Chapter One - Richard Lewis

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.
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