Chapter One - Richard Lewis

"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
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