said in
English to Tina, "My father gets confused. I don't know what I'm going to study, maybe
drama, try to get some character actor roles in TV or movies. I just finished up shooting a
video for a friend."
Nol wasn't sure he understood. "You're not at Stanford?"
"Sanford, Bapa."
68

one."
"And you want to be an actor?"
"It's Hollywood there, Bapa. Everybody's either writing a movie or wants to act in
69

Chapter 13
The news reported that former President Soeharto had recovered and was allowed
to return home. Footage showed him in a wheelchair, smiling that enigmatic half-smile
that could be interpreted a thousand different ways.
What would happen now to the bones, stored at police headquarters as potential
evidence? Nol hadn't forgotten about the bones, but he hadn't been thinking about them
either. For a day there, history had risen out of the dirt and snapped its dirty fangs, but
nobody had been badly bitten and the creature was slumbering again.
Nol had been busy supervising the renovations to the rental before Miss Tina
moved in. The pool man cleaned the pool, but when he started unrolling a hose from the
well, Nol stopped him. Nol had promised Tina a spring fed pool—well, not precisely a
promise, but foreigners took such things more seriously than they should—and spring
water was what she should get for the first filling. He called Timon, whose wife had
relatives in management at a spring water bottling plant. Several of the hygienic tankers
that transported volcanic spring water to the plant were diverted to the villa. Suti returned
home one evening to find the last of the trucks pulled up the side wall, pumping its
contents into the pool.
"Why," she asked Nol, "are we filling the pool with Bali Emerald Spring drinking
water?"
"We have to fill the pool as quickly as we can or else ground water will push the
pool shell out of the ground."
Tina inspected the renovations and the pool and declared herself pleased. She
moved in, bringing with her a suitcase, a laptop and printer, a few books and files. Most
of her belongings she'd already shipped home, she said. The first thing she did was place
on the book cabinet a small framed photo of two girls. The older frizzy-haired teen had
her arm around a younger girl. Clearly sisters, and Nol remembered what Tina had said
about her younger sister going missing, but he didn't say anything. He knew what the
feeling was like, and he didn't need to talk about it.
Tina asked him to drive her to the supermarket to shop for new linens and towels.
She had her own VW Safari, a rental she kept parked in the tin shed by the villa, so why
was she asking him to drive? Probably to get him to pay for her own home
improvements. She chatted on the way, asking Nol if Putu was enjoying his summer
vacation. Of course, Nol said, although truth to tell he'd hardly seen his son, who was
surfing all the hours of the day, not to mention hanging out all hours of the night with that
zoo girl.
At the store, Tina bought linens and towels, which she paid for herself. She also
bought box of fancy chocolates for Suti and Arini, and a box of Dunkin' Donuts for Dian
and Putu.
70

On the way back, she asked Nol if he wouldn't mind stopping at the beachfront
villa were the bones were found.
He did mind, but he didn't say anything.
At the villa, the pool concrete had already been poured and workmen were setting
dark turquoise tiles.
Tina snapped a few photos and contemplated the strollers on the boardwalk. "In
1965 this would have been empty coconut groves," she said. "Were the victims all from
the village?"
"I wasn't even born yet," Nol protested.
Tina put a hand on his arm. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't be stirring this up for you. It
must have been hard, growing up without a father."
Uncle Dharma had done the best he could. He'd taken Nol to temple and to fairs,
bailed him out of trouble, gave him jobs and pocket money, scolded him when he was
rude, hugged him with pride when Nol graduated from high school.
He coughed to clear the sudden lump in his throat.
"Let's go home," Tina said. "I have groceries to put in the fridge. And," she added
with a smile, "I promised your mother to help with the ironing."
71

Chapter 14
The Bali University library was a large room filled with warped bookshelves and
musty tomes. At the front desk, Tina filled in a call slip to access restricted material and
waited an hour before she was ushered into the head librarian's office. He was a fusty
man who reminded Tina of a silverfish. Perhaps they had stealthily evolved out of the
library's shelves and ended up running the place.
"Why do you wish to see the Harian Rakyat microfilm?" he asked with suspicion.
"I'm doing academic research," Tina said as reassuringly as she could.
"We can't just let anybody see those archives," he said. "It is dangerous. The
propagation of Communist doctrine is illegal."
Tina showed him her references and research permit, affixed with many stamps.
After photocopying her permit, he extracted a set of keys from a desk drawer and
led her to a locked and darkened room. It took him a minute to find the right key, and
when he turned on the lights, the florescent bulbs flickered before they steadied. Tina
hoped the microfiche machine on the lone table actually worked, but the air-conditioner
was as dead as the cockroach in the corner.
Tina opened a storage cabinet, and discovered that the only reference material
they held were the microfiches for the Harian Rakyat editions. This room, she thought,
was like a solitary confinement cell of an especially hostile prisoner. "Is there a printer?"
"Only notes are allowed," the librarian said. No copying, no printing. The serpent
never dies. We must keep a careful eye on it."
Thankfully, the machine worked, and despite the humidity, the film was still
good. To narrow her search, Tina started with the January 1960 editions. She
concentrated on the letters, but also perused a few articles and photographs from the
Classic Age of the Cold War. The articles were replete with the jargon of class struggle
and dialectic analysis and imperialist hegemony, spiced with local references to the
Seven Village Devils and the Crush Malaysia campaign.
A photo of Bung Karno, the Great Leader of the Revolution, at a microphone,
snarling at America, "To hell with your aid!"
And Foreign Minister Subandrio, smooth and oily and double-tongued.
Communist Party Chairman Aidit in his fancy white ministerial uniform, giving a speech
at a national conference, demanding that the peasants be given arms and turned into a
Fifth Force. No wonder the Indonesian army was alarmed. They had the guns, and men
with guns, Tina reflected, weren't very good at sharing.
The Harian Rakyat exuded an arrogant sense of destiny and success. And for
good reason. The PKI was the world's third largest Communist party. Under Sukarno's
protection and patronage, it was becoming more powerful by the month. No wonder
72

LBJ's State Department had been so gloomy about the prospects of losing yet another
Asian country to the Reds.
But how many of those triumphant people in the photos would soon be dead?
Within a month after the failed coup, Aidit himself would go from leadership of the PKI
to being on the run in dirty clothes, finally trapped and killed and tossed like garbage. But
what about that village woman in Javanese dress holding high a poster demanding lower
food prices, what about that farmer with his fist raised against his landlord? What had
happened to them?
The microfiche burned hot. Tina sweated, wiping her face with tissues.
Persevering, she finally spotted a name at the bottom of a letter. Madé Catra, Headmaster
of Grade School 2, Batu Gede, Bali. Tina read the letter twice. Catra referred to Karl
Marx, who had once mentioned Bali as an example of water rights and power. In the
letter, Catra stated that any land reform of the rice fields should maintain the proletarian
aspect of the water irrigation system presently under the control of the water temples and
not be subverted by greed.
This was hardly rabid, not even damning.
But what arrested her attention was the last sentence, in parentheses: "(I would
like to thank Comrade Luhde Srikandi for her critical insights into this topic.)"
Luhde Srikandi. A real person, and not just a myth.
Who was she?
"Nobody really knows," Professor Oemar said on the phone. "After the coup, the
army found out that the PKI had a secret organization, called the Special Bureau,
responsible for infiltrating the army and planning the coup. They had branches on the
main islands, and she was allegedly the Bureau agent for Bali."
"I didn't think the coup was that organized," Tina said, her cell phone to her ear. A
hundred feet below, waves surged against the cliff. Tina picked at a calamari salad, a treat
for successful research, but since the last time she'd eaten at her favorite cliff top café, a
WarZone franchise had opened in the adjacent limestone ravines. Tina tried her best to
ignore the bangs and flames and whoops and men charging along with very real looking
assault rifles as the battle built to a climax.
"Myth surrounds the events of Gestapu like fog—excuse me, are you watching
TV?"
"No, its grown men playing war next door. You were saying?"
"If Sukarno hadn't been such a flip-flop coward, they would have succeeded. He
waffled at the critical moment there at Halim air force base where they killed the
generals, and that allowed time for Soeharto to stage a counter coup. It was a close thing.
In the end, the winning became so absolute that people don't realize how close it was in
those early hours."
"And this Luhde Srikandi?"
"In Bali, after Gestapu, she became the focus of a witch hunt. The nationalists
demanded that she must be found and crushed. To be honest, I'm not sure she actually
existed, but was a propaganda symbol to rouse the nationalist spirit."
Tina thought of the letter but said nothing.
The next hill over, the men playing at war roared their triumphant battle cries.
73

The brass iron resembled a stately ship with a high sharp bow. With Arini
supervising, Tina filled the vented chamber with hardwood charcoal and squirted alcohol.
Blue flame whooshed at the touch of a match. On the porch was a rattan basket of sundried
laundry.
As they waited for the iron to heat, Tina remarked, "It looks like it has a long
history."
"My mother's," Arini said. "I stole it from home when I married."
"Where was home?"
"Here. Batu Gede. I was from a northern hamlet, up by the hill. We went to
school together from first grade."
"Really? You knew him your whole life, then."
"No," Arini said softly, "I knew him his whole life."
Tina winced. "I'm sorry. That was a careless way to put it. I was at the meeting
they had about those skeletons, and your brother-in-law Dharma told me about your
husband."
"You see that dent on the side of the iron?" Arini said. "My mother told me that
one wind-blown night during the monsoon storms, the Demon King from Nusa Penida
roared through our yard and flung the iron against the well. But I'd seen my clumsy father
knocking it off the ledge."
Tina held back a sigh. Had Teflon been invented in 1965? Because Arini was
coated in it, impervious to Tina's questions, no matter how subtle or discreet. Maybe a
more direct approach would work.
"I've heard stories about Communist leyak called Luhde Srikandi," she said.
"Who was she? Was she a real person?"
"I think the iron is ready."
Tina stifled another sigh. From the basket she picked out one of Arini's dresses, a
cotton print with yards of pleated skirt and balloon sleeves, a style fashionable half a
century previously.
"A Chinese dressmaker in Denpasar made that for me," Arini said. "He had the
latest fashion catalogs shipped over from Europe. Every day I got on a Lambretta scooter
to go to work at the Bali Hotel. I always liked to look nice for our guests."
Tina began ironing, working the nose of the iron into the tops of the pleats. The
brass clinked and clanked. "It must have been hard on you, raising your children on your
own."
"You been in Bali long enough to know better." Arini's tone was gently scolding.
"A child is raised by the whole family."
"You were still a mother."
"Careful, you're going to scorch the fabric. Let me finish that."
They exchanged places, and after a long silence, Tina said, "When I was fifteen,
my younger sister Nancy snuck out one night to a shopping center near our house. She
took a shortcut through the woods and she wasn't ever seen again. The police investigated
for months. Not a single clue. Her picture was put on milk cartons all around the country.
Nothing. My parents were devastated. My mother didn't get out of bed for year. Nancy
and I shared a bedroom, and to this day my mother blames me for not keeping an eye on
her."
74

Arini hung up the ironed dress and looked at Tina with a steady gaze.
"When I'm asking you questions about your husband," Tina said, "I'm also asking
myself about Nancy. A senseless tragedy."
"Oh, but when they took my husband, it made perfect sense," Arini said. "It was a
terrible time, but with such pure clarity. The killings started in Java in October. You
knew what was going to happen long before it did."
Tina was silent for a moment, then decided in for a penny, in for a pound. "I
found your husband's letter to the Harian Rakyat."
Arini was very still.
"I have a copy," Tina continued. "Right here in my bag."
Arini looked down at her hands and then back at Tina. "Why are you doing this?"
Tina steeled herself. "Because somebody has to. Somebody must."
Arini held her gaze. "It's your sister, isn't it? After all these years, there is
something there that hasn't healed."
A flush of anger threatened to spread to Tina's tongue and undo everything. Why
did Arini have to drag Nancy into this? "And has it healed for you after forty years? Does
the passing of time really make a difference?"
Arini thrust out a hand. "Let me see this article."
Tina handed her a plastic document holder, containing the faxed copy of the
letter.
Arini read it and said evenly, "I'm surprised they published this. He had a strong
social conscience but he was never PKI."
"That author's note at the bottom. He thanks Luhde Srikandi."
Arini put her finger to the note and rubbed back and forth. As if she was trying to
erase the name, Tina thought.
"Who was she, Arini?"
Arini was silent. Tina thought she wasn't going to answer, but then she murmured,
"In those days, strange creatures roamed the land. Half-angel, half-beast, hidden in
sunlight, visible when not looked for. She was the right hand of the wind, left hand of the
waters, she was everywhere and she was nowhere and she was in our home, whispering
to my husband, give me your heart, give me your heart."
75

Chapter 15
On Saturday, Nol lounged in bed, waiting for Suti to leave for the shop, but she
sat at her desk, crunching numbers on her calculator and frowning at the answers.
"You're going to be late for work," she told him.
He still hadn't told her he'd been fired, so he grudgingly dressed in his uniform
with the embroidered golf ball. "I'm thinking of quitting," he said, planting the seed.
"Give me more time on my new project."
She looked at him over her reading glasses. "What project is that?"
"I'm still working on the concept," he said, not willing to get into the details of
Product Ziro, which already had a prototype website, thanks to Yanto's hard work.
Returning her attention to the calculator, she said, "Don't quit just yet. They've
raised the rent on me. Asking double."
"What? Double? That's got to be a mistake."
"No mistake."
"They can't do that! I'll go down to the village office and have a talk with them."
"It's no longer a village business. The palace has bought controlling shares. Gdé
Raka. I'm negotiating with his manager."
This was news, but Nol wasn't all that surprised. In fact, he wasn't surprised at all.
Raka. Of course. "Then I'll go have a talk with him."
"Stay out of it. Raka doesn't like you. You'd make it worse."
All dressed up for work and with no work to go to, Nol went for an aimless drive.
He parked on the edge of the rice fields and watched the kites flying in the wind. Hungry,
he had a sudden craving for some of Men Djawa's kue lapis, but her market stall was
shuttered. She hadn't been seen since the morning those bones were found.
She'd first appeared in Batu Gede about the same time that Putu had played his
blue soap trick on Mantera's granddaughter. Suti had came home from the market with a
banana leaf package of cakes.
"Try these," she said. Nol suspiciously nibbled and then devoured the lot, the
moist chocolate layers of kue lapis, the coconut richness of kue pukis, the perfect jackfruit
topping on the round serabi solo.
"This woman's opened up a stall," Suti said. "The market ladies call her Men
Djawa. I hear she was Gerwani and her husband was PKI and he got killed and she got
rounded up. She was released from one of those detention centers in Java. She's not right
in the head." Tsking her sympathy, Suti added that Men Djawa asked all her customers if
they knew where her daughters are. Apparently in 1965 she'd escaped with her daughters
to Singaradja on the north coast to try to hide but the army sniffed her out. "They took her
away from her girls," Suti said, "and nobody knows what happened to them. Poor
woman."
76

The next morning, Nol walked to the market, a gloomy place of cement and
plastic roofing. He much preferred the old market with its trees and thatched huts, but
you could no more stop progress and civil project contracts with their kickbacks than you
could stop the tides. Men Djawa's stall was a dank cubicle in the back of the market. Nol
was surprised how well dressed she was. Compared to some of the market ladies with
their tattered sarongs and dirty blouses, she looked almost elegant in her clean kebaya,
her gray hair brushed back. Her white brows were like chalk marks. Her deep black eyes
did give a hint that not was all well behind the forehead. She had a look that wasn't quite
there, her eyes flicking this way and that with alert suspicion.
The cakes and tarts on display on the bamboo trays glowed moist and bright.
Nol's mouth watered as he waited in line behind two women in bureaucratic khakis, who
ordered a package of cakes to take to their office at the Ministry of Information.
"Have you seen my daughters?" Men Djawa asked the two women. She spoke
pleasantly enough. "Sri has a mole on her chin."
The two women gave each other a look. One said sweetly, "Old mother, since
we're buying so many, can you throw in an extra?"
"Absolutely. Anything for you fine patriotic ladies of the New Order. Oh, you're
from the Ministry of Information? Here, an extra two!"
Nol shuffled to the head of the line and asked for a couple of those and a couple
of that. "And who are you?" Men Djawa asked him.
"They call me Nol," he said, and surprised himself greatly by refusing the change.
"Keep it, old mother," he said.
A week later, Nol's family attended a festival at the village's mother temple. As
they knelt in the courtyard with his family to receive the priest's blessing of holy water,
he noticed Men Djawa standing to the side, glowering with puckered lips at his mother.
Arini must have sensed her stare, for she stopped praying. She leaned back on her heels
and returned Men Djawa's glare with a level gaze of her own.
"I can't kneel like that anymore," Men Djawa yelled out in coarse Balinese.
"Rheumatism. My prison cell flooded in the rains. My hands don't work properly."
Her crow's voice cut over the priest's prayers. Several worshippers close to her
murmured for her to keep silent. A younger priest headed her way to guide her out of the
courtyard. Before he got there, Men Djawa launched herself at Arini, knocking aside
offerings. "Where are my children?" she screeched. "Where are my daughters?"
Nol jumped to his feet and caged his arms around her. He made soothing noises,
saying, "We'll find them, don't worry."
Dharma ordered two temple guards to haul her out. Nol went with them, his arm
still around Men Djawa's warped shoulders, keeping up his gentle patter.
Back home from the ceremony, he asked his mother, "Was Men Djawa really
Gerwani?"
Arini put down the magazine she was reading, and for a long time was silent, an
odd light in her eyes. Then she answered pleasantly enough, "Back then her name was
Parwati. She lived in Batu Gede. Her house was the local secretariat. She was very
active."
"So you knew her?"
"Of course I did. It was a much smaller village then."
'Why was she so upset at you?"
77

"I knew her daughters. Catra taught them."
"What happened to them?" Nol asked tentatively, for he was on dangerous
territory that touched borders with the forbidden topic of his father.
His mother leaned forward, and now the odd light had strengthened into an
unsettling glow. "The rivers ran backwards and the mountains shook. Monsters clawed
the land and wicked women danced naked to seduce our heroes. Oh, who would come to
save us? Had the gods abandoned us? No! For there came a mighty hero, the General
who fought the monsters. The battle raged from earth to sun, the mighty dragon lashed its
tail, the turtle heaved its back. Of what importance the fate of two young girls? They
were like chaff, blown away in the storm and burned by the lightning."
On the hill, growing hungrier yet, Nol watched the kites for a while longer and
then drove on to a food stall where he bought dozen fried banana fritters. He took them to
the police station to share with the duty cops, including a desk sergeant, a friendly
Javanese. He chatted with the sergeant for awhile before asking, "Didn't you guys take
Men Djawa in? When those skeletons were found?"
"Sent her to a mental clinic," the sergeant said. "She's really gone round the bend
this time."
"Bangli?" Poor woman. A government clinic wasn't a place to be stuck without
family to help out.
"A private one out by Gianyar."
"Mbeh," Nol said, surprised. "A private one? Isn't that expensive?"
"I guess somebody's paying for it."
"And what's happened to the bones?"
"Funny you should ask. They were in the main evidence room at Police
Headquarters but they've been kicked back to us."
In the front courtyard, the flag whipped hard in the wind. The light was crisp
enough to bite. On the road beyond, trucks growled past, loaded with black river sand,
enough sand to bury a thousand bodies. "Can I see them?"
"The bones?" The sergeant's surprise turned into a shrug. "The private will take
you. Just don't touch anything."
The rookie showed Nol a back room with metal racks for shelves. Two barred
windows admitted dim light. The bones were in cardboard boxes, jumbled together, but
the skulls were in their own box. All showed fractures. Not a single one with a bullet
hole.
Leaving the police station, Nol drove to Gianyar on the new highway the
government had bulldozed through rice fields. He took it slow to save on fuel. Vehicles
swooshed by him, everybody impatient to get someplace. East bound trucks were loaded
with limestone, and westbound trucks with volcanic sand. The whole island was getting
all mixed up and turned around.
The mental clinic occupied a former colonial building with wide porches. A new
wing was graced by a fenced by pleasant garden. As Nol parked the car in the visitor's
lot, he noticed in the garden several patients sitting on tree shaded benches or strolling on
the path, with nurses in attendance. You didn't get that kind of attention without paying a
lot of money.
78

He told the receptionist, and then a series of nurses, and finally a young Chinese
doctor with lively eyebrows, that he was Men Djawa's relative.
"I didn't know she had any," the doctor said.
"Not a blood relative," Nol said. "I'm a civil defense volunteer from Batu Gede
and I more or less adopted her and kept an eye on her."
The doctor thought for a moment and then asked him to sign a visitor's ledger
before summoning an attendant. The attendant escorted him down a hallway to the new
wing, where he unlocked a door. Beyond was a plain room with a bed and built-in closet.
Men Djawa sat on a chair in an enclosed porch overlooking the garden. In her clinic robe,
she looked even more shrunken. Her gray hair was washed and combed straight back in a
manner that suggested she was bathed by others. Her unblinking gaze focused on empty
air.
"Don't know what you're going to get out of her," the attendant said. "She's dosed
to the max."
"Hello, old mother," Nol said, squatting beside her.
She rotated her head to look at him with dull eyes. "Did you find my children?"
The words floated out of her.
"Are you getting enough to eat? Are they taking good care of you?"
"They should come and visit me. Why don't they come and visit their mother?
What kind of children leave their mother alone like this?"
"Old mother, do you remember the bones on the beach? The ones that were dug
up?"
Men Djawa frowned at Nol's nose.
"Who were they?" Nol persisted. "Who were the buried ones?"
Her gaze struggled with some remembrance, trying to lift it up through the drugs
and assemble it in her fractured mind. "I know you. You're the one who is nothing."
"Madé Ziro. Nol. You know me, you know my mother, Wayan Arini."
"Your mother. Why should she have her children when I don't have mine?" Men
Djawa's lips worked furiously, her cheeks sucking in and own. Without warning, she spat
in Nol's face. "Where are my children?" she shrieked. "Why does she have hers?"
Shocked, Nol was wiping the spit from his face and didn't see her hand coming at
him, but the attendant caught it in his fist and gently pushed her arm down.
"You better leave," he said to Nol.
79

Chapter 16
On the porch by the plunge pool, Tina finished a cup of early morning coffee and
then phoned Reed Davis on her cell. It was early to call, but she wanted to make sure to
catch Reed at his house. He famously refused to succumb to the tyranny of the cell
phone, as he called it, saying there was little in life that was that urgent. He said he
wanted to stretch his remaining years, not speed them up.
When he answered, there was no sleepiness to his good morning.
"Any chance of me stopping by and seeing you today?" Tina asked.
"About what?" he asked cautiously.
"1965."
He was silent for a moment and then told her to meet him at the Hash House
Harrier run that afternoon. "I'm the spiritual advisor," he said.
Tina vaguely knew of the Hash, an expatriate ritual where a pack of runners
followed trails through the countryside and afterwards drank gallons of beers and sang
dirty songs. "What's a spiritual advisor?"
"I say grace over the beer."
"Do I have to run?"
"We can amble," Reed said, and gave directions to the run.
That afternoon, Tina drove into the hills beyond Ubud. Following posted signs,
she found the Hash runners gathered in a pasture, circled loosely around a beer wagon
loaded with kegs and a token box of mineral water.
Reed spotted Tina and gave her a brusque wave before clapping his hands to
summon the others. "Gather around ye faithful for the prayer," he called. He intoned "Oh
Great Hound, may the trails be true, may the on-ons be loud, may the shiggy be deep, and
may the beer be cold."
"Shiggy?" Tina asked she and Reed started off at a leisurely pace. Already the
front runners were on the upper rice terraces, crying "on-on" as they found the splotches
of flour marking the trail that the hares had laid.
"You'll see," he said.
The marked trail led through woods. Monkeys in trees chattered angrily at the
interlopers. The woods dipped to a stream, the marked path leading through a wide
stretch of mucky bank.
Reed pointed to the river mud. "That's shiggy."
"I'm not going through that," Tina said. "These are new running shoes I have on."
80

"This way," Reed said, and they made their way back into the woods to a tiny
temple, its eroded brick thick with lichen. A deadfall in the clearing provided a place to
sit. Crickets chirped and somewhere a bird trilled. In the distance a truck growled in low
gear. "Digging sand from the river," Reed said. "Illegal, of course. Nibbling away the
island."
"It's called progress," Tina said.
"You wanted to see me. Here I am."
"I've been doing some reading up about 1965 and Gestapu. It's like a
postmodernist play ahead of its time. The drama is clear enough, but the audience can
interpret it any way they want. A devious Communist plot that went haywire? Sure—
Aidit and the politburo weren't innocent angels. Soeharto manipulating his way to power?
Why not, the facts can be marshaled in that direction. The CIA masterminding it all?
Certainly they had a finger in the pie, why couldn't they baked have the whole thing in
the first place?"
"Or it was just everybody muddling through," Reed said.
"In my research I came across the name Madé Catra. That ring a bell?"
"The Batu Gede schoolteacher."
"I went digging through some archives and found the letter he wrote to the Harian
Rakyat, the letter that doomed him."
"He was a good man. Those days, personal virtue didn't amount to squat."
"In Batu Gede, there's this legend about a leyak witch called Luhde Srikandi." At
the mention of the name, Reed's face twitched briefly. Tina briefly stated the content of
the letter. "At the end, Catra mentioned Luhde Srikandi, thanking her for her insight.
Proof she's more than just a legend but a real person. But nobody wants to talk about her.
Do you know anything?"
Reed scratched his cheek, looking aged and weary beyond his already old years.
He watched a orange butterfly fluttering on the still air. "No offense, Tina, but I'm not in
the mood to talk about this."
"Why? Did you sell her hair like you did the others?"
Reed gave no reaction, not even a twitch of jaw. "Srikandi was one of Arjuna's
wives. The warrior princess. Sumbadra was his demure housewife. You should write a
paper, Tina. Feminist iconology in the Hindu epics."
"Reed—"
"Remember when I told you the trickle of blood started in Batu Gede?"
"Yes."
"That implies a first victim, doesn't it?"
"You knew her? She was a real person?"
"Her real head was really chopped off and real blood flowed."
"Does she have a name?"
"I grew up a WASP and a secret Catholic. My father the icy Presbyterian lawyer,
my mother the closet Catholic Italian dragging me in secret to my first communion, Mass
in Latin, confession and penance. I've started going to Mass again, sporadically,
something about getting old, I guess." The butterfly flittered out of view. "You aren't a
priest, Tina, and this," Reed said, nodding at the broken temple, "is not a confessional."
1965
81

On the second day of the Galungan holy days, Reed drove his jeep to Batu Gede.
Decorated bamboo poles bent over the household gates. Balinese in their finest dress
strolled the lanes, out to visit family and friends. The women wore their long hair in the
traditional style, curled up into broad-loaf buns. This hair business was getting to the
point that Reed was noting heads like a farmer contemplating a harvest.
At the Batu Gede hill, Reed passed through the teak forest's cathedral hush and
rattled down the switchbacks. A hollow afternoon light spread across the sky, a warm
salty sea breeze drifted on the air. At the bottom of the hill, he rounded the last corner.
Just ahead Comrade Naniek was bent over her bicycle, examining the bike's flat rear tire.
She wore her usual trousers and blouse, a large bag slung over her neck. Standing by was
a woman in mended sarong and kebaya buttoned with a safety pin. Reed recognized her
from the rally—Desak the salt-maker's wife. Naniek must have been giving her ride into
town on the bicycle's back pillion seat.
Reed braked to a stop. Naniek looked up, the brim of farmer's hat throwing a
sharp line of shadow across her cheeks.
"Want a lift?" Reed said. "The bike will fit in the back.
Ignoring him, Naniek said to Desak, "We'll have to walk." .
Reed eased the jeep into gear, keeping pace as she pushed the bike. "You're being
rude," he said. "I'm only offering help."
She stopped and gave him another level look. "All right."
He hoisted the bike in the back, the rear wheel sticking out over the tail gate, and
opened the front side door for the two women. Naniek sat in the middle. She held herself
stiff and tidy, limbs all tucked in.
"I'm Reed Davis," he said.
She gave a side glance out of the corner of her slanted eyes. "You buy hair."
He pretended to peek under her hat. "Have you sold yours?"
She didn't reply. She held her hands tight in her lap. No rings. No jewelry. The
pocket of her bag was open, and Reed could see Gerwani pamphlets. She closed the
pocket. Reed leaned across her to introduce himself to Desak. Her skin was sun-darkened
and coarse, her hands calloused, her fingernails cracked and yellowed. She had the aura
of hardscrabble poverty and gave Reed a nervous twitch of smile.
"I'm from a city called Boston," Reed said, switching to English. "One of my
ancestors fought in the Battle of Bunker Hill against the British army colonial
imperialists. The American leader told his men, 'don't fire until you see the whites of their
eyes.' Do you know how close that is? I measured it when I was a kid. I had a pellet gun
and a cousin and I told him to march slowly toward my fort and at fifty feet I could see
the whites of his eyes. He wasn't very happy when I shot him."
Reed was just making noise, figuring the women could understand the friendly
tone if not what he was saying.
To his delighted surprise, Naniek said primly in English, "You shoot your
relatives."
"Hey, he was a British reactionary colonial imperialist and I was the
revolutionary." The jeep's tires rattled on the wooden planking placed over the irrigation
culvert. "Let's see. I'm twenty nine. I've been in Indonesia for four years, Bali for two.
My father is a lawyer and I am supposed to be a lawyer too but in college I heard about
82

Bali from a professor there and I said one day I'm going to Bali, and here I am. But I have
a terrible confession."
She flicked him another side glance.
He switched to Indonesian. "I hate durian fruit."
She stayed with English. "You speak Bahasa very well. Did you go to CIA
language school?"
Reed sighed extravagantly. "You Communists have no sense of humor."
"A revolution is a serious business. Every citizen must be a soldier."
"Who said that? Chairman Mao? Aidit?"
"Thomas Jefferson."
"Oooh-kay, got me there." He lifted both hands from the steering wheel. "Let's
say for sake of argument I'm a lousy CIA running dog spy. Would you really think any
less of me?"
Did her lips curl slightly at the corners? "You are going to drive off the road."
Reed straightened the jeep away from the ditch. "You still haven't told me your
name."
"You can drop us there," she said, pointing to the old colonial house and Gerwani
secretariat.
Two young girls were playing hop-scotch on the cracked cement driveway of the
empty carport. They broke off their sisterly arguing to stare at Reed as he unloaded the
bicycle. Mothers were picking up their tykes from the day care, and the chairwoman
Parwati was talking to several of the women. Her gaze cut coldly to the jeep.
"Thank you," Naniek said, taking her bike from him. She studied the long-nosed
blond monkey Tjok Arsana had painted on the jeep's door.
"Looks like me, doesn't it?" Reed said.
"The monkey is more much more handsome," she said, and pushed her bicycle
through the gate without a backward glance.
Wayan Dharma shooed away barking dogs to usher Reed into his compound. He
had company, including Wayan Arini, the Bali Hotel assistant manager, and her husband
Catra, a slender man with the absent-minded air of a scholar. Reed had brought a gift,
half a pound of refined sugar, which he gave to Lastri, Dharma's wife. Sugar was
expensive, often hard to find, and she was so pleased she immediately spooned it into
new coffee for the several guests.
"My brother Catra is the grade school head master," Dharma said proudly. "When
I was working the rice fields, he taught me how to read."
"And my brother worked so he could pay my school fees," Catra said. "I believe
already know my wife Wayan Arini?
"You've cut your hair," Reed told her. "It looks good."
"In our village, you can tell PNI and PKI women apart just by their hair," Arini
said. "The PNI women have short hair and PKI have long hair. Strange, isn't it?"
Dharma roared with laughter, hugely amused.
In the garden pavilion, Reed sat cross-legged on a mat with the other men and
provided his standard history of vagabond adventurer, the youngest of three children, not
married. Yes, he said in reply to Dharma's joke, there was a chance he might bring a
83

Balinese bride back to Boston, where she would have to learn to ice skate to go to
market. Everyone howled.
After Dharma's relatives took their leave, Dharma escorted Reed to the palace to
meet the young prince, Anak Agung Mantera, who was also the royal patron of the
nationalists. The palace owned many of the rice fields the Communists wanted to give to
the landless peasants.
"I sharecropped for his father, the previous prince," Dharma said. "I am now
Mantera's collector."
Reed knew that the collector who collected the landowner's share of the rice
harvests, Dharma received a percentage. No wonder the farmer was so virulently anti-
Communist. By threatening to confiscate rice fields, the PKI was threatening his
livelihood.
Dharma led Reed through the palace gates and across a central garden to an openair
pavilion that boasted carved posts and a pressed tin ceiling. Hanging from the eaves
were varnished bamboo cages, holding exotic tropical songbirds. Reed was more taken
with the antique furniture lining the back wall, noting in particular a matched pair of
hanging wall cabinets, glossy mahogany, with an arched pediment tops and double glass
doors. Dutch, mid-19 th century. He could sell that in heartbeat, as well as the slender 18 th
century marquetry chair that Anak Agung Mantera was sitting upon to receive his guests.
Another chair of ordinary teak, and slightly lower than the prince's, was brought
in for Reed, while Dharma squatted on the pavilion steps. As Reed and the prince sipped
tea and nibbled on Balinese sweet cakes, Mantera talked about his birds.
"And how do your American robins sing?" he asked. A slender urbane fellow, he
carried an air of indolence. Reed instinctively didn't like the guy.
As for robins, he'd had never paid attention. As far as he was concerned, birds
trilled and twittered and sometimes chirped. "I'm sure they do," he said.
"I should like a robin."
"I'll see what I can do."
Another group of well-wishers approached, and Reed's audience was over.
Dharma took Reed on a tour of the rice fields. The paddies had been recently flooded,
with new shoots poking like green fuzz above the shallow water. Dharma's broad feet
confidently tromped the narrow terraces, while Reed navigated them like an uncertain
tightrope walker. They halted by a mud pond in which water buffalo wallowed. Dharma
said that Batu Gede had done well to keep out most of the pests ravaging other fields,
which made these fields all the more attractive to the Communists, who were claiming
large swathes under the land reform law.
"We work hard for years to keep up the irrigation, to keep the land good, and they
think they can come in and take it from us just like that?" Dharma said. "Especially those
Gerwani women. Stirring up the refugee salt-farmers, saying they should take our fields.
Those people don't even belong here." The Balinese man brooded over the fields and then
said, "We can turn the tables. Those mangroves they tore up belong to the village. They
want to take our rice fields, we can take away their salt farms."
An hour later, Reed said his pamits and drove away. He slowed down as he
approached the Gerwani secretariat. In the cool of the dusk, Naniek sat out by roadside
on a wooden bench with the two girls, who were playing a lively game of pat-a-cake,
chanting loudly to the slap of their palms. Naniek had washed her hair, which was still
84

damp, and she was brushing it with a turtle shell comb. Reed waved at her. She tilted her
head, and as she combed underside of the strands she watched him without expression.
A week later, he stopped by the Batu Gede salt-making farms and bought five
kilos of the coarse grain crystals, packed in a basket of woven bamboo, paying ten times
the market price. The salt-farmer, rejoicing in this small windfall, allowed Reed to take
photographs of the cleared salt pans and the filtering and drying process, which used
solar evaporation in dry weather and firewood stills in the rainy season. After snapping
off a roll of film, Reed wandered through the refugees' shanties, built on the high ground
in front of cleared mangroves. Dogs barked and mothers snatched their pot-bellied
children away from his sight. One shack of thatch and drift-wood and rusted tin sheet had
a Gerwani sign out front.
Desak's, Reed assumed, but she wasn't in.
He continued on. In the street in front of the Batu Gede Gerwani secretariat, the
two girls played hopscotch. They were still in their school uniforms, their slates and
school bags on the bench. He didn't see Naniek's bicycle. Reed asked the girls if Miss
Naniek was home. The older girl shot him a suspicious glare, but the younger one
cheerfully said she was with Headmaster Catra at the school.
The school was wedged between coconut groves and the southern rice fields. The
single building sported a red tile roof and diligently whitewashed walls. The three
classrooms were connected by a cement porch. In the tidy garden rose a flagpole, and the
only sound was the flag snapping in the breeze. Naniek's bicycle leaned against the gate.
Reed parked and entered, walking along the yard's gravel path. In the farthest classroom,
Naniek sat on a low desk, her palms pressed flat to the desk top, her legs thrust forward,
her black skirt molded to long thighs. Catra stood close before her, arms crossed on his
headmaster's khaki blouse, listening intently as she talked. She lifted a hand and touched
his elbow. The touch dislodged his arms, which fell to his sides.
Catra spotted Reed, and he instantly smiled and waved him into the classroom.
"Did you know that Karl Marx once wrote about the Balinese water irrigation
system?" he asked.
"I had no idea," Reed said. "What did he say, Miss…?"
"Naniek," Catra said.
A flush colored to her cheeks.
"I have to go," she said to Catra and brushed by Reed without a word.
Catra blew air and shook his head. "I've known Naniek for a while. She can be as
abrupt as a car crash."
"Friendly as one too," Reed said, watching her ride off on her bicycle, her back
erect, those calve muscles working smoothly.
"A revolutionary princess," Catra said. "Very earnest."
85

Chapter 17
Nol's sister Wayan was wealthy enough to have a fancy lawyer's office, but in
order not to alert the tax man, she worked out of a decrepit building lodged in Denpasar's
small intestines.
Nol found a parking spot by a meatball soup vendor, who had place his food-cart
in the shade of weary, grime-smudged tree. In his sister's law office, three assistants
communed with their computers and one fellow pecked away at a manual typewriter.
Wayan was in her inner office, partitioned off by glass windows. She was reading a legal
document to a young, well-dressed couple.
A few minutes later, the couple left, and Nol took one of the hard plastic chairs,
still warm from its previous occupant.
"And what were they here for?" he asked as he fished a mint out of the bowl on
her desk. Files and folders crammed the inner office from floor to ceiling, blocking light
from the window. Nol could practically hear the worms munching through the paper.
"A pre-nuptial agreement. She's rich and he's not."
"Same caste?"
"Same as us. Sudras. How's Putu?"
"He has this American girlfriend. Suti says we should invite her to the tooth
filing."
"Of course you should."
"You don't even know her. She's got teeth like a monkey's," Nol said, although
truth to tell, he'd never seen teeth so white and even. "We send Putu to America and he
comes back a surfer with an American girlfriend."
"What's wrong with that?"
"His skin's all dark. Like he's a peasant. We're dragging him to his homecoming
blessing at the Temple of the Crater Lake. He didn't want to go. Said the surf was going
to be good and he didn't want to miss it." Nol shook his head in disbelief, as if such a
pilgrimage could be postponed at a whim. He popped another candy into his mouth. "I've
been developing this idea. A new sales approach. See, I open a website and sell rice and
noodles and basic nonperishable market food. Everybody orders online, and everything's
delivered to their doors by a sales team. It's going to be big. A small startup investment
could earn you serious money."
Wayan's expression flattened. She leaned back and yelled through a slot in the
window, "Is that document ready?"
One of her staff handed her a folder. She put on her reading glasses.
86

Nol crunched the mint. "Wayan, do you remember anything about our father?"
She looked up from the file, her eyes pudgy half-moons over her reading glasses.
"Why do you ask?"
"Just wondering. Am I like him? It’s funny to think I could be like my own father,
maybe I smile like him, or scratch my ears like he did, and I wouldn’t even know."
"He sang me songs. 'Old Grandmother', 'Let's Climb the Mountain'. He had a
myna bird he taught to sing."
"I know that," Nol said. The myna bird had been family lore, told to him by Mak
but not his mother. He wanted to keep one himself, teach it to talk, but his mother had
flatly refused.
"Father spent a lot of time with Mak," Wayan said. "He'd talk with her for hours.
When he was a boy, she helped with his schoolwork. Just like she helped with mine.
Yours, too."
That was true. This was easy to forget, what with Mak doddering around with her
mind half-melted between reality and imagination. But she had been very smart and
clever and knew many things besides weaving. She could even pluck his algebra x's and
y's out of the air. "When you are taught by Dutch nuns, you don't forget," she had told
him, referring to her education in a Dutch school in Java before she turned guerrilla
revolutionary with that pistol of hers.
Nol put a handful of mints in his pocket and asked, "Do you remember when the
Red Berets came to get Father?"
"Why do you want to talk about this?"
"I think Mantera was the one who turned him in."
Wayan frowned, scratching her forehead with the capped end of her fountain pen.
"I know you don't like Raka, but his father was always nice to me. I remember once
Mantera gave me carbon paper. It like magic. I drew for hours, wondering how it could
copy."
"I was thinking about something," Nol said. "The PKI here had weapons. They
had a lot of people. Why didn't they organize and fight back?"
Wayan glanced at her staff in the outer office and leaned forward, her hefty
bosom pressed against the edge of the desk. "You listen to me, younger brother. Don't
you ever go around saying that. You never know who could be listening. It's very
dangerous. Not all of it is history yet." She handed over the file. "Tell Uncle Dharma it's
just a concept. He can pencil in changes."
The front passenger door of Nol's car stood open, and Gong hunched sideways on
the seat, slurping at a bowl of meatball soup in his fat hand.
"What are you doing in my car?" Nol asked
Gong slurped the last of the soup and handed the bowl back to the vendor.
"Waiting for you to give me a ride to Ramayana Mall."
The mall wasn't far. "Why don't you walk?"
"When you can give me a ride?"
With an aggrieved sigh, Nol got in behind the wheel, putting the folder on the
dashboard.
Gong reached out a hand and took it.
87

"That's confidential!" Nol snapped, trying to grab it back, but Gong fended him
off with a meaty forearm as he flipped open the folder.
"You give that back or I'm driving you straight to the police station." Gong let the
folder go, and Nol stuck down his door's side pocket, out of reach.
Gong burped. "I was thinking about Men Djawa," he said as Nol ground the
gears. "I'm missing her cakes. I guess you're missing them too. Missing them so much
you had to go see her in the Gianyar clinic."
"Why shouldn't I go see her?"
Gong burped again. "That was spicy. The doc says I should cut my food. I have
high blood pressure. I'm not supposed to get excited. Don't get me excited, Nol."
"What's there to get excited about? So I went and saw her."
"About what?"
"People in hospitals, you go see them. That's what you do."
"Mbeh, calm down, brother. You're going to have a stroke."
At the Ramayana Mall, Nol turned into the entrance, which had a parking booth
and an attendant asking for two thousand rupiah.
"I'm just dropping him off," Nol told her. "I'm not parking."
"Sorry, sir. You have to pay."
"I don't have small money on me," Nol said to Gong.
Gong reached for his wallet and gave him a five thousand note. "You were always
cheap," he grumbled. When the attendant gave the change, Gong shoved the coins into
the ashtray. "Keep it for next time."
Nol assumed that the file Gong had pawed through held another contract draft for
a land deal. At a red light he opened the cover and was stunned to see that in fact the
contract was a concept for a lawsuit against Anak Agung Gdé Raka.
Nol startled as the cars behind him honked. For the first time that he could
remember, he'd missed gunning a green light.
He found his uncle at his compound, taking delivery of bamboo and thatch for the
temporary structures necessary for the tooth filing ceremony. After a last check, Dharma
led Nol to a back porch where they sat on the steps, facing the pig sty, a contented porker
snoozing in the dirt, fattening up for the feast and blissfully unaware of his fate. Dharma
took the folder but didn't immediately open it, asking instead about Nol's new renter.
"Was she the American woman at the meeting, asking about the bones?" Dharma
asked.
"Her rent was up and she was still here for a few more months and she heard
about my place."
"It's odd," Dharma said.
The comment wasn't an accusation, but a reflection. Nol's uncle was thinking of
something, his shrewd mind whirring away, but Nol knew better than to probe. Dharma
harrumphed and opened the folder. "Have you had a look at this? I'm suing Raka. The
bastard took a big land deal right out from under my nose. This is that deal you did some
work on, so you better hope he backs off because your percentage is riding on this."
"You mean the land out in Tabanan?"
"That's right."
88

Nol didn't like the sounds of this at all. "But that deal was with Mantera, not
Raka," he said.
"Raka's taking over his father's affairs," Dharma said. He shook his head. "I knew
this day would come. Mantera's not a man you can fully trust. He should be keeping his
word, not letting his son break it. But like father like son and like son like father."
Dharma unclipped his pen and added a name underneath Raka's. "Anak Agung Mantera
as second defendant," he said. "Now that will surprise the old prince. But we'll wait until
after the tooth filing. I want to invite him one last time as honored guest."
As Nol squatted on the steps of the kitchen, eating a late lunch of rice and pork, a
scooter hummed up the lane, and a moment later Putu popped through the gate. This was
a change, Nol thought. Not only was his son home during prime sun-baking time but he
was dressed in trousers and shirt and shoes, looking like he had a regular office job, and
he had in his hand a manila folder. He nodded at his father, took off his shoes, and
padded into the kitchen to get his own meal, a plate of food piled like Mount Agung
They ate silently and quickly. Putu took the dirty plates to the sink and brought
out a pitcher of water to wash their fingers over the side of the steps.
"Tomorrow we're going to the Temple of the Crater Lake for your homecoming
blessing," Nol said. "And we're asking for holy water for your tooth filing ceremony."
Putu scowled. "Why does everything have to be so feudal? Today we have
computers that can think like a person and we send satellites to space and we know how
the world was made and how we evolved but we still make offerings and have rituals like
we did a thousand years ago, when there wasn't any science at all, just superstitions."
Nol swung on his son, astounded. "What is this nonsense?"
Putu didn't reply. He handed the folder to Nol. Within was a computerized form
from the Civil Registry. "I was there all morning," Putu said. "You need to sign it right
there at the bottom."
It was an application for a legal change of name. Nol had assumed that Putu's idea
was just a passing jet-lagged whim. He hadn't given it any more thought. Now he traced a
line with his finger. Requested new name, and then Putu's carefully inked letters. Johnny
Putu.
"That's my screen credit for the short movie I did," Putu said. "I want to keep it."
"But if you change your name this way, it's permanent."
"Don't worry, Bapa. This is just for America."
"You think when I was growing up people didn't make fun of my name? Madé
Ziro? I can't begin to tell you."
"People aren't making fun of my name, Bapa. I get hate mail. Threats."
"I sometimes wondered what my father would have named me if he'd been alive.
But I decided early that I was who I was. If people were going to make fun of my name,
then I would be proud of it. I was always proud of it and am proud of it now. Madé Ziro.
That's who I am. Why, I'm even starting a company with my name. Product Ziro."
"My name though, Putu Swastika, with Americans, they think it's like saying I'm
proud to be a Nazi. That's how it is over there. They spit at me. Even Zoe thinks—"
"This bulé girl says you should change your name, is that it? A perfectly good and
respectable and proud Hindu name that your own father gave you?"
89

"Don't take it so personally. People here change their names all the time, if they're
sick or have bad luck—"
"So it's bad luck you have a father who gave you your name? Who worked hard to
send you to school and give you the best start in life? This is bad luck?"
Putu rose with a long and aggrieved sigh. "You are turning everything around."
He snatched the folder from Nol's hand and stalked off.
Nol's lunch sat in his stomach like a fermented brick. "Johnny Putu," he muttered.
What was the world coming to?
That afternoon, Nol went next door to make sure that Tina knew she was invited
along on the pilgrimage. She'd be good company for Mother.
Tina wasn't in, but sitting on the bottom step of the porch was Mak. For once she
was fully dressed, in sarong and blouse, and even wore sandals on her feet, as if she'd
made a long and weary journey to get here. Two pieces of songket textiles were draped
across her lap. Nol had no idea she still had some left.
"What are you doing here, Mak?"
"I'm waiting for the American to sell her some songket."
The bungalow's doors and front room windows were open. Rather trusting of
Tina, considering her laptop was right there on the table. Balinese wouldn't steal—well,
not most Balinese—but you couldn't say the same about the Javanese working in the
nearby fields. Easy enough for them to jump over the wall and grab what they could. She
should have at least closed and latched the side windows. He entered the front room to do
that for her, but his attention was caught by a folder open on the table. Tucked into a
plastic sleeve was a copy of a newspaper page. The communist Harian Rakyat, no less,
the text in old-fashioned typesetting.
The page was from the letters section. One of the letters was titled "Water rights,
land reform, and Marx."
Written by Madé Catra.
Once Nol's shock eased, he tried to read the letter, but was rebuffed by the dense
theoretical language. Apparently Karl Marx had once mentioned Bali as an example of
water rights and power, and it seemed to Nol that his father was arguing against that
interpretation, which was a great relief, for if his father was arguing against Marx, then he
certainly was no Marxist.
Nol almost missed the tiny print in parentheses at the bottom of the letter: (I
would like to thank Comrade Luhde Srikandi for her crucial insights.)
Nol read that again, and a third time. The name still remained. Luhde Srikandi.
Comrade.
What was going on here?
He wandered out to the porch and sat down by his great-aunt, who was waiting
with the relentless patience of the aged, staring at nothing.
"Mak," he said.
She didn't hear him.
"Mak," he said. "Who was Luhde Srikandi?"
She blinked and focused her shrunken eyes on him.
"Do you know anything about her? Luhde Srikandi?"
90

"Hush, you silly boy. Don't mention that name. Where's the American?"
She had no sooner asked that when Tina blew in like a leaf on the wind. "My
goodness, the landlord is checking up while I'm away," she teased.
"You should lock up when you go," he scolded.
Tina ignored him to smile at Mak. "My, those are lovely songket."
"Are you sure you're not Dutch?" Mak asked suspiciously.
"American. I have a passport that says so."
"CIA?"
Tina laughed. "Heavens, no."
Mak looked suspicious, as if she didn't believe Tina. She held up her cloth. "Do
you want to buy one of these songket? Fifteen ringgit."
Ringgit? That was antique money.
"You should sell those to a collector," Tina said.
"Here. Take one. I give it to you." Mak thrust the songket into Tina's hand and
labored to her feet. She hobbled away.
Tina dusted the songket with a few slaps of her hand and gave it to Nol.
"Seriously. This could be worth a few hundred dollars."
Really? Well. Nol took it with renewed appreciation, wondering how many more
the old woman had stashed in that hut.
Tina invited him to sit at the porch table and have a coffee. Nol wanted to ask her
why she'd taken the trouble to look up his father's Harian Rakyat letter but he could think
of no path that could naturally lead him to the question. He couldn't just come out with it,
that he'd been reading her files. He'd had enough experience with Americans to know
they got awfully touchy about their privacy, one of their odd cultural habits. Instead, he
and Tina chatted about the unusually warm July weather, and of cobras which Tina had
not yet seen.
Nol then reminded Tina of the pilgrimage to the Temple of the Crater Lake and
that she was welcome to come. He casually mentioned Putu's wish to have his name
changed.
"Is Swastika really such a terrible name? He says he gets threats."
"Many people from other countries arrive in the US with names that sound odd or
have double meanings," Tina said. "Some of them do change their names, but others are
proud of their heritage and let the jokes and insults roll off their backs. Swastika, though,
I have to say that's in a different category. It's a volatile word to many people. They react
without thinking. I think Putu does have a point."
"I hated my name when I was growing up," Nol blurted. "What kind of name is
Ziro? I hated my uncle for giving it to me. But I never said anything." He brooded at the
plunge pool's blue water. "I didn't have a father. I didn't have an example to follow.
Sometimes I wonder if I am a failure as father myself."
"Of course you're not," Tina said.
Nol appreciated the confident no-nonsense way she said that, but she wasn't a
father. She wasn't even a parent. How would she know?
91

Chapter 18
It was a fine morning for a drive to the Temple of Crater Lake in the Kintamani
hills. Suti and Dian rushed around getting ready with the baskets of offerings while Nol
read the Bali Post, the news reporting that an unknown tourist had been reported getting a
tattoo of the sacred OM syllable upon the buttocks. Balinese community leaders urged
restraint, but Nol could help but tsk with indignation, which was interrupted by the
appearance of the Zoo girl at the front gate, deposited there by a taxi.
"I'm sorry I'm late," she said breathlessly.
Late? For what? And what was she doing here?
Suti rushed forward to welcome her, whispering to Nol, "Don't you dare say
anything. I invited her."
To the temple? Dressed like that in those low-slung shorts and that T-shirt? And if
there was one tattoo upon her leg, could there be more? Nol squinted suspiciously at her
buttocks.
Suti noticed and pinched him hard, hissing in shock. "Nol!"
"It's not that," he hissed back, and shoved the newspaper at her, but she was
whisking the girl to Dian's room. She emerged a good twenty minutes later dressed in one
of Dian's sarongs and Suti's kebaya blouses.
Nol eyed her sourly as Putu emerged from his room, finally dressed himself. Putu
took one gawk-eyed look at his girlfriend and said, in English, "Wow!"
As if he were marveling at a creature in a zoo, Nol thought.
With everyone wedged in the car, Nol drove off. Beside him in the front seat was
Suti. Nol's mother Arini, Mak, and Tina took the middle seat. Dian, Putu, and the Zoo
girl sat in the back, Putu's girlfriend practically on his lap. The air was thick with the
minty smell of Mak's tiny bottle of cajaput oil, which she sniffed every once in awhile to
keep away car sickness.
Tina asked Arini how different the island was now than when she was a girl.
"Oh my," Arini said. "See all these art shops and antique stores? Back then,
between villages, this was all rice-fields. That's how people lived."
"And we'd be going about ten kilometers an hour around potholes," Nol said.
"Be careful of the brigands," Mak said suddenly. "We don't want to be robbed."
"Mak, that was fifty years ago," Nol said.
"I have my pistol," she said, rummaging in her big purse.
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Nol braked a sudden stop. "Give that to me!" he barked, reaching around to snatch
the handgun. He chucked it into the glove box, which he locked. In the rearview, he saw
Putu kissing his girlfriend. Dian had her ears plugged with tiny earphones.
Tina asked Arini, "What games did you play when you were a girl?"
"Games? Who had time for games! I was a peasant girl. I woke up at four every
morning to get the kitchen fire started. After school there were always chores. But at
school we'd play hopscotch and jacks." Arini glanced over her shoulder "Dian, I don't
think you've ever played a game of hopscotch in your life."
Dian removed her earphones. "What?"
Arini repeated her comment.
"I have too," Dian said indignantly and then, a moment later, "Which one is that
exactly?"
The road climbed past Tampaksiring, where President Sukarno had built a
presidential palace. Tina asked Arini about Sukarno, and Arini replied that the man had
once pinched her cheek.
"He was like our father," Arini said. "We were all upset when he married that
Japanese bar girl but still we loved him. It was a shame how Soeharto put him under
house arrest, where he died like a criminal."
They came to Pertamina gas station, and Suti asked Nol to stop so she could use
the restroom.
In the men's toilet, Putu said to Nol, "I wish Tina would stop badgering
Grandmother."
Putu was pissing prodigiously and without effort, sparking a little flame of
jealousy in Nol, who was of an age where he had to concentrate to get the flow going.
"They're just talking."
"She's an anthropologist, Bapa. Do you know what anthropologists do? They
study people. She's here studying us. Our family."
"She's good friends with your Grandmother—"
"Tina is using her as an 'informant'. That's what they're called. She's trying to suck
Grandmother dry. I know how the academic system works. Professors like her are very
ambitious. They need to publish papers, and she's going to publish a paper on our family.
I don't like that. I don't trust her."
"Did you know her younger sister went missing when they were children? Just
disappeared one day?"
"She probably made that up."
"Enough. She's our guest."
"She's trouble. You should break her lease and kick her out."
Nol changed the subject. "I'd appreciate it if you don't kiss what's her name in the
car. We're not animals in a zoo where anything goes."
"Her name is Zoe. Zoh-ee. What's so hard about remembering that?"
"Just don't kiss in the car."
Putu splashed water on his hands, his jaw hard and tight.
The rest of the drive passed in silence. The air grew cooler with altitude. Nol
drifted away on the hum of tires, thinking of the money he would make from Product
Ziro, although he was having some funding difficulties, with Yanto harassing him for
payment on the web site design. What an annoying young man, smart with a computer
93

ut who had difficulty understanding the basic concept that businesses had to make
money before bills could be paid.
With a last steep tilt, the road curved onto the crater's rim.
There was a sudden rustle and gasp as Putu's girlfriend snapped upright. "Oh my
god!"
Nol instinctively braked in alarm. "What?"
"The view!"
The view? There below was the crater and the lake and small active cone with
steam vents, and the patchwork of gray lava flows and the green fields, and the blue
water of the lake, everything looking as it should. But then again, foreigners were always
making a fuss of what they could see from high places, as if in past lives they were all
birds.
"It is gorgeous, isn't it?" Tina said. "And the air is so fresh."
The only vehicle in the temple parking lot was a mini-bus with the flowery logo
of a travel company, a business that Mantera owned. Snack stalls lined one side of the lot.
Gong sat in the middle of a bench that bowed under his weight, slurping a bowl of sugary
shaved ice. He nodded his triple chin at Nol, his gaze lingering with curiosity on Putu and
the blond girl in her Balinese dress.
"I know that big man," Nol's mother said under her breath. "Wasn't he the school
bully?"
How would she know? Nol had fought his battles without her taking much notice
of them.
Nol ushered everyone through the Temple of the Crater Lake's towering main
gate and through courtyards to the proper shrine for the blessing and the beseeching the
holy water. There praying before a congregants' shrine was Anak Agung Mantera with
his three sons, their wives and children.
What were they doing here?
The zoo girl stepped to the side with a digital camera to photograph the praying
family. Nol's growl grew louder. Even though he was annoyed to see Mantera, this was
not a tourist moment. Putu whispered to her. She blushed furiously and immediately put
the camera away.
Mantera's family finished their prayers. Raka helped his father to his feet, but the
old man brushed his son away and used instead his black cane to steady himself. He
strolled over and greeted Arini, saying his family was here to ask for holy water for their
tooth filing ceremony.
"So are we," Arini said. She took Putu's arm. "You remember my grandson?"
Mantera extended a hand. "Welcome home."
"Thank you, sir," Putu said politely.
Suti jabbed Nol with her elbow. He followed her quick dart of eyes, which
signaled out Wulandri brooding like a pent-up volcano behind her grandfather. The
princess was ignoring Putu with such haughty fervor that she might as well have been
sneering openly at him. She whisked her sandalwood fan about her face as if to ward off
Putu's smell. Over the fan's edge she flashed him a look full of lava and heated steam and
electric lightning, and then her gaze flickered to Putu's blond girlfriend in her borrowed
Balinese temple dress. Wulandri's eyes narrowed into a sharp blast of scalding, poisonous
gas.
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The Zoo child didn't wilt. An unhappy furrow creased her tanned brow. She put
her lips to Putu's ear and whispered, and he whispered back. Slinging his arm around her,
he hugged her close and aimed a sly smile at Wulandri.
Bright color popped to the princess's cheeks, and she glided away, nose in the air.
The priest prepared for Nol and his family. When the Zoo girl realized she was
also invited to pray, she had sudden stage fright and exchanged worried whispers with
Putu.
Suti intervened. "Don't worry," she told the girl. "Pray with your heart."
Nol and his family took their places on the mat before the priest. The holy man
chanted mantras and rang his bell. The quavering voice, the ring of the bell, the smoke of
the incense invaded Nol's senses. As he prayed, his soul felt wide open as a blossom. The
drops of holy water fell like rain, and his increasingly tilted world was restored to
balance, if only for a time.
After the prayers, Putu's girlfriend came up to Nol. A quiet radiance was upon
her, and her eyes brimmed with tears.
"Thank you, sir," she said.
He nodded gravely. "You are very welcome, Zoe."
On the drive home, at a village high on the volcano's slopes, temple guards halted
traffic. From a side lane emerged a ceremonial procession for a sacred Rangda mask,
which a devotee carried upon his head. The Queen of Leyaks strode by, her red tongue
hanging loose between fangs, her red eyes bulging underneath her wild hair.
Mak opened her bottle of cajaput oil as the mask paraded by her window. She
sniffed deeply and said, out of nowhere, "Luhde Srikandi? They cut off her head and
marched it through the village. They pranced and cheered and chanted. Death to
Gerwani! Death to Communists! Kill them to their very roots! They used her head as a
brush, to mark doors with blood."
Nol's senses lurched. His stomach sloshed with a sudden tide of nausea.
"What do you have to talk about that for?" Dian complained. "Now I'll have
nightmares."
Arini turned to her. "No you won't, dear. Those nightmares don't belong to your
generation."
95

Chapter 19
Reed hadn't set foot in Batu Gede for forty years, but he was still on the palace
mailing list, and occasionally a courier dropped off an invitation to a wedding or
cremation. Today the invitation was for a tooth-filing.
Would Tina Briddle be attending? Probably. Right up her anthropological alley.
Why, Reed wondered, had he told her about Batu Gede? When it came to the
massacres of 1965, there were plenty of other unknown stories to be told. Why had he set
her on that path? Luhde Srikandi—of course she would zero in on that. Stupid of him to
have opened his mouth.
Or had he been sabotaged by a story that was forty years old, one he had tucked
away into the dead ends of his heart, but was now demanding to have its ending written?
1965
He'd only seen her three times.
And she was a Gerwani cadre, at that. A Red.
By God, the thing was impossible.
But he couldn't stop thinking about her.
In his bungalow above the murmuring stream, with moon shadows dappling the
rice paddies beyond, Reed Davis finally fell asleep, twisted in his sheets beneath the
mosquito netting. He was dreaming of Naniek when he groggily woke to a man calling
from beyond the screened bedroom window.
"Tuan Reed, Tuan Reed," the man whispered.
"Who is it?"
"Me."
"And who is me?"
"Gusti Kusumba. I have hair for you."
Reed fumbled for his watch. One in the morning.
"I have come far. The bus broke down. I am so sorry to bother you."
Yawning, Reed swung out of bed and shucked on a sarong and T-shirt. Carrying a
kerosene lantern, he went round to the back porch, where Gusti huddled upon the steps
with a wicker basket. He again apologized for disturbing Reed.
Amid the cricket's chirping and the croaking of frogs, Reed thought he heard a
moan out by the road. "What's that?" he asked.
"It is nothing," Gusti said. "Some of my family came with me."
Reed nodded at the basket. "And that?"
Gusti lifted the top. Strands of loose black hair half-filled the basket.
"I'd really like to do this in the morning—" Reed broke off as another moan
drifted through the night, longer and more intense. "What is that?"
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"It is only my wife," Gusti said. "She is sick."
"My God, man," Reed said in English before reverting to Balinese. "Bring her in."
Gusti stood and clapped his hands. Out of the darkness two men appeared,
carrying a makeshift bamboo stretcher, on which a woman moaned and writhed with
pain. Rusty followed after them.
Gusti smiled and repeatedly apologized for disturbing Reed while wringing his
hands, that common and curious mix of fatalism and distraught urgency. His wife had
terrible pain, he said, and after several days of treatments with the local balian, she wasn't
getting better. Perhaps Reed had some special medicine in his medicine box?
Now Reed understood the late night visit, but he only had basic first aid training,
and something was seriously wrong here. He hoped that the French doctor who'd been on
a six month volunteer mission to Father Louis's orphanage was still in residence.
The woman moaned again. Five vials of morphine nestled in Reed's first aid kit.
He hated needles, and even though he wasn't getting the shot, was already growing
lightheaded as he read the dosage and filled the syringe. He managed to get most of the
morphine into the woman's buttock before he fainted clean away into Rusty's arms. When
he came too, he was flat on his back on the grass, Rusty sprinkling water on his face.
Gusti's wife had melted away in narcotic euphoria, and with Rusty and Gusti and
a brother holding the stretcher steady in the jeep, Reed barreled along the night-shrouded
roads to Den Pasar. The orphanage and clinic were tucked down a back lane, a complex
of several bamboo and brick structures. Father Louis's rectory hunkered by a stream. On
the rectory's front porch, the beam of Reed's flashlight fell upon children curled up
together on mats. They remained asleep as Reed knocked with increasing vigor on the
front door, rousing a sleepy housekeeper, who went to fetch Father Louis. He appeared in
his bathrobe, eyes sleepy behind his tilted glasses, pink cheeks twitching.
Reed explained the situation, gesturing to the groaning woman and her anxious
husband. Father Louis told the housekeeper to get Doctor Philippe, and then knelt to tuck
a blanket around a girl of thin bones and scraggly hair, who was restless in her dreams.
"From Klungkung," the Father said, rising. "The harvest failed. Their parents
were ready to sell them to a middleman."
Doctor Philippe shuffled out from his room. By the light of the porch lantern the
doctor briefly poked and prodded the woman and told a male nurse to take her to the
clinic. "Most likely kidney stones," he said to the relieved husband.
Reed declined Father Louis's offer of a room. With Rusty snoozing in the jeep's
passenger seat, he drove home to Ubud and collapsed into bed for the last hour before
dawn, exhausted enough to sleep until the start of eternity, but sleep wouldn't come.
Images of Naniek combing her hair returned and kept him awake.
With dawn birds chirping, he finally gave up, threw on a shirt and walked to the
morning market. There a barber under a tree greeted him, lathered his jowls, and shaved
him with a straight razor. A notorious gossip, the barber had this morning new topic of
conversation. "You fell like a tree," the barber chortled. Rusty had spread the word about
his mid-night faint. "A big strong American like you."
After breakfast and a shower, Reed drove to the Bali Hotel, bringing along his
Nikon. He'd had word from Arini that the Udayana military command had booked the
function room for a seminar and luncheon. At the hotel, Reed parked on the street, as
Army vehicles and MP jeeps and top brass sedans filled the hotel lot. Several souvenir
97

sellers waited by the hotel's main entrance. Dharma's aunt Mak Jangkrik had set up a
temporary stall for her songket, crowded by officers wanting a souvenir to take home to
wives or mistresses.
The power was out again, and slouched in a lobby chair, Reed sipped a warm
lemon juice. The air hung thick and humid. He withdrew into himself, holding very still.
When you waited like this, not only did you lessen your sweating, you had all the time to
notice details, such as the plate numbers and insignia of the army vehicles in the VIP
parking lot, their plate numbers and insignia. He didn't bother with his camera, which
would have elicited misunderstandings.
A group of men in civilian clothes came into the lobby and took a corner table.
With a sharp spike of interest, Reed recognized a splendidly mustachioed man who was
one Sukarno's presidential attaches. Reed knew the attaché from Djakarta, had even
bought him a set of golf-clubs. The attaché chain smoked cigarettes as he chatted with the
three other men, two of them local contractors. When the contractors took their leave,
Reed wandered over to greet him. "How's your handicap?"
The attaché made a face. "I hardly have time to play anymore. So busy. Right
now I'm sorting out supply problems for the hotel in Sanur."
Using Japanese war repatriation funds, Sukarno was building out at the Sanur
beachfront yet another grand hotel. What a clever fellow Sukarno was, letting other
countries build his stadiums and highways and monuments while his country slowly
starved. "Will it have a golf course?" Reed asked.
"Of course." The attaché nodded at several of the army brass exiting the function
room for a buffet lunch. "We must give our generals a place to play. When will we see
you in Djakarta again? Madame Dewi would appreciate another salsa lesson," he said,
referring to President Sukarno's young and beautiful Japanese wife, whom Reed had
politely danced with several times at the swank Nirwana Nightclub. With a wink, the
attaché excused himself, saying he had to go out to check on the project.
As the conference attendees attended to the buffet table, Arini strode into the
lobby, graceful in a new dress of many pleats, looking copied from one of the fashion
magazines Reed had bought for her in Singapore. He discreetly signaled to her.
She glanced at the army officers and murmured, "Tomorrow will be a better time
to meet."
"It's not business. It's personal. About Naniek."
"What about her?"
"I'd like to meet her. I was wondering if you could arrange something."
Arini giggled. She was a stylish and competent woman—Reed had heard her
laugh many times, but never giggle. "Aduh," she said. "Sit down before you fall."
He plopped back onto his chair. "I've never felt like this before."
"You are in love with her?"
"It that what this is? I don't think so. I don't even know her at all. It's crazy."
"Reed, you don't need my help. Go see her. Why not today? Late afternoon is
usually the best time to visit."
"Just like that?"
"It is not against the law. Go, today. Don't waste any more time."
98

At the Gerwani house, the late afternoon's caramel light filled the air, and
dragonflies floated over the bushes like golden motes. The door to the family residence
was open, as were the windows. The women's center stood empty, but chairs and benches
were arranged for a meeting. Naniek's bicycle leaned against the empty carport post.
Apart from the two girls playing hopscotch on the road, no one was in sight.
Reed parked and watched them for a moment before grabbing his camera. He
took pictures, capturing the girls in mid-jump of gangly limbs, their disconnected
shadows flying long behind them.
But he wasn't interested in the girls. He wanted to see Naniek. Should he go to the
house and ask to the use the bathroom?
As he turned, he saw her marching out of the house and to the gate, the fabric of
her skirt snapping against her legs. Her hair was damp from a shower, her face fresh as
heaven, and as remote, too. She ignored Reed and said to the girls, "Your mother says to
go take your baths."
"Oh, come on, let them play a little longer," Reed said.
Naniek folded her arms across her chest, held square to him.
"I have your photo by my bed," Reed said. "The one I took at the rally. I fall
asleep looking at it. I wake up looking at it."
She was silent and then nodded at the long-nosed blond monkey on the side of his
jeep. "I had a dream about him."
"Yeah?"
"He stole my hair."
Parwati bustled out of the house and clapped her hands, calling her daughters. She
made sure they scampered into the house and gave Reed a cold look, a mother protective
of her children, and he the gobbling ogre.
"I was taking pictures," Reed said. "I'll give you copies."
Parwarti did not reply and said to Naniek as she turned to follow her daughters,
"We have to get ready for evening class."
Naniek fell in behind her.
"Bye," Reed said to Naniek.
"Good bye," she said, making it sound final.
He sat behind the wheel of the jeep for a minute, his heart beating hollow. He
peeled away, his foot heavy on accelerator, but at the irrigation culvert at the foot of the
hill, he braked to a shuddering stop. The canal was dry, the bed littered with sticks. He
jumped down into the culvert and picked out a dried segment of bougainvillea vine, one
end spiky with stout thorns. Pressing a thorn to his upper right cheek, he jabbed deep and
tore the thorn down the flesh and across the bone. The pain flooded his eyes with tears.
Blood flowed hot over his cheek, dripping onto his shirt, which he took off to press
against his check. It hurt like hell.
Sunlight fading fast, he bolted the jeep around in a three-point turn and sped back
to the house. Several women were arriving for the meeting, and they pulled back with
cries of alarm when they saw his bloodied shirt.
"Excuse me," Reed blurted and hurried to the women's center. In the room, a
pressure lantern hung from the ceiling, shedding a hot white light. Part of the room was
partitioned as a clinic, with a doctor's table and an examining bed, curtains ready to be
pulled. In the rest of the space, chairs chairs and benches faced a blackboard, and on the
99

wall were posters on nutrition and basic health care. On a wooden counter was a kerosene
stoves and burners. Another counter held utensils, where Naniek was preparing
ingredients for a cooking class.
Her eyes widened as she caught sight of him, bare-chested, holding a bloodied
shirt to his face.
"I stopped to relieve myself and my foot slipped on a loose rock," Reed said. "Fell
into the ditch and cut myself. I don't know how bad."
She pressed down his fist and the wadded shirt to expose the wound. "To the
bone," she said. "You'll need stitches."
To the bone. Jesus. He blinked, suddenly woozy-headed.
Naniek took his elbow and guided him to the clinic's examining bed. "I'll go get
Parwati," she said.
A minute later, Parwati loomed over him. She inspected the wound and said
curtly, "Go to the government clinic."
"To be honest, I'd rather not. Can't you sew it up here?"
She thought about that. "All right."
Thus it was that Reed became the object for an impromptu lesson on how to clean
and stitch a cut. The women stood around the bed, young housewives and old matrons, a
few of them holding handkerchiefs to the nose and wincing. Desak the salt-maker's wife
clutched a pamphlet on pregnancy and nutrition. Was she pregnant? He was vaguely
surprised. He thought her middle-aged, beyond child-bearing age, but he realized now
that it was only the hard struggle of daily life that had aged her, carved those lines in her
face and coarsened her skin.
Naniek cleaned the wound, her fingers cool but not gentle, swabbing the harsh
antiseptic. It stung like hell.
"Ow!" Reed said. "You're hurting me on purpose! Just because I'm a Yankee
nekolim imperialist."
The women laughed. Naniek smiled, the first full smile she'd given him. He felt
light-headed with the simple pleasure of it, and then Parwati loomed back into view with
a syringe of local anesthetic. The needle descended, filling all of Reed's vision, and his
light-headedness accelerated until none of his mind was left.
When he came to, it was with the sensation of something sharp tugging on his
skin. Parwati, with a needle.
"You fainted," Naniek told him.
"Just like a woman," Desak said as the others laughed.
When the cut was stitched and bandaged, Parwati brusquely declined any
payment but told him he'd have to get his own antibiotics.
"I'm no condition to drive," Reed said. "Can I stay here for the night? I have a mat
in the back of the jeep I can throw down anywhere."
Parwati sighed sharply but didn't say no. She told Naniek to get Reed settled in
the corner shed behind the carport. Naniek pushed open the shed's tin-sheet door, holding
high a coconut oil lamp. Between shelves stacked with odds and ends was a clean cement
floor big enough for Reed's mat.
"Is there a man anywhere in this house, or is it all women?" Reed asked.
"Bapak works for the railroad in the Java," Naniek replied, referring to Parwati's
husband.
100

The railroads were heavily PKI. "What about you? Husband? Boyfriend?"
"Over there by the mango tree is a bath and toilet."
The anesthetic was already wearing off. His cheek throbbed. He hadn't eaten
anything since breakfast, but he wasn't hungry at all. In the soft flickering light, Naniek
looked like a halfling angel. "How about a goodnight kiss before you leave me?"
She gave him a flat look. We are not amused. As she returned to the meeting, he
trooped to the car to get his mat and camera bag and the flashlight. The bath and toilet
was a tin cubicle with a squat pan. A sliver of soap rested on the edge of a cement water
tub. He rinsed his bloodied shirt and used it as a washcloth to wipe his chest. After
rinsing it again, he hung the shirt on a nail to dry. Returning to the shed, he plucked a
lemon from a shrub and rubbed peels across his teeth.
Two small bedroom windows overlooked the back yard. Was one of them
Naniek's? In the women's center, he could hear the ladies gossiping and laughing as they
sampled the cakes they'd baked. They finally took their leave, walking along in the light
of the stars and a quarter moon.
In one of the bedrooms the curtains flipped open, and Reed saw two heads
pressed to the screen. He blew out the lamp. Propping his flashlight behind him, he threw
hand shadows on the blank tin of the shed door. Dog, cat, dog chasing cat. An elephant
swinging its trunk. He heard giggles. A lantern's light appeared in the bedroom. There
was a scurry, two girls jumping back into bed.
Naniek stepped to the window to look out.
Reed threw a heart.
The curtains snapped shut.
A moment later the lantern glow appeared in the adjoining room.
He turned off his flashlight and stretched on the mat and concentrated on the
throbbing pain in his cheek. In the sky outside, a shooting star fell, and another. He
bounced to his feet and across the yard to tap on the second window. "Naniek," he
whispered. "Naniek."
As the curtains twitched, and Naniek appeared, a robe pulled tight around her.
"Look," he said, pointing to the sky. "A meteor shower."
She opened the screen to watch. He didn't know how long he stood there, caught
between Naniek and the falling stars. After a final flurry, the sky closed up and the stars
were still once more.
"Do you believe in omens?" he asked.
"Feudal superstition. We make our own future."
"I think some of those stars fell into your eyes," Reed said. "Do you have a
boyfriend?"
"Who has time?"
He drew a deep breath, which didn't seem to go into his lungs. "Do you believe in
love at first sight?"
She frowned slightly. "How did you make that heart?"
"Like this." He reached out and took her warm hands and arranged her fingers.
They were calloused. They trembled.
Behind her, a light flashed in the narrow gap between bedroom door and floor,
and steps sounded. Naniek withdrew her hands. "You'd better go," she whispered.
"I want to see you again."
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"Yes. I'll let you know. Good night."
A week later, Reed sauntered off to Benoa Harbor with his camera for one of his
periodic surveys and had a chat with a clerk at the harbormaster's office about the
Chinese flagged vessels that'd been in and out of the harbor.
When he returned to Ubud, there was a telegram waiting for him in the hefty
bosom of Reed's housekeeper, Mrs. Nyoman. She plucked the blue envelope from her
armor clad bra and handed it to him.
== COME HOME FOR VISIT STOP AUNTIE==
Reed would rather not. Since that night of the falling stars, he'd not yet seen or
heard from Naniek. Arini told him that Naniek and other Gerwani women were busy
going around the island organizing demonstrations against spiraling food prices. But one
did not disobey Auntie.
The next morning, he packed a carryon and hired a car to take him to the airport,
where the Garuda counter clerk had his ticket ready. The flight was delayed as the pilots
went shopping at Den Pasar's cheap market for their wives in Djakarta. Several hours
later the DC-3 bumbled through Djakarta's smoky sky, skimming across red-roofed
kampong homes to land at Kemayoran Airport. Reed swiveled through the throng at the
domestic terminal, abruptly detouring into the godawful stinking toilet. When he
emerged, no one was loitering, waiting for him.
He hopped into a taxi, old Ford with a young driver. Gambir train station, Reed
said. The driver replied that's have to detour around Djalan Veteran, one of the city's
main streets, as there was yet another demonstration to crush Malaysia. Clever Dr.
Subandrio, the former doctor and present foreign minister, fashioning a bully boy out of a
former British colony to distract Indonesians from their country's growing woes.
Once out the airport's parking lot gates, the driver hit the accelerator with a racedriver's
élan. Blaring his horn, he careened around groaning buses stuffed with
passengers, while at the same fiddling a radio. He finally tuned into an illegal station
blaring the Beatle's latest hit, banned from official airwaves.
Reed tsked and shook his head. "No good," he said. "Ngik ngak ngok," he said,
using Sukarno's derisive term for immoral rock and roll.
The driver grinned and give the thumbs up. "I like. Very good."
Built on former swamps drained by Dutch-built canals, Djakarta steamed under a
smeared out sun. At Gambir, Reed paid the driver, adding a generous tip for the rock and
roll, and casually looped through the main station hall back out again to hail a trishaw,
pedaled by a tiny man with huge calves. Reed gave the driver an apartment address
behind the US Embassy. Nobody followed, either in car or on bicycle as the trishaw
cruised down West Merdeka Avenue that flanked Freedom Square. In the center of the
enormous square rose the slender obelisk of the National Monument, thrusting its gold
flame hundreds of feet high into the hazy heat. Sukarno's public erection, wags liked to
say.
The Crush Malaysia demonstrators had now gathered in front of US Embassy's
shut gates, and were desultorily shouting anti-American slogans. Following Reed's
directions, the trishaw driver cut down a back alley and stopped at the front gate of a
three-story apartment block. An armed guard let Reed through the gate, but in the
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uilding's lobby, two men intercepted him. They were Eastern islanders, scrawny as knife
blades, soldiers loyal to the Dutch who had resisted Sukarno's revolution.
The one missing his left hand said, "Good afternoon, Mr. Reed," but he wasn't
going to let Reed through without inspecting his passport and the telegram from Auntie.
His companion wordlessly handed Reed a key. He couldn't speak. His tongue had been
cut off by a troops from a Javanese battalion, gentle and humble men in their villages,
brutal warriors in battle.
The key opened the front door to a modest, second floor apartment, wicker
furniture scattered on the tiled floor. On the coffee table was an old issue of TIME and a
Bible. The fan and lights and fridge drew power from the Embassy generators. Reed used
the toilet and reapplied antibiotic salve to his cheek wound, which was healing nicely,
although the heavy black stitches looked Frankensteinish. Opening the fridge, he
inspected the contents, stocked from the commissary.
Hot damn. He pulled out a chilled Coca-Cola. Sipping from the bottle, he stood
by the screened window overlooking red-tiled roofs and the tangle of power and phone
lines. A mile away the Hotel Indonesia towered over a sprawl of shanties.
"Hello, Reed," a soft but precise voice said.
Reed turned. He hadn't heard Wendell come into the room. A tall man, the
Deputy Chief of Station was stiff as a lamppost, and had a high forehead that he aimed at
people like a radar dome. He placed a briefcase on the coffee table, slipped out of his suit
jacket, snapped the arms, and hung it on the back of a kitchen table chair.
"Why don't you loosen your tie while you're at it?" Reed said.
"What happened to your cheek?"
"Accident."
Wendell lit a Pall Mall, and perused a file through the curling smoke.
Reed finished the Coke and sat down on the sofa, opening the Bible at random.
One of the endless Old Testament genealogies. His lineage was only a couple hundred
years, chump change in comparison, but he was nonetheless a Boston Brahmin, except
for a sneaky Irish Catholicism on his mother's side, which, come to think of it, made him
the prototype American, with just the proper touch of mongrel. Flipping to the New
Testament, he landed upon the Beatitudes. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be
called the children of God.
Reed turned on the overhead fan. Wendell's cigarette smoke went in circles, but
some escaped out the window. Reed didn't smoke, a quirk that Wendell held against him.
It was almost un-American not to smoke.
"Hello, dears," Auntie said, swooping in through the door like Mary Poppins in a
tempest. Auntie had a stout body encased in girdle and bra, outlines visible underneath
her long skirted dress. She was rumored to be a devout Seventh Day Adventist, and had
made her chops in Germany, running agents behind the Wall. Two years previously the
orders came down from on high for the Indonesia Embassy to cut back on staff and lower
the American profile least Sukarno become even more tempestuous and nationalize the
American oil companies. Reed had been slated to leave. Auntie, though, had worked one
of her wondrous miracles and sent him to Bali.
Her gaze landed on his cheek.
"Accident," he said.
"Those stitches could come out."
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"I'll give it one more day."
She poured herself a glass of chilled water and took the chair opposite Wendell.
"You were reading some Scripture, Reed?"
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God."
"And to make the peace you sometimes have to prepare for war." Auntie's graystreaked
hair was pulled back with a pin. She wore no makeup and had the most pleasant
brown eyes. When Reed first arrived in Indonesia as a suave entrepreneur and
businessman, he'd gotten the goods on an American oilman who was having a red-hot
homosexual affair with a handsome, middle-ranking Communist cadre. Reed sweettalked
the suspicious, nervous oilman into this very same apartment and Auntie's
embrace. She conducted the interrogation. During the interrogation, Auntie showed the
oilman a photo of his lover's severed head. "The Communists disapprove of homosexual
liaisons," she clucked. "They can be such fastidious puritans."
Wendell lit a fresh cigarette. "About Operation Samson," he said to Reed without
glancing up from the folder. "You're shipping the hair to a broker and selling it."
"Harry Chen in Singapore. A real hustler. He sells to wigmakers, mostly
Broadway shows. Next time you catch one, the wig you see could've come from Bali."
"This is highly improper."
"I collect hair as a business, so what else am I going to do? Burn it? Bury it?
Make people wonder what the hell's going on?"
Auntie clucked. "Let's move on, shall we?"
For the next two hours, as Wendell chain smoked and Auntie sipped her water,
they debriefed Reed. They went over his reports, the who and where and what and
reassessing the whys and what doth it mean. The big power players were in Djakarta, but
Bali provided a different set of clues to help interpret the playing, the acting and
backstage machinations, get a different measure of the pulse.
Wendell pulled out a photograph from another folder and placed it on the table.
One of the photos that Reed had taken of the Batu Gede rally, a podium shot. Wendell's
nicotine-stained finger pointed to Naniek. "You missed her," he said. "We don't have a
name for her."
"She's a Gerwani flunky."
"With a clipboard."
"They trucked in cadres from all over. Somebody had to organize the ranks on the
square. That's all in my report."
"We've picked up something new in the last six months," Auntie said. "Some
traffic about a PKI agent in Bali. Codename Luhde Srikandi."
"I haven't heard anything. This girl's not her. She's wet behind the ears. What I
know from Wilma is she works with the refugees from Mount Agung's eruption." Wilma
was Arini's codename; when Reed had first met her she reminded him of Fred
Flintstone's unflappable wife.
"We need to know everybody," Wendell said, exhaling a thin stream of smoke.
"Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa."
"Now, now, boys," Auntie said. "Reed, we're stopping Operation Samson. For one
thing, the budget's used up. I trust the money's been well spent."
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Reed leaned back against the cushions. "A couple of the guys have new bicycles,
but generally, they realize they have basically one chance against the PKI, and they don't
want to blow it. They've been busy," he said, "making the peace."
"We have a new project for you. Sukarno's birthday is June 6 th , and according to
the palace secretary's appointment book, he is having a birthday dinner in Bali, at his
Tampaksiring Palace."
Wendell lit another cigarette. "We want you to be there and have a look around.
Take note who's there. Pay attention to Sukarno's health. Doctors and ambulances on
standby? Doddering with a cane? A private nurse willing to talk?"
"I know the drill," Reed said.
"Maybe you'll spot this mysterious Luhde Srikandi."
"You have a birthday party invitation for me?"
"You're a charming boy," Auntie said. "I'm sure you'll figure out something."
"Naked women should do the trick."
Auntie's brows rose primly.
"A painting by a Balinese artist friend of mind," Reed said. "Tjok Arsana. Lovely
nude nymphs by a spring. A birthday gift for Bung Karno's collection."
When Reed was stationed in Djakarta, one of his contacts was Sister Agnes of the
Blessed Heart Convent, an expert on the politics and social movements of the city's
peasant kampongs. Her order worked closely with other social organizations, such as
Gerwani. Reed had last seen her a few years previously, when he made his farewell
rounds of Djakarta to take leave of his colleagues and contacts and friends before heading
to Bali. He'd gotten horribly drunk at the Minerva Lounge, a slum bar, and the next
morning had been just as horribly hung-over as he said his goodbyes to Sister Agnes at
the convent. He'd made the effort, though, because the middle-aged nun from Maluku
was one of his favorite people, full of holy guile and sacred subterfuge, but with a heart
big as the slums. She was a leaven of goodness in his rather self-indulgent life, to be
honest.
The Blessed Heart convent had once been the sprawling family quarters of a 19 th
century Chinese merchant. Located in Kota, Djakarta's original old town, the compound
with its graceful curved roofs faced the river where trading boats had once docked with
cargo. Reed knocked on the solid wooden doors and a small lattice screen opened. A
nun looked out at him, her face framed by her wimple.
"My name is Reed Davis," he said. "I am here to see Sister Agnes."
The screen closed, and a minute later the door slid silently open. The convent was
partially cloistered, but a good number of the sisters had public avocations, running
informal schools and clinics in the slums.
The sister wordlessly ushered Reed into the Reverend Mother office, a small and
austere room, the only splash of color the red heart of a Sacred Heart of Mary statue.
Well, that and the bright blue rosary beads dangling around the Reverend Mother's neck.
"So you've been promoted," Reed said.
The Reverend Mother Agnes laughed. "This wasn't a promotion, Reed. It was a
call to higher duty." She'd learned her English in Holland, and spoke it with that buttery
Dutch accent. "And last time I saw you, you looked ready to repent of alcohol."
105

She got Reed settled in the visitor's sofa, under the blessed cooling stir of the
overhead fan. The sister brought in a tray of tea and retreated. They chatted briefly about
Bali and Father Louis. The small talk dwindled. Mother Agnes clasped her hands across
her habit, her thumbs on the small cross at the bottom of her rosary, her calm gaze steady
on him.
"I didn't stop in just to say hello," Reed said.
"I didn't think so."
Reed opened his briefcase and on the table placed a photograph, the one he'd
taken at the rally. "A Gerwani member from Djakarta," he said. "Now in Bali. Her
name's Naniek."
"And?" Mother Agnes said. Her guarded tone was something new. Perhaps it
came with her added responsibilities
"This doesn't have anything to do with politics," Reed said.
Mother Agnes smiled. "Ah. I see."
"Do you know her?"
"Gerwani is a large organization. But I knew her as Yuyun. That was her
nickname. I didn't know her well, but she struck me as earnest and dedicated. She had
patrons in power, but never used that to her advantage. I thought highly of that."
"Why would she be sent to Bali?"
"I don't know. What are her feelings for you?"
Reed grinned. "I'm not sure, but I'm hopeful."
Mother Agnes escorted him convent's front door and there took both his hands
and said she would say prayers for him.
Across the road, a crowd had gathered to watch a medicine man hawk his special
herbs and amulets. A rusty sedan was parked on the edge of the crowd, and the man in
the passenger seat raised a camera and aimed its telephoto lens at the nun and her guest,
clicking off several shots.
. In Djakarta, Reed professionally printed and framed the best of the photographs
that he'd taken of Parwati's daughters, of the girls in mid-jump as if leaping away from
their shadows, the afternoon bathing their faces with light. The older sister was intent on
her landing, and the younger flew with a smile wide as wings.
The day after he got back to Bali, he puttered in his jeep to Batu Gede, arriving
late afternoon. With a rush of elation, he noticed Naniek's bicycle in the carport, which
also sheltered a sedan car with official plates.
Stepping up to the residence's porch, he called out hello. Parwati's two daughters
rushed out and stopped in mid-stride to stare at him.
"Is your mother home?" he asked.
The youngest turned. "Mama! That American is here!"
Parwati emerged, an apron around her. "Yes? What can I do for you?" she said,
coldly polite.
"I promised you these," Reed said, showing her the framed photographs.
She took them with a puzzled frown that eased to delight. "Oh, my. They look so
lively! And look, that is just like Endang, always so serious, and Sri, always so happy."
"They're lovely girls," he said. "You must be very proud of them."
106

"Yes," she said. "I am." She studied Reed for a second and then stepped to the
side. "Please. Come in."
The front parlor was simply furnished with cheap bamboo chairs around a low
bamboo coffee table. The mahogany cabinet, though, was stout and well-carpentered, a
colonial period piece. Parwati placed the photographs between two plates of Delft
porcelain, and invited Reed to sit. As she made tea, the girls shyly stole forward to stare
at their photographs. Reed asked them their ages. They giggled shyly behind palms.
Then Sri dropped her hand and said say forthrightly, " I'm seven. Endang's ten."
"Eleven," Endang said.
Whisk of sandals sounded in the hall, and the hanging cloth curtain was pushed
aside. A slender man entered, still buttoning up a shirt, his face creased on one side from
a nap. Instantly his two daughters swirled and ebbed around him like excited tidal
currents, pulling him to look at the photographs. When that was done, he greeted Reed,
and introduced himself as their father.
Parwati served tea and kue lapis. Reed took a bite to be polite, as he found local
cakes to be too oily, made with tinned margarine, but his eyes widened in surprise. "This
is delicious!" he exclaimed.
"Freshly made."
"My mother loves to bake," Reed said. "If she was here, she'd charm the recipe
out of you."
"Oh, it's easy enough, you can find the recipe in our Gerwani magazine," Parwati
said, with a mischievous twinkle. "And thank you again for the photographs. My husband
and I don't have many. Just school photos."
Reed tapped the bandage on his cheek. "I also stopped by get the stitches out. I
could do it but I'd probably faint. Is Comrade Naniek around?"
He asked as casually as he could, but was acutely aware of Parwati's less than
hidden amusement
"Let me get her," she said and disappeared down the hall, reappearing a minute
later with Naniek. Naniek's right forefinger was stained with fountain pen ink, and she
had a mildly annoyed look of having been disturbed at her writing
"Here he is, your Nekolim boyfriend," Parwati said with a teasing smile.
Naniek didn't respond. Parwati said to Reed, "Naniek is too serious with the
revolution sometimes."
"There is much to do," Naniek said.
Reed tapped his bandage. "Including removing my stitches, if have you a minute."
"He will faint if he does it himself," Parwati said.
Reed made a face. "A common weakness of the reactionary bourgeoisie."
That earned a smile from Parwati, but nothing from Naniek. His hopes began to
flag. Had he misunderstood her, that night of falling stars?
In the clinic, Naniek ordered him to lie down on the clinic's bed. After removing
the bandage, she bent over him with scissors and tweezers. He studied her face from
hairline to chin, ignoring the small tugs as she cut and pulled the stitches.
"Last one," she said.
"Look at me," he whispered.
She did, her gaze not serene but troubled, her brows dipped together.
"Closer," he whispered.
107

She tentatively lowered her head. Her breath fell sweet. A strand of hair brushed
his brow. He lifted his head off the thin mattress and kissed her gently, just a brush of
lips, not wanting to scare her. She closed her eyes and let the kiss linger.
"Listen," Reed said. "Sixth of June. I'm staying at the Tampaksiring Cottages.
Bungalow Number eight. Come see me. Please."
Running feet sounded on the porch outside, and she quickly straightened. Endang
and Sri burst in, calling for Reed to take a photograph of their father. Sri grabbed his
hand.
"Well?" Reed said to Naniek
Naniek dropped the scissors and tweezers in an enamel basin and murmured, "It's
possible. Go see Ibu Arini. She'll explain."
On the Denpasar town square, two soccer teams were battling it out, a team from
the hotel playing a squad from the electric company.
The electric company scored an equalizer. Reed blew a Bronx cheer. "I hope for
once they get their lights knocked out."
He and Arini stood under the shade of tamarind tree. Arini explained that for
President Sukarno's birthday dinner, she'd been given the job of organizing a Balinese
dance for him and his guests, and that Naniek was helping with a short children's
program.
"Nationalist or Communist, when it comes to Father of the Country, the Great
Leader of the Revolution, we put aside our differences," she said.
"I have a birthday gift for him. One of Tjok Arsana's paintings. Oil on canvas,
naked nymphs by a jungle spring. I know one of Bung's attachés, and he's put me on the
general guest list. I hope to give the painting to Sukarno."
"In person?" Arini asked skeptically.
"I've taught Madame Dewi the salsa dance. I'm a family friend of sorts. Anyway,
I've gotten a room at the Tampaksiring Cottages for the night. If Naniek could slip away
after all the partying? Just for a visit," he added hastily.
"We can try. It can't be for too late, though. She has to come back with everyone
else." The hotel scored a goal, and she clapped vigorously. "F&B finally get us one."
At six precisely, Reed arrived at gates to the Tampaksiring presidential palace.
Palace guards in full uniform stood at rigid toy soldier attention, while armed comrades
in fatigues checked his name against a list. They waved him in, directing him to a satellite
parking lot, sunset pooling golden around majestic trees. Deer strolled on the lawns, and
military and civilian staff scurried about. He was the only white guy in the place. People
gave him curious glances, and some threw him harder looks.
Arini scooted out from a group of dancers in Balinese costume. "You made it."
"Is Naniek here?"
"My goodness. Here you are in the palace with the President and you are thinking
of a girl."
A military jeep drove up the road. A man in civilian dress but with a military
bearing jumped out, two guards flanking him.
108

Arini murmured, "Lieutenant Colonel Untung, head of the presidential guard."
She introduced Reed to the light colonel, a short and stocky man, brusque but not
unfriendly.
"You have a gift for the President?" he said.
Reed patted the painting, carefully lodged on the seat beside him.
The colonel inspected the canvas and the carved teak frame. "Come with me," he
ordered.
Awkwardly bearing the large canvas, Reed followed the colonel through the
palace grounds and across a bridge cantilevered over a ravine to Bung Karno's private
quarters. The glossy modern structure overlooked the Tampaksiring temple and its sacred
springs. As Reed entered, the guests assembled in the luxuriously appointed sitting room
momentarily halted their conversation to stare quizzically at him. He recognized many:
the island's Governor, the Chief of Police, several parliamentarians. Many knew him as
well, but didn't quite know the protocol of how to greet an American friend in such a
gathering of Revolutionary stalwarts. They decided that ignoring him was the best course
of action, and resumed their conversations as they waited for Bung Karno to appear. Reed
propped the painting against the wall and stood by the windows. In the gathering dusk,
Reed could just make out the temple's bathing pools. It was rumored that Sukarno spied
on bathing beauties and selected the most nubile maidens to be brought to his bedroom.
There was a stir in the hall. Reed's attaché friend and several of the presidential
staff strode briskly into the room. Following them at a more leisurely pace was slight,
bespectacled Foreign Minister Subrandio and several other cabinet members.
Naniek as well, lovely in a batik dress and heels.
And walking beside her the Great Leader of the Revolution, a stocky, bushybrowed
man, with a black petji cap tilted jaunty on his head. He padded along in his
stocking feet, an aide carried his polished leather shoes. A swagger stick was tucked
under his arm, and his other hand was on the small of Naniek's back. He was chatting
with her, bestowing upon her the full force of his charm. She replied with a laugh,
spotting Reed as she did so, and her smile was undercut by a momentary flare of surprise,
even alarm, but she returned her entranced and radiant attention to the great man.
Reed's knees loosened, and his heart burned with instant jealousy. The President
circulated around the room, greeting his guests with casual radiance. Naniek remained by
Foreign Minister Subandrio's side, refusing to look at Reed.
Finally the attaché brought the Sukarno over to where Reed was standing and
made the formal introductions.
"The salsa dancer," Bung Karno said with that full wattage smile." My wife Dewi
praises your ballroom skills." He spoke in perfect English.
"At least it wasn't rock n' roll," Reed said daringly.
Bung Karno fixed him with a look that made Reed wished he hadn't opened his
big mouth, but then the President threw his head back and laughed. He wriggled his toes
in their black socks. "My body builds up electricity," he said. "I release it through my
feet. Otherwise I might go boom!"
"It is an honor to be here and present you this birthday gift, sir," Reed said. "The
painter is Tjok Arsana, a brilliant artist—"
"Tjok Arsana! That rascal! I've commissioned a painting from him and have been
waiting for months, but he says he needs the full inspiration of the revolution. I told him,
109

the revolution acts now! Not next year!" He swung his swagger stick to emphasize the
point, and the guests laughed.
Bung Karno inspected the painting with a connoisseur's eye, but whether of the
art or the naked nymphs, Reed couldn't tell. With a flick of walking stick, Bung Karno
directed an aide to bear the painting away. With a nod of his head, the great man both
thanked and dismissed Reed.
As Reed left under the escort of two palace guards, he again tried to catch
Naniek's eye, but she had her gaze fixed on the Foreign Minister, listening to something
he was saying.
Reed returned to his jeep and drove down to the Tampaksiring Cottages, sick to
his stomach. Would Naniek be sharing the President's bed tonight? He paced the scraggly
garden, staring up at the palace high on the ridge above. The place was blazingly lit. The
hours passed. He cursed and kicked stones.
But wait—there, two women in the high shadows, descending the concrete steps
leading through the ravine to the temple. Reed jumped over a flower bed and then a low
fence to the temple's outer courtyard. A half-moon was caught on the higher branches of
a banyan tree, shedding a pale, fractured light.
The woman paused on the lower landing. Reed's lungs seized up as he recognized
Naniek.
She saw him too, and smiled, a smile that tipped the moon and spilled its light
into his heart.
The other woman hobbled behind her, complaining in Balinese. "So many steps!
My poor legs!"
It was Mak Jangkrik, chaperoning the visit. She sat down on the edge of a temple
pavilion and rubbed her feet.
Reed held out his hand to Naniek. She lightly squeezed his fingers. They strolled
to another pavilion on the courtyard, close enough for Mak to keep her eyes on them, far
enough away to talk in private. Sitting by his side, Naniek took off her heels and sighed
in relief. "That feels better. They were hurting me."
"I was about to kill myself," Reed said. "I'll go head to head against any man over
you, but not the damn President! What…does he…do you go back to him?"
Naniek laughed and lightly slapped his forearm. "I was with Minister Subandrio.
He's a family friend. I've known him since I was a baby. In English you say he's my
godfather."
In the rush of relief, Reed thought, this would be a nice little nugget to mine for
Auntie. In the next instant, he felt ashamed and scolded himself.
"Tell me about yourself," he said. "Anything."
She idly swung her legs, the nails of her bare feet glowing like tiny fallen moons.
Her father was an aristocratic Javanese from Djogdjakarta who now lived in Surabaya
and was in the marine shipping trade. Her mother was Balinese who'd migrated to Java as
a girl.
"My full name," she said, "is Naniek Rahayu Sastrohartono."
"Yuyun," Reed said. He wasn't thinking. "Your nickname. How'd you get that?"
Her swinging legs came to a dead halt. "How do you know that?"
110

"At the Batu Gede rally I asked people who you were," he said smoothly. "Oh,
she's Yuyun, somebody said." The lie cut into him. But how could he tell her about
Mother Agnes, that he'd been sneaking around Djakarta asking questions about her?
To Reed's enormous relief, her frown eased and her legs started swinging again.
"From my middle name. My brother gave it to me when I was a little girl."
Her older brother Bambang worked in Singapore for Permina, the national oil
company whose product powered a lot of engines and greased a lot of palms. Naniek She
was a graduate of Gadjah Mada University, where she'd studied economics as an under
classmate to Catra, the Batu Gede schoolmaster. As a girl growing up in an affluence and
power, she'd seen poor people struggling to survive and often dying, which was why she
became a student activist and then a member of Gerwani. It wasn't politics, she said, it
was a simple desire for justice.
She said, tell me something about yourself.
He told her about his father the Wasp lawyer, his mother the Irish Catholic
beauty. She married him for love and was disowned by her family, Reed said, and when
she lost her love for my father, she'd lost everything except her pride. That's the only
reason she and my father are still together, he said, her pride, she's incapable of admitting
a single mistake.
He said in college a girl broke his heart and so he'd become a vagabond and ended
up in Bali.
"My parents have received a dozen offers of marriage for me," Naniek said. "I
told my father I would only marry for love and he laughed. He said I was a very serious
girl, and that I would never marry if I waited for love. I told him one day it would
happen, I would fall in love, and until then I wasn't going to worry about a minute about
it."
Across the courtyard, Mak Jangkrik watched the moon.
Reed nodded at the temple's split gate. "You want to go in and see the spring?"
Naniek shook her head. "I can't. It would be disrespectful."
Reed understood. It was that time of the month for her.
"But we can see the bathing pools," she said. Reed took her hand. Her fingers
relaxed and curled into his. The warmth of her hand burned all the way to his heart.
The public bath was a narrow pool of sandstone brick. With her bare feet
swishing under that sophisticated dress, Naniek seemed to be a nymph, returned from the
world of men. Water flowed from the mouths of carved dragons, water so pure that the
shimmering moonlight fell clear to the bottom of the pool.
From the courtyard rose Mak Jangrik's loud complaining voice. "Now we have to
climb those stairs. By the gods, whose stupid idea was this?"
"I have to go," Naniek said.
"When can I see you again?"
"Arini will let you know." From a flower offering placed in a wall niche, she
plucked a hibiscus blossom. Bending to the pool, she dipped the blossom into the water,
With it held between her fingers, she solemnly flicked sweet cool drops onto his face,
once, twice, three times.
111

Chapter 20
Rumors flew that the Governor would be attending the palace's tooth filing
ceremony, and fancy BMWs and Mercedes lined streets bumper to bumper without a
space for Nol's pedestrian Toyota. He had to park by the market, and with his family
trailing behind him, gingerly stepped around piles of rotting garbage.
The elaborate palm leaf ornaments decorating the palace's outer courtyard and
gate must have cost a small fortune. Gede Raka and his wife greeted the arriving guests.
A high-caste family entered before Nol and his family, and were fussed over with
exquisite courtesy. When it came to Nol's turn, there was not the slightest lessening of
manners, either on Raka's or Nol's part. This was, after all, a public and formal occasion,
when one put on the politest of faces.
But as Suti was being greeted, Raka's gaze slid over her shoulder at Nol's mother
Arini, and for a moment his expression was one of undisguised contempt and loathing.
The intensity shocked Nol but before he could react, Raka's face closed over and he
greeted Arini with the same gilded graciousness.
A few steps beyond, Raka's younger brother directed the guests this way and that,
that way for the common village folk and this way for important personages. Closest to
the garden pavilion where the priest would conduct the ceremony was a row of velvet
arm chairs shaded by an awning, the place of honor for the governor and his party.
In the back corner, under a temporary thatch shade for the village farmers, Uncle
Dharma sat sideways on a plastic chair, one bare foot propped on his knee and rudely
exposed. Normally he would have been there on the other side of the courtyard with the
legislator and the police commander and the several foreigners in Balinese dress,
including Tina, regaling all with a story, but there he was, alone and silent and glowering.
"What are you doing here?" Nol said.
"It's an insult," his uncle snapped, "that's what it is."
Tina caught Nol's glance and came over to say hello.
"Do you anthropologists still study the tooth filing ceremony?" Dharma said.
"Surely you have learned all there is to learn about it?"
"I'm here with acquaintances who've never been to one," Tina said. "See that
worried-looking fellow with his sarong wrapped like a woman? I had to explain to him
that the teeth aren't filed to points. It's just a few rasps of the file along the incisors to
make them less sharp. It symbolizes the person's maturity over base animal desires, I said
to him, but he still looks uneasy, doesn't he?"
A ripple of excitement spread from the gate, and word flashed that the Governor's
limo had pulled up, but the fellow through the doors was his secretary, who conveyed
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egrets to the family that an emergency of state had detained the great man. Nonetheless,
it was still an honor for the palace to have his personal regrets.
Anak Agung Mantera broke away from a group of cronies and crossed the
courtyard to welcome Nol and Suti, turning last to Arini to greet her. He startled as he
finally noticed Dharma. "What are you doing here hiding in the background, my brother?
Come, come."
The invitation included Nol and Suti and Arini, who were shepherded along by
Mantera's outstretched arm to the empty velvet chairs. "Come, come," he said, "let's not
waste these chairs." He insisted they sit and clapped his hands for a serving girl to bring
them iced lime juice.
Nol fidgeted, acutely uncomfortable at occupying such a seat of honor, with
everyone throwing them glances. He was keenly aware of Raka whispering heatedly with
his father. His mother, sitting beside him, remained serene, not a ripple of expression.
His uncle Dharma was impassive, too, but the way his eyes were inwardly rippling, Nol
could tell he was furious. People would talk. You should have seen them, such airs sitting
there.
The celebrants emerged from the dressing rooms, the girls in full regalia of
elaborate brocades and shimmering gold headdresses, their faces exquisitely painted.
Wulandri, Nol had to admit, was stunning in her classical beauty.
A gang of boys with Putu in their midst stopped their noise and gawked at her.
One of them hooted. Wulandri's head jerked up, her gaze zeroing right in on Putu, as if he
was the loutish culprit. He reassembled his pole-axed expression into one of unimpressed
indifference.
The male celebrants, in nearly equal finery, were led by a boy old enough to sport
a mustache that did not sit well on his powdered face. Tucked behind his back was a
palace's heirloom keris, its sheath and handle dazzlingly bejeweled. The keris was said to
have been forged by a renowned priest during the Gelgel Dynasty.
Dharma leaned his head close to Nol. "A pretty bauble," he whispered.
True, Nol thought. It was nothing compared to their family keris, the powerfully
charged Ki Poleng.
"Look at us," Dharma whispered. "We've been put here on display. Sorry the
Governor can't make it, but here's something interesting for you all to stare at."
The heady scent of incense billowed from the offerings. The sun beat upon the
awning. The air was still and hot. Sweat trickled down Nol's back.
"Wouldn't it be interesting," Dharma whispered, "if you grabbed that keris and
stabbed somebody with it? You're already up here on display," Dharma whispered, "you
might as well make a spectacle of it. Just think, three quick strides and a pull and a slash,"
Dharma whispered.
The whispers swirled in Nol's head. The heat thickened. Raka stood rudely in
front of Nol's chair, bending to take photographs of Wulandri upon the pavilion, his silksaronged
ass right in Nol's face. The humiliation of being fired when he should have been
promoted rose bitter in Nol's throat, and the taste of it brought to mind all the other
humiliations of years past, and also of Raka was harassing Suti with the rent increase.
Nol couldn't breath. He had to move. How easy it would be to grab that keris. He
imagined himself rising, striding, grabbing. His hand twitched. He could feel his fingers
wrapping around the handle. A quick lunge with pointed tip—
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A hand pressed on his thigh. His mother leaned into his view. "Are you all right?"
Nol gulped air. "I need to go the toilet," he gasped.
He stumbled off the platform and into the guest bathroom to douse his face with
cool water.
114

Chapter 21
An hour after sunrise, Tina strolled down the beach to the boardwalk café where
Wayan Dharma had told her to wait. He'd phone her last night, after the toothfiling
ceremony. "I hear you are interested in 1965 and Gestapu," he said. "I have something to
tell you, if you care to join me on a trip to Temple Ped on Penida Island."
After ordering a coffee from the café's matron, Tina sat a wooden table, placed in
the sand under a scrub tree. She wore sunglasses and a first layer of sunscreen against the
brightening sun. Across the lagoon, waves plunged on the reef and rushed into the lagoon
to dissipate as ripples lapping the sand. Four elderly men bobbed in the shallow water,
chatting and joking. One she recognized as Anak Agung Mantera.
Nol's son Putu sauntered down the lane, a surfboard under one arm and his
girlfriend Zoe on his other. Tina hardly knew the girl, but in her classes had become
familiar with her tribe, sunny Southern Californian and smarter than hell.
Zoe gave Tina a friendly wave, but Putu dismissed her with a snide glance.
Tina set about to eavesdropping.
Putu to Zoe: "Want a coffee?"
Zoe, plopping down on a beach recliner: "Why do you always ask me that when
you know I don't drink coffee?"
"Whatever." He stripped down to his board shorts and began waxing his
surfboard.
"How long are you going to be surfing?"
"As long as the wind stays good."
"God," she muttered.
He rubbed the wax on her nose. "Okay. No surf. We'll go to Uluwatu and jump
off the cliffs holding hands and for a thousand years people will talk of our love.
Hollywood will make a movie. Halle Berry will play you."
A smile cracked through Zoe's frown. "She's the wrong skin color."
"Brad Pitt will play me so no problem."
Zoe laughed. "Oh, go on and surf. The waves look good."
Putu paddled out with vigorous strokes, the muscles of his back working in
sharply defined rhythm. Watching him, Tina felt fat and flabby. Dharma whisked into
view on the boardwalk, in sandals and temple dress. He held in one hand a painted
offering basket. After greeting her, he said the boat wouldn't be leaving for another hour
and ordered sweet coffee in a glass.
"I myself should be at my house," he said. "The preparations for our tooth-filing
ceremony are underway. All chaos and noise."
"Why do you are going to Temple Ped, then?"
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"An emergency visit, you might say. And you know Bali, the preparations for
ceremonies look like madness but it all gets done in the end." He eyed Zoe, stretched out
on the recliner. "Putu is surfing, is he? He should be helping. My nephew Nol is there but
Nol is the sort of man who means well but causes twice the work."
"He's a good landlord," Tina said
Down the beach, the old men in the water erupted into a good-natured argument.
Dharma said, "Those four men are the power brokers of this village. They swim here
most mornings."
"Then shouldn't you be swimming with them?"
"I am their misan."
The word could mean either cousin or servant. "In which sense do you mean?"
Tina asked, slipping a hand inside her bag to turn the digital recorder.
The matron delivered the coffees. After a long slurp of his, Dharma said, "Nah,
when I was a young, strong man, I worked as a farmer sharecropping the palace's rice
fields. I had no education. I wasn't qualified for government jobs. There was little
opportunity back then to do anything else, and I had to make a living, and I did what my
ancestors had done. I am a sudra, Tina, a peasant. A rich peasant now, but still a peasant.
Is that a tape recorder in your bag?"
"Do you mind?"
"Would you turn it off, please?"
Tina took out the recorder. "I really would like to tape this."
Dharma shook his head. "Off the record."
She hit the stop button. "You said you had something to tell about Gestapu."
"I hear you've been asking questions about Luhde Srikandi."
That certainly riveted Tina's attention. "Did you know her?"
"Communist Special Bureau agent, right here in Batu Gede. Masquerading as a
Gerwani activist." Dharma looked right at Tina with a shuttered gaze. "I was the one who
cut off her head."
Tina summoned all her willpower to maintain a scholar's dispassionate
expression, but Dharma obviously sensed the effort. He said, "It was what happened. I
could speak in circles, but why? It was a violent time, Tina. The Red Beret commander
was furious I hadn't kept her alive for their tortures. She was fortunate I killed her
quickly."
"She would have been more fortunate if you'd kept her alive and away from the
Red Berets."
"And be called a Communist myself?"
Tina didn't reply.
"Nah, my sister-in-law. Arini. I promised my brother Catra I would take care of
his wife, and for forty years I have. You want her to tell you about the events of Gestapu
and of her husband, but I am asking you to please leave her alone. She is fragile. Her
mind is not strong."
"She strikes me as being the exact opposite, very strong-minded."
Dharma slurped again and carefully placed the glass on its saucer. "You've only
known her for a short time. But you can tell me I have been wrong all these years I have
known her, from when she was a young girl going to school with my brother?"
"Maaf," she said, the apology a tactical retreat.
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Down the beach, Mantera buried his legs in the sand. His granddaughter
Wulandri, who yesterday had been glammed up in Balinese temple dress but was now
dressed in shorts and T-shirt, spread a towel on his shoulders. She headed down the
boardwalk, strolling with that balanced grace common to so many Balinese women, but
when she spotted Zoe napping on the recliner, she halted for a second before continuing
on with a distinctly different sashay. Sauntering to the café, she bantered with the lady as
she ordered a tea.
Zoe suddenly sat up as if internal alarm bells had rung and stared at Wulandri.
She removed her cotton top and shorts, and thus stripped down to her bikini, turned over
on her back to present herself and to the sun.
Wulandri eyed Zoe and said in Balinese to the shop matron, "She looks like a
roasting pig."
Tina had to smile at this little vignette. Jealousy, the same the world over.
"If you promise to leave Arini alone," Dharma said, "then I will tell you her
story."
Tina returned her full attention to him. She would never silence another woman's
voice, much less allow a man to tell her to do so, so she lied with ease. "All right."
"I have to start with mine."
"I'm listening."
"Nah, I sharecropped for the old prince, Mantera's father, and then I became
Mantera's collector, the landlord's share of the harvest. I put aside a good percent of what
I earned to keep my younger brother Catra in school. I was already a young man when he
was still a boy. I was determined that at least one of our family should go to university
and become a professional. To fulfill the promise of Sukarno's revolution. After I worked
a hard long day, we'd sit in our front room with its dirt floor and a single kerosene lantern
and he would teach me to read and write.
"Since the days of my forefathers the palace had been hard lords, harsh on the
tenants working their fields, some of them demanding sons and daughters to work in the
palace. They were loyal to the Dutch. Mantera's father was a greedy man. Mantera was
only marginally better." Dharma paused for another slurp.
"Batu Gede was considered a rich area of Bali, but life was hard back then. Last
year I attended a charity event. There were old photographs of Bali in the old days, the
Bali of unspoiled paradise."
"Reed Davis's photos?"
Dharma gave her a long look. "Yes. Some were his."
"I've heard that he was CIA. Many people think the CIA masterminded Gestapu
and the killings, to get rid of the Communists."
Dharma laughed loudly, slapping his knee. "We have had a thousand years of
wars and intrigues, of spies and shadow puppets. It is colonialist arrogance to think the
we needed the white American CIA to rid us of our Communists. Frankly, it is an insult."
"They provided lists of names. Of Communists."
"Bah. For every ten they counted, we already knew a thousand. We took care of
our own problem, and we made the CIA dance to our own tune."
Tina filed this away as she watched Zoe turn over and sat up. Slipping on a Tshirt,
the American girl wandered into the café to order water. She gave Wulandri a
smile, and said in passable Balinese, "Do you think I'm roasted enough?"
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"Maybe a bit more and the demon from Penida Island will come over and gobble
you up," Wulandri replied evenly.
The two girls laughed, and Zoe sat down at Wulandri's table.
Dharma had noticed as well, and was frowning.
"The calm before the storm," Tina said. "Putu is a handsome boy."
"And a commoner. Wulandri is a royal. Her family won't be happy. And neither
will his."
"The lure of the forbidden." Tina leaned forward. "You were saying about Reed's
photos?"
"At this charity," Dharma said, "they also showed a movie taken in the 1930s of
village women husking rice with their husking poles. Have you seen this?"
In fact, Tina had seen such movies, and as with much of daily life in Bali, the
simple act of husking was infused with grace and poetry and music, the bare-breasted
women raising their long poles and pounding them down into the wooden pestle,
alternating their hands from right to left and right again, a rhythm of motion and sound.
"The people at the party, the foreigners and the Jakarta socialites and even the
young Balinese were amazed. There was much sighing about how beautiful life was back
then. But I tell you, Tina, that rice husking was hard work in a day full of hard work.
Those women were young and looked healthy but in ten, twenty years time they would be
old women, worn down and broken.
"In those years after Independence, the majority of Balinese lived on the knife
edge of poverty and disaster. A simple illness or accident could spell tragedy for a family.
And that was how life on Bali had always been, except that the fervor of Revolution and
Merdeka had given us hope. It was an atmosphere ripe for politicization of the masses.
People took their cues from feudal lineages and from family elders and from
revolutionary leaders. By 1960, there were really only two parties, the Partai Komunis
Indonesia and the Partai Nasionalis Indonesia.
"The PKI and their associates the Peasants League and Gerwani were big on land
reform. The League and Gerwani made inroads into Batu Gede. As for Gerwani, such
clever seductresses they were. They set up day care centers and health clinics, not for the
children but to indoctrinate their mothers. They wanted women to have power. It became
a joke in the neighboring villages. Oh, you're from Batu Gede? Did your wife allow you
to travel today?"
"God forbid that women have that kind authority," Tina said.
"Nah, early in 1963, a week before Mount Agung exploded, Mantera summoned
me to the palace. The whole village was busy with preparations of the big Eka Dasa
Rudra, the one hundred year ceremony at the holy mother temple on Mount Agung.
Mantera sat upon a chair in his court and I squatted upon the ground before him. I was
older than he was, big and full of muscles. He was a slender man in expensive brocade,
his cheeks red and smooth as ripe papaya. He said to me that the previous day members
of the PKI and the Peasants League had paid him a visit and told him the palace owned
too much land and ordered him to give up fields according to the land reform law.
Mantera asked me what I thought about this. He was testing my loyalty. Would I be a
friend of the palace, or an enemy? I do not wish to brag, but my choice was important. I
had good revolutionary credentials. I did not crow like a cock at every sunrise, but when I
did speak, men listened to what I had to say.
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"It was a day of low clouds and west winds. The middle of the rainy season, when
sickness and misfortunes stalk the land. The PKI were powerful and getting more
powerful. It seemed possible that they would overcome the nationalists and control the
country. And it wasn't that I had any great affection for the palace."
Dharma held up his two forefingers, pressed tightly together. "But in this Mantera
and I were one. I looked out at the courtyard where the women were assembling the
offerings. We were Balinese. The PKI taught a foreign ideology. If they came to power,
they would give us no choice, they would strip us of our culture and identity. They would
reverse the natural order.
"I bowed before Mantera and said, I am your servant. I became the leader of the
nationalists, with the palace as my patron.
"Nah, after Moung Agung erupted, the famine spread and tensions grew. You
need to understand something, Tina. It is easy to have sympathy for losers. But the
Communists were not going to show any mercy. Cadres marched with hammer and sickle
banners saying Death to Capitalist Dogs. Effigies were hung and burned. This wasn't just
propaganda. They meant it. They were the first to create death lists and to make plans to
cleanse the country.
"Here in Batu Gede the Communists wanted our rice fields. One late afternoon
they caught us unawares and raided a field belonging to the palace, ready with their own
scythes to harvest the crop. The tenant was there. He tried to stop them. They killed him,
cut him down like he was a dog. Everyone was hungry for revenge but I knew the PKI
were looking for excuses so I calmed everybody down. I told them to keep cool heads
and colder steel at the ready. I told them, our day would come. And our day did come,"
Dharma said. He turned to look at Mantera, still buried in the sand. "Do you see that cane
with the silver handle? It's ironwood. It is very hard. It will break bone. Do you
remember those skulls? The fractures in the back of the head?"
Tina stared at the cane. "Oh dear God," she said softly.
"There's our boat driver. Time to go."
As Tina paid the bill, Putu trotted up the beach, a broken surfboard under his arm,
blood dripping from his forearm, where coral had gashed the skin. Zoe clucked with
alarm. "That looks nasty."
On the back wall of the café was a first aid box with some bandages and
disinfectant. Wulandri got out a roll and the small bottle of Betadine. "Let me put some
on," she said.
Zoe took them from her. "I'll do that."
The smile Wulandri gave Putu was as small and concise as her shrug. "And you'd
better pray at your family shrines," she said. "Spilling your blood before your tooth filing
is not a good omen."
The speedboat's twin outboards zippered a wake in the glassy blue sea. With a
tattered life jacket tied around her, Tina clung bucket seat. Beside her, Dharma held to his
offering basket. The boat swooped close to the curve of coast. A few miles along the
black sand beach, the driver throttled back into idle, the engines burping a cloud of white
exhaust.
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From the offering basket, Dharma took out several flower offerings and lit the
incense sticks. Leaning over the side, he placed the offerings in water, murmuring a
prayer.
A hundred yards away, waves surged against a stone embankment that channeled
a small river.
"There used to be a natural estuary behind the beach," Dharma said. "All eroded
away now. A short way up the road is an old army post where the Red Berets had a camp.
That's where they took my brother Catra. They shot Communists on the river bank and
threw them into the estuary. Nearly a hundred on December 10 alone. I looked at every
one."
Tina understood at once. "For your brother."
"I couldn't save him. For his cremation we had to use an effigy." Dharma looked
down into the clear water, lanced by rays of light. "The military killed him but it was
Luhde Srikandi who sealed his fate with her poison. I had no idea who she was until it
was too late."
An hour later, the blue of deep sea gave way to the turquoise pastels of reef
fringing Penida island. The driver nudged the bow into sand, and Dharma and Tina
jumped off. They headed down a cactus-lined path that blended into a narrow road
leading through a seaside village. Soon they turned and passed through an carved
limestone gate to a temple's outer courtyard. Not any old temple, but one of Bali's most
feared, Temple Ped, home to the Fanged Lord. Dharma placed his basket on a pavilion
and opened the cover to withdraw a sheathed keris.
"The other night I heard the blade rattling," Dharma said. "A sign of danger. This
is why I am making this pilgrimage, to pray to the god for protection." He vanished
through the inner gates, guarded by fanged demons carved in stone. Tina could have
wrapped a prayer sash around her waist and followed, but didn't want to forget the details
of Dharma's story, which she summarized into the recorder. Light drenched the
courtyard. The trade winds had picked up, ruffling the palms beyond the walls.
In the inner courtyard, a furious bellow exploded. Dharma stalked out of the gate,
his eyes red and huge. He'd fallen into a trance. Slashing the air with the keris, he
bellowed again and rushed down the stairs, whirling to attack unseen enemies. Two
priests darted after him, sprinkling holy water on him, trying to break the trance.
Dharma stabbed offering baskets as he ranted. The commotion attracted
passersby, who rushed in to grab his arms. After another heavy dousing of holy water, he
finally collapsed and sagged backwards. The villagers led him to the pavilion and sat him
down on the edge. He groggily came to full awareness. He stared at the keris for a second
before putting the tip to his palm. Pricking hard to draw blood, he licked the drops
welling out of the cut.
Tina knew better than to ask if he was okay. He was both okay and not okay.
Unexpected trances were not uncommon, especially at one of Bali's most spiritually
charged temples.
Dharma sheathed the keris and placed it in the basket, and they wordlessly left the
temple. He led the way with slow steps down another track, winding to a fisherman's
empty hut on the beach, smelling of salt and seaweed, a not unpleasant iodine odor.
Waves lapped the sand. Dharma plopped heavily onto on a rough bench.
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Taking a deep breath, he said to Tina, "We are alone here. Turn on your recorder.
It is time to finish my story, and I want to make sure you get every single word."
Early on a bright morning in the heady days of Sukarno's revolution, three
children left their homes for school.
Madé Catra walked barefoot along the rice paddy dikes, carrying his slate, with
several friends behind him. A wriggling eel halted them, and the friends were ready to
give chase, but Catra said no, they'd only get muddy and the teacher would be angry.
A short distance away, Wayan Arini skipped down a narrow lane past the market.
On her slate was written the alphabet, and she chanted her letters in rhythm to her stride,
punctuated with cries of "merdeka atau mati", freedom or death, the rallying cry of
Sukarno's revolution. The market goers smiled at the girl and her revolutionary fervor.
Catra and Arini arrived at the school gates as a Chevrolet sedan pulled up on the
lane. The back door opened and there emerged a male servant, holding up a ceremonial
umbrella for the boy who jumped down, his new black shoes raising a small puff of dust.
The servant ushered him to the school's gate. The other schoolboys held back out of
deference, but not Arini. The servant scolded her, telling her to allow Anak Agung
Mantera to enter.
"I got here first," Arini said, and flounced ahead of the young prince.
Each school year, Catra and Arini were the top students in the class, while
Mantera passed because it would have been unthinkable to keep him behind. But Mantera
was a talented dancer, and along with Arini, was a principal dancer in the village troupe,
performing at various venues, including one memorable time at Tampaksiring Palace for
President Sukarno.
Mantera and Arini loathed each other. Mantera demanded that Arini give him the
traditional respect of a commoner for her lord, which she refused. She would eat her
snacks and lunches without waiting for him to start eating his. She would climb trees and
walls and sit higher than he.
In the dance troupe, their instructors paired the two as often as they could to let
the sparks fly.
The palace sent Mantera to Java to finish school in an elite academy. Catra and
Arini continued in the local high school. Catra rode a bicycle, and Arini stuffed herself
into a packed bus. The second year Catra began to stop by Arini's house to offer her a
ride on his bicycle's pillion seat so that she could save her bus fare. By the time they
graduated, he and Arini had an unofficial understanding that they would marry when he
returned with his degree from Gadja Mada University in Yogjakarta. In the meantime,
Arini opened a warung that sold drinks and simple but delicious meals.
A few weeks after Catra left, Mantera returned from his academy under some sort
of dark cloud. Rumors abounded that he'd gotten the daughter of a powerful military man
pregnant. He and his palace friends began hanging out at Arini's warung, teasing and
flirting with her. She was prettiest maiden in the village, and Catra vowed to his friends
that he would capture her heart and then toss her aside.
"After all, she's low caste and I can't marry her," he said. "I'll use her first and
then she can go back to Catra."
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But she didn't respond to his overtures. The old animosity rekindled. At this time,
Mantera's father died, and after the cremation ceremonies, Mantera took over as head of
the palace. He summoned Arini's father, who sharecropped for the palace. Mantera told
him that his rice fields were being poorly farmed and they were going to be given to a
more product tenant. Arini's father protested, but Mantera did not relent.
Then he said, the palace needed another attendant who could cook. His daughter
Arini was a good cook, was she not? If her father sent her to work at the palace, then he
could continue sharecropping the fields.
When Arini's father ordered her to the palace, she took with her the pistol that
belonged to Catra's aunt, a former underground guerilla fighter. At the palace, in front of
a delegation from another royal house, she tried to shoot the boar in the sty, but she
misaimed and the kick of the pistol knocked her to the ground.
The police arrested her. That night her warung burned down. Her family brokered
a deal with the palace that exiled her for a year to Java. So she joined Catra at his
university and returned a married woman, the wife of the village's new schoolteacher.
On the recording, Dharma's voice says: "Mantera kicked Arini's father off the rice
fields, but I worked out a private deal and allowed him to farming as usual for his tenant's
share. A minor administrative headache for me, but it kept Arini's family from poverty."
Tina asks, "And what happened between Mantera and Arini when she returned as
Catra's wife?"
"Nothing," Dharma says. "Until 1965 and Gestapu."
In the late hours of September 30, 1965 and into the early morning of October 1st,
rogue leftist army units led by Lt. Colonel Untung of the Tjakrawibawa presidential
guard kidnapped six army generals from their Djakarta homes. They seized the
telecommunications office and surrounded the Presidential Palace. In his proclamation of
a new government, read out over the national radio, Lt. Colonel Untung declared this
action to be the 30 th September Movement and stated that that he was rescuing President
Sukarno and the Revolution from a Council of Generals who were planning an antirevolutionary
coup. Three generals were killed in the abduction, and three were taken
alive to Halim Air Force Base, which served as headquarters for the plot. At the time of
the coup, the Air Force was conducting paramilitary training at the base for Gerwani
women, with representatives of various mass organizations due to arrive soon. At Halim,
the three generals still alive were killed, and all six corpses, plus that of a junior officer,
were thrown down a nearby well. Later on October 1 st , President Sukarno visited Air
Force base and consulted with the ringleaders, thereby opening himself to accusations
that he himself had masterminded the plot.
The plotters had overlooked Major General Soeharto and his Red Berets, crack
commando troops. In the morning hours of October 1, Soeharto was already mobilizing
his men to counterattack. With little bloodshed, his loyalist officers talked the rogue
battalions back into their barracks and retook the telecommunications building. During an
evening assault, they also retook Halim Air Force base, with only a single fatality, that of
a water buffalo, accidentally shot.
On these events, the fate of the nation turned. No graceful pivot, but a lurching
violent swing. In a clever acronym with overtones of the Nazis, barbaric cousins to the
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treacherous Communists, the Army quickly relabeled the September 30 Movement, or
Gerakan Tiga Puluh September, into Gestapu. Soeharto and his loyalists moved to crush
the ringleaders and then the Communist party leadership. The Communist Party, which
had been accelerating to power via political process, was cut off at the knees and then
gutted. When the bodies of the slain generals were found, there spread like wildfire lurid
stories of how they'd been tortured by the Gerwani women. Gerwani became a symbol of
treachery and wanton wickedness.
The Army, with the vengeful help of nationalist and Islamic organizations, began
in October to cleanse Java, to secure the Communists down to their very roots. It was a
methodical process. All transportation between the islands was halted. Bali was cut off
and locked down. While Java was cleansed, as bodies by the hundreds and thousands
filled gullies and floated down the island's rivers, Communists in Bali began to renounce
their party and admit their sins. The daily newspapers were filled these remorseful and
fearful confessions.
Madé Catra continued to teach at school. He was not PKI, and he had never
joined leftist unions. Surely he was safe.
Until Mantera came around one morning late in October to visit Arini in the
family compound. He had with him an edition of the Harian Rakyat newspaper, which he
showed to Arini while standing at the gate. She refused to let him onto the property.
"That," Mantera said in his soft, cultured voice, while pointing to the name, "is
your husband. The land reform he talks about is my land. It is in a Communist Paper."
"The article counsels common sense," Arini replied, as her young daughter
clutched her skirt. "If anything, it is to your benefit."
"A Communist news organ," Mantera repeated. "You know I am PNI. A
nationalist leader. I am in charge of this district. I am keeping," he said, speaking softer
yet, "a list of names."
Arini said nothing.
Mantera folded the newspaper. "I can put your husband on the list or I can keep
him safe. It's your choice."
"I want you to leave," Arini said.
Mantera glanced down at the girl. "Such a lovely child you have." He put his
hands together and took his leave.
He was back the following day, and the next. Each time, his intrusion extended a
just that little bit further into the family compound, to the garden wall inside the gate, to
the garden pavilion, to the porch of the simple room where Catra and Arini slept.
Every time Arini resisted, Mantera would mention his list of names, growing
longer each day. He would smile and pinch her young daughter's cheek and give her a
small gift.
After he left, Arini would take this gift—a hair brush, a tin bangle, a colored
pencil—and throw it into the kitchen hearth.
One morning in early November Anak Agung Mantera again stopped in to see
Arini. This time his gift for her was a half kilogram of precious white cane sugar.
"Perhaps you have not yet offered me coffee because you are ashamed you have no
sugar," Mantera said. "Two spoons in my glass, please. Thank you."
Wordlessly, Arini retreated to her kitchen hut and made him a glass of coffee,
from the tin of powder which she was hording for Catra's morning cup. For Mantera, she
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picked out the dirtiest glass and a saucer that had a dried gecko dropping on it. Mantera
pretended not to notice, although he didn't touch the glass.
He showed little Wayan his gift for her. A new shiny sheet of carbon paper, which
he placed between the pages of a blank notebook.
"Look what you can do!" he told the girl. "Let me write your father's name –
Madé Catra and look, there it is, on the page below! Like magic! And your name, let me
add your name to the list. Little Wayan. See? Your name appears like magic!"
He glanced up at Arini. How cold his face, his eyes! How remote hers! As if she'd
retreated from her own skin.
She took the notebook from her daughter and carefully ripped off the pages with
the two names before handing the notebook back.
"You stay and play with that," she said.
She didn't resist as Mantera reached for her wrist. She didn't resist as he marched
with her to the back of the property, didn't resist as he herded up the steps to the granary,
didn't resist as he shoved her through the small door.
On the recording, there is a long silence filled with the rasp of wind and the fizz
of waves. Then Dharma speaks again, in a hard and level voice.
"Mantera was the one who betrayed my brother," Dharma says. "He was the one
who told the Red Berets about that letter. He'd never forgiven Catra for stealing Arini
from him."
"He raped her," Tina says, her voice uneven and agitated. "To this day, he toys
with her."
"That is not all," Dharma says. "Whose son is Nol? Who fathered him?"
A long silence. Then Tina, softly, a sigh barely heard: "Oh dear Lord."
"I raised Nol like he was my own son. He is an innocent. None of it was his fault.
Now he is a grown man. It is time for him to know these things. You have the story in my
words. You can play it for him."
There is a click as the recording stops.
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Chapter 22
Nol's cell phone blasted him awake as the first light of the day reached through
his window.
"Get down here," Suti barked. "Somebody's broken into the shop."
Nol still hadn't told her he'd been fired from the golf course, so he yanked on his
guard uniform, which she would be expecting him to wear, and rushed out to the garage.
Traffic was light, but Nol got stuck behind a Family Ride for Health bicycle rally, the
bicycles spilling across two lanes, families out for a leisurely spin before the sun got too
hot.
When he finally got to the beach, he parked in the public lot by the local karaoke
bars. Three drunken men sat outside one establishment, empty bottles of arak littering the
table. Gong hailed Nol with an exaggerated wave of his hand. Two of his skinny friends
grinned sloppily. One seemed to have a smear of blood or paint on his arm. Gong's eyes
were red but alert. He had the bulk to absorb a whole tanker of arak.
"What's this, Nol," he said, "you don't have clothes to wear so you keep wearing
that uniform?"
Nol ignored him and trudged on. Javanese tourists thronged the boardwalk, a
good number of them gawking at Suti's shop, third in the arcade. Nol pushed through the
crowd and halted in shock.
The interior of the shop was a shambles. Smashed cabinets, splintered carvings,
hacked souvenirs. T-shirts and dresses and baseball caps had been thrown into a pile and
drenched with red paint. The same red paint was brushed onto the back wall in big letters:
COMMUNIST WHORE. A hammer and a sickle flanked the words.
Suti and a friend squatted by the broken glass, picking out pieces of silver
jewelry. Nol scanned the shop front's rolling door, rolled up normally on its hinges. It
hadn't been forced, but the ceiling panel that led into the attic was ajar.
He picked his away around the pile of clothing, the paint still sticky, and knelt by
Suti. "They came in from the attic," she said, picking up a pair of earrings. "And the only
way into the attic is from the access in the back office."
"I'll take care of it," Nol said.
Suti sat back and brushed hair from her forehead. "I don't know why you keep
wearing that silly uniform when they've fired you."
Nol grabbed a handful of ruined clothes, still wet with paint, and rubbed the fabric
over the slogan and sign, obliterating it with red the color of blood.
Three hours later Nol was back home, scrubbing red paint off his hands with
gasoline. The paint had gotten onto his uniform, which now was only good for rags. Suti
was still at the shop, starting to fix it up. Cops had also shown up to strut and scold Nol
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for destroying evidence by painting over the back wall. They took scene photos and
measurements and statements, including one from the arcade's manager, who'd clucked in
indignation at Nol's suggestion that somebody had gotten into the attic from the office.
Nol switched to a bucket of soap and water, and was just drying his hands when a
taxi pulled up to deposit Zoe in the lane.
"Hello, sir," she said in English. "Is Putu home?" Despite her smile, her blue eyes
sagged. She seemed tired, too tired to concentrate on speaking Balinese.
"He's at his cousins helping prepare for his tooth-filing ceremony," Nol said and
attempted a translation.
Zoe frowned unhappily. "Well, yeah, I know that's where he should be but he said
he was going to skip it and pick me up early to go surfing at Tabanan."
Nol understood the gist. He could feel his face clouding up. Surfing at Tabanan?
Was his son too full of his Johnny Putu self to bother helping out with the ceremony? He
got on his cell and called Dharma, who said that Putu hadn't shown up yet.
"He is probably still sleeping," Nol told Zoe. With her hovering behind him, he
knocked on Putu's door. No answer. The door wasn't locked. Opening it, Nol saw that the
empty bed was neatly made with the fresh linen Suti had put on yesterday. In the garden,
Mak was sweeping the yard, one arm curled up behind her bent back, her sunken breasts
dangling. Nol asked her if she'd seen Putu.
She gave him a ferocious look. "I am not going to tell you a thing," she said.
"Torture me, but I won't say a word."
"Do you mind if I wait here?" Zoe asked Nol.
"Please, please." Nol fussed over her and got her seated in the garden pavilion.
"Coffee? Tea?"
"Some cold water would be great, thanks," she said.
Cold water? Very American. Nol didn't have cold water but Tina kept some in her
fridge, Nol was sure.
She still wasn't locking her doors. On her dining room table was a photo album,
open to a shot of Nol's mother on her porch, taken with Tina's compact digital, the date
and time stamped orange on the bottom. Nol flipped through the plastic sleeves. Oddly,
three were shots of the granary. Why was she taking pictures of that.
The last shot was one of Mantera taken early morning on the beach. Unaware of
the camera, he stood on the sand, towel around his neck, and he was pointing his black
cane toward something. Across the bottom Tina had written in black marker the English
question WHAT TO DO?
What did that mean? What could be Tina's problem with Mantera that she was
having problems deciding what to do?
He turned to the fridge, which held only milk and Diet Coke. No cold water. Nol
felt aggrieved. Now he'd have to go down the road to Bu Mangku's warung to buy a
bottle of mineral water out of her Coca-Cola fridge that was not supposed to be used for
anything but Coca Cola products. If Nol reminded her of that, perhaps she'd knock the
price down by five hundred rupiahs, not much, but that's how everything added up.
Why was he thinking of five hundred rupiah when Suti's shop was a wreck?
Because everything did add up, a little to a lot.
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He hurried out to the lane and was nearly run over by a scooter, carrying two boys
without helmets. Putu jumped off the pillion seat and gave his friend a wave as the
scooter roared off.
"Where have you been?" Nol snapped. "Zoe is here, waiting for you."
"She is?" Putu said with some alarm.
"She says you're supposed to be at Tabanan with her, and I say you're supposed to
be at Uncle Dharma's, helping with the ceremony preparations."
"That's were I'm going now."
"But where have you been?"
"Out."
"That's why you have cell phones. You should have told Zoe and you should have
told me."
"Father, do me a favor, will you? Go talk to her, make up an excuse for me—"
"You go right in there and tell her yourself."
Putu sighed hugely and trudged through the gate with lowered head. Mak was still
sweeping in front in front of the pavilion where Zoe waited on a bamboo chair, her gaze
instantly riveted to Putu.
She looked, Nol thought, like women always do when they are waiting for an
explanation that had better be good.
Putu halted. He looked away from Zoe to Mak and then exploded in a torrent of
Balinese, waving his arms and scolding the old woman.
Why didn't she get some clothes on, he said, this was embarrassing, this was the
21 st century not the feudal ages, what an embarrassment she was to the family, parading
around in front of guests half-naked like this.
Mak ignored him and kept sweeping.
Nol stepped between his son and his great-aunt. "Enough," he said to Putu,
knowing that his son was getting upset at Mak as a way of delaying a quarrel with Zoe.
Zoe remained seated as if she were on her throne, and Putu a supplicant on the
steps. "Where were you?" she asked.
"Didn't you get my message?" Putu asked with fake surprise.
And he wants to be an actor? Nol thought.
"You were with her, weren't you?"
"Who are you talking about?"
"That girl you said you hated all through school. Miss Wet Laundry, you called
her."
"Wulandri?" Putu said with exaggerated confusion.
Nol grunted, as if he'd been sucker punched. Putu? With Anak Agung Wulandri?
Zoe rose and walked stiffly past Putu, who was trying to stutter an explanation.
He put out a hand to stop her. She shrugged it off but then stopped and turned to face
him.
"I know what falling in love is like," she said. "I know how you can't help it. But
if you can't be honest about it, then go jump in the lake, you big jerk." She stalked off. By
the time she reached the gate, she was running.
Putu ran out after her but slouched back a moment later, his face heavy. "Girls,"
he muttered.
"What's this about Wulandri?"
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"Relax, Father. We're just friends. We were just out talking."
"She's a royal. You should know better. Stay away from her."
"At least she's Balinese. You should be happy about that, but you're never happy
about anything, are you?"
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Chapter 23
Tina rushed along a wide gallery cut through the limestone hill, leaning into a stiff
wind. In the distance, ruffled waters of the Indian Ocean glittered under an afternoon sun,
and before her towered a carved stone bust fifty feet high, the head and shoulders of the
god Vishnu, eyes closed in meditation.
Tina was late, damn the traffic, and she didn't have Dr. Ningsih's cell number. For
weeks now she'd been trying to meet the archeologist who'd been at the bones meeting.
Tina had finally asked two of her high powered academic friends to vouch for her before
the doctor reluctantly agreed to a meeting. Was she even here?
But there she was, seated on a cement bench. She glanced at her watch and
gathered her purse. She spotted Tina and held still, waiting but ready to bolt.
"Sorry I'm late," Tina huffed. "Traffic jam."
Dr. Ningsih pushed her glasses up her nose. "That is the modern Bali experience,"
she said, her English slow but fluent. She nodded at the enormous bust. "I was
contemplating the statue. I find it ironic that on a Hindu island that worships Siva the
Destroyer as their deity, we have Vishnu as our tourist symbol. It's like having an icon of
the Virgin Mary above a Baptist pulpit."
Tina noted the gold cross dangling around the archeologist's stout neck. "You are
a Christian?"
"I am a Protestant, a member of the Church of Bali, as my parents were." The
thick lens of her glasses magnified the caution in her eyes. "You understand that I am
only meeting you because Dr. Oemar asked me to."
"Do you want to go somewhere out of this wind? One of the cafes?"
"Here we are alone. Gestapu is still a sensitive subject."
"Do you mind if I record our talk? Off the record. Only for my personal use." She
used her shoulder bag as a platform on her lap to hold the recorder. The archeologist
didn't protest. "As I told you," Tina said, "I want to ask you about those bones that were
discovered in Batu Gede. You examined them on site?"
"Most had already been retrieved. Carelessly so. I found several more. A mass
burial. I said a forensic pathologist or anthropologist should look at them, but they said I
would do."
"But in your opinion they were killed?"
"By blows to the back of the head."
"And were they killed there at the beach?"
"Perhaps elsewhere, but it's easier to transport living bodies to where they will be
buried."
"You mentioned one of the skeletons was missing a skull."
"Recovery is never exact, Ibu Tina. Many bones go missing." But her gaze was
troubled.
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"What is it?" Tina asked.
"Forgive me, but why are you investigating this?"
"For myself. I need to know what happened."
Dr. Ningsih studied the serene face of Vishnu. "The Communist were so close to
taking over. If they had, I wouldn't be here. My parents were anti-Communists—they'd
be dead, their bones buried somewhere. Thank God for Soeharto. People sometimes
forget he saved this country."
Tina choose her words carefully. "We can only judge what actually happened,
not what could have happened. Surely these murders were wrong?"
Dr. Ningsih sighed and touched her cross. "One set of cervical vertebrae showed
evidence of trauma. Cuts and nicks. As might happen with a decapitation."
Tina let out a long breath.
"Determining the sex of skeletons is not automatic, but I have enough experience
to know my bones. All the victims were female. There were no artifacts. Not even shreds
of clothing. I believe they were stripped naked before they were brought to the site and
killed." She fell quiet again, a deeper and heavier silence.
"Yes?" Tina prompted.
"I recovered several infant bones. Most likely a fetus. It is impossible to be
certain, but I am inclined to say one of the victims was a pregnant woman near term. A
mother would have hid her newborn with friends or family."
"Oh, dear Lord," Tina whispered.
"I kept the baby's bones for a private burial," the archeologist said. "One of God's
pure ones. It was the least I could do."
130

Chapter 24
On the night of the full moon, a throng of Balinese and expats and drive-by
tourists celebrated the organic salt harvest with a mix of Balinese ceremony and Western
carnival. Fortified by vodka, Reed danced the dance of the bumbling bulé. He wore his
sarong tied like a woman. He poked himself with his warrior's keris. He flapped his arms
and his legs got stuck in arthritic poses. Everyone howled. It was a great success.
Bowing, he slipped into the background, where he sipped another tonic and
vodka. Children raced about, a number of them half-Western, half-Asian. A young
French glass-maker hovered solicitously by his lovely pregnant Balinese wife. Reed had
attended their shotgun wedding, one of the most talked about in years, for the lad's
mother, direct from Paris, had stormed into the ceremony to knock down offerings and
smash plates.
Reed poured his vodka into a hibiscus bush. He'd been in the spotlight and now he
was alone, and melancholy sifted down from the stars to settle on him with memories
more bitter than sweet.
1965
Three times. Once a month for the next three months. That was how often Reed
was able to see Naniek.
Before the world went mad.
Each time was at the Tampaksiring Cottages. A day or two before the tryst, Mak
Jangkrik would show up at Reed's bungalow and after a litany of complaints, from her
tired legs to the spiraling price of kerosene, would pass on Naniek's note saying she'd be
free. On these visits, Mak always chaperoned her. The two women took an early bus and
spent the day at Tampaksiring before catching the last bus before dark. Mak refused to
allow Reed to drive them. She kept to herself on the cottage porch and left them alone,
but made sure that Reed behaved himself. He didn't mind. This was how things were
done in this country.
He and Naniek strolled in the ragged garden, picnicked on mats in the shade of
the wispy casuarinas trees, watched the fish swimming in the temple's spring that bubbled
pure as crystal out of fine sand.
Naniek was a vegetarian, although she did eat some fish for protein. On Fridays
she did not eat at all and saved the money for the Gerwani charity for the poor. She
owned a dress, a skirt, two pairs of trousers for riding her bicycle, several blouses, and
her canvas sneakers. She didn't need money. When she rode her bicycle to villages for
evening meetings on nutrition and health, she knew that there would be rice to eat and a
place to sleep.
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Reed was reminded of Jesus's apostles, preaching the gospel.
He envied her the simplicity.
He said, "Having Dr. Subandrio as a family friend must sure open doors for you."
She gave him a little hiccupy look. "I open my own doors."
She was uncompromising in her political views but did not argue them. If you
believe in something then you do something about it, she said, explaining her activism.
She also believed in ghosts, two of them she'd seen as a young girl in a field near her
village home, Dutch sailors that the Japanese had captured and executed.
Her favorite color? The question seemed to puzzle her. Reed put the question
another way. If she were to buy a dress, what color would she choose? She said she'd buy
the cheapest one that fit well. Then she laughed and said her favorite color was the shade
of living green when rice seedlings were half-grown, except it didn't look good on her.
Her favorite food? Sweet coconut kolak.
She liked cats better than dogs because cats were independent. She never had
pets. Pets were a colonialist indulgence—in Dutch times, the colonials fed their dogs and
horses better than their servants. She thought about this and added, "When I was a girl I
did find a starving puppy in the gutter and I kept him until he was grown but then he
disappeared. I cried for days. What about you? Did you have pets?"
Reed said that his father didn't like animals except for horses. In his boys' school,
boys didn't have favorite colors, that was sissy and could get you teased mercilessly
unless you said something like you liked the color of blood on the football field, which
led to digression on the game for Naniek. But if he had to pick a favorite color he'd say
the color of her eyes. Velvet black.
"And I don't believe in ghosts," he said, "only superstitious feudal reactionaries
believe in ghosts.
She laughed and lightly smacked him on the arm. "What would your family say if
they knew about me?" she asked.
"My parents wouldn't say a word. In fact, they wouldn't say a word to me for the
rest of my life."
"That is not good."
"What about your folks, if they knew about this big-nosed foreigner you're
seeing?"
"It is my brother you have to worry about. We're very close. He is very protective
of his little sister."
"Is he a dedicated Revolutionary?"
"Bambang? He is dedicated to himself." She said that with exasperated affection.
August arrived with big blue skies and friendly puffball clouds drifting along on
the cool trade winds. The island never looked more lovely than in August, but
underneath the bucolic charm, tensions were ratcheting. There were mass marches and
demonstrations and occasional violence between Communists and nationalists. Impatient
at the foot-dragging over the enactment of land reform laws, the Communists began
orchestrated actions, forcibly seizing agricultural land for the landless peasants.
Wendell harassed Reed for intelligence on the mysterious Luhde Srikandi. She
appeared to be a loose cannon agent, an anomaly in the well-run and well-regulated PKI
machinery with its hierarchy of control. Wendell said that if Reed could get his
132

fingernails into this crack, then there might be a way into something big. Something
important. Reed casually probed his contacts, including Dharma and Arini. Dharma
growled that the Communists were gearing up for a takeover, and they had agents
everywhere. Arini passed on to Reed her usual bits and pieces gleaned from the guests at
the hotel, but nothing that hinted at Luhde Srikandi's true identity.
Reed wondered if the BPI, the Central Intelligence Organization, had a hand in
this somehow. And the BPI was Prime Minister Subandrio's personal fiefdom. And he
was Naniek's godfather. And she'd only recently been assigned to work in Bali.
But this was surely only coincidence. Indonesia was rife with rumors and rumors
of rumors, a constant buzzing of them, a swarm born more out of imagination than fact.
Could be that there was no Luhde Srikandi at all.
No, Naniek was who she said she was, a Gerwani activist who had no time for
skulking, except for a few stolen hours each month for Reed.
In September, Mrs. Nyoman, Reed's housekeeper, quit with much hand-wringing
and many apologies, saying that her husband wanted her to open a coffee stall. Reed
knew that she'd finally caved in to PKI warnings not to work for an American, but he
accepted her face-saving lie and gave her three month's bonus.
Late one afternoon, Reed was slicing papaya and banana to chill in the icebox for
dinner's desert, when Rusty showed up with three policemen and four stalwarts from the
local PKI office. Rusty apologetically said that the corporal wished to talk to him, and
the corporal in turn apologetically said that his boss the police captain wished to talk to
him at the station. Reed invited them to stay for a moment for coffee. The corporal
declined, asking him instead to get his passport and come with them.
No coffee and small talk? This was serious. Reed washed his face and put on his
shirt. He was driven to the station in the back of a police pickup, the PKI cadres glaring at
him as if he were an ax-murderer.
At the one-roof station, the corporal knocked on the police chief's door. In his
office, the police captain reclined on a settee, entertaining two visitors. Naniek sat stiff as
a plank in black skirt and white blouse, those canvas shoes flat on the floor and pressed
together. She glanced at Reed as he entered, her gaze flat and unreadable. The other
visitor was an Indonesian gentleman in fine clothes, the silk shirt tailored to a tee. He
talked genially with the captain. The captain finally took notice of Reed and the corporal.
The corporal smartly handed over Reed's passport. After flipping through the passport,
the captain passed it to his guest, who idly examined Reed's photograph and then perused
the other pages, including Reed's current visa, before fixing his limpid brown eyes on
Reed.
"I am Bambang Sastrohartono," he said in English. It wasn't a greeting but a
pronouncement.
Ah. Naniek's brother, from Singapore, the Permina oil executive who by the looks
of things had dipped his hand into the riches of national oil and came up with a Rolex
watch and diamond ring. Bambang glanced at the watch and said, "I have never seen the
famous Elephant Cave. We have time for a tour."
They rode in a touring sedan, Bambang driving, with Naniek beside him. Reed
sat in the back seat, feeling rather superfluous. It was obvious Older Brother didn't
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approve of him, and in Reed's opinion Naniek was taking this more seriously than she
should. They didn't speak to him, and he didn't know what to say.
The Elephant Cave was on the edge of rice field terraces a short way out of town,
an ancient Hindu complex in a small jungle valley. A footpath cut down the side of the
ravine. Afternoon sun filtered through trees tangled with vines and orchids, and
dragonflies flashed golden wings in the hushed green light.
In a level clearing, ancient statues of maidens held water pots above bathing
pools. The cave itself was dug into the side of the ravine, its opening the mouth of a
demon carved into soft stone. There was an otherworldliness to the place that pricked
Reed's senses, of vanished people and unknown ages.
"Shall we have a look?" Bambang said to Reed, gesturing at the demon's dark and
gaping mouth.
Reed turned to Naniek. "Are you coming?"
She curtly shook her head without speaking.
"She's claustrophobic," Bambang said.
Reed followed him into the low tunnel, ducking slightly. A guttering oil lamp at
the end revealed a statue of Ganesha, the elephant god hunkered in an alcove, withered
offerings scattered about. The lamp's flame flickered to a faint draft of air. Shadows
swayed, and the god seemed to peer through the dim, unsteady light at him.
"I want you to stop seeing Naniek," Bambang said.
There it was. Reed wasn't surprised. "You are PKI?"
Bambang chuckled. "They are such strict and severe people. They don't know
how to have fun. Naniek, for example. A wet blanket, I think you say in English. But she
is my sister. Stay away from her."
"I think she should be the one to decide, don't you?"
"Go and talk to her. She will tell you."
In the clearing, Naniek brooded upon a water nymph, the nymph's carved
sandstone features eroded, her water spout dry.
Reed said, "It's kind of depressing to think that whoever carved that is dead and
forever forgotten."
Naniek crossed her arms, refusing to look at him. "That is a bourgeoisie way of
thinking."
"We're back to propaganda, are we?"
"The success of the Revolution depends on unknown heroes. It is not a price to
pay. It is a life we give."
Reed sighed. "Your brother has ordered me to stop seeing you. What do you say?"
She turned to him. Her black eyes shone hard as stone. "Go back to America,
Reed. This is not your country."
"Yankee Go Home, hunh. What happened? Last time we were together, I believe
you kissed me goodbye. Snuck that kiss right underneath Mak Jangkrik's nose—oh, boy.
Don't tell me that hag's been telling tales to your bosses. Is that what this is? She's told on
us and now your brother's laying down the law?"
"I told him about you. I always tell him everything." Naniek opened her shoulder
bag. One by one she handed Reed black-and-white surveillance photographs. Reed at a
party at the US Ambassador's private residence in conversation with Auntie; Reed
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strolling through Merdeka square with Wendell; Reed at the red door of the Heart of
Mary convent with Mother Agnes.
Top quality shots, most likely taken by BPI agents.
"Bambang has connections," Naniek said.
Her brother stood by the mouth of the cave, hands thrust in his trouser pockets as
he watched them. Reed suddenly understood—Bambang had paid off somebody in the
agency for the goods on the American his sister was getting involved with.
"You were asking Sister Agnes about me," Naniek said.
"She's now Mother Agnes," Reed said.
"That's where you knew my nickname," Naniek said. "Nobody in Bali knew it. I
thought and thought about that. It bothered me." Naniek shoved the photos into her bag.
She crossed her arms. "You are interested in me for who I know. Dr. Subandrio. I am
someone for you to cultivate. Someone to use."
"Is that really what you think?" Reed said, anger tightening his voice. "These
photos—it's small American community. Every one of us has a BPI file." He tapped the
photograph of him at the Ambassador's residence. "This was a Fourth of July party. Of
course I was there. And Mother Agnes, she's a friend. Yes, all right, I should have told
you. I showed her your photo. Asked if she knew you. You were in Djakarta, she's
worked with Gerwani, I thought there might be a chance. It was personal, I was attracted
to you, I wanted to know more about you."
"I don't want to see you again, Reed." Naniek took her brother's arm and marched
up the steps, abandoning Reed to the stone maidens, mute in the soft gold-green light.
At the Bali Hotel, Reed sought Arini's counsel. The cool dry weather was giving
way to moodier skies with sweltering heat that mirrored the island's simmering tensions.
Arini was as composed as ever, but of late there was to her a certain strain, a constant and
alert surveying of the lobby and the halls and all who went in and out. Reed had brought
a letter for her to give to Naniek, but Arini gave a quick shake of her head.
"I'm sorry but I can't take it." She spoke in a half whisper. This seemed to be the
conversational tones these days. If you weren't shouting angry slogans, you were
whispering behind your hand. "Everyone is watching everyone else. It is too risky. But,"
she added, "tomorrow afternoon at Batu Gede there will be a big Communist action. The
palace rice-fields are ready for harvest, and Gerwani and the Peasants League are going
to take over some of the fields and harvest the crop for the refugees."
The next afternoon, Reed drove down to Batu Gede. The Gerwani secretariat was
closed, Parwati's residence was shuttered, as were the shops on the main street. Reed saw
no pedestrians, and no children played in the alleys or on the village square. Reed rattled
down several lanes to a unpaved track for ox carts. On his left were coconut groves, and
to his right stretched rice fields ready for harvest, a sea of golden grain that on the
northern side lapped up to a temple several hundreds yard away, its shrines shaded by a
large shaggy banyan.
Reed heard chanting of revolutionary slogans from somewhere ahead of him. He
pulled off into a stand of palms and parked deep in their shadows.
135

Around a curve in the track marched several dozen women, many carrying
harvesting scythes. They chanted in unison, their voices ringing: "Land for the peasants!
Rice for the workers! "
Parwati, Naniek and Desak strode in the front row of several dozen women.
Naniek held her scythe high, punctuating the air with its sharp tip in rhythm to the chants.
Parwati's scythe was painted red and decorated with hammer and sickle tassles. The front
tails of Desak's kebaya blouse was pulled apart by her growing belly, the unborn child
she would soon have to feed.
Behind the women swaggered a gang of Communist Youth, loose and loud and
boisterous.
The women crossed a ditch and spread out at the edge of field. Parwati handed the
decorated scythe to Desak, who symbolically cut a ripe stalk. The other women cheered
and moved forward to the harvest.
There suddenly appeared a farmer, sprinting toward them along an irrigation
culvert as he shouted furiously. "What are doing, that is my field!"
Parwati waved a document and loudly proclaimed, "The courts have declared
these plots to be re-distributed."
As they argued, several dozen men rallied out from the distant temple,
brandishing staves and spears. Dharma led them, waving a keris blade.
Emboldened by this reinforcement, the lone farmer snatched the document from
Parwati and stomped it into the ground.
Parwati told the women to keep working.
The farmer grabbed the scythe from Desak and swung it, cutting her forearm. Her
scream set off a chain reaction. Three of the Communist youth boys pulled out their own
knives and fell on the farmer, stabbing him in the chest and stomach. He went down, a
pink-purple loop of intestine spilling out of his belly.
Dharma and his men broke into a sprint, shouting war cries.
The women milled uncertainly around the writhing farmer, and when Dharma's
men were only fifty yards ago, most turned and ran. But not Parwati, not Desak, not
Naniek. They stood shoulder to shoulder with grim faces as Dharma's men bore down on
them.
A police truck roared down the cart lane. Cops spilled out and fired weapons into
the air.
Jesus Christ, Reed thought, why hadn't they been out in force in the first place?
Ignoring the chaos of the fleeing women, Reed sprinted for the three women before
Dharma got to them, but he was too late. Dharma grabbed Desak's bleeding hand and
yanked her toward him. "You want to steal our rice?" he roared, his keris at her throat. It
seemed certain he would stab her, but Naniek lunged for him and slapped the keris down.
Reed jumped between them, uncertain whether he could stop Dharma's fury, but the
farmer did hold up, chuffing like an enraged bull.
"Don't get involved in this," he snarled to Reed.
"This is not how to do this," Reed said. He nodded at the farmer on the ground,
groaned and trying to hold in his entrails. "Get him to the hospital."
A police squad surrounded Desak and Parwati, but Reed was already pulling
Naniek away. Dharma stood still, the keris dangling in his hand, and Reed had time
enough to notice the understanding rising in his eyes.
136

"You won't be able to protect her forever, Tuan Reed," he said, a mockery now
layering his anger.
Reed swung Naniek to the coconut grove and the jeep.
"Let me go," she said, struggling.
"Don't be a fool," he said harshly. He pushed her into the front seat and whipped
the jeep across the grove, bouncing over ruts. Plowing through a patch of peanuts, the
jeep emerged in a cloud of dust on a village lane. Naniek held onto the dashboard, staring
straight ahead. Reed didn't say anything until he came to a stop in front of Parwati's
house.
"That farmer's good as dead," he said.
"Were you taking your photos?" she said with a clenched voice.
"No."
"Thomas Carlyle said in a time of revolution a father can eat his own children."
"Jesus, Naniek."
She jumped out and ran into the house.
Two afternoons later, stretched out upon his verandah couch, he idly watched a
house lizard stalking across the rafter toward an unsuspecting bug and debated whether
he should go out and buy the strongest moonshine arak he could find. Alcohol never
solved anything, but it was better than nothing.
The lizard crept closer. Reed's skin began to prickle, with that sixth sense of
being watched himself. Stalked by somebody. Ompreng? Rusty? Even this mysterious
Luhde Srikandi herself, poisoned dart at the ready? He casually turned his head toward
the verandah's side steps.
Sweat lined Naniek's forehead and dampened the collar of her blouse. Her bicycle
leaned against the stair's lower post. Oil from the gear chain had stained her trousers.
She didn't speak, held Reed's gaze, her expression unreadable.
"I didn't hear you come in," he said.
"You were muttering," she said. "You look fierce. Are you angry?"
"No," he said. Then, "Yes."
She slipped out of her canvas shoes and padded across the verandah to the railing,
where she stared down into the rushing stream. "Please go home, Reed."
"This is home."
She turned to him. "That farmer. He died before they could get him to the clinic."
"Nobody could have done anything for him."
"It wasn't meant to happen." A fire in those eyes, a hard line to her jaw. "I'm
afraid he won't be the only one."
"What's happened to Desak and Parwati?"
"Released. Lack of evidence. Please, Reed, leave us to our own revolution. Go to
your own people."
"I'm not going to leave you."
She glanced at her hands. "But I am leaving you. I've been called back to
Djakarta. I go tomorrow."
Reed absorbed that, a dud bomb that sank deep and then without warning
exploded. He jumped to his feet. "Aduh, where are my manners? Let me get you
137

something to drink." He poured her a glass of water from the earthenware jug. "I'd make
you a fruit juice but Mrs. Nyoman quit and I'm not real handy in the kitchen."
She thirstily drained the glass, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.
He put the empty glass on the table.
In the bushes lining the ravine, a flock of birds broke out in a noisy quarrel.
She moved forward and slipped into his arms and held him, pressing her face
against his chest.
"It will be all right," he said.
Still holding tight against his chest, she shook her head. "It won't be all right." Her
hair tickled his nose. "I was with Desak and her husband in their shack. Dirt floor. Mud
in the cracks to keep out the wind. But so much love. The baby they are having. They
were so happy. I was so sad."
Reed pushed back her shoulders to look at her. She smiled through her tears. He
touched the scar on his cheek, faded to a fine white line. "I have a confession," he said. "I
did this on purpose. Deliberately cut my cheek. Hurt like hell, but I had to go back and
see you. I was desperate."
Her gaze didn't leave his.
"If I can do this small thing," Reed said, "then I'll figure out a big thing."
She reached out and touched the scar. "We only have today."
He took her hand and led her into his bedroom. Her fingers clutched his and soon
traced patterns on his body.
He spread her hair upon his pillow, and she gave him back more than he had ever
lost.
138

Chapter 25
It was now five minutes to the bank's closing time, and Nol had been waiting in
the lobby for an hour. Despite vigorous scrubbing, he still smelled faintly of paint and
gasoline, and several clerks wrinkled their noses as they walked by. He should have been
stinking up the police station, putting pressure on the detectives to interrogate Gong, but
without income from the shop for some time, and the land deal in Tabanan tied up a
lawsuit, he had returned like flotsam to the bank to borrow money to tide them over until
the mess was straightened out.
At two o'clock, the armed guard showed the last of the clients to the door and
turned the sign to closed. Still Nol waited. At last a clerk opened a side door and looked
around the empty foyer, calling out "Pak Madé Ziro, Pak Madé Ziro."
I'm the only one here, Nol thought sourly as he stood. Who else could I be?
He waited some more in banker's outer office. A secretary served him a glass of
cold tea with ants on the rim. The office overlooked the Puputan Square, where a century
previously Nol's deified ancestor had marched with hundreds of others against the Dutch
guns, all dying on the square. When Nol was a boy, Dharma had taught him how to drive
on the big weedy field. Now it was landscaped and hallowed ground, where the military
marched in parades and the governor gave speeches.
Communist whore.
Nol pictured Gong's fat face. Say it to me, Nol thought, and see what happens. I
beat you up once, I'll do it again.
Finally he was summoned into the inner office. The banker was a well-fed man
with a perpetually pleasant smile. The two men quickly dispensed with the formalities of
family and health and children and children's health, and then Nol finally blurted, "Are
you loaning me the money?" He became aware as he asked that he was hunching forward
and clutching his thumb, like a peasant before a king, and he forced himself to relax.
The banker's pleasant smile altered not a whit at this unseemly question. "You
requested fifty million—"
"Actually, I was thinking, I'd like to borrow sixty million," Nol said, the extra ten
million to launch Product Ziro
"We will loan you five million."
Nol's heart plummeted, then rose again in indignation. "Five million! What good
is five million?"
The banker sighed. "This is all highly irregular. Normally, you would have been
turned down and received nothing. No collateral, you see. Policy. But I made a phone call
to Anak Agung Gdé Raka. He is now a director on the board. He approved five million
on his personal guarantee. You can thank him later." The banker pushed an envelope
across the desk.
139

Nol felt his face burn. Another one of Raka's humiliating insults. He wanted to rip
open the envelope and throw the bills around the office. But five million was five million,
and he still had expenses to pay for the upcoming toothfiling ceremony. His hand reached
out and closed around the envelope.
Returning home, Nol drove into traffic clogging the Renon wantilan. The
cockfights were back on. Men streamed into the pavilion, many carrying their fighting
cocks in their wicker satchels. Nol clamped his hands on the wheel and clenched his jaws
and stared resolutely ahead. How easy it would be to join the gamblers and for while
forget all his troubles. When the cocks were put into the ring, the acid hope and searing
anticipation stripped everything away. For those few furious seconds of chickens at
battle, nothing else in the world mattered.
He would not stop he would not stop he would not stop, and he did not stop, but
once he was well past, he found himself swinging the car around the Renon square.
What saved him was the sight of a familiar black BMW nudged into the shade of
the park's trees.
Was Gong here somewhere, enjoying a snack from the food vendors ringing the
huge field?
Nol parked on a side street. Rummaging under his seat, he took out the tire iron.
The cool hard heft of the metal felt good, felt just right.
Energetic folks who didn't mind the afternoon's late heat were jogging or powerwalking
on the paths, but Gong wouldn't be one of them. He'd be eating. Parked under
shady trees along the walkways were food carts, the vendors offering sweet young
coconuts. Nol scrutinized the patrons as he strolled, mostly low ranking bureaucrats from
the nearby government offices and students from local schools.
In his peripheral vision, Nol noticed an elderly couple on the path strolling toward
him. There was something about the woman that made him look directly at her.
By all the gods upon the holy mountain, it was Mother.
And strolling beside her, tapping his cane, was Mantera.
Nol quickly stepped behind a tree. His mother and Mantera were having a tense
argument. His mother was biting her lips and blinking hard, as though to keep away tears.
Mantera frowned at the bricks before him. He tapped them hard with his cane as if testing
them, to find a weak one to shatter.
Why did he continue to harass her like this?
Nol gripped the tire iron. He pictured himself charging forward to save his
mother, but his feet remained rooted in the grass. His mother gripped Mantera's elbow.
They were already walking away from him. He didn't have a good angle, but she
appeared to be leaning in toward Mantera, telling him something. Then she veered away
and hailed a taxi passing on the street.
Mantera watched her get in, his thin face set in harsh lines.
Shortly after dark, Arini returned home with from the library. Nol had been
waiting for his mother and followed to her porch.
He was going to ask her what she'd been doing with Mantera in the Renon square
this afternoon, but the words didn't make it to his tongue. Instead he asked, "Mother, you
heard what happened at Suti's shop this morning?"
She paused in the evening's shadows. "Yes, I'm sorry."
140

"What happened here in 1965, Mother?" There it was. That was the heart of it, the
core of the great big tangled puzzle.
Arini didn't reply. Nol hit the light switch on the porch wall, and she startled at
the sudden brightness. "What happened to my father? Who betrayed him?"
Arini smiled. It was a most peculiar smile, sad and amused and even a touch
contemptuous. "Are you interrogating me?"
"You've never told me a thing about it. Not once. Those people killed on the
beach. Those bones. Who were they?"
"I'm afraid I was never a very good mother to you, was I?" Arini opened her door
and slipped into her room. Nol felt like a creature out of his element, stranded on an alien
shore.
In bed, Nol fidgeted, constantly checking his watch as the hours marched on. Suti
was tucked away into her sleep, as if she had not a care in the world. This was unfair, Nol
knew, for that evening she'd grimly worked on her account books and calculator and
computer to figure out the shop losses and what to do next.
Nol's many worries were presently coalesced into a minor unease. Where was
Putu? He'd tried Putu's cell phone a dozen times, each time getting the no service
announcement.
From the bed stand his cell phone buzzed, jerking him awake. Putu's number was
on the screen. Nol answered with enormous relief. "Where are you?"
"There's a problem," Putu said hoarsely. "Come get me. I'm at the pura dalem."
He hung up.
Nol hit dial, but only got a screech.
He quietly gathered his clothes and dressed out in the parlor. Ten minutes later, he
pulled up to the temple, the car headlights sweeping the temple's empty graveyard. At
their far reach, the pond's cement balustrades flashed like dirty teeth. Uneasy, he grabbed
the tire iron and got out, leaving the door open and the engine running.
"Putu?" he called out. "Putu?"
He eased past the banyan toward the pond as a brittle wind rattled the leaves.
"Putu?"
"Right here."
The soft voice came from behind him.
Nol whirled. From behind the banyan's twisted trunk spun an ogre's shadow. The
thing grabbed the tire iron from him. In the same instant, the ogre's enormous hand
slammed into the side of Nol's head, stunning him. He wheeled backwards, his vision a
multi-color sparkle as he toppled over the pond's balustrade, landing on his back in the
water with a big splash. Gasping and floundering, he tried to swim, but then he dimly
realized that his feet were touching mucky bottom. He stood there, gathering his wits.
The lights of his car were still on, poking the darkness above him. He flung himself
toward the pool's steps, the sandstone rises eroded and slippery with moss, and managed
to haul himself onto a perch.
The ogre moved to the balustrade. Gong's moon face shone in the starlight. One
huge hand was wrapped around Putu's neck, and in the other he casually held the tire
iron.
141

"Let him go," Nol gasped.
"Should I, boss?" Gong asked.
Raka materialized out of the darkness. Anointed lord of day and of night.
"Two things, Ziro," he said. "Important enough for me to tell you in person. First,
keep your son away from my daughter. Second, tell your mother to keep her greedy
hands off my father. She will not extort a single rupiah out of him. Do you hear me?"
Nol spat foul-tasting saliva. "You and your thugs can go to hell."
"Nol, Nol," Raka sighed. "You always were less than nothing. I'm not a wicked
man. A wicked man wouldn't give you warning. Let the boy go, Gong," he said as he
turned away, slipping back into the night.
With final squeeze on Putu's neck, Gong let go and vanished.
"Hey, give me back my tire iron!" Nol shouted.
Putu leaned against the balustrade, coughing and hacking. Gripping a post, Nol
hauled himself out of the pond. He put a damp hand on his son's back. "Are you okay?"
Putu nodded, still coughing. He finally caught his breath. "What an asshole," he
said in English.
Alarmed at his son's tone, Nol said, "I'll take care of this. You don't get involved.
And didn't I tell you to stay away from Wulandri?"
"This isn't the feudal ages, Bapa."
The breeze chilled Nol's wet skin. His heart twisted like a dangling leaf, ready to
fall. His son confused him and angered him, but how he loved him.
142

Chapter 26
1965
A heavy rain fell from a gray dawn sky, running off Reed's thatched roof in
watery curtains that shut him from the world.
Naniek had been gone five days.
On the dresser, Reed's short wave radio crackled news from RRI, the
government's Djakarta radio station. Reed half-listened to the announcer's hollow
droning. The news bulletin ended and Reed was thinking of Naniek and telling himself
that's just how it is pal, that's life when he realized the announcer was still on the air. His
formerly dead-pan voice now had a hitch of surprise and tension as he read an impromptu
bulletin, something about the September 30 th Movement, led by Lieutenant Colonel
Untung, to secure President Sukarno from the Council of Generals, a subversive
movement sponsored by the CIA. The announcer said that the government was
disbanded, and authority was now in the hands of the Indonesian Revolutionary Council.
"Jesus Christ," Reed said, staring at the radio as if it were a deadly creature.
The Radio Republik Indonesia building was just around the corner from the US
Embassy. Reed had been by the place a hundred times. If its broadcasting station was
reading out a bulletin of the new Revolutionary Council, then the building must have
been seized by force. And probably the telecommunications building as well.
A goddam Communist coup.
Then he thought: Naniek. A sudden recall to Djakarta. Five days ago.
Reed threw on clothes and spun the jeep out of its shed. The rain had eased into a
drizzle, and the roads were empty, everyone staying out of the wet, no particular sense of
urgency in the air. If anything the town's market day rhythm seemed to be more lethargic
than usual. At the Ubud telephone office the switchboard operator shrugged fatalistically
when Reed gave her a Djakarta number. As he waited, he paced. The air was so humid he
could have wrung water with his hands. Sweat filmed his skin.
The operator called him over and shook her head. "I can't through. Djakarta
phones are down."
Time for Plan B. The shortwave radio at the Benoa harbormaster's office. On the
drive down, nothing looked out of the ordinary. Schoolchildren chanted lessons in
classes, market ladies finished up the last of the morning sales, farmers worked their
fields. At village police stations, cops at the duty desks smoked and read newspapers.
Cadres at a local PKI branch office played badminton on a soggy court. The Den Pasar
bus station hummed with passengers and touts, buses waiting for a full load before
pulling out.
Didn't anybody listen to public radio on this island?
143

At Benoa, Reed barreled down the causeway through thick mangroves to the
harbormaster's office, where he told his contact that he needed to use the shortwave. The
contact hustled him to the radio room, but the sparky was dubious. A hundred dollar bill
convinced the operator to have a long cigarette break. Alone in the room, Reed put on the
headset and tuned to a memorized frequency. He chanted the call sign mantras, got
through, announced his coded credentials, and waited for Wendell to be summoned to the
embassy radio room.
Through the choppy staccato of overs and the hollow background yowling of the
short wave frequency, Reed said that he'd heard the RRI broadcast and what the hell was
going on?
"Auntie is an emergency meeting with Uncle," Wendell said guardedly.
"Roadblocks on the way to work but they let us through. Between here and Playboy's hut
are a whole bunch of red musketeers." Playboy was the in-station codename for Sukarno,
his hut the palace on the north side of the square across from the Embassy. Reed
interpreted this as meaning that least some of the military had turned PKI and were
involved in this September 30 th Movement. "Things are in flux here," Wendell said. "We
assessing."
Which means they don't know what the hell is going on, Reed thought.
"As for you," Wendell said, "See what you can see and let us know."
Whatever was happening, the most obvious sign would be at the Udayana
Military Command by the public square. Reed was expecting a tense bustle of activity,
but strangely, all was calm, civilians sauntering in and out of the gate, idly watched by
bored guards.
Perhaps Arini knew something, but the receptionist at the Bali Hotel said she was
out and didn't know when she'd be back. Reed hiked around the corner to the
telecommunications office by the Governor's mansion, where a gardener swept fallen
leaves off the lawn.
The operator shook his head even as Reed was speaking. No lines to Djakarta, he
said.
Figuring he'd better stock up on gasoline for the jeep, just in case, Reed stopped in
at Hwa Chen's shop to buy a couple metal jerry cans. He got there as spindly Chinese
storekeeper was closing shop, sliding the wooden shutters across the store front. In the
back of the shop a radio crackled its news.
"The Air Force has backed a coup in Djakarta," Chen said. He explained that the
radio had broadcast an order of the day from the air force commander supporting Lt-
Colonel Untung's action to secure the revolution from reactionary elements. The 30 th
September Movement had also broadcast a second decree, announcing the comrades of
the New Revolutionary Council.
"They say it is strictly an internal army affair, but these things have a way of
getting out of hand," Chen said. "Close shop and wait."
The Bali army command finally reacted, imposing an island-wide, dusk to dawn
curfew. The next morning when Reed drove into Den Pasar, he encountered road blocks
with armored cars, but after taking a look at his ID, the soldiers waved him through. He
tried the central phone office before resorting to the harbor radio, and to his surprise
found that phone lines were back in service.
144

This time Wendell was less guarded, a note of optimism creeping into his voice.
"We've heard six army generals were kidnapped and killed, but General Nasution
escaped," he said. "It looks like he's getting the upper hand against this September 30 th
Movement, or whoever the hell they are."
"Upper hand? How?"
"How this works is you tell me what you know and not the other way around."
"I'm the dark way over here. I have to be able to tell people things."
A long sigh echoed down the phone line. "Yesterday's red musketeers appear to
have been withdrawn. Last night some armed Communist civilians showed up at the
National Front building but they were quickly disarmed by Nasution's loyal boys."
"Armed civilians? Who were they?"
"Communist youth, Gerwani, who knows. Rabble."
"What happened to them?"
A short silence. "Why do you want to know?"
Wendell was no slouch. He had antenna, did Wendell, antenna that quivered at the
scent of the littlest morsels. Reed quickly changed the subject. "What about Untung?
Aidit? Sukarno, for God's sake. What about him?"
"The coup planners appear to have rabbited. Nobody knows were Aidit is.
Sukarno's holed up in his Bogor palace."
Reed next placed two international calls to Singapore and then paced the waiting
room. It took a while before the phone in the cubicle buzzed. This first call to get through
was to Bob Allison, an attaché Reed knew in the Singapore Embassy.
"You guys in Indonesia are having all the fun," Bob said with fake complaint.
"Coups and counter-coups, and feathers being made for caps. What do you want?"
"Bambang Sastrohartono." Reed spelled it. "Staffer there for Permina. I need a
contact number for him."
"What for?"
"Just do it, would you? I'll take you out for drinks next time I'm in Singapore."
The next call followed an hour later. Reed asked his broker and agent Harry Chen
the same favor. "You've been hearing what's going in Djakarta?" he asked Harry.
"Sure have. Everybody's talking about it." Harry said that the coup had been
staged out of Halim Air Force base. "But General Soeharto's men attacked Halim and the
renegades—"
"General who?"
"Soeharto. Commander of KOSTRAD. He's taken charge of the armed forces.
He's the head honcho now."
Reed knew of the Strategic Army Reserve, but not its commanding officer. "I've
never heard of him."
"He's not much known out of the military."
"Wouldn't Nasution be in charge?"
"He was injured, his young daughter shot during the botched kidnap attempt."
"How do you know all this, Harry?"
"Hey, man, I'm a Chinese businessman, I'm connected into the old boy network.
We have to stay alive in alien countries, so when it comes to that kind of intelligence,
nobody beats us, not even the agency that must not be named."
"Thanks, Harry."
145

"No problem. Whoever's behind this coup, the army's gonna come down on 'em
like a ton of bricks, with bayonets attached."
Reed's next stop was the Gerwani office at Batu Gede. A cool sea-breeze had
picked up, whisking the palm leaves and breaking the heat. Mothers had already picked
up their children from the day-care. Endang and Sri were home from school, and Sri
tugged Reed into the family living room. She wanted to learn a English song. Reed taught
her Old MacDonald. Sri picked in on the first round, shouting ee-eye-ee-eye-oh and
breaking into giggles. Twelve-year-old Endang was above such childishness.
Parwati returned from an errand and scolded Endang for not getting their guest a
drink. If she knew about the events in Djakarta she didn't seem perturbed by them. She
served Reed coconut milk, served with pieces of sweet soft meat. Reed asked her where
Naniek would have gone. She replied that most likely she would have shown up first at
the Gerwani headquarters in Djakarta and perhaps stayed the night at their dorm. No, she
didn't know what Naniek's new assignment was or where it would take her.
"My daughters miss her," Parwati said.
So do I, Reed thought. And he was worried as hell, too.
Reed searched for Dharma and found him at the cockfights at the death temple. A
hundred men gathered around the makeshift pit under the banyan, the bedlam of betting
giving way to silence as the roosters exploded into furious rage.
Reed hadn't eaten all day, and ordered rice-cake and spicy peanut sauce from a
vendor, who dished out the meal on a banana leaf. Reed squatted and ate with his fingers.
Another fight, another round of betting, but this time a rooster took flight from the pit,
and the men wheeled away from the deadly razor attached to its spurs.
The fights finished before sunset, and Reed walked back with Dharma, who
carried his winning rooster in a basket and also two dead cocks that his champion had
defeated. "PKI chickens," he boasted. "Their owners were Communists."
Yes, Dharma said, he had heard the news, but he wasn't going to attach much
significance to anything just yet. Djakarta was a different world, and events there often
had no effect on Bali.
He hoisted the dead chickens. "Today we spilled chicken blood. But perhaps one
day soon we'll offer the gods a better sacrifice. Human blood. Communist blood."
Reed spent most of the next day in the Den Pasar phone office again, trying to get
through to Harry Chen. Finally, in mid-afternoon, the call went through. Harry said he
hadn't been able to track down Bambang.
"The Indonesians in Singapore are all running around like chickens with their
heads cut off," he said. "And some of them might loose their heads for real."
When Reed got home to his bungalow, Mak Jangkrik was waiting for him, sitting
on the steps of his verandah, with a basket of sonkget cloths As soon as he saw her, his
hopes soared. "You have a message from Naniek?"
"Haven't heard from her since she left," Mak said.
He invited her up to the verandah and wearily slumped on the couch, nodding
vaguely as Mak showed her songket cloth and chatted. Reed really wasn't in the mood
for a sales pitch, but it cost nothing to be polite.
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"The secret to selling to tourists," she said, "is to tell them a scary story about
magic. Shape shifting leyaks at the midnight graveyard, a bicycle riding past in the dead
of night without a rider, the front wheel pulsing like a heart. Tourists loved hearing me
tell them stories. Then they would buy. Do you want me to tell you a story?"
"Go ahead." Reed stared absently at the stream splashing through the ravine. It
must have rained in the hills, for the water was high, sounding deeper and less playful.
"This was during the days of Sukarno's revolution," Mak said. "A Dutch colonial
officer at the resident's office fell in love with a Balinese maiden. He and the girl eloped.
We guerillas tracked them down to a mountain hut. Please, he begged us, let me be with
the girl I love."
"I hope this has a happy ending."
"It has a Balinese ending."
"Go on."
"We said no. We said we'd let him go but he had to leave her. So he said, if I can't
be with the girl I love than I will kill myself. He took out his pistol and dor! shot himself
in the heart. The girl screams and yells and picks up the gun and shoots at us. Dor! Dor!
So we shoot back and kill her. And that is my story."
"That's a real edifying tale," Reed muttered in English and then bolted upright.
Christ, Mak was waving around a revolver, an antique Webley colonial relic that looked
huge and unstable in her small hand. "Put that away. Please. Now."
She tucked the revolver in her bag. "Everywhere I go, I take the pistol. For my
safety. Your safety. Naniek's safety. I know where she is. She told me."
It was like a spear through him. He held very still. "But you just told me you
hadn't heard from her."
"She told me before she left, you silly boy."
"Where is she?"
Her shrewd gaze pinned him. "But you must promise to let her go."
He thought about that and then shook his head. "No. I can't promise."
She scowled. "You and the Dutchman.
"I'm not going to shoot myself."
"Halim Air Force Base in Djakarta. That's where she went."
Halim. Base camp for the coup. Invaded by the Kostrad General. What's his
name--Soeharto. God Almighty. Reed jumped to his feet, fire ants swarming out of his
marrow. He had to get to Djakarta. He had to be there now.
147

Chapter 27
Tina showed Nol the Youtube video taken at the beach when the bones were
discovered, and paused the clip when the screeching crone burst into the scene.
"Who is she?" she asked. She was certain that her landlord knew.
Nol grimaced, as if an internal gas bubble was seeking egress. "Her name's Men
Djawa."
Under Tina's prodding he reluctantly added that she was a former Batu Gede
Gerwani officer who'd been in prison for many years. She was half-crazy, he said, always
looking for her two missing daughters, long gone to who knew where. But she made
excellent Javanese cakes that she'd sold in the market. She was now in a private mental
health clinic in Gianyar.
Tina drove out there that afternoon. At the clinic, she was relayed like a baton
before she ended up in the cramped office of a young Chinese doctor.
"How may I help you?" he asked, his eyebrows twitching.
Tina put her laptop on the desk. "As I've told your staff, I would like to see one of
your patients. A named Men Djawa."
"She is not allowed visitors."
Tina turned the laptop toward him. "I'm an anthropologist. During my researches
here on Bali, I've long been aware of a big blank spot in history. The 1965 massacres."
She played the video. She frankly stated her suspicions that the bones discovered
were those of Gerwani members, slaughtered naked on the beach. Perhaps they'd first
been tortured and raped. Certainly one was beheaded. She said that Men Djawa, the
distraught woman on the video, had also been a Batu Gede Gerwani member who
escaped the killings.
"And that man you see there," Tina said, pointing at a slender elderly fellow
carrying a black cane, "is the man who killed them."
The doctor's brows rose and twisted and dipped. "That is a very serious
accusation. That gentleman you accuse of being a killer is paying Men Djawa's bills."
"To keep her quiet?"
"She is making good progress."
"Is she lucid? I would like to talk to her, Doctor. I think she has a story that needs
to be told."
The doctor fiddled with a bronze paperweight shaped as a Komodo dragon, his
brows still twitching, but in a troubled manner. He put down the paperweight and said,
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"My ancestors came from China, but my family has been Indonesian Chinese for many
generations. In 1965 my grand-father had a supply contract with the military command,
which of course involved kickbacks. That was how one did and still does business.
During the 1965 riots in Djakarta, while other Chinese own shops were burned, military
soldiers kept ours safe. With the rise of Soeharto, our own family fortunes rose. We
became quite wealthy. We owned properties around the world, but Djakarta was always
our home. In 1998, there were mass riots that led to Soeharto's resignation. We thought
that our loyalty to the regime would guarantee our safety, but not this time. The military
stood aside, our private security forces wandered off, and a mob ransacked and burned
our place. I myself was in university in Australia, but my sister was attending the
University of Indonesia, where she thought she was safe." The brows came to a dead
stop. "She was raped and then burned to death."
Tina briefly closed her eyes. "I'm so sorry," she murmured.
The doctor unlocked a cabinet behind him. Flipping through hanging folders, he
extracted papers from one. "Men Djawa has been in and out of state mental institutions
several times. It would professionally unethical for me to show you her confidential
patient records, but there are some government documents appended. You would need
my permission to look at them, a permission I am denying." The doctor put the papers by
the bronze dragon. He glanced at his watch and opened his agenda book to write,
repeating out loud his words, "Tina Briddle requests to see Men Djawa. Denied." He
closed the book. "Just to aid my memory in the future if needed. I have an appointment.
In half an hour, the patients in her wing will be taken to the back garden. Friends and
family often visit. I've never heard of an anthropologist doing so, but if one did, I would
imagine she would use tact and sympathy. If you will excuse me."
The doctor left the room.
Tina waited a few discreet seconds and then looked through the papers.
The standard police report and welfare agency intake information, including a
photocopy of a Identity Card that gave her name as Parwati. In her ID photo she stared
into the camera with empty eyes. The letters "ET" stamped onto the card marked her as
ex-political prisoner, a second class citizen with limited rights and very limited
employment opportunities, required to regularly report to the authorities.
There was also a photocopy of a typed government intelligence summary dated
November, 1966, dotted with many acronyms and long numbers. Portions of it had had
been blacked out. Parwati was Gerwani, the chairwoman of the Bate Gede branch. She'd
been hiding in Singaradja, where she was arrested based on a loyal citizen's information.
The name of the citizen was heavily inked out. Her husband, was PKI and made secure.
There were two daughters, Endang and Sri, fate unknown.
Parwati was held first in temporary detention at a military base in Singaradja for
two months, then transferred to a center in Tabanan, where she was classified a category
C prisoner. After an escape attempt, she was reclassified to B category and relocated to a
main camp in central Java, where she was held for decades and then finally released
without trail or recompense.
Large trees shaded the garden, with squares of lawn decorated with flower beds.
Men Djawa sat a wheel chair in a patch of sunlight, her hands resting in the lap of her
striped clinic gown as she stared unseeing into the distance. On the bench next to her a
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male orderly in white uniform read a newspaper. He looked up as Tina approached, but
relaxed as the office clerk with Tina gave him the okay sign.
Tina knelt on the grass and gently grasped both the old woman's hands, her
fingers lumpy and twisted.
"Hello, honored mother. My name is Tina."
Men Djawa gaze fell to slow and puzzled focus on Tina's face. "Did my daughters
send you?"
"No, Mother," Tina said softly.
"Do you know where they are?"
"I don't. I'm sorry. But I am sure they are in a good place."
"Are you, now? How do you know they aren't in a very bad place?"
That hit Tina hard, and out the pain she felt for this woman, rose a much older and
deeper agony, an image of her sister Nancy, lost like these two girls to the darkness. "Are
they taking good care of you here, Mother?"
Men Djawa gaze dropped to her hands, still in Tina's grasp. "The cells were wet
and damp. My bones twisted. They asked me questions, you know. Men smoking
cigarettes, writing down my answers. They said they'd tear out my fingernails if I didn't
answer. I told them everything. It was no secret. I was Gerwani. It was all public
knowledge, we weren't rats hiding in secret. Gerwani was a legal organization. But I did
not tell them lies. I did not make up stories. Soon I was no longer pretty. I no longer
interested them that way. So they left me alone." She pulled her hands back and placed
them on her lap again. "The tea cakes here are terrible. I make much better ones.
Traditional recipes. They sell very well." She leaned forward and whispered to Tina,
"Recipes from the Berita Gerwani magazine. We used to have cooking classes for the
women. They were very popular. In prison, I wrote them down from memory. When I got
out, I made Gerwani food. I had a market stall, first in Java and then Batu Gede. I sold
Gerwani food to everybody. They couldn't get enough of it. Military officers,
bureaucrats, fat children. Gobble gobble gobble on Gerwani cakes."
"Now isn't that something," Tina said, her smile matching Men Djawa's
conspiratorial grin.
"Are you Red Cross?"
"I'm a professor."
"The Red Cross were allowed to visit us in our camp. I told them I left my
daughters with my cousin in Singaradja but the nice Red Cross man came back and said
he didn't know where they were or what happened to them. They were lost. Do you know
where they are?"
"I'm sorry, Mother."
"They were sleeping in the back room. At my sister's house. Endang and Sri.
When the military came. I didn't want the soldiers to wake up my daughters. I gave them
one last kiss. Their skin was warm and sweet and sweaty. It was very hot. I dried the
sweat and tucked the hair back into place and then I went out and gave myself up. What
sort of terrible mother loses her daughters? You're from the Red Cross, aren't you? Where
are they? Can you find them for me?"
"Honored mother, I was at Batu Gede when the bones were found."
The old woman again leaned forward to whisper, "I was selling cakes in the
market when I heard. A round faced woman in civil service khakis was bargaining for a
150

dozen kue lapis. I told her take them, take them, take them all, free Gerwani cakes for
you, and I raced as fast as I could to the beach. I knew, oh yes, I knew."
"Who were they?"
"My interrogators said I was lucky I wasn't in Batu Gede that night. It was a very
efficient action, my interrogators said. I was lucky I was in Singaradja, they said,
otherwise I'd be just as dead as them. I spat at them and said my comrades were the lucky
ones."
"Can you give me their names?"
Men Djawa snapped away, pressing into the back of her wheelchair. "Who are
you? You're not Red Cross."
Tina once more took her hands and gently rubbed the twisted knuckles with her
thumb. "We cannot forget them. The world needs to know their names."
"We were betrayed. All of us."
"Who betrayed you?"
She hawked up phlegm and spat into the flowers. "Luhde Srikandi."
"And who was this Luhde Srikandi?"
Men Djawa spat again and told her.
151

Chapter 28
1965
The magic of a hundred dollar bill got Reed into the cockpit jump seat of an
unscheduled flight to Surabaya, a harbor city town in east Java. He spent the night in an
rundown hotel near Juanada airport, slapping mosquitoes through several hours of
restless dozing. At dawn the next morning, he returned to the airport where he found
himself partially in luck. There was a flight leaving for Djakarta in an hour, but no seats.
Reed sidestepped the agitated crowd and in the Garuda manager's office pulled out
another one of the magic hundred dollar notes that secured him a boarding pass. In the
waiting lounge, fumigated by the smoke of a hundred cigarettes, he drank insipid coffee,
Fans did nothing to cool the humid air. A stubby white man shot through the doors and
plopped himself in front of the canteen counter. It was Gene Haskell, foreign service
officer from the Surabaya Consulate. Spotting Reed, he brought over his cup and sat
down at the table. Sweat stained the underarms of his white shirt. "You off to the meeting
too?" he asked.
"That's right."
Gene lit up a clove cigarette and gesticulated. "How about it, hunh? Tables are
turning. Six months ago we had a Commie mob tear down the gates of the consulate and
this morning? The Commie watchers who follow me wherever I go weren't anywhere in
sight. It's like we can finally start breathing a little. How are things in Bali?"
"Quiet."
Gene yanked out a handkerchief and mopped his shining face. "Isn't this great?
Looks like the Army might finally have the PKI on the ropes."
On the plane, Reed tuned out Gene's prattling and slept, waking as they landed at
Kemayoran. Gene wanted to share a taxi, but Reed said he was going to stop at the Hotel
Indonesia first. Gene grinned and winked. "Oh, you spies and your secret missions. What
is it, a sweet little brown-skinned number?"
Half an hour later, with a mid-morning sun floating hazily over rice fields and
reedy swamps at the edge of the city's sprawl, Reed's taxi pulled up to the gates of Halim
Air Force Base, heavily guarded by elite RPKAD commandos, easily identified by their
red berets. With his Nikon dangling around his neck, Reed said he was a photojournalist
here to do a story. As the stony-faced commandos looked on, their sergeant grunted and
said he'd already turned back all the other international journalists.
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"I understand," Reed said cheerfully, knowing that aggression was the quickest
way to get a boot up his backside. "At least allow me to congratulate you and your an
outstanding job." He passed out packs of Pall Malls bought at the Hotel Indonesia
tobacconist's shop. The soldiers broke into smiles, and a few slapped Reed's back.
"And thank God for General Soeharto's swift response," Reed said.
The sergeant perked at the mention of the name. He reassessed Reed, asked for
his name and ID, and told one of his men to escort Reed onto the base, where he was
taken to the back of an operations buildings by the runway and hangers. His bag was
searched and his Nikon inspected. A Red Beret captain barked questions, who and what
and where and why. Most importantly, what did he know about General Soeharto?
Reed said, "He's saved the country, may God bless him."
The captain beamed at this answer and took Reed to an office overlooking the
airstrip. Two young soldiers stood guard at the door. The only occupant within was an
army general in combat fatigues. He sat upon a armchair, his hands dangling loose over
the ends of the arms. Fatigue marked his smooth round face, but his lidded eyes held
steady on Reed, his gaze unreadable.
The Captain saluted and introduced Reed as an international photojournalist.
Reed bowed and said it was an honor to meet to meet the General who had saved
the Republic from disaster.
General Soeharto held Reed in his gaze for a long and steady moment and then
gave a single, somber nod. Speaking softly in Indonesian, with a distinct Javanese accent,
he told Reed, "We have just exhumed the bodies of our murdered generals. The treachery
of the Communists knows no bounds. The world must know this. Captain Heru will show
you the place."
Reed bowed again, held up the camera slung around his neck and deferentially
asked if he could take a photo. General Soeharto said neither yes nor no, and so Reed
quickly framed a shot and snapped it.
Driving an army jeep, Captain Heru gave Reed the full tour, showing him the
modest officer's house where the coup leaders had stayed and, in the far corner of the
enormous complex, an even more rustic bamboo hut where PKI Chairman Aidit had hid
when it became apparent that the coup had failed, before he fled on an airplane. "We're
looking for him," Captain Heru said. He was smoking from a pack of Pall Malls, sucking
his cigarette with sharp inhalations. Flicking a butt over the side, he said, "Now we go to
the well where they threw the generals."
They rode along a track past a field for parachute landings, presently sprouting
rows of abandoned canvas tents. A kitchen mess still had kettles on hearths. "The
Communists were pretending to have paramilitary training for the Crush Malaysia
campaign," Captain Heru explained. "But now we know better, don't we?"
They came to a farming hamlet on the outskirts of the base that this morning was
marked by a heavy military presence. The well was a dry hole under a thin tree. The
well's perimeter was marked by the burial dirt that had been tamped down to hide the
bodies. In time, if left alone, the well would have done its job, hoarding its secret bones.
The sun beat hard with a harsh white light, and there still came from the hole lingering
sickly sweet odor.
"The generals were tortured," Captain Heru said.
Reed took more photos. "Were there any Gerwani at the paramilitary camp?"
153

"Those whores," the Captain spat. "They danced naked before the generals. They
went wild. Savage. Castrated them, ripped out their eyes. When they heard we were
coming, they fled like roaches. Don't worry, we'll find them and crush them."
Reed didn't want to bump into anybody he knew, so he stayed away from the
usual expat haunts. He took a room in a boarding house in Kota, the old part of town,
once a stopping place for colonial traders and merchants, but in recent years favored by
gentlemen seeking the fleshpot delights of area's red light district. The Oranje Huis was
clean and anonymous and, most importantly, had a phone in manager's office. Reed put
in two calls to Singapore and waited patiently for the first of the call backs.
"Where the hell are you?" Bob said.
"Out and about."
"Auntie wants to hear from you."
"What about that name I gave you?"
"Couldn't get anywhere with it. Call Auntie—"
Reed hung up.
A half hour later, Harry Chen was on the line, telling Reed that Bambang
Sastrohartono was still on Permina staff, but as yet Harry hadn't been able to get in touch
or get a contact number.
Reed hired a betjak to the Blessed Heart convent. The city had come to a
standstill for the slain generals' funeral. The shops shuttered and the roads were empty,
patrolled by armored cars. At the convent, Reed did not get to see Mother Agnes, but a
young novice gave him word that the Reverend Mother would be at the Cathedral for
four o'clock mass, the hour changed because of the curfew.
The Cathedral and its stern gothic towers always struck Reed as a piece of Europe
misplaced among the Djakarta's bamboo shanties and tin shed slums. He got there an
hour early, and already congregants filled the pews. Reed took one of the few open seats
in a pew of nuns.
Mother Agnes slipped into the pew beside him. She genuflected, and the murmur
of her prayer swept Reed back to his childhood. Going to church was always a furtive
business, his mother sneaking him into some Southie cathedral, full of hard Irish and
harder nuns. Hush, we won't tell your father.
When Mother Agnes took her seat, Reed didn't waste time with chitchat. He
quietly said, "I'm looking for Naniek. Yuyun. She was called back to Djakarta just before
the coup. To the Halim air force base. Could you ask your Gerwani contacts if they know
where she is?"
Mother Agnes sighed. "You could also try praying."
"I'm at the Oranje Huis. Room 6." He stood to leave.
"You should stay for Mass. Say confession."
"I'll wait until my sinning is done, Mother."
The Oranje Huis was connected to the city power grid, which was on most
evenings, and had a small TV in its lobby. There was only one station, the government
TVRI. That night, Reed stood in the back of a standing room only crowd to watch the
news clips of the generals being exhumed from the well. An emotional General Soeharto
154

denounced the cruel and sadistic murders. An anchor also reported on General Nasution's
young daughter, shot and badly wounded during his botched abduction. As shocking as
the murders were, it was this shooting of the innocent girl that deeply stirred the
emotions.
"Kill the bastards who did it," a man in the lobby said, and there was a loud
murmur of agreement.
The next day's edition of the nationalist newspaper announced a national day of
mourning and decried the wanton viciousness of the Gerwani witches who had tortured
and mutilated the generals. The power station ran its generators so that TVRI could
broadcast live the slain generals' funeral, a somber procession of flag-draped caskets
carried on soldiers' shoulders, followed by the grieving families. At the cemetery, the
whole of parliament and the national leaders were gathered. But not Sukarno, Reed
noticed. In his place he had sent his stand-in, his loyal foreign secretary Subandrio, a
spare man with thick rimmed glasses. Naniek's godfather. Did he know where she was?
The capital's entire diplomatic corps were also assembled, but not the Communist
Chinese. A most curious absence. The Russians looked smug—the Indonesia Communist
Party had trotted after Peking, not Moscow, and hadn't that been a big mistake! And there
were the Americans, hardly less smug but more careful not to show it, the Ambassador
sweltering in the heat, and Auntie in her more sensible dress, fanning herself with a
delicate sandalwood fan Balinese dancers used.
A street boy slipped into the lobby and pressed a note into Reed's palm.
Unsigned, but Reed recognized Mother Agnes's convent hand. Somebody will meet you
three o'clock Stuidhuis museum.
Formerly a Dutch colonial administration building, the history museum was in
walking distance, but only mad dogs and CIA spies walked in this heat. Gray clouds
massed on the horizon, presaging the arrival of the wet season. Camera bag slung over
his shoulder, Reed hired another betjak, which melded with a flow of bicycles, the city
sputtering to life again. Twice Reed told the driver to turn down this lane, to cut back on
that street, and he noticed with each change a young man on a bicycle with new tires
sticking close. But then the guy peeled away around a corner.
The museum was in dire need of a good whitewash. Only a few people wandered
the musty halls, looking at the displays of ancient earthenware and stone artifacts, stuck
in cabinets with dirty glass.
A middle-aged woman with the light skin of a Dutch-Indonesian stepped out of an
alcove and murmured to him, "The prison."
Reed ambled after the woman, following her down a flight of stairs to the
underground jail, stone cells with iron bars that the Dutch had used. Here they were
alone. The woman nodded at one cell. "According to my family legend, one of the Dutch
jailors was my great-grandfather, and one of his prisoners was also my great-grandfather.
Have you been in jail?"
"In college. For a night. We lost a hockey game and took it out on a bar."
"I've spent my time in jail. A year and a half. In Sumatra. I earned my
revolutionary credentials." She turned to him. "Agnes says you are looking for
somebody."
"Naniek Rahayu Sastrohartono. Yuyun. She's a member of Gerwani. I think she
was at Halim, at the Lubang Buaya training camp."
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The woman closed her eyes and sighed. "Already the lies are spreading. It was a
youth training camp for all organizations. Catholic youth, Muslim youth. Our members
there were mostly girls, fourteen and fifteen. Shy and sweet. Hardly murderers."
"And Naniek?"
"Why are you looking for her, Mr...?"
"Davis. Reed Davis."
"You are an American?"
"Yes."
"And why are you looking for her, Mr. Davis?"
He spread his hands. "I know her family. Her brother in Singapore. They are
worried. They don't know where she is. I said I'd see what I can do."
The woman smiled. She didn't believe him. It wasn't too late to blurt out the truth,
that he was looking for her because he loved her, but his tongue was blocked.
"Naniek Rahayu Sastrohartono is a Gerwani member on our rolls," she said.
"She's supposed to be in Bali."
"But she was called back to Djakarta."
"Not by us."
Reed frowned, trying to think this through.
"Gerwani is an autonomous organization," the woman said. "But a few of our
members are also full Communist party cadres. And the PKI is the higher authority," the
woman said, with a hint of sarcasm.
"I don't think for much longer," Reed said, thinking, Could Naniek be PKI?
"This Gestapu business is just a blip. Sukarno will set things straight."
At the Oranje Huis, Reed's room had been searched. A trouser on a closet hanger
had been hung the other way. The empty notebook which Reed had left by the bed as bait
had been riffled through.
He would try to phone Harry one more time, and then he'd move to a hostel in
Kramat, where the missionaries hung out. Buy a white shirt and carry a Bible.
The manager invited Reed to place the call and strolled out of the office to have a
smoke, closing the high double doors behind him.
"Finally talked to your guy Bambang," Harry said a short while later. "He hasn't
heard from his sister. He's having problems of his own, has to keep his head way down
out of the firing line. He says keep in touch. Here's a number."
Reed grabbed a pencil and jotted the number on the edge of newspaper. "Thanks,
Harry."
"Sure. I hear the military there are pulling in Chinese to interrogate, see if they
can find any Chinese Reds hiding under the bed."
"Anything I can do for you?"
"Keep your eye open for deals. Times like this, people start selling heirlooms."
Reed hung up and was just tearing off the strip of newspaper when four men burst
through the doors, moving in on Reed without pause. They were young and fast and welltrained.
Reed spun away, giving him just enough time to shove the piece of newspaper
into his mouth and swallow. He felt a sharp whack on the back of his head, and for a split
moment he admired the controlled force of the blow but then all thoughts were
swallowed up in blackness.
156

157

Chapter 29
Upon a mat underneath a makeshift awning, the area lit by a neon bulb buzzing
like a headache, Nol chopped onions. His uncle and other men of the community minced
other spices for the ceremonial dishes of roast pork and pig's blood. As Nol grabbed
another handful of onions, it occurred to him that pre-mixed lawar spices would be a
good addition to Product Ziro's item list.
The snick-snack of cleavers and the chatter of gossip filled the night. A man Nol
didn't recognize slipped in from the shadows and bent to Dharma's ear. Dharma put down
his cleaver. Rising, he gestured for Nol and Sudana to come with him. Dharma's son and
grandson also followed, carrying a lantern, a knife, and a couple empty enamel basins.
They filed out the back gate to the bamboo grove behind the pig sty, where a pickup was
parked in a clearing, the vehicle guarded by two men. They flicked their cigarettes away
and undid the tarp covering the pick-up bed.
The man who'd fetched Dharma played a flashlight over two large green sea
turtles, their fore and hind flippers pierced together by twine. "Your special menu item,"
he said to Dharma.
"Memé ratu," Sudana breathed as Nol began to salivate. These days, one had to
skulk around like a drug fiend to find turtle to eat.
But he recalled Dian's joy that time they'd released the young turtles. "This is
illegal," he said.
Even in the dark, Nol could feel the heat of his uncle's glower. "Eating turtle been
a part of our culture for generations," Dharma rumbled. "I'm not going to let a bunch of
foreign turtle-huggers tell me what I can and can't do."
The driver's assistants slid bamboo poles through the tied flippers and lowered the
heavy creatures to the ground. Dharma paid the driver, who tucked his flashlight under
his arm and counted the bills by its beam. Satisfied, he grunted his goodbye and drove
off, the pickup's red taillights dwindling away. In the bamboo grove, now lit by the single
lantern, Dharma and his son quickly prepared for the slaughter, turning the turtles over on
their shells to expose the softer underside to the knife. The enamel basins were placed to
catch the blood. Nol watched, his stomach tightening.
Dharma handed the sharp butchering knife to Nol. "You do the first one."
Nol reluctantly took the knife. "I've never done this."
"A first time for everything."
The handle was cold in Nol's hand. The lantern's flame sputtered in the breeze.
"Tomorrow your son Putu will wear the keris for his tooth filing," Dharma
whispered. "Listen carefully now, the keris rattled in its sheath. I heard it from my
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edroom. When I entered the room, it had fallen to the ground. It was unsheathed. I took
it to Temple Ped for a blessing, and fell into a trance. Listen to me, Nol, listen to me
carefully: the man who betrayed your father to the Red Berets. His name is Anak Agung
Mantera."
Nol held very still, the words falling like bars around him. But he wasn't shocked,
or even surprised. He'd known all along, hadn't he?
"I have waited patiently," Dharma whispered. "All these years I have waited. The
keris has spoken. It's given warning. Blood needs to be spilled. Starting now, with the
offering of the turtle."
Nol bent to the sea creature. His hand trembled. The lantern's soft yellow flame
danced and flickered, but it might as well have been the world shaking while the light
held steady.
A cry rose from the compound. "Bapa, Bapa, where are you?" Dian's high voice
was tinged with hysteria.
Nol straightened as a current jolted up his spine. Still holding the knife, he ran,
intercepting his daughter at the back gate. She wore her mall clothes tight leggings and
long blouse, and her face was artfully was made-up, but her hair was all a-tumble and
distraught tears filled her eyes. Nol's heart went wild. If somebody had hurt her—
"It's Putu," she panted, her cell phone clasped tight between blanched fingers.
"Wulandri called me all in a panic on Putu's cell and said some thugs beat him up and
they threw him out the car unconscious and bloody."
"Where?"
"I don't know, she said some temple, she wasn't clear but somebody grabbed the
phone from her and I can't call back."
Nol sprinted out the compound to his parked car. Sudana was right behind him.
As Nol clambered into the car, Sudana pried the knife out of Nol's hand and tossed it on
the floorboard. Nol's thoughts caromed all over the place, and his emotions veered from
fright to fury and back again. He pressed the accelerator, trying to catch up to his front of
his headlights as he raced to the temple. The bright beams swept across the empty burial
ground. The nooks of the banyan's fluted trunk were this time empty.
But there was the pool…
Nol slammed on the brakes and jumped out of his seat, forgetting to put the gear
in neutral. The car lurched forward and died, but the headlights still flared, catching the
pool's balustrade, its cement posts white as bones.
Putu lay slumped on the pool's steps, his face turned into his forearm. Nol jumped
over the railing to his son. Gingerly turning Putu's head to the light, Nol inhaled sharply
the sight of the brutalized face. The skin on Putu's forehead was split raw, oozing blood.
His eyes were puffed and darkening. A thick mass of blood was congealing around his
nose and mouth. Lips protruded, grotesquely swollen.
Putu's eyes fluttered but didn't open. He moaned, a deep and inarticulate sound.
Sudana jumped down beside Nol, and both men slipped an arm around each of Putu's
shoulders. His head lolled loosely. Scrabbling backwards, they tugged him up the steps
and over the railing. Nol gently laid him on the dirt and told Sudana to pull the car closer.
He took off his shirt and wiped the congealed blood from his son's nose and swollen
mouth.
Putu's teeth were shattered at the roots.
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dirt.
As Sudana moved the car closer, its bright beams caught an object tossed onto
Nol's tire iron.
At the hospital emergency room, the scans revealed a hairline skull fracture and a
blood clot on the brain. With the wall clock ticking loudly in the late night quiet, Nol
listened to the doctor, who spoke of immediate surgery. Nol understood, but nothing
stuck. It was Suti who remained focused, who asked the questions and sat down to fill in
the paperwork and pulled out the money as the down payment and told Nol where to sign
on the consent form. Nol's mother Arini was seated on a bench, comforting Dian, who
was wept quietly.
Putu lay on a gurney, an IV taped to his hand. A nurse plucked out teeth
fragments from his mouth and lacerated tongue.
A neurosurgeon swept in, bright and chipper despite the hour. He was optimistic
as he explained the procedure. "With all the motorcycle injuries we get, we're very
experienced at this. All brain injuries are serious, but this one we should be able to
resolve."
Nol looked at an image pinned to a light box, showing the smashed and broken
tooth roots. "He's supposed to have his tooth filing tomorrow."
"I'm sorry," the doctor said.
Suti bent and kissed her inert son on both cheeks. She straightened and asked Nol,
"Who did it?"
"I don't know."
"Call the police."
"I'll take care of this," Nol said emphatically.
A male nurse wheeled Putu down a hall to the operating theater, pushing through
a pair of double doors, beyond which Suti and Nol weren't permitted. The doors swung
shut. Suti's face crumpled, and she turned to cling to Nol.
Dharma and his two wives swept into the hall. The women embraced Suti,
clucking and crying. Dharma's hands still smelled of spice. Nol pulled him aside and
briefly related to him what had happened and the doctor's prognosis.
"All his teeth are smashed," Nol added. "It was deliberate. A tire iron. It was the
palace, you know. Suti wants to go to the police."
"And will you?"
"The tooth filing first. Dian still needs to have the ceremony."
"Mantera will be there," Dharma reminded. "And Gede Raka."
"I hope so," Nol said flatly.
Dharma gave him a long and searching look. "The keris has given warning," he
murmured. "Remember the betrayal."
Suti and Dian prayed at the hospital's garden shrine. After Putu had been an hour
in surgery, a nurse in green togs and plastic shoes and cap came out to say all was going
well and it shouldn't be much longer. Nol suggested to Dharma that he take Dian home to
his house. She needed to be up early to prepare for the ceremony.
"I'm staying here," Dian declared.
Nol patted her shoulder. "He'll be okay."
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"I'm not having my ceremony if he can't have his."
"Your father is right," Dharma said. "You're coming with me."
After they left, Nol sat between Suti and his mother. Arini had tucked herself in
the corner of the bench, her eyes closed, her face drawn with exhaustion. A great
weariness came over Nol, and there drifted through his mind images of Putu both whole
and broken.
And the image of Ki Poleng, the naked blade, bloodied.
The OR doors banged open. Nol jumped up, instantly alert. The surgeon beamed,
saying all was well. Putu was being taken to intensive care. He expected a full recovery.
They could see him after he was settled in although he wouldn't be conscious.
Nol took a huge breath, suddenly dizzy.
Suti collapsed on the bench and wept in relief as Arini hugged her.
There sounded down the hall a quick snapping stride. It was Tina, cheap
bathroom sandals on her feet, her bag swaying under her arm. "I just found out," she said.
She noticed Suti still crying and she instantly paled. "Oh my god, please don't tell me."
"Putu's out of surgery and is fine," Nol reassured her. But what was fine? How
deep did fine go?
Tina plopped down on the bench and squeezed Suti's hand. "Is there anything I
can do?" she asked, and replied to herself, "I'll get something to drink." She bustled out
and returned with plastic bottles of water from a 24 hour mini-market. Nol drained his,
not realizing how thirsty he was.
After Suti and Arini drank theirs, they went in search of a toilet. Tina hung back
and murmured to Nol, "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
Wondering what this was about, he followed her through the hospital reception
and out to the garden, softly lit by security lights. It was cool and windless, the glow of
the city bubbling up into the night. Nol could feel the dew settling heavily on the grass,
lapping up over the edges of his sandals to wet his toes and heels. A scooter swooshed by
on the empty road and all was quiet again.
Using tissues, Tina wiped dew off a wrought iron bench.
"What is it?" Nol said, sitting down beside her.
"Putu came to see me this afternoon for some advice about Wulandri," Tina said.
"I know he doesn't like me very much. But I guess he thought I was the outsider who was
going to tell him what he wanted to hear, that it was okay to have a relationship with her.
A very American thing, you know, to champion romance, not allow others tell you who
you can and can't love."
"What did you tell him?"
"I told him it wasn't okay. He wasn't happy."
Nol dragged a hand down his face, trying to wipe away his tiredness. "Too bad he
didn't listen to you."
"I didn't tell him all my reasons why it wasn't okay. I kept the biggest reason to
myself." She withdrew from her bag a tape recorder, which she put on her lap. She
looked uncertain, almost uncomfortable. "Situations like this, I always think, what would
my sister do? She always did the right thing, and she didn't hesitate to tell anybody what
they should do, either. She could be quite a tattletale. Once we were fossil hunting with
my father, and we found a beautiful specimen, this sea lily that was worth quite a bit of
money. My dad and I wanted to keep it, so we begged her to keep silent because we had
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to report everything we found to the landowner, who let people keep the common stuff,
but nothing that good. But no, she wouldn't let us get away with it. She said if we didn't
tell, she would. We were so angry with her. She disappeared when she was twelve. I miss
her so much. I don't know if she would wised up, grown out of the black and white way
she viewed the world. I like to think not. We need people like her. So what would Nancy
do?"
Confused, Nol said, "I don't know what you're talking about."
"I'm going to play you a tape," Tina said. "You just listen." She stood, put the
recorder on the bench and pressed the play button. As the tape began to turn, she and
strolled to the other end of the garden to watch the first glow of the coming sunrise.
Puzzled and not at all alarmed, not after the heart-draining fright he'd already had
that night, Nol listened to Dharma's voice rumbling out of the recorder's tiny speakers. He
bent close to hear. It sounded as if his uncle was speaking from long ago and far away,
from those days when Madé Catra and Wayan Arini and Anak Agung Mantera were
school children. Nol listened with intense interest to a part of his mother's life he'd never
known. When Dharma related the account of her warung burning down, Nol had to force
his fingers to relax. He was digging his nails into his own palm.
Then came the events of Gestapu. Dharma's words acquired a different weight as
he spoke of Mantera visiting the house when Catra was teaching at school. Now alarms
begin to ring for Nol. Nol wanted to fling the recorder into the bushes, but it was too late.
Each of his uncle's words burned like a drop of acid, each sentence stripped away a little
of Nol's life as he'd always understood it, until he was stranded upon a bench in an upside
down world he did not know, the dew cold against his feet.
The city came awake with the sun, and the hospital stirred to full life, with nurses
bounding to their morning shift and doctors energetically making rounds. Nol and Suti
and Arini were allowed to see Putu, and when the nurse said Tina could not as she wasn't
family, Nol firmly said, oh yes she is. They let her in. Putu was surrounded by machines,
blinking and beeping and humming. Suti held his hand. She had on her brave face. Nol
didn't know what kind of face he had on.
He couldn't bring himself to look at his mother.
He was the child she didn't want.
He was not his father's son.
He concentrated instead on his own son, indisputably his son, on that swollen
bruised toothless bandaged head.
The fingers of his right hand curled around an imaginary knife handle.
The head nurse shooed them out after too short a time. Back in the visiting room,
Suti told Nol she wanted to go home and get some things. Arini said she would stay and
keep watch over her grandson.
Nol drove Suti home, lost to his twirling thoughts.
Mantera is my father. Raka my half-brother.
Many of his life's mysteries and peculiarities were suddenly explained.
At the house, Suti filled a small suitcase with an abundance of clothes and
toiletries and towels for a stay at the hospital She said she'd take a taxi, that Nol needed to
get ready for the ceremony.
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"We're not going to drop this," she said. "Somebody has to pay for what they did
to Putu and to our family."
Nol nodded. "Somebody will," he said.
The taxi shortly came and took her away.
Old Mak was in the kitchen, confused, looking for the morning's rice that hadn't
been cooked. Nol explained that Putu was sick and was in the hospital.
"Who's going to do the offerings?" she said.
Nol gave her money and told her to go the offering maker's at the market and buy
some for the day. It was a task she could do, and if she got lost, neighbors would guide
her home. She slipped the money into the fold of her sarong.
"Mak," Nol said, "before the Red Berets took my father away, when my sister
Wayan was a little girl, did Anak Agung Mantera come by and visit Mother?"
In those deep vacant eyes sparked a fragment of shrewd memory. "He wanted her.
It would never do. A prince with a common girl? She refused to go the palace, you
know."
But, Nol thought, he could force her into the granary and rape her.
The man who fathered me, but not my Bapa. My Bapa was the man who whistled
birds into his hands and silenced mobs and walked into ditches and who was taken away
by the Red Berets.
The man who fathered me put my Bapa on a list.
Nol showered and dressed in his best sarong and blouse and headdress and
slipped on his special agate ring. As he headed out the gate, a salesman in tie and pulling
a wheeled case approached him.
"Not now," Nol said.
"You'll want to see this," the salesman said. "I'm selling essential foods at prices
cheaper than anything you can get in any store. You can order online and I will deliver. It
is the new way to shop." He thrust a brochure into Nol's hands.
Nol scanned the text and pictures. His idea, stolen once more.
And the thief on the cover, a full photo of his sleek and handsome face, the
president-director promising prosperity to all those who joined the team, was none other
than Gdé Raka.
163

Chapter 30
1965
A high ceiling with plaster roses. Empty light bulb fixtures.
Iron bars on the windows. Opaque glass. Sunlight.
No fan. Hot. City heat.
He was lying on a mat. Woven straw. Ignoring his throbbing head, Reed groaned
to his feet. Empty room. Solid wooden door. Locked. A thick glass peephole, covered.
There was a bathroom, no door. A squat toilet, a cistern of water, a plastic dipper.
No mirror. Reed threw up in the toilet. A concussion? He rinsed his head, and returned to
his mat feeling marginally better.
Who'd taken him? PKI intel? Didn't make sense. They had far more serious
problems than worrying about him. Army intel? Didn't make sense either. Too busy
chasing the Commies. The Russians, the ChiComs? Maybe. Those guys would take down
a loose American just on the principle of the thing.
The peephole opened and shut. A key sounded in the door, and the bolt was
thrown back.
Two men entered, both with holstered sidearms. One was the bicyclist who'd
followed him. The other had a glass of water and a bowl of rice and noodles.
"I am an American citizen," Reed said. "I demand to be taken to the embassy." He
was just going through the motions. So did the bicyclist, who lightly slapped the butt of
his gun across Reed's face. They watched him eat, took the bowl and left, locking the
door again.
Reed pressed his ear to the window. He could faintly hear sporadic traffic. The
chanting of the Koran from a mosque loudspeaker. A tinker man's cry. City sounds.
The window darkened as night fell.
The following day was a repeat of the first, minus some of the headache but with
growing frustration. Reed needed to be out there looking for Naniek. The two minders
brought him a meal of rice and water but refused to speak.
On the third day, they marched him out the door to an adjacent room, identical to
the first, but with furniture. A stool before a desk, a chair behind it. The bicyclist shoved
Reed down onto the stool. An older man entered and straddled the upright chair. He wore
trousers and a khaki shirt. His buzz-cut was gray above the ears. A light scar ran across
an eyebrow. He had yellowed eyes and bad teeth and a paunch. He placed a thick manila
folder on the table.
Reed knew instinctively what it was. His file. Reports gathered on him over the
years. Now he knew who these guys were. They were BPI, the Central Intelligence
Board, Subandrio's boys.
The man lit a clove cigarette and flipped through Reed's passport, squinting
through the smoke.
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"You speak Bahasa," he said. It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
He turned the passport so it face Reed and tapped Reed's visa stamp. "A forgery."
"I wouldn't know."
The man leaned forward with his elbows on the table. He exhaled another lazy
plume of smoke as he studied Reed with those unblinking yellow eyes, pupils black as
bore holes. He lifted a single finger.
The bicyclist brought over a tin bowl of rattan strips soaking in water.
"Americans, Chinese, Russians—everyone thinks we Indonesians are children
who need to be taught everything from military organization to, oh, extracting
information from hostile sources," he said. "We're happy to learn what we don't know,
but we know much and have our own way of doing things. For example, wet rattan
shrinks as it dries. If you wrap wet rattan around a knee, the knee cap will crack. If you
wrap it around a neck, slow strangulation will follow. It takes some time, but we are
patient."
At Langley, a decorated officer who limped with a cane told a class, If they
interrogate you, cooperate. No sense in getting tortured. Of course they might torture you
anyway.
"I'm thirsty," Reed said.
"The stamp is a forgery."
"I assume so," Reed said.
The interrogator put a black-and-white photograph on the table. Spun it around
with his forefinger.
The shot of General Soeharto, at Halim. They'd developed his film.
"I'm a freelance photojournalist," Reed said. "It was just chance. I went to Halim
to see what I could see. They let me in. The General just happened to be there."
"Soeharto would not bother with somebody like you."
"He obviously did. He was upset. The generals' bodies had just been found."
There followed a steady, stately, relentless barrage of questions. Who said what.
Who was present. Full description. Who sat and stood where. The jeep ride to Lubang
Buaya. Who and what. Details.
Back up, start over. From your arrival at the gate. What was said. To whom.
Describe everything.
And then again.
Standard interrogation technique.
The interrogator lit another cigarette and barked something in dialect. The
bicyclist brought Reed a glass of water. Reed cautiously drank half, resisting the
temptation to guzzle the rest, wondering if this marked the beginning of an escalation.
The rattan strips, for example.
The interrogator brought out another photograph.
The water Reed had drunk turned to ice in his gut.
Naniek. Looking over her shoulder.
"She's somebody I know from Bali," Reed said.
"Naniek Rahayu Sastrohartono."
"That's right. I'm looking for her."
"Why?"
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Reed spun out his story. She was Gerwani. Brother Bambang concerned. Family
hasn't heard from her. Reed knew she'd gone to Djakarta so he was here, looking for her.
A favor to a friend. "I only met her a few times," he said.
"Tell me about them."
"They weren't secret meetings. She had a friend with her. Mak Jangkrik. Naniek is
attractive. I enjoy her company."
The man glanced at his watched. "You like soto ayam, Mr. Davis? We have
guests at my house. My wife is cooking her soto. It is very good. Put your hands behind
your back, please."
The bicyclist grabbed Reed's arms and yanked them. His friend took a wet rattan
strap and wove it around Reed's wrists. He tied another strip around Reed's elbows.
"I'll see you in the morning," the interrogator said as he stood. "Have a good
sleep, Mr. Davis."
Reed had no sleep at all. The rattan bindings inexorably tightened. The one on his
wrists cut off all sensation to his hands. The one around his elbows pulled back on his
shoulders, threatening to tug his upper arms out of their sockets. The pain came in
layered pulses. A wrist bone finally cracked. The collapse allowed a flow of blood, a rush
of fire that doubled back as a hot-white flame from the break itself.
Reed sank away into the pain. He timed his gasping to its throbbing. He banged
his head against the metal bars to its rhythm. The window began to brighten with
daylight. The door opened, and his minders entered. Using shears, the bicyclist cut the
rattan straps. The worst of the pain instantly eased, but his arms felt lifeless. "Take a
bath," the bicyclist said, handing him soap, a towel, and a clean sarong.
Reed shuffled into the bathroom. He awkwardly undressed, trying not to jar his
broken wrist. He could hardly move his shoulders. Using the dipper to pour water over
him, he showered as best he could. After he dried off and wrapped the sarong around his
waist, bicyclist took him to the other room.
Yesterday's interrogator wasn't present. Standing by the desk was a slender man in
a tailored suit, looking scholarly with round-rimmed glasses, his hair brushed straight
back from his forehead.
Dr. Subandrio, formerly a physician, Sukarno's foreign minister.
"Let me see your hand," he said in soft English. He gently probed. "The ulna is
fractured." Using a roll of first aid bandage, he fashioned a sling for Reed. " You will
need to have that put in a cast. Sit, please."
Reed perched on the stool. Dr. Subandrio ordered the bicyclist to open the opaque
window. The room was on a high floor, and in the distance rose a thick column of black
smoke.
"PKI headquarters is burning," Dr. Subandrio said. "The army's sent mobs. The
revolution turns."
Reed mentally unfolded a map, triangulated the smoke and the sun and this
building. He wasn't far from the Embassy. Perhaps at the Foreign Ministry.
Subandrio opened a folder on the desk and studied Reed's photo of Soeharto. "Do
you know the wayang, Mr. Davis, the shadow puppet show?"
"I've seen performances," Reed said.
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"It is common for Westerners to analyze our politics according to the shadow
puppets. But sometimes a clown is just a clown and a thief is just a thief. And
sometimes," Dr. Subandrio said, putting his finger on the face of the smooth-faced
general, "the cunning peasant would be king."
Reed said nothing. His wrist throbbed.
Subandrio slipped another photograph out of the folder. The one of Naniek. The
Minister smiled faintly. "I used to call her Miss Kancil when she was little, after our
clever little mouse deer, always outwitting the tiger."
Reed leaned forward. "Where is she?"
The smile vanished. Subandrio's eyes turned flat and cold.
"Forgive me," Reed said. "I have lost my manners. I am looking for her. That is
why I am in Djakarta, why I went to Halim."
"Why are you looking for her?"
"I love her."
The doctor's gaze sharpened, a slicing scalpel.
I am following my heart," Reed said. "Not my head."
"Your Auntie will not be happy."
"Probably not."
Subandrio looked out at the smoke. "The clever mouse deer is on her way to Bali.
The trains are still running, their unions are PKI. There is not much I can do now. I am
going to be busy with other matters myself, I'm afraid. I'm counting on you to help her.
May at least one life be saved from the cunning peasant."
"I can't be doing that if I'm locked up here."
"You are free to go. These men will see you out."
The bicyclist led him through a metal door that opened onto a third story porch. A
of afternoon sunlight poked through tumbling grey clouds, glinting off the towering gold
flame of the National Monument. Here and there pillars of black smoke rose skyward.
On a street corner a crowd marched, carrying hastily painted banners that demanded the
PKI be crushed, Aidit be crucified, Gerwani whores be hung.
Steps at the end of the porch descended the building's second floor. The bicyclist
opened a door and said, "You should know where you are. Goodbye."
Reed shuffled down the hall, frowning in confusion, which soon cleared when he
reached a familiar door. Christ, Auntie's Guest Apartment. He tried the door knob. It
turned, the door opened.
Wendell and a man Reed didn't recognize looked up from the sofa, their faces
wreathed in cigarette smoke, the ashtray full of butts.
"As I live and breathe," Wendell said. "It's our prodigal son."
"I was rolled up by the BPI," Reed said. "My wrist is broken."
Half an hour later, Reed was at the Embassy's clinic, his left wrist being plastered.
A junior officer about Reed's size donated two changes of clothes that smelled of
mothballs and shoes a size too big. He was given an apartment in the Embassy's guest
quarters. On the walls hung framed photos of the Statue of Liberty and the snow-covered
Rockies.
Auntie and Wendell paid him a late afternoon visit. Auntie had brought a thermos
of chicken noodle soup. Delicious, but still Reed forced himself to eat. He said he'd been
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abducted after leaving the airport, a classic car intercept. The BPI had interrogated him
about his attendance at Sukarno's birthday party.
"Why would they bother to do that, six months after the fact, when there's far
more important things going on?" Wendell asked.
Reed absently scratched his wrist, forgetting he had a cast on. "Who knows? And
after a spot of torture, they let me go. Could be their pulling our noses, keeping me right
above the apartment. Having one last moment of fun."
"Bob Holden at the Singapore Embassy said you phoned him," Auntie said.
"According to you, you were already abducted."
Damn, Reed thought. He'd forgotten about that phone call. He wasn't thinking up
to speed. Putting on a sheepish look, he said, "This isn't going to make me look good. I
came to Djakarta to scavenge for deals. Quick sale heirlooms. Stayed at the Oranje Huis
and put out the word. BPI picked up me the next day."
"Bob said you wanted him to track down a guy named Bambang," Wendell said.
"Some sleazebag works at the Permina office there. But rich. I've sold him things
before."
Auntie said they'd better go and let Reed have some sleep. The doctor had given
him pills for his aches and pains, but Reed didn't take any. He thought of Naniek, and
wondered where she was this evening, where she'd taken secret shelter. This was a big
country, and there were many unmarked ways to get around. He picked up the phone
with the idea of calling Harry Chen, but when the Embassy operator said, "Yes, sir," he
hung up. He wandered out into the garden, but a Marine guard intercepted him. "Sorry,
sir, but you're to say in quarters."
The next morning in the kitchen, Reed had Cheerios and fresh milk and orange
juice while Wendell sucked down coffee and cigarettes. There'd been developments, he
said. His forehead was swollen with excitement. For first time Reed could recall,
Wendell's tie was loose and not cinched tight against that glossy neck. The army,
Wendell said, had shared with the Embassy the results of certain interrogations. They had
discovered that the PKI had a secret Special Bureau assigned to coup preparations. Only
Chairman Aidit and a select few had known of its existence. The Special Bureau had
placed cells in all the major islands, including an agent in Bali.
"Guess who?" Wendell said. "None other than Luhde Srikandi." He waved his
cigarette. "It's gets better. Our Librarian did some research and found a very interesting
letter in the Harian Rakyat."
Wendell produced a copy from his briefcase, a letter on water rights, written by
Madé Catra, headmaster of SD Number 3, Batu Gede. At the end a note thanking Luhde
Srikandi for her insights.
"You know this Catra fellow?" Wendell asked.
"His brother is the local PNI leader," Reed said, changing not a whit his slouch at
the table or his tone of voice, but suddenly very alert.
"You're our Batu Gede expert. Who do you think he's talking about?"
"A Special Bureau's secret agent is hardly going to go around announce himself."
Wendell beamed. "Herself. There's even more. At PKI headquarters, the cadres
couldn't shred files fast enough. Army intel found a partial dossier. It seems that in
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addition to her other duties this Luhde Srikandi was cultivating an American asset
codenamed Yellow Monkey."
Reed poured himself more orange juice, marveling at how steady his hand was
while the rest of him felt pole-axed.
With another flourish, Wendell produced Reed's photograph of the Batu Gede
rally, and pointed to Naniek. "You never did give us her name."
Reed sipped. "Of course there were reports on me. I wasn't exactly lost in a
crowd. I stood out. High profile. Photographing rallies. Taking names. Buying hair from
PNI leaders to fund their anti-PKI programs."
"Don't worry, you're going to have a leisurely time to explain all," Wendell said.
He stood and tightened his tie, cinching it right up against his neck. His face glowed.
"We're on the winning side now," he said, "and winners get to write the rules."
Three Marines entered and the privates stood at parade rest while the corporal
said to Reed, "Come with us, sir."
They escorted him across a tropical garden and to the brig, a barred cell within the
chancery. It had a double bunk and a toilet. Reed was given towel and toiletries, along
with his medicines.
Laying on the bottom bunk, he stared at the slats of the bunk above him.
Naniek. Close friend to Catra. At the school house. She's been telling me about
Marx and water rights. Luhde Srikandi. She was Special Bureau. She'd been called back
to Djakarta to be there for the coup that failed.
She'd filed reports on him.
Why did he feel so shocked at her betrayal? He wasn't an innocent. He knew how
the game was played.
Help her, Mr. Davis. Save her from the cunning peasant.
Not much he could do now. He swung out of the bunk, now understanding why
prisoners paced their cells.
He was brought a lunch tray of pasta salad and then taken to a secure
interrogation room. No Auntie this time. A senior security officer had come in from
Singapore to ask the questions. He was polite and formal. For one day and the next and
the one to follow, he took it slow and easy about Naniek and her meetings with Reed. He
was a father confessor, patient and understanding. Instead of a heavenly book, his
answers were recorded on a reel to reel tape recorder.
Reed answered without hesitation or fudge. He knew how it looked for him.
Whenever you worked in the shadows, the shadow of suspicion was never far away.
Reed marked the days by dog-earring the corner of an old issue of LIFE. On day
five, he was taken to the clinic for a checkup on his wrist. The world still spun, morning
and night, but he had no idea of what was happening beyond the walls. He deliberately
did not think of Naniek somewhere out there. Naniek was now in the past tense, and he
kept her imprisoned there, in his memory and his answers and on that slowly spinning
tape, for there was no point in thinking of her in the present. It would only drive him nuts.
He passed the time reading and playing solitaire with a deck of cards. He did situps and
jumping jacks and ran in place. No push-ups because of his wrist.
On day thirteen, the Marine guard returned after breakfast, unlocked the cell, and
escorted him along familiar halls to the secure offices. He knocked on the door to
Auntie's office and entered.
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"Good morning, Reed," Auntie said, looking up from a homemade birthday card
drawn by a childish hand. She smiled. "My granddaughter." She punched a button on her
phone console and an Embassy secretary came in with a suitcase and a stack of clippings.
She put the suitcase by the desk and plopped a stack of clippings on the coffee table.
"Sit down and read those," Auntie ordered. "You have catching up to do."
Reed flipped through them. The clippings were from local papers, all of them
nationalist or religionist, no leftist or PKI. "Harian Rakyat and the other pink rags?" he
asked.
"Banned," Auntie said.
Reed began reading. Inflamed reports of the generals murdered and tortured by
the Gerwani. Fist-pounding editorials against the treachery of the PKI. Articles on PKIsponsored
universities being closed by government order and then torched. Members of
leftist organizations being hounded out of government offices. Banks and businesses
firing staff. Muslim youth routing a force of Communist Youth in Central Java. On and
on—the general impression was a crescendo of nationalism rampant and triumphant.
Auntie handed him a folder. Station cables to Washington.
"I'm back in your good graces?" Reed said.
Auntie smiled benevolently. "We're giving you a chance to redeem yourself."
He scanned the cables. Confidential reports that Aidit had been captured and
killed in Central Java, but the news was being kept secret so that the PKI could not recoup
around a new leader. No evidence of smuggled Fifth Force arms. Communist
leaders in Djakarta captured by army and summarily executed. In Sumatra and Java,
army sponsored militias were beheading communists by the hundreds; in one village,
heads, including those of women, were paraded down streets.
Reed refused to let Naniek into his thoughts.
"They're on the run," Auntie said. "We have to make sure they stay on the run.
But nothing is happening yet in Bali. Still a tense standoff. We don't want the PKI to
regroup there." Auntie nodded at the suitcase. "Clothes for you." She handed him an
envelope. "Passport and ticket to Denpasar. You're going with Wendell."
Wendell had booked two rooms at the Hotel Bali.
"Let's freshen up and then we'll keep going," Wendell said when they checked in.
"Batu Gede is as good a place to start as any."
Reed dumped his suitcase in his room and didn't freshen up. He found Arini
having a late lunch in the hotel kitchen as she perused the nationalist local paper. She
looked thinner and wearier, dark circles etched under her eyes. She noticed the cast on his
wrist but didn't say anything.
"I've been in Djakarta," Reed said. "Looking for Naniek."
Arini pushed aside her plate. "And?"
"I was detained on other business. Have you heard from her?"
Arini shook her head. Reed caught the title of the paper's editorial. Flush out
Luhde Srikandi. "Can I see that?" he asked.
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The editorial thundered that the mysterious Luhde Srikandi was the heart of the
traitorous evil on the island. She must be unmasked, and all her treacherous followers.
All of them must be made secure down to their very roots.
On the margin of the paper, Reed wrote down Bambang's name and the phone
number Harry had given. "That's Naniek's brother in Singapore. Could you phone him for
me and ask him if he's heard anything. She's supposed to be on her way to Bali. Tell him
that her godfather is no position to help and has asked me."
Arini's weariness lifted a little with surprise. "Subandri? He asked you? In
person?"
"It's a long story. I'll tell you later."
Arini tucked the strip into her pocket.
An hour later, Reed and Wendell were sipping coffee with Dharma in his guest
pavilion. They sat cross-legged on mats. Wendell still wore his shoes, having giving
Reed a cold look and saying "I'm not getting hookworms" when Reed suggested it was
polite to take them off. A flight of doves circled overhead, their whistles softly sounding
in the golden air, but over the mountains, thunderheads billowed in towers of gray.
"It's like this, Pak Wendell," Dharma said. Reed had introduced Wendell as a
senior colleague, and since Wendell knew only basic Bahasa, Reed had stepped in to
smooth over the translations. "This is Bali. If the PKI are being slaughtered in Java, good
for Java, but that is not here. Here, we and the Communists are two cocks who have
brought to the cockpit. We're circling each other, heads down and cockles spread.
Governor Suteja is still in power. The PKI have many members."
Wendell pressed a finger to the bamboo mat. "Start something. Get it going. We
will support you. Could you put that to him, please, Reed? Make sure he understands."
Dharma waved his thick hand. "I understand very well."
Reed opened his briefcase and pulled out stapled sheets of paper, with lists of
names typed on them. "Start by securing these people," Wendell said. "But one name is
missing." With his fountain pen, he printed on the bottom of the first page the name
Naniek Rahayu Sastrohartono. He fixed his radar head at Reed, something twinkling deep
at the bottom of his eyes. "Could you explain that, please, Reed?"
Reed pulled himself far away and calmly translated.
Dharma flipped through the pages and then handed them back. "We know all
these people. We don't need your help."
Auntie ordered Reed to stay on in Bali and keep up the good work. Apparently
he'd been granted absolution, if not exactly forgiveness, but he knew there was no future
for him in the Company.
November came with wind and storm. The tension on Bali built to palpable
portions but there was as yet no violence despite the news coming from Java. The
classifieds of the local newspaper were filled with remorseful confessions of PKI
members who condemned the killings of the generals and renounced their party.
Governor Suteja, the loyal Sukarnoist and leftist who had long supported the PKI agenda,
became a faded, furtive presence. Ompreng quit working as Reed's watchman. He put on
nationalist militia garb and declared to all that he'd been an undercover nationalist all
along.
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Reed waited for Naniek. She never appeared. But the mailman did deliver him a
manila envelope with no return address. Within were his photographs, last pawed through
by the BPI interrogator. He burned all except the one of Naniek looking over her
shoulder. This he hid in the Ming cabinet's secret drawer.
The newspapers and banners thundered. Find the traitorous Luhde Srikandi!
Hang her, crucify her, cut off her head! And her camp followers of Gerwani!
Some nights Reed woke to a noise with a sudden lurch of hope. But it was only
the wind knocking at a screen. Other times he found himself gasping and sweaty with
dread.
On a rainy afternoon, Bambang showed up at Reed's bungalow without warning.
He had only a few hours before he had to return to the airport. He was a different man
than the sleek older brother who'd warned Reed off his sister. He paced and chainsmoked.
The rivers in Java, he said, were filled with corpses. Thousand were buried deep
inside teak plantations.
Many of his family friends had disappeared. He hadn't heard from Naniek.
Bambang said, "They came for my boss in the Singapore office. Indonesian
military, in civilian clothes. They took him to the Embassy and killed him in the back
garden with bayonets. They said to me, you are now boss. They told me, if you keep
quiet and cooperate, all things are possible. My God, Reed, my last trade, I siphoned off
half a million dollars. A hundred thousand was for me." He paused and stared at the
swirling clouds. "A hundred thousand," he murmured, "and that's just the beginning. All
things are possible."
Reed drove him to the airport and on the way back stopped at the hotel in to see
Arini. "What's happening in Java is going to happen here," he told her. "The army's
blocked ferries, boats, planes. The PKI in Bali are bottled up. We have to stop it
somehow before it starts."
"But this is what you wanted," she said. Her eyes were harrowed. "This is what
you planned for. Are you now getting a guilty conscience?"
"My conscience isn't big enough," he said. "All I want to do is save Naniek. She
was at Lubang Buaya and the military is hunting those people down with a special
vengeance."
"Then go pray for her, Mr. Davis," Arini said and left him.
A howling midnight gale battered the house, shaking Reed awake. With his
flashlight, he checked the shuddering thatched roof. A figure squatted on the verandah,
arms huddled to his chest as he tried to stay out of the driving rain.
It was Rusty.
"My family kicked me out of my village," he said. "They don't want any PKI. I
don't know where to go. Please help me, Pak Davis."
"If you don't mind helping me first. Those leaves of thatch look like they might be
coming loose."
The two men climbed up to the roof and in the rain tied bamboo poles across the
thatch eaves to keep them from flying loose. With that done, Reed gave Rusty a towel
and dry sarong and told him to sleep in the garage.
The rain continued most of the next day. The stream swelled to a raging flood,
tearing at the ravine's banks. Rusty hid in the garage, eating a meal Reed bought at a
172

warung, packaged in banana-leaf. Reed didn't touch his, but sipped steadily at a bottle of
arak. The rain finally stopped, leaving a sticky mist hanging in the air. Rusty crept out of
the garage to mop up the puddles on the verandah and scoop out the water that had
flooded into the kitchen. Reed feel into a sweaty, half-drunken nap.
Rusty shook him awake, saying he had guests.
On the side steps to the verandah, Catra held a woman swaddled in clothes. A
sedan from the Bali Hotel was pulled up to the end of the driveway, nosed into the
garden.
Catra said, "She's sick. Malaria."
For a moment Reed thought the woman was Arini, but then Arini came from
around the corner, holding young papaya leaves she'd just plucked. Catra guided the
swaddled woman across the verandah. Her hood fell back. It was Naniek, her eyes
glazed, her body wracked with shivers.
Reed's mild hangover vanished. "Here, in the bedroom," he said, opening the
door.
They laid her down on the bed. She moaned and trembled. Reed piled blankets on
top of her.
"I'm boiling up some of the papaya leaves," Arini said. "You can feed it to her
when it's cool. It will help."
Reed wrote a note for Father Louis. "Go to his clinic," he told Arini. "He should
have some chloroquine to give you."
Catra squeezed Naniek's hand, and Arini bent to kiss her forehead.
"How did she get here?" Reed asked.
"I got word she was at Banyuwangi," Arini said. "I went over and got on her on a
fisherman's boat and smuggled her across." She tucked the note away. "I'll get the
medicine and be back later."
Reed spoon fed the papaya leaf juice to Naniek, who threw up most of it. She
babbled incoherently in Javanese. She stopped shivering and began to burn with fever,
rivulets of sweat running down her face. He stripped off her clothes and sponge bathed
her. Her ribs showed like sticks.
She was here. She was in his arms.
If this was the blackwater fever form of malaria, then she was dying.
As a heavy gray dusk coagulated, Arini returned on her scooter with the
chloroquine and two changes of clothes and said she'd spend the night to nurse Naniek.
Reed slept on the verandah and at dawn, with the cocks crowing and Naniek's
fever still not broken, he drove to Father Louis's bamboo cathedral. The faithful and the
fearful crowded the pews and the confessionals. Reed said Mass and argued with God.
You're not a cosmic jokester. You will not do this to me. Heal her. No promises from me,
that's not how this works, I'm not bargaining, I'm just reminding You of who You are.
Driving back, at Sukawati the road was blocked by another demonstration,
farmers now joining the students. Gerwani are whores! Kill the snake Ludhe Srikandi!
As they paraded past the jeep, something fluttered into Reed's brain.
Back at his house, Naniek's fever had at last broken and she was conscious, but
Reed knew that malaria was cyclical, that the parasites would flood back into her
bloodstream. God hadn't necessarily heard him. Or He had, and was toying with him.
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Arini was trying to get her to eat some young coconut. "Just a few bites," she
cooed.
Naniek weakly pushed aside the spoon and from the bed looked at Reed as if he
had emerged from her sweat-soaked dreams to trouble her. She closed her eyes and
turned her head away.
Arini put aside the bowl. "I have to get back to Batu Gede," she said. "I'm leaving
her in your care."
"Before you go," Reed said, "I need to tell you something."
She sat patiently on the verandah sofa, her eyes weary and calm and without
curiosity. "Yes?"
"My people found a dossier on me in the burned-out PKI headquarters." He fell
silent, frowning at a frog by the rails.
"Yes?" Arini prompted.
He picked up the frog and tossed it into the lotus pond. "Naniek was called back
to Djakarta just before the coup. I found out there that she was also a PKI cadre. Some
Gerwani women are. I put two and two together to get four. At least I thought it was four.
That she was also Luhde Srikandi. The Special Bureau agent. But it doesn't make sense.
It isn't four at all. A Special Bureau agent wouldn't wear another hat. She wouldn't be
Gerwani. She would be deep undercover, an ordinary citizen. Most likely a nationalist.
And she wouldn't be called back to Djakarta. She's an agent in place. She would be in
Bali and stay in Bali. But the coup failed from the get-go. Now she's abandoned. Alone.
Everybody out to lynch her. It must be a terrible feeling." He looked up, looked directly
at Arini, at her pretty face now tautened into a severe beauty. "Isn't it, Arini? A terrible,
lonely feeling.
Arini held his gaze for a long moment, then softly said, "When I was in
university, there was an outbreak of polio in the hill villages. The government sent teams
out to vaccinate the people for free. I was assigned to one to help. But the head of the
program sold the vaccines to the rich landlords and merchants, who tripled their money
selling it the poor. I told myself, this must be changed."
"The trouble with people," Reed said, "is that when the poor become powerful,
they are just the same."
Over the mountains, in the late morning heat, the first of the thunderclouds were
starting to build. "There's going to be another storm," Arini said. She rose to her feet.
"The loneliness is more than you can imagine. You wanted to save one person. She is in
your house."
174

Chapter 31
In the hospital garden, Tina had watched Nol's world implode as the sun rose.
Had she done the right thing? What price for truth?
But she was more certain with Arini. She had her duty, to justice and those
murdered women and to Men Djawa.
Tina invited Arini to have coffee and donuts at the hospital's café. The coffee was
weak, the donuts stale, but refreshment wasn't the point. A sleepless night had left Arini
unmarked, apart from a deepening of shadow under her calm eyes. Decades of carrying
her unspoken secrets and her private sorrows had lacquered her into a kind of perpetual
elegance.
As stirred sugar into her coffee with a methodical rotation of the spoon, she asked,
"What did you tell my son that he rushed off like that?"
Tina said softly, "I had a long talk with Dharma the other day. He told me the
story about you and Catra and Mantera, from when you were children to the events of
Gestapu."
Arini did not react. Her uncanny composure reminded Tina of a Ice Age glacier,
and she felt a prick of irritation. This was not something to be kept under a mile of ice.
"I promised him I would keep it to myself," Tina said, "but some promises are
meaningless. Mantera must be brought to justice, Arini."
"And why must he be brought to justice?"
Tina could hardly believe she heard that. "Why? He betrayed your husband. He
raped you and made you pregnant. And what those women he murdered, the ones by the
shore? And what about Putu—his own unacknowledged grandson, assaulted and in the
hospital? Isn't it time for justice, Arini?"
That blasted through the Arini's ice. Her hands began to shake. She put down the
cup before coffee sloshed over. There fluttered along her neck an accelerated pulse. She
took a moment to gather himself and then said quietly. "What exactly did Dharma tell
you?"
As sympathetically as she could, Tina relayed the gist of what Dharma had said.
"Not only that," Tina said. "I had a talk with Men Djawa. She said that the bones found
by the beach were those of Gerwani women. She said that you had betrayed them. But I
can't believe this. I know you."
Arini closed her eyes and rubbed her thumbs on her temples. When she opened
her eyes, something deep within her had shifted. "Let me tell you a true story," she said.
Early on a bright morning in the heady days of Sukarno's revolution, three
children left their homes for school. Madé Catra and Wayan Arini walked barefoot and
carried their slates, while Anak Agung Mantera was chauffeured in a palace sedan, his
shoes shining, his servant carrying his notebooks and pencil case.
It was true that Arini and Mantera rubbed each other the wrong way. He teased
her and she was rude to him. This animosity strengthened as they got older, especially
when they came of age as adolescents. For Arini, there was a sense of injustice added to
175

the mix. Her father sharecropped for the palace, her family was poor, and she was the
first to get the education that the palace children took for granted.
One day in class Mantera grandly presented her his pen, saying it was a shame she
still used chalk and got her fingers dirty. He didn't want to dance with a girl with dirty
fingers (for they were in the same dance troupe). She was so angry when she was alone
with her friend Catra she cried in private, as Catra tried hesitantly comfort her.
She got Catra to glue the pages of Mantera's notebook. The prince was so angry
he ripped the notebook and threw the wadded pages at her.
Their dance teachers paired them during dances to let the sparks fly. The teachers
choreographed a dance for them, of battle and seduction and love. They didn't have to
fake the hostility, which was real. During the final scene, they fell in love, only for Arini
die in Mantera's arms. But when the final gamelan notes drifted into silence, they sprang
apart as if repelled by electric forces.
Then something terrible happened. When they were teens, they danced for
President Sukarno and state guests at his Tampaksiring Palace. In the climatic scene,
Arini lay dying in Mantera's arms of the arrow meant for him, her blood began to gallop.
By all the Gods, she she'd fallen in love with Mantera for real!
When the dance was over, Sukarno pinched her cheek but all she wanted to do
was to sneak away and be alone with Mantera. They strolled down the palace steps to the
temple of the holy water, and there in the outer courtyard, under the banyan tree, they
kissed.
Arini was a teen, and like teens the world over, how grand and painful and lovely
and forever and eternal was her first love!
She and Mantera eyed each other in classes, pretended to fight so they could be
together, snuck off to meet in private whenever they could. There was to this innocent
romance the added spice of danger, for it was unthinkable for a palace prince to be with a
common girl.
Then one day Catra's older brother Dharma found them in rice field hut, laying on
the bamboo mat and holding hands and talking about this and that. Dharma had his eye
on Arini, had tried to steal kisses from her, but she'd always cut him off cold. Now he got
his revenge by telling the palace and Mantera's father.
They packed Mantera off to a private school in Java.
Arini pined for awhile and then forthrightly decided she'd better get on with her
life. Dharma was interested in her, but to snub to him, she developed an interest in Catra,
who'd always been smitten with her. After high school, Catra left on scholarship for
university in Java, while Arini opened a warung offering simple but delicious food.
Then Mantera's father fell sick with the illness that would soon take him. He
summoned his son home. One day, out of nowhere, Mantera stopped in at Arini's warung
for lunch.
Adolescent love hardly lasts. It is a flexing of new emotions, a tentative
exploration of the growing body's new desires. But Arini found that her love for Mantera
had not died and gone cold. Without warning, it erupted once again like one of Bali's
volcanoes. It was an impossible thing. Such a romance broke down local and cosmic
order. Even so, they made secret plans to elope, but again Dharma got wind of it and
informed the palace, who sent thugs to burn her warung. Angry, she stormed into the
palace and tried to shoot the palace hog. The police arrested her. Her family held council
176

and decided to send her into exile. Mantera slipped her enough money so that she could
continue her education at the same university Catra attended
There her latent political consciousness was awakened by injustices she could not
ignore. She joined the Communist Party, but the PKI leadership told her they wanted her
to be a sleeper agent. The party emphasis was on mass membership, but they had their
secret cells, including one in Bali. She was placed in the Bali Hotel as an assistant
manager, a perfect cover. She charmed guests and visitors and ferreted out nuggets of
information and passed on misinformaton. An undercover CIA agent named Reed Davis,
for example. At heart Reed was a good man, but misguided. Buying hair to secretly fund
the nationalists—typical CIA stunt, very Hollywood. He fell in love with a Gerwani
activist. Dr. Subandrio's goddaughter, no less. Very Shakespearean, complete with
tragedy.
After Arini's marriage to Catra, she tried her best to convert him to the true
revolution of the socialist cause, using his own brother Dharma as an example of greedy
capitalism masquerading as patriotism. But Catra was too soft for his own good. He
didn't have the steel to be a revolutionary. He adored Sukarno and did good works and
was naïve beyond belief, and stubborn as stone.
He was her husband, and for him she felt affection, but not the searing and
wounding of love. That love she would always have for Mantera.
Angry at Arini for scorning him, Dharma tried to get her father kicked off the rice
fields he was sharecropping for the palace, but his plan backfired. Mantera, who was now
the palace prince, not only threatened to fire Dharma, but increased the all sharecropper'
percentage of the harvest, meaning that Dharma's share as collector was less. Dharma
could only bow and hide his fury.
"Dharma," Arini said to Tina, "has always hated Mantera. In the Balinese manner,
he has hated him. Long and silently, brooding on revenge."
Arini's soft relentless voice filled Tina's mind like a storm fills the sky, sending
thoughts scattering. How foolish she'd been. Dharma had played her like a master
puppeteer, marching her to his strings.
"Sometime early in 1965," Arini said, "I became aware of various lists of
reactionaries, of nationalists and capitalists, who were going to be re-tooled. Including
those of for Batu Gede—"
"Wait. Re-tooled."
"That was the term. Today we would say re-educated."
"That smacks of concentration camps to me."
"I was a revolutionary. I was never naïve," Arini said, and there was steel to her
voice. "We would do what we had to do. But I also did what I had to do, as a human
being, as a woman."
Arini wrote a sealed note for Mantera and asked Catra to deliver it in absolute
privacy. Her cheerful, trusting husband asked no questions. She knew he would not peek
at the note. She took advantage of his trust to arrange an assignation with the one man she
had ever loved.
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Mak was on a trip selling her woven songket. One evening, Mantera slipped
across the village to the granary where Mak wove her songket. It was quiet, secluded,
away from prying eyes and ears.
Huddled in the small room like mice, Arini told Mantera that as a manager at the
Hotel Bali, she was privy to secrets. She got to know things. Such as the Communists
preparing for a takeover. She told Mantera that his name was on a list.
In the dim light of a oil lantern, she showed him the list, a list dated and stamped
and approved by local PKI politburo. She did not bother with the niceties of euphemisms.
She told him that he and his family was going to be eliminated. She told him to get his
family out of the country. She suggested a long tour of Holland and Europe.
He shook his head. He wasn't surprised or shocked about the list. He said all
landowners were on a list. He wasn't going to run away from his island, his home. He
wasn't going to send away his family.
Then he grinned and said, Do you remember the time you tried to shoot the pig?
Arini laughed. As the oil lamp flickered, the granary became their private world,
and what might have been became theirs for that hour.
In the hospital café, a man at the adjoining table was starting to get interested in
Arini's story, and not so subtly leaned sideways to eavesdrop. Tina suggested that they
find some other quiet corner. Arini stared at the man said, "Why should we move? I don't
care if he hears what I have to say. I was a daughter of the Revolution. I spit on Soeharto
and wish the vengeance of a thousand razors upon him."
Alarmed, the man bolted for another table.
"Some people think Soeharto was behind Gestapu," Tina said. "So he would have
an excuse to crush the PKI."
Arini's headache sounded as if it were carved into her harsh laugh. "You have
seen the garbage pickers going through piles of rotting garbage. That was Soeharto. A
garbage picker, always waiting for his chance. "
The world had been overturned, mountains fallen into rivers, rivers flowing to the
sky. Where once the Communist Party was on the ascendancy, it was now on the run.
Literally. Chairman Aidit on the run in Java and then found and secretly and
unceremoniusly shot and dumped down a well. Just like the six army generals.
After the killings in Java started, the certainty of a bloodbath began loom like the
Fanged Lord over Bali. Mantera sent word via Catra that he needed to see Arini. They
met again in the granary.
Several months before, Arini had a secret PKI list she showed Mantera. Now he
showed her newspaper editorials and articles and nationalist propaganda whipping up
public frenzy against the newly uncovered Communist secret agent Luhde Srikandi. The
horror and danger of this Luhde Srikandi was that she could be anybody—she could be
one's neighbor, a member of one's family. She was a snake lurking in the house.
And then he showed her the edition of the Harian Rakyat in which Catra's letter
was printed. Thanking Luhde Srikandi for her insight.
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This was the first she knew of the letter, and her blood ran cold. What had her
foolish stupid husband done?
The army interrogators aren't going to overlook this, Mantera said. They will
interrogate Catra and find out who Luhde Srikandi is. You and Catra must leave the
country now, while there is still time. Go to China.
Arini thought of Parwati, and of Desak the salt-farmer's wife, and the other
Gerwani women. I am not going to run away like a coward, she said.
Twice more Mantera came to the granary to try to convince her. She refused. She
did what she could to save the Batu Gede Gerwani women. They were suspicious of her,
so she finally revealed to Parwati that she was a member of a secret PKI cell. Parwati had
a sister in Singaradja, a well-connected nationalist. When it seemed certain that the
killings would soon start in Bali, Arini bullied Parwati and her daughters into leaving
Batu Gede. She took them to Singaradja in the hotel car. The sister hid her and the girls in
the house. Parwati had with her a family heirloom, a ruby ring, and some gold.
Later, when Arini heard that Parwati had been arrested, she went back to
Singaradja to check on the daughters. The sister was wearing the ruby ring. She'd made it
bigger to fit her finger. Arini knew in an instant what had happened. Parwati's own sister
had turned her in to the military. The sister became angry when Arini asked her what had
happened.
How dare Parwati come to me and expect me to care of them, she ranted. The day
after Parwati was arrested, she said, she sent the two girls back to Batu Gede and to their
father.
But their father wasn't in Batu Gede. He was a railroad worker in Java, a PKI
unionist who vanished into the blackness. Arini went back to Batu Gede to look for the
girls, but she didn't find them. She never knew what happened to them. Much later, when
Parwati returned to Batu Gede as Men Djawa, she thought Arini had betrayed her, and
betrayed the Batu Gede Gerwani, in order to save herself.
Morning light curled into the café. From beyond the wall came the bleat of traffic.
In telling her story, Arini had shown no emotion. She had strength of character all right,
but had that strength stunted her emotions for pain and grief? Had she stifled them,
simply in order to survive, get through the years?
From behind a ridge of memory, Tina was suddenly ambushed by an image of
Nancy, climbing out of their bedroom window at night, to sneak after her old sister, who
was herself sneaking off to meet a boyfriend…
Tina thrust that image away and said with more harshness than she meant, "If you
were Luhde Srikandi, then who was the woman who was beheaded?"
"There is an English game," Arini said. "Eenie meenie minie mo. Who will be the
one to die? The military was looking for Luhde Srikandi. So Mantera and Dharma and
my own husband Catra decided to find her first."
Mantera summoned Dharma and Catra to the palace for an urgent conference.
Dharma replied that it would be best to meet at night on the empty grounds of the pura
dalem. A misshapen moon rose, but monsoon clouds shrouded the sky, throwing
darkness on the land. Dharma brought an storm lantern, the wick trimmed low. Any one
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seeing a glow would not be curious. They would think a leyak witch was up to her magic,
procuring water from the dark pond for her terrible rites, and would stay well away.
The three men squatted on the ground by the banyan tree, the oil lantern hanging
from a crook of branch, swaying slightly, throwing their shadows. Later Mantera would
tell Arini that it seemed to be those odd, shifting, contorted shadows that had discussed
what needed to be done.
Mantera's shadow bending and twisting as he explained the danger of Catra's
letter. The military will torture you to reveal Luhde Srikandi's identity, Mantera said. He
did not mention Arini by name. What need was there of that? Catra huddled, his shadow
a quiet and confused darkness.
Dharma's shadow swayed angrily as he told his younger brother that he must
abandon Arini, give her up like he would an unfaithful wife.
Catra straightened, and his shadow grew larger and darker and menacing. I will
kill the man who betrays her, he said. This kind and gentle schoolteacher suddenly
showing the blade. A wind sliced through the graveyard and set the lantern's flame to
trembling, and it was as if the shadows of the other two men quivered to the force of his
words.
Catra said to Dharma, You must promise me, elder brother, you must promise on
the Gods and all our deified ancestors that you will protect my wife Arini.
Dharma growled, he tried to slip and slide away and not be grasped, but Catra
inexorably kept after him until he made his solemn vow.
Then this is what we must do, Dharma said, taking charge once more. If Luhde
Srikandi needs to be found, then by the Gods, she will be found and silenced before
anyone can question her.
But who? Mantera asked. How?
On the night of the new moon we will gather up the Gerwani whores, Dharma
said, and I will pluck one from their midst. I know just the woman. I will hold high her
bloody head and say to the world, this is the witch Luhde Srikandi!
180

Chapter 32
1965
Rusty, revealing remarkable skills as a cook, made chicken porridge for Naniek,
who managed to finish a bowl on her own, refusing Reed's fumbling help. "I'm not a
child," she snapped. He did help her to the bathroom, but she only grudgingly allowed a
steady arm around her shoulders. She slept in Reed's bed, and cried out in a nightmare.
With a damp cloth, Reed stroked her forehead and brushed tangled hair away from her
face.
"I've sent a telegram to Bambang," he said when she woke. "Still in Singapore.
The office boss, now."
"He's the kind who will survive anything." Naniek looked hollow and far away.
She said, "I was there at Lubang Buaya. Part of a training exercise. The soldiers made us
assemble in a mock court. They killed the generals. Shot and stabbed them. Three were
already dead, I think. I thought I was in a bad dream."
"You're here now. That's what counts."
She clutched the sheet tighter around her. Her black eyes burned, dry as desert
stone. "In Banyuwangi, an Ansor youth gang almost caught me. The police chief hid me
in his house. He said I had to pay him. I had only one thing to pay him with. Communist
whore? Yes, I am one."
"Naniek—"
She shoved him away and closed her eyes.
That evening, after the afternoon rains had eased, the wet season's first batch of
flying ants swarmed from the earth. They came in endless clouds, swarming around all
light, a brown haze around the front yard's lanterns. From the depths of these insect
clouds emerged a figure, as if they'd molded into a man. It was Ompreng, swaggering
through and brushing the bugs away from his face. He sprawled uninvited on a verandah
chair and told Reed, "That man who lives in the garage is a Communist. Fire him."
"He is working for me. He is under my roof and my protection."
In the bedroom, Naniek coughed.
Ompreng's square head swiveled. "You have a girl in there?"
"Ompreng, it is late. Leave me"
The flying ants haloed Ompreng's head. "Give me one of your hundred dollar
bills, Tuan Reed, and everything will be all right. Nothing will happen here."
Reed took a rupiah note from his wallet, ripped it half, and gave one of the halves
to Ompreng. He held up the other. "If anything happens to anybody here," Reed said, "I
will stuff this down your dead mouth."
The next day, Naniek collapsed with another bout of chills and fever, but not as
severe. The chloroquine was mowing down the parasites. The postman bicycled around
with a telegram from Bambang. He was arriving on Sunday on a Permina plane. He was
coming for Naniek.
Reed's relief left him strangely deflated. He hadn't realized how tense he'd been,
his days filled with worry, his nights with the grinding of teeth that left his jaws aching.
181

When Reed showed Naniek the telegram, she merely stared at it as if she didn't
understand the words. "Bambang's taking you to Singapore," he said. "You'll be safe."
She plucked a stand of hair from her damp neck. "From what?"
She insisted on visiting Parwati and her daughters in Batu Gede. Reed tried to
argue her out of the idea, she was too weak, it was too dangerous to be seen in public. He
finally gave in and bundled her up in a windbreaker and cap and sunglasses despite the
low gray skies.
The Gerwani secretariat and day-care were closed with the signs removed.
Parwati's residence looked abandoned, the windows shuttered. Dead leaves littered the
long porch. A faded outline of a hopscotch cross was still chalked in the carport. Reed
bulled the jeep through long weeds and parked around the back of the house.
Naniek knocked on the rear doctor and called softly. Only silence greeted her. But
she pointed at the sandals by the doorstep and persisted, whispering loudly, "It's me,
Naniek." There was a shuffling of furtive steps and a shadow filled a crack in the wooden
panel. A partial eye gleamed. The stout bolt was thrown back, and the door cracked an
inch, just enough for Reed to recognize Desak, the salt-farmer's wife.
"What are you doing here?" she whispered to Naniek. "It's dangerous."
"Let me in."
She opened the door just wide enough for Naniek and Reed to slip inside and
bolted it shut after them. She was heavily pregnant, and waddled into a rear bedroom,
windows shut, the gloom thick and warm. A hand to her back, she lowered herself to a
bare mattress that smelled of sweat and something else. Fear, perhaps. "I don't dare go to
the front," she whispered. "Some of the shutters are cracked. People can see from the
front road.
"Where is your husband?" Naniek asked.
Desak chuckled bitterly. "He didn't get his rice field. He went back to Klungkung
and is now a loyal PNI nationalist, hoping to save his life. He doesn't want anything to do
with me." She buried her face in her hands and began to weep.
Naniek hugged her. Reed sweated in the dank, cloying heat. He cracked open a
window but Desak startled at the sudden beam of light, her face caught like a cave
creature suddenly exposed. She told him to shut it. "I hide here like a mouse," she said.
"Where's Parwati?" Naniek asked
"Arini took her and her daughters to her sister's in Singaraja." Desak put a hand to
her belly. "Kicking," she said. "Due in two weeks."
"Do you have enough food to eat?" Naniek asked.
"I have old rice grain. Cassava leaves."
"Stay here," Reed told Naniek. "I'll go get something."
The Batu Gede stores were closed. Their fronts were painted with PNI signs,
proclaiming their loyalty to General Soeharto. Reed went around the back of one and
banged on the side door. The merchant finally opened it. He wrung his thin hands and
said he had nothing to sell. Look at the empty shelves, he mourned, just look at them.
"Do you want me to tell the Army that you're hoarding?" Reed said harshly. "Do
you want me to remind them about the Chairman Mao pamphlets you used to display out
front?"
Sweat beaded the merchant's forehead and he tremblingly bought out a sack of
rice grain, a basket of dried fish, five kilos of soy bean. Reed tried to pay with dollars, but
182

the merchant refused. "No, no, no. I give to you. You are an American, please tell the
Army I am a good nationalist. Please."
Reed returned to Parwati's house with the food. Too afraid to use the kitchen,
Desak had put stones on the floor of the other bedroom as a fire hearth. She collected
firewood at night, she said.
It was Saturday. Tomorrow Bambang was arriving for Naniek. Reed told Desak
he'd be by on Tuesday at the latest to take her to Father Louis's clinic. She'd be safer
there, waiting to have her baby.
Desak clasped his hands in both of hers and kissed it.
Naniek watched, her expression hooded, but when they snuck out the back door,
she took Reed's arm and pressed it close to her.
As they drove back up the Batu Gede hill, Naniek brooded at the distant refugee
shacks and the salt-makers' huts. "We had such dreams."
Beyond a narrow iron bridge, in the village of basket weavers, a gang of high
school students in uniform marched one of their own across the square. The boy had his
hands tied behind his back and around his neck was a placard. "Stooge of Luhde
Srikandi." The gang jeered. Several had staves and gave the boy nasty jabs. His white
school shirt was already torn, dotted with blood. He stumbled along, his eyes gray blanks
in a gray face.
Across the road, several policemen sitting in the portico of their station lazily
watched.
Reed braked hard and leaped out of the jeep. He didn't sprint, but marched with
quick strides toward the gang of boys. They held up, giving him startled looks. He
grabbed the tied-up boy and swung him away from his classmates, who were too
astonished to react. "We are civilized humans, not animals," he said, more angry than
he'd ever been in his life, astonishingly, astoundingly angry. "We do not take the law into
our own hands." He spoke loud enough for the police to hear. Turning to them, he rose
his voice. "Isn't that right?"
The cops quickly leapt into officious action. The commandant said he'd take care
of the situation, keep the boy safe, and his junior officers sent the gang of boys home
with scolding rasps of their whistles.
Back behind the steering wheel, Reed's hands trembled. Wordlessly, Naniek
reached out and clasped one, squeezing it before letting go.
"They'll wait and hunt that poor boy down later," she said. "Even Desak, at the
pastor's clinic, will she be safe?"
"I don't know," Reed said.
"In Java, when I was hiding, I saw the youth gangs butcher several women.
Chopped them down. I couldn't—" She stopped, as if she'd abruptly run out of the
strength to speak. She didn't appear particularly distraught, just distant. "I was raped," she
finally said, "but what is that? That is nothing."
"That's a lie you speak," Reed said. "Rape is a terrible thing."
Now tears ran down her cheeks. She angrily wiped them away. "Why should I
cry? We wanted the revolution. Now we pay the price for losing.
"Soon you'll be safe in Singapore," he said. He dared not think beyond that, of the
future that could be theirs.
"And why should I be spared the fate of my sisters?"
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"I had my role to play," Reed said. "I'm theoretically on the winning side here, but
I'm a loser too. If all I can do is get you to Singapore, then that's what I'll do to save my
own soul."
That night, the earth closed up tight and dark. The skies mysteriously cleared, and
from his makeshift bed on the verandah, Reed studied the unmoving stars.
The floorboards quivered lightly. Naniek sat down beside him, her sarong
wrapped around her, long black hair tumbled dark on her shoulders. She smelled of soap
and talcum powder.
"No falling stars," she said.
"Not yet," he said
"Each time when I was with you at Tampaksiring, I told myself, this is how I
want my world to be. I was so confused. Was I betraying the revolution?" She took his
hand. "I want to be with you. For tonight we can be the whole world. We can make the
stars fall."
Bambang's plane was scheduled to arrive at three-thirty. Evening curfew was still
in effect, and anti-aircraft batteries on Java were on high alert for night-time aircraft, so
he would not be leave with Naniek until the following morning.
Before heading to the airport, Reed stopped to see Father Louis, and found him at
the rectory. When Reed asked him if the clinic could take in a pregnant woman
abandoned by her husband, he asked, "Is she PKI?"
"Gerwani."
Father Louis sighed and said that if Jesus could multiply the loaves and fishes,
then certainly the good Lord could multiply the beds and assign more guardian angels.
He added that just because this was a Catholic charity, that didn't mean the army would
leave it alone.
Reed said, "If you have time, Father, I’d like to say confession."
The priest did not erupt with hallelujahs but reacted as if Reed had always been
one of the devout. "I always have time for that."
In the bamboo confessional in the bamboo church, Reed knelt before the screen.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned, he said. He said, I have prepared the way for death
to come to the pure and innocent.
When Reed left the confessional, he did not feel so much lighter of heart but
determined. He would try to make a new life, one with Naniek, if she would have him.
No more secrets, no more subterfuge, no more making a sunny career out of the shadier
side of human nature. He would walk upright in the open and live a life no larger than the
simple joys he would find in the day.
At Tuban airport, Reed watched as a plane broke free of a clotted mass of gray
clouds, a silver speck whose brightness seemed to come direct from the future.
Bambang was like a man who has seized his new and better future. The hand
Reed shook was plump and vigorous and well-manicured, a new gold watch to the wrist.
"You are keeping my sister well and safe?" Bambang said.
"She's lost a lot of weight. Malaria."
184

"Have her here at seven tomorrow morning. My pilot wants to leave as early as he
can."
"You don't want to go see her?"
"I have people to meet and," Bambang said, patting his leather briefcase, "bribes
to pay. You've taken good care of her this far, I'll trust to you to take care of her for
another night."
The clouds rolled down, tendrils of mist sweeping low, and the gloom thickened.
In an instant, the air burst like a balloon, and the windshield wipers barely coped with the
deluge. A flood took out the rickety bridge north of Tophati. With the chocolate water
raging and no way across, Reed backtracked to Denpasar and up toward Bedugul to cut
across a country road to Ubud. Even with rain easing to spatters, it was tortuous going
along the broken road. The blackness of this new moon night was thick enough to swat.
It was well past nine when the Jeeps' tires squished up his muddy lane. Reed
whistled happily. He'd make himself and Naniek a thermos of tea, and boil up a bucket of
water for a hot bath.
When he shut off the headlights, the bungalow shrunk into the blackness, with no
glow of the lanterns that Rusty usually set out. Rain dripped off the roof in steady splats.
Using the flashlight from the glove box, Reed shone its beam left and right. "Rusty?" he
called out. "Naniek?"
The only reply were the deep croaks of bull-frogs.
He raced up the steps to the verandah. A quick scan of the beam showed the
coffee table on its side, pillows ripped off the sofa. In the living room, a couple statues
had toppled, a pane of glass in the cabinet had shattered, and the rugs on the floor were
rumpled. The bedroom door was flung open, the bed sheets in disarray.
Naniek had been grabbed from the bed. There'd been a struggle. Reed forced his
sudden fear down to the bottom of his shoes. Turning off his flashlight, he stood very still
to listen.
In the soaked garden and pond, the choir of bull-frogs rose to full voice, a triple
forte of croak and throat booms. One frog was weak and off-tune, a strange ribbetting of
tolong, tolong, tolong. Somebody calling for help. Reed echo-located the sound to the
well behind the kitchen. Dipping his flashlight over the side, he saw fifteen feet below
the scared uplifted face of Rusty, who was clinging to the rough brick.
Using the bucket and rope, Reed helped Rusty haul himself out into the open.
"They threw me down the well," he panted.
Apart from scratches, Rusty was uninjured. Reed suspected that Rusty hadn't been
tossed but had purposefully skedaddled down the well to hide, but that wasn't the burning
issue at he moment. "Where's Naniek?"
"They took her."
"Who?"
"Ompreng and the nationalist boss from Batu Gede. The farmer with the loud
voice who sounds like one of these frogs."
On the Batu Gede hill, Reed pulled the Jeep over, pausing his hurtling rush.
185

Where would Dharma have taken her?
He cut the headlights. The darkness below was not absolute. Here and there in the
village the faint speck of lantern lights punctuated the blackness. Reed could hear a
cacophony of dogs barking and yapping and yowling. On the road below, headlights
suddenly stabbed the night, and the rumble of a truck drifted up the hill. In the back of
the truck stood several men carrying burning torches, the flames illuminating a dozen
other comrades. The truck stopped on the side of the road, and the men jumped out to an
greater frenzy of barking dogs. The torches' light bounced off the white wash of the
Gerwani secretariat. There rose the cry of men on the hunt, swarming the doors with
crowbars.
"Out you Gerwani whore! Out out!"
Desak. Was she in the house?
Reed snapped on his headlights and sped down the twisty road. Near the bottom,
he overran the beam and hit a pothole that ripped into the front tire. It instantly went flat,
freezing the steering. Reed cursed in frustration but neither cursing nor frustration would
fix a flat. He got out the spare and jack and placed his flashlight on a flat rock. Fifteen
minutes later, his shirt soaked with sweat, he tightened the sparel's last lug.
Fifteen minutes. Enough time for the Gerwani secretariat to be in flames, tongues
of fire licking out the smashed windows and eating up the torn doors and ceiling rafters.
A part of the roof collapsed in a shower of sparks.
The truck was no longer there.
Reed didn't waste any time looking for Desak.
The cockfights at the death temple. Dharma saying that one day they'd offer to
Durga a superior sacrifice. Of human blood.
Reed hurtled the jeep along the oxcart track toward the temple, and braked to a
stop behind the truck, parked off to the side in tall elephant grass. Jumping out, he
sprinted to the temple. The underside of the banyan tree's shaggy canopy caught the glow
of torch fires. At the edge of shadow, Reed halted.
A dozen torches were stuck on bamboo poles, ringing the graveyard, their flames
flickering to a breeze. Two ranks of women knelt nude in the dirt, their hands tied behind
their backs. They faced away from Reed. He didn't immediately see Naniek among them.
Several of the women were weeping and keening, but the others were silent. They were
loosely circled by men in black shirts, machetes and spears in their hands. Back cloth
swathed their heads. Reed recognized three of them as lads from the palace, their faces
avid with a shiny heat hotter than the torch fire. Their prince Mantera was with them,
unarmed, looking ill and uneasy. Reed dismissed him with the glance, his attention now
on Dharma. The farmer stood with spread legs facing the women, his broad thick feet
rooted deep as if he'd sprung up from the earth. His face held no heated glee but an
implacable will as he pointed a straight-bladed keris.
"One of you is Luhde Srikandi," he said in low hard voice. "You have made you
foul nest in our village. Confess. Tell us and the lives of your comrades will be spared.
Who of you is Luhde Srikandi?"
Near the center of the row, one of the women rose gracefully to her feet. "I am."
Naniek, her arms tied pinned behind her back, uncaring of her nakedness.
186

"No!" Reed shouted, resuming his sprint. There was a moment's confusion as the
men turned to him. Then the palace lads sprang on him, two grabbing his hands and the
third putting the tip of a spear to his throat.
"Ah, Tuan Davis," Dharma said. "Don't worry. We will let you go unharmed so
you can tell your bosses that we have found Luhde Srikandi."
Naniek watching him silently, uncaring of her nudity.
Reed struggled against the hands that held him.
"She is not Luhde Srikandi," he said. "None of these women are."
"You have heard her confess," Dharma said.
"Yes," Naniek said. "I am Luhde Srikandi. Let the others go."
Summoning all his strength, Reed almost broke free, but the youth with the spear
jabbed his throat, the tip forcing his head back.
Dharma shoved Naniek to her knees. Grabbing her hair, he yanked back her head
and put his keris to her throat. He didn't look at her, but at Reed, light playing across his
handsome face but not touching his black, black eyes.
Reed held his stare. "I know who Ludhe Srikandi is," he said. "I will make your
house fall down around your head."
Dharma held still for a second and then chuckled. He lifted his keris away from
Naniek's throat. "Let Tuan Davis go," he told the boys. They released him and stepped
away.
Dharma said, "If you do not want your lover to be Luhde Srikandi, then who
should it be? You tell me, Tuan Davis. You point one out. We will let her be Luhde
Srikandi. "Pick one, Tuan Davis." Dharma pointed his keris at the row of kneeling
women. "If you want your lover back, pick one of these to be Luhde Srikandi in her
stead."
Desak moaned and cupped her swollen belly. Several of the others lifted their
heads to look at him with fractured, pleading eyes. He knew them, Gerwani women. He'd
taken their photographs and put their names on his list.
Reed wanted a wind to howl and blow out the flames. He didn't want to see their
eyes. He wanted the world to stop spinning and let him out of this madness.
Naniek straightened her back. "Don't, Reed." Two words, one his name, calm and
measured.
Dharma shoved her back down with his foot, exposing her neck. Reed tightened,
ready to spring at him, but the unwavering point of Dharma's keris stopped him. Dharma
crooked a finger, and one of his men came over. He held a machete, and lifted the blade
over Naniek's neck.
"Pick one, Tuan Davis, or your lover will die."
Reed's bones trembled. He knew that this fine Balinese, this salt-of-the-earth
farmer, was not playing games.
"Reed, no," Naniek said. Her voice was strong and clear. "It is all right. I am
ready. I am not afraid."
Forgive me Naniek but that I can't do and these women are doomed anyways they
will all be killed the bloodlust is ready to burst and all I can do is save you
He closed his eyes. The ground under his feet wobbled. His arm was so heavy, so
heavy, but he lifted its impossible weight. He pointed a trembling finger.
187

One of the women screamed. He forced his eyes to open. He had to see this, to
bear witness to his own cowardice and treachery.
Two men dragged the woman forward. She collapsed in a faint, her knees digging
furrows in the rain-softened dirt.
Dharma shook his head. "No, she won't do. She is the one," he said, his keris held
steady on Desak.
Desak made no sound. She bent her head, as if to kiss her unborn child.
In one swift motion, Naniek lunged from her kneeling position to head-butt
Dharma. He casually backhanded her arm away and dragged her to Reed. "Take your
lover," he said.
Even with her hands tied, she fought Reed like a tigress. He finally threw a short
sharp jab to the side of her jaw to daze her and propelled her forward.
Mantera approached him.
"Take her to my palace," he said, but Dharma called out, "Where are you going,
my lord? Come back here, for you have work to do tonight."
Holding on tight to Naniek, Reed stumbled away from the death temple. He did
not look back. He thrust Naniek into the jeep. As he drove off, his rear view caught a
brightening glow, as if the flames surrounding the graveyard were rising brighter, Durga
bending to a blood sacrifice upon her graveyard.
188

Chapter 33
"They found their Luhde Srikandi," Arini said to Tina. "I had no idea what my
husband and Dharma and Mantera had planned. I wasn't even in Batu Gede on that night
of the new moon. Catra insisted that we go on a pilgrimage to the Temple of the Crater
Lake."
Arini paused and rubbed her forehead.
Tina broke free from her horrified enthrallment. "For god's sake, Arini, we're in a
hospital. Let me get something for your headache."
Arini lowered her hand. "This pain is easy to live with," she said. She caught her
thoughts and said, "This pilgrimage—I was perplexed, because Catra never had feudal
sensibilities, and I certainly did not. I didn't know it was his excuse to get me away from
Batu Gede that night. I didn't protest. I had my own worries. I was pregnant. I didn't
know what to do. Why not a pilgrimage as a way to collect my thoughts? "
"It wasn't Catra's child," Tina said gently.
"He was a careful family planner. He took the responsibility upon himself. An
enlightened man. No, the child was not Catra's. I later I found out about that night. Mak
told me some of it, how the Gerwani women had been rounded up. She told me Reed
Davis had burst into our compound looking for me. He had Naniek with him, bound and
naked. Mak helped her get dressed—Naniek was heavily traumatized, unresponsive.
Reed took her to the airport where her brother was waiting. As for the others, I made
Mantera tell me."
A truck rumbles through the coconut grove to the beach, swaying heavily on the
rutted tracks. In the back bed of the truck huddle the naked women. Black shirted men
ride the cab's sideboards and perch jauntily on the tailgate, smoking cigarettes. In the cab,
Dharma and Mantera sit side by side, next to the driver.
The truck backs up to a swale behind a high berm of beach. In the dawn light,
low clouds scud on a strong westerly breeze that ruffles the lagoon. The Black Shirts
lower the tailgate and prod the women into the swale. They are gray and silent with fear,
but then Desak says to Dharma, "The Dutch were never so cruel."
The Black Shirts force the women to kneel. Some of the lads complain that this is
a waste, that they should be able to drag the women into the palms and enjoy them for a
spell in the age-old manner of triumphant victors, but Mantera finally finds voice and
with a orders them to be silent.
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He says in a quieter voice to the women, "We will give you a chance to nyumpat,
to repent. You will be given cremations."
"Enough," Dharma says and without warning plucks an ironwood stave from one
of his men and delivers a vicious blow to the back of Desak's head. She crumples on her
face and does not move.
"I beg you, nyumpat," Mantera pleads with the other women.
A skinny woman spits at him, "Kill me like you've killed her, and may karma
judge your soul."
This time Dharma presses the ironwood into Mantera's hand. "Kill her, my lord,"
he says. "Prove to us that you deserve to be our prince, that your palace is loyal."
Mantera glances up at the sky and out to sea, the stave loose in his hand. He takes
a deep breath, tightens his grip, and swings as hard as he can. The woman crumples and
moan once and then is still.
Dharma takes a machete and with several hacks chops off Desak's head. He holds
up the gruesome object by its bloody hair and cries, "Behold Ludhe Srikandi!"
A blood vessel pulsed in Arini's forehead, the bone under the thin skin looking as
fragile as eggshell. Her face and eyes were taut.
"So Mantera did kill them," Tina said.
Arini cut her eyes to Tina without moving her head. "He wants to marry me."
Tina thought that nothing more would astound her, but this took her breath away.
She couldn't speak.
"He doesn't care what his family think or anyone thinks. He says he should
married me fifty years ago." Her lips stretched in a smile. "Marrying at our age!"
Tina found her voice. "Arini! You're not thinking of it, are you?"
"His family have always hated me. His oldest son, especially. That little glossy
frog of a boy, the one who always bullied Nol. He thinks I'm after revenge and the family
money."
"Mantera is a murderer, Arini. That cane he carries... my God!"
"I make no excuses for what he did. He makes no excuses for himself. He carries
that cane to remind him. He made a vow. He will be judged by karma. He has accepted
that."
"What about justice?"
Arini's jaws flexed. "Such a primitive justice you have. An eye for an eye.. You
see the hand cut off and the adulterer stoned and you walk away feeling self-righteous
and good about yourself."
"That's not—"
"I have lived a revolution, Tina. Mantera is good and decent man. I won't marry
him, not because of what he did, but because of all the trouble it will cause." The shell of
her headache cracked and pain seared across her face. "I didn't save them. I couldn't even
save Parwati's daughters. And Catra, my silly stupid husband, nobody could save him."
"Mantera betrayed him," Tina said. "Mantera told the Red Berets about his letter."
"Is that what Dharma said?"
"Dharma was very certain."
190

"He would blame Mantera, wouldn't he? But it wasn't Mantera who betrayed my
husband."
"Then who?"
Arini squeezed her temples again, her eyes fracturing. "Catra turned himself in.
Oh, that fool husband of mine."
In the classroom, the children buzzed excitedly
Luhde Srikandi had been found and killed! She'd been living right here in Batu
Gede! Her head paraded on the streets! I saw it! I saw it too! Huge eyes and red fangs!
The children shivered at the delicious thought of how close they'd come to being
gobbled up.
Their teacher Catra, though, seemed distracted. He gave them problems to do in
class and then forgot about them as he stared out the window. He paced the room and
stopped by the two desks where Endang and Sri had sat, frowning at their empty seats.
But they were the fortunate ones, having escaped to Singaradja. He looked at the other
children one by one, and as he looked at this boy, or that girl, an immense sadness
weighed down his kind eyes to the bottom of the sea.
Their lives would be destroyed.
First blood had been spilled. And for that he was just as guilty as his brother.
His wife Arini knew this too. When she found out about the beheading and the
Gerwani killings, she'd gone from a rampaging hysteria to a cold and contained fury that
was even more frightening.
The previous day the RPKAD commandos had arrived from Java, flush from their
triumph there. A company of the Red Berets had take over the local military base near
Batu Gede. Catra knew that they had special targets to hunt down, as they had in Java.
One of them would be Luhde Srikandi, the Special Bureau agent. They wouldn't be
content with some villagers killing a woman and declaring her to be the traitor.
If they didn't yet have his letter to the Harian Rakyat, they would soon find out.
They would double-check with him. He was a courageous man, but he would not be able
to stand up to their torture. They would kill him and take Arini and Mak and little Wayan.
Who knew what would happen to them.
It was better that he orchestrate this. There had to be a certain sequence of cause
and effect, a believable act, no suspicions. Early the following morning, he penned an
anonymous letter to the Red Beret captain at the base, telling him that Madé Catra, the
Batu Gede schoolteacher, was a closet Communist who knew the identity of this Luhde
Srikandi was. This anonymous letter writer said that Catra was slippery as a snake but
would be home, at such and such a house, on the evening of December 9.
Catra mailed the letter from the post office, which along with the public schools
was about the only civil institution was still carrying out their duties.
On December 9 th , Black Shirts raided the huts of the salt-makers and slaughtered
them and threw their bodies into the skirted roots of the mangrove trees. Dharma was
leading them, Catra knew, bloodying the family keris, which these days he always carried
with him.
191

At his house that evening, Catra played games with little Wayan and sang her
songs. When Arini put her to bed, he remained out on the porch and listened. Soon
enough he heard an army truck. Then came the sound of marching boots.
He went into the bedroom and spoke to his wife, who at first turned away,
refusing to listen. "I know you never loved me," he said, "but I have always loved you,
and so for this last time you will please listen to me."
Surprised by his brutal honesty worked, even looking shaken for once, she
listened to him.
"Those are Red Beret commandos at our gate," he said. "They are going to take
me away. Two things. Tell Dharma that he needs to find me at their camp tomorrow
morning. Promise me this."
He'd never spoken so firmly to her. His eyes had never been so fierce and hard.
She promised.
"Second, I give you this charge, that you will not do anything foolish and that you
will take care of our daughter. I love you and you will do this for me."
The soldiers kicked down the door, waking the sleeping girl, who began to cry.
Arini picked her up and hugged her tight.
The captain ignored her and said to Catra, "Are you Madé Catra, the grade school
teacher?"
"I am," Catra said.
The men seized him and dragged him with them. Mak scuttled out of her hut. She
screeched and spat her betelnut juice at the soldiers. With the butt of his rifle, one
knocked her down.
Arini followed. She did not argue or beg with the soldiers, but cried out instead to
her husband, "Oh, Catra, what have you done? Catra, Catra what have you done?"
At the Red Beret's camp, Catra was shoved into a barrack stuffed with a fifty
other men, all PKI and Peasants League activists seized that evening. At dawn, the
commandos called out a dozen names, herded them to the yard, tied their thumbs together
behind their backs, and led them to a waiting truck. They climbed the ramp like cattle.
They did not resist.
Soon there came from the direction of the estuary the cracks of a dozen rifle shots,
one after the other.
A soldier respectfully ushered another man into the barracks, a Church of Bali
pastor in his black robes. The pastor opened his Bible and preached to the men, saying if
they repented and accepted Christ, they would this day be in heaven with God.
The doomed men jeered the pastor. "To hell with your gods! We'll die like men,
not cowards!"
One of the PKI leaders pointed at the rifle the commando held at the ready. "That
is our god. Today we lost, but one day history will show we have won. There will be no
more of you and your kind," he said to the pastor
The captain's aide appeared and called out, "Madé Catra."
Catra was marched away to a holding cell. In the nearby interrogation room, he
could hear the moaning of a man, who pleaded no more please no more I'll tell you
everything
192

Then he heard his brother Dharma, bellowing like a man run amok. "It's a
mistake. My brother is no Communist. I demand to see him. See the blood on this keris?
This is the blood of a hundred Communists! I have the right to see him!"
A commando opened the cell door. Dharma's black trousers and shirt were
rumpled and dirty, his black bandana damp with sweat, his eyes streaked with red. He
looked as if he was in Rangda's killing trance.
"You have fifteen minutes," the commando told Dharma. "This one," he said,
pointing his rifle at Catra, "will be getting special treatment at our headquarters."
Catra clasped his older brother's shoulders and kissed him on the cheeks,
ignoring the stink of sweat and the iron scent of blood.
"Don't worry, younger brother, you'll be leaving with me," Dharma said, his voice
still hoarse
Catra said, "You have made your holy vow to protect Arini and keep her safe. I
want you to repeat it."
"Don't be ridiculous—"
"I insist, older brother. Promise me on pain of hell and torment that you will
protect her."
"I've promised and I promise now. Now let's get you out of here so you can take
care of her yourself."
"Listen to me. They are going to interrogate me. They will found out from my lips
who Luhde Srikadi is." Quickly, quietly, efficiently, for he was a schoolmaster
accustomed to the teaching the lesson, he explained that somebody had written the
captain an anonymous note about his letter to the Harian Rakyat.
Dharma cursed. "Mantera," he hissed.
"I don't think so, brother."
"It had to have been him!"
Catra impatiently shook his head. "That doesn't matter. Now listen. You must kill
me. Here. Now."
"What? You are mad."
"They will torture me and they will break me, and your own good name will be
dragged into the affair. Believe me, this will happen, no matter how many Communists
you have killed."
Catra could see that strike home. There a slow closing of Dharma's reddened eyes
as his mind absorbed the meaning. When opened his eyes again, they were redder yet.
His breath came harsher and shallower, almost a guttural sound.
"Listen to me, older brother," Catra said. "Listen to me, the spirit of our ancestor
is here. Our revered ancestor who used this very keris to keep his honor rather than
submit to the white invaders, he is here. Do you not sense him, older brother, do you nbot
sense his presence with us?"
Dharma's eyes quivered as if the force of the spirit was taking residence within
him.
"With the help of our honored ancestor, whose spirit you feel, this is what you
must do, you must take that keris, yes, take it like that, wrap your hand around it, let me
press your fingers to the handle and here, you must stab here between my ribs and into
my heart and you must cry out you filthy Communist, die! Yes right there, I won't let go,
you must, no don't hesitate or draw back, this is for your future and the future or your
193

children and strike true and deep, older brother, remember to shout you filthy Commun –
aaaaaaaahhhhhhh….."
"Dharma never told me this directly," Arini said to Tina, "but he brought me and
my daughter into his compound, and I heard at night his nightmares and his groans. I
sought out the Red Beret captain, who was willing to tell me, a good staunch nationalist,
the military version of what happened. There'd been an investigation as to how Catra was
killed before he was interrogated. Dharma got quite a scolding but to the military there
was no denying he'd lost his head and killed his brother for being a Communist. To the
Javanese, Balinese are famously hotheaded, so there was no suspicion of anything else at
play."
The terror and devastation of those far away events had sifted on Tina like ash,
and lured from its hiding place the grief she'd felt for Nancy.
But her mind was still working, and even though the puzzle had fallen together
for her, it hadn't done so neatly, for there was still some confusing parts to it. "Dharma
didn't blame you for Catra's death? I mean, wouldn't he blame you? He would kill his
own innocent brother and leave you alone?"
Arini smiled tightly. "He blamed Mantera. As for me, he made his holy vow to his
beloved brother to keep me safe. And for another, I was only a woman, not worth a man's
plans for blood vengeance. I was just something to be used."
The meaning of this began to rise over Tina's mental horizon, but it wasn't entirely
clear at first. She said, "I thought Mantera…I thought Nol was Mantera's son."
"Mantera was a gentleman, faithful to his wife. He was always proper, even when
we were alone together."
"So…" Tina said, the meaning clear but so enormous that she couldn't
immediately take it in.
"I didn't know about the meeting in the pura dalem. The next day Dharma came to
see me at the hotel where I was working. He needed to talk to me in private, he said. A
hotel room would do. He locked the door. He said he knew who I was. A secret
Communist. He was full of cold fury and contempt. He raped me. When it was over, I
told him if he touched me again, I would kill him."
"Dear God," Tina murmured.
"After Catra was murdered, Dharma moved me into his compound. I had little
choice. Newly widowed, with a young daughter to keep safe, taming gangs roaming
freely. He was a well-known nationalist and taming leader himself. Nobody would dare
poke a nose into his house. I thought he would try to rape me again, and hid a knife on
me at all times, but he left me alone. He knew I was pregnant as soon as I did. I never
told him that the child was his, but he knew. He's never admitted it, but he's always
known that Nol is his son."
194

Chapter 34
Nol stood with Dharma at the gate to Dharma's home, greeting guests who were
arriving for the tooth-filing. The palm leaf decorations, woven by one of the island's
premier artisans, fluttered and swayed in the gentle breeze. More adorned the pavilions
and garden within the compound. The offerings too had been custom ordered, no
expenses bared. From within came the energetic music of a gamelan orchestra, not just
any troupe but the famous all-women's ensemble that had recently toured Europe. This
was a celebration and ceremony of the highest class, far superior to the tooth-filing that
the palace had put on, and the guests who arrived wore their best finery.
Behind him Nol heard one guest whisper to another in wonder, "Why, who does
he think he is, the King of Ubud?"
The other guest replied, "Who cares? I hear there will be turtle lawar."
As of it yet, none of the gathered villagers were gossiping behind their palms
about the attack on Putu. That was not yet news.
There occurred within Nol a most curious division, calmness separating from the
turmoil, and rising like vapor from raging seas to ease his mind. This calming vapor
smelled a little bit like the wintergreen balm Dharma had daubed around his neck to keep
out the wind.
With a courteous namaste, Nol greeted Mbak Lena, the personnel manager who'd
fired him from his golf course job. It was good to see her again, and when she said she'd
gotten a new job at a five star hotel, Nol read easily between the lines, that she refused to
work for somebody like Gede Raka.
But even when she said, "Bapak Raka promoted me to the hotel. He's part owner,"
that didn't matter. She would soon realize, soon understand.
A black Mercedes hummed along the road, haughtily forcing oncoming traffic to
the side. Gong's fat face filled the windscreen. The car came to a graceful stop precisely
in front of the gate, and Gong oozed out to open the rear door. Mantera's cane emerged,
and when its tip was securely on the road surface, his thin legs swung out, the gold thread
of his fancy sarong sparkling in the sun.
He was the only one in the car. As Gong got back behind the wheel to park the
car, his gaze caught Nol, and he half-smiled. "Save some food for me, brother," he called
out.
195

Mantera shuffled forward. Was it Nol's imagination, or did had the prince aged
overnight? As well he should.
Dharma murmured to Nol, "The keris rattled, warning me of the man who
betrayed your father." Then a warm smile closed over his face like water over a hole. He
greeted Mantera not like his prince but like an old and beloved friend.
"I apologize that Gdé Raka could not make it," Mantera said. "There is a tempest
in the household with his daughter Wulandri," he added, as if sharing this family affair
excused the insult of Raka's absence.
Little wonder Wulandri would be upset, Nol thought, seeing her boyfriend beat to
an inch of his life. But no matter. With only Mantera attending from the palace, Nol's
mint-scented calmness could focus with exceptional clarity of thought. This was the man
who had fathered him, but Mantera was not his Bapa. He was a wicked man, who had
sent a good man to his death.
Dharma guided Mantera to his place of honor, a row of velvet armchairs by the
guest pavilion, where the priest was ready for the celebrants. The gamelan beat out a
crescendo as the prince took his seat. Nol slipped into the chair beside Mantera, and the
music died away to silence.
"How is your bird, my lord?"
"The one you taught to sing? It's going to be a champion."
"My son Putu Swastika couldn't make it," Nol said. "A medical emergency last
night."
"Oh, dear. I am sorry to hear that. Is he okay?"
"He was attacked by thugs last night."
"Oh my," the prince said. "Have you informed the police?"
"A matter to be taken care of privately," Nol said. "An old feud with somebody.
Why involve the police?"
Mantera sighed and lightly tapped his cane to the ground. "We Balinese really
should get over our petty clan and village feuds. It is so backwards."
Nol pictured Mantera writing the anonymous letter, filling a plain sheet with his
handwriting, the words furtive and sly. This was the man who had fathered him with rape
and violence, and the man who had betrayed his real Bapa.
As the gamelan played a light tinkling tune, the celebrants filed out through the
courtyard, glittering in their finery, looking like dolls in their make-up. Putu's cousin led
the way, Ki Poleng the family keris tucked into the back of his ceremonial dress. It
should have been Putu, but Putu was in the hospital, his teeth shattered to their roots.
Before the cousin stretched out on his back on the prepared mat, Dharma removed the
sheathed keris from the boy's finery. As he handed the sacred weapon to Nol, his gaze
held Nol's for a long and lingering moment.
The handle of the keris felt warm to Nol's palm, as if it pulsed with life. He pulled
the handle, the blade slipped free, and the calm poured to his mind, and held his soul pure
and steady.
"Can't you go any faster?" Tina pleaded with the taxi driver.
He glanced at her in the rear view. "It's the traffic," he said, "and this isn't a
movie, you know. I drive this on a commission, I have to pay for my fuel and any
scratches…"
196

He went on, delivering a litany of woes. Tina tuned him out, tapping her knee in
frustration. How stupid and naïve she'd been. As soon as Arini had told her the truth
about Nol's real father, she'd sat there stunned for a second before bolting. She had to get
to the tooth filing ceremony in time to stop Nol from doing anything crazy. She had the
awful sense that something horrible and bloody was going to happen.
Parked cars and motorbikes of invited guests clogged the narrow lane to Dharma's
compound. The taxi inched along. Tina told the driver she'd get out here, thrust a rupiah
note that was double the fare into his hand, and bolted out the car.
Ignoring the barking dogs and the young louts who called out to her, Tina twisted
and pushed through a group of tourists who were late to the Balinese ceremony they had
paid a tout good money to see. Drops of sweat stung her eyes. One of the thin rubber
bathroom sandals she was wearing broke its thong, hobbling her for a step before she
discarded them both. Barefoot and panting and sweating, she charged through Dharma's
compound. His junior wife, greeting the late arriving guests, reared back in alarm.
The crowd packed the compound, many seated, many standing, blocking her
view. Gamelan music drifted through conversation and laugher, for a tooth filing was
celebrated with merriment.
This one might be celebrated with murder.
She jumped up on a flower planter. Craning her head, she spotted Nol, in the
velvet seats of honor by the garden pavilion. He sat rigid beside Mantera. There was in
his left hand a scabbard and his right the straight-bladed keris she'd last seen at Temple
Ped. Nol's face was gray and even as she watched his eyelids began to tremble, the first
sign of a deadly trance, of a Balinese about to go amok.
Such tranquility. Nol had never experienced anything like it. He was above and
beyond himself, almost as if he were having an earthly taste of nirvana. In his hand the
keris lifted itself into his view. He would avenge his family on the man who had
cuckolded his Bapa and then betrayed him to his death—
—his Bapa, who charmed birds out of trees
—his Bapa, who risked his own life to save an innocent man from a murdering
mob, who said if you want to kill an innocent man who can't read or write then you must
first start by killing me,
—his Bapa who was saying to him you will not be avenging me but killing me a
second time
—and Nol's hand trembled
"Nol!" Tina shouted. "No! Don't! She jumped off the cement planter and barreled
her way through the crowd, knocking two gentleman off their plastic chairs. Guests
shouted, and children screamed, frightened by a sweaty, barefoot, carrot-haired, freckled
woman with wild eyes. Had a demon materialized to disrupt the occasion, plowing
through them to the pavilion where the priest was doing his holy work?
him
—the blade shivering in Nol's grasp, shattering his peace, pain searing through
197

—and then he knew how best to avenge his father, by shoving the keris back in its
scabbard
—ah the cracking hurt of it
—sweat pouring off his forehead and stinging his eyes
Lifting the hem of his sarong, he wiped his eyes. When they'd cleared, the first
thing he saw was Tina charging down on him, like some crazy woman about to go amok.
He leaned back in his chair in alarm.
She halted, stared at the sheathed keris in his hand. Memé ratu, she wasn't going
to try to grab it from him and start stabbing innocent people with it, was she? He tucked it
carefully in the back waist his sarong, out of her reach.
She was wearing the same dress she'd worn at the hospital. A fresh panic seized
him, and he jumped to his feet. "Putu," he said, his lungs and heart getting stuck on the
word.
"What? Oh. No, he's fine."
The relief made him limp. "Then what's wrong?"
She took a deep breath and with puffed cheeks blew a big sigh. Stepping close,
she spoke quietly into his ear, "When you get a chance, you should have a nice long talk
with your mother."
198

Chapter 35
The front runners of the Hash pack loped over the rocky ridge and sprinted toward
the dive resort's parking lot. Tina and Reed hadn't even bothered to amble after them, and
sat in a gazebo overlooking the sea, where several dozen European and Japanese divers
explored a sunken wreck, bubbles ghosting to the calm blue surface. In an open-air
pavilion of glossy teak and tile by the beach, a yoga instructor was coaxing non-diving
guests into contortions.
For the last hour, Tina had been entranced and horrified and saddened by Reed's
story.
"I got Naniek to the airport and Bambang whisked her away," Reed said. "On the
ride to the airport she didn't say a word. She was lost in a world of hurt. I couldn't reach
her. Before she boarded the plane, she finally looked at me, finally saw me, but it was
with this terrible, searing, despairing hate. She said, I will never forgive you. That was
the last thing she said to me."
The Hash runners hoisted their beer mugs and with red sweaty faces chanted their
drinking cry of "down-down".
"In 1975, quite by chance I ran into Bambang in a Hong Kong bar," Reed said.
"About the first thing he said was, did you hear about Naniek? I didn't want to know
about Naniek. My very first thought was that she committed suicide. Not because she
was weak, but because she was inflexible. She would break rather than bend. But he
said she'd married a Frenchman and moved to Canada. Quebec. Happy there with her
family. That's the last I knew of her, and I didn't even want to know that."
"Did you ever marry?"
"Twice. Both times to pry myself away from Bali. But I ended up divorced and
back in my bungalow. I never sold the place. My personal purgatory." He looked at her,
his sunglasses reflecting the Hash runners at the keg. "Are you going to write all this up,
put the dry academic jargon to it?"
"There are rumors," Tina said, "that you continued to buy hair from Dharma and
other nationalists. Communist hair. Hair from female victims."
"Sure I did," Reed said. "I saved up a big box of hair and on the Fourth of July
party at the American club I dumped it all over the lawn and into the pool. I told the
Ambassador and Auntie and all the diplomats and all the kiddies that this hair was from
murdered women, that in Bali at least we had time to step in and stop the madness. They
weren't real happy."
Tina imagined the scene. "God, I wish I'd been there." She stretched her legs.
"Why don't you tell people this instead of letting them gossip?"
"I'm not in the business of explaining myself." Reed rubbed a hand along his
cheeks, his thumbs digging white furrows into the skin. "On Christmas Day, 1965, I went
to Batu Gede for the last time…"
199

The dregs of the monsoon rain decanted as a thick brown stream into the Batu
Gede mangrove swamps. In the washed out sky, a thin scrim of clouds layered the sun.
The ramshackle village of salt-makers' huts had been destroyed, with only a few
yellowed bones of bamboo visible. The mangrove plants' umbrella roots hid other kinds
of bones and their decomposing flesh. Driving past, Reed caught that sickly sweet stink.
The house where Naniek had boarded with Parwati and her daughters, and where
Desak had hid like a mouse, was a ruined hulk, the roof collapsed in a jumble of charred
timber and broken tiles. Reed didn't know what he was doing here. What was the purpose
of this pilgrimage? What good would it do? Should he get on his knees and like a good
penitent crawl through the high weeds and broken glass until his flesh was torn and
bloody?
He picked his way through the debris to of the wing where the family had lived.
The damp stink of fire and ash rose up around him. Shoving a collapsed rafter out of the
way, he entered Naniek's room, where Desak had also slept. There was nothing there but
a blackened mattress under a roofless square of sky.
The walls still stood, smeared with soot. The crooked window was curiously
intact, glass panes shut tight against the frame. Reed's shoes crunched on smashed tile as
he crossed to the floor to look out the window. High weeds choked the perimeter of wall,
creeping toward the center's patch of bare dirt.
On which was drawn a hopscotch cross, the lines scratched fresh after the rains.
In a couple places around the squares were the impression of small bare feet.
Reed's gaze lifted to the shed where he'd spent the night those many months ago, sagging
and tilting but still intact. The rusty tin door was agape by a few inches, and in the
shadows behind it he sensed eyes watching him.
Reed picked his way out to the back yard. He whistled Old McDonald as he stood
by the hopscotch cross. "Ee-eye, ee-eye, oooooh," he sang. "So, who wants to play a
game of hopscotch? Aiyo, aiyo, come out and play."
The tin door creaked open and an eye appeared along, with a sliver of face.
"There you are," Reed said. "Who won the last game?"
Sri slipped through the gap, a smudged wraith of a girl in a dirty dress, her hair
tangled, her cheeks gaunt, and her eyes wary but hopeful. "I was playing by myself," she
said.
"Where's your sister?"
Sri nodded at the shed. "She doesn't play anymore. She's scared."
"Where's your mother?"
"The soldiers took her. My aunt sent us here. We're waiting for Bapa. Aunt said
he'd come."
Oh dear sweet Jesus son of Mary.
Reed took Sri's hand, and she led him into the shed. Endang lay curled on her side
on the floor, her bed a piece of torn matting. She was awake, looking at Reed with huge
unblinking eyes. She didn't move A safety pin held the torn front of her dress together, a
dirty towel was wrapped around her waist.
Kneeling, Reed felt her forehead and took her pulse. She didn't resist. Her
temperature felt normal, and her heartbeat was strong. "Do you hurt?" he asked.
She didn't reply.
Sri said, "She cries at night."
200

In the back of a shed, a tin pot stood on a stones, under which were ashy remains
of firewood. In the pot was leftover a boiled cassava root and a few limp leaves. "Who's
doing the cooking?"
"Me," Sri said.
From beyond the back wall, there rose voices, the loudest complaining in
Balinese, "Somebody's hiding there. They've been raiding my garden."
Sri scooted over to Reed and pressed herself against him. Endang squeezed her
eyes shut and hugged herself. She whimpered. Bending over, Reed took her hand and
said, "It's all right. You're with me. I'll keep you safe. But we have to go." He tugged her
to her feet and, with an arm around each small shoulder, shepherded the girls out of the
shed to the jeep.
"Father Louis took them in but they still weren't safe," Reed told Tina, as the
drunken Hashers broke into a lewd song. "The new civil authorities in Denpasar,
Soeharto's New Order, investigated orphanages and children's homes, to ferret out the
kids with Communist origins. Father Louis smuggled the girls to Singapore. They were
adopted by a Dutch-Indonesian couple. I saw them a couple times before the family
returned to Holland. Sri was prattling Dutch, and and Endang, well, she was getting a lot
of loving and starting to come out of her shell. The couple were good people—what?"
Tina's face was shining, her eyes dancing. "My God, Reed, don't you know about
their mother?"
"Parwati? Dead in concentration camp, I'd guess. And their father didn't have a
hope in hell."
"No no no! She showed up in Batu Gede a few years ago, calling herself as Men
Djawa. She sold cakes in the market and went around asking if anybody had seen her
daughters. When they found the bones, she flipped out. She's now at a private mental
clinic in Gianyar."
Reed rubbed his jaw. "They're probably middle-aged Dutch dowagers clopping
along in those wooden shoes."
"God, Reed. She's still their mother."
"Are you sure it's her?"
"Who else could it be?" Tina suddenly leaned forward. "That photo in your house.
Those two girls playing hopscotch."
"Sri and Endang."
"Take that to her and show her. Tell her."
"I guess," Reed, but he was still doubtful.
"She needs to know, Reed. There is peace in just knowing."
"I don't think it's going to be as simple all that. There's no magic wand to wave
that will make everything all right."
Tina frowned, the wrinkles of her brow pressing her eyes together, the irises
darkening. "I wish somebody could show me a photograph of my sister, tell me where
she is, tell me she's safe." Her frown deepened, and she squeezed her lips tighter. She
inhaled harshly through her nose and then blurted, "There's something I haven't told
anybody. Not ever. Not my parents, not the police, not my succession of shrinks."
Reed leaned back in alarm. "You don't have to tell me," he said quickly.
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"Just shut up and listen, would you."
"Sorry."
"We were living in this development near Bakersfield, and behind our house was
a kind of wasteland, the sort of place where you'd hide a body. My sister Nancy was
scared of the place, just about the only thing she was scared of. Anyway," Tina said, "I
was fifteen and had my first boyfriend. My parents had us on strict curfew, in bed by ten
for me, but one night I snuck out to meet him at a strip mall down the avenue. We didn't
have a big house, and so Nancy and I had to share a bedroom. I thought she was asleep.
But she climbed out the window and followed me and busted me before I got to the mall.
God, the fight we had. She could be such a puritan, you know. She threatened to tell on
me if I didn't go home. So I said fine, we'd go home together and I grabbed her arm and
hauled her off. I said we'd take the shortcut through the scrub brush, to scare her. I was so
angry at her."
Tina fell silent, her fingers plucking at the cushion on her lap.
"I'm listening," Reed said.
"I left her there. God, I was furious. I knew she was scared of the woods, so I
pushed her down onto this rock and told her she had to wait there for half an hour while I
went home and snuck back into bed. She begged me not to leave her, but I said she had to
stay. This was her punishment for following me. She sat down on that rock. She was
frightened, but she was also proud. She was angry right back at me. I was the one who
was breaking our parents' rule, she said. That was Nancy. Maybe if she'd kept begging
me, if she cried, if she looked, you know, just a little bit forlorn, like a little sister should,
I would have relented and walk her back to the house. But she shot daggers at me. She
said she'd stay there all night. She was always so stubborn and self righteous and
maddening—"
Tina's voice caught again. Tears pooled in the corners of her eyes, but she angrily
flicked them away. "Where are these coming from? I've used up all my tears. All that's
left is cracked bottom. Mirrors. Shards."
"I never did cry," Reed said. "How I was raised. Emotional drydock."
"I snuck back into my bedroom. I waited an hour. Then I went back out to look
for her. She wasn't at the rock. I thought she was hiding, to make me even more angry. So
I said, I almost shouted, all right, stay here all night if you want, I'm going to bed.
Whoever took her probably heard me. And later that's all I could think about, that he
heard me yelling angry at her, yelling fine stay here all night, I'm going to bed. And the
next morning, when she never returned, my parents went frantic. They called the cops. It
turned into one of those abducted girl TV things. I lied through my teeth. I told the I'd
heard a puppy crying that night, and Nancy probably snuck over the wall to find it. I
never told the real truth. I was so torn apart. Grief. Guilt."
Tina paused. With one hand, she smoothed out the fingers of the other. "But you
know the worst of it? I was angry. She was missing, it was my fault, and I was angry at
her! If she hadn't followed me. If she hadn't been so stubborn. It was my fault. It was her
fault. Damn me. Damn her. An infinite hall of mirror shards. Still grief and guilt. Still
anger. Anger reflecting the guilt, guilt reflecting the anger. I still get furious with her. I'll
never get over the grief. But I don't have any more tears."
Reed watched as the yoga master struck an impossible pose. "You could try
forgiving her," Reed said. "And then yourself."
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"What do you know about it?" Tina snapped.
"The theory is easy. I don't know much about the practice." He straightened his
legs with a wince and held out his hand. "Help me up, would you. Looking at that guru
with his ankle around his neck has frozen my joints."
In the clinic's garden, shaded by the trees and serenaded by a flock of twitchy
sparrows, Men Djawa tilted her head and peered up at her visitor looming over her. She
said in Balinese, "What a big nose you have."
Reed grinned and said in the same language, "Where I come from, that's the start
of a children's story."
"Do you know where my children are?"
Reed sat down on the bench across from her. "Don't you remember me, Ibu
Parwati?"
She harrumphed. "White people all look alike."
"Do you remember Naniek?"
Men Djawa blinked her cloudy eyes. "They killed her. I saw her bones."
"She wasn't killed. Her brother took her to Singapore. She's living in Canada
now."
"How do you know? They were all killed."
"I put her on the plane."
Men Djawa sucked her cheeks, her corrugated face further creased with
puzzlement. "I know you. You're that American, with the camera. Reed Davis."
"Much older now. I have hair growing in my ears."
"Naniek is in Canada? Isn't it cold there? I hope she dresses warmly. She was
always riding her bike in the rain."
Reed withdrew a postcard sized photograph from his shirt pocket, one he had
digitally reproduced from the larger framed photo, of two girls playing hopscotch. He put
the photo in her hand. She frowned again and brought it close to her eyes. Her hand
began to shake, slowly at first and then as if caught in a violent storm. She pressed her
hand down into her lap, nearly crumpling the photo. She looked at Reed, and it wasn't
hope that was rising up through those murky eyes, but an awful dread, a terror that she
would at long last find out what happened to her girls.
"They're safe," Reed said. "I took Sri and Endang to Pastor Louis. You remember
him, the Catholic priest? He ran the orphanage and the clinic. They were in the orphanage
for a month and then Father Louis's church sent them to Singapore. A Dutch family
adopted them. They went to Holland a year later. That's where the live."
Men Djawa's terror receded and was replaced by indignant alarm. "Orang
blanda? Dutch colonial imperialists?"
"A good family. Your girls found a home."
Men Djawa examined the photograph once more, briefly, almost cursorily, and
tucked the glossy down the front of her gown, close to her heart. She grasped Reed's hand
and said, "Come around again tomorrow. I will make sweet cakes for you, the best kue
lapis you've ever tasted."
Tina dropped Reed off at his bungalow. He invited her in for a drink, but she
could tell that he wanted to be alone.
203

"Thanks, but I got to finish my packing," she said. "I'm leaving tomorrow. Have
to get back. A ton of work to catch up on." She held out a strand of hair. "Plus a visit to
my hairdresser, the only person in the world who knows what to do with my mop."
"Drive safe," he said, and bent to kiss her on the cheek. "That car of yours has a
mind of its own. You sure the steering's connected to the wheels?"
She laughed and put the car in reverse, the vehicle reluctantly obeying. "I'll see
you around," she said, with a final wave. As she drove off, she felt oddly unsatisfied, as if
she'd just watched a TV series that was missing half its final episode, where all the loose
ends were neatly tied up.
During the visit to Men Djawa, she'd kept to the background with Doctor Lim,
figuring Reed deserved a private moment but eavesdropping nonetheless from the
doctor's back porch. It'd been an weirdly anticlimactic moment. She been hoping for an
explosion of joy, a warmth of happiness to bask in. A naïve expectation, really.
On the doctor's porch this had hit home. All her adult life she'd thought that if
only Nancy's bones could be found then she wouldn't wake up at mornings feeling like a
loathsome immovable object. But now, with the Safari sputtering along, she had the
notion that finding Nancy's bones wouldn't much change things. It'd only stir and shift the
shadows a bit. Even telling Reed the secret she carried with her like a ball and chain
hadn't been any cleansing confession. Forgiveness—yeah, the theory was easy all right,
but the practice was like hoisting yourself up by your bootstraps. How did you start?
Grabbing the straps just meant you were scrunched over your boots like an idiot.
Arini, Nol, Dharma, Mantera—the truth had come out. The bones found by the
beach had been identified, maybe not officially, but people now knew. Tina had heard
names being murmured. But what of it? Life in Batu Gede would stay its course and the
world would turn as it always had.
There wasn't much packing to do, clothes and a few books and papers. She held
the framed photo of her and Nancy. She touched Nancy's school-marm face, wishing she
could form that expression into something more lovable and less accusing. "I am so
sorry," she said. "Please forgive me." The words were easy to say, but no emotion
followed in their wake. Well, it was the best she could do. She folded the frame and
slipped it into the side pocket of her suitcase.
Out in the garden she burned the facsimile of Catra's letters and the photos of
Arini and Mantera and the granary and the notes she'd jotted. As the paper smoldered she
contemplated the plunge pool. She'd never used it, and she wasn't about to have a
goodbye dip either. The water had turned a murky green, which was somehow a fitting
symbol of…of everything, Tina decided.
A dozen feet away, in the mulch of the hibiscus plants hedging the wall, a
movement caught her eye. A snake, brown and well camouflaged, pausing to taste the air
with its tongue. Tina waved an arm, catching its attention, and it rose a foot and spread its
hood. Delighted by this National Geographic moment, Tina laughed. "Go away, would
you. Eat a rat or something."
The snake relaxed and slipped down a hole.
"So you do like snakes," a voice said dryly. Tina turned. Arini had appeared from
the back garden, carrying the brass iron. "My son was quite amazed by that."
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"There were rattlesnakes around where I grew up," Tina said, stirring the ashes to
make sure nothing recognizable was left in the dirt. "I learned to respect them as part of
my world. Live and let live."
Arini held up the iron. "A going away gift."
"Oh, Arini. I can't. That's a family heirloom."
"Nol's bought me an electric iron. Very light and easy to use." Arini patted the
iron. "Perhaps you don't want this. It's heavy, awkward to pack."
"Actually, it would make a great paperweight for my office. Please, sit down. I
have some tea in the kitchen. Or coffee."
"No thank you. The doctor says I should cut down my caffeine."
Seated at the table, Arini opened the iron's rooster lid. The interior was scrubbed
of charcoal, and within were several copies of a flyer. She handed one to Tina. Flimsy
paper, cheaply printed. Arini was silent in her usual composed way as Tina read. The
pamphlet was a publication of the Council for Reconciliation, established by several
former members of Gerwani and the PKI who had survived the 1965 killings, but were
victims of years of imprisonment and deprivation.
We must not forget the history of those terrible years, the text said, and we must
hear the voices of those have not spoken. But we must also forgive, for the sake of our
children and our children's children, for they are the future of this country. May it never
again happen!
"A Jakarta foundation," Arini said. "They are establishing a branch in Bali."
"Are you joining?"
"I've been silent and bitter long enough. It is time to forgive."
"What did you tell your son?"
"About his father? I lied. I said Catra was his father, and had betrayed himself to
save his family. Catra is now even more of a hero to him."
In the newly harvested rice fields, threshers were burning chaff, an eddy of smoke
wafting over the walls. Tina fanned a wisp away from her nose. "I can't imagine Dharma
going around hugging ex-Communists."
"True," Arini said. "Forgiveness is as much a struggle as is a revolution."
"Dangerous, too. Some people will come after you. Not all of them will want to
be forgiven. They'll snarl, want to finish the job. Especially if they find out Luhde
Srikandi is still alive." Tina hesitated, and added, "It's a noble thought, but I'd think twice,
Arini."
Arini's smile was a curious one, as if behind it was a secret. The perplexing smile
struck Tina as being inappropriate, but then a suspicion rose up from her mind. "You
were Luhde Srikandi, weren't you?"
"Aduh, my dear, I never said I was. I was in a PKI cell, not Special Bureau. My
codename was Sumbadra."
Tina let this sink in. It didn't sink far, but deep enough. "Arjuna's dutiful wife,"
she murmured. "Srikandi was the warrior bride."
"My duty was to report on the guests that came through the hotel. I passed on a
few messages. Spied on people like Reed Davis. I wanted to do more. I was envious of
Luhde Srikandi. But I did my duty."
"Then who was she?"
Arini gave a little shake of her head. "Let the past keep some things, Tina."
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Tina contemplated the brass rooster on the iron's lid. Poor Reed Davis, getting it
partly right and completely wrong. On the night of the new moon, at the pura dalem
temple, Naniek had said she was Luhde Srikandi, and nobody believed her. Another was
killed in her place. No wonder her vow to never forgive Reed.
Tina picked up the flyer and glanced it over again. "Am I allowed to join?"
"There are no boundaries. How could there be? We'd love to have international
members." Arini stood. "I'll leave you to your packing and say goodbye tomorrow." She
eyed the iron. "A paperweight? What sort of papers do you have in your office?"
Tina laughed. "Piles and piles." She escorted Arini to the gate, and on impulse
kissed the older woman's cheek, the skin stretched and dry. "Thank you, Arini."
Arini gave her a smile, but the kiss had discomfited her. Too bad, Tina thought.
She would just have to get used to it.
Reed Davis flicked the latch in his Ming cabinet and tugged open the secret
drawer. Within lay Naniek's photograph. He lifted it out. Holding it in his hands, studying
that lovely face, he opened his mind as wide as it could go to all the memories, from the
joy to the horror. He let them wash and crash and tumble, himself a piece of rotten
flotsam. What do you know. He was crying. The room blurred through his tears. Finally
the tumult eased. He took the photograph down to his workshop and found a simple
frame to fit. After cleaning the teak and polishing it, he inserted the photo. There were
plenty of wall spaces on which to hang it, but only one felt right. On the verandah, he
screwed in a brass hook and hung the photograph beside that of Sri and Endang, playing
hopscotch.
He wasn't sure what this meant. Bringing everything out into the open? That was
too neat and easy and cute. All he knew for certain was that for a snapshot it was a great
photo and looked good up there.
Komang made him a fruit juice, and he lowered himself with squeaking knees
onto the verandah cushions. A construction crew had carved a path on the ravine across
the stream, and workers were clearing one last patches of remaining wild grass and
woods. Probably another mansion. Thin brown smog layered the land beyond, all the
way to the distant volcanic foothills. Above the stream, the pigeons circled round and
round, their sound of their whistles a mournful elegy.
Bali. For better or worse, whatever it had been and would be, it was home.
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Chapter 36
Nol trotted up the granary's steps and pushed open the door. More of the thatch
roof had rotted through, and patches of sky showed, dusty rods of light falling on Mak's
old loom. He looked around at the room with its curved walls, larger than his parlor, big
enough for, oh, a half-dozen rich tourists to meditate upon their yoga pads. Nol would
tell them stories of the strange magical things that had happened in this granary, the
spiritual forces that charged this space, and they would look around them in awe and
sense the power and feel doubly privileged to be here. Why, they'd be willing to be pay
more for the honor.
He wouldn't tell them about Mother and Mantera meeting here in secret, though.
Ampun, but Uncle Dharma certainly got that all backwards, didn't he, Nol
thought. Mantera hadn't taken advantage of Mother in that way, which Nol didn't even
want to think about for a single second. No, Mantera had been a friend who had helped
Arini and Catra, not hurt them.
Like a fighting cock with its hackle spread and its single-minded brain, Dharma
was too blinded to see this.
Nol still didn't like Mantera, and Raka he frankly hated. But the attack on Putu
was now in the hands of the police. Nol doubted they'd be able to pin anything on Raka,
who was too rich and well-connected. But people knew. In fact, Mbak Lena had quit her
job when she'd heard. She'd come round to visit Nol and said she couldn't possibly work
for a man who sent thugs to beat up people. Nol thanked her and then casually asked if
she would be interesting in investing in a yoga and healing center. Tourists were going
mad about yoga and Balinese medicine, he said. He hinted that he himself had a valuable
collection of medicinal texts and a deep understanding of the ancient healing arts. Mbak
Lena said she'd think about it.
Tomorrow Putu was being released from hospital. He'd already had several
dentist appointments at the hospital to have his teeth rebuilt. This was a serious matter
that had already required a preliminary ceremony, which Dharma had helped pay for.
Nol squatted by the loom and experimentally pushed the reed, which creaked
from years of disuse. Old Mak must have spent hours and hours up here, making her
songkets. And all that traveling she did to sell her cloth.
His father had turned himself in order not to betray Luhde Srikandi. Uncle
Dharma had been in on the plot. Oh, Mother and her secrets! Nol should have guessed
the truth of it a long, long a long time ago.
The stairs creaked under a footfall. Nol startled and then relaxed as he heard
Mak's cranky muttering. She poked her head through the doors. "What are you doing up
here?"
"Thinking," Nol said. He held out a hand to catch a beam of light. "I should fix
the roof."
"This is mine. You're not going to take it from me. Where is that friend of yours?
Sudana. I don't trust him. The two of you are always getting into trouble."
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"Mak, remember when I asked you who Luhde Srikandi was? When you were
selling your songket to Tina?"
She narrowed her eyes and worked her lips as if chewing betel nut. "The CIA spy.
She and that man with the big nose and the camera."
"Mak, I know who Luhde Srikandi was. I figured it out."
Mak squatted on her haunches, wrapping her tattered scarf around her shoulders.
"Have you done your homework? You always put it off to the last minute and then you
expect me to help you." But there was something cunning to her addled mind, shrewd
intelligence pricking through those rheumy eyes.
"I thought it was Mother at first," Nol said. "My father would do anything to
protect her. But some things didn't make sense, and other things made more sense." He
worked the reed again. Click-clack. "Your songkets were famous. You went around the
island selling them. You could visit everybody, anywhere. Nobody would think a thing.
Your songkets gave you access. They allowed you to do your job. As Luhde Srikandi."
She squinted fiercely. "Torture me, but I won't say a word."
"You were my father's favorite relative. My sister said he adored you. He would
have done anything to protect you, just like he would Mother. My guess is you and him
had long discussions in this granary on Marxism and water rights and whatever else you
talked about."
Mak picked her nose. "He wouldn't believe. He was a half-revolutionary."
"And Mother knew who you were. She knew you were Luhde Srikandi. She's kept
that a secret all this time."
"Why does she have an electric iron now? What's wrong with charcoal one? Next
thing you know, she'll get an electric ice box and that machine that cooks your food using
magic rays."
"It's called a microwave, Mak." Nol eyed her. Spruce her up a little, teach her a
mantra or two to chant, and she would make a great backdrop to a yoga health center, the
wise elder from whom Nol had learned the ancient secrets. "Nah, Mak, listen to me. Do
you know anything about herbs and traditional medicine?"
208

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The bloody trauma of 1965 remains to this day a dark bruise on Indonesian psyche.
Growing up in Indonesia, I absorbed much of the myth and mystery and murk, as did
everyone who lived through that time. You knew who among your neighbors did the
killing, and you knew others who'd lost their families or livelihoods, and occasionally in
private you heard stories from both sides that rushed out like bitter waters, but you also
knew not to talk openly about any of this. While I underscore the fact that my principal
characters and the principle setting of Batu Gede is entirely made up out of my
imagination, I did draw on this lifetime of osmosis. I also read the standard works, both
old and new, liberal and conservative, on the 1965 coup and counter-coup. Rarely has
such a deadly upheaval of this magnitude been cause for such wildly divergent
interpretations.
I would especially like to thank Dr. Saskia Wieringe, whose book SEXUAL POLITICS
IN INDONESIA, pulled together several stories I'd heard into a different context than
that of the New Order's official version of events, and brought into focus a major element
of the novel.
The author can be contacted at richard at richardlewisauthor.com
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