Chapter One - Richard Lewis

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
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